WHM Desperately Needs An Overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

Because that's worked so well so far hasn't it? I sure don't miss Selene's old effects at all, her implementation is to heal after all. I'm sure no one liked the old card system for AST either. It was just DPS buffs, Bole/Spire/Ewer totally didn't have different effects at all. I have seen the light.....
....and it's BORING.

That has nothing. Whatsoever. To do with button efficiency.

Capacities are not buttons. Functions are not buttons. Actions need not each take a separate button.

Selene's Skill Speed and Spell Speed (later, Attack Speed) buffs were already auto-castable and could have easily been consolidated or outright made into auras because they are capacities, not buttons.

Balance, Bowl, Spear, Arrow, Ewer, and Spire only ever used a single button.

Button bloat has nothing to do with available functions or capacities. It has. Only. To do with taking more buttons than is needed to allow for a given capacity or function. It's not that complicated.

And how are Solace and Rapture any different? They were by no means necessary at all. They could have simply made Lilies generate as they currently do and just made Cure 2 and Medica instant, free cast spells while you had a Lily but they added Solace and Rapture for whatever reason. So are you going to advocate for their removal?

So long as you never wanted to save even a single charge of Lily for mobility and/or weave space (which seems unlikely in many a Savage fight), sure, you could remove the ability to control when you gain those benefits.

You could also, though, just have Lilies auto-complete (and make MP-free) healing casts that would have otherwise been interrupted by movement or damage taken such that the mobility-holding capacity can actually be used for mobility. No loss of function or capacity, but no buttons required.

Or reduce the cast times of WHM healing spells by ~.6s across the board to give some weave space and then turn it into a Swiftcast-type action that uses only one button for every possible healing function it may be applied to. One button, every sub-function covered.

And couldn't you just add 2 charges of Lucid Dreaming?

???

Charges don't increase uses per minute. You'd get only one extra Lucid Dreaming per fight. And if you're concerned about button bloat, why the hell would you want Lucid Dreaming at all? Is getting PKed shortly after a Lucid Dreaming and therefore having far less MP when raised... so exciting as to be worth a button? Unless we know when we're going to die and can therefore bank Lucid for it, there's no added function or capacity, only an added button -- which, yes, makes it bloat.

Astrodyne, moreover, is not some Lucid Dreaming-equivalent; it's a self-buff (like PoM, but weaker and more thematically tied-in) of up to three types and if it so offends you that after using up Speed and Damage that they next went for Mana, change the Mana to Crit and think no more on it.

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To reiterate one last time: Whether something is bloated or not depends on whether the implementation takes up more buttons than is necessary to achieve its target capacity and/or function. If something offers no capacity or function but requires a button, it is inherently bloated; most skills, however, at least offer something, but many could do all that (or better) without using so many buttons.

It has nothing directly to do total button count alone. A given design for WHM can still be bloated even if WHM currently has fewer buttons than AST or SCH. That AST and SCH are bloated does not excuse button bloat (needlessly inefficient design) for WHM.