WHM Desperately Needs An Overhaul

[aiqa]

This I can understand, given I saw a post on Reddit the other day where someone literally had arthritis from playing DRG at a high level. I've been rethinking a bit about how jobs are designed in regards to GCDs since then, and I'll agree that maybe WHM does feel good on the low APM side; however, we still have to address the issues we have with Lilies. Taking what Shurrikhan said, it literally can go either way with oGCD or GCD Lilies since I made it a secondary option in the OP for this reason. If we're to design around a high level WHM that runs on GCDs alone, then we need to consider the Raw Potency as outlined in the original design of WHM in XIV. Adding raw potency to Misery to make it neutral would be a large gain to WHM instead of just Glare spam.

Low APM is fine as far as I'm concerned, but existing spells aren't utilized well even if Misery potency gets increased. I don't really see why a role with the least damage spells should also have one of the highest "cooldowns" on one of those damage spells. Using misery every 90 seconds at most doesn't add that much to WHM rotation over Glare spam. I'd much prefer Misery every 30 seconds even if that means lowering its potency a bit. And the long Dia duration seems nice at first, but in effect that just means using Glare even more compared to the old Aero/Stone.

[Silver-Strider]

Low APM is fine as far as I'm concerned, but existing spells aren't utilized well even if Misery potency gets increased. I don't really see why a role with the least damage spells should also have one of the highest "cooldowns" on one of those damage spells. Using misery every 90 seconds at most doesn't add that much to WHM rotation over Glare spam. I'd much prefer Misery every 30 seconds even if that means lowering its potency a bit. And the long Dia duration seems nice at first, but in effect that just means using Glare even more compared to the old Aero/Stone.

That could all be resolved by adding procs like the Diacloud suggestion. Something to break up the monotony and to give more purpose to our toolkit in ways that are simple but impactful and actually rewarding to utilize. If SE would just stop with cuddling healers to death, we could have actually engaging gameplay with just our 3 DPS spells but instead we just have an overbloated healing toolkit that is overkill for the majority of content and even in the content we can utilize it, they're so potent that we're still stuck spamming our 1 filler spell with nothing else to do except refresh our DoT occasionally.

[Shurrikhan]

That could all be resolved by adding procs like the Diacloud suggestion. Something to break up the monotony and to give more purpose to our toolkit in ways that are simple but impactful and actually rewarding to utilize.

That probably needs to at least have banking, though, even if that may reduce the urgency granted. Having a chance to waste a loaded proc with each server tick is rarely a good fit for healer and would constrain any later attempts towards a lower-percentage-downtime design philosophy for healers.

Moreover, I'm not sure how "break up all other possible procedures through immediate use of thing A upon proc-chime" would be particularly impactful or rewarding outside of a kit like that of BLM in which it should be held under state A and used mostly immediately under state B and both states are rotated between.

tl;dr: Procs can be of use, but only in the right contexts. They are not remotely sufficient in and of themselves.

[Semirhage]

tl;dr: Procs can be of use, but only in the right contexts. They are not remotely sufficient in and of themselves.

Agreed there. Is having a proc at all better than 11111111111? Sure, it's a start, but almost anything is less boring than 11111111. The important part comes with what the proc does and what it implies for the rest of the kit. If the proc pops up and skillful play dictates "just press it immediately whenever it lights up for a damage gain", then it's a scant improvement over just having no proc in the first place. If, for example, it's only a gain when you use it at say 9 seconds or fewer remaining on the dot, that's a bit better. Makes you think just a little. If it has greater implications and/or feeds another system like RDM's black and white mana do, which gives you even more pause to determine what among a set of 2-4 choices would be the best course of action in the next half second or so, that's excellent; much better than "press the button when it glows".

[Silver-Strider]

That probably needs to at least have banking, though, even if that may reduce the urgency granted. Having a chance to waste a loaded proc with each server tick is rarely a good fit for healer and would constrain any later attempts towards a lower-percentage-downtime design philosophy for healers.

How is having a Skill Ceiling high enough that you don't bump your head standing a bad thing? You missed a proc. That means there's room for optimization which isn't a bad thing. Anything is better than the nothing we have.

Moreover, I'm not sure how "break up all other possible procedures through immediate use of thing A upon proc-chime" would be particularly impactful or rewarding outside of a kit like that of BLM in which it should be held under state A and used mostly immediately under state B and both states are rotated between.

Healers have a similar system. It's call healing or DPSing. If I'm in a DPS phase, I don't need to heal and when I'm in my healing phase, it should be to build up my DPS phase again, or at least that's how it should work. Having a system in place so that your GCD heals don't negatively impact your contribution to the group is literally no different than asking for Misery to be DPS neutral. Maybe Regen gains the Diacloud proc. Dia becomes a 600 potency nuke that more than makes up for missing out on 1 GCD of Glare with the potential to be a DPS gain. Maybe Cure 2 get the Cleric Stance proc to double the potency of your next attack spell. Misery becomes an 1800 potency AoE nuke in 5 GCDs vs 5 Glares at 1550 potency on a single target. Does it encourage overhealing? Sure but then again, you have a trait to help solve that issue, don't you?

Literally, short of just adding more DPS buttons, there isn't really a good way to break Healers away from their 1 button spam. Procs could help though.

[Shurrikhan]

How is having a Skill Ceiling high enough that you don't bump your head standing up a bad thing? You missed a proc. That means there's room for optimization which isn't a bad thing. Anything is better than the nothing we have.

Right. We're talking about adding systems. Adding a system to which all others must be subordinate because it is "use within 3s of its proccing or risk wasting it" --and one has no means of controlling the opportunities for its generation beyond whether DoTs were worth using in the given fight-- will constrain those other systems. "Anything helps" only so long as the "anything" added doesn't also badly hamper any other system to be added.

Again, procs can work. Procs can be really good. With the right context. Damage optimization primarily being based around a "hit when flashing" mechanic (especially since it would, in this case, apply the DoT anyways, thereby making its periodic reapplication effectively passive in sustained combat and end up costing about as much complexity as it adds), though, is likely to constrain any future additions or more meaningful setup available to a job to little to no net gain.

[Silver-Strider]

Right. We're talking about adding systems. Adding a system to which all others must be subordinate because it is "use within 3s of its proccing or risk wasting it" --and one has no means of controlling the opportunities for its generation beyond whether DoTs were worth using in the given fight-- will constrain those other systems. "Anything helps" only so long as the "anything" added doesn't also badly hamper any other system to be added.

Again, procs can work. Procs can be really good. With the right context. Damage optimization primarily being based around a "hit when flashing" mechanic (especially since it would, in this case, apply the DoT anyways, thereby making its periodic reapplication effectively passive in sustained combat and end up costing about as much complexity as it adds), though, is likely to constrain any future additions or more meaningful setup available to a job to little to no net gain.

You act as though you'll always get a proc but given my experience with the Thundercloud proc, I don't particularly believe that would be a problem, especially since Regen only lasts 18 seconds (15s for Medica 2) vs Thunder lasting 30 and thus would have less opportunities to proc. There will be instances that Regen won't proc Diacloud and there will be moments that you might want to save it for movement and with a 40s duration, I don't particularly see it as stifling to the degree that you do. I don't see how having a proc somehow makes Dia any more or less complex to utilize. It's already pretty passive being a button we hit only once every 30 seconds so I don't really see any complexity involved with making it that we hit it once or twice more every so often.

I don't see SE adding any additional setup to Dia in the foreseeable future. Hell, I'd say the likelihood of them removing it before adding any additional setup is more likely given SE's history with healers, so I'd rather build it up now than await some other hypothetical situation that might never come.

[HyperiusUltima]

*snip*

Sure, you can make Diacloud work this way, but I think what Shurrikhan is getting at here is the fact that WHM doesn't necessarily focus as hard on movement as BLM does. Planning out movement on a BLM in a Savage fight is HARD to many different reasons: Boss Mechanics, Forced Weaves, the works. It literally takes a lot of time for optimizing a complex job and to get your burst timings right as a DPS; but for WHM, they have a 1.5s cast time. This means that they have slivers of movement that add up over the course of multiple GCDs(which can be larger than a sliver with slidecasting). BLM was set up in a certain way where they want to plan their proc usage around boss mechanics and required movement, whereas WHM can plan their movement with the use of instants like their Lilies and Misery(with the only constraint being overhealing).

After having some time to think on the thread, I think I have an idea I'd want to propose for Strider since we're getting so focused on one aspect: Diacloud increases the next completed Glare cast's potency by 20 at a 20% rate. This would at least take the idea and focus it into the current systems that are in place; but an actual idea is connecting the dots in the kit. Our current issue is that in downtime, we literally do not have any systems in place for such(Cleric Stance used to be a button, but instead it literally made you heal for crap but boost your damage by 15%; they scrapped it after Stormblood). So, we technically have to make a new system from scratch that can be used in Downtime. I think one thing to consider is just backing up to the lore. We know WHM to basically be king of GCD Healing; and we've had oGCD healing overtake a majority of these aspects in this regard given the kits that were created in Shadowbringers and Endwalker to the point it's barely needed at all in some cases, so to bring more interest to WHM in the form of abilities that follow its lore would help a lot more than just still having Light for some reason without even going back to our roots.

Let's take SGE's Eukrasia as an example. It augments their skills to be Instants with different effects. I think that we can create a new system that involves the three elements that WHM starts with: Water, Earth, and Wind. Light only came from Shadowbringers when we traveled to the First; that should be the base of the kit at Lv 90. But, I think having this build-up alongside Misery would push WHM into a better spot being a GCD healer; yet, we'd also have to consider what effects could happen with this new system.

Something I thought up:

Add Elemental Attunement as a mechanic for Lilies. All we know right now is that Lilies are the crux of WHM's kit to lead into Misery. If we can augment those Lilies to apply additional effects instead of just healing, this means we can make some things happen. For instance, let's say we hit [insert button name here] to change Holy II into Quake which would be flat AoE Damage. This would be an AoE that can be instant and cause the next Lily in the Lily Gauge to become an Earth Lily. Earth Lilies could be used to apply a Single Target Stoneskin(10% Max HP) or a party-wide 5% Max HP Shield. For Dia, that same button can change it into Tornado, which makes the next Lily in the gauge a Wind Lily and is an AoE DoT. You can see where I'm going with this since it'd be focused on which buff came first, Earth or Wind? Wind Lilies grant self MP Regeneration, while the AoE version is a mini Assize. Lastly there's Flood, which changes from Glare(god I miss Fluid Aura) and does flat single target damage. Water Lilies would grant a HoT that's close to what M2 is in AoE, and in single target it'd be a basic regen. While this sounds like I'm getting close to Astro's toolkit, the idea behind it is different since you're actually getting an interaction every 10 GCDs instead of it being 1111111111 and then sometimes Lilies inbetween.

There is one thing I've wanted to try, but it'd be separate from Misery. Misery would still be allocated based on Normal Lilies used(since sometimes we don't have the luxury to guarantee an Elemental Attuned Lily during a fight), while I think a better Capstone(which can even put Liturgy of the Bell at 88 if need be) would be with this system granting Afflatus Resolution, which would technically be a different button than Misery that does big ST damage greater than Misery's current value so they don't have to fudge the numbers too much. While this idea is merely a pipedream(and probably not even balanced in the least) I just wanted to spitball ideas here for a minute since we're talking about interactions and trying to break up the Glare Spam with other systems that can be simpler. Generally, the CD of that button would be 30s since that's how long it takes to get a single Lily, but this is me just trying to rethink how WHM could be done to be more interactive.