WHM Desperately Needs An Overhaul

[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.