Honest question for people dissatisfied with WHM:

[Shikiseki]

I like the design option people mentioned earlier.

Could make a skill like continuation that triggers if you meet certain conditions like
heal x% amount with a single target cure to trigger an earth spell that places a damage down on the enemy or
use an aoe healing skill that triggers a wind spell that places a dot
and something like mitigate % damage via Aquaveil/divine benison to trigger a water attack spell that splashes around the enemy that heals allies around the target

that way at least you wouldn't feel as bad to use your gcd healing on white mage (which imo is quite a waste of design choice to begin with) but you'd get compensation like the blood lily

[SargeTheSeagull]

My problem with WHM is my same problem with healers generally. 11111111111121111111111111112 and sometimes 3 is not fun. Period. I will take literally anything over that. I haven’t touched WHM this expansion for the same reason I haven’t touched drk: I’ve heard nothing good about the changes. That said, here’s my idea:

Thin air works like it did in ShB, Misery is a DPS gain. They could work in a system similar to BLM’s enochian. Instead of going back and forth between dealing big damage but spending MP and doing small damage but gaining MP, WHM would go back and forth between giving huge heals and spending MP, charging blood lily, and gaining a passive buff that increases your damage, and dealing big damage and recovering MP on a 15-ish second timer. Sorta like a less trash version of old cleric stance. So in heal phase each GCD heal you use charges blood lily, grants a buff increasing your damage per cast, costing lots of MP, and you can swap to damage phase, spend the buffs you gained, spend blood lily, regain MP. So the more heals you pump out during healing phase the more damage you can deal when you’re dpsing.

I didn’t think this through bc I threw it together in five minutes but honestly I’ll take anything other than 1111111111111. If nothing else, all they should do is make lilys and thin air work like they did last expac.

[Valmaxian]

I’m finally getting to leveling WHM after finishing the other three, and after playing them all extensively, my experience is that WHM just feels really bad. The Lily system may give “free” heals, but they’re still on the GCD. You cast them, wait, then continue with whatever you were doing (usually spamming Glare or Holy). The mana issues are also very apparent. So it’s gameplay is noticeably slower than the other healers, it has worse MP economy than the other healers, and it doesn’t even bring bigger DPS because of the additional tools the other healers have (Energy Drain, Phlegma, Macrocosmos/Earthly Star). And those AST abilities? They also heal. A LOT. WHM can function, but you’ll absolutely notice a difference when playing all four. As an AST main, WHM feels like a severely watered down AST, and that’s just not satisfying or fair. It’s identity is not strong enough to set it apart, even if you significantly boosted its damage. I think the true potential of WHM can be seen in Assize. I’d add a damage boost to Temperance, boost Afflatus Misery’s damage by a huge margin, make Lily skills OGCD, give Assize two charges, increase the radius of Asylum and add a DoT to it, and add another interactive element - maybe OGCD DPS Lily spenders.

[D6Damager]

Highest green DPS because it took all the other healers down with it to its level. Right now they are basically still the same as they were in Shadowbringers, but with Bells and Whistles attached that don't do much in terms of engagement. If the devs would learn that engagement is the key to making a good job(both in healing AND in DPS), then maybe perhaps people will stop complaining about healers in a nutshell and how we press 1 all the time.

Not by the end of the expansion. It was behind both AST and SCH, if only by 1% but last place is still last place

Thx! I've been away from the game awhile. A lot has changed.

[UkcsAlias]

High end players find the gameplay boring and won't touch GCDs with a 10 foot pole, so hate that WHM is GCD reliant. A mere potency increase won't fix that.

GCDs are not a problem if combo's exist (the GCD on that actualy even helps). Even with a very simple kit, combos can do quite a lot. There is a reason why many of the newer classes involve combos.

For WHM due to being GCD reliant, it would generaly be welcome if those GCD heals could compensate the damage side by allowing combo effects. This could even have make cure 1 viable again: instead of a 15% free cure 2, having a 100% chance to boost glare 2 with double damage would already make her kit rely less on a single button. The cure 1 part then allows a more passive healing pattern (although in this example make it a clicking hell to change between targets).

But for example it would be welcome if a 3 button rotation for dealing damage exist (and on that a combo like 12123 would also be a fine enough while still being easy). Add to that some additional effects caused by other buttons (mainly synergies after healing), and suddenly even that basic system can get some quite interresting synergies. And if those are only focussed on the damage portion, WHMs core feature at least keeps working when its needed.

WHM is supposed to be easy, but at some point adding complexity is a good way to get people to at least adapt to skill requirements for other classes. By level 70 you already should have had enough time to practice WHM, keeping it excessively basic isnt needed at that point.

[Dhalya]

I think WHM should stay at the bottom with DPS, it makes sense to have one beginner healer that is easy to pick up and perform okish on, for newer players.
With lower difficulty it should NOT have the highest DPS, it would be very demotivating to play other jobs.
What it really needs is full rework - some interesting gcd rotation with procs or something, system that will remain easy but still fun like Dancer for example.

[MiaShino]

I think WHM should stay at the bottom with DPS, it makes sense to have one beginner healer that is easy to pick up and perform okish on, for newer players.

Most amusing to this Lala over here is that once you play other healers you realize white mage is most difficult to play.

Most punishing during high movement.
Mana issues especially if limited ogcd toolkit not utilized.
Induces bad habits through freecure and gcd reliance. (Quiz time! Who can heal faster, the Scholar with three lustrates or white mage with three lillies?)

Wonder how many sprouts who struggled the first time in Vale realize that the three other healers all have aoe regen by that level? In dungeon with two bosses that inflict large raidwide damage with high consistency. Unsure what Square is even thinking some of the times! The "newbie friendly" starter healer is actually toughest healer to play at 50. Makith no sense that does.

[Silver-Strider]

I think WHM should stay at the bottom with DPS, it makes sense to have one beginner healer that is easy to pick up and perform okish on, for newer players.
With lower difficulty it should NOT have the highest DPS, it would be very demotivating to play other jobs.
What it really needs is full rework - some interesting gcd rotation with procs or something, system that will remain easy but still fun like Dancer for example.

That's not how balance works in this game at all. Every job in the game that has low damage does so because they're sacrificing DPS for utility that helps keep it on par.
BLM, SAM, DRK, etc bring little to no utility to the group but have the highest pDPS and sometimes just the highest DPS in general even when accounting for the utility of other jobs. WHM, however, does not bring any utility and has the weakest damage of all the healers. The only other "selfish" job that is having this problem is MCH and it's universally agreed upon that MCH is undertuned AF and desperately needs a DPS buff. So why then is it ok for WHM to just be bottom barrel? Because it's for beginners? That's a BS argument because WHM is the absolute worst healer for beginners in every conceivable way. It has the worst MP economy of every healer, which a new healer is absolutely going to struggle with when crap hits the fan. It doesn't properly teach you how to weave in oGCD skills because it has all of 2 by level 50 while the other healers have upwards of 5+. The very notion that WHM is good for beginners is ludicrous because it doesn't do anything well enough to actually be recommended for beginners and has been a strawman argument that has crippled WHM for years now and I'm sick of it.

[IceBlueNinja]

I agree with this, it allows me to focus on the fight and not some rotation. Please keep this but fix the lilies and bell.

I third this I dont mind the 1 2 111 myself never did else ofc ill hope on red mage or blue healer if i want more dps buttons. Idk seem whm got the ast 5.0 mana issue treatment for some odd reason seem games just love to have a meme joke character similar to a fightning game that always have the rarely used fighter lol. either something is mass buff or mass nerfed. Again ty god sage got what i want and I hope they dont damage it like they did the other 3 am at last straw now else 100% rdm next exp if any.

[Rilifane]

A 1224225223122242 would still allow you to focus on the fight because it's not mandatory to fulfill your primary role.
Saying "please keep the 11111 because anything else would stress me out" is nothing but egoistic because not wanting to improve healer downtime options means purposely gimping the skill ceiling just so some people can feel comfortable with their easy mode and everyone that has grown out of their fluffy little baby shoes has to be bored out of their minds or hope for clown fiesta.
You can clear every DF content without ever touching a single dps button, you can clear the first floors on Savage with way below optimal healer dps contribution first week. If you need to focus more on the fights, set your priorities correctly and focus on the fight by simplifying dps for the time being and as you get more practice, you'll naturally get better and eventually use the full kit. That's how the other two roles work as well.
Every class has to deal with not being able to play their class to its fullest potential when learning fights -- except healers, better give them a skill ceiling low enough for ants to bump their heads.

This mindset is exactly the reason why an entire role has grown stale: better keep the skill floor as low as humanly possible so everyone can feel happy and comfortable smashing one button over and over.