Fixing Every Healer Job

[SirShady]

I will never not be confused by these healer forum AST/SCH/SGE main screeds that spend paragraphs going on and on and on about how dreadfully boring mashing one button over and over again for an entire encounter is, what a wretched awful gameplay experience it is, how it's the worst design in the MMO genre.

And then conclude with "so that's why the 1 button rotation is perfect for WHM."

Quite simply, it's because I believe Square Enix is going to keep at least one healer class at that simple baseline rotation. There needs to be one entry level healer that anyone can pick up and play through the MSQ with. White Mage, as the first and most basic healer, is that job. A second and third damage button could be added just for the sake of having a damage combo, but I don't see them doing that (not that I see them doing any of these suggestions), so instead I suggest additional support options that could be used for a DPS increase instead. However, as Silver pointed out to me, my Afflatus Inspiratione has problems of its own with it basically invalidating lilies as a healing resource, so I'll have to think it through again. I'm a White Mage main too. I play all healers.

I'd also like to point out that the other jobs changes don't give them strict combos like other jobs either, otherwise you could just do that for every healer job and give them a 1-2-3 easy rotation. Scholar has DoTs, a mini-fester, and enhanced versions of broil/art of war, Astro has a machine gun mode that ramps up by rotating through two buttons and an OGCD that is supposed to be timed for when their DoT falls off, and Sage rotates through two different Dosis combos depending on if they need more damage or more heals and gets more toxicon use out of their kit. I find these are all more interesting and nuanced ways to get value out of their kits than a simple 1-2-3 combo, but honestly if White Mage is the "basic" healer, maybe it should get a sweet and simple combo with no strings attached... Huh. Honestly that might just work better.

Edit: Made some updates I think you'd like better! Gave them a basic 1-2-3 combo. The combo and Holy II now reduce Thorn's (renamed Bloom) cooldown. Still a good amount of optimizing to be done.

[Silver-Strider]

Snip

Again, Simple =/= Braindead.
Having Aero 3 back is the bare minimum SE can do for WHM but honestly, Healers just need a flatout rework from the ground up; oGCDs need to be consolidated/removed, systems need to be added or enhanced, and skills need to be adjusted.

For WHM, I would have them function as kind of a mix between WAR's rotation and BLM.
Aero/Dia would function like Thunder, having a ST and AoE version that don't stack but instead of having Aero/Dia proc the Thundercloud effect, attach that effect to Regen/Medica 2. This way, your GCD heals aren't completely worthless once you unlock Lily skills and could potentially become DPS positive, without the need for adding any new skills (apart from an AoE Dia equivalent)
As for the WAR part of the rotation, have a branching combo similar to Storm's Eye and Storm's Path.
Stone/Glare -> Water/Banish -> Seraph Strike to get Cleric Stance for 15s to increase their damage/healing potency by 5%
Stone/Glare -> Water/Banish -> Wind/Aeolus as just a basic combo.

Ofc, in order to add these skills, we'd need to compress/remove skills to compensate.
PI could be dropped entirely and the CD on Temperance could just be lowered to 60s so that it could fill the role of buffing up our heals.
Aqua Veil and Divine Benison could just be merged into a single CD of 60s as well.
Remove Thin Air and buff the MP restored by Assize to 10% and granted a 2nd charge.
Have Freecure just upgrade Cure 1 into Cure 2

Still incredibly simple but much more fleshed out.