White Mage Attraction

[Semirhage]

You are reaching a long way of you think “niche” means that you didn’t mean what you proceeded to elaborate on for the rest of your original post but let’s say it does say that then you aren’t really answering what comment I made that you are replying to

And the other healers have defined niches, SGE’s is movement shielding and mitigation, SCH’s is shields and totem healing, AST is damage buffs and time delayed heals, WHM has nothing to compare to any of those useful niches

Gemina's uncle is Yoshi-P. She knows exactly what the dev team thinks, and the rest of us are morons who don't understand what true real healers are like. I'm not a -real- healer because I quit healing, and *real* healers don't care about boring damage rotations.

[Supersnow845]

If I'm reaching, it's because you're not comprehending. My main point was NEVER to focus in on WHM HoT being a niche of theirs. That is just the general idea of the so-called pure healers. Yet for some reason, you want to come in here a try to form a rebuttal around SGE having superior HoT. No one cares.


Yeah... no. This is just an illusion. It's all healing, bud. It's all just keeping other players from eating the floor, and picking them up when they do. "Niche" as is defined, is some type of specialization. Something unique that separates one from another. Right now, this belongs to AST, whose niche has an impact on the DMG output of the entire party, and all jobs can take advantage of it being a direct buff to dmg. That's just Divination. They still have the cards as well.

It is not my intention to dumb down SGE, or perk up AST. But the notion that WHM is somehow inferior to the other healers doesn't even begin to compute. Like at all. Comparisons with something such as Asylum to Sacred Soil/Collective Unconscious/Druochole would be one of those obvious cases of such. The issue is, if SS/CU/Dr are not used, everyone still lives. The regen effect these abilities have (ala Asylum), are the main reasons why they are used. What would actually make Asylum or any healer bubble inferior would be is if all it did was mitigate damage.

I am not dumbing down healing in FFXIV either. Far from it. The thing is, when it comes to true healing scenarios in FFXIV; this happens when things aren't going according to plan. It's not this bundle of scripted goodness, and you heal within a controlled environment. No. True healing is when the S has hit the fan, and HP bars are bouncing around like the LEDs on some kind of old school equalizer. That is the eventual point I arrive at, and it is of the utmost importance that each healer be equipped to handle it. SE has gone to great lengths to snuff out, and snip any such "niche" you want to bring up. AST's remains intact though. The job has an established identity all by itself as the healer that also boosts the party's damage.

tl;dr WHM gets a thumbs up from me.

For someone who is so adamant that cards are a niche you love to completely ignore the fact that chain Stagmentation exists, hmmm is that not a “increases damage”

And if you knock off things like fairy totem healing as “just healing” what niche does any class they? The tanks “just have mitigation” the DPS “just do DPS”, if you aren’t willing to look at what separates jobs within a role just because technically they can still clear then you really have no business discussing why one of the healers is so inferior because all three healing niches I mentioned are all relevant and useful in certain situations even just in the last tier and WHM has nothing at all

[AmiableApkallu]

White Mage needs a cooler damage rotation, you're telling me they fought against Black Mages in the War of the Magi spamming Glare and Dia?!

People always want the identity of WHM to be burst GCD healing but why not just a full GCD identity in general? Give them something similar to BLM (Stone = Fire, Water = Blizzard, Aero = Thunder) but without any timers to manage. That way they can pick up on their rotation when they're done healing or raising. They have an abnormal amount of healing abilities that they never need because lilies cover almost everything that happens. I think some of these can be replaced with damage abilities so it isn't just glareglareglare.

The moment you add any sort of multi-button DPS rotation to a GCD-based healer like WHM, someone's going to point out that those GCD heals are a DPS loss (à la the old lilies) or find a way to turn GCDs spent over-healing into a DPS gain (because of how damage is "refunded"). It's a balancing act the current WHM avoids because of Glare-Glare-Glare-….

The story could play out differently if healers received DPS credit for healing and mitigating [1] [2], but that's non-trivial to work out.

[vetch]

The moment you add any sort of multi-button DPS rotation to a GCD-based healer like WHM, someone's going to point out that those GCD heals are a DPS loss (à la the old lilies) or find a way to turn GCDs spent over-healing into a DPS gain (because of how damage is "refunded"). It's a balancing act the current WHM avoids because of Glare-Glare-Glare-….

The story could play out differently if healers received DPS credit for healing and mitigating [1] [2], but that's non-trivial to work out.

What point are you trying to make? It's currently a DPS loss to GCD heal as well, you just suck it up and do it when you (almost never) have to.

[flowerfairy]

Glare & Dia function as WHM's damage. What I want is for those buttons to have more flavor to them rather than mashing the same thing forever. GCD healing will always be a DPS loss because you aren't dealing damage. Glare being 1 button only or being split into 4 different buttons will never change that predicament healers have to deal with. Lilies as they are now are DPS neutral GCD heals (and actually plus if it's half-charged before burst), isn't that great for a GCD-based healer? I don't see how changing Glare affects that at all. I'm not asking for more damage, I'm asking for unique ways to output that damage.

I agree with your arguments in the hyperlinks. Healing just isn't very engaging or rewarding this expansion. Bosses fart a raidwide once every minute and then it's back to Glare spam. And the solution to that isn't easy to think about because only changing future fights to be more heal-dependent neglects old content and it'll be a snoozefest to revisit them. What I and other people propose is to add more engaging gameplay for healers. When there's no one to heal or raise in a fight, give them something else to look at. SCH's old DoT rotation was a good example of how a healer can contribute to damage. They're just buttons you press when the boss isn't being hurt by it anymore. It's minimal pressure on the SCH to both deal damage and heal the party. Why do we want this out of the game?

[AmiableApkallu]

What point are you trying to make? It's currently a DPS loss to GCD heal as well, you just suck it up and do it when you (almost never) have to.

Eh? 4 GCDs spent on Glare = 3 GCDs spent on Rapture/Solace + 1 GCD on Misery, or "DPS neutral" as people like to put it.

The point being that a GCD-based healer will always be constrained and limited compared to an oGCD-based healer, especially when the "the community" assigns zero utility to healing and mitigation. (And for WHM, as long as combat values mitigation more than HP restoration...)

[AmiableApkallu]

I'm not asking for more damage, I'm asking for unique ways to output that damage.

My feeling: Current job design is not so good at "unique" ways to output damage. Of the 11 DPS jobs (and 4 tank jobs), the only one I find that makes damage at all interesting is BLM, and that's because it has terrible feels when you fail: zero MP and not being able to get yourself into Umbral Ice for zero MP, dropping Enochian at 29 of 30 seconds. Melee are little more than variations on making single-target damage as convoluted as possible. Jobs based on buffs, such as BRD, provide zero feedback in game and thus are unsatisfying to play.

"Healing", on the other hand, at least provides feedback. People are standing, or they're not. They survive the next raid-wide, or they don't. You drag someone and kicking through a fight with 314159 vuln stacks, or you don't. If only those examples weren't so reliant on people making mistakes...

[vetch]

Eh? 4 GCDs spent on Glare = 3 GCDs spent on Rapture/Solace + 1 GCD on Misery, or "DPS neutral" as people like to put it.

Oh, I see what you mean. But, as long as you're not overcapping on lilies, you still lose potential DPS from your maximum by using them to heal instead of saving two to dump during GCDs where you can't Glare (due to the boss being offscreen or whatever), so oGCD healing would still be preferred. No?

The point being that a GCD-based healer will always be constrained and limited compared to an oGCD-based healer, especially when the "the community" assigns zero utility to healing and mitigation. (And for WHM, as long as combat values mitigation more than HP restoration...)

It's not that healing isn't valued. It's that having the most healing power isn't any kind of identity when one of the game's design goals is that all comps need to be able to clear, meaning all that healing power can't be required by the content. 'Guaranteed surplus healing' can't be an identity when one of the cornerstones of MMO combat gameplay is 'surplus is a waste'.

Mitigation is properly valued at the extreme high end, however, which leaves WHM with the least and worst mitigation of any healer, also least valued.

[Mortex]

Oh, I see what you mean. But, as long as you're not overcapping on lilies, you still lose potential DPS from your maximum by using them to heal instead of saving two to dump during GCDs where you can't Glare (due to the boss being offscreen or whatever), so oGCD healing would still be preferred. No?



It's not that healing isn't valued. It's that having the most healing power isn't any kind of identity when one of the game's design goals is that all comps need to be able to clear, meaning all that healing power can't be required by the content. 'Guaranteed surplus healing' can't be an identity when one of the cornerstones of MMO combat gameplay is 'surplus is a waste'.

Mitigation is properly valued at the extreme high end, however, which leaves WHM with the least and worst mitigation of any healer, also least valued.

Blood lily if played correctly is actually minimal a dmg gain. It’s up ever minute so it fits into the 2 minute burst window and now it’s 100 % dmg neutral so you can skip glare and throw a lily before you over cap and more if you approve the burst window. Whm still is not good in comparison but it got way better then it was before.

[AnotherPerson]

The moment you add any sort of multi-button DPS rotation to a GCD-based healer like WHM, someone's going to point out that those GCD heals are a DPS loss (à la the old lilies) or find a way to turn GCDs spent over-healing into a DPS gain (because of how damage is "refunded"). It's a balancing act the current WHM avoids because of Glare-Glare-Glare-….

The story could play out differently if healers received DPS credit for healing and mitigating [1] [2], but that's non-trivial to work out.

WHM already do that. They throw away excess lilies right before raid buffs to get Afflatus Misery under the buff window. Because Afflatus Misery is worth 4 Glares, you essentially get 3 more Glares worth in a buff window at the cost to your DPS. It's not much, but the alternative is "overcap your lilies, spend extra MP on Glare for the same value of the GCD".

I'm quite sure what people meant is that GCD healing is a DPS loss in the sense that WHM has to use Medica II more than other jobs due to a lack of free healing abilities compared to other jobs due to the inherent nature of being a GCD-oriented job.

And that's another big thing - people are all so focused on DPS because healer DPS is the only metric that matters anymore. That's because we have so much healing power so "powerful healing" that isn't used is thrown away and traded for something else when people want to improve and figure out how else to maximize their toolkit. It's another way to say "my versatility literally comprises of throwing my healing away for more DPS or overheal".

In other words, it's not very versatile at all. It sucks. There's literally no versatility to White Mage outside of "heal more" when damage doesn't require it, nor is damage consistently high enough to constantly require GCD healing.

We don't have movement speed buffs, we don't have LB charging buffs, we don't have skill slow buffs, we don't have CC.
You know what WHM has that actually been a niche ability? Presence of Mind - literally speeds up your GCD casts. Wow, something different and synergizes well with White Mage's GCD-gameplay! Why is it not used for GCD Healing? That's because we have so much healing that it will rarely ever be used for GCD healing. That's why it becomes Glare x300, but we already press Glare for most of the fight because we have so much healing power in regards to the content's overall damage. Nothing changes except Presence of Mind becomes a DPS skill on cooldown. No versatility.

Just pause for a moment to think - if damage was actually high enough where Presence of Mind actually was an ability we use to determine whether we should save the ability for a very fast damage-heavy duration of a fight, then it would be different.
The reality is that, the skill doesn't work like that. The gameplay doesn't work like that.
This is why healer gameplay sucks. There is no real thought to damage - so healing in the game is very uninspiring.