White Mage Attraction

[Renathras]

Most scenarios that most players will encounter will involve normal mode content with standard party comps of players of average skill playing their jobs and mechanics less than perfectly.

But anyway, a rational player would place value on healing so that the game design itself might come to value it. Why would a game designer ramp up damage so high that a healer would find it necessary to use GCD heals when the players complain that "GCD heals are a DPS loss"?

Honestly, I hate to see dogpiles.

You make some good points. I think the problem is the game's design is going in a weird direction vs healing.

We have too many oGCDs and they're too powerful AND they have too short of CDs so there's no reason to hold them. So players never need to hit a GCD heal because they always have oGCDs for that. I'm old enough I remember playing Vanilla WoW (no, not "Classic", the OG Vanilla) where Paladin had a 1 HOUR (60 minute...again 1 HOUR) CD that was basically Bene if Bene also sapped all your MP. Druid had a combat raise but it was also on a 1 hour CD (and it had no spamable "normal" raise)

Abilities like that were powerful, but you had to carefully consider using them because they would not be available again for a long time if you later had a more urgent need. The "Elixir problem" from single player RPGs, basically.

You had less powerful abilities that were available more often, but most were still things like 5 or 10 minute or so CDs.

In FFXIV, we started with ARR and HW having few oGCDs, and they were longish CDs so for more clutch situations. WHM at level 50 had exactly one oGCD heal, Bene. It had a button that boosted healing (Divine Seal, I think?) and had Presence of Mind for quicker casting of GCDs. That was it. And party AND TANK damage was also much higher relative to health bars. You couldn't hit Assize or Asylum and ignore healing for the next 20 seconds like you can now. Not only did you have to use GCD heals, but probably several.

But at this point, we have so many oGCDs, they're so powerful, and they have short, accessible CDs, that there's no reason to not use them...and they remove the need to even cast a GCD in most situations. Combine this with lower damage to the party in encounters, and it creates a situation where most GCDs a healer uses are damage just weaving the occasional oGCD and calling it a day.

So the game has designed itself into a weird corner were we have insanely powerful heals (GCD and oGCD), but very little unavidable damage, and our oGCDs are so powerful, so plentiful, and so frequent in CD time that there's no reason to ration them. And because we have so many and they do all the healing we need, we have no need of GCD heals past about level 60 leveling dungeons. Some Jobs (SCH) arguably don't even need them well before then.

Either our heals need to be nerfed, damage needs to be buffed, oGCDs need to be pruned, or...I dunno, something.

[Rilifane]

Until that clown fiesta happened and you wasted all your oGCDs already and are forced using GCD heals, and an aoe targets you. Suddenly this turns into an issue. This while such aoegcd could have mitigated a lot of damage (especialy with bosses that show when they are about to do a strong global aoe). Saving some panic heals can do a lot.

Not every team is equaly fluent. And especialy in 4 player content, you do not have a backup healer.

Now you might say, if you had to resolve to that, its still the team that made the flaws, which is true. But your mistake could have still caused the wipe to happen. While your 10 cycles of not using a dps ability barely made any dent to begin with, and the wipe wasted a lot of time.

Sure, not all content requires you to use these (most doesnt). But there are those cases which arent standard. Also, those aoe healing over time abilities can provide a lot of health over time. And 1 gcd for such buffer can be very much worth it. And the less organized a team is, the more you are forced to rely on GCDs (and the higher the difficulty, the less usage they will see since those demand organized teams).

Keeping people on lower health will influence their decison making, since at safe health a lot more things can become viable as tactic. And those things can also result in a higher damage output. But most important: no matter how much GCDs you saved not using those abilities, the moment 1 dps dies, that dps loss will exceed every single dps you saved. Trying to keep them alive is nearly always more viable for dps output (the only case when it isnt, is when the dps was bad anyway).

You still missed the point.
Nobody said you're forbidden from using GCD heals, ever. We simply said that a pointless GCD heal is wasted and a dps loss.
Just to make it very clear: a GCD is pointless when something else would've done the trick.

Pointless GCD healing bad. Not GCD heals bad. Big difference.
There will be times when a GCD heal is indeed the best choice and I don't think you need to explain that to any healer that is even half-decent.
Rein is still right, if you could've handled the situation without dps loss then chosing the dps loss was pointless. Healers make mistakes and sometimes decide poorly, lack foresight, panic etc. but that is all besides the point that unnecessary GCD heals are a dps loss and as you get better the panic, mistakes and lack of foresight will go away over time.
That's all we've been argueing and no amount of "but sometimes clown fiesta happens!" invalidates this point because these situations are included in that statement as they do not fall under "pointless".

Either our heals need to be nerfed, damage needs to be buffed, oGCDs need to be pruned, or...I dunno, something.

If it was up to me?
All of it.
We have fluff skills that are simply boring/ overkill and could easily be removed for more meaningful skills - be that dps or healing tools with actual interaction and synergy instead of 2 hotbars full off "just press when you feel like it".
Our oGCDs are not only MP free, they're also hilariously strong. It gives them priority because they surpass GCDs so there is no "stronger but costs MP and dps loss" vs "weaker but free" decision making, it would also mean SE could maybe give back some resource management because pressing LD on cooldown isn't it.
Incoming damage is laughably low. I already mentioned it elsewhere but when you can do p1s and p2s at min ilvl without even touching AF heals on SCH, using your other heals only about half as many times as you could and still walk out with some chunky overheal, something is wrong. It needs to be higher.
And in addition to all of it, we also need some better downtime gameplay because there will always be battle content that requires barely/ no healing like solo duties, fates, treasure maps, former level cap dungeons, several of the story trials etc. because healers still should feel engaged in all content like the other roles; not just in clownfiesta parties, not just in "known for high incoming damage" duties. All.

(Also explaining over and over to someone misinterpreting "GCD heals bad" isn't dogpiling especially when vet healers went on record saying they want more to heal. Doesn't change the facts though: pointless GCD heals are a pointless dps loss, period.)

[Renathras]

Removing HOT’s from the other healers just leads to a nocturnal AST situation where the healer is useless in dungeons and basically a glorified mitigator in 2 healer content

...

Also side note how is fey illumination medica 2

That's the thing, there aren't good solutions. The game doesn't need raw throughput, and AST is JUST AS GOOD at it as WHM anyway, and when it's happening infrequently (so that CDs can be used to help out), SCH is also just as good, and SGE is good enough. I also contest removing HoTs from other healers wouldn't really change much, since how often are you actually using HoTs to heal everyone up anyway? If Fey Blessing had 2 charges, removing Whispering Dawn wouldn't matter (btw, I meant Whispering Dawn, not Fey Illumination, sorry for the confusion). Does SGE really need Physis AND the HoT from Kerachole? REALLY? Just give Ixochole 2 OR give it a button that makes Kardia party-wide for the next 5 seconds or next 3 GCDs. BAM! You've basically done the same thing without a HoT that actually leans into its Job identity anyway.

I'm not sure the other healers NEED HoTs. Though replacing them with direct heals doesn't really change anything, either. Regen needs to be oGCD and MP free with no CD or something. It would have to be nerfed in potency, but it would let WHM be the "rolling HoTs" healer and work with FFXIV's current healing model (that is anti-GCD healing) since you could weave Regen that way with no DPS loss.

I do agree that WHM needs something. A buff (Brave/Faith could work) and it kind of needs at least one more mitigation because of how long Temperance's CD is and that Assize doesn't offer any mitigation (a 10 sec duration Protect/Shell to reduce damage by 5% or 10% could fill that void). As you note, this steps on AST's toes a bit, and the Barrier healers, but as I said before, they're all stepping on WHM's toes anyway, so how is that any different/unfair

And when I play WHM, I always feel like I'm missing ONE party mitigation. Do the last boss of The Dead Ends. Block one partywide AOE with Temperance. When the next happens in 30 seconds, what mitigation do you have up?

Right, none.

Sure, it's not LETHAL, but if feels bad when literally every other healer can mitigate them both in some way, and SCH/SCH can do so with the same ability a second time, Soil/Kera, much less dip into all their other buttons. WHM needs a second party mitigation on a shorter CD. It just feels bad not having one.

You could say the trade is that it has powerful group healing...but do that same fight not using party mitigation on SCH, AST, or SGE and see if you have ANY problems full healing the party after it. You don't.

(Also explaining over and over to someone misinterpreting "GCD heals bad" isn't dogpiling especially when vet healers went on record saying they want more to heal. Doesn't change the facts though: pointless GCD heals are a pointless dps loss, period.)

When one or two people offer an explanation, sure. When 5-10 people are all quoting and "correcting" the same person, and most are doing so in less than gentle/kind ways, it's a dogpile.

.

One other thing is damage RATE, not just size. If parties and tanks were taking more consistent chip damage, it would mean we'd have to either use GCD heals from time to time to augment or oGCD heals OR we'd have to let people fall far lower on health before using oGCD tools. Since oGCDs are limited by CD time, having frequent but relatively small damage would encourage occasional GCD heal use to patch people up between oGCD use in the healing plan for the bigger spikes of damage.

Just making more damage ALONE doesn't work because party damage can never do more than 99% of party member health otherwise people drop. You can't heal 110% damage if it happens in a single hit, you'd have to use a Raise or shield/barrier/mitigation instead, but that just gets us back to using oGCDs and isn't helpful to address the problem. So damage needs to be higher, heals need to be weaker, but also damage FREQUENCY (of damage that still needs to be healed) needs to be higher.

I largely agree with the rest of your assessments, though. oGCDs should be weaker since the opportunity cost (low CD, no MP cost) is lower than GCD heals (DPS loss, MP loss). The only exceptions should be very long CD spells, of which there aren't any other than (sorta) Bene and the tank Invulns (and not even all of those). MP management is non-existent. So many abilities are redundant - WHM has at least three versions of Cure 2 (C2, Tetra, Solace), etc etc.

[Semirhage]

I do agree that WHM needs something. A buff (Brave/Faith could work) and it kind of needs at least one more mitigation because of how long Temperance's CD is and that Assize doesn't offer any mitigation

This is one of the many obnoxious aspects of WHM's "design" "identity". WHM's always been the healer that has cooldowns a teensy bit stronger....with an absurdly longer cooldown. In a vacuum, sure Benediction could have a 3-minute cooldown. When compared to the other healers? What in the hell is so strong about one single target fullcure that warrants 3 eternal minutes of cooldown? Essential Dignity is nearly a Fullcure with its scaling potency, and it has two charges with a 45-second cooldown. Macrocosmos is in practice often an AOE Benediction, and it does damage, also on a 3-minute cooldown.

I voiced my concerns about this weird developer nervousness I sensed about WHM back when Heavensward dropped. Proshell needed to be made universal, not just a WHM trait. That extra magic defense might make it mandatory in parties. Stoneskin needed to be nerfed from an 18% shield. Too strong, might make WHM mandatory. Can't give WHM powerful, short cooldown tools. Too strong, might make it mandatory.

Meanwhile this rule magically evaporates when talking about literally any other healer, and the meta has borne the fruits of it ever since. WHM mandatory you say? Perish the thought. 20% Balance? Come right in!