AST (and DRG) had their improvements pushed to 7.0 PLD are getting theirs in 6.3

[ty_taurus]

Listen, I feel bad on a personal level. It feels like the entire healer forums has been at war with Ren for literally weeks now, and regardless of anyone's stance on the game, I imagine that's frustrating, stressful, and disheartening. I don't want to create enemies, and I don't want someone feeling like ass because of video game debates. So I just wanna say, before anything else, I hope it's not taxing you as a person in real life. I want to try and find some middle ground.

You've made your stance on SCH, AST, and SGE clear, and I think everyone is content with that. There is, however, disagreement on WHM. What the majority of us here want is for WHM to offers a consistent gameplay loop and reasons to avoid Glare spam. I'm not entirely sure what your stance on that is. Previously, it sounded like you wanted WHM to possibly lose its DoT and just stick with Glare, but you've also said maybe expanding on that or returning more toward what ARR WHM had which was marginally more than what we have now. That said, adding more depth to WHM doesn't have to mean that WHM needs to become hard to play, nor does it mean WHM needs higher APM. BLM has very low APM yet has consistently been one of the most fun and engaging jobs in the game for many. WHM, I think, should still be a relatively forgiving healer with low APM, but offers more opportunities to do more than just Glare and use a lily heal on occasion.

We largely agree on the lily system and expanding upon it because, yes, being incentivized to use lily healing on the GCD with Misery as your refund is better than 4x Glare. The issue with the lilies now is that it's still a fairly uncommon occurrence as you have no way of generating more lilies, and sometimes the healing gets spent when no healing is needed due to the game's overall lack of damage. So I want to discuss some lite WHM change ideas and see if something along this line would feel more engaging for others yet satisfy your desire to keep WHM feeling simple:

New WHM Direction Summary

1. I'd like to, in general, take some inspiration from BLM when thinking about a WHM rework, as WHM is meant to be a foil to BLM in many ways. With this in mind, I'd start by increasing the cast time of Stone/Glare to 2.5 seconds. Like BLM, WHM also is more immobile, but I'd like to give it more answers to that immobility.

DPS Adjustments
- New Spell: Water/Banish. This is the same potency and MP cost as Stone/Glare, but is instant cast, and has 3 charges with a 20 second cooldown on the GCD. It also deals AoE damage with 50% fall-off. It gives WHM a more interesting way to engage with mobility and weaving, and the lily heals stay instant as well, giving WHM mobility options for both DPS and healing. It also foils Triplecast in a more unique way.

- Aero II now upgrades into Aero III, and Dia gains AoE properties. I'd like all healers to have ways of spreading their DoT to multiple targets, such as restoring Bane on SCH. But rather than give WHM some way to try and spread Aero/Dia, it instead spreads it passively, being an easier and more direct way of handling AoE DoTs. Not all healers need a DoT, of course, but Aero is a major part of CNJ's earth, wind, and water dynamic, and I don't think it should be cut. It also foils against BLM's thunder.

- Holy now grants WHM a buff that increases their damage dealt and healing magic potency by 5% for 45 seconds. It gives Holy a reason to be used in single target situations, allows Glare to be further broken up, but the gain is small and it's not a huge deal if you drop uptime on it at times. Holy III also just has a really cool animation, and it's a shame we don't get to see it very often.

Lily Adjustments
- I mentioned this before, but I believe Solace and Misery should be brought down to level 30. Introduce this core aspect of WHM gameplay early and simply update Misery's potency with each upgrade to Stone and Glare. Additionally, the system should expand with more tools, possibly reworking some existing tools into lily actions instead. I also think it would need some type of supportive spender, something like an Afflatus spell that places a mark on an ally that increases the healing you give them with your next spell, so when you have excess lilies, you can instead set up stronger healing in the future when you don't need any healing currently.

- Additionally, Afflatus Misery gains a cooldown of 20 seconds, and you're allowed to accumulate a second blood lily. This helps give you a bit more control over holding onto Misery, but doesn't let you spend all of them in a short span of time.

- I'd also like to see a new GCD spell that consumes a fair chunk of MP to both generate 1 lily and nourish the blood lily. This would give you a way to generate extra lilies in harder content at an MP cost while still being on the GCD, taking away from Glare spam, and giving a more valuable way to engage with MP, which is also more BLM-like.

New Mechanic
Lastly, I want to create something that foils against BLM's Ley Lines as that's a core aspect to BLM's gameplay, and also, I want to pull some ideas from FF7R's Aerith as her abilities look and feel perfect for XIV's WHM. So I want to suggest a take on her Arcane Ward:



How I see this working is that Arcane Ward would exist instead of Presence of Mind, and it would sit on perhaps a 120 second or 180 second cooldown. While standing in the ward, for its duration, your DPS spells generate 1 lily, and your Healing spells, including lily healing, nourish the blood lily 1 additional time, making your healing and support tools here a fair DPS gain, ultimately. This is also why I think a lily spender is necessary, like how I mentioned above. I also think it would be interesting if Arcane Ward were tied to Liturgy, Liturgy was usable while Arcane Ward was on cooldown, and would sprout from where you originally placed that ward, though this part is unnecessary if it creates too many problems.

Now, because I mentioned adding a cooldown to Afflatus Misery, I also want to discuss adding in Aerith's Tempest as an action with a unique function designed to help you avoid overcapping on the blood lily and also giving you another way to take slight advantage of burst windows.



Tempest would be a GCD spell that, when first used, consumes your Blood Lily and grants you Tempest Ready. When you recast Tempest, it delivers an attack that's twice as powerful as Glare, deals 50% less damage to nearby enemies, and restores the Blood Lily it initially consumed, essentially allowing you to store a theoretical third blood lily within the otherwise DPS neutral Tempest action. Both readying and using Tempest could also both be instant cast, allowing you another source of mobility if needed. Or we could make it even stronger and give it a cooldown to make it a part of your rotation, though that might make things too complicated for when you don't have a blood lily to ready Tempest with.

In Conclusion
This is where my general headspace is at on WHM--trying to give it a bit more depth to work with in terms of DPS while trying to create more reasons to rely on its lilies to make Misery a more significant part of WHM's gameplay. It's still not particularly difficult and would be fairly forgiving, but would just feel a bit more unique and offer WHM a bit more complexity at a higher skill level when trying to take advantage of burst windows. which would be especially nice if we end up seeing the 2 minute burst window see a reversion (maybe that's copium, but we'll just have to see).

So I ask if something like this would be satisfying for all parties or not?