Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

E.g. WHMs use Lily heals even though they are GCDs, but despite them being identical to Medica and Cure 2, they AVOID using Medica and Cure 2 because they are not damage neutral.

That's because there is no "Avoid GCDs" rule, in itself; that's at best an indirect indicator... which does not function for/on WHM.

There is only "avoid excess at-cost healing". As you noted, Lilies have no cost (until less than 90 seconds remain in the fight), so they're not avoided. It's that simple.

People speak about how bad homogenization is, but when someone points out "So we can do this thing on one Job that's different", it's attacked.

Which depends on the quality of the thing being suggested, not on the mere fact that it may be different.

Yes, context will always matter...

If you suggest something that takes far, far more effort with zero advantage (e.g., no other ways to leverage that complexity that could, even if with the same on-paper power, result in an advantage in practice when optimized), then yes, it will be shot down unless you indicate that similar changes would be happening to the other healers as not to simply put the affected one on a "To be Avoided" list. (Though even then, the fact that those components offer virtually nothing to warrant their complexity might still cause a poor reaction to the suggestion.)

If you suggest something that just does what another job but better (more easily, more leveragably, or at a better fit with content, etc.), then it'll likewise probably be shot down unless you indicate similar changes being made to the other healers.

...But let's not conflate "I don't like <Idea A>" with "I don't like differences among healers."

It's why I think having all their GCDs be damage neutral via nourishing the Blood Lily makes sense. That generates ACTUAL choice. Choice they don't (in practice) have right now. Sure, there's a "choice" but the "choice" is "doing it wrong".

The solution to avoiding the oGCD bloat IS making heals damage neutral. In a world where, say, Succor was damage neutral, it would actually be more worth casting and would reduce the need for things like Whispering Dawn or Indom.

Current "choice" is not between which skills to use over time, agreed, but there is at least (brief-lived) choice over when to use them.

The problem is that the relevant emergencies are so few and scripted (in WHM's case, solely for mobility, the need for which is almost only ever tightly scripted) and being overconservative (using a GCD heal on the expectation that you'll need the Lily for later, only to end up thereby needing to use the Lily before overcap without needing its mobility or burst healing*) is so heavily punished.

*Inb4 "They're not burst!!!" Yes, I realize Lily heals are identical to their normal analogs aside from their being MP-free, instant-cast, and damage-neutral. In other contexts, though, any of those things would already matter, not just the last.

This "burst healing", for those who remember ARR/HW, can be featured from a simple a matter as being able to pre-cast a normal, casted heal to land just after, say, the first of a two-hit TB and then to follow it up with another hefty heal instantly such that a mechanic that would have needed a timely tank-swap can now be done with a 1|5|2 comp.

Such can be powerful, even if our contexts have made us since forget anything beyond rDPS and the occasional mechanic-hard-countering ability. Which sucks, by the way. Without sufficient damage intake, it's very hard to make space for healing nuance or to accentuate soft utilities.

But the result of what you're suggesting would be to replace choice in timing (X must be used, but you determine when) and the gambling that may (even if only for a few runs) involve... with a broader selection of choices that... make little difference anyways. I feel like it'd be slightly better, but far from sufficient. We both agree that we need more damage, and that MP management probably shouldn't just be a joke; even with those somehow fixed, though, I suspect something more and essential would be missing before this could provide any significant increase in the breadth-x-depth of choice available to healers. For now, you'd lose nearly as much in depth and impact, I suspect, as you'd gain in breadth.


More importantly, though, I don't want to further roll over with this insistence on damage-neutrality. The more we make everything damage-neutral, the more we're just effectively pre-paying for all our damage potential. Sure, now, none of our GCD heals cost any damage... but because our offensive potency would almost certainly be balanced to keep us at roughly the same maximum total HPS + DPS against low damage intake, you'd simply have reduced healers' sense of progression over a fight.

Stark damage-neutrality is effectively just a way to replace (the starting, and thereby unavoidable / most important) part of that 'ramp' of healers' total effective output as they get better at handling a fight with (A) taxation and (B) a single goliath stair-step. It's... not a good thing.

And the only reason we're as a community thinking so much about daMagE-neUtraL GCDs right now is simply that so many still somehow confuse Lilies with being functionally "GCDs(-and-therefore-at-cost)" instead of simply a WHM's functional analog to "oGCDs(-with-thereby-free-healing)" with bonus utility attached (mobility and at least a filler attack's worth of MP saved each).
They're... CDs. They fill the same function as the other healers'... CDs. They just pack more compound utility than most.