4 Paired Threads: WHM - How do you feel about it?

[Renathras]

Do you ____ it?
(love, like, neutral, dislike, hate)

What do you like about it?

What do you dislike about it?

What would you like changed about it?

EDIT:

SCH thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-feel-about-it

AST thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-feel-about-it

SGE thread: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-feel-about-it

[Sebazy]

IMO:

WHM has the most cohesive kit and as such, for all it's flaws, it's in the best place of all the healers in my eyes. It doesn't trip over it's own kit and everything just makes sense.

At least if you take it in isolation from the rest of the game that is.

IMO WHM is in a strange spot where it's almost certainly going to get worse again with the next expansion due to SE likely going minimum effort and testing again if Endwalker is anything to go by. For this cycle to be broken, SE really need to figure out where they stand with regards to healer kits vs the content we actually tackle them with.

The current style of mitigation focused Savage content with burst healing requirements coupled with casual content that is almost entirely non threatening could be absolutely fine if healer's were more in line with either SWTOR's/Warhammer Online healers or even something like Summoner in early BnS (VERY loosely FFXIV Dancer with more healing).

The other solution of course would be to roll back the clock and make healing more akin to ARR/HW with just about everything from dungeon trash to raid bosses slamming out a lot more damage.

Both options have issues, as much as I'd prefer bonkers healing requirements, I think that taking the Swtor/Warhammer approach with healers is the better one for the long term health of the game. Throwing out banzai healing requirements doesn't really solve the monotony of casual content as a healer, meanwhile for sure there's people that will absolutely hate healers being covertly redesigned into functional DPS, but I'd wager a good portion of those people barely realise that they are just DPS already.

TLDR: Of all the healers. WHM is most dependent on content and encounter direction needing to change first IMO.

Needless to say, I'm not going to be nearly as kind to the other healer jobs

[IceBlueNinja]

Basic, boring and for the so call starting friendly healer, mp issues, expensive punishing healing spells. Guilty of teaching bad healing habits to new people to healing( I use to be in that myself so I wont say am guilty of it until I learn ast and was taught by advance people).

Has pretty spells and nice casting animations. Its my personal favo co healer strangely when I was noct ast or atm when am sage, strangely for some reason whm/sage just feel so right because their lack of party buff makes up for their BIG personal damage which kinda makes the whol ast/sch comp biasness undeeded. even though I do not mind ast/whm. Finally I play whm over sch anyday imo my worst healer always.

[ASkellington]

WHM was the class I wanted to main with AST being the curious back up (as a friend got me into FFXIV by talking about the cards... and then telling me that before I joined they got rid of them).

I want to like WHM. I really do. There's nothing for me to really like about it other than CNJ job quests and artifact gear. (I was estatic to get the iconic lv50 gear).

Being a GCD healer... Why can't it be like BLM or RDM where the cast times have a purpose? I think that would be interesting. Maybe not a carbon copy of either but give meaning to it being a GCD healer. Make it DO something.

The Lily system got better I guess in the expansion I refuse to play it in.

It still doesn't become a thing until after you reach HW... why?
You still don't get Affaltus Rapture until SHB. W H Y????
I want more abilities to work with it but I feel like that's a bad idea.

Free Cure still exists. ...Could it at least work in the reverse? Where you use Cure 2 to get a proc of Cure 1? Or.... when you get the Lily system you have a chance to not spend a Lily but still contribute to the Blood Lily?

WHM was not made for me. I'm a healer who's been healing in too many MMOs for it. But its lacking SOMETHING and it needs to get it.

[Semirhage]

Hate.

I liked the aesthetic before it became all white glitter and gentle tinkling noises for its abilities. A few were fine. Now it's all tinkles and glitter.

I liked the idea of the healer that could overpower problems if pressed...until Square decided that all other healers could do the same thing instantly and for free at the low low cost of cooldowns that make said oomph *only* available every time damage goes out. While having utility on top of it that WHM doesn't get because it's the "raw power" healer dontcha know. Having utility just wouldn't make sense!

That it's the designated boring healer for babies that isn't allowed a whisper of complexity because it'd make Sylphie brain go hurty. If it had a gameplay loop beyond spamming uncreative potency bomb heals and boring basic b*tch magic missile spells the universe would implode.

That it has some of the most simplistic decision trees straight lines I've ever seen in an RPG.

That the skill ceiling is more presses of one boring white glitter-flinging button.

That Heavensward tricked me into thinking this class would ever develop instead of getting an icepick straight up the eye socket to serve as the testbed for doing the same thing to the rest of the role. Healers aren't classes for humans to play and master; they're trust NPC scripts that exist to make the DPS fun.

[LilimoLimomo]

Do you ____ it?
(love, like, neutral, dislike, hate)

WHM is my favorite healer. Though I don't find it very enjoyable to heal right now, so I feel somewhere between 'like' and 'neutral' at present.

What do you like about it?

WHM is classic. Recognizable spells, recognizable gear. Getting to heal your teammates is fun!

What do you dislike about it?

In non-EX/Savage content there's not enough healing to do. 80% of the time there's nothing to heal, so I'm just playing as the most boring DPS imaginable for the bulk of every fight. A skilled tank frequently doesn't even need support from a healer. The role feels vestigial and superfluous.

What would you like changed about it?

Honestly? This would ruffle some feathers but remove every WHM button that does damage, then balance the fights for a healer who's healing no less than 80% of the time. And that likely requires a rebalance so that tanks actually need a healer to survive dungeon content. Let my healer heal.

[AmiableApkallu]

Like:

An iconic job, especially with the Lv.50 artifact gear. And to echo a previous poster:

WHM has the most cohesive kit and as such, for all it's flaws, it's in the best place of all the healers in my eyes. It doesn't trip over it's own kit and everything just makes sense.

Dislike:

The utter lack of diversity in the healing kit / The fact that so many buttons come down to "restores HP."

What I'd change:

For today's hot take, I think I'll go with... Something I miss from FFIV and other, earlier Final Fantasy games: The ability to choose between single-targeting and multi-targeting a spell.

So, let's give WHM a toggle that does exactly that. It could be in the style of SGE's Eukrasia, or it could be a "free" action like placing SCH's fairy. It could affect only the next spell, or it could function more like a stance. For now, these details don't matter much to me. The important quality is that there be a cost when toggling from single-target to multi-target: potency per target goes down, duration of over-time effects goes down, MP cost goes up, cast time goes up, or any combination of those. The cost could scale with the number of targets, if we're worried about dungeons vs. trials/raids.

Next, make all of WHM's targetable spells single-target by default (so, this excludes Holy), and prune spells that become duplicative of other spells. Also, turn WHM's existing shields and mitigation into spells.* Add other fun spells now that hotbar space is not a concern in the slightest. With a bit of tuning on numbers... voila! A job that's more inline with the white mages of eld.

* Yeah, yeah, someone's going to complain about "damage neutrality," but I'll leave my rant on that for another day.

[Supersnow845]

Like:

An iconic job, especially with the Lv.50 artifact gear. And to echo a previous poster:



Dislike:

The utter lack of diversity in the healing kit / The fact that so many buttons come down to "restores HP."

What I'd change:

For today's hot take, I think I'll go with... Something I miss from FFIV and other, earlier Final Fantasy games: The ability to choose between single-targeting and multi-targeting a spell.

So, let's give WHM a toggle. It could be in the style of SGE's Eukrasia, or it could be a "free" action like placing SCH's fairy. It could affect only the next spell, or it could function more like a stance. For now, these details don't matter much to me. The important quality is that there be a cost when toggling from single-target to multi-target: potency per target goes down, duration of over-time effects goes down, MP cost goes up, cast time goes up, or any combination of those.The cost could scale with the number of targets, if we're worried about dungeons vs. trials/raids.

Next, make all of WHM's targetable spells single-target by default (so, this excludes Holy, but includes Stone and Aero), and prune spells that become duplicative of other spells. Also, turn WHM's existing shields and mitigation into spells.* Add other fun spells now that hotbar space is not a concern in the slightest. With a bit of tuning on numbers... voila! A job that's more inline with the white mages of eld.

* Yeah, yeah, someone's going to complain about "damage neutrality," but I'll leave my rant on that for another day.

WHM already has the lowest number of buttons of any job in the game, why are we pruning its buttons, including it’s only useful button (temperance) in favour of a slightly unwieldy eukrasia system that fixes a problem that doesn’t exist

[Shurrikhan]

Rating:
I feel pretty indifferent about WHM, at least so long as it's constrained by the same things as the other healers. It's functional but dull, while some others are slightly less dull but that much more clunky or messy*. But, I also think every healer has significant room for improvement.

* By "clunky or messy", I'm referring to fine details like Eukrasia's recast time not scaling with Spell Speed, Pepsis's exploitability so varying with time until/since the next server poll check, (inconsistently) slow pet action responsiveness, the inability to queue Draw while still playing the Card currently held / the complete lack of reason for still initially hiding the Card now that it begins cooling instantly, etc. Those things add up, imo.

Like:
The versatility of the Lily system.

Dislike:
That it just... doesn't really have anything else going for it, gameplay-wise. I also dislike its elemental aesthetics having been turned instead into shades of, at most diverse, 99% White, 99.9% White, and 100% White.

Change:
Ideally, I'd actually rework the job almost from scratch to be built far more around its elements, with many actions acting either or both as offensive or defensive throughputs while generating element-specific resource that can likewise be spent for multiple effects, making WHM a master of responsive soft utility.

In particular, also, I'd have Water's mechanic (into which most heals feed) provide some sort of "rush" mechanic whereby resource can be spent to instantly finish off the rest of an ability's cooling time --each point of gauge or whatnot skipping both, say, 2% and 1 second of the CD, as not to only be used on Benison [short] or the likes of Asylum [long CD]-- (with said heals MP costs greatly reduced or in some way refunding themselves), thereby also giving WHM a slight edge in especially healing intense scenarios.

Elemental vibes with accordant versatility and decision-branching/-pathing, only occasionally and deliberately coalescing into pure white magic.

[Renathras]

Appreciate all the comments so far. Just popping in to note two things.

.

So, let's give WHM a toggle that does exactly that. It could be in the style of SGE's Eukrasia, or it could be a "free" action like placing SCH's fairy. It could affect only the next spell, or it could function more like a stance. For now, these details don't matter much to me. The important quality is that there be a cost when toggling from single-target to multi-target: potency per target goes down, duration of over-time effects goes down, MP cost goes up, cast time goes up, or any combination of those. The cost could scale with the number of targets, if we're worried about dungeons vs. trials/raids.

It surprised me to find this out, but in 1.20, this actually was a thing CNJ had. Sacred Prism. It was a CD (90 sec, maybe?) that made the next healing or enhancement spell have a longer cast time, but be AOE.

Your description made me think of FF9 where Garnet/Eiko can cast their heals as single target or AOE for the party when you tap one of the trigger or bumper buttons.

WHM already has the lowest number of buttons of any job in the game, why are we pruning its buttons, including it’s only useful button (temperance) in favour of a slightly unwieldy eukrasia system that fixes a problem that doesn’t exist

Not...quite, I don't think. WHM has enough buttons that if you include Sprint, Potion (mount in the field), and LB, you're at 33 buttons, which is EXACTLY 1 more than two crossbars sets can hold if you equip all your role actions. It has 1 button too many by that metric. Even if you don't care about that metric, several Jobs have fewer hotbar slots needed. Offhand, I believe SMN, MCH, RDM, and possibly DNC. SGE and WHM also have the same number of hotbar slots taken up, I believe. So no, WHM does not have the lowest number of buttons of any Job in the game.

I can run the numbers again to get an accurate count, but in terms of hotbar spots, WHM isn't actually on the low end, it's more the low end of the middle (or high end of the low, depending on how you want to look at it), tied with SGE.

If you mean actions, then it has less than SGE (since Eukrasia double dips 3 buttons, so a net change of +2), and SMN has several sets of Gemshine/Astral Flow/Ruin 3 buttons, and RDM also has 5 Enchanted versions of its weaponskills and Flare, Holy, Scorch, and Resolution that share the Thunder2/3, Aero 2/3, Jolt/Impact and Jolt/Impact buttons, respectively. But those don't take up additional hotbar spaces since all of those things are context hot-swaps of "This action cannot be assigned to the hotbar."