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

[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

[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."