WHM Desperately needs a rework

[ForsakenRoe]

The issue with WHM as I see it, is that after the SHB rework to lilies to make them actually useable, that became WHM's 'identity' for lack of a better term. It's entire gameplay is about the lilies now. Any time there's raidwide damage, you don't think about 'what tool is best to deal with this' like the other three healers, you go 'I will use Rapture, because Rapture is the 'one size fits all' solution button no matter what I'm dealing with'. It's good that it is a more 'reactive' playstyle, compared to AST who has to wait a couple of seconds for their 'full potential' (thanks to Star having it's charge time, or the HOTs ticking), that's good for the more casual players to have reliable fallback options.

But then, what does a more experienced healer do? The exact same thing as the casual player. There's no room to grow your skill as a player. In some regards, it could be argued that WHM's relative simplicity actually stifles growth of players, rather than just being 'the more simple option'. Having basically zero mitigation options for raidwides (just Temperance really) means that a learning player will learn 'I don't really need to worry about mit, that's not my problem', whereas an AST will potentially learn 'my 60s Bubble skill is a powerful mit too, I should try and rearrange my healing so that it is up for X mechanic to help mitigate it'.

Every job suffers from the issue, but none more than healers: We used to have 28ish skills learned over 50 levels. Now, we have 32-35ish skills, now spread over 90 levels. Next expansion, we'll probably have 32-35 again, but now spread over 100 levels. We need lower level versions of tools we have at max level to pad out the lower level experience, and we need to just have... more useful abilities at higher levels. Nobody's using Cure 1 or Benefic at max level, so why are they still on the bar instead of something that we'd find useful, like idk an AOE mitigation tool for WHM, or a couple of damage buttons so our rotations look a little bit more like what we had back in SB

WHM is not the problem, the problem goes much deeper, and affects not just WHM, but the healer role in general, and to an extent, every role suffers a bit because of the issues. WHM just happens to be patient zero, the one who's kit is so wonky in [current year] compared to the fight design, that it is the prime example, the one who makes it so blindingly obvious that 'hang on, this seems kinda weird'

ps: hope you weren't looking to get good at AST as it currently is, because it's slated for ANOTHER rework come 7.0

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[[...]ps: hope you weren't looking to get good at AST as it currently is, because it's slated for ANOTHER rework come 7.0

Or alternatively, something that I semi-joked this morning after a raid session with my static: "Go ahead and give it a try at least. Because CBU3 have a bad track record of making things worse for healers. Should you find something to enjoy, you might as well do it now--enjoy it while it lasted before they take it away from you by MeleeDawntrail release."

[ForsakenRoe]

Or alternatively, something that I semi-joked this morning after a raid session with my static: "Go ahead and give it a try at least. Because CBU3 have a bad track record of making things worse for healers. Should you find something to enjoy, you might as well do it now--enjoy it while it lasted before they take it away from you by MeleeDawntrail release."

I'd dispute that. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. For example, if someone laments that they couldn't try AST before the SHB card prune, I'm kinda glad for them, because it'd hurt for them so much more I'd expect, if they had the firsthand experience of going through that prune, instead of just hearing about 'how it was in the good ol' days' and forming a second hand opinion of it based on the complaints of old grumpy sods like me