Healer kit adjustment idea, 40% dps to 60% heals/utility

[Shurrikhan]

Yes, White Mage. My reasoning would be that, given WHM has always struggled to have an actual identity beyond 'it heals hard', this would give it an actual solid one: it can bank damage by using various damage-neutral GCD healing skills, and then unload all of that banked damage at once for massive burst in the raidbuff window. Effectively making it the 'king of ADPS', like how DRK currently functions.

All that is totally separate from its more powerful/interesting heals being locked behind dealing damage, though.

WHM is only a single CD attack away from "King of ADPS" already, even if that had no impact on their personal potency per minute (e.g., even if its potency were just siphoned from Glare). SCH and AST both sit well behind it at <90% and <80% of WHM's aDPS (despite edging out its rDPS by only ~0.4%).

And none of that requires restricting heals behind those attacks.

I'd also have liked for it to be a Necromancer healer or something that had a system like this, but we aren't getting Necromancer for various reasons, so WHM's the next best choice imo.

That stuff was stripped from original Thaumaturge not so much because "Shadowy/Vampiric/Necrotic arts bad" but simply because Yoshida wanted to simplify everything into franchise-standard analogs asap. We could still easily get a job for which it'd make sense for healing resources to be drawn from prior attacks. I just don't feel like WHM is even close to that. SCH and SGE both seem better fits, thematically.

Wouldn't mind seeing WHM start with 100 gauge either, your opening salvo would be like, precast Glare, spend, spend (POM), Tornado (Assize), <Quake, Quake, Flood, Flood>, Tornado, Glare and continue as usual (with the bit in <> being rearrangeable for mobility purposes, but who needs mobility in the first 20s of the fight). That's assuming you don't need/want the healing from the gauge and can afford to dump it early like that, if you need to save the gauge then you'd drop one or both 'spends' and the Tornado/Quake/Flood would be reverted to their regular Dia/Glare/Banish forms, and the net loss of damage would be 'the amount of damage gained by casting Glare in raidbuffs, minus the damage that Glare does without any raidbuffs' (because that 'spend' is replaced by a Glare), so absolutely miniscule (but still high enough for optimizers to care about).

This all sounds decent to me. I just still don't see why it'd want to have heals locked behind damage in almost any way. If you, say, formed a healing spring and then used a Tornado around it to vary its effect, or a Quake to spread it, etc., that'd be pretty neat; I just don't get why Tornado would unlock a particular heal or even why you'd necessarily want to have the nuke damage skills/CDs to be mere gauge-builders on an "aDPS healer" instead of having them be the gauge-spenders (far more bankable, flexible, exploitable).

I guess the main thing is that it feels like you could easily just have WHM have some serious MP-burst-spending options via burst damage tools while making it wildly MP-positive otherwise and accomplish largely the same result -- flexible, seriously unloadable burst damage with a side of situational utility. Attach some costs to oGCD heals and grant MP-spending burst heals a bit of damage-refund value (e.g., via more water magic, which all heals are to some extent, in the effect of Tornado = higher potency Tornado, etc.) and you're already there. And since WHM would be balanced around (generating and) spending much more MP than most healers, it'd still also be your "prog healer", more capable of mass-/chain-rezzing than most.

Additionally, WHM does not start with Lilies, whereas SCH can instantly get 3 Aetherflow (plus 3 more with Dissipation), AST can start with 3 cards for a full Astrodyne in the opener, and SGE starts with 3 of both Adderblobs.

Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like starting from 100 gauge would be unreasonable (only that it'd then be mildly redundant with MP). WHM should start with 3 Lilies and should be able to generate Lilies even outside of combat. It just probably shouldn't be able to generate Blood Lilies except within X seconds of having been in combat (should be indicated with an action/button flash/highlight or subtle change in icon), as not to delay combat for a minute to build a Misery and keep 3 Lilies. That'd be a far fairer way to handle that.

[ForsakenRoe]

This all sounds decent to me. I just still don't see why it'd want to have heals locked behind damage in almost any way. If you, say, formed a healing spring and then used a Tornado around it to vary its effect, or a Quake to spread it, etc., that'd be pretty neat; I just don't get why Tornado would unlock a particular heal or even why you'd necessarily want to have the nuke damage skills/CDs to be mere gauge-builders on an "aDPS healer" instead of having them be the gauge-spenders (far more bankable, flexible, exploitable).

Sorry, sometimes I forget how long it's been since I first made that post, let me clarify: this hypothetical gauge, the 'builders' would be 'every spell in your kit that is not a Lily spell', be that damage or healing, with varying gauge generation rates. The 'spender' would be this instant cast heal, probably around the same power as Cure3 but without the scuffed range. The 'Quake, Tornado, Flood' spells are not CDs, but upgraded versions of Glare, Dia and Banish, in the same way that after using Infuriate, FellCleave turns into Inner Chaos for one use. The purpose of those spells is not to be a damage gain per se, but to make that 'spender healing GCD' be damage neutral. Being able to move the 'refund' into raidbuffs is a happy coincidence that most players would not need to worry about, but the few that would take notice of it would find enjoyment in rejigging their Lily spend timings to work around that heal, such that they get both it's refund and Misery into raidbuffs. It would be nice to have spells affect things as you describe, eg 'Quake adds potency, Tornado adds range, Flood adds duration' or something, but I had originally made the idea based on how cautious SE plays when it comes to making changes. I went with 'baby steps' on purpose, because I wouldn't expect SE to add a complexity of that level to WHM, the supposed 'babby's first healer'

I'd look at 'what does this healer have to build an identity out of in it's kit right now', and work from there. SCH has two fairies, and in FF11, Black/White Grimoire, which could lead to some kind of stance-dancing gameplay (with less punishment factor than Cleric used to have). AST has it's cards which could have some additional gameplay added to them again. SGE has Kardia, and SE could make it have a gameplay that revolves more around that. What does WHM have? Cure 3. That's fine and all, but I feel like it needs something a little... more, than just Cure 3, hence why I think something like this would fit best on WHM. Sure, we could have SGE have it, or have SCH generate Fairy Gauge each time one of it's 4 recently re-added DOTs tick. But then the question is, if that healer gets this new system which helps interlink the two halves of their kit (damage and healing), what does WHM get to play with that makes it retain all levels of player? If WHM has no 'thing' that SE could build off of, like the Fairies, or the Cards, or the Kardia, then it needs to be given one, is how I see it, otherwise WHM remains doomed to be 'the boring one, the function-over-form one, the 'it just works' one' and I'd personally like to see it achieve more than 'barely scraped a passing grade'

[Shurrikhan]

If WHM has no 'thing' that SE could build off of, like the Fairies, or the Cards, or the Kardia, then it needs to be given one, is how I see it, otherwise WHM remains doomed to be 'the boring one, the function-over-form one, the 'it just works' one' and I'd personally like to see it achieve more than 'barely scraped a passing grade'

I feel like it always has, though -- the Elements, themselves. I just don't necessarily want to see them relegated to something redundant with Lilies as a refund measure (even if partial and without any CD, as opposed to Lilies' full but CD-limited refund).

Will probably edit in more further; only had a brief moment between shifts today.