Would you rather healers get more complex healing kits or more complex DPS kits?

[PyurBlue]

Being able to move 3 glares from filler into raid buffs means it's often more beneficial to burn lilies on nothing than ignore them.

That's part of what I mean when I say "ignore lilies for healing". In that case you're not so much healing as you are setting up DPS. This also manifests as using OGCD heals during combat and only spending lilies when there is downtime, like a boss jumping away in a raid or between pulls in dungeons. As long as you don't overcap doing that it's the best way to use them because it negates their GCD cost.

It's less of a problem in really damage heavy fights that are more likely to force lily healing, but there is quite a of lot content where you can get away with excluding lilies as a healing resource and just considering them a prestep in maximizing DPS. I'm not sure if it bothers anyone else, but I've never liked that aspect of WHM.

[fulminating]

That's part of what I mean when I say "ignore lilies for healing". In that case you're not so much healing as you are setting up DPS. This also manifests as using OGCD heals during combat and only spending lilies when there is downtime, like a boss jumping away in a raid or between pulls in dungeons. As long as you don't overcap doing that it's the best way to use them because it negates their GCD cost.

It's less of a problem in really damage heavy fights that are more likely to force lily healing, but there is quite a of lot content where you can get away with excluding lilies as a healing resource and just considering them a prestep in maximizing DPS. I'm not sure if it bothers anyone else, but I've never liked that aspect of WHM.

The way I view it is that the lilies are almost cemented as the first choice heal because of it, rather than ignored. Fight timeline, whether there's incoming downtime and if it's a trash pull or not depending. I don't think it's fair to say that this is the cause of prioritising oGCDs, because that's not behaviour exclusive to white mage. Scholars don't ignore adlo for lustrate, sages sageadlo for sagelustrate nor ast benefic for their myraid ogcds that I also don't know the names of. Prioritising oGCDs is just part of optimising for damage, which is ultimately the goal of every job.

[Renathras]

That's part of what I mean when I say "ignore lilies for healing". In that case you're not so much healing as you are setting up DPS. This also manifests as using OGCD heals during combat and only spending lilies when there is downtime, like a boss jumping away in a raid or between pulls in dungeons. As long as you don't overcap doing that it's the best way to use them because it negates their GCD cost.

It's less of a problem in really damage heavy fights that are more likely to force lily healing, but there is quite a of lot content where you can get away with excluding lilies as a healing resource and just considering them a prestep in maximizing DPS. I'm not sure if it bothers anyone else, but I've never liked that aspect of WHM.

Huh.

I kind of see it the other way around.

WHM doesn't have a lot of oGCDs (relatively speaking) that heal, just Assize and Tetra do direct healing, and Assize is generally used on CD for damage.

This means where SCH might use Whispering Dawn or AST Celestial Intersection (or Opposition? The blue icon that heals the party, not the single target half-Benison shield plus heal), WHM uses Afflatus Rapture. While you have Tetra, if you have Solace up, you can use it instead. This is less "you have a damage spell locked behind needless heals" and more "you can use Cure 2 or Medica 1 as an oGCD/damage neutral to address the healing you should need to do anyway".

Yeah, in super easy content like 4 mans, you are probably just going to do token healing to the tank and mostly do overhealing if you use Rapture, but even there, the bosses do raidwides, so you can use it for useful healing. Or you can ignore them completely; 4 man dungeons don't matter if you're optimizing Misery under raid buffs or not, so that side of the argument is kind of irrelevant.

So you're "not so much healing as you are setting up for DPS"; you're healing necessary damage you'd have to heal anyway in content more difficult than normal MSQ stuff. Everything else has places in the fight to do useful healing with Rapture and Solace, so if you're finding yourself "wasting them on needless overhealing", that means you (or your co-healer...) are wasting more oGCDs than you/they need to. If you think of 8 man encounters with 2 healers as "a combined healer toolkit" (that is, look at all the abilities of both healers as if they were one unit acting together, because that's what they are), Lilies have higher priority of use over anything aside from maybe SGE's Addersgall heals (since those are 7% of SGE's MP economy per use while Lilies replacing a Glare are 400 MP or 4% of WHM's) or WHM's own Assize (since that is 5%).

That is, if there's "needed healing", WHM's Lilies should be the first thing you AND your co-healer touch, generally speaking, to restore health. So if everyone is 100% topped off all the time without you using Lilies, in Extreme or higher content (e.g. actual stuff that hits hard), then one or both of you is doing something wrong by using other heals first. Again, unless it's a SGE throwing out 2 Keracholes and an Ixochole per minute and somehow there's zero additional damage for you to heal after factoring in Assize.

Additional healing changes will likely be very binary, just like healing itself: either it's enough to shake up the way we play, or it isn't and we carry on as normal. It will be very hard to 'notice' the change, leading to people potentially asking 'wasnt healing meant to be getting harder? When was that meant to happen'. Couple of extra buttons in the damage rotation is immediately noticeable as a change, as evidenced by the fact that the mere thought of it occurring causes such contention. And it would open up more design space for new interactions, than another healing skill would allow for, in followup patches (assuming SE actually did iterate, instead of 'rest on laurels'). For example, in one patch they add a new GCD to WHM with a 15s CD and reduce Dia to 12s, then next patch they say 'ok now people are used to that, here's a new system that plays around those previous changes: a healing tool that is charged by using those damage skills'. It wouldn't make sense to add the healing tool and it's associated gauge before the things that build said gauge, would it? Instead, it'd be made into another boring bland 60s CD, and we'd be back where we are now

Or for AST, changing Major Arcana to have the unique effects I mentioned, and if 'the cards all deal damage, but in different ways, and this allows them to have unique tertiary effects like mit or MP restore' goes down well with the players, then they can then move on to the bigger change of reworking Minor Arcana to be interesting in similar fashion

Think so?

I thought the P5-8S changes were very noticeable.

Not to mention "couple extra buttons in the damage rotation" may be noticeable BUT NOT GOOD. And they also may not be impactful. As you're fond of saying, players that don't want to use them (should be able to) continue not using them, at which point, what was noticed? That we have extra buttons we don't use?

Not to mention you point out why that's not a good idea: "the mere thought of it occurring causes such contention" kind of indicates that ISN'T where we should spend our once per 2 year bullet.

We already have design space for interactions. "Holy Might" and "Diacloud procs" are two extremely straightforward ones that require nothing new at all. We aren't using the design space we have, so what makes you think we'll get more than "Here are two more DoTs that do 10 potency over time. Have fun?" instead of something...useful?

Again, you know my position - change some, leave some - on the DPS side, but not only would just throwing more DPS buttons at all the healers alienate people (more than just me), it wouldn't fix the problems, and would make the situation worse. You MIGHT actually get more of a healer shortage, not less, as folks leave the role and wait 2 more years. "But they did that with SCH!" Which is why I shouldn't have to explain to anyone why doing it again would be bad...

[EDIT: Note here I'm not saying we CAN'T address DPS buttons on healers; but I AM saying we CANNOT have that be the only thing we do. That could make playing healers worse than now. If you slap me with some extra damage buttons but otherwise change NOTHING about healing, encounter design, etc, I just will not play healer for the expansion. And other people have said they won't as well. That cannot be our answer. Again, if you want to do it on just a healer or two like SCH and SGE OR WHM and leave the other one alone, that's a different argument. But that isn't the proposal. "more DPS buttons" proposals are always "...on ALL of the healer Jobs, whether people want them or not", and in the case of the "incremental change" argument, would be the only thing we get, meaning nothing else on the healing or encounter side.]

The way I view it is that the lilies are almost cemented as the first choice heal because of it, rather than ignored. Fight timeline, whether there's incoming downtime and if it's a trash pull or not depending. I don't think it's fair to say that this is the cause of prioritising oGCDs, because that's not behaviour exclusive to white mage. Scholars don't ignore adlo for lustrate, sages sageadlo for sagelustrate nor ast benefic for their myraid ogcds that I also don't know the names of. Prioritising oGCDs is just part of optimising for damage, which is ultimately the goal of every job.

Mhm. It's not often, but I agree with Fulminating here.

Lilies should generally be WHM's go-to heal button for healing people. The only things that rank higher are Assize if it just came off CD and can cover the healing or POTENTIALLY Tetra or Asylum IF you know you're about to have a heavy movement phase and want to save the Lilies for that. Outside of those two cases, Rapture/Solace should be the first buttons you hit. Again, possible exception being if you have a SGE co-healer.