Dear SE: WHM Suggestions

[Airal]

The Benediction bit is what really pushed me away from WHM towards SCH. As Kondor said, SCH gets a max of 75% HP from 3 Lustrates a minute where you get a Benediction cooldown that heals 100% every 5 minutes. Not really sure that the ability to burst that much HP in one go is preferable to having 3 short bursts at 25%, but maybe I just haven't seen a situation where I couldn't deal with it using Lustrate.

Then again, this is kinda like the argument that WAR had nothing to compete with PLD's Hallowed Ground, so they got Holmgang, so make of it what you will I suppose.

[Tranquil]

Bored at work and gonna reply to all of your points individually..

1. While I agree that proc-reliance for a healing class is not good and that there are many things they need to fix about the WHM's proc-design (eg. making the times longer or having both proc off of Cure, where you could then choose which to use and either spell cast once would use up the proc), I don't really know anyone who would waste a Freecure proc. It's a free heal, doesn't matter so much if it is minor overhealing. Just use it.

2. While the WHM tends to burn out faster, it doesn't mean it needs to be so. Perfect resource management, decent gear and a good situational assessment concerning heal-distribution as well as trusting your healing partner makes all of this easier. You have better AOE-heals and burst heals and those superb 18% stoneskins - if it's a more sustained stage of tank-and-spankage, you don't need to burn yourself out. Dish out cures, Regens, Freecures and Cure 2s if need be, so that you know you will bounce back to comfortable levels with the next shroud. If that is not doable, there is a very high likelihood that your SCH healing partner is lazy (which is a very common trait among many of the SCHs I've seen). I do agree it would be good if SoS scaled off of your Piety, especially now, when the current gear cuts down some of the MP pool.

3. I agree, the WHM needs some better stat synergy. I don't really like the idea of it being crit, like it is for the SCH, but the Firestarter-like Stoneskin sounds good, for instance.

4. ...this is overkill.

5. Potentially a good idea, would depend on the execution.

6. Agreed, the animation delay of the so-called "instant cast skills" is a bit annoying to say the least. Benediction is one of the biggest culprits. While you can compensate and somewhat get better at its use, there should be no need to adapt to that - it's pretty much false advertising.

7. Now, something like this is pretty brilliant. Well designed stat synergy is nice, especially if it would be based around spellspeed - which would fit the WHM the best in my opinion.

8. I don't really agree with its upkeep difficulties, but this isn't a bad idea either. Wouldn't necessarily hurt anything. Except, you wouldn't be able to multi-regen or refresh it at the end of Divine Seal, if they made said CD be its duration, 21 seconds. So I am kind of meh about this.

9. Absolutely agreed, 100%. Good idea, been thinking of something like that myself, too.

10. You can get by with the current SoS if you plan it well, but the WHM doesn't really have that many useful oGCDs so I wouldn't mind seeing this be implemented. Honestly, I am still fine with the current SoS, except it would be cool if it scaled off Piety.

11. Waiting for the Stoneskins applied between each T8 wipe.. Every single time. Yeah, it gets old. Basically, you could replace T8 with any "progression content". I agree it should be an AOE-cast out of combat. Make it a WHM trait or something. Not sure about Sacred Prism though, maybe, it was a very nice spell.

12. Wouldn't mind it if it were well implemented, though I'd rather have them expand upon the healing aspects of the WHM as opposed to giving them more utilities similar to the SCH's supposed niche (mitigation). Maybe a defense buff of some sort, instead of flat mitigation/damage absorbtion?

13. 100% agreed, Reraise would be amazing and its lack is disheartening. Maybe even make it so that it lets you start off with some MP or reseting SoS cooldown upon death, if the CD on said Reraise would be long enough (eg. 7-10 minutes)? WHM recovery isn't exactly the best, unless they happened to have SoS up anyway, with their potion CD up as well, with potentially even a bard singing on top of that.

In a nutshell: some brilliant ideas, some good ones, some decent ones and some that just make me think "this is wanting everything without drawbacks". Overall, positive about your ideas, though.

[Fran636]

The only WHM ability I have a real problem with is Presence of Mind...that 5 minute cool down... x.x;;

[Airikay]

I'll edit my post later when I read, but one thing I want to say is shroud. I never have mana issues. Really I'm a support healer on MT but my main healing is party. Sometimes I switch to MT during stuff like T7 where adds hit harder than MT and I'm taking care of fireball victims. Usually cure is enough in these situations when I have regen running on them too. I cure 2 if I get behind or if I have a free proc. Also, I wouldn't like if WHM had crit related prices. Its make gear builds too one dimensional for both heal classes.

[Bigpurpleharness]

Well if we were equal to schs why would ppl need schs then?
The only thing that differentiates us from schs are:
-we don't use pets
-we have very limited damage mitigation buffs
-our mp pool sucks
-we can out dps them i believe.
-etc
* we wear white robes and have canes instead of grimoires.
Soo you obviously play whm, but have you truly "played" a whm in every possible way?
Also if we get a kick in the teeth then we spam holy back at them.

If we had a similar MP situation we would be about equal actually. SCH does better single target HPS/DPS than a WHM, WHM does better AoE DPS/HPS than SCH. SCH has a bit of an edge with proactive healing, but a WHM can get pretty good at timing 18% stoneskins, so I count that as mostly equal. I want presence of mind's cooldown put down to a 90 second cooldown though.

I do love that artwork though. lol

[subteraneanbird]

The only problems I see with WHM are:

1) Bene's delay, which is a commonly cited problem and one that is easily fixed
2) Shroud being a flat gain vs Aetherflow's scaling gain. This means that even with a higher initial MP pool for WHM (even something like double) SCH will eventually have more effective MP. While this may take a very protracted encounter, a design team that would think something as stupid as a higher starting MP for WHM making up for a flat MP gain would also probably make a stupid 20+ minute encounter where that higher initial value is negated. Please make Shroud scale. I wouldn't even mind a nerf to the enmity effect (for example, making it like Quelling Strikes instead of an aggro dump) as "compensation". The reason why WHM has MP problems isn't due to initial MP (in fact, I often have higher MP values than SCH of similar levels). It is because our management tools are significantly worse as they are slower AND smaller in numerical value. There is no permanent fix to this problem except making Shroud scale.