How do you think the WHM Lilies work?

[Coltvoyance]

So I was once upon a time a WHM main, then switched to tanking (I had gotten dismayed by utility like others, but this isn't about that) - and after watching the ability video, WHM has me positively intreagued; so much so that I'm prepping it's gear for stormblood.

While it's easy to panic and focus on the potential disappearance of Stoneskin, and the underwhelming translation of "still pure healing", we did see something almost ENTIRELY unique when it came to WHM - the Lily Battle Guage (BG).

Most of the BGs we saw were fancy depictions of things classes already have, but the lilies are an entirely new battle mechanic for WHM.

They mentioned they affect cast speed and allow for certain skills to be cast. What if it's like Greased Lightning for WHM? Can I now pound out Stone casts like a bullet train?

[Coltvoyance]

(sorry for the double post, having trouble editing on mobile)

Or do the lilies augment skill effects the more you have? 1 Lily adds a 5% dmg buff to Regen effects, 2 adds 7%, 3 adds 10!

What if they let you reboot a skills cool down? Can I continually refresh Presence of Mind? Or Swiftcast and pull off a Multi-res in a matter of seconds? Building more lilies that may fuel an MP Regen skill that lets me keep up with those costs?

And what awesome skill is going to require the use of all 3 of these valuable flowers that you build up?

Some of this is probably unlikely, but with so little to go on so far, who can tell? It's entirely possible that SQE is still tweaking WHM and didn't want to disclose too much about how the new one would work.

But what do you think? How do you think the flowers work?

[Okamimaru]

When charged it uses the power of all the salt from whm forums to grant immortality to the whole group for 5 minutes... XD

[BlueMageQuina]

Still won't save the DRG

[Erakir]

Weehee, finally a post after lurking around for oh so long~

It can go so so so many ways. We know basically nothing - not even how they're generated at this point in time. Just the short video to guess with.

I have two fears - one is that they only tie one or two situational skills to it, making it kinda bland or restrictive in use, like it was tacked on just so they could give WHM some sort of UI graphic like they gave everyone else.

The other is that they tie multiple abilities to it, and tack on a decent MP restorative effect to only *one* of those abilities, lending people to almost always use that specific ability unless they straight up have to use another for a mechanic.

There are lots of ways to make it unique and interesting, though.

One I've been toying with my head is simple - tie multiple abilities with short CDs to them, and allow consumption of lilies to buff or augment those. For sake of ease, say that using them consumes all available lilies. In this scenario, I've thought of the lilies generating slowly automatically, but having a chance to gain one when casting spells/healing - this would ensure you're never completely out of luck with them while also adding some randomness to it so it doesn't get to be 100% planned. Maybe you get crappy luck, 0 procs, and it takes 60s to get 3 lilies. Maybe you get some luck and find you already have 3 at 47s, stuff like that. Similar to WotLK Maelstrom weapon, kinda, anyone familiar with WoW's enhancement shamans (Do they even still have that? It's been yeeeeears).

Now imagine Asylum, Assize, this new supposed barrier thingy, and perhaps even tetra if you feel like it are all on 20-30s cooldowns and consume the lilies.

One of Asylum's issues is how rough it can be to keep people in it for the duration, sometimes turning it into little more than a tank HoT, right? Consider Asylum being 6y radius at 1 lily, 9 at 2, and 12 at 3 (Bigger than sacred soil, I think?), potentially making it more useful as a substitute medica II for much of a raid, or dropping it more often for a heavy tank hitting fight at the cost of using other abilities. Consider Assize growing in strength, maybe something like 150 -> 225 -> 300 potency for each lily consumed (And drop the MP return if we're getting that addressed some other way). New skills we don't know anything about? Give them a similar line of thought.

By all means, toss a MP return on using the lilies if you feel like it. I'd rather it be tied to its own ability at that point rather than a specific healing one, though. I'm really not a fan of Assize having MP tied to it already, as it greatly encourages you to use it off CD, or close to that as to not lose a potential +10% MP window throughout a fight, unless there are specific instances where the gain from a smart use is > that 10% MP.

Regardless of how you tinker with numbers (potencies, ranges, building lilies, etc), I like the idea of a system that has you constantly wondering which of these healing-related-skills might be best used at every point in time, and never having it down to a snooze-fest of 100% calculated usage times like we often do with strict CDs independant of each other. Smart use of such abilities would be a way a WHM could heal efficiently, ties these lilies to the whole "pure healer" line we keep hearing, and could let them always keep ticking somewhat even when low on MP.

Consider that they've mentioned spell speed from the lilies too, and you have a potential reason not to want to use them. They better make such a spell speed gain noticeable, though. Something like 2, 4, and 6% isn't gonna cut it.

Would that necessarily fix every issue people are concerned about? Utility and the like? Not necessarily by any means. But I think it'd be enjoyable, and would be a more interesting way of addressing MP than just giving WHM a bigger MP button to push. I already like mixing up my approach every 20-30s depending on which abilities are coming off cooldown.

You could also make the abilities usable at 0 lilies, just, you know - weaker, so you'd rather not - that brings the issue of making sure people just don't pop everything off cooldown at 0 for maximum potential HPS, though. Can work around that, mind you, even if you make everything share a short cooldown, but it's just something that would have to be addressed.

Do note this is just one potential idea I've been playing with internally. There are many, many more that could be more useful or more interesting. And of course, anything resulting from it would ideally be balanced around the other healers' kits, before anyone mentions something about too much potential HPS blowing everything out of whack~

I do not feel we'll get something along these lines, though. I imagine a simple charge-system where certain abilities cost 1, 2, or 3 lilies, and that's it.

[DuskTS]

So far the only thing I've read on here/reddit is your cast-times decrease as you gain lilies but looking at the cast time of Stone IV in the showcase it isn't very promising. Aero 2 seems to be insta-cast though?
Oh and all 3 lilies are consumed by the skill that buffed/barriered/ackshuallyjusthealed the BLM.

[Gemina]

So far the only thing I've read on here/reddit is your cast-times decrease as you gain lilies but looking at the cast time of Stone IV in the showcase it isn't very promising. Aero 2 seems to be insta-cast though?
Oh and all 3 lilies are consumed by the skill that buffed/barriered/ackshuallyjusthealed the BLM.

Whatever it does, it also gets the mob along with allies.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Yoshi already said it's a barrier.
Probably weaker than SCHs even.

It's accumulated by healing.

That's it.

[Reiryuu]

Yoshi already said it's a barrier.
Probably weaker than SCHs even.

It's accumulated by healing.

That's it.

Not quite. They're supposed to have a chance to increase spell casting speed as you accumulate them and you can expend them to create a barrier.

[Fernosaur]

I think some skills are gonna be tied to the Lillies, consuming some or all of them depending on the power of the spell. What I noticed in Yoshida's UI was that Cure III was greyed out, and I think I saw the Cure III animation in the job skills video, immediately followed by three Lillies disappearing. So I think Cure III will consume three Lillies, and the barrier thing will consume one Lilly. They might even increase the potency and range of Cure III to compensate for its more restricted use, making it a more powerful spell in general.

There's a bunch of other new spells WHM casted that I have absolutely no idea what they could do, so that's as far as my speculation goes.