Plenary Indulgence is a tank heal

[SoulMonarch]

I feel like WHM's kit 1-60 is fairly solid.

But Plenary Indulgence is a terrible damn addition. I can't see how the math ever works out to make it useful, even under best case scenario. Feel like they just wanted to give WHM a skill that incorporated some random procs and didn't really think it through enough...

[Pyitoechito]

I feel like Plenary Indulgence would have been the better choice for granting a barrier effect. Heal someone, proc a Confession, use PI to replace Confession with a damage-absorbing barrier. Now White Mages don't have to wait until they take damage to use PI.

As for Divine Benison, it could be given the effect of PvP Protect (% damage reduction on single target), increase the CD and drop the minimum lily requirement. Then have PvP Protect and PvP Benison swap effects so the PvP abilities remain unchanged.

Now PvE White Mage has two damage-mitigation skills just like in PvP, while still using the Lily system that SE already implemented (because we're probably stuck with it).

[NocturniaUzuki]

The fact that you can only get Confession stacks when you cast a Cure or Cure II and not even Medica(at least), that the heal consumes the stacks, and that it is unlikely (and unrealistic) to get more than one stack on the tank (let alone even one stack on any other party member) Plenary Indulgence is, frankly, silly and an overly clunky heal that needs to be looked at.

I actually kind of like that WHM only gains stacks on Cure I and II. I admit it makes them cruddy AoE healers. But I like that it encourages healers to take on individual roles. The AoE-heavy healers like AST can handle the AoE (AST has the MP regen to sustain repeated AoE heals anyways). Meanwhile, the WHM can focus on healing the MT and any emergency heals on players who accidentally eat an AoE, etc.

Plenary Indulgence seems to me to have two major functions:

1. To act as a double heal on a single target, with potential to divide it across two or three targets if you are keeping them all healed. Plenary is an excellent tool that should allow WHM to single-handedly manage healing both the MT and OT if they are splitting the damage source between them. This frees up their co-healer to focus on party-wipe AoE healing. As raid complexity increases, this sort of healer role splitting tactic could become important.

2. It preserves MP. Being able to constantly use Plenary every few seconds essentially gives you an free, instant Cure II. Many new healer skills are aimed at preserving MP while doubling as a potential emergency heal. AST has Lady of Crowns for this, as well as Earthly Star, allowing for a double AoE heal, saving the cost of casting Helios twice (not to mention full-healing the whole party after heavy AoE damage).

[Risvertasashi]

2. It preserves MP. Being able to constantly use Plenary every few seconds essentially gives you an free, instant Cure II.

...what?

For one thing it's not that strong. For another, while you might occasionally get those freak streaks of RNG that give you 2 or 3 stacks in quick succession.... just as much, you'll struggle to get even 1 stack.

[Reiryuu]

...what?

For one thing it's not that strong. For another, while you might occasionally get those freak streaks of RNG that give you 2 or 3 stacks in quick succession.... just as much, you'll struggle to get even 1 stack.

Let's not forget, you could cast a cure I and get a chance for a free cure II, chance to reduce assize cooldown, etc. instead.

[Elamys]

The AoE-heavy healers like AST can handle the AoE (AST has the MP regen to sustain repeated AoE heals anyways)

As much as I've been able to play so far, not sure that I agree with that statement. Ewer is RNG and we need to give up a party buff to use it, so all we have is Lucid Dreaming, unless it's really down to the wire, most ASTs won't use Ewer for the MP regen. WHM has Thin Air, Assize, AND Lucid, leaving them the best in the MP department.

[Tridus]

I actually kind of like that WHM only gains stacks on Cure I and II. I admit it makes them cruddy AoE healers. But I like that it encourages healers to take on individual roles. The AoE-heavy healers like AST can handle the AoE (AST has the MP regen to sustain repeated AoE heals anyways). Meanwhile, the WHM can focus on healing the MT and any emergency heals on players who accidentally eat an AoE, etc.

Actually it mostly encourages WHM to ignore Plenary entirely in the case of AoE damage and just use the same tools from HW. Assize and Medica II are still there, after all, and Assize is up more frequently than it used to be.

Plenary Indulgence seems to me to have two major functions:

1. To act as a double heal on a single target, with potential to divide it across two or three targets if you are keeping them all healed. Plenary is an excellent tool that should allow WHM to single-handedly manage healing both the MT and OT if they are splitting the damage source between them. This frees up their co-healer to focus on party-wipe AoE healing. As raid complexity increases, this sort of healer role splitting tactic could become important.

At 20% proc chance and having them drop in 30 seconds, the odds of you getting stacks on 3 people are not very good. You'll probably get one on the MT. Likely the OT if both are actively tanking something. It's extremely unlikely I'm casting Cure enough times on a Dragoon to have them get confession very often, and they'll basically *never* have more than one stack. In that case, PI is a free heal on the tank. I wasn't aware WHM was lacking in that department.

2. It preserves MP. Being able to constantly use Plenary every few seconds essentially gives you an free, instant Cure II. Many new healer skills are aimed at preserving MP while doubling as a potential emergency heal. AST has Lady of Crowns for this, as well as Earthly Star, allowing for a double AoE heal, saving the cost of casting Helios twice (not to mention full-healing the whole party after heavy AoE damage).

It only gives you a heal close to Cure II if you have 3 stacks. You need to cast a LOT of Cure to get 3 stacks, and you need to not use PI for long enough that it actually stacks up to 3. While this can happen, Freecure is already giving me free Cure II without making me stack 3 of them up. Tetra is giving me a free Cure II. Thin Air is giving me lots of free Cure II. Regen is making it so I need to cast less Cure II.

PI is more likely giving me a free Cure, since if you're actively using it you will need the RNG to be very kind to get to 3 stacks. If the RNG is unkind, PI will spend most of the time giving me absolutely nothing whatsoever. Even when it does give me a free Cure... yay? Cure isn't exactly an odious burden on an MP bar.

[REMoyen]

A lot don't notice , but it is 20% only when you heal HP and last 30 seconds. If they increased it to say 50%/100% chance and no fall off timer I can see it being useful. Right now it is an RNG mini Tetra.

Add that to the lv 68 trait being useless.

[Risvertasashi]

As much as I've been able to play so far, not sure that I agree with that statement. Ewer is RNG and we need to give up a party buff to use it, so all we have is Lucid Dreaming, unless it's really down to the wire, most ASTs won't use Ewer for the MP regen. WHM has Thin Air, Assize, AND Lucid, leaving them the best in the MP department.

I'm playing AST now and... just as with HW after the buffs, I do have to agree with it. WHM did get MP management love. But AST still has the stronger heals, the cheaper heals, and can still extend lucid dreaming, and can reduce costs even more with Lightspeed. On top of that, CU is as strong as WHM's single target regen, but it's AoE and of course stacks with Aspected Helios.

You really don't need to factor in Ewer at all.

Thin Air does a lot to bring parity to this, but if you're talking about sustain beyond a 12 second window, AST is still very strong and likely stronger.

[lyndwyrm]

2. It preserves MP. Being able to constantly use Plenary every few seconds essentially gives you an free, instant Cure II. Many new healer skills are aimed at preserving MP while doubling as a potential emergency heal. AST has Lady of Crowns for this, as well as Earthly Star, allowing for a double AoE heal, saving the cost of casting Helios twice (not to mention full-healing the whole party after heavy AoE damage).

...what?

For one thing it's not that strong. For another, while you might occasionally get those freak streaks of RNG that give you 2 or 3 stacks in quick succession.... just as much, you'll struggle to get even 1 stack.

While it isn't that powerful, that is the one purpose I've thought Plenary Indulgence could be intended serve, MP management. Because of Plenary's short cooldown it'll almost always be up when you get a confession stack, and it will definitely be up before the stack falls off. Because of this, you may think of it more like another free cure, not the trait, but a free "cure" (yet slightly weaker than that now). If you don't need the extra healing, then Plenary may reduce total MP consumed through cure and only cure by ~18% (if you don't need the extra healing then you're also not using cure II except through freecure), which is also only a fraction of mp consuption.

There is a problem with this though. If that's its purpose, then we have yet another reason to use cure less, which of course means fewer chances to proc plenary and lilies. As others have said before, literally every healing ability we get after cure II allows us to use cure and cure II less. While we may have to use them when damage is high, note the wording have to use, meaning we otherwise don't use them.