Isn't it about time for WHM to get an AOE mitigation tool?

[Cabalabob]

Honestly I think they should just change secret of the lily 2 to make divine benison AoE when it consumes 3 lilies, I mean what a garbage level 68 skill, a 20% chance that something that happens about 20% of the time will proc a 5 second recast reduction on 2 already fairly short recast skills proced by a skill we rarely use? Come on... WHMs have been asking for an AoE mitigation tool for ages and we get that?

You think divine Beninson is garbage? What world do you live in?

Apparently one where people can’t read.

On top of this, even if this happened and its AoE strength were reduced to a smaller number like 8%, the bigger concern I'd have is its stackability with SCH/AST shields.

The last thing I want to see is a return to both healers having to shield the party with everything they've got to survive ults even when adequately geared. Succor + AoE Benison, Succor + CU, Aspected Helios + AoE Benison....nah, I'm good. I don't look back fondly on the memories of stoneskinning for 8 GCDs and watching people die if I didn't happen to start early enough.

So you’d rather if this situation arises that WHM just have no answer to it and be excluded from the content in favour of AST/SCH? I entirely agree with you stoneskinning 8 people sucked, having stoneskin 2 in combat would have remedied that. But this weird obsession people have with whm not being allowed any mitigation stands in the way of that.

You know it’s funny, where has this “no mitigation for whm” mindset even come from? It’s not like there’s some precedent for it. In ffxi whm was the shield healer having a stance that turned their cures into this games adloquium. 1.0 cnj had stoneskin and could AoE stoneskin. Protect, shell and wall are all classic mitigation white magic. So why is whm getting this mitigation stigma?

Ah pls give cure 3 to ast if it\\'s not good then.

I would trade it for earthly star any day.

[Sebazy]

I don't disagree that an AOE Divine Bension wouldn't be hilariously op, but let's take a minute to look at what other healers have.

/cracks knuckles

SCH has Indom, a 500 pot OGD 15y AOE on a 30 second CD. It almost always heals everyone but the tanks up to 100%. I would consider this trivializing AOE damage for sure.

Indom is roughly 10k actual HP healed at 70. I've got just shy of 40k HP, O3S and O4S have aoes that routinely hit for 20-30k+. I'd be really interested to see your raid experience as your numbers don't stack up.

AST has Earthly Star, a massive AOE heal that puts any other heal in the game to shame. It takes some coordination, but with good usage, this thing trivializes any AOE attack by itself.

Stellar Explosion is ~14k, it's also a minute cooldown. Again, I've got no idea what your raid experience actually is but I can assure you that if nothing else, Earthly Star is indeed an amazing ability, but it certainly doesn't trivialise every AoE attack by itself. Feel free to test this on Faustdeath, I look forward to seeing your results.

For comparison's sake, Cure III is ~11.5k, with Largesse up it's averaging just shy of 14k, a single PI charge nets just over 3k. We stack up absolutely fine when it comes to raw HPS once you start factoring in the details. In short, all 3 abilities have strengths and weaknesses vs each other.

Now in comparison, WHM doesn't actually have anything that's borderline broken like these two. Cure III on a GCD is nice, but it doesn't feel nearly as powerful as it did in 3.0 with other OGCD heals with much larger range beating it.

And yet Medica II and Aspected Benefic absolutely trample over any of the abilities mentioned here, discuss.

I'm not going to say AOE Bension isn't broken, but why is that a bad thing for WHM to have it's one truly powerful tool that trivializes damage?

Because it'll enable us to surpass a rather peachy 50k effective HP as well as providing a group barrier that completely ignores infirmity effects (Which will almost certainly be a thing again with Ultimate Coil). Do you actually appreciate what that'll mean for several mechanics in O4s?

Don't get me wrong, I was waiting for the gotcha with Earthly Star when the press build potencys went out and I was certainly pretty stunned when it actually went live with the numbers that it did. However it still has it's own limitations and WHM is in no way in any kind of a bad shape right now. Thin Air bought so much to the table for us, being able to brute force my way through a completely unmitigated Almagest for a big fat 0 MP is eye opening to say the least. It really saddens me that you simply refuse to see this.

So you’d rather if this situation arises that WHM just have no answer to it and be excluded from the content in favour of AST/SCH?

I honestly don't understand the desire to see WHM get an AoE Galvanise clone. High end content and mechanisms are designed around having two different healers. Ideally one to handle HoTs, one to handle barriers. Whilst ending up with double WHM costs you any AoE bubbles, there are alternatives on Tanks now and double WHM actually stacks pretty well assuming you're not going to get one shot by something. O4S is dooable with double WHM.

In ffxi whm was the shield healer having a stance that turned their cures into this games adloquium.

Either my memory is really bad or this was a very late addition to the game? I played pretty much from the NA release until after WoTG and don't remember seeing that =(

Beaten to it again! #slowbazy =(

[Ghishlain]

Either my memory is really bad or this was a very late addition to the game? I played pretty much from the NA release until after WoTG and don't remember seeing that =(

Yeah, there was a level 40 JA introduced around early WotG for WHM called Afflatus Solace that basically generated a Stoneskin worth X% on the target you single target cure, which was augmented by AF3 gear when Abyssea came out. Afflatus Solace + that AF3 body is basically what propelled WHM back from obscurity to super heal power. lol. With the upgrade AF3 body I think it generated a Stoneskin worth 25% of the total heal (overheal didn't matter) so you get like a 250HP Stoneskin instantly after you Cure V. [edit] Oh, and said JA was also a 2 hour buff (basically a passive) to the WHM kit when it was introduced. It could be dispelled though.

With that being said, that's effectively an ability that's only been around for around half of the game's life cycle then? /think

Beaten to it again! #slowbazy =(

*/comforts Sebazy*

[edit2] Just to add my two cents too - Medica II + Plenary Inguldence is already a 850 Potency heal, it just needs 30s to get the full effect and is essentially the best AoE heal in the entire game at that point. Earthly Star just wows because it's HUGE NUMBERS all at once but Medica II w/ Plenary Indulgence gives you a better heal overall on the same cooldown timer. But that's the power of HoTs for you. Heck, even pre-SB Medica II + Divine Seal was 910 potency worth of healing.

[Tridus]

Honestly I think they should just change secret of the lily 2 to make divine benison AoE when it consumes 3 lilies, I mean what a garbage level 68 skill, a 20% chance that something that happens about 20% of the time will proc a 5 second recast reduction on 2 already fairly short recast skills proced by a skill we rarely use? Come on... WHMs have been asking for an AoE mitigation tool for ages and we get that?

Be careful what you wish for. There's no way a trait is going to potentially increase DB's effectiveness to 8x of standard and give WHM arguably the strongest burst shield in the game (while only costing lilies). None. If they did this, DB would get nerfed massively.

Secret of the Lily II is so weak that you could remove it and almost nobody would even notice. It definitely needs addressing. This isn't the way. I'd rather them see do something like "20% on Cure/Cure 2 healing to make your next Stone instant" or some such, as that'd help you keep up personal DPS in situations where you're needing to use more Cure, effectively playing up something you want to be doing anyway without stepping on the toes of anyone else.

[ValentineSnow]

Be careful what you wish for. There's no way a trait is going to potentially increase DB's effectiveness to 8x of standard and give WHM arguably the strongest burst shield in the game (while only costing lilies). None. If they did this, DB would get nerfed massively.

Secret of the Lily II is so weak that you could remove it and almost nobody would even notice. It definitely needs addressing. This isn't the way. I'd rather them see do something like "20% on Cure/Cure 2 healing to make your next Stone instant" or some such, as that'd help you keep up personal DPS in situations where you're needing to use more Cure, effectively playing up something you want to be doing anyway without stepping on the toes of anyone else.

I dunno, thinking about it, it wouldn't be too unbalanced, let's look at it comparatively. succor and noct sect are about a 3k heal with 150% barrier, so about 4.5k AoE shield. at level 70 in i320 gear non-tanks have about 32k hp. benison is a 15% shield so about 4.8k AoE shield, a little stronger than ast and sch version. But ast and sch it's a GCD spell so they can spam it back to back, whm has a 24 second recast timer. whm's is free and oGCD while sch and ast cost 2k mp and a GCD, but whm also has to build 3 lilies which will cost at least 1500mp and 3 GCDs. Finally, ast and sch can buff their shield with largesse, fey illumination and dissipation, whm can't.

So while whm's shield would be stronger it would also come with built in drawbacks to offset that.

[MoroMurasaki]

So while whm's heal would be stronger it would also come with built in drawbacks to offset that.

But those drawbacks don't offset by remotely enough. Those other classes can spam a shield (not sure why, but okay) but WHM can spam Cure III and follow that up with a PI for 2,100 healing potency over about 7 seconds over the whole party.

[Sebazy]

I dunno, thinking about it, it wouldn't be too unbalanced

It would be disgustingly unbalanced in the endgame TBH =/

As an iLvl 340 healer with partial VIT melds I'm just below 37k with food. Raid buffed? I'm just shy of 40K and have room to surpass that if needed for Ultimate Coil.

So now we're talking a 6k oGCD barrier on the squishiest person on the party (going up to just shy of 11k on a warrior) with a 24 second cooldown. Not to mention that it'll completely ignore infirmity style debuffs and such.

The lily requirement is fluff, that would trivialise so much AoE stuff it's unreal. SE already got burned with fixed percentage based abilities via 2.x Lustrate. There's no way they will let this ability balloon out of control like we saw prior.

[Erakir]

snip

On top of this, even if this happened and its AoE strength were reduced to a smaller number like 8%, the bigger concern I'd have is its stackability with SCH/AST shields.

The last thing I want to see is a return to both healers having to shield the party with everything they've got to survive ults even when adequately geared. Succor + AoE Benison, Succor + CU, Aspected Helios + AoE Benison....nah, I'm good. I don't look back fondly on the memories of stoneskinning for 8 GCDs and watching people die if I didn't happen to start early enough.

[Sebazy]

I suspect that's just a case of poor wording and they are infact referring to Secret of the Lily II

Ooop, didn't spot the new page!