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

[Miste]

I understand how powerful Thin Air is. You can frontload as many heals as you want within its window. But it doesn't give you the power to simply neglect your MP through the entirety of a fight. I find myself, in O4s and Shinryu, running very low on MP quite often, along with my co healer at the time

AST is the weakest in MP recovery, but their low MP cost makes up for it so they end up being just as MP efficient as any other healer.

I know what you mean for Shinryu, but O4S hmmmm honestly I find O4S to be very not MP intensive in general so I've never actually gotten close to running out (this is when people are not dirt napping left and right or making mistakes though). Exdeath is so-so but the fight is short, as for Neo his heavy damage is so sporadic and in short bursts that honestly I haven't had an issue with MP at all...just don't get hit by Emptiness. O3S in my experience is actually quite a bit more MP intensive than O4S.

Shinryu I flip back and forth from AST to WHM and on WHM when it is a smooth run I never get close to running out of MP even a few mistakes or deaths I don't run out. AST though I do start to get low at points even if the run is smooth and especially if I have to raise. That is just my experience though.

I personally think that it is due to Asp. Benefic having a much higher MP cost than WHM Regen and regens are very good to keep on the tanks for that fight since Shinryu's wings constantly pot shot both of them. Asp. Benefic is 1440 MP while WHM Regen is 840. 600 MP difference and those regens are pretty helpful in there.

The MP recovery is mostly balanced between all healers, but AST's lower MP costs and extended Lucid don't make up for Thin Air and Assize. I play both and on AST I have to manage my MP a lot more carefully than WHM. Ewer is not reliable since you can not get one when you need it and AST are supposed to use those to setup damage boosts not for MP so we have to watch MP close to avoid that, but that is how AST is supposed to be so it is fine. WHM should have better MP management than AST anyway in my opinion.

Also have to keep in mind that any healer can run out of MP if they overheal too much due to worrying too much so they overcompensate.


Are you using Thin Air to heal the dragon heads and/or using Benediction to heal one to full for free? Because when I was learning that fight I noticed that those dragon heads are really MP sponges if you use no buffs.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Are you using Thin Air to heal the dragon heads and/or using Benediction to heal one to full for free? Because when I was learning that fight I noticed that those dragon heads are really MP sponges if you use no buffs.

I've made it a point to save CDs for those dragon heads. If done right, every healer should have a low MP cost answer to heads (WHM and Thin Air -- AST and Lightspeed -- SCH and Lustrates). I always kinda liked how this worked out honestly. It makes it feel like every healer can get the job done, but has it's own answer to this healing check. I hope we see more of this type of stuff.

Also looking back, I do agree that O3s may be more MP draining than O4s.
Perhaps my opinion is a bit warped, since I PUG my O4s', and group performance differs greatly.

[Miste]

I've made it a point to save CDs for those dragon heads. If done right, every healer should have a low MP cost answer to heads (WHM and Thin Air -- AST and Lightspeed -- SCH and Lustrates). I always kinda liked how this worked out honestly. It makes it feel like every healer can get the job done, but has it's own answer to this healing check. I hope we see more of this type of stuff.

Also looking back, I do agree that O3s may be more MP draining than O4s.
Perhaps my opinion is a bit warped, since I PUG my O4s', and group performance differs greatly.

Yeah I do use Lightspeed on AST for them as well, Lightspeed is just only -25% MP not 0 like Thin Air so that makes a difference, but in general all healers are well off for MP as long as stuff is going correctly and all can run out if too much mistakes or deaths as well.

Yeah PUG O4S would definitely cause you some MP heartache probably due to exactly what you said differing performance and not having the kind of coordination a static has. During progression for these turns though O4S really didn't give me much of an MP problem even when performance was bad, O3S though I really claim that one as the worst for MP personally.

[Ghishlain]

Thanks for providing these links! It's interesting to see this data, but what I'd be more interested in is seeing the total number of parses uploaded per class and seeing if the variance between the division shows a different trend. This just shows each person who has cleared on a class, so each player shows up once, but not the total number of times they've cleared per class. It would be interesting to track the trends to see if people tended to clear on one class and then change to another for repeated farms, or if they stayed on the same class the whole time.

I imagine the website designer could do these trends if they felt like it but given the purpose of the site is to help track performance and assist in individual player's in reviewing these performances for optimization, I imagine building something that tracks "job changes" would be very low on the priority list for them.

Overall I think it's important to note that the representation percentage of each healer that is clearing content hasn't changed that much and the data provided shows that White Mage is regarded as the most selected healer for what is currently the second hardest content in the game currently. I can understand the concern for exclusion because let's be honest, when we're dealing with absolutely optimal kill speeds, there will be eight specific jobs selected and White Mage won't be part of that healer pair due to their kit design. At the same time, I don't feel this exclusion is at a scale that warrants concern at this time.

To answer the original point of "Does WHM need an AoE mitigation tool", I personally believe it's not necessary. White Mage's kit excels at having a multiple answers to triage any situation versus the more limited scope of the other healers. The White Mage challenge is knowing when to hold back on certain CD or GCD+CD combinations and when to go all out on the healing front to push the ship back from being capsized by damage.

IE.
For single target consideration, WHMs have access to Tetra, Cure + Divine Benison, Cure II, and Benediction vs AST's Essential Dignity, Benefic II, and (if in proper Sect) Nocturnal Aspected Benefic vs SCH's (Emergency) Adlo, Lustrate, and Excogatation
For AoE consideration, WHMs have access to Assize, Asylum, Medica + Plenary Indulgence, Medica II, and Cure III vs AST's Earthly Star, Aspected Helios, and Helios vs SCH's (Emergency) Succor, Indomitably, and Whispering Dawn.

To me, looking at the kit design, WHM is meant to excel at having the myriad of options to stop the raid from bleeding to death at a raw level and have the MP pool necessary to push out this agenda. SCHs and ASTs can heal the content, but they don't have the multitude of options that WHM has. Is those additional heals basically "frills"? From a farm standpoint, yes. From a progression stand point, not so much. Because of that push with the progression kit, and assuming S-E continues to push this envelop with "Super Savage Content", WHM will always have a place in end game content as the ultimate progression healer. And Super Savage will always be progression when you consider how it's man handling the best raiders in the game right now.

Also looking back, I do agree that O3s may be more MP draining than O4s.
Perhaps my opinion is a bit warped, since I PUG my O4s', and group performance differs greatly.

I personally also find O3S is more MP intensive because the damage is more consistent throughout the fight.

O4S NeoExDeath is basically HAVE THIS MASSIVE BURST OF DAMAGE TO HEAL THROUGH then... nothing. After clearing the fight as many times as I have now, I'm actually not surprised that there were solo heal videos coming out as quickly as they were. It's huge massive spikes of heal but because they're so few and far in between it's very easy to save potent cooldowns to help get through these massive spikes, especially when combined with the mitigation tools provided by other jobs. This is great for WHM since you essentially have Thin Air available for every single time Almagest goes out aside from either the one Alamagest after GC Omega or the subsequent one after GC Delta (which ever you use your CDs for) - which in turn leads to massive amounts of MP economy gained.

[Estelle9lives]

WHM is indeed the most efficient, but SCH is a very close second as of this patch. Not nearly as strong for all MP costs to be negligible as you said.

I should probably have worded that better - it's not exactly that you can just spam whatever spells you want on WHM, some of the MP costs are still beefy. It just so happens you have the tools to bypass situations where you'd otherwise be spending lots of MP. Naturally this depends on playstyle as well - you mentioned Shinryu as one of the fights you have MP issues with, so here's an example: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/VQ7rf...asts&source=83

In particular run you can notice I have 5 Holy casts, which equals 12000 MP that was mostly covered by Thin Air. During Reiryus WHM is also incredibly strong due to Bene and Tetra, you can basically instantly take down a Reiryu and then Regen > Tetra > Cure II to take care of another one. I also had to Raise once in this run, but again, this is just an example of how freely you can spend your MP on WHM with the right cooldown usage.

I'd also like to mention that I do agree with your initial post, WHM is the only healer at the moment that has no answer to situations where mitigation is needed, whereas SCH and Noct AST have an answer to burst healing.