Should WHM get a personal damage buff?

[SwarleyMcSwarls]

White mage is underperforming for personal dps in raid when compared to the other healers too. So i'd definitely say they could use some dps balancing; however, I don't expect any changes prior to next expansion.

[MoroMurasaki]

SCH does more, by a wide margin, in addition to bringing the raid buff.

(In raids. Yeah yeah holy spam dungeons etc etc)

I agree that SCH does more dps in a raid setting than WHM when you factor in Chain Stratagem but it seems like you're trying to say there is a wide margin in the personal dps of WHM and SCH... this is untrue.

[MoroMurasaki]

The only issue I have with WHM getting personal damage buffs is the same issue SAM/BLM getting buffed presents - at some point why would you play anything else in casual content?

To an extent WHM already has this - if you're healing an expert roulette doing it as something other than WHM is just silly. The personal dps is so strong and you don't need to hope you get competent dps to make use of cards you can be top dps in most AoE pulls with proper use of Holy/Thin Air/Presence of Mind. Throw Assize, Aero 3 and Cleric/Swiftcast on there and it's just overkill.

So yeah, I'm a WHM main, but I don't think we need much else. We have strong heals and reliable dps, asking for more is igniting a potential salt explosion from ASTs that seems like something I want to avoid.

Would I enjoy it if it happened though? No comment.

[Ghishlain]

I don't feel that WHM needs additional DPS buttons / buffs to make themselves seem more desirable versus their healer counterparts. I'm of opinion that any "selfish DPS" class should have higher personal DPS but lower raid DPS because coordinating buffs to stack in specific manners during a fight take some time and trust. If a "selfish DPS" could match the total DPS contribution of a more utility DPS, then the question has to be asked why bother bringing the utility DPS when a selfish DPS can do the same damage at less co-ordination. I feel its fair for higher DPS gains playing a DPS job that requires both good coordination and high skill versus a DPS that can hit high numbers on the power of high skill alone.

[Driskus]

I personally think its fine as-is. Sure, you're not going to be top DPS on a single target unless the DPS are straight up awful, but for AoE, WHM is already insane enough. Aero III followed by PoM/Thin Air Holy spam, Assize, and another Swiftcast Holy is probably going to be top DPS in some cases.

[EaMett]

As someone who regularly keeps an eye on actual rdps vs dps I think things are fine. At the moment AST brings just slightly more rdps than WHM dps. If you play your cards perfectly we're talking 200-300 more rdps in a party of 99 percentiles. Your average party will most likely never leverage the cards as well and my experience is that WHM and AST roughly provide the same rdps in those instances.
It's kind of the same old: meta comps are often only worth it if you know how to leverage them which isn't the case of 90% of the user base.

That the AST -could- top the WHM rdps is normal given the added amount of complexity involved (DPSing + cards vs just dpsing) and the higher HPS provided by WHM. Both lag quite a bit behind SCH though, but sch has a bit of a harder dps rotation than both and iirc has the lowest sustained HPS output of the three healers so they make up for it in this fashion.

[EaMett]

The real problem with WHM is the same that everyone complained about before stormblood released. They don't scale properly with gear. The more gear you get the less likely you are to use cures and the associated skills (Lillies). Of course since then they've rendered Lillies totally useless so I would expect some change there. Next to that AST and SCH become more and more attractive as the gear cap increases. Once the next tier hits and people are comfortable and geared up WHM will fall back into oblivion.

[VanilleFang]

The real problem with WHM is the same that everyone complained about before stormblood released. They don't scale properly with gear. The more gear you get the less likely you are to use cures and the associated skills (Lillies). Of course since then they've rendered Lillies totally useless so I would expect some change there. Next to that AST and SCH become more and more attractive as the gear cap increases. Once the next tier hits and people are comfortable and geared up WHM will fall back into oblivion.

I don't feel this is true anymore. WHM has received a lot of really good tools with SB. Yes AST + SCH will still be the "meta" unless something changes, but WHM as it currently is will never be in the spot it was in HW.

[EaMett]

I don't feel this is true anymore. WHM has received a lot of really good tools with SB. Yes AST + SCH will still be the "meta" unless something changes, but WHM as it currently is will never be in the spot it was in HW.

A lot of good tools? You mean two good tools and a broken mechanic outside of progression.
They reduced our mana management which gives whm an edge on other healers during progression but is pointless beyond that point. Again as tiers progress, mana management doesn't necessarily get harder. The more gear AST and SCH get the less the gap between classes on this matter. The need for sustained high HPS also diminishes.

The other good tool is DB. Lets face it, it's awesome no denying it. Doesn't make or break the WHM, but it's a good tool to use for that little extra uptime. Again as people get more vit the actual -need- for a shield lowers. But WHM was never not meta at the end of HW because of it's lack of shields. At the very least one shield on cooldown is not going to factor in.

What about PI? Provides good HPS burst ontop of the existing toolkit but this is really pointless overall unless the future becomes solo healer meta. It's an extra cushion that has little use outside of progression. It's actually a bit of an insult to the class because it's hard enough not having your hots overheal as is, so what do they do? Add a skill that helps you top people up and that only works right after you place said hots. Blergh, at least it has good synergy with cure III.

I won't even mention Lilies.

We're coming full circle with the shortcomings that people highlighted during the stormblood craze. The only difference with back then is that people didn't realize how strong WHM would be during the progression phases. When that withers out it'll be back to square one.

Back on the topic of healer dps. SCH has significantly better personal dps compared to WHM in savage raid settings. I think neo exdeath has been the only exception since the 4.0 launch.
The way it works is that WHM has better dummy damage but has a much harder time keeping boss uptime which makes them fall behind. On average we're talking 250-ish extra personal dps for SCH. Add to that the fact that chain stratagem is anywhere from 300 extra raid dps to 500+ and SCH dps towers over WHM.

The raid DPS for each healer goes something like this : WHM < AST (+200ish over WHM) < SCH (+300ish above AST) . Very loose numbers based on 99% parses over multiple fights. To give you an idea of how loose it is, on average this tier in savage I think SCH does about 700 more rdps than WHM and AST around 400 more though that' harder to tell because of the RNG based model (but I've been downplaying numbers for consistency across other %iles).

PS: Because I know this will come up I'm just clarifying. The reason why I look at savage content only is twofold. First off all, the other content is a mess, a great chunk of the parses are from people who don't know the fights well or don't know how to leverage their classes. This is easily noticeable by how relatively easy it is to get orange parses even in ex trials compared to savage. And don't get me started on normal mode raids where you can hit orange even if you die, and where 99%iles are all cheesed because hardly any healing is required.
The other reason is that there is value in comparing top tier players instead of the masses. People with very optimized gameplay will highlight the real discrepancy between classes much better than anyone else. Even though most of us experience a mix of player levels on a daily basis and might not find that those numbers reflect our personal experience, they still are the most accurate source of information we have on class differences.

[VanilleFang]

A lot of good tools? You mean two good tools

Yes, Lilies are trash. But that aside...

Maybe tools was the wrong word. Maybe I should have just said WHM was buffed very well?

Lucid Dreaming is better than Shroud of Saints, Bene has a reduced CD, and Assize has a reduced CD. PI is kind of better than you are giving it credit for. It's not the best ability but it's still more raw healing for free, meaning more free time and MP for other things. I use it all the time after Medica IIs.

I also think you are down playing how good Thin Air and Divine Benison are.

I'm looking at it like this: savage is not the only thing that needs to be balanced. WHM is ridiculously good in pretty much anything with PUGs, so if we were to buff WHM just to be stronger in savage than we will also buff WHM in everything else. It would break the job. WHM is already considered (by a slight margin) by many, the best healer outside savage(general consensus I have gathered). Why should we buff it for savage? Right now WHMs are having no issue getting into savage, so what exactly is the issue?

I've said this already but I'll say it again: WHM as it is now will never be in the same spot it was in HW.

If we do eventually see "no whm" PUGs as a norm than I'll come back and admit that I was. Can't see it happening though.