WHM toolkit suggestions and changes (PI and Lily)

[EaMett]

Hey guys,

Here's my stab at changes for WHM. Before going any further here are the assumptions I'm making (as per SE's communication and apparent direction for the class):

- WHM is a beginner healer. Needs to stay simple to play. Not much room to add new skills.
- WHM is a pure healer who's purpose is similar to that of RDM. Provide extra non-mandatory comfort in exchange for some drawbacks (No raid utility should be expected).

The issues that need solving (omitting PI/Lily):

- It is hard to properly leverage HoTs efficiently (pugs will very often overwrite them) removing a huge part of the toolkit. Made worse by PI's current iteration, the result of trying to patch up a broken mechanic.
- WHM rdps is lagging behind the others. Non-meta and somewhat unattractive.
- Lack of ogcd. Not really part of the class identity but the lack of weaving makes it a little clunky. WHM also takes more of a hit on mobility.

Suggested changes
tldr: provide more dps windows, an alternative healing option (no potency buff), and a new reflective damage mechanic.

Lily mechanic

The cooldown reduction should be removed completely. Instead lilies will be used to trigger a new skill and an old revamped one. Each of these skills will consume one lily.

- [spirit consumption (new skill) instant] : consumes all your HoTs on all party members. Giving them n% (50?) of the remaining ticks/potency in one go. This % can be adjusted if lily generation rates are changed.

- [fluid aura] : Lock this skill behind lilies, keep ogcd, and add the side effect that it will extend Aero dots by n seconds (15?). Potentially consider extending the range to make it a little more beginner friendly. I realize this point is a little contentious because we get the skill way before lilies. I just didn't want to add yet another skill. Just bear with me.

Plenary Indulgence and confession stacks

Change how this works. If WHMs want more upfront healing they can use [spirit consumption].
Instead keep how the stacks are generated and make it so the confession stacks don't shield or heal. But instead act as a "magical thorn" mechanic. Whatever damage is done to the party member with the confession stacks will be dealt back to the enemy as personal dps for the WHM or for the party member. (original damage still hits the party member)

1 stack : 1%
2 stack : 3%
3 stack : 5%

I'm not a theorycrafter so I don't really know what these values should be. But I trust more knowledgeable people can come up with good numbers. (Same on whether they get consumed upon taking damage or not)
The timer on the stacks might have to be readjusted as well. The idea here being that it might make more sense to have your WHM cover some healing because of the potential dps gain for both healers. (Plenary indulgence would be removed as a skill)

That's my first draft of suggestions. Anyone see some loopholes?
It should give WHM some extra dps, mobility, an actual use for lilies and some nice new mechanic to play with (without being overpowered)

[Sebazy]

My strongest view on this is that PI is misunderstood rather than being bad. It's a lot like Dissipation really, it's a little useful in casual content if you're min maxing, but it can really shine in end game raids and trials.

Rather than a complete rework, I think the stack duration could be tuned upwards a little (15-20 seconds would be a better balance imho) to make it a bit easier to use in a broader range of content, but that's all it needs.

I'd actually argue that your thorns mechanic would actually fall foul of the same issue whilst also being a balancing nightmare. It's likely to be useful in an even narrower band of encounters vs the current PI. In more casual content with minimal aoe it's just not going to amount to anything without ramping the percentages right up which in turn would blow it out of proportion in high end content when the aoes come rolling in.

Regarding the Lilies. The first thing that needs to be addressed before anything else is simply the rate at which we generate them in a non train wreck situation. On the new primal it's pretty standard for me to generate maybe 5 or 6 lilies across the entire ~9 minute encounter. That's just not acceptable.

Spirit consumption sounds good and I 100% agree that Fluid Aura should be addressed as it's almost entirely useless now (It's a potential emergency button for Eureka when solo, but even that's clutching at straws frankly) in PvE whilst the PvP spin off means there's no justifiable reason to keep it as it is. Putting it back as a DPS ability would be a good nudge towards getting WHM back on track and looking competitive again.

I think the Lily gauge has more potential, I'll throw an idea up tomorrow when it's not so late <3

[Risvertasashi]

- WHM is a pure healer who's purpose is similar to that of RDM. Provide extra non-mandatory comfort in exchange for some drawbacks (No raid utility should be expected).

Just wanted to comment on this in particular because I feel this is flawed.

WHM is more like the SAM of healers, not the RDM. Except needed healing for an encounter is capped, while useful DPS in an encounter is uncapped. And, the other healers don't really lose out on healing in exchange for their high utility, like RDM loses out on DPS.

To the rest of your post: WHM really doesn't need more healing. It's already far into overkill territory.

Maybe a significant buff to personal DPS since it has no raid utility. Could also use some help with enmity (which buffs to healing would only make worse...)

[Exiled_Tonberry]

It was already mentioned, but first and foremost, before anything, we need a better way to generate lilies. No other job's guage is counterproductive to the way the job should play, and no matter how much SE wants to push it, a pure healer will simply never be a thing in this game so long as content is designed for all healers to heal it equally. So first they need to move away from this idea of your guage being effected by Cure/II. Change it to regens or even Stones as using elemental attacks is still part of a WHM.

As for what they can do, personally I think Plenary Indulgence is fine. It's duration is way too short though, 15 seconds just like Divine Bension would make more sense. I also think it should reduce enmity while stacks are up, to solve WHMs enmity issues.

As for lilies. Well, I had this idea in my head that two separate types of lilies could be generated. One from healing spells and another set from DPS spells.

The healing lilies could perhaps effect healing potency of your Ogcds which would really fufill that "big healer" identity, while the lilies gained from DPS strengthens your dps spells.
The idea would be to powerup your heals with healing lilies and power up your DPS with DPS lilies (perhaps they could give us a ogcd DPS ability at this point). Using Assize would be the only thing that costs lilies and it would both benefit from healing and DPS lilies. Lilies would no longer reduce CDs and instead we would rely on the trait, secret of the lilies II (which is hopefully more useful at this point >.>) for CD reduction.

It's nothing solid and pretty basic use for the Lily system, but the main draw away is that lilies both need to be generated easier and be more useful than CD reduction.

[EaMett]

To the rest of your post: WHM really doesn't need more healing. It's already far into overkill territory.

I don't at any time suggest more healing. Actually quite the opposite since my healing suggestions:
- incur a potency loss to hots if consumed
- remove PI altogether

All in exchange for more dps and dps uptime. Maybe go over it again?

And you can't say WHM is like SAM and then start your next sentence with "except" lol. WHM is like RDM you trade training wheels (padded healing for WHM, raises for RDM) in exchange for DPS in both cases (rdps)

[EaMett]

In regards to comments about PI being ok. I feel like they're missing the point. WHM's identity is centered around two important abilities. First one is Cure III, second one is HoTs.

HoTs already have a very limiting factor in that unlike shields they are rarely effective healing outside of a very controlled healing environment. WHM has ALWAYS had an issue with HoTs not being able to express themselves and being crushed by other healers (or mehanics that require topoffs). When you medica II for example, it's only worth it if you let your hots tick and this again only happens in very controlled environments.

PI goes absolutely against this as it helps you crush your own hots in many cases. It was never intended to do this in the first place and was patched that way because WHM abilities were a trainwreck. The only reason PI is "ok" currently is specifically because the hots are kinda pointless and that's an issue (or the occasional situation the timer isn't too short but these can be replaced with [spirit consumption]). I'm not saying the skill isn't currently useful, I'm saying it's counter productive for the intended class gameplay. It goes against the class identity.

Also, saying it's intended as a tool for maxing heals in an optimization setting is underwhelming at best for a lvl 70 ability and should definitely not lock us out from an altogether different mechanic with it' own set of opportunities for optimization.

And to close this off. You can't complain about Lily generation rates in a vacuum. You must take into account the trade off from the lily skills. If your 5 lilies allow you to cheese 5 mechanics in the fight, that's going to be about 1/4th of the mechanics in a 9mn fight (at a rate of one every 30 seconds). It's huge.

The current generation rate is absolutely fine considering we have no use for the lilies (ironically). It'll only need readjusting once the lilies actually have a use.

I'd actually argue that your thorns mechanic would actually fall foul of the same issue whilst also being a balancing nightmare. It's likely to be useful in an even narrower band of encounters vs the current PI. In more casual content with minimal aoe it's just not going to amount to anything without ramping the percentages right up which in turn would blow it out of proportion in high end content when the aoes come rolling in.

This is a good remark but also assumes changes to how stacks are generated and how long they last wouldn't be made. The ability to stack on the tank could solve this. The numbers I posted aren't absolute and would need adjusting. The damage taken depending on encounters does vary from 3k for your dungeons to ~7kish for your average savage (15kish for outlyers like god kefka where you're capped by enmity anyways). This gives ample opportunity to make it more useful than PI, even if it won't scale evenly doesn't mean it should be discredited as it is ok for your class to be stronger in some encounters than others, we see this all the time with mobility.

I'll look forward to your take on the gauge though.

[Sebazy]

In regards to comments about PI being ok. I feel like they're missing the point. WHM's identity is centered around two important abilities. First one is Cure III, second one is HoTs.

I guess I should clarify here. I pretty much see PI as a 'front load a bit more potency on my Medica II' in most fights (God Kefka is a special snowflake) with the idea being to save me a second GCD cast somewhere soon. The first few minutes of the new primal are a great example of this. With a barrier beforehand, Asylum+DS+Medica II+PI on the first Spear is enough to get through the spear>gun>reprimand sequence with little to no additional GCD healing from either healer. A SCH can throw in WD, an AST can bubble it for their regen.

The same also works on the final add in phase 2. I drop Asylum down as the stun wears, throw one stone then DS+Medica II and start throwing stones again, Medica II should hit after the first aoe, then hit PI and Assize for the second. Assuming the other healer does 1 aoe barrier, that's all that's needed to get through that regardless of if the group takes 2 or 3 aoes from him.

I use PI in a similar manner throughout various dungeons and such, and whilst it might not be absolutely required to scrape people through a sequence if AoEs in a dungeon. I use it more to make things feel more comfortable for the rest of the group without impacting my Stone throwing like I would throwing an extra Medica.

To expand on my Thorn comments. This method of doing damage was rather popular in Everquest and even with small fixed values rather than percentages, it was still a very important tactic in killing high HP bosses. Simply put, I don't think it's a good enough alternative to be worth the inevitable QA and testing nightmare that it'll raise. SE's testing team is either awful or non existent when it comes to healer stuff and this is only going to end up either being utterly abusable or worthless. Case in point, if we just stick with the 5% for 3 stacks mark, lets say a boss has an aoe mechanic you can fail to eat a 999999 hit, is it failed on an individual level? Can you get LB3 for it? If both of those are a yes, it's very likely you can get a 350k burst out of that 5% shield right there by just suiciding and LB3ing. This would also impact gimmicks such as the last phase of Ultimate Coil. It's just not a good move.

I'm 100% behind tearing up Lilies but PI shouldn't be reworked imho. The fact that Exiled and myself are on near enough the exact same page about this speaks volumes

[Remedi]

I like the idea of using lilies to consume all the Hots on a target to instantly heal it for a set amount, kinda reminds me of a skill from wow.
It would make also lilies more involved that they ever were since the cd reduction was meh at best

[number473]

(Since it's probably more relevant here I will just add what I wrote in a recent thread)

When it comes to lilies I think they need to be completely deleted. WHM doesn't need a mechanic like this and as it is implemented at the moment they are completely irrelevant to how you play the class. The don't offer gameplay choices and they don't really do much beneficial. Compare this to aetherflow which is a resource which you have to manage and which gives you many choices as far as what you want to use it on.
So, we have the idea that WHM is the "beginner" or "simple" healer. White mage has already done quite a lot to differentiate itself from the other classes in terms of its toolkit in the expansions: whereas scholar has its toolkit of aetherflow abilities, white mage has its selection of cooldowns which it can use along with its efficient regens to heal powerfully and effectively. Once a player has played to level 50 on white mage they are as prepared with the basics of healing as they are going to be, whether they stick with the class or switch to AST or SCH. I personally like the simplicity that is part of the job's design, but I don't think it needs to be a 3 button class even after 2 expansions.

Addressing plenary indulgence: there are a number of things wrong with this skill. At least it's not as completely worthless as the version that was originally revealed, but there are still a number of problems.
- It's really complicated and has a really long tooltip.
- It is usually complete overkill, except in the hardest fights in the game. In easier content like expert dungeons, it doesn't save needing to use a GCD aoe heal and so might as well not exist. Even in much raid content, a lot of healing is covered by your co-healer's oGCD aoe heal (indom/earthly star) so it is only effective when there is high damage repeatedly over a short period of time.
- Even though it is an oGCD skill, it still costs one or more GCDs to use. In other words it doesn't save you a cast. This is the same problem that lilies have, although at least the payoff is slightly better here.

So here are some potential replacements for it that I consider reasonable:
- Replace it with a 300 potency aoe ability with a 1 minute cooldown, no conditions attached. (Yes, I would be happy to have my level 70 capstone skill replaced by a skill that is just 1/3 of a skill that I already have)
- It becomes a trait that replaces medica/medica II/cure III with enhanced versions that have 150-300 more healing potency. Once used it goes on cooldown for 30-60 seconds, during which you cast the regular version. Cooldown can be shown on the job gauge. (Here we simplify an extra button into just making your existing skills more powerful)
- It becomes a skill that converts all remaining healing ticks into instant heals. (not sure how much I like this one)

[Ceasaria]

I think the stack duration could be tuned upwards a little (15-20 seconds would be a better balance imho) to make it a bit easier to use in a broader range of content, but that's all it needs.

I agree.

For me, PI should be the mecanic of the WHM and SE should add new effect on other skills based on PI (at the very least a dps one, if we don't want to use PI for heal).
Then, as we see now, Lilies can be skipped and it change nothing. So remove them, and put PI instead on the job gauge.

I will try to think about changes for PI later, but for now, for his dps, I am thinking of this :
- Stone IV : potency increased (250 --> 280)
- Aero II : potency increased at impact (50 --> 100 ; 50 from dot unchanged)
- Fluid Aura : additionnal effect : reduce enmity.