WHM toolkit suggestions and changes (PI and Lily)

[EaMett]

Well assuming you could keep an average of 2 stacks on everyone for the entirety of a fight (which is highly unlikely) and NO shielding was used. You're looking at at a boost of about (average runs, it's lower for speed runs):

170 dps on o5s
280 dps on o6s
225 dps on o7s
300 dps on kefka
480 dps on god kefka
~200 on ex primals.

Given that reaching these numbers is highly unlikely the thorn mechanic will not be OP. If anything I think the % values I gave are on the lower end considering WHM is currently lagging about 300rdps behind the other healers iirc. You would at the very least want to boost WHM pdps by that much.
Also yes, results will vary depending on encounters but this is a great way of keeping separation between healers without forcing them into tank/raid healing roles which SE will not do. The situational aspect isn't that big because we're only talking about a single skill here and one that is somewhat situational to start with (PI).

Food for thought: That some mechanics may be worth cheesing with this is also a great factor. Take the dadaluma bleed for example. If you use 3 gcds (probably 2 more than currently) before it hits and you get everyone to stack for them with 3 confessions. You could up your dps.

With the current setup I gave you're looking at getting about 50k damage off of bleeds alone, and another 17kish damage from other incoming damage over that 60s or so period. This is roughly the equivalent of using about 10-13 stone IVs or 9-11 holy casts in that section, If you can heal the incoming damage with fewer than 7-8GCDs it's going to be a dps gain of however many GCDs you saved.

Another idea: the guardian laser hits for about 35k when shielded (I'm throwing this out without checking but it should be a ballpark figure). 3 stacks at 5% would mean trading probably 1-2 healing gcds (keep swiftcast in mind) for the equivalent of about 2-3 gcds of stone IV

Judging from all the above, the 1, 3, 5% for each stack is probably too low. At those rates even cheesing gives you lackluster dps gain but it goes to show that this wouldn't go wrong as much as some people think.

As an FYI the current confession stack uptime is at it's most about 55% on demanding fights like god kefka. Stacks mostly only once so as is that would be an 88dps increase for whm (if no shields are applied ever). And that's almost double the uptime you would expect in other fights and double the incoming dps. Of course this is considering non optimized play for the thorn mechanic, but if anything, my own thorn suggestion is underwhelming at those percentages of reflective damage.
Should probably be upped to something along the lines of 3,5,7 because otherwise it leads to having to math a lot out to figure out if it's worth it. Should be more straightforward and because we have a 300dps goal over entire fights we have a lot of leeway.

As for the Occam's razor approach. That's basically all we got with stormblood already. Would be nice to actually get some gameplay options rather than the same thing we've had over the last 3 years

It's because you're suggesting turning HoTs into a burst heal. It might be a tomato/tomato kind of thing but to a lot of people that sounds like more healing.

It's an optional, lily locked, burst heal with a potency hit and in an environment where PI no longer exists (would most likely be backloaded instead of frontloaded like PI as well). It's hardly a tomato/tomato thing.