A(nother) Secret of the Lily Rework Thread

[Ghishlain]

TLDR: Convert Secret of the Lily traits to generate resources like heat or inner beast that builds with each GCD / HoT or DoT tick. A Lily is grown every hundred resources generated so WHMs performing their ABCs will gain the benefits of Lilies.

The Core Fault of the Lily System

The core fault of the Lily system is it promotes non-optimized play. The core tenants of optimized play are the following:

• Always be casting (caveat, unless you need MP for something upcoming)
• Use the most effective ability for your current GCD
• Minimize clipping both your GCDs and DoTs
• Do the mechanics successfully while minimizing movement

Unfortunately, Lily generation is a proc off Cure or Cure II. These spells are generally bad choices because of the following:

• Low potency/mp efficiency compared to Regen (also, Regen allows the WHM to use oGCDs without clipping)
• Requires a GCD cast while abilities like Benediction and Tetra are instant and MP-free
• The WHM is dealing with AoE damage and shouldn't be spot healing

Generally speaking, the times WHM should be using Cure or Cure II are times where an individual need a spot heal to survive an upcoming mechanic and no oGCDs are available. Given the myriad of tools at WHMs disposal, you can imagine these occurrences are few and far in between.

Additionally, because of the scripted nature of the battle content in the game, cooldowns being planned and used at specific instances of a fight means healers have optimal GCD uptime over the course of the fight. Spot healing via Cure and Cure II is not required when the cooldowns are managed and implemented to that level and the players are familiar enough with the fight that one generally doesn't need to save cooldowns and/or spot heal mistakes.

Proposal: Rework how Lilies are Generated
Instead of either having Lily generated from Cure or Cure II at a guaranteed chance or having it generated at a random RNG chance as has been previously implemented, Lily's should be a resource that's accumulated via GCD usage. This will be implemented through the following steps.

1. Cast GCD
2. A resource bar is charged (similar to Beast Meter / Heat)
3. When 100 resources is generated, the WHM grows a Lily and the bar resets (WHM can store up to 3 total)

This method of Lily generation means that by playing optimally, the WHM is gaining Lilies that can be used for the fight without needing to make non-optimal choices in their decision making. This also means that the bonuses the Lilies provide can be planned out for the fight and for the highly skilled players, take this foresight and planning to a whole skill ceiling that has opened up for WHM.

In general, here is how I would change the Secret of the Lily traits.

Secrets of the Lily
Adds 10 resources to your Lily Gauge upon the successful execution of a spell while in combat. When 100 resources is accumulated, a Lily is added (maximum 3 can be stored)
Lilies will lower the recast time for Asylum, Assize, Divine Benison, or Tetragrammaton by a percentage corresponding to the number of Lilies stacked at time of action execution (at which time the Lilies are removed).

1 Lily: 4%
2 Lilies: 10%
3 Lilies: 20%

Secrets of the Lily II
Upon the successful execution of a HoT tick, add 3 resources to your Lily gauge (this can only occur once per server tick to prevent massive gauge building via Medica II)
Upon the successful execution of a DoT tick, add 3 resources to your Lily gauge (also can only occur once per server tick to prevent massive gain via Aero III)


The first trait would allow a WHM to get a Lily in 25 seconds of dedicated chain casting. The second trait would allow a WHM to get a Lily approximately every 17 seconds of dedicated chain casting and maintain DoTs and HoTs.

The CDR component of the Lilies is frowned upon since the CDR gain is not worth the GCD loss to use Cure or Cure II. The change to Lily generation could make CDR more palatable since it would both be more readily available and thus be able to be planned around.

Alternatively, the bonuses to Lilies can be changed to a unique bonus based on the skill (IE Divine Benison gains a higher %-bonus, Aslyum can gain a potency bonus, etc. to help flesh out the WHM identity with the Lilies.)


Proposal: Increasing the Skill Ceiling

Adjust Secrets of the Lily or a future third tier of the trait could be have the following text:

"Lilies will lower the recast time for Asylum, Assize, Divine Benison, or Tetragrammaton by a percentage corresponding to the number of Lilies stacked at time of action execution (at which time only a single Lily are removed)."

The skill ceiling balance would be trying to maintain three lilies to maximize the Lily bonuses while still being able to keep up with healing responsibilities. An added incentive could be tying a passive stacking healing and damage buff of 2% per Lily to further encourage Lily maintenance. The one fault of this style of gameplay is encouraging high risk which is not conducive to responsible healing.

====

I guess that's about all I got to say on the matter. I personally feel this is an opportune time to rework Lilies given how healer balance has shifted with 4.3.

If S-E can package a potency increase for our DPS spells, that would be highly appreciated ^_______^

[Sebazy]

That's an elegant solution and more refined than my previous idea of granting a lily when regen/aero ran it's duration <3

This coupled with your idea of traits each ability when used with Lilys would be a solid fix IMHO.

Good stuff, here's hoping the community team passes it on.

[MoroMurasaki]

Well I feel silly for only seeing this after it was linked in general discussion, it's a really nice idea!

I particularly enjoy it's plausibility- SE clearly has a vision for WHM even if it isn't one that the playerbase tends to share. This is definitely less disruptive to that vision than a total overhaul of the class, retaining the core ideas they implimented with the lily system but allowing it to function in line with real WHM gameplay.

Overall just a whole lot of yes, yes please.

[NobleWinter]

I love this rework for Lilies but if it was implemented I think the potencies for the cool down reduction would need to be changed. Currently it only takes 3 GCD's to get 3 lillies and with your proposal it would take 30 GCD's by contrast if you don't count Regen Ticks. Even with Regen Ticks it is a much longer process. It's clear from the design of the skill that spot healing was the focus of the trait which is typically a sign of a terrible group being terrible. So the cool down reduction seems to have this intention of being used for wipe correction and not for speed run optimization which is what your Lily proposal lends itself to. A new healer who may actually stand still doing nothing waiting to heal would benefit more from the current Lily system. I do admire the fact that you encourage more active gameplay but I also like that White Mage is built currently to help the extreme novice to healing. I would think that the lilies should be generated by Cure 1 & 2 at Level 52 and then have the trait switch to a GCD fed meter with regen ticks included at 68 to better transition the super novice to a super elite.

[KisaiTenshi]

I guess that's about all I got to say on the matter. I personally feel this is an opportune time to rework Lilies given how healer balance has shifted with 4.3.

If S-E can package a potency increase for our DPS spells, that would be highly appreciated ^_______^

This proposal is just an over-designed "make it work off DPS" suggestion. As I've said in maybe a half dozen threads accross GD and here, the gauges are to point players the correct direction of doing their role/job. DPS is not a core part of the healer's job, hence none of their gauges deal with DPS. It's not a limit break button where resources are consumed. You may not like that it promotes, what in your point of view is inefficient play, but it is what the dev's view is the correct role of the healer. Therefor asking for anything related to DPS to be involved with the lilies is promoting the idea that the WHM is a green DPS, and that is simply dredging up the "lazy healer" nonsense again.

Now putting "correct way of healing" aside. This is what I would change in your idea:

1. Cast any healing GCD
2. A resource bar is charged (similar to Beast Meter / Heat)
3. When 100 resources is generated, the WHM grows a Lily and the bar resets (WHM can store up to 3 total)


Secrets of the Lily
Adds 10 resources to your Lily Gauge upon the successful execution of a healing GCD spell that recovers HP. When 100 resources is accumulated, a Lily is added (maximum 3 can be stored)
Lilies will lower the recast time for Asylum, Assize, Divine Benison, or Tetragrammaton by a percentage corresponding to the number of Lilies stacked at time of action execution (at which time the Lilies are removed).

1 Lily: 4%
2 Lilies: 10%
3 Lilies: 20%

It's important to keep the function of Lily I independent from Lily II.

Secrets of the Lily II
Any GCD heal that recovers at least 10% HP, removes 5 seconds from all currently ticking oGCD recast timers (including role actions like Largesse, Swiftcast and Lucid Dreaming) until there is 10 seconds remaining. Per player healed. So an efficiently executed Medica/Medica II/Cure III will shave 20 secs off a light party and 40 secs off a full party. Can not recast Asylum while Asylum is still up. (Admittedly this could probably break Swiftcast and POM if there is no floor recast to using either.)

Lily I & II will have no direct positive or negative effect on DPS skills. If you want to instead use Swiftcast and PoM on DPS skills, go right ahead, that's your loophole to exploit.

You need to leave all DPS skills out of the lilies themselves, or you will see the all DPS skills potency cut to balance it (even the your proposal in the first post would certainly result in cutting the DPS potency of Assize, and so would this one.)

Personally I'm expecting SE to nerf the potency of all DPS skills on all jobs in 5.0 relative to the new skills. So where Stone I (140)/ II(200) / III (210) / IV (250) gained 78%. That is far more significant amount of skill creep when the BLM's only gained 55%, and they have to combo to get that largest boom the fastest.

What I would like to see are "combo" skills that work with the co-healer. So instead of some absurd stacked HoT regen mechanics, they create a "shared double potency" version, so now instead of seeing two HoT stacks (and not knowing which one is yours), either healer that casts Medica II while there is still time left on the super-medica II HoT, renews the HoT for half the time, so that overlapping casts don't clip. eg Both healers cast Medica II (Or Diurnal Aspected Helios), result "Super Medica II", 30 secs. Each time Medica II is casted by either healer adds 15 seconds to it instead of a 30 second separate HoT's. WHM+AST(Noct) or WHM+SCH = "Medica Shield" where the Medica II cast recovers HP, and the Shield/Galvanize effect adds a shield, and once the players HP is full, the shield power doubles, and can be renewed by either the WHM or the SCH/AST. And for SCH+SCH or SCH+AST(Noct) you get "Super Galvanize" which doubles the strength, but is extended instead of overwritten by subsequent Aspected Helios/Succor casts. This solves the stacking/overwriting problem by allowing one healer to renew the the effect for 15s even if the other healer has has been taken out of commission. Initiating the "Super" version requires both healers to cast the HoT skill within one server tick of the other, otherwise behaves as normal.

A similar proposal could exist for DPS's that give party buffs, where a combination buff applies to the party as long as one of the DPS keeps renewing it.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Very nice ideas. I 100% agree on lilies needing to be gained through another source outside of CureI/II.
The way I see it, lilies are as useless as Plenary indulgence was back when it only generated from cure spells.

The main problem is, SE is stuck in this idea that WHM should be a pure healer, and designed lilies around that, but why should a pure healer only be limited to hardcasted heals? There should be rewards for healing in general, not only a very specific way. So far they're the only job who's job gauge means absolutely nothing to them, and that simply shouldn't be the case. It should be considered a failure by SE and should be reworked just like WAR or 4.0 SCH was. And this should happen BEFORE 5.0, because I don't want our main addition added in 5.0 being a functional lily system while everyone else gets new things.

[Miste]

I agree with this idea.

I think lillies should be gained by simply playing the job as a whole and not limited to only 2 spells like it is now.

[Myrhn]

I like a lot your way of gaining the lilies. I just think the usage of lilies is still underwhelming. Cooldown reduction is not enough and this way of gaining them that is a but slow will most likely end up using an ability that use a lily when we just have one.

[MoroMurasaki]

snip.

I committed to people off the forums that I would ignore your post but I just couldn't stick to it. This is awful. This would make WHM so horrendously overpowered even I would have to say something about it and I'm usually the one crying for WHM buffs.

Do you underatand what that massive CD reduction would do to the effective healing potency of WHM? It would take us from being the best by a small margin to being able to recover more HPS than a SCH and an AST combined over the course of a fight. It would be completely gamebreaking, like basically making your party immortal if your WHM didn't die.

Your complete and utter lack of understanding of how this game works and specifically how WHM works never ceases to astound me but this has to be the cherry on top of the of the sundae on top of the cake on top of the pizza on top of the brand new car - it is ridiculous.

Please for the love of WHM stop suggesting things until you understand how literally any of this works.

Your aversion to dps bothers me but not nearly as much as the rest of your proposal.

A bit of math so you understand how this works.

10% HP right now is around 4k for non-tanks. My Medica heals for about 8k. This means every Medica after a raidwide aoe will take 40 seconds off of all my timers. This is 1/3 of Thin Air and Lucid (WHM now has effectively limitless MP), about half of Largresse and Asylum which will mean a crazy amount of Largresse uptime (not that its needed, this WHM doesn't have to care about MP or GCD efficency), 2/3 of the time of Assize, Tetra and PI and SC and means DB is essentially always off of CD. PoM is the least of our worries at that point.

Also, the hate this WHM would generate (and I don't just mean irl from the AST and SCH communities, I mean threat from enemies) would be monumental. You are basically rewarding overhealing at this point (why not cast a Medica when everyone is only missing 5k health, the CD reduction is worth it!) and you will pull off of tanks this way without a doubt.

So no, your idea is literally the opposite of what WHM needs because WHM doesn't need to be able to solo heal Ultimate which is essentially what you're proposing.

Think before you type.

[Sebazy]

This proposal is just an over-designed "make it work off DPS" suggestion. As I've said in maybe a half dozen threads accross GD and here, the gauges are to point players the correct direction of doing their role/job. DPS is not a core part of the healer's job, hence none of their gauges deal with DPS.

Thematically you're correct, but the gameplay at hand simply doesn't pan out that way. Ghislain's solution has one source of lilies from actual DPS (Dots no less), the other is from any ability, it's certainly making it work off DPS, but it's not focused around that at all. Rather it works nicely off your overall work rate, something with should be encouraged anyhow.

At the end of the day, look at a WHM's raw cast numbers on a random EX primal log, you have to go almost to the bottom of the barrel before you find a WHM that's casting more healing than DPS abilities.

I'm not sure why you think that SE are so massively against healers getting any kind of a DPS bump, if this was the case, AST's malefic change would have been addressed by now. I also find it amusing that whilst you're practically terrified of suggesting any kind of DPS increase, yet are willing to put forward a cooldown reduction that's flat out broken. I don't think we're going to see a Lily change until 5.0 frankly, but I will be surprised if WHM doesn't get a potency bump for 4.4 TBH.