QoL changes for WHM - Not another rework thread.

[Gemina]

Once again at high end raiding a WHM will use Cure1/2 very very sparecly.. like.. at most 2-3 times a fight. That is what annoyed people the most. They had a job gauge that was RNG AND tied to a spell that is hardly uses. However Medica 2 and Regen are both up almost constantly.

And no WHM abilities rely on the lillies. The lilies are just a added bonus to reduce the CD slightly of these abilities. Being able to force a proc of a Lily from Cure1/2 is basically a waste of a GCD and the proc in it's current form.

What does high end raiding have to do with it? An experienced WHM is going to rely on ogcds and regens to do the bulk of their healing in any content. That's how you optimize it, and high end raiding is not required to play your job optimally. When SotL was first released, only Cure 2 gave a 100% proc rate. Cure 1 was still RNG. Again though, your suggestion only returns the lily mechanic to RNG. I know where you're getting at, and want to take away having to use up a gcd to get a lily. But why not just have a regen cast proc a lily initially, while the ticks themselves are RNG for additional lilies?

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't Divine Benison require at least one lily to use? That's what my tooltip says. Otherwise it indeed just remains a passive ability you pay no mind to.

[Risvertasashi]

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't Divine Benison require at least one lily to use? That's what my tooltip says. Otherwise it indeed just remains a passive ability you pay no mind to.

No longer. Benison is now lily-less, and it's a pretty decent part of WHM's kit.

[bidaum92]

Asylum? It's weaker than Whispering Dawn and Collective Unconscious. Medica 2? Ok, it's 6 potency stronger than Diurnal AH... but I really doubt 6 potency is a breakpoint.

Collective unconscious lasts 15 seconds vs Asylum lasting 24 seconds. The AST also has to stop all actions for a GCD to ensure it gets applied.

Whispering Dawn lasts for 21 seconds and whilst it's 120 potency. Fairie potencies are calculated different to player potencies so it actually has a lower potency than asylum. However it is up 30 second sooner... But it's a SCHs only hot.

And thats not even including assize + plenary

[Sylvain]

Wait, someone not requesting lilies to proc from dps skills?

I guess life is full of surpises

[bidaum92]

Well it could also proc from Aero/Aero2 but sounds kinda janky to have that to me.

[Lynesse]

I'm leveling an AST and comparing it to WHM as I do so.

AST allows for cleaner positioning with Gravity being ranged. Earthly Star is efficient. Lightspeed makes Gravity spam feel more MP-efficient.

In general, I have less work to do in large pulls as AST, which means I make fewer mistakes and can react more quickly to the mistakes of my team.

Everything is compartmentalized better on AST. Cards. Heals. Combust + Malefic. Lightspeed + Gravity. If I need Celestial Opposition's stun, it's there and it's nearly instant.

It's easy to complete one task fully and move on to the next. That's what makes it feel so good to play.

WHM needs better compartmentalization. If a tank explodes during an Aero III cast, the WHM can be forced to interrupt his/her opener, which can make them fall behind in damage -- or healing if someone's made an error. It feels awkward and incomplete. AST never has to deal with this.

[Elamys]

I think there is a big misunderstanding of what a QoL change is. It's a change that doesn't directly impact your combat/crafting/gathering power. For example a requested change on gatherers is to turn on your Truth skill automatically upon switching just like with Triangulate/Prospect. A suggested QoL change for AST has been for Draw to have no CD pre-pull in trials so that the static doesn't have to stand around waiting for them to ready up that party Balance forever. The suggested changes aren't QoL (though that doesn't render them unworthy of discussion).

While not a QoL change, I just want to see Lillies both generate from damaging abilities and effect damage CDs in some way. While the benefit of a CD reduction for healing abilities in this game is generally meh, it's a little more useful for DPS abilities. My ideal implementation for WHM is to have WHM get some oGCD damaging ability on a longish CD next expansion that benefits from Lillies.

Not really sure where these myths keep coming from. Cure III is nice, but only better than other options where it needs to be spammed. Cure II is weaker than Benefic II, and so on. And this isn't new.

I think this "myth" comes about because it's the combination of all of WHM's abilities and how they work together that makes WHM such a powerhouse of a healer. Only WHM has the ability to put out such huge numbers, so fast, at such little cost in comparison to SCH/AST. If you take all the abilities out and parcel them out by potency, sure, it might seem like WHM is a garbage healer, but in practice that's not the case. There's a reason WHM has always been favored as a prog healer.

Wait, someone not requesting lilies to proc from dps skills?

I guess life is full of surpises

There's a very good reason people request that a lot It makes the most sense and gives WHM more identity.

[KisaiTenshi]

I see 3 "rework for WHM" threads on this forum already.

So you added a 4th.

Now.. honestly in my personal opinion WHM is in a pretty good spot. It's fun, it's got huge healing potential, high personal DPS. It's also great for Prog thanks to divine benison, benediction, and super high Mana Regen potential. However there are two glaring QoL issues that people always bring up.

1. Lilies 2. Enimity.

Now ...instead of a complete rework of WHM to fix this. I'm suggesting some simple changes. Starting with lilies..

Nope, stop there. It's not a limit break button.

Lilies;

The main issue with lilies is that they only proc on Cure1/2. Which any Savage/Ultimate raider knows.. these two spells are used very very sparcely.

So you're basically advocating to not use all the tools in the box, despite that being the same argument used to tell healers to DPS.

If you don't always have three lilies, you're doing something wrong unless the content requires no healing at all. Like running ARR dungeons unsynced.

So on the high end scene the entire Lily mechanic is pretty much forgotten.

However.. we all know WHM is the HoT King. So.. instead of making lilies proc off cure casts. Lets change them to be based of regens similar to BLMs thundercloud proc.

So for Secret of the Lily:
every Regen HoT tick you have a 10% chance for a Lily to bloom. And for every Medica 2 HoT tick you have a 3% chance for a Lily to bloom.

And then for Secret of the Lily 2:
Every Regen crit has a 10% chance of reducing the recast time of Aslyum/Assize by 5 seconds.

No. Regen should not have any interaction with the Lily Mechanic. The lilies should only be generated from casts that recover HP, which is what they do now. Secret of the Lily 2 should reduce the ticking oGCD time, which is what it does now. Where a more desirable change is to lose the RNG itself. RNG does not allow for strategic use, and thus RNG procs are always that. I've actually had Secret of the Lily II work as intended on multiple occasions, and really, it goes unnoticed. If it always took 5 seconds off on a any cast that recovered HP (eg cure/cure ii/medica/medica ii/cure iii) it would be more useful, but it's more likely it would get reduced to removing 2.5 seconds if it did... which to be honest would still be more useful than RNG on top of RNG.

I'd appreicate it if Yoshi-P didn't do anything more to encourage destructive "healers must dps" raider meta. Which is the secondary reason why not to ask for changes to DPS, especially not to tie it with the lily mechanic. The primary reason is that the game's balance must be maintained, and if Yoshi-P makes it so that you have to DPS to earn a proc, then the DPS will be reduced by the amount of that proc. Thus healers end up doing even less DPS across the board.

I advocate in favor of healers staying healers, because some portion of the player base insist on raid-meta or zerg behavior that relegates the healer role to being unimportant, and to not play it as it was designed. There is another portion of the player base who signed up to be healers first, and should not have their role be turned into just-another-DPS. Players who insist that the healers DPS, are simply asking for a DPS role, and those asking for changes to healer DPS don't get this.

[Rubiss]

The problem with that is you act like the other healers don't have equivalents. Perhaps better ones. Asylum? It's weaker than Whispering Dawn and Collective Unconscious. Medica 2?

Have you ever played SCH before? Asylum is stronger than Whispering Dawn. THe only flexibility Whispering Dawn has is that it is an AoE instead of a field spell and that it doesn't cost a GCD or oGCD to cast. Asylum is stronger potency wise.

[Sebazy]

Bleeeeh, this is probably going to get buried and missed when a new page pops up, but here goes.

The lilies should only be generated from casts that recover HP

Might I ask why you are of this opinion? I think it's pretty hard to defend the WHM job gauge as is, it's pretty unique in that you could completely remove it and it's systems in it's entirety and it'd have somewhere between little and no impact on the job. Ironically, removing Benison's Lily requirement was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for it IMHO. I agree that it doesn't need a drastic rework as a 48 second Assize is a beastly thing when the game actually gives you the opportunity to aim for it.

If you don't always have three lilies, you're doing something wrong unless the content requires no healing at all. Like running ARR dungeons unsynced.

Either you're A) Grinding with a party in Eureka B) Taking far too long to kill things in mid/high tier HoH or C) doing something wrong.

I used to be able to align my CDs and oGCDs in a manner that reliably let me have 3 Lilies for most of my Assizes in the 4.0 Expert Roulette and I'd routinely have more Lilies than I could actually use in the early days of Eureka grinding. But everywhere else, it's very rare for me to get 3 lilies without wasting time fishing for them. And it's important to stress here that I certainly can't think of any current situation where it's actually worth throwing away my GCDs to get those lilies.

I'd appreicate it if Yoshi-P didn't do anything more to encourage destructive "healers must dps" raider meta.

Whilst I agree with this in some regards (Lilies from Stone/Holy is just a balance nightmare and as you say, I don't think Yoshida is going to offer up any more reward for throwing rocks than the damage we deal), I do think a middle ground needs to be found here and in my eyes our DoTs are the way to go. Adding a guaranteed Lily when Aero II runs it's full duration and/or a ~30% chance to gain a lily per target hit with Aero III are options that spring to mind for me. This isn't about encouraging a destructive DPS meta. Rather this has the double whammy of adding an extra incentive for potentially nervous or hesitant WHMs to give their dots a go whilst also giving more efficient WHMs a viable source of Lilys so that we can actually try to get some value out of this thing.

I advocate in favor of healers staying healers, because some portion of the player base insist on raid-meta or zerg behavior that relegates the healer role to being unimportant, and to not play it as it was designed.

I'm not really sure what you are getting at here? Top tier healers are held in very high acclaim within the raid community and I'm not really sure why you would feel otherwise. Your Zerg behaviour comment is also rather confusing and I can only guess we are working with very different definitions of the term here? A zerg style raid in EQ or WoW generally situations where you just needed to be able to raise bodies and throw them at the boss faster than it could chew through them. This is workable in Eureka and 24 mans, but it rarely works in relevant EX/Savage content (A4S and Alte Roite are two examples where it has).

There is another portion of the player base who signed up to be healers first, and should not have their role be turned into just-another-DPS. Players who insist that the healers DPS, are simply asking for a DPS role, and those asking for changes to healer DPS don't get this.

Before you write me off as just another raider, I completely feel you here, I've got 20 years of healing under my belt in mmos and I love nothing more than actually being pressured and having to heal (And this is demonstrated by my HPS world rankings whilst I raided with a more casual team).

The problem is that SE have designed themselves into a corner on this front and as such, it's actually very difficult for them to put mainstream content in that pressures a healer. Healing requirements outside of Savage, Ultimate and even a good portion of EX encounters are braindead low and given how hugely powerful healers are relative to the average character's health pool and typical incoming damage, something needs to give to fix this.

Frankly, I don't think SE's class design team understands healing well enough to fix it, nor do they seem to have enough interest in the role to correct that. This isn't me being jaded, you only have to look back to the backwards step healers took on 4.0's release.