Thread: WHM wishlist for 5.0

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I want to see more Conjury. A lot more. It's fine if the new effects of that span only 1-50, but WHM feels short of ground-work for anything more interesting than an identity of "most straightforward (barebone), obvious healer caricature". From there, White magic can start shaping towards more. Introduce Soulfont, a way to coalesce elemental magics into White magic, at level 50, and steadily make more off of that over level 52-60, ending in Soulfont phase now compounding towards some extreme strength hits. From 62-80, extra as much utility as from that as possible without stepping into any territory of raidwide %stat or %effect buffs.

That.

And I'd like to add some Aether-themed action. And about lillies, for me the soluion for them is:

Scrap lillies. Seriously. Just delete healing bar, SoTL and SoTL II. It won't make any difference for us.

But if S-E likes to add another thing for WHM, then add a Elemental Aether Gauge. It can measure how much aether you've drawn from the elementals. It fills everytime you use a GCD (Cure, Medica, Regen, Stone, Aero, etc). It'll be more straightforward than RDM's, since it'll be just one bar. It'll enhance the oGCDs, adding an bonus damage/heal while you have the buff added when you choose to release the mana using an action learned at level 73 (maybe Elemental Release?).

WHM has been my main for most of FFXIV, and still is. I've seen a lot of great suggestions over the various expansions on how the class could be made better; some really great ones in this thread. Tying the class more closely with it's main-line heritage while enhancing it's current quirks would be a great way to reinvigorate the class.

Here's my wishlist:

Add Wall
WHM should always have protect in one form or another. Protect was almost removed from the game entirely with Stormblood because you can just rebalance content around it not being there. Yoshi-P insisted that it stay however since it's such a core spell of Final Fantasy. I agree. In the same vein, Shell should also be in the game. The classic White Magic "Wall" spell delivers both Shell and Protect in FF. Let WHM reclaim protect, add shell, and give it a drastically shorter duration and increased benefits. Make it a spell you insta-cast at the start of each pull or during battle, just like a real FF game. But keep it group based! An individual cast version, like in pvp, doesn't appeal to me. Oh, and of course, give it a new animation.

Add Berserk
Looking for a way to buff the DPS? You got it. Many may forget that Berserk is traditionally White Magic. Now, I'm not suggesting it lock DPS out of their skills like actual berserk, but I'd propose that casting it doubles Auto-Attack speed and increases Auto-Attack damage by %50. Or something. I'm not a numbers person, whatever amount makes it worthwhile. That can be a huge increase in DPS for one player. Then put it on a cooldown that's also balanced. Maybe once every two pulls? Cheers. (Also rename the WAR lvl 6 skill)

Water Damage Spell... Deluge?
Please. PLEASE. I know I'm going to get a Stone upgrade already, it's fine, I accept that! But god damn it please break up the monotony of Wind and Stone. Give me flashy water effects to drown my enemies with! And better yet, add some synergy between it and Aero. Let this skill add a "Drenched" DoT leading to...

Typhoon
A trait that upgrades the damage on your Aero II cast if the target is suffering from a "Drenched" status effect, turning Aero II/III into Typhoon. This releases the rest of the DoT ticks from drenched as well as all the DoT damage of an Aero II/III all at once in a flurry of wind and water.

You could throw out Deluge on multiple targets for prep and activate Typhoon on them all at once with an Aero III cast, or you can focus one target and do Deluge > Aero II over and over, replacing stone maybe as our bread and butter?

New Stone
After forever and a day of turret casting stone, our new stone ability is the clipping DPS skill we've been looking for. Typhoon becomes our new bread and butter.

Trait: SOtL III
Time to rework Lillies. Instead of lilies being a gauge that you build up, use, build up, use, etc. Lets keep it passive... hear me out. Each Lilly gives WHM a passive AoE Regen (think Lucio). Stand near me and you get a VERY low, auto applied, passive regen. Not enough to negate consistent damage, but say a DPS goofed and took a hit, then didn't get hit for the next 30 seconds? Should be great for that. SOtL 1 & 2 are reworked into "You can have 1 Lilly, you can build 2 lilies, etc". Passive regen potency increases with each lily.

Basically you're such a badass as a lvl 80 White Mage that you're able to charge the Aether in the air around you into a persistent state of healing energy.

As for how you generate lilies? Mh... Crit regen ticks? Perhaps synergize it with "Wall" where when party members take x amount of damage it generates a lily, similar to Brotherhood for MNK but with taking damage instead of giving it.

Deluge and Typhoon would be called Flood/Tornado most likely. As for Wall, WHM already has Divine Benison, which is basically Wall, in that it offers a shield. Also, I think PLD's LB is considered to be the FFXIV equivalent of "Wall", but with a re-imagined name, similar to how DRG's Life Surge is basically Lancet, and Dark Passenger is FF4's Dark Wave.

Let's not beat around the bush... all 3 healers need the same thing... more damage input to the party...

I main AST but I suspect healer 4 is going to cause ASTs healing kit a lot of changes so not bothering thinking about it.

In the end, Healers and DRK are both sitting in the pointless to talk about until May's combat update. Healers and Tanks are both more hinging on encounter design than job design at this point anyways. Lilies getting changes is pretty much expected, something big happening to cross role system is expected (possibly removed even), a lot of skill pruning/merging expected, hopefully healer 4 gets a new healing niche (EQ2 Cleric Shaman Heal on being Hit /pray) and probably fighting with AST for raid buffing.

More Water based skills is great, but can we just stop trying to ask to be better DPS and ask to HAVE to be better healers already.