Coming to understand WHM in endgame

[Filmakus]

As the name of the topic implies I am in need of help with my WHM. Currently I have just hit 57 with my white mage and I will say right off the bat it has been a helluva good time playing as a white mage. Never did a healer in any game before, decided to give it a spin and never looked back, most fun I have had on the game in a while.

Now that being said I will digress into my issue which is trying to understand what I have been reading in different forums regarding the end game WHM rotations. From what I have been able to gather it seems like WHM are no longer needed for heals and rather dps. Read roughly 5 different forum posts from reddit and other sites and all basically summed up my experience soon to be, put up HoTs, and spam cast Holy till everything is dead while throwing out the occasional assize or asylum...is that true?

I read in the posts that I should never touch cure I or II, ignore the lily counters or go as far as removing off my screen and I will be honest as I read that and more I have become suddenly discouraged about reaching end game with my white mage. Several responses in the different forums made it sound like WHM heals are almost never needed and we are secondary healers whom is kept around for dps purposes only.

I will admit almost all posts I found dated back to august of 2018 being the oldest but they were the most recent I could find. With current content brought in recently between 4.0 and 4.5, has the environment improved for WHM or is it as bad as everyone has made it out to be?

[Ghishlain]

In short, those comments you read aren't wrong but to say "never" use Cure and Cure II may be a slight exaggeration.

In general as a healer your priorities are to maintain party health, then throw out DPS spells as GCD fillers when your healing isn't required. However, the healing power in this game is absurdly high, allowing for minimal healing requirements and significant DPS GCD usage. Things haven't changed much since August of 2018 and will continue to look so in the foreseeable future, and may even become worse if more oGCD heals are introduced to the healer kits in the upcoming expansion.

The Lily comment specificly to WHM isn't a lie either - unfortunately due to the structured nature of boss fights it's very very easy to plan out all the WHM healing in a singular fight and thus negating the need to generate Lilies and/or making effective use of the cast time reduction bonus the Lilies provide.

For structured and static Savage / Ultimate parties, you can pretty much predict exactly when and how damage will occur, taking a lot of the random factors out and thus you'll be DPSing more than healing. You'll find less structured and more chaotic healing if you participate in 24-man content, or if you enter Savage content as a PuG, you'll probably make more use of your healing abilities and spells like Cure and Cure II, thus feeling more like a healer.

It's an unfortunate circumstance of the current healing meta due to the FFXIV game design.

[manamoppet]

Some of those tips are greatly exaggerated. First of all, us healers heal first, dps is secondary. A WHM can solo heal 8 man parties if needed, and are not secondary healers.

"Those who would walk the path of the white mage are healers without peer, possessed of the power to deliver comrades from the direst of afflictions—even the icy grip of death itself." - Jobguide

Cure II is used late game, as sometimes the tank will be hit like a truck, and other times like being hit with a rolling train-wreck. Sometimes one can use CureII+Tetragrammaton to bring the tank from 20-30% to 80-90% when Benediction is on cooldown. Healing/damage varies in the dungeons, and is something one learns to account for, and sometimes different strategies for healing that one are unfamiliar might occur, and require a bit of improvisation. Since WHM don't have proper shield magic before lvl. 66, HoTs and Asylum make healing less stressfull, especially combined with Largesse. After applying HoT you can put up an Aero I+II now and then - it's not required, but lower the time having to heal. The lilies sadly aren't really something that need a lot of thinking about, they are mostly just there, and nice to look at. Cure 1 is mostly used on the ranged dps, or you can use Cure III if there are melee near the tank that got hit with an aoe. Medica (+/- Plenary Indulgence) is more effective and faster than Medica 2, but when to use either still depend on the content.

Holy spam can be done, but it takes a lot of mp without Thin Air (lvl. 62), and the tank will die if done indiscriminately. Swiftcast+Holy(+Assize) combo can give you a bit of breathing room to get a situation under control, and pick off the small mobs with little health left, allowing tank/dps to focus on the larger ones.

Just remember to be a healer foremost, and if you're comfortable/bored then apply damage

[NocturniaUzuki]

Most of it has been covered already, but I'll more clearly state that it's not anything strictly against WHM. Some. people go on about how WHM is "bad" in the current meta, but that's a load of bull unless you're min/maxing to the extreme and actually care enough to restrict an entire class based on a few numbers alone. So don't worry about it.

All of the healers avoid using GCD heals like Cure I and I when playing at a mid-tier or higher Savage raiding level. As has been mentioned, that is because the goal of healing efficiently in this game is to minimize actual healing time and focus on DPS. Since heals are so strong, this is realistic.

Even if you're solo healing, you will spend a lot of time DPSing if you've reached a certain level of healer proficiency.

In dungeons, you're looking at large pulls where you cast Regen/Asylum, the odd Tetra or Bene, Benison, and then Holy spam while rotating PoM/Thin Air and Lucid Dreaming to AoE down the mobs. In older dungeons, this is less the case because mobs hit a lot harder and tanks aren't so tanky.

In any case, rest assured that if you want more intensive healing challenges, you CAN find them. There are things you can do where you will spend almost all of your time healing. However, the downside is that almost never ever does them, since it's old content. And to get that level of healing focus, you'd need to be solo healing it. Things like solo healing MinIL Ultima, or MinIL T9, etc, where the autos do so much damage, you're focused on healing tank most of the time.

[Filmakus]

So for the most part it comes down to the situation as far as which heals are priority to use.

Sad to hear lilies truly aren't used cause on paper the idea sounds great but after looking over exactly how it works I due see its flaws.

So if I am understanding everything correctly to sum up healing in general terms, and I'm talking super general, for example throw out Medica II, Regen on tank(refreshing both when needed) and then from there fill in time with DPS such as Aero II and Stone II (or stronger variants once I get them) and Holy then if tank is about to take full frontal damage from a tank buster be ready with a Cure II or III depending and making sure Asylum is out during extended fights?

Thanks for all information given so far and any more received after this been truly enjoying WHM and want to see it through to the end and the more I understand the better!

[manamoppet]

Sad to hear lilies truly aren't used cause on paper the idea sounds great but after looking over exactly how it works I due see its flaws.

There was a lot of improvement on various issues in patch 4.5, but lilies probably won't be useful until the new expansion. We'll just have to see.

So if I am understanding everything correctly to sum up healing in general terms, and I'm talking super general, for example throw out Medica II, Regen on tank(refreshing both when needed) and then from there fill in time with DPS such as Aero II and Stone II (or stronger variants once I get them) and Holy then if tank is about to take full frontal damage from a tank buster be ready with a Cure II or III depending and making sure Asylum is out during extended fights?

Well, generally you don't use Medica II when fighting mobs outside boss-fights in the lvl. 60 dungeons and up, as it can affect the tank aggro more than regen, especially since most dungeons (that I can think of) have ambushes/ reinforcements. Cure III if more than one PC can be healed from it, otherwise Cure II. But that's the gist of it, yes

[Ghishlain]

So for the most part it comes down to the situation as far as which heals are priority to use.

Sad to hear lilies truly aren't used cause on paper the idea sounds great but after looking over exactly how it works I due see its flaws.

So if I am understanding everything correctly to sum up healing in general terms, and I'm talking super general, for example throw out Medica II, Regen on tank(refreshing both when needed) and then from there fill in time with DPS such as Aero II and Stone II (or stronger variants once I get them) and Holy then if tank is about to take full frontal damage from a tank buster be ready with a Cure II or III depending and making sure Asylum is out during extended fights?

Thanks for all information given so far and any more received after this been truly enjoying WHM and want to see it through to the end and the more I understand the better!

You more or less get the gist of it, though Medica II is an AoE heal so it's better after a raid buster - it's usually not worth the GCD usage to use Medica II if the only person who will benefit from the heal is the tank.

And as mentioned earlier, sometimes it's not even Cure II you want to use, you'll get Tetragrammaton which is essentially a free Cure II that's instant cast on a 60s cooldown (you'll get this at level 60).

In terms of healer priorities, you tend to want to exhaust your instant and free abilities before you start to spend GCDs on heals as it's generally more efficient to spend an ability that uses 0.75s versus a GCD that spends 2.5s. Once those are exhausted, you start to move into your spells like Cure II to heal.

Also, due note that Cure III is a very small AoE. It's not as MP efficient as Cure II for single target but it's pretty much the best on demand GCD AoE heal in the game, offset by the fact that your party members have to be in closer proximity of the target.

Asylum usage pretty much comes down to what you want out of it. In some cases it's best to use it as a stationary single target heal that will assist the tank, though if you can get 4/4 or 8/8 people stacked in Asylum for the entire duration, that's a lot of free healing that can be done for a single ability. It's unlikely, but if you can set it up well, it can save you a Medica II GCD since both Asylum and Medica II have similar potency / use. I find Asylum is about personal preference as well as the content you're participating in. You'll find very little use of it in 24mans in some regards because it's so chaotic it's hard to keep your party in your Asylum so it's best to just help the tank's HP if they're MTing. Even in more structured environments, there's no reason to use Asylum as an AoE just because the boss is so big and people seem allergic to enter the boss' hit box, lol. So again, just use it to keep your tank's HP up at that juncture.

Happy healing~

[Gemina]

So for the most part it comes down to the situation as far as which heals are priority to use.

At level 57, you are only going to have one ogcd heal in Benediction, so you'll be casting Cure II more often in the lower levels. At 60 you get Tetra, which will give allow you to begin to rotate these two ogcds before you have to resort to using Cure II. Using your regens effectively will also prolong the need for heals. The idea is to try and give continuous healing with your ogcd heals so you don't have to resort to Cure II, but do so if it is needed. This is also contingent on your party working with you and not against you.

Cure I is a spell that gets pointed out from time to time about its usefulness because Cure II is more gcd efficient. You still need to keep Cure I on your hotbars because of level sync. But if you are about optimizing your gcds and recognize that you don't really have MP problems at all as a WHM, it will almost always be better to cast one Cure II instead of two Cure I's to get your tank up past your threshold.

Sad to hear lilies truly aren't used cause on paper the idea sounds great but after looking over exactly how it works I due see its flaws.

It's a passive trait, so you honestly don't have to pay attention to it at all. The devs don't seem to want to give WHM a gimmick they have to micromanage like the other two healers. The concept isn't that bad, but it really does very little to actually benefit the WHM. Secret of the Lily 2 however is complete trash and still leaves a lot of us scratching our heads. Hopefully come 5.0 they figure something out better as I don't think the lily mechanic is going away; just getting reworked.

So if I am understanding everything correctly to sum up healing in general terms, and I'm talking super general, for example throw out Medica II, Regen on tank(refreshing both when needed) and then from there fill in time with DPS such as Aero II and Stone II (or stronger variants once I get them) and Holy then if tank is about to take full frontal damage from a tank buster be ready with a Cure II or III depending and making sure Asylum is out during extended fights?

Use Medica II sparingly. A mistake I see far too often is WHMs keeping medica II up full time. Regen is your sustain spell, and Medica II is actually more suited as a recovery spell more often that not. It can be used to sustain when constant AoE is inflicting damage whether it is unavoidable, or peeps are derping. In these cases, Swiftcast it. Otherwise, a well-timed largessed Medica II going off quickly after a large AoE blast is superior to Medica and more gcd efficient. This is great when people are spread out as they often are. Cure 3 is great when mechanics force the group to stack; and this happens often after a certain point.

When you don't need to heal, regen, rezz then your downtime is filled with DPS. Keep your dots up as best as you can and throw rocks when you have nothing else to do. Assize is your bread 'n butter and should ALWAYS be on cooldown unless the timer somewhat lines up with raidwide AoE.

There's a little more to it than that such as weaving ogcds like Divine Benison, Cleric Stance, Presence of Mind etc. between castings, openers on bosses but I think you'll get the hang of it as you go along. WHM is very fun to play and just needs a little love. Good luck out there.

[Sida]

The post you have been reading are largely boasting. Not necessarily unrealistic boasting, but they come from the standpoint where everything works, everyone knows their steps, no one takes damage they shouldn't. While this is one way to play the game, get a perfect static and blast forward, it's by no means the only one. Healer is largely reactive role, more so when playing with people who need to be reacted to. I find fun in my healer role playing in chaotic 24-man groups and taking my chances in random parties. I've been in Orbonne runs where I've had to pull every healing trick in my sleeves (and few I didn't know I have) to make sure my party, and in some case, the neighbouring party whose both healers stay dead more time than alive, can stand up long enough to get past things. No time to consider what I should or shouldn't use as healer, as long as it increases right amount of health in right place at right time and I can cast it it's good. Question is how you want to play the game, not how the forum tells you how you should play it.

Disclaimer for last sentence, by that I don't mean one should be any less than they can be, nor do I endorse the "healing only healers". I'm just saying there can be challenges for healer where they can be more than just glorified dps, even if that's the picture meta-people like to paint.

[Kalise]

A thing to keep in mind is generally, forums tend to err towards the min/max levels of content. Which is where the "Never use Cure" thing comes from, because in a min/max static, it's entirely possible for Healers to co-ordinate so as to put the majority of the healing onto their oGCD skills leaving more room for pushing DPS.

However, there is far more content, as well as far more players, which will cause this playstyle to be literally impossible. Just like how the "Meta" thing for Tanks is to never use either Tank Stance nor Enmity combos, but it will be necessary for a lot of PuG groups and various dungeons and trials.

As far as WHM goes... In min/max scenarios their additional healing is unnecessary when everyone is doing mechanics nigh flawlessly all the time. But outside of that, the abundance of healing is really helpful to make up for peoples mistakes or to just give yourself some breathing room to mess up on occasion.

Lilies are... Poorly implemented. In min/max scenarios not only will your default CD's be short enough to time to the predictable incoming damage, but also you'll be trying to minimize usage of Cures to actually proc the damn things. Outside of that, it's really a case of how limited they are in generation. ONLY being from casting Cure I/II (With additional Secret of the Lilies II also only proccing off critical Cure I/II...) that makes them really kind of bad to play around. Since, given the plethora of other skills you have, you tend to want to minimize your use of Cure I/II anyway in favour of just using your oGCD's, Regen, Medica's and Cure III with Cure I/II being just the last resort for bringing someone's health up.

However, this is merely in the current expansion. No doubt that come Shadowbringers, there will be some changes to WHM and likely Lilies that will help alleviate some of these concerns and ideally make Lilies be more useful to the point of wanting to play around them (For example, hopefully they're not still tied to Cure I/II only...)