If SCH got Energy Drain back, why not do the same for WHMs?

[Atlantasia]

I'm on the last mechanic of Es3 right now with my raid group, so this is the perspective I'm coming from. The vast majority of my heals are now Lily heals and oGCD heals. Especially Rapture + Assize.

If there was one thing I'd want on WHM it'd be Fluid Aura's damage back so I could weave it with the GCD heals from Lily use. It'd give me something to do during them. I don't always have Assize up or Tetra up and it's not always needed either.

The other few things I'd like, is honestly, Plenary Indulgence back to how it was in the last bit of SB, I found it a lot more fun to use that way. And I'd really love if Temperance had a shorter cool down.

[Shurrikhan]

Also, doesn't Afflatus Rapture already count for "spreading healing"?

It was merely a spitball example.

Rather than spending into direct healing, you could sort of supercharge existing Regen or Medica II effects to have their potencies increase and/or durations extend and give them the ability to jump to another wounded ally once the target reaches full HP, which would at least feel distinct from the existing AoEs and effects.

If we just had more client-side trust, oGCD delay-compensation, and/or a decent polling rate, we could have easily consolidated our Lily skills into our core GCDs (Cure II, Medica, and perhaps more for new effects) by just having movement-cancelled or double-hit effects (while still in the first half of casting, one can hit the Spell again to release a tied-in Ability) to instantly complete their casts and deal additional potency based on the (up to half) cast time actually used.

And to be honest I wouldn't be terribly surprised if next expansion's growth spell was some kind of multi-Lily dump, like a 3-Lily clone of Benediction ("Afflatus Serenity") or introduction of Reflect ("Afflatus Vigilance"), or even just introducing another attack as a Risk-Reward skill ("Afflatus Wrath").

Agreed. I hope by that time it'll be a bit more... involved... than simply waiting 30 seconds each and spending some GCDs, but we'll see.

The point of the thread is asking why we don't have a means to dump the resource so we can keep cycling them rather than capping and delaying the Blood Lily.

I've been considering this more, and if only because of the period prior to actually getting Misery there can be a couple dungeons where you really don't need a single GCD of healing in a given pull if group dps is high, I'm more okay with this than I was as long it doesn't then make it optimal to clip uptime with oGCDs due to the instant casts lost but also isn't a "joke" or "trap" skill like current Hagakure.

Not to be pedantic, but by the given logic, one Lily -- as one of four GCDs to fire Misery -- is only 75% of a Glare's worth of damage.

And... yep. That's a massive brain-fart on my part. 225 ST vs. Glare's 300, and 202.5-112.5 AoE vs. Holy's 140.

[manamoppet]

Kind of my current non-exhaustive wishlist/ideas for White Mage. Probably broken ideas, but I just wanted to get them out of my head, and this seemed like a good place. Sorry about the many parenthesises.

Return Largesse (maybe call it Divine Seal again) and have it upgrade into Temperance at level 80.

Temperance, 100s CD

Presence of Mind, 120s CD
Additional effect(?): Speeds up Lily growth rate by 20%.

Afflatus Spirit (new spell?):

Grant Cheer/Faith/Might to party members (and self?) in a radius of 25y. Cheer/Faith/Might increase damage dealt by party member by 1%, while reducing magic(?) damage received by 4%.
Duration: 10s.
Cost: 1 Blooming Blood Lily
Additional effect: Grants an effect to self, making the next use of the abilities Presence of Mind, Thin Air, or Divine Benison (if DB doesn't get a 2nd charge) spread to party members within a radius of 12y(?) (Kind of a "don't stray too far from healer please?").
Duration: 15s(?)

(Allowing it with other abilites like Benediction and Tetragrammaton would be OP heal as heck, like a "free" LB1-2. Having the additional effect interacting with other AOE abilities wouldn't make sense.)
Cooldown: 150s

Fluid Aura Mastery:
(Inspired by Ambrosia from Greek mythology, with consuming the nectar of the (gods) lilies that make one immortal?)

Grants additional effect to Fluid Aura. Upon binding effect is removed or immunity occurs, becomes afflicted with a status affliction increasing damage by 1% against it (or reduce by 2% damage dealt by it?) for 10s. Party members attacking the enemy gain a heal over time with a cure potency of 50(?) while the status affliction is in effect. Nourishes the Blood Lily when status affliction end, or if enemy dies while afflicted.(For all are but nourishment for the Blood Lily!)
Healing gauge cost: 1 Lily

For moments when delaying casting Afflatus Misery doesn't hurt, like when you really need to cast a lot of heals in a shorter time or while moving (though something else to spend the blood lily on would be great too if someone have a suggestion):

Afflatus Mind/Seed (new spell, or tie to Presence of Mind? Ability not as good as SCH's Recitation or Dissipation, or AST's Draw/Sleeve Draw, resource-wise, I think):

Sacrifices the growing or blooming Blood Lily. No effect if there are no blood lily charges.
Effect:
Sacrifice/Prune 1 Growing Blood Lily: Reduces current time of lily growth by 50%.
Sacrifice/Prune 2 Growing Blood Lily charges: Grants 1 lily.
Sacrifice 1 Blooming Blood Lily (3 charges): Grants 2 lilies. (I'm assuming we get more bloodlilies next expansion?)
Cooldown: 120s

[Hatstand]

I especially like the idea of of being able to sacrifice blood lily for more healing. Dynamic kits that encourage choice are the best kits.

On the topic of damage lilies and feeding the blood lily, it might work if lily abilities that dealt damage fed the blood lily for half the amount that healing lilies did. So the blood lily would bloom after 3 lily heals, or 6 lily dps spells, or 2 of each, or another equivalent combination of uses. Because the dps use nourishes the blood lily less, every use of a lily for dps delays the next use of misery by 15 seconds.

E.g. 6 lilies used for damage: blood lily takes 3 minutes to charge, since that’s how long it takes for the 6 regular lilies to build up. This is 90 seconds longer than normal, so 15 extra seconds per lily.
E.g. 2. 2 lilies used for healing, 2 for damage. Blood lily takes 2 minutes to charge. 30 seconds longer than normal, so 15 seconds extra per dps lily.

Under this system, you can consider a dps lily to be worth 1/6th of a Misery, so if you put it at 150 potency the WHM who used all their lilies for dps would break even, assuming that their misery was only used on a single target.

This doesn’t exactly let people choose between dps and healing, since using the lilies for dps would give the same amount of dps (barring aoe) only without the healing, but it would give a choice between extra dps now and no healing, or healing now and dps later.

Part of me wants to suggest bumping the potency of the lily dps up to 160 or something so it’s actuslly a choice between healing and dps but since (unlike SCH) the lily Mechanic makes up a smaller part of their healing potential, I’m worried that if you make using lilies for dps a struck dps gain that will become the only acceptable way to use lilies. Ergo, I think the best solution is to leave it at a break-even.

[RayThrust]

A lily dump would be nice, but it shouldn’t be to strong as WHM is currently in a good spot.
Just upgrading Fluid Aura to give another player a small amount of MP could be balanced.

WHM don’t need more heals, they don’t “need” more dps as a lily dump should increase it and we got other buffers like AST and DNC.

A small mp give away could help in progresses and if someone managed to die at least. A worthless lily dump, but it’s better than the current Fluid Aura and people would probably not find it unfair.

Something more creative would probably be more fun though.

[Rhinos]

Though I don't believe "wasting" lily healing is a huge problem, I do admit it feels bad. I'd support having over-healing from lily spells be converted to a HoT, to reduce the feeling of "wasted healing" from burning lilys.

That said, this would be a buff for WHM, and they don't need buffing right now.

[Billythepancake]

Though I don't believe "wasting" lily healing is a huge problem, I do admit it feels bad. I'd support having over-healing from lily spells be converted to a HoT, to reduce the feeling of "wasted healing" from burning lilys.

That said, this would be a buff for WHM, and they don't need buffing right now.

All they would have to do is nerf misery in response to them being a dps lily dump and itd be fine. Besides a class being strong doesnt mean it doesnt need work, they should be fun AND strong, not one or the other.

[Uliq]

Energy drain is more of a mp regain ability and not a resource dump. SCH doesn't benefit from just wasting aetherflow when having more aetherflow stacks is better than having none. Just because players use it as a resource dump doesn't mean that is what it was intended for. AS for mp regen skills, WHM doesn't hurt for mp. It has assize, thin air and lucid dreaming it doesn't need more.

[Billythepancake]

Energy drain is more of a mp regain ability and not a resource dump. SCH doesn't benefit from just wasting aetherflow when having more aetherflow stacks is better than having none. Just because players use it as a resource dump doesn't mean that is what it was intended for. AS for mp regen skills, WHM doesn't hurt for mp. It has assize, thin air and lucid dreaming it doesn't need more.

While the MP back from ED is certainly nice, and can come handy in a pinch, most SCHs do not use it for MP exclusively. It is mostly used as an aetherflow dump and a dps gain, you get 3 aetherflow every 60 seconds, no more no less, so it's pointless to hold onto it, and very rarely do you need 3 heals in 60 seconds, hence why there was such a fuss to get it back in the first place.

I think WHMs need SOMETHING to spend lillies on that isn't healing as well, for much of the same reason, when there's no healing to do, they're sitting there collecting dust.

[Archwizard]

Had a bit of a brainstorm about this looking for something out of the box, and a bit of history gripped me.

What if WHM had a Lily spender that reduced the recast time of some of their on-cooldown skills?

Assize or Presence of Mind would naturally be a DPS boost but even then most of the options are healing-centric. Could perhaps name it something like "Afflatus Sympathy" or "Afflatus Urgency".