A summary of healer issues

[Renathras]

Looking back to the OP...hm...

As a more or less WHM main at this point (I play SCH and SGE frequently, but WHM is where I return and the first I try new stuff on if possible):

1) I think this is subject to taste. I don't think the issue is that there are simple Jobs or ones with low skill ceilings. Most games of any kind have easy and hard characters/classes, some with little nuance (low skill ceiling) and some with high, some with easy to learn (low skill floor) and hard to master (high skill ceiling) and everything in between. It's fine to have low skill floor and ceiling, low skill floor and high ceiling, high skill floor and low (relative to that) ceiling, and high skill floor and high skill ceiling. Not everyone wants "challenging gameplay", but some do. Not every class/Job needs to cater to both. It's fine for some to have it and others not. I don't want Seraph Strike. I hate it in PvP. I hate the idea of melee on a Caster, and hate that SMN and RDM both are forced into it and SGE semi-forced into it on Plegma. I don't mind Quake/Tornado/Flood, but I'd tie them to Presence of Mind like how PLD Requiescat/Confetior/Swords x3 works. Something like that might be fine. Aero 3 I'm neutral towards; if it's a damage gain in AOE but damage loss in single target, I'm fine with that, as long as it upgrades to Banish or something. I don't care for the Conjurer "elementalist" theme. WHM is a holy element mage, that's what I like about it. [I do agree with the SGE Toxicon 2x damage so it's damage neutral, though. 100% agreed.] {Aside: Note that Thunder was only Cross-Class in 2.0. In 2.1 that was changed to Blizzard 2, I believe. Meaning you couldn't have had them both at the same time. And at any rate, WHM has Holy, so Blizzard 2 is meaningless - me personally, I'd like Water added at level 15 as a big ball that forms above you then pops [the spell works that way in FF8 and FF9], and this could be WHM's AOE that Trait upgrades to Holy at level 45. I'd be cool with that.}

2) Okay, this one I mostly agree with. BarbEx was a bit of a pita because it was higher damage but ALSO higher movement, which meant people couldn't use GCD (cast time) heals. That needs to be considered in any future fights like that (normal versions) if we're trying to "casual-proof" general content, though. But overall, I do agree that more constant, lower individual hit damage is preferable to less frequent but big spikes that can kill people but if they don't, can be patched up with the press of a single oGCD.

3) Is arguably the same thing but from the Job design side instead of the encounter design side (for non-Healers), and I'm fine with that. I don't think some Jobs having healing is bad, I think it's when it's over the top that it is. Honestly, of those, Vercure is probably the one that doesn't offend. Try to heal a 4 DPS run of a 4 man dungeon using only Vercure and you quickly will see what its limit is (alongside not being able to do any damage), which I think is a fair tradeoff. DNC and most Tank heals (Clemency is really the only exception) are either part of their core rotation or oGCDs, meaning they cost them nothing to use and are pretty powerful. This is also true of SMN not including lolPhysic.

4) MOSTLY agree but also disagree at the same time. WHM is clearly missing out on mitigation vs the other three (AST has 2x Collective Unconscious + 1x Nocturnal Stance party AOE shield + 2x [at any give time, via charges] Celestial Intersection; WHM has Temperance on a 2 min CD and 2 charge x Divine Benison). I think the issue is that there are ESSENTIAL tasks Healers have to have covered in some way. The way they cover them don't have to be the same, but the need to cover them is. For example, every healer needs a Raise. In WoW, Druid had only a in-combat one for 2 expansions but didn't have a standard one, and the in-combat one there had an hour CD. So if it was the main healer and two people died...out of luck. If big unavoidable partywide damage is made where it REQUIRES mitigation, all healers need mitigation, and they need it to be roughly frequent enough to use intelligently with those damage spikes, and ideally flexible enough to get other uses in the encounter that rewards intelligent play with a smoother run. So some homogenization IS necessary. THAT SAID: That ends at the essentials. There's no reason that AST should have (almost) WHM's entire GCD healing kit. There's no reason all four Healers should have the same DoT + Nukespam. It's fine if one or even two do, but why should all four? I think there's lots of room to really break things up. SCH in ARR/HW had smaller heals but mitigation to make those heals go farther via the concept of effective HP. Now, the Barrier Healers are just as potent in direct healing as the Pure Healers, and one of the Pure Healers (AST) is practically a mini-Barrier Healer, too! As a WHM, we don't need Shroud of Saints (we already have Lucid) or other similar "here's extra pointless button bloat". We need to consolidate redundant abilities and add interesting ones, not add bloat.

5) I'm not sure I agree with this, but if you mean make Freecure proc from casting Stone/Glare instead of Cure 1, I'm all for that, especially if we have Cure 1 trait up to Cure 2 anyway. Chance your single target damage spell makes your next Cure 2 instant cast and cost no MP. Trait at 52 where it also nourishes the Blood Lily (and doesn't consume a Lily - see my WHM change suggestions below)

6) I disagree with ALMOST all of this for WHM. I am good with having Cure 1 upgrade to Cure 2 (see my idea below), but basically none of the rest. I have a VERSION of Cure 2/Medica into Solace/Rapture (also Regen into an Afflatus ability, whatever name, let's call it Afflatus Comfort for lack of a name for now), but not an outright replacement. There are times I want to hold a Lily for instant movement. The only way this will work is if Cure 2/Medica are made instant casts at that level. I'm fine with this, of course, but that requires a change (see below). Divine Benison and Aquaveil do two completely different things. It makes no sense to merge them. If you mean Aquaveil grants a barrier AND damage reduction, I guess we could do that, but right now, Benison has 2 charges and a 30 sec CD, meaning it can be used freely on Tanks and on party members in danger/low health/about to get whacked by a telegraph where you tend to save Aquaveil for Tankbusters or similar specific cases and it's less available at 60 sec CD and no charges. Plenary Indulgence doesn't need to buff damage, WHM needs a short duration mitigation. Again, I have an idea for this (see below). I HATE DoTs in general, but especially short duration and especially ANNOYING duration ones - 18 sec doesn't line up with the GCD even, 15, 17.5, or 20 sec would. And 30 is fine, there are other ways to fill those gaps (again, see below). Neutral on Tetra, Lilybell could use some kind of change (maybe the stacks are on party members and consumed based on THEM taking damage; kinda like Panhaima). I guess I'm fine with lowering Cure 3's MP cost and I do agree with reverting Thin Air, though.

7) Don't DISagree. See my proposals below to give some more abilities and spice up the rotation a bit across the leveling range, as well as introduce key concepts earlier.

8) While I don't disagree that SB Lilies were awful - most healers do, in fact, use GCD heals for most of the game. Especially on WHM. You're confusing raiders with the at large healing community. Personally, I think WHM should lean into that and be a GCD focused healer, and it already has the building blocks to be that with the way Misery being damage neutral works. I'm not sure you're aware of what the majority of players at level 90 are like. I hopped on AST the other day (I never play and don't like AST, mind you). Just randomly throwing cards, not really bothering with Astrydone, and even forgetting to use Divination for a chunk of the dungeon...I still got a Blue rating when I looked my name up later. If my not at all optimal ham-fisted run was enough to get a 74, that tells me the average player is well BELOW that level of competency. And I only do some Extremes and (only in EW) have done the P1S, P2S, and P5S (first time I've ever done at-level Savages). I think you strongly overestimate what "the majority" of healer players are doing.

9) I don't want to say don't care...but this is honestly a pretty small concern. I do think it's odd Tanks are always male and Healers are always female in promotional artwork and a lot of the gear designs...but I'm not sure this is the issue to die on. Though I do agree some diversity is good, and WHM/AST gear is particularly girly quite often, SCH has usually been pretty unisex, SGE kind of seems so, and in ShB, the Deepshadow (chainmail looking), Cryptlurker, Bozja Resistance and Judge, and at least one set of the NieR 24 man gear (the 9S-ish one) were all not feminine. I'm not saying they're perfect on this, but they aren't terrible, either.

10) I somewhat agree but also disagree on a lot of this. Not every Healer wants to be a DPSer. So not every healer should have a complex DPS rotation, or much of one at all. Healer is NOT always Adventurer In Need. On my datacenter, Primal, most of the time I'm on, there's a healthy mix of Tank and Healer, and DPS is often the AIN for 24 mans and (frequently) Trials and/or Normal Raids. A night or two ago, my Healer Expert que was NOT instant, so I tried DPS and my RDM WAS instant. DPS were more in need, at that time, than Healers. On more rare occasions, I've seen zero Healer and only Tanks and/or DPS AIN. It would appear that new Healers are, in fact, filling in those gaps. I'll also note healers in FFXIV started out more mixed. In 2.X, SCH was much more of a support healer that used GCDs for damage and oGCDs for healing. It could maintain high Cleric uptime since Lustrate and Embrace ignored Cleric. WHM, on the other hand, was often out of Cleric, and was tasked with GCD healing for general party maintenance and spot healing. And the system worked. The problem is the proliferation of oGCD heals now - in ARR, WHM had Fluid Aura, PoM, Divine Seal, Shroud of Saints, and Benediction as oGCDs and that was it. Fluid Aura didn't do healing, Shroud didn't do healing. PoM and DS only modified your GCD heals (and damage spells in the case of PoM since it was casting speed). Benediction was the only oGCD heal WHM had, and the only one that ignored Cleric (aside from Stoneskin since it was based on the target's HP - which SHOULD still be allowed in the game because Shake It Off works that way). WHM was never the Cleric stance dancer that SCH was. And neither was SCH. In practice, SCH spent most of its time in Cleric and WHM much of its time out of it. And both worked fine. We should go back to the idea of healer Jobs working differently/being more diverse, and in WHM's case, being more GCD based.







What I'd do with WHM, personally, I'm not entirely sure. A part of me would be fine leaving it alone since I really enjoy it right now (provided encounter design changed to actually make use of more GCD healing), but if I was going to make changes...like literally EVERY change I'd be open to at once...

1) Trait at level 30 where Cure 1 upgrades to Cure 2. Cure 2's cast time will be reduced to 1.5 sec and MP cost to 500 MP to compensate.

2) Level 15 spell, Water, Spell (GCD), 300 MP cost, 2.5 sec cast time, 2.5 sec recast (GCD), 0 y range, 8 y radius, Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to all nearby enemies.

3) Trait at level 45 upgrades Water into Holy, which will cost 100 more MP, do 40 potency more damage to all targets, and inflict 4, 2, 1 seconds of stun.

4) Trait at level 52, Cure 2 becomes instant cast but is otherwise unchanged. When you have one Lily in the Lily gauge, it is consumed instead of MP to cast Cure 2 (can have the Solace visual effect). Nourishes the Blood Lily.

5) Trait at level 76, Medica becomes instant cast but is otherwise unchanged. When you have one Lily in the Lily gauge, it is consumed instead of MP to cast Medica (can have the Solace visual effect). Nourishes the Blood Lily.

6) Somewhere between level 30 and 50, Divine Seal, which is a 2 min CD with just the heal boosting effect of Temperance. Trait at level 80 upgrades this to Temperance.

7) Somewhere between level 15 and 50, Protect, which is a party wide damage reduction mitigation (5% 15 seconds or 10% for 10 seconds). Trait at level 70 upgrades this to Plenary Indulgence, which will keep the mitigation and add the extra healing effect on top of it.

8) Swap Tetragrammaton and Benediction, Tetra at level 50, Bene at level 60.

9) Give Assize 2 charges, maybe make it a GCD. It'd still be different than Plegma and everyone knows it.

10) Level 8, Stoneskin. Make it Divine Benison jr with a 200 potency shield. Alternatively, just readd the original Stoneskin to the game.

11) Convert Holy (and Water) to work like Cure 3; if you have an enemy targeted, it will center the effect on them, and if you don't, it will center the effect on the WHM. Casting Water/Holy on a target can do the Aero 3 twirly staff animation.

12) Trait at level 15 (when you get Water) where every Stone cast places a buff on you that stacks to 4. For each stack, increases the damage and reduces the cast time of Water by 25%. At 4 stacks, Water will do 2x damage (+100%) and be instant cast (-100%). This Trait will upgrade for Holy and Holy III, and obviously Stone iterations and Glare iterations. This will create a rotation where every 4th Stone/Glare cast, you will cast a Water/Holy, and it being usable at range will allow this even if the WHM is forced to disengage. The +100% damage should make it better than the single target equivalents at all levels. Holy's damage will be increased to 150 potency and Holy 3's damage to 170 potency to ensure this as follows: Stone 1 (140), Stone 2 (190), [vs Water at 200 damage with 4 stacks], Stone 3 (220), Stone 4 (260), Glare (290), [vs Holy at 300 damage with 4 stacks], Glare 3 (310), [vs Holy 3 at 340 damage with 4 stacks].

13) Presence of Mind has the additional effect of adding/capping 4 stacks of the Holy damage boosting thing. This "force resets" your rotation for the burst phase and avoids PLD's weird "just cast whatever" thing. I guess it's not strictly necessary, though. In either case: At level 100(?), Trait for Presence of Mind has an additional effect to make it work kind of like Confetior for PLD. In addition to its standard effect, the next three Glare casts will instead be Quake, Tornado, and Flood, strong AOE attacks somewhat similar to PLD's Blade of Faith, Blade of Truth, Blade of Valor. Pressing the same button but getting neater animations. CONVERSELY, could make it where Glare/Dia/Holy are respectively replaced with Quake/Tornado/Flood for the duration of the combo like RDM, I guess. ALTERNATIVELY, make it like...a hyper-simple SMN system (where you can use the gems in any order) where you simply have the ability to use them until you use them or some time (30 sec?) passes. They hit AOE to make them usable in both single target and AOE encounters. The one issue with making it NOT just 3x Glare presses is you can't refresh Dia until you use Tornado, but maybe that isn't an issue or maybe Tornado can apply the Dia affect (and would do so to all targets in AOE...that could be fun...) like how Blade of Valor used to inflict the Goring Blade-like DoT before 6.3.

- Collectively across, this will make WHM's core rotation cadence Aero/Dia every 30 sec/12th GCD, Assize once every 2 min (burst) and one free somewhere inbetween to prevent overcapping, and every 5th filler GCD, 4 will be Stone/Glare with the 5th being Water/Holy, and use 3 Cure 2/Medica per minute (as Lily boosted Solace/Rapture) and 1 Misery, with every even minute fitting the Misery into the burst window alongside Presence of Mind buff and Quake, Tornado, Flood.

14) Revert Thin Air to the ShB version (10 or 15 sec, whichever it was, duration)

15) Add a Lily spender for Regen as well, I don't care what the level is. Same as Cure 2 and Medica where you learn it via Trait at some point and it makes the MP cost 0 to use it as well as it nourishing the Blood Lily to use. Afflatus Comfort or something.

16) Add a lower level Afflatus Misery as soon as Solace is gained (doesn't have to be level 52, but as soon as you get it). At level 74, it Trait upgrades to Misery. Or could even rework the Blood Lily to be that Water/Holy buff thing, though I think there's value to keeping it its own thing.

17) Rework Freecure as you suggest; Stone/Glare have a chance to proc an instant cast (if below 52 when this is relevant), 0 MP cost Cure 2. From level 52 (or whenever you get Afflatus Solace and Proto-Misery), it will also nourish the Blood Lily without consuming a Lily, so basically can get you extra Misery casts, I suppose...though this MIGHT throw off using Misery in burst. So if that's a problem, could instead have it either create a barrier for some percent of the heal OR guarantee a crit (at the risk of being too samey with AST's Benefic one...)

Note that none of these changes...actually require more hotbar spaces. They just make the existing spaces more useful and available for more of the leveling experience (e.g. Holy in single target, Divine Benison from level 6 as Stoneskin), and would arguably shave off at minimum 3 existing buttons - Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture would take the places of Cure 2 and Medica [or Cure 3, see (A) below] when active, and Cure 1 would be directly upgraded to Cure 2. Yet would make the rotation more active, with Assize being used like Plegma, Water/Holy being used after every 4th Stone/Glare, and Presence of Mind activating a powerful burst high-element spell combo.

Unsure about but curious:

A) Trait at level 50, Medica upgrades to Medica 2. Medica 2's initial potency increased to 250 to 400 to match, otherwise unchanged. If this is done, though, Afflatus Rapture might be the Lily effect of Cure 3 instead (since stacking the HoT would just be weird in cases you need to cast several at once), but that might cause more problems unless Cure 3's radius is expanded. This is the one reason I'm not sure if Medica should upgrade to Medica 2 or not.

B) Might have a lower level "Earth", "Wind", "Wave" lower level versions of Quake, Tornado, Flood.

C) A possible change would be to have all GCD heals (regardless of Lily use) nourish the Blood Lily. This would stop penalizing using GCD heals and WHM could become the really GCD focused healer. Doing this, we could potentially remove Tetra and even Assize's healing component if we wanted to, as you'd be using your GCD heals instead to achieve these goals, which is already what the Afflatus abilities are kind of shoehorned into. This one I'm also not sure about, however. Would need some testing to see if it feels good or bad.

Some combination of those MAYbe.

Or I guess just combine Cure 1 into Cure 2 to free up a hotbar spot to add Aero 3 and change nothing else, whatever. /shrug Though I'd personally like ONE more hotbar slot free so I could actually slot Repose and Rescue at the same time. Not that I use them, but I just dislike having abilities not slotted because they don't fit anywhere...

Though, honestly...I'd probably be just fine with that. Aero 3 every 6th or so GCD and used as an AOE opener and Cure 1 merged into Cure 3, Medica merged into Medica 2. That would take care of all the problems with the fewest changes/steps...

Oh, and for the record, I'm fine with "baby's first healer" and hate elemental spells. WHM is a holy mage, not an elemental mage, that's BLM. Go have fun with that or add GEO. You can do what you want with the other three healers if you must, though. Have fun. SB SCH and SB (or HW?) AST, I'll not play either, but I think them being in the game is fine (that way, the Healers aren't all the same and people that enjoyed that playstyle can have it again - everyone wins!)