Thank you SE: WHM is fine where it’s at.

[AphraelAmarantha]

With so many threads out there complaining about healer role and how brain dead easy and boring it is apparently, I felt compelled to make a thread expressing the opposite and unpopular opinion that I think WHM is fine where it’s at (I have not played the other healing classes so this will only be about WHM). It’s not boring and I find it a good challenge to play. Let me go over some points why.

1) The variety of healing abilities. This allows me to keep up on healing when performing mechs by a party can be lackluster.
2) That I only need three main abilities for dps. I am happy that when there is downtime I don’t have to remember a rotation or figure out where I was in the rotation. The simplicity with dps allows someone like me to monitor the party’s situation while I passively dps. If I have to think about a rotation or some other complexity at the same time I’m trying to monitor the party’s health, it would be too much for me.
3) How reactive the class plays. I like that with this class I can react to almost any situation. If I had to plan for how my heals should used and when during a long encounter that would make it too difficult for me to play the class. I’m not very good at that sort of gameplay, hence why I chose this class to begin with.
4) I like the lily system. Gives me a way to access better and faster healing and a big damage dealing spell that isn’t reliant on just being used for aoe trash mobs like Holy.
5) I like the new focus on using light instead of throwing rocks. Always felt that was rather underwhelming. Aero also always felt underwhelming since I always remember it being a big damage spell in older final fantasies so it was weird to me that Aero was regulated to just a dot. Plus I feel with how WHM is kind of presented with some Of it’s purity and goodness feel to it, I felt it appropriate that it’s abilities would be more light based.
6) I like how easy it is to do solo duties with WHM. That one skill (I don’t remember what it’s called atm) where you have a shield and take no damage combined with regen makes solo content much more manageable to get through. If I do the same content as a dps such as dancer, I’m struggling too much and usually wipe an unhealthy amount of times because I can’t heal myself fast enough. Potion cooldown are waaay too long and with WHM abilities, I can make mistakes without being too punished for it. I also have the ability to restore all of my health if it gets too low, unlike a dps.
7) I like the overall feminine feel to the class. I’m a very feminine person and I like healing. Those two factors is what attracted me to try the class after my abysmal failure at trying to play dps classes. It just clicks for me and I feel a very much part of the world as I go around vanquishing evil and bringing succor to the suffering :3

Anyway, I just wanted SE to know that amidst the sea of complaints, there are those of us who enjoy where WHM is at right now. Thank you SE, WHM is just fine.

[KDSilver]

WHM is not the job people complain about the most.
People mostly are okay with it having a more straightforward gameplay.
At best, what they don't like is having some old spell taken away such as Aero III and Fluid Aura being useless/still in the kit for the sake of having a Water-spell to fit the lore.
Certainly some would like WHM to have a bit more depth, but certainly not any complex DPS rotation. No healer have been asking for such thing. The main issue that has been raised it the mad pushing of Glare/Broil/Malefic because of how fight are designed, healers designed, some action taken away... Healer DPS rotation had never been complex in the first place.

I'm not dragging down your enjoyment. It's good that some people can enjoy thing as they are.

[ty_taurus]

I'm happy with WHM for the most part, though there are definitely a few areas I hope will get improved in 6.0 (Yes, that means you, Fluid Aura. No, being utterly useless is not a redeeming quality).

I kinda want Temperance to get a rework. Move the healing potency somewhere else and make these giant wings of light a little more epic-feeling? What if Temperance causes Afflatus Solace and Rapture to be used OGCD? Something like that.
Mostly though, I look forward to seeing how the Lily system expands. It's such an improvement to Stormbloods Lilies, but it's still very light in terms of it's impact on WHM's playstyle. I'd like to see lily actions actually made available much earlier including Afflatus Misery. This is stuff that should be the core of WHM's gameplay, and to me that means it should be present in more of the game's content and not just level 74+ content.

Also I don't fully agree that dropping the Earth/Wind/(not)Water trinity feels great, however I do like their theme of flowers which combines those elements. I'd like to see more use of floral spell effects in what we see moving foward. WHM traditionally is a very generic healer, and making 14's WHM have more personality by making them a healer with holy flowers as opposed to just holy healing helps give them a bit of spice that you otherwise miss out on.

[Semirhage]

They deleted Aero 3, took away the already nerfed Divine Seal at lower levels in the role system to sell it back as a capstone (again), nerfed Fluid Aura (AGAIN), nerfed Holy (AGAIN), stole Repose out into the role system, spaced out the weave windows from casting Aero even more than before (making it clip something awful), and, granted, made the lily system not completely pointless, but are also reskinned Medica and Cure 2 that you toss into the avoid casting box unless you have trash pulls.

Yaaaaay, it's at its most stripped-down iteration yet. Next expansion I vote that WHM has only Glare, Cure 2, and Medica, but add pretty flower animations to all three. Then it'll be WHM's best version ever.

[Risvertasashi]

While I wouldn't say WHM is bad, I disagree that's it's fine where it is. There's plenty of room for improvement.

Like, say, how about more weave opportunities so you don't have to keep dia and lucid perfectly aligned or you'll clip (and realistically, you're going to clip anyways because there's other oGCDs).

How about not having PoM have a CD that aligns with nothing?

How about more movement options, so you're not stuck with refreshing your dot (which then no longer aligns with Lucid)?

Again, not saying WHM is terrible, but it's a far, far cry from perfect. As someone that also plays tanks and DPS sometimes - WHM is by far the kludgiest job I play. DPS jobs' abilities (and caster weave windows), and tank abilities, etc all come together sooooo much more smoothly. It's like driving a modern sports car vs a 1960s winnebago with one wheel about to fall off.

I sincerely hope that, some day, healers get the same level of attention towards allowing smooth gameplay that other roles get.

[Gemina]

Dude, WHM has all kinds of issues. I'll have to elaborate later, but that itch had to be scratched.

For now I will say it is an improved job, but it definitely has all kinds of kinks that need to be hammered out.

[SomeRandomHuman]

I'll trade fluid aura for flood to have an oGCD damage skill since sch has energy drain and ast has earthly star.

I also don't see how holy was nerfed. it was 210 for the first target 10% less to each additional target after the 1st until it was at 20% damage right? So it being 140 to everything pans out better in large groups of mobs. It's also the best over all healer aoe dps ability since it has the like... is it 8ish seconds of stun until they resist stun altogether?

Then imo the lily heals should be oGCD and misery should stay on the GCD. Feels a bit awkward to interrupt dps to pop an extra tetra basically.

[Eclipse12187]

Holy also used to have a longer cast time before shadowbringers, potency nerf but cast time reduction and no fall off made it a wash. Mp reduction on it though was a great buff. And yes I agree WHM is in a pretty nice spot right now but could use some adjustments. I’d personally like to see afflatus misery be dps neutral (unless we get a single target lily nuke next expac), a possible reduction in the time needed to accumulate lilies (sch gets 3 aetherflow a minute) or making the lily skills ogcd. Although with how few weave options we do have ogcd lily healing would still have clipping issues unless we got a ruin 2 equivalent or the malefic treatment.

[ty_taurus]

Holy also used to have a longer cast time before shadowbringers, potency nerf but cast time reduction and no fall off made it a wash. Mp reduction on it though was a great buff. And yes I agree WHM is in a pretty nice spot right now but could use some adjustments. I’d personally like to see afflatus misery be dps neutral (unless we get a single target lily nuke next expac), a possible reduction in the time needed to accumulate lilies (sch gets 3 aetherflow a minute) or making the lily skills ogcd. Although with how few weave options we do have ogcd lily healing would still have clipping issues unless we got a ruin 2 equivalent or the malefic treatment.

I think what we need is some way to add generation to the lilies. It's very passive that you just have to wait for your lilies, but if there were tools you could use to create more, even if on a time limit, it would make the gauge feel more interactive. A simple button that gives you lilies is probably the direction they'll go, but something like an OGCD that damages an opponent that also generates a lily under a certain condition or something.

[Shurrikhan]

I'll trade fluid aura for flood to have an oGCD damage skill since sch has energy drain and ast has earthly star.

Then imo the lily heals should be oGCD and misery should stay on the GCD. Feels a bit awkward to interrupt dps to pop an extra tetra basically.

I'm sorry if I'm taking a inch and running it a mile here, but... these lines of reasoning (generally speaking -- not @Some in particular) seem to lead only into a far worse position for WHM and job design in general.

We don't need parity on paper. We need parity in practice; something that can do most things as well as SCH and AST, at least as enjoyably as SCH and AST, with --in what things remain without direct parity-- as much unique advantage over them as they may have over us. That's not going to come from a quota of oGCDs or oGCD potency or even burst differential. It's going to come from gameplay considerations and what WHM can do for a healer-pair in the context of actual content.

Take making Lily heals into oGCDs as an example. With a 30s DoT up from an 18s, and Regen lacking frequent power CDs into which duration to snapshot it at beginning and end for efficiency gains enough to more than make up for potential waste via overhealing, our non-Lily kit has the least opportunity to weave in oGCDs that it's ever had, despite having as much oGCD cpm as in Stormblood. Our only compensation has been those lily skills being instant-cast GCDs. They're what makes our mobility and weave opportunities. You're suggesting they instead provide none of that, making it damn near impossible not to clip oGCDs, while somehow assuming we'd be allowed that extra healing ppm with zero balancing compensation. At best case, you'll have slightly increased WHM's ability to massively (over)heal in burst, but at massive cost to QoL and playflow. That's not a positive direction. If WHM is undertuned, it should be buffed directly. It shouldn't have to sacrifice mobility or weave opportunities for it.

You're looking at these things like they're improvements, and on paper, taken completely out of context, they may be buffs, but the gameplay that would emerge from what you're requesting in undoubtedly worse. Please at least consider what it would look like in practice.