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

[SomeRandomHuman]

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.

So because I don't consider mix/max stuff like in savage and ultimate you're going to call me an idiot? Did you play in HW when any ranged learned to stutter-step? I don't do savages and ultimates mainly because I have no friends that have any interest in doing it and I hate using the DF for content that actually requires coordination and skill.

I will openly admit that I'm an old man when it comes to playing whm. I like to leverage regen to do as much healing for me as possible and use things like tetra and the lilies to keep up as needed so I can use as many GCDs on glare as possible. But I guess I don't know what I'm doing since I don't min/max efficiency on absolutely everything. I'll just bow out of this thread. Not gonna post my opinions in an opinion thread just to get railed and insulted.

[Shurrikhan]

So because I don't consider mix/max stuff like in savage and ultimate you're going to call me an idiot?

not @Some in particular

I don't do savages and ultimates mainly because I have no friends that have any interest in doing it and I hate using the DF for content that actually requires coordination and skill.

Though, to be fair, and to address you specifically, these things should be evident even in running casual dungeons. If not, given that you are in fact leveraging Regen and your oGCDs, you're probably 90% of the way there. Take that as you will.

[Shurrikhan]

Out of curiosity, how would you all have felt if the Stormblood version of Lilies had simply been revised to something a little more granular and flexible, e.g.

Blessed Growth: Your healing spells cast generates Blessed Growth, to a maximum of 60 Growth stored, at a rate of 1 Growth per 100 healing potency dealt. This resource can be consumed to cast abilities which are currently recharging, to a maximum of 1 second and 1% recharge time skipped per point of resource consumed.

A Divine Benison, therefore, would take up to 23 Growth to double-cast. Divine Seal, if returned at a 60-second CD lasting 15 seconds, would take 31 Growth to effectively double the duration of. Assize would take 38 Growth to double-cast.
Regen would thereby generate 12 Growth if it deals its full amount (no overhealing), Cure would generate 5 (having rounded up), Cure II would generate 7 etc.

Potency-per-growth can obviously be adjusted, but it may be better to have it instead upgrade later down the line to allow benefit from damage spells or to generate Blessed Growth passively, rather than directing so much power specifically into healing intensive fights, which are relatively niche and would oblige the WHM to take on solo-healing duties wherever possible.

[elioaiko]

WHM is probably the least offensive healer since they've been the least affected by SE's change.

I don't really get this idea that WHM is supposed to be straightforward and stay that way. Sure it can easy during the leveling process but to make the entire job's concept around the fact it's so braindead to play is almost laughable.

While it doesn't have to be as intricate or busy as AST, WHM could use something interesting instead of spamming one button (the other healers suffer from this as well but moreso WHM).

And also only the change to a certain website's priority in stats put WHM as more useful in the competitive scene.

On top of all this WHM feels like mud in its weaving department than both SCH and AST. It's more of a turret than BLM and that's the one of biggest issues I have with WHM. For a job that's supposed to be easy it's movement and weaving feels awful.

Yes you can weave with lillies, but it comes to the point of dropping a lily for the sake of weaving rather than actual healing.

Then the dropping of elements feels very, "we wanna randomly move it away from its lore to a traditional holy WHM," which is odd. R.I.P Stone V. Part of me feels that they did this for the possibility of Geomancer.

So no, I don't agree. WHM isn't the worst healer at all, but that doesn't mean WHM is the best place for a long stretch.

It took SE ripping SCH and AST apart for WHM to finally shine and that's quite sad. WHM should have been reworked to match their level rather than nerfing the fairy into the floor and changing AST's cards. Take SB for example, WHM had the worst gauge mechanic and then they made it better in ShB but took away Aero III for no reason and nerfed Holy. Nevermind not actually addressing the job's actual issues, because the job has to be so easy for players to be attracted to it because AST is so hard and SCH is too different.

A job's popularity should be based on how easy it is to play but rather what they mean to the player. For example, I play AST because I feel like a healing machine with answers to different situations with an arguably fitting kit for the game's design whereas WHM's GCD focused kit works against that along with the existing one button spam. WHM feels like vacation coming from AST but for the wrong reasons. And sadly WHM could be much more but SE refuses to add more than reskinned/redundant Cure 2/Medica 1 copies because what needs is more healing apparently.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't want to go back to Benison being locked behind Lillies. It felt horrible.

I feel like you're conflating two very, very different things here.

The last time Benison was on the Lily system, that Lily system required GCD heals to be cast to generate Lilies (and thereby shorten oGCD CDs, including Benison's).

Now, Lily's are generated every 30 seconds, mirroring Benison's current 30-second CD, which Bundy suggested switching back to a Lily requirement alone. With the context Bundy suggested, however, that effective CD (the time required to generate a Lily) could be far shorter than that when healing (or, depending on the generation requirement, just casting any spell) intensively, potentially allowing one to cast Divine Benison across three targets back to back, having generated their 3 required Lilies over far less than 30 seconds each. That would reduce the Lily skill output floor, true, but the output ceiling could be far higher. Moreover, such a shift would likely include an increase to DB's own power, especially if it were consequently moved to the GCD to mirror the other Lily skills. Slapping down an idea because of how it worked in an entirely different system doesn't seem particularly reasonable.

[Liam_Harper]

Out of curiosity, how would you all have felt if the Stormblood version of Lilies had simply been revised to something a little more granular and flexible, e.g.

Not sure how that helps with the weaving and movement issues? Do you mean adding this to the current Solace/Rapture system or replacing it? Either way it creates more oGcD's that need to be weaved.

I assume you'd also want to spend Growth on the best dps-return, such as Assize. No overhealing would be difficult to balance since a co-heal sniping healbot will significantly hurt your own performance by wasting all the Growth from your efficiently planned HoT's. If there's anything I missed feel free to explain though, it does sound interesting

[Shurrikhan]

Not sure how that helps with the weaving and movement issues? Do you mean adding this to the current Solace/Rapture system or replacing it? Either way it creates more oGcD's that need to be weaved.

I assume you'd also want to spend Growth on the best dps-return, such as Assize. No overhealing would be difficult to balance since a co-heal sniping healbot will significantly hurt your own performance by wasting all the Growth from your efficiently planned HoT's. If there's anything I missed feel free to explain though, it does sound interesting

In itself it would not help with weaving and movement issues. The obvious choices for something like that would probably be to return to its CNJ roots somewhat with a Wind (and later White Wind) based mechanic, though of course it can be dealt with in any sort of way (even including slight adjustments to instant cast spells, cumulative cast time reduction, or whatever else).

It's just a matter of providing more choice in one's oGCD output. You're right that normally one would want to maximize DPS efficiency, but that too can be solved largely by tuning, favoring shorter CD skills somewhat, and, well, healing requirements being intensive enough to eventually returning to more than 10% of casts spent actually healing (or, to use shared resources on burst healing rather than solely on DPS-maximization). Likewise, having overheals do nothing would be overly punishing. To be more clear, I meant that it should be rewarded so long as a given instance of healing does not entirely overheal (as to avoid any need to spam heals during downtime to rush oGCDs via Blessed Growth).

tl;dr: I was simply wondering if the previous Lily mechanic would really have been so bad if it had just allowed us to choose how to spend it, rather than forcing it to be used on the very next oGCD.

[Gemina]

I don't want to go back to Benison being locked behind Lillies. It felt horrible.

WHM already isn't allowed to have AoE shields for some reason outside of Wings while the other 2 healers can do both. Even Benison has a cooldown so while it is usually up for Tankbusters and such, i don't want the only "on demand shield" whm has... to be locked behind Lillies... again....
I would rather take an useful Fluid Aura as a lilly skill than my only shield that would also not be used most of the time which would also make it kind of useless as lilly skill.

The issue with SB benison was the lily mechanic didn't do anything other than reduce CD durations. While I won't say Benison should be the dump skill, it now has more merit to be one. While the lily dump skill won't nourish the blood lily, it is possible for it to reduce the time it takes to get the next lily, or there can be something else the WHM does that accomplishes this. The idea is not to dish out more Misery, but to address the over healing and a full lily gauge that is drifting as a result of trying to avoid that.

If the lily dump skill isn't offensive or restorative, then it's going to have to be favorable utility. We can theorycraft on what this skill should be and do, but I also see no reason why Benison cannot be placed here under the new conditions and also either be put on the GCD like the other lily skills, or give it reasonably short cool down.

Does anyone object to WHM being able to whip out multiple Benisons? They can only toss out three, but they would obviously not want to do this.

[Semirhage]

The issue with SB benison was the lily mechanic didn't do anything other than reduce CD durations. While I won't say Benison should be the dump skill, it now has more merit to be one. While the lily dump skill won't nourish the blood lily, it is possible for it to reduce the time it takes to get the next lily, or there can be something else the WHM does that accomplishes this. The idea is not to dish out more Misery, but to address the over healing and a full lily gauge that is drifting as a result of trying to avoid that.

If the lily dump skill isn't offensive or restorative, then it's going to have to be favorable utility. We can theorycraft on what this skill should be and do, but I also see no reason why Benison cannot be placed here under the new conditions and also either be put on the GCD like the other lily skills, or give it reasonably short cool down.

Does anyone object to WHM being able to whip out multiple Benisons? They can only toss out three, but they would obviously not want to do this.

It'd need number tweaking at the very least. Benison is 500 potency, while Flower Cure 2 is 700. Under almost all circumstances, that makes it inferior, especially if it doesn't even refund any damage toward the Blood Lily.

[Gemina]

It'd need number tweaking at the very least. Benison is 500 potency, while Flower Cure 2 is 700. Under almost all circumstances, that makes it inferior, especially if it doesn't even refund any damage toward the Blood Lily.

Indeed it would, but probably not in the way that you think. If you're thinking 700pot shield, that isn't happening. Even if it was that potency, that GCD is still not going to be refunded. However, this is redundant because the idea with Misery is to refund the 3 GCDs that are used to nourish the blood lily to full. If WHM can nourish the lily by whipping out shields, then it immediately changes the identity of this job. Not happening. The pot on Benison at best would remain the same with this change, but the more likely scenario is it would be reduced due to no longer being bound by the 30s CD.

The dump is exactly that, a dump. The WHM uses this either at their own discretion, or to prevent their lily gauge from capping. It cannot be offensive, because once again it will change the identity of the job and turn the afflatus restorative skills into the abilities bad WHMs use. We would want to avoid that.

This does not mean that Benison can't return some other kind of benefit along with it to help give it incentive. In fact, you probably could delete PoM and make it a buff as a result of using Benison. That change right there would leave this lily dump conversation outright; and WHM gameplay would now focus on maintaining their PoM buff, making them the speedy healer, but that would obviously effect their GCDs used on damage as well; meaning WHM will not be playing optimally if they don't use Benison at least once before PoM runs out.