WHM: An idea to change the freecure trap and to encourage using damage spells

[Peace-Division]

Some whm players spam cure 1 thinking its a good idea due to the chance to get a cure 2 cost zero mana (the trap) which causes whms across the level range to keep using it when its not a good spell to use when the whm kit expands into the cure 2+ holy+medica and onwards into the lily territory (lvl 45 and onwards).

To encourage dps which helps the group make it so that freecure bonus is now part of a stone/glare cast landing instead of it being on cure 1

In addition for every tick of damage that aero/dia does there is a 5% chance of reducing the cool down of lucid dreaming by 1 second. So more dots on enemies the better

And finally for every enemy assize causes damage to it has a 10% up to a maximum of 50% chance to make a stone/glare cast instant

[AnotherPerson]

Some whm players spam cure 1 thinking its a good idea due to the chance to get a cure 2 cost zero mana (the trap) which causes whms across the level range to keep using it when its not a good spell to use when the whm kit expands into the cure 2+ holy+medica and onwards into the lily territory (lvl 45 and onwards).

To encourage dps which helps the group make it so that freecure bonus is now part of a stone/glare cast landing instead of it being on cure 1

In addition for every tick of damage that aero/dia does there is a 5% chance of reducing the cool down of lucid dreaming by 1 second. So more dots on enemies the better

And finally for every enemy assize causes damage to it has a 10% up to a maximum of 50% chance to make a stone/glare cast instant

White mages do not need more MP with lucid dreaming and Thin Air to cover the MP cost. In terms of MP management, they are considered one of the strongest out there. Having freecure tied to stone/glare although seems good before lv 35, but I think I'd rather have it tied to cure since cure should be used only when your MP is bottoming out due to very healing intensive situations (a specific ultimate) or when you die. Having a freecure proc at that situation would be more ideal. Also, around lv 30-32 in Brayfox as a White Mage in leveling gear, cure is used very often in conjunction with cure II when healing and DPSing because you lack the regen skill to sustain the tank's HP at this point. Because cure II is expensive, freecure is very beneficial this dungeon run. Tying cure into a DPS skill cannot guarantee you will get a freecure proc when you really need it.

Just reducing the cooldown of lucid dreaming by 1 second per tick will encourage more Medica II spamming.

There's really no point to make assize -possibly - give you an instant cast since you can't guarantee you'll get the instant cast at the right time to weave your healing oGCDs. If there should be more weave windows, I rather they made White Mage more similar to Black Mage and get a second DoT. Say this DoT is renamed to Aero II and Dia and Aero II are no longer direct upgrades of each other.

Assuming Glare is 300 potency, by level 80 Aero II could be an instant cast GCD like before that does 60 potency on hit, but it will be a and 45 potency per tick over the duration of 24 seconds.

At a certain level (say lv 62), White Mages will get a trait [Enhanced Aero II] attached to the skill to have a 10% chance on each tick to have the next Aero II skill to add half its damage over time amount to the initial hit. The proc lasts for 24 seconds. 180 + 60 = 240 potency, so it's a DPS gain on instantly using the proc for Stone III and a minor DPS loss unless you hold onto the proc for Stone IV.

Then by level 72, when you get get the current [Aero II mastery] trait, which changes adding half its damage over time amount to the initial hit to adding the 75% damage over time amount to the initial hit, as well as getting your second DoT skill Dia. This will incentivize the white mage to have more weave windows with 2 DoTs. In the period of a minute, you can refresh your Dia DoT 2 times, get 2 Aero II DoTs without procs, and get 2 lilies (30 second for a lily), giving you at least 6 weave windows. Since the amount of damage Glare vs Aero II is minimal, it could be more beneficial to hold onto an Aero II proc for movement or to just refresh the DoT.

Then, when the next expansion is out, we can have an [Enhanced Aero II Mastery] Trait which on proc, makes the next Aero II add the full damage over time amount to the initial hit. Potencies could be adjusted with each trait to make the skill be worth holding onto like in the case of Thunder with Black Mage.

Adding this DoT I feel would break up both the monotonous use of Glare while adding extra weave windows to the White Mage gameplay.

[Seraphor]

The problem with Freecure, and similarly with ASTs crit Benefic II, is that the proc is the opposite way round to what is optimal.

Cure II should have a chance at proccing a crit or buffed Cure I, basically making Cure I the same potency as Cure II.
This way you save MP by healing the same amount of HP as Cure II, but with the MP cost of a Cure I.
Cure III should have a similar proc that turns Cure I into an AoE. Call it... Fullcure.


For AST I'd just have Benefic II downright replace Benefic I tbh.

[Videra]

tbh just get rid of Cure 1/Bene 1 after you get their upgrades. Done.

[Kurando]

In regards to Lucid Dreaming, you wouldn't want to link a benefit from a job action to a role one. SCH had this issue with Eye for an Eye (in SB), they could spread it sure but Deployment Tactics didn't match the cooldown, plus other healers could use Eye for an Eye anyway, so it didn't really feel particularly unique even though it was a SCH (well ACN) action to begin with. And yeah since AST buffs, literally all the healers can manage MP pretty well now.

Think the biggest WHM trap is players constantly keeping up Regens. More of a new player thing, but often see Medica II spam or single Regen being put on multiple targets that don't require it.

[Jaelommiss]

I agree with everything AnotherPerson says about Lucid Dreaming and Assize.

With the role that Lilies and Afflatus spells have in WHM healing, I'd suggest the following replacement for Freecure:
1) Lilies and Afflatus Solace become available at level 30. Cure II is delayed until level 40 and its cost is increased to 1200 MP. Medica II has its cost increased to 1600 MP.
2) Casting Stone/Glare/Holy grants two seconds of progression towards the next Lily.
3) Each Aero/Dia tick has a 15% chance of granting a Blooming Lily buff for 30 seconds. When Afflatus Solace or Afflatus Rapture is cast while under the effect of a Blooming Lily, a 100 (Solace) / 50 (Rapture) potency regen is applies to the target(s) for twelve seconds. Blooming Lily stacks up to two times.
4) Casting Afflatus Misery grants a stack of Blooming Lily.
5) When one of your regens (Regen, Asylum, Medica II, Blooming Lily hot) crits, your next Stone/Glare/Holy has its potency increased by 10%, stacking up to three times.
6) WHM HP restored per potency is reduced by 15%.

Rationale:
1) Freecure is a relic of when Cure and Cure II were a large part of the WHM's healing kit. Lilies have since replaced them, so it makes sense to grant access to Lilies earlier and replace Freecure with something that enhances them. Given the increased reliance on Afflatus heals that I have in mind, Cure II and Medica II will be last resort heals, so their costs are increased. Cure and Medica are left at their current costs for a low MP, low healing option.
2) Dealing damage grants additional healing resources. Greater uptime grants more free healing. This production accelerates the current 1 Lily per 30 secs.
3) Dot ticks grant a ~55% increase in healing output from Lily heals. Keeping high dot uptime will reduce the amount of healing that is necessary. The 15% proc chance means that there is an 80% chance of getting at least one Blooming Lily per 30 secs. This increases to 96% chance on two targets. Each 30 secs of dot will produce an average of 1.5 Blooming Lilies. While it's not absolutely certain, there is a very high chance that Blooming Lily will be available for every Lily that a WHM needs if they keep their dot active. A non-overlapping hot will require that the healer plan in advance so as to not overlap and waste ticks.
4) A free Blooming Lily ensures that at least one Afflatus spell can be assumed to have an extra hot.
5) Skilled healers will rely heavily on their hots due to their GCD efficiency. This grants an additional damage reward to those players. Buff stacks multiple times in case multiple coinciding ticks crit. All stacks are consumed on next Stone/Glare.
6) Dropping healing across the board keeps WHM's healing output consistent after buffing Lilies.

Optimal gameplay:
Apply dot to two targets if possible to fish for Blooming Lilies. Spam Stone/Glare/Holy to accelerate Lily CD.
1) Use oGCDs to heal.
2) Use Lilies to heal anything remaining, making sure to spread them out to maximize Blooming Lily ticks when possible. Use Regen for single targets if Lilies are needed for raidwide healing.
3) Cure II and Medica II are used next, though their high MP cost makes it prohibitively expensive to use excessively.
4) Cure and Medica are still bottom of the barrel.
This matches the current priority system, however skilled healers will increase how much healing can be done with step 2 and an overreliance on step 3 will drain MP fast.

Based on my cohealer's performance last tier (full oranges), a good WHM can maintain roughly 15-18 CPM on Glare in a savage fight, including forced downtime. That'll generate an additional Lily every minute. One minute of dot uptime will generate an average of three Blooming Lilies per minute, lining up nicely with Lily production.


Edit: I'd prefer to add some more damage options, too, but that goes beyond the scope of fixing Freecure.

[AnotherPerson]

I agree with everything AnotherPerson says about Lucid Dreaming and Assize.

With the role that Lilies and Afflatus spells have in WHM healing, I'd suggest the following replacement for Freecure:
1) Lilies and Afflatus Solace become available at level 30. Cure II is delayed until level 40 and its cost is increased to 1200 MP. Medica II has its cost increased to 1600 MP.
2) Casting Stone/Glare/Holy grants two seconds of progression towards the next Lily.
3) Each Aero/Dia tick has a 15% chance of granting a Blooming Lily buff for 30 seconds. When Afflatus Solace or Afflatus Rapture is cast while under the effect of a Blooming Lily, a 100 (Solace) / 50 (Rapture) potency regen is applies to the target(s) for twelve seconds. Blooming Lily stacks up to two times.
4) Casting Afflatus Misery grants a stack of Blooming Lily.
5) When one of your regens (Regen, Asylum, Medica II, Blooming Lily hot) crits, your next Stone/Glare/Holy has its potency increased by 10%, stacking up to three times.
6) WHM HP restored per potency is reduced by 15%.

I disagree with removing [Cure II] at level 30 and replacing it with the Lily System in addition to an RNG healing buff. Making [Cure II] and [Medica II] more MP expensive is also equally a bad choice for content below level 50 as White Mages simply do not have a strong fundamental healing kit to rely on if they happen to die as they lose both their lilies, lose their MP, and currently lack their potent MP management tools. The rationale should be that regens are more potent than regular healing because the healing is delayed, thus should be used first, then the less efficient MP option for more healing would be to use [Medica/Cure/Cure II]. Having an increased MP cost to [Medica II] is counterintuitive to making regens the more 'potent' healing choice since it would eat your MP more and that MP could have been used for DPSing.

Healing that is dependent on RNG cannot be optimized unless it is guaranteed. For the vast majority of normal content, this is not an issue, but for high end content and more difficult content, healers do map out exactly how much they need to heal in order to increase DPS to pass the enrage timer properly.


Having a variable amount of unknown healing potency (Blooming Lily buff) poses a couple of issues:
1. You could get the buff but big healing is not required within 30 seconds, so the buff is wasted and your next lily loses its extra potency. This is prevalent in content like The Vault, where [assize] + [holy] + prepull [regen] + [Asylum] is enough to cover the need for an afflatus spell until mistakes happen.
2. You don't get the buff the moment you need healing or weaving, making you lose out on a lot of extra healing (400 potency on Solace / 200 for Rapture). This is a considerable margin of healing lost during the encounter. What damage could have been covered with 1 [Afflatus Solace] with blooming lily turns out to be 1 [Afflatus Solace] + 1 [cure II] because the buff wasn't available or 1 [Afflatus Rapture] + Blooming Lily may end up requiring an [Afflatus Rapture] + [Medica], which ends up being worse since you spent the extra GCD regardless to heal as you mapped out the previous oGCDs to specific parts of the fight.


The issue with also giving the Lily System at lv 30 and not [Cure II] is:
1. You have no access to your big 700 potency cure until 20-30 seconds -in combat-. Only after 20-30 seconds in combat, you get to use 1 [Cure II] potency skill. For encounters to lv 30-34 as a white mage in leveling gear, this means you cannot do big pulls at all because outgoing damage will be too high for you to heal through. Only multiple uses of [Cure II]s and [Cure I] with Lucid Dreaming on cooldown in Brayfox can cover big pulls unless you're significantly overgeared. A tank actually has a higher chance of dying in that regard with a White Mage since a tank's HP can quickly drop to very low levels before 20 seconds are up in ARR content, so you won't get an afflatus spell by then. Instead, you'd be using multiple GCDs to use [Cure I], which will effectively make encounters worse since you'd spend more GCDs on healing before spending another GCD on a potent afflatus healing spell. This is also due to the matter of DoTs have more damage potency and supposed to be applied to enemies in the beginning of the battle first, so you would spend 2.5 seconds *[# of enemies] to apply DoTs due to a lack of an AoE spell at this level before starting to use your Stone/Glare spell.
2. In the event you die or wipe, you lose your lilies and lose the blooming lily buff. This is too punishing because by this point, all White Mages have is just [cure I]. A regen takes time to kick into effect and cannot save the tank who's very low on HP when you revive. This is also worse later on in the game if you run out of oGCDs and then get revived because the changes to the cost of [Medica II] and [Cure II] suddenly skyrocketed.
3. It encourages actually spamming [Cure I] even more than before since it's the only healing skill that is readily available to you. With the reduced healing potency, it actually incentivizes this further since you don't have readily available or powerful oGCD healing tools to get your tank's HP back up in the event the tank takes a huge hit/tankbuster. If you done the Hall of Novice as a Conjurer to get the Novice gear, you can see how little [cure I] heals in relative respect to the tank's HP dropping. There is very little time to actually DPS. That is essentially how rough Brayfox will be for White Mages if [Cure II] gets put on a 30 second cooldown.

4. This change will end up being designed against DPSing. As of currently, [Afflatus Solace] is only worth using to replace [Cure II] because they have the same potency cost. However, if White Mages take a 15% reduced potency to all healing restored, this would actually be a step backwards because you would be healing much less than before and spend more GCDs for the same potency instead of using the GCDs for DPS skills. [Regen] + [Cure II] currently costs 2 GCDs and gives a total of 1800 potency worth of healing. With the reduced 15% healing, a White Mage who uses [Regen] + [Afflatus Solace] = 1462 potency worth of healing. It goes up to 1862 if you get a blooming lily. There's very little Healing potency gain and the Healing over time effect by the Blooming Lily can be overwritten by the next Blooming Lily effect if the tank needs to back to back uses of [Afflatus Solace] in future content, so you don't actually get the full use of Blooming Lily's healing potency. Assuming [Afflatus Misery] is available by level 35, it changes instant GCD Afflatus spells to be more of a fancy oGCD due [Afflatus Misery] substituting all the damage that you normally could've done if you spammed Stone/Glare for the GCD healing. However, it still does not remove the glaring problem of not having a readily available and strong GCD heal until 20-30 seconds into the encounter.

[MartaDemireux]

I think the easiest route would be to directly upgrade Cure/Benefic into Cure II/Benefic II and give them traits for a % chance of being free/critical. Adjust cost and potency as needed. Maybe give Physick a rebalance alongside or an upgrade of it's own.

[glamazon]

If we’re thinking of new healer type abilities what about physicals upgrades to life line which ties the healers own health to the target draining the healer to heal? Or what about a spell called equilibrium which would balance the groups health so everyone had an equal amount?

[Seraphor]

If we’re thinking of new healer type abilities what about physicals upgrades to life line which ties the healers own health to the target draining the healer to heal? Or what about a spell called equilibrium which would balance the groups health so everyone had an equal amount?

Draining HP from the healer sounds like a very bad idea...