Giving Whm an identity

[Liam_Harper]

Not at all, because Sage will change everything.

Now Whm can finally become a healing power house with Ast

You mean now WHM can finally be pushed aside entirely by AST. There will only be 1 Pure Heal spot.

WHM is not a healing powerhouse. All it has is Cure III plenary burst, which is irrelevant and overkill in any content. Outside of that it's inferior to AST in every way. Its GCD heals even cost more despite doing the same thing. It can't move. It can't weave properly. It brings no utility to the table.

There needs to be a huge rework but the developers have communicated nothing along those lines all expansion. No indication at all. The last we heard from them on reworks, they reduced Succor's mana cost and nerfed ED to "make us heal more", which is so out of touch with how SCH works in this game it's scary. That's the same team that have already completed a lot of 6.0 and likely nearly finished class design for the healers. Being optimistic with no proof and many concerns, is deluding yourself.

[Acece]

I do not know what this is supposed to mean. Is it a stacking DoT? Does it have two/three charges? How is it "stacking up to 2 times"?


That in no way makes Fluid Aura any more interesting, as there's nothing worth banking there. If it were a % of missing MP, and the maximum charge time on FA were fairly high, then maybe. But strapping a 2% MP gain on cast to FA is at best flavor text.


So even less actual use of the majority of our spells? If we had a DPS rotation that had to be banked for to best exploit this window, that'd be something, but your Seraph Strike times so closely that they just feel codependent on (less positively, "bloated by") each other.


See above.


This seems more of a general issue of excessive MP generation (e.g., via bloat spells like Lucid Dream that could, but probably should not, have their effects just made passive over time now that they do nothing else) than what would fall under the scope of a WHM rework, specifically...



So I can no longer choose when to spend Lilies. I'm not a fan.


I mean, at least you effectively removed any playflow surrounding making/using weave space by making it passive.


How? You got rid of Cure I, Solace, and Rapture, and only added Seraph Strike. Shouldn't that amount to 24?

_________________

Overall:
I'm not really a fan of making even less use of our healing spells, nor having our dps complexity (which in this case is literally just a single extra button before doing all we'd do before, unchanged) rigidly slotted into Indulgence/Atonement (WoW Disc Priest) windows.

Idk how to break down the comment like you do sorry.
The fluid aura idea is a instant cast 300 pot, not a dot, that has 2 charges. I should of made that more clear. I wanted ways to give whm mobility/weaving options without just copying ruin II from sch or taking ast's 1.5 gcd. I also wanted a reason for a whm to use it even if they don't need a weave window, though I could see why it would seem redundant. Tbh the mana return on it was tacked on.

The main reason we don't use the majority of our spells is because they're such a damage loss compared to other healers. That just comes with the territory when whm has the most opportunity cost. Whm will be a "Pure healer" in End Walker so that means the majority of healing is going to be put on them (if they do it right), The problem will be is that they're actually terrible when it comes to that without losing a lot of damage. My idea was to use Pi to avoid this and allow (with good play of course) a way for a whm to keep close to 100% uptime on dps. I really should add more dps spells to spice it up, like you said yourself. I'll try to come up with some later.

Mp management is kind of a dead thing, All it does it just prevent too many raises. Mp management is kind of boring anyways.

I always felt that Gcd Heals (especially cure II) is a last ditch effort to try to save a party, I don't see a reason to really use cure I ever besides in a low level dungeon.

Is whm supposed to use Cure II or medica I when we have lillies? The only time I could think is when you have a blood lilly and need to heal.

I miscounted which is something I feel kind of embarrassed about. I also didn't include fluid aura in the current Whm design, and I added fluid aura and seraph strike to mine. so it would be 26 actions initially and 25 with mine.

The hard part I'm trying to do is trying to keep whm simple when I really should just try to make them all about the 30sec, 60sec burst frames instead. Whm needs a lot of work but I really don't have many ideas how they could do it with it's current design. If they make content actually hit as hard as people want them to then Whm is at a disadvantage with it's opportunity cost. If it doesn't then it'll just be a boring slog as a whm pressing glare over and over again (all healers might have to deal with it but still sucks.)
Whm will never be as good as other healers with it's current design unless the other healers are straight up broken like they were at the beginning of Shadow bringers.

[Shurrikhan]

If they make content actually hit as hard as people want them to then Whm is at a disadvantage with it's opportunity cost.

...Why would that be the case? WHM does not have uniquely high offensive opportunity costs for its curative GCDs. Quite the opposite, albeit up to a capped amount (similar to how other healers may have a bit more free ppm, but such is likewise capped).

Moreover, if WHM's identity is to remain centered at all around having above-average strength in its GCD healing, additional healing requirements means that it has that much greater a chance for its higher curative ppgcd to hit a threshold by which a curative GCD may be skipped or an offensive GCD retained.

Consider it this way. Even if WHM's direct heals were a whole fifth stronger per GCD than those of other healers, it's going to take enough casts within a window of time for that fifth to have actually made a difference. If you'd normally have to top someone off before a White Hole mechanic, before which oGCDs will already have been spent, at half a Cure II or Benefic II's worth of health remaining after the third crit-less heal, then that added strength might actually mean something -- a GCD spared. Similarly, the more incoming damage, the less is offset by oGCDs alone, again letting that advantage actually come into play.

Whm will never be as good as other healers with it's current design unless the other healers are straight up broken like they were at the beginning of Shadow bringers.

Its current design has gotten closer to parity than probably ever before. I'll not say its especially fun or that its identity is anything deep, but as far as mere parity goes, it's merely slightly lacking in ppm (potency-per-minute), or in the incoming damage enough for any of its potential scaling advantages to shine.

[Liam_Harper]

The ability to deal damage while healing is definitely important. That's how the game is designed. Even if you bumped heal requirements significantly, you can't make it so hard the average player can no longer beat the content during progression. Which means better healers in coordinated groups using full mitigation in BiS would still end up dealing damage at least half the time. Unlike games such as WoW which have larger groups and can be flexible with healer ratios as they progress, we're locked to 2 healers in 8 man groups. There's no point in looking at "should be's" when evaluating a healer in the current game design.

Overheal is 100% worthless. It does nothing. If it's via GCD or cost heal tax, it's lost damage and detrimental.

The ability to burst heal sufficiently for any content is also important. WHM can do so fairly well, but so can all healers, so WHM doesn't become a "powerhouse" in that regard. AST's Neutral Sect for example turns Diurnal AspHelios into 1140 potency (or 540 upfront) from a single GCD and lasts twice as long as Thin Air/Plenary with wider range. Not to mention Star, Horo Helios and all their oGCD's. Every healer can throw out more than enough healing for any situation.

[Roeshel]

snip

If all healers can throw out more than enough healing for any situation then that would classify all of them as healing powerhouses. Two out of three happened to be able to deal damage while healing (so that would make them damage powerhouses?) and one of them did not, despite having one of the strongest offensive healing spell in the game - assize.

The ability to overheal is not worthless. Overhealing is worthless. There is a difference. When you have the ability to overheal, it becomes a lot easier to recover from mistakes when such are made. So in essence you are not overhealing, you are correcting other people's mistakes. This is something only the healers can do.

And yes, people can complain about how whm is the most terrible healer job and whatnot. But the reality is the whm is the easiest healer job with the losest skill ceiling. It is easy because it is straightforward, it is easy because it relies on gcd to heal, it a popular healer job because it is easy. The problem this job has with weaving is why many ppl play it.

The strongest gcd heal still belongs to whm - 1170 from medica II, casted in asylum while having wings and plenary. Burst heal is not something that whm is just good at. They are the best job for that.

Also: "AST's Neutral Sect for example turns Diurnal AspHelios into 1140 potency (or 540 upfront) from a single GCD and lasts twice as long as Thin Air/Plenary with wider range."

This is just wrong information.

Plenary has 20y radius, aspected helios only 15y. And Asphealios has 1140 if you let the regen do it's work, so you get to cast 1140 potency strong heal only twice every two min with ast. If you actually need healing right now you don't have cure III like whm. You resort to helios after all of your ogcd have been used, but of course, there is no content that requires so much healing except terminal relativity.

And no, the ability to deal damage while healing is not important. It has been made important because there is nothing else for you to do as a healer. I am not sure how you don't see it. You have no debuffs to cleanse, no strong buffs to apply, no variety of group utility to grant and no real damage to heal. The game has been designed this way. This is why a healer's performance is determined by how much damage they have dealt in the raid, and not how much healing they've made because the healing part is never a challenge in this game.

If the devs actually thought that healers should focus on dealing damage, they would have given us a proper and interesting rotation. But that's not the case now, is it? Healer's DPS being relevant is an afterthought, it is the consequence of smth else, it is not the primary focus and it has never been.

[Semirhage]

If the devs actually thought that healers should focus on dealing damage, they would have given us a proper and interesting rotation. But that's not the case now, is it? Healer's DPS being relevant is an afterthought, it is the consequence of smth else, it is not the primary focus and it has never been.

I couldn't disagree more. Damage is the primary focus in almost every single RPG I've ever played, single- or multi-player. When you're in combat, the combat is over when your enemy is dead. The thing that makes your enemy dead in 99+% of encounters is damage. Healing output can help you get there. Buffs can help you get there. Mitigation, debuffs, countering enemy attacks, those can all be important depending on the systems as designed. But at the end of the day, those are all supporting your ability to smack your enemy to death. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played where my healers haven't been respectable damage dealers. Fact is, if all but the most explicitly difficult content requires constant heals or support, most players are going to die. Squeenix wants most players to ultimately succeed in the vast majority of content. That gap between players on top of their heal/support game and the ones struggling to keep up through story dungeons is where the downtime comes in. That downtime has been pretty large in most games I've played. From tabletop D&D type games, to easy RPGs, to more difficult ones. I've never reached the end of a Final Fantasy game where my more heal-focused character wasn't spending a good 80% of their turns attacking the enemy in some way.

The ability to deal damage while healing is important, because that's the way RPGs are generally designed. FFXIV isn't some bizarro world exception to a rule where forum princess healers are "strangely" "forced" to deal damage. Healing is regularly a multitasking role with a sliding scale of downtime based on how skilled you get at your primarily important task. Having downtime that isn't a terrible, stupid snoozefest of a reward for gaining finesse at your basic task is one of the most important facets of designing a multitasker class. I don't enjoy playing healers because I'm particularly enamored with spamming Cure over and over and over again. I like healing because it's a balancing act that should be rewarding when you manage to minimize healing as much as you possibly can. Because that's the (perhaps ironic) definition of getting more skilled at healing, no matter how much of it you design into an encounter. Minimizing it is ALWAYS the eventual goal.

[Roeshel]

snip

Damage being the primary focus in most rpgs doesn't change the fact that the devs don't like the idea of healers doing dps that much. From what I've learned, with Shb they even tried to reduce sch and ast to perform as poorly as whm when it comes to damage dealing. SCH had many dots and strong ED while ast had a very op time dilation spell that extends the buffs you put on targets by 15s and a 20% damage buff on some cards or smth. If whm is their model for a healer then in the gms' perspective the other two were seen as defects that must be corrected. So that only supports my point. The problem can't be with whm as this it is probably the first healer they designed so they must have put more thought into it and how it plays out than the other healer roles. It is also the only healer class with which you can start the msq so obviously it is going to be the most popular one with the strongest personal dps. In my opinion, sch and ast have been given good weaving spots because it is just harder to play them in general and they rely exclusively on ogcd to heal. So at the end of the day, it is only appropriate for a healer class with a higher skill ceiling to deal more damage and heal more than the easiest class.

And yes, things die quickly when you have the ability to deal damage. However, that damage doesn't have to come directly through you. The healer class is a support class in nature. It is kinda the reason why it doesn't come naturally to ppl to start dpsing as healers in dungeons. When your damage output is close or even higher to the one of your dps party members your class is no longer a support class, something that healers are meant to be.

Spamming cure is very different from spamming glare because if you mess it up ppl will end up dying. That's putting pressure on healers. This is why I liked tanks doing big pulls even if they don't use cds when I was levelling my first healer role. On the other hand, if you skip one, two or ten glares nobody will care as long as the boss doesn't enrage.

[Semirhage]

Damage being the primary focus in most rpgs doesn't change the fact that the devs don't like the idea of healers doing dps that much.

Then the devs don't understand how RPG combat works. This is evident. They tried making Scholars spend less time dealing damage by deleting several of their damage spells. That's...not how this works. Time spent on an activity isn't determined by the number of tools you have to do it. It's determined by the most useful thing you can be doing at the time. Even if that's pressing one button a thousand times.

If whm is their model for a healer then in the gms' perspective the other two were seen as defects that must be corrected.

Most healers who had any skill at healing whatsoever despised WHM's design in Stormblood. For reasons that were explained in excruciating detail both here and in other places on the internet. Doubling down on what your skilled players consider boring is...a look I guess.

So at the end of the day, it is only appropriate for a healer class with a higher skill ceiling to deal more damage and heal more than the easiest class.

Yes yes, WHM deserves to be the weakest AND most boring healer because AST and SCH are just so much more complex. Their superiority should be written into the Forever Meta, et cetera and so on. I've been rolling my eyes at that since late Heavensward, and they keep on rolling. This is not a dynamic for any other role in the game. WHM is the only job people regularly come out and advocate for sucking just...because.

It is kinda the reason why it doesn't come naturally to ppl to start dpsing as healers in dungeons.

I started dealing damage in Sastasha. Naturally. Because I've played a healer before. And I know that means keeping people at 100% HP all the time is a fool's game.

When your damage output is close or even higher to the one of your dps party members your class is no longer a support class, something that healers are meant to be.

Not in the RPGs I've played. They certainly haven't done *more*, but comparable? Absolutely. At least depending on the encounter.

Spamming cure is very different from spamming glare because if you mess it up ppl will end up dying. That's putting pressure on healers.

Pressing one button over and over again is good design guys. Really.

[Liam_Harper]

This is just wrong information.

Plenary has 20y radius, aspected helios only 15y. And Asphealios has 1140 if you let the regen do it's work, so you get to cast 1140 potency strong heal only twice every two min with ast. If you actually need healing right now you don't have cure III like whm. You resort to helios after all of your ogcd have been used, but of course, there is no content that requires so much healing except terminal relativity.

Plenary is 20y but Cure III is 6y. You don't have to resort to Helios after your oGCD have been used under Neutral, you reapply AspHelios as the shield breaks. 540 upfront is like regular Cure III's, paired with Horoscope Helios for another 400 and that's enough to recover from most things. Popping an undercooked Star in emergency is also practically a full Cure III's worth. Speaking of burst heal to correct mistakes, 2 charges of Essential Dignity on a short cooldown can cover more than WHM's one Benediction + Tetra. Bene's great but it's overkill and 40s > 180sec.
It's not that WHM's heal toolkit is bad at all, it's quite solid. But it doesn't bring anything to the table that the other healers can't cover, while at the same time being clunkier to use. Sure, it's also easier to play at a mediocre level because you aren't juggling cards or fairies, but "Baby's First Healer" that ends up being sort of bad as you learn to play better is not good design for a class. No other class is designed like this.

If everyone's a powerhouse, it's not special and then no one's a powerhouse really. Just average.

The ability to deal damage is always important. It doesn't matter if the devs are being stubborn about it, the fact is that damage is always useful. It wouldn't matter if you gave healers more to heal either and we healed 100% of the time at first, we'd coordinate mitigation, map the fight, reduce that to 70% or less and fill the rest with dps because we'd contribute more to the team.
The difference between two 5k dps healers and two 14k dps healers who keep everyone alive is killing the boss much faster meaning less time for mistakes to occur and likely skipping dangerous mechanics like Pitch Bog II, Cycles or Terminal. Or sometimes simply being the reason the group beat enrage. Even if dps isn't mandatory, the high dps healers have a much higher value to the team.

Correct that the devs should focus on dealing damage and give us some rotation. Just because it hasn't been the focus, doesn't mean it shouldn't be.

[GrimGale]

WHM strongest personal/selfish DPS pure healer
AST strongest raid/support DPS pure healer
SGE strongest personal/selfish DPS shield healer
SCH strongest raid/support DPS shield healer.

There, space for everyone.