Giving Whm an identity

[Semirhage]

Mind telling me where you got them installed? If I see one more "WHM needs to stay simple" post my eyes will actually turn into dust

The old Television Without Pity forums had a special discount. Having the occasional trashy TV show guilty pleasure gives the orbital muscles an intense workout.

[Roeshel]

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 you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

Mind telling me where you got them installed? If I see one more "WHM needs to stay simple" post my eyes will actually turn into dust

You guys are kinda hypocritical. You say that you don't like the homogenisation(I am jumping to a conclusion here because most ppl complaining about healer roles are against the homogenisation as well) of the healer classes yet you want whm to play the same way as the other two healer classes. It is easy to reduce glare's cast, and turn the lily spells into ogcds and have whm play exactly the same as ast or give whm an instant strike attack like the sch. But it is a whm at the end of the day not another copy of ast or sch. It's gameplay must feel different first and foremost and currently feels a lot different than the other two healers. And yes, it must stay different and hopefully it will, regardless of what you guys think.

[Jandor]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

Why wouldn't it come naturally? Nearly every game in existence makes you deal damage with your character.

[Shurrikhan]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer?

Yes. Yes it did.

[Lyth]

It really just depends on the opportunity cost of healing. Mobs don't hit hard enough for you to be afraid. If someone dies, you can raise with impunity. There's no real resource management or time costs associated with healing. Given that sort of design, then yes, you should be predominantly doing damage because there's nothing else of value to do. SE is scared to let you actually heal, because feelings will be hurt if people die. So you dps.

But they also don't want to let you differentiate between healers on the basis of damage. There's a fairly big gap now between true DPS and other roles, because feelings will be hurt if you do more damage than the actual DPS. You're also going to tend to do very similar dps to other jobs in the same role. So how do you make the jobs feel different?

The only way left to differentiate healers is through resource management. If you want WHM to be a damage focused healer, then make them into a healer that regenerates MP based off doing damage. Let access to your oGCD heals be MP-gated, not time gated. What if, say, you had an on demand Tetra with a large MP cost where the only real limitation was whether you refreshed your MP back by doing enough damage? Recast times are not the only way to gate access to oGCDs.

[Semirhage]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

Doubt away. I dealt damage in that MMO from the beginning too.

You guys are kinda hypocritical. You say that you don't like the homogenisation(I am jumping to a conclusion here because most ppl complaining about healer roles are against the homogenisation as well) of the healer classes yet you want whm to play the same way as the other two healer classes. It is easy to reduce glare's cast, and turn the lily spells into ogcds and have whm play exactly the same as ast or give whm an instant strike attack like the sch. But it is a whm at the end of the day not another copy of ast or sch. It's gameplay must feel different first and foremost and currently feels a lot different than the other two healers. And yes, it must stay different and hopefully it will, regardless of what you guys think.

I've heard it said that utility, damage, oGCDs, buffs, debuffs, DoTs, and being powerful were the sole purview of AST and SCH, but this is the first I've heard that "not being designed to flow like tar" was their exclusive shared identity.

This "difference" WHM has from the other two is that its design punishes you for getting better at playing it. Now to be fair, all three of them do some of that now that the horrid damage "rotations" are the skill cap reward, but WHM's kit is unique in that it also rewards you with gameplay that's about minimizing the ways your kit punishes you instead of working toward ways it rewards you. Which is Bad. Game. Design.

[GrimGale]

You guys are kinda hypocritical. You say that you don't like the homogenisation(I am jumping to a conclusion here because most ppl complaining about healer roles are against the homogenisation as well) of the healer classes yet you want whm to play the same way as the other two healer classes. It is easy to reduce glare's cast, and turn the lily spells into ogcds and have whm play exactly the same as ast or give whm an instant strike attack like the sch. But it is a whm at the end of the day not another copy of ast or sch. It's gameplay must feel different first and foremost and currently feels a lot different than the other two healers. And yes, it must stay different and hopefully it will, regardless of what you guys think.

"Uhh you guys are kinda sus? "

In all seriousness, wanting healers to have a more complex/engaging damage rotation during healing downtime and wanting them to be less homogenized aren't too contradictory feelings. If anything giving each healer their own flavour of dps opens more avenues for distinct design.

Again:

AST as a raid buffer, rDPS master with pure heals.
WHM as a personal DPS master with pure heals.
SCH as a raid buffer (or enemy debuffer, which is effectively the same but mechanically distinct.), rDPS master with shield heals.
SGE as a personal DPS master with shield heals.

There is space for everyone, nobody steps on anyone's toes and you can design systems for each class that are distinct from the others.

Though this works only if you take the DPS side of the healers into account.

[Roeshel]

"Uhh you guys are kinda sus? "

In all seriousness, wanting healers to have a more complex/engaging damage rotation during healing downtime and wanting them to be less homogenized aren't too contradictory feelings. If anything giving each healer their own flavour of dps opens more avenues for distinct design.

Again:

AST as a raid buffer, rDPS master with pure heals.
WHM as a personal DPS master with pure heals.
SCH as a raid buffer (or enemy debuffer, which is effectively the same but mechanically distinct.), rDPS master with shield heals.
SGE as a personal DPS master with shield heals.

There is space for everyone, nobody steps on anyone's toes and you can design systems for each class that are distinct from the others.

Though this works only if you take the DPS side of the healers into account.

What's sus?

Also, wanting whm to rely on ogcd to heal because the other two healer classes that rely on ogcd to heal are doing better in savage is the same as asking for homogenization.

I would personally prefer for whm and sage to have buffs which they can apply to their party members. For example, presence of mind doesn't have to be a personal buff but a raid wide with a lower spell cast and skill speed bonus. It already reduces auto-attacking for whatever reason. It can be a spell locked behind using misery or something. I don't mind whm becoming complex but I don't want it to become yet another healer that relies only on ogcd to heal.

[Roeshel]

The only way left to differentiate healers is through resource management. If you want WHM to be a damage focused healer, then make them into a healer that regenerates MP based off doing damage. Let access to your oGCD heals be MP-gated, not time gated. What if, say, you had an on demand Tetra with a large MP cost where the only real limitation was whether you refreshed your MP back by doing enough damage? Recast times are not the only way to gate access to oGCDs.

This sounds nice btw. I always wondered why ogcd consume no mp.

[Rilifane]

When you played your first mmo, did it come naturally to you to dps in dungeons as a healer? I really doubt that it did.

It did.
It took maybe 2-3 pulls for me to notice that I have enough time to dot everything, followed by as much Smite spam as my mana allowed when I healed my first dungeon in Vanilla WoW. And with tighter mana and far tighter aggro management and hit being a thing, it was the most risky and punishing time for healers to dps.

You guys are kinda hypocritical. You say that you don't like the homogenisation(I am jumping to a conclusion here because most ppl complaining about healer roles are against the homogenisation as well) of the healer classes yet you want whm to play the same way as the other two healer classes. It is easy to reduce glare's cast, and turn the lily spells into ogcds and have whm play exactly the same as ast or give whm an instant strike attack like the sch. But it is a whm at the end of the day not another copy of ast or sch. It's gameplay must feel different first and foremost and currently feels a lot different than the other two healers. And yes, it must stay different and hopefully it will, regardless of what you guys think.

Relying on oGCDs is. Not. An. Identity. Being braindead is not an identity either.
Nor is it homogenization by default when there are countless ways to design oGCDs. Delayed heal, decaying heal, triggered heal, regen, shields, ground target heal, oGCDs tied to resources and synergies open up a lot of ways to design oGCDs. If you think that every healer will play the same just because the use skills tagged as "Ability" over "Spell", that's on you.
SCH is "WHM plus something cool, but different from AST" and AST is "WHM plus something cool, but different from SCH", not the other way around.