WHM 1-2-3

[Almagnus1]

So one of the things I really DO NOT like about WHM is how the job basically collapses down to chaincasts of Glare with the occasional Dia thrown in to not make it as monotonous.

Something I think would help the WHM immensely is if we took the Stone skills and turned them into a skill chain like:

Stone 1 => Stone 2 => Glare
Stone 3 => Stone 4 => Glare

And later upgraded Stone 1 with Stone 3, and Stone 2 with Stone 4. Also, all of these spells should have a 1.5s cast time to allow for better skill weaving.

So what makes our skill chains unique is that instead of just increasing DPS potency for keeping the chain, they should also do the following:

Stone 2/4: AoE HoT (Gift of Earth?)
Glare: AoE Heal

So we're not stepping on Medica, Medica II, or Afflatus Rapture's toes, the AoE heal and AoE HoT shouldn't be all that big, but should still be there nonetheless. If this was copied and pasted onto another class, SE could change the AoE HoT or AoE Heal to a shield.

Even though this will likely cause a ton of overheal, the changes to the tanks with aggro have shown that healers can basically do whatever they want and if the tank is half away (let alone halfway competent) the healer will never pull aggro - which means we're safe to just let the DPS skills overheal as that will provide the WHM with some baseline healing that can be used along with built off of if things go sideways.

[Hatstand]

I like the idea of giving the combo system something extra, but just pumping out extra healing all the time seems kind of wasteful. As an alternative, maybe completing the combo could help charge the lily gauge faster. That way doing more damage helps you with your healing, which in turn helps you with your damage (via the blood lily).

Also, I’d disagree with making all of the damage spells take 1.5 seconds. I’d say leave glare as a full gcd, and shorten the other two. This means you have weave windows, but not an infinite amount of them, and it forces a decision point. When you get to the glare part of your rotation, you have to choose to finish it off with the big damage move, knowing that doing so will cut you off from healing and movement for a gcd.

Those are just some preliminary thoughts. I’m sure there are plenty of other things to say on the topic.

[Vencio]

I like this idea!! Respects!

[NobleWinter]

A little extra healing from Glare would be neat if it originated from the enemy it targeted. This would mean the tank being attacked would constantly get a small stream of healing to help with auto attacks similiar to what the Scholar Fairy already does. In solo instances this healing would apply to the WHM instead as the target. It definitely keeps in line with the "pure healer" vision and wouldnt be the first time they made a dps ability have some interaction with healing

[Almagnus1]

I'm trying to think of a way that a healing rotation would work, but the problem with healing is that you're basically playing jazz with the skills. In other words, while certain combos are quite melodic, there's no "correct" way to do a healing rotation as it's got to be written for the situation which means that a canned 1-2-3 wouldn't be flexible enough, especially since you'd likely not have to do enough healing to complete the chain.

I like the idea of giving the combo system something extra, but just pumping out extra healing all the time seems kind of wasteful. As an alternative, maybe completing the combo could help charge the lily gauge faster. That way doing more damage helps you with your healing, which in turn helps you with your damage (via the blood lily).

Why not both? Personally I'd rather have the DPS skills do suboptimal healing if it helped push DPS because (quite honestly) it makes for a slightly more interesting DPS rotation, especially if a lily was granted with a combo Glare.

Also, I’d disagree with making all of the damage spells take 1.5 seconds. I’d say leave glare as a full gcd, and shorten the other two. This means you have weave windows, but not an infinite amount of them, and it forces a decision point. When you get to the glare part of your rotation, you have to choose to finish it off with the big damage move, knowing that doing so will cut you off from healing and movement for a gcd.

I think the entire kit would need to be reworked (and likely rebalanced) around a 1.5s cast time. Going towards faster casting, Cure 1 should finally get traited into Cure 2 (and Free Cure gets deleted). The same should happens with Medica 1 and Medica 2 as well. That would open up the insta cast spells to turn into GCD skills. I'd also be fine with an Aero 3 getting added back into the kit as long as that too had a 1.5s cast time to help bring some of the Conjurer flavor back into the class that we lost with ShB. That would help give WHM some more interesting game play options as you're figuring out how to quickly cast spells to optimally play as you basically have a decision to make about every other second which could lead to some more interesting game play than what we have now.

A little extra healing from Glare would be neat if it originated from the enemy it targeted. This would mean the tank being attacked would constantly get a small stream of healing to help with auto attacks similiar to what the Scholar Fairy already does. In solo instances this healing would apply to the WHM instead as the target. It definitely keeps in line with the "pure healer" vision and wouldnt be the first time they made a dps ability have some interaction with healing

I think there's a lot that could be translated to SCH and AST if it was figured out on WHM how to get a satisfying DPS rotation so that WHM doesn't feel quite so braindead to play, as a lot of the oversimplification problems with WHM have made the DPS side of the class a complete drag.

[Marc-Vigar]

Small rotation for healers? Yes please.

More buttons? No please.

If something is going to be added, something else has to be removed, I don't wanna have 7 hotbars.

[Semirhage]

Small rotation for healers? Yes please.

More buttons? No please.

If something is going to be added, something else has to be removed, I don't wanna have 7 hotbars.

White Mage has like...four or five fewer buttons than the average job in this game. Its hotbars are empty.

[RopeDrink]

White Mage has like...four or five fewer buttons than the average job in this game. Its hotbars are empty.

Mine ain't.



This is assuming that you literally place every button down. There are still outlier moments where I'd want access to Fluid and Repose (despite the fact that I haven't pressed one of them since Heavensward, and the other is barely even niche). Meanwhile, I have equal (or less) buttons on MCH, DRG, BRD, DNC, DRK, WAR, RDM, etc. I know, I know, the point is less about button counting and more the fact that us WHM's are not exactly drowning in buttons to worry about, but really, MCH has a literal graveyard full of empty hotbar slots by comparison. It's not fair to say ours is empty unless you're literally stripping fat from the bone.

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As for the actual topic, I'm one of those few people who miss Cleric Stance.

As such, I'm all in favour of damage combinations and/or extra buttons. The fact it devolves into spamming a single-target button or AoE button 90% of the time can surely be expanded in a simple but meaningful way.

[blue_skies]

Mine ain't.



This is assuming that you literally place every button down. There are still outlier moments where I'd want access to Fluid and Repose (despite the fact that I haven't pressed one of them since Heavensward, and the other is barely even niche). Meanwhile, I have equal (or less) buttons on MCH, DRG, BRD, DNC, DRK, WAR, RDM, etc. I know, I know, the point is less about button counting and more the fact that us WHM's are not exactly drowning in buttons to worry about, but really, MCH has a literal graveyard full of empty hotbar slots by comparison. It's not fair to say ours is empty unless you're literally stripping fat from the bone.

-----

As for the actual topic, I'm one of those few people who miss Cleric Stance.

As such, I'm all in favour of damage combinations and/or extra buttons. The fact it devolves into spamming a single-target button or AoE button 90% of the time can surely be expanded in a simple but meaningful way.

I'm guessing you'd hate Ninja then:



More buttons, an extra combo gauge and Mudra combos to memorize.

I personally love it. It's by far my favorite class and is incredibly rewarding to play. By contrast, my alts either feel too easy or overly simplified.

[RopeDrink]

I'm guessing you'd hate Ninja then:



More buttons, an extra combo gauge and Mudra combos to memorize.

I personally love it. It's by far my favorite class and is incredibly rewarding to play. By contrast, my alts either feel too easy or overly simplified.

I don't hate it at all. What I said about overall button count has no bearing on my own preferences. Someone claimed WHM's bars are empty, yet you can swap over to MCH (which is one of the spammiest) or various other DPS which are literal graveyard action bars by comparison. We don't need tonnes of buttons in order to make something more engaging than what we have, though I'd have absolutely no problem with more buttons to press. Still, there's something to be said for the simplicity of WHM even if it's not engaging enough for some people. I love diving in and wailing on everything with Holy or Glare between the occasional weave or oGCD, though it's no surprise others find it dull as dishwater.

It's a relaxing contrast to my time spent pushing 20's on my Resto Shaman in WoW - a class/spec that has been rife with button bloat since vanilla and still has tonnes to press after all attempts to cull the overall button counts across the board. Here in FFXIV, I miss old Cleric Stance, and while Protect and Stoneskin were poorly implemented, I don't think deleting them was the answer. Even if you remove those and choose to remove drivel like Repose and Fluid Aura, I still have equal (or more) buttons on my WHM compared to various DPS. The problem is there's no engagement with them, whereas MCH (which gives me huge holes in my UI) is a very active job despite that fact.

It all depends on whether Square believe the current GlareGlareGlareHolyHolyHoly+occasional heal is worth changing. I don't believe they'll add anything else as they clearly want to avoid lacing healing with too much to consider outside of "keep people alive", especially considering the fact that 50% of healers you meet in roulettes act like half their kit doesn't even exist and wouldn't know a Stone or a Holy if it smashed through their own monitor. I'm not wholly convinced that a more engaging kit would encourage such types to change, but it'd be a good start.

Combos, Procs, some kind of revamp of the Lily system, or having it tied to damage so you can ramp up Afflatus burst quicker. Who knows? Maybe something like throwing Stones having a chance to apply a diluted Stoneskin on a nearby friendly close to the target. Shrug. I'm not one for devising systems in my head on the fly as a non-developer who doesn't believe much will change due to how Square have treated WHM for so long.