Concerns about WHM in Endwalker

[mobradovic00]

Hello.

Some of my fellow healer friends and I have noticed that WHM has a couple of problems going into EW. One is its MP regeneration being reduced significantly by the new Thin Air - which I'll illustrate by comparing WHM's MP regeneration to the other healers'. The other, bigger issue, which persists from ShB and only gets further exacerbated by the Thin Air change, is that WHM loses damage potency by healing with the Lily mechanic.

I'll first analyze the MP regeneration part (some math involved, unfortunately) by comparing WHM's MP regen to the other healers. This will be viewed through the lens of an optimized setting, where these issues become most apparent. I will also be ignoring Lucid Dreaming, as well as the base MP tick, as they are constant across the board.
After that, I will cover the Lily mechanic, how it ties into the MP issue as well as its own problems, then offer some possible solutions.

Boring part for nerds

WHM
1 Thin Air every 60s. It will apply to a glare - 400MP/min
Assize every 45s. 500MP each - 666.6MP/min

1 Lily stack every 30s, it also corresponds to 1/3 of a Misery. Each of these will replace 1 glare, so - 1066.6MP/min.

Total without Lilies - 1066.6MP/min
Total with Lilies - 2133.2MP/min

SCH
Aetherflow every 60s, restoring 2000MP - 2000MP/min

Total - 2000MP/min

AST
Draw every 30s, restoring 500MP - 1000MP/min
I won't go too deep into explaining how Astrodyne math works out, but overall, it restores ~1250MP/min in an optimized setting.

Total - ~2250MP/min

SGE
1 Adder's Gall every 20s, restoring 500MP - 1500MP/min
Rizomata every 90s, restoring 500MP - 333.3MP/min

Total - 1833.3MP/min

Boring part over.

Cont. in next post

[mobradovic00]

Less boring part

Evidently, each healer's MP regeneration is roughly equivalent. There's some variance but it's all within reason; these are all numbers you can work with.

However.
Using Lilies is a potency loss. 3 Lilies + a Misery are 4 GCDs, worth 900 potency. Comparing this to 4x Glare III, you're losing more than a Glare's worth of potency overall. This is fine at present, since WHM's movement options are very limited, but with 1.5s casts, WHM will no longer need to rely so heavily on Lilies to move around. Since they're also a loss, and not DPS neutral, they will likely lean more heavily on the oGCD kit to heal, making Lilies somewhat obsolete (barring very long movements that Swiftcast couldn't cover).
If you took a look at the boring part, you're aware of the implications of this. WHM has little in the way of regenerating MP (or negating MP loss), since the new Thin Air applies to 2 GCDs every 2 minutes, rather than the current 5. This is fine when you're using Lilies, and your MP is comparable to everyone else's. But if you're not, your MP regeneration is much worse, meaning you'd have to change your gear or play suboptimally to keep up, neither of which is a desirable outcome.

There's another less-than-ideal consequence to this. As-is, the best possible thing for a WHM to do is to spam Glare. Meaning, many players will default to this and simply not heal because it's "not what they should be doing". Whether they're correct in saying this is heavily dependent on context, but, one way or another, this point of view is completely justified by the way the class is designed.

The way I see it, making the class this linear simply makes it uninteresting on some level. If you want to play the optimal way, you have no choice between healing and pressing Glare. You just press Glare. And, more broadly, it means WHM's would be less fun to coheal with, as you already know they can help a very limited amount before they start losing potency.

Some possible solutions

1) Make Misery damage-neutral. 4x Glare's worth of potency, instead of the current 900 (1200 would also obviously be acceptable and is perhaps a nicer number). This immediately and completely solves the problem and it becomes a non-issue. Perhaps Rapture's healing potency would have to be reduced in turn, I'm not sure.
2) Make Misery an off-global. This would mean that you'd only be spending 3 GCDs on Lilies before using your Misery, and as such, the point of comparison is 3x Glare's potency, in which case it compares much more favorably. This is a solution that works, but I feel they would be less likely to implement, as they generally make these big finisher moves GCDs.
3) Bring back old Thin Air. This is more of a band-aid fix, and only addresses the MP regeneration part. WHM would still lose potency by healing and the other issues stemming from this persist.

Thank you for reading.

[Garnix]

Not a healer main but....if that is an issue...why not simply add an "energy drain-ish" spell that consumes one lily to get MPs back and deal some damage? (maybe with a 90s CD to prevent people from using it instead of the healing spells all the time)

Also..are WHM main never using medica/medica 2? I think Thin Air should mitigate the MP consumption on those rather than glare...And that's probably how the devs envisioned it when balancing it out.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Not a healer main but....if that is an issue...why not simply adding an "energy drain-ish" spell that consumes one lily to get MPs back and deal some damage? (maybe with a 90s CD to prevent people from using it instead of the healing spells all the time)

Also..are WHM main never using medica/medica 2? I think Thin Air should mitigate the MP consumption on those rather than glare...And that's probably how the devs envisioned it when balancing it out.

The current Thin Air has multiple potential usage, but they're mostly used during heavy MP cost windows. One of the most recognized is free double raise, followed by brute forcing against back to back heavy raidwide with Cure IIIs (and maybe Medica II too), and finally pairing it with Lucid Dreaming to regain large amount of MP should the need arise.

WHMs has some useful toolkits to use that's just way more efficient until they have to fall back and use Medica II; it doesn't get too many uses. Regular Medica is one of the worst of all healing spell they have, perhaps close enough to Cure I in term of uselessness. The only time regular Medica get their use is when the WHM is absolutely out of lilies, abilities, MP, and/or Medica II HoT is still ticking its duration, which is fairly unusual to happen.

With the coming of Lilybell, I imagine if this is the 'answer' to their gutted Cure III brute forcing capability, considering the ability is also more powerful against back to back raidwides.

[CrimsonGunner]

The current Thin Air has multiple potential usage, but they're mostly used during heavy MP cost windows. One of the most recognized is free double raise, followed by brute forcing against back to back heavy raidwide with Cure IIIs (and maybe Medica II too), and finally pairing it with Lucid Dreaming to regain large amount of MP should the need arise.

WHMs has some useful toolkits to use that's just way more efficient until they have to fall back and use Medica II; it doesn't get too many uses. Regular Medica is one of the worst of all healing spell they have, perhaps close enough to Cure I in term of uselessness. The only time regular Medica get their use is when the WHM is absolutely out of lilies, abilities, MP, and/or Medica II HoT is still ticking its duration, which is fairly unusual to happen.

With the coming of Lilybell, I imagine if this is the 'answer' to their gutted Cure III brute forcing capability, considering the ability is also more powerful against back to back raidwides.

not to mention the thin air + lucid dreaming made dying in progging raids much more recoverable making whm the starting/progg healer friendly then the others which is a huge plus. with that gone ast,his direct competition,is much more friendlier and mp friendly then whm can be with the new thin air change

[Rongway]

Not a healer main but....if that is an issue...why not simply add an "energy drain-ish" spell that consumes one lily to get MPs back and deal some damage? (maybe with a 90s CD to prevent people from using it instead of the healing spells all the time)

Also..are WHM main never using medica/medica 2? I think Thin Air should mitigate the MP consumption on those rather than glare...And that's probably how the devs envisioned it when balancing it out.

The lilies effectively upgrade Cure II and Medica to be instant cast and cost no MP.

Adding a damage dealing, MP restoring lily would be, at best, awkward, because the lilies themselves are meant to be MP positive by saving you from spending MP on CureII/Medica, and then refund some of their damage via Misery.

As for spending Thin Air on Medica or Medica II, there's never a reason to spend it on Medica because Afflatus Rapture is exactly a 0 MP Medica so if you really really need it (you probably don't) you can use Rapture instead of Thin Air + Medica. You could spend Thin Air on Medica II, but if you're sitting on an unused Thin Air just to wait for the opportunity to use it on Medica II, you might never use it because healers have so many oGCD AOE heals that Medica II is often nothing but overheal.

[mobradovic00]

The lilies effectively upgrade Cure II and Medica to be instant cast and cost no MP.

Adding a damage dealing, MP restoring lily would be, at best, awkward, because the lilies themselves are meant to be MP positive by saving you from spending MP on CureII/Medica, and then refund some of their damage via Misery.

As for spending Thin Air on Medica or Medica II, there's never a reason to spend it on Medica because Afflatus Rapture is exactly a 0 MP Medica so if you really really need it (you probably don't) you can use Rapture instead of Thin Air + Medica. You could spend Thin Air on Medica II, but if you're sitting on an unused Thin Air just to wait for the opportunity to use it on Medica II, you might never use it because healers have so many oGCD AOE heals that Medica II is often nothing but overheal.

It's also worthy of note that using a Thin Air on a Medica II isn't an MP gain by itself. Thin Air is always 0 MP either way, so as long as you're not using expensive heals outside of it, you can't milk extra mana from it by using more expensive things inside of it.

[Eclipse12187]

As far as oGCD heals go whm doesn’t have the capabilities that other jobs do. We have Tetra with a single charge on a 1 minute cooldown, Assize which should be used on cooldown for damage and mp regain, benediction on a 3 minute cooldown, and asylum on a 90 second cooldown. WHM doesn’t have the oGCD staying power that sch does (lustrate, excog, soil, indom, the fairy and it’s skills are all ogcd) or ast (2 charges of Essential Dignity, celestial intersection, celestial opposition, collective unconscious, earthly star, and even lady of crowns again come endwalker). As a WHM you frequently have to rely on your cohealers oGCDs in order to avoid GCD healing yourself.

[Liam_Harper]

Don't forget PoM, especially on a shorter cooldown now, will affect WHM's mana consumption due to extra Glare casts.

[BlueMageQuina]

Don't forget PoM, especially on a shorter cooldown now, will affect WHM's mana consumption due to extra Glare casts.

^ This. PoM getting a cooldown reduction is going to put it in the raid buff window—an important oversight because it encourages all WHMs worth their salt not to drop a single Glare now that it aligns with things like Divination, Tech Step and Battle Litany.

The only option that makes sense to me so far is to keep the ShB Thin Air.