Quote Originally Posted by CrimsonGunner View Post
doesn't it just sums it up that whm is no longer the prog friendly healer anymore?
one of whm strong suits was his mana management was the easiest of the 3 healers with thin air, now when shit its the fan you basically have nothing cause despite everything you said those lilies were already the first thing to go when u needed a cure/medica spams and when u actually need to dip on gcd heals frequently cause people get hit, you have nothing cause the other healers have ogcd heals that cost nothing which they can throw and whm has none other then lilybell that you can only count if ur hit so you go oom.
sch has all his fairy ogcd and aetherflow stacks, ast has loads of ogcds to help heals but whm has none of those free ogcd other then bene and tetra(asylum like sacred soil dont count for cause its regen not raw heal)

my point is the other healers have loads of mana free cast and skills that they burn long before they burn their own mana pool, whm has none of those and the lilies regenerate 30 per one so unlike the platora of ogcd the other healers have to pull from, whm has basically 3 gcd for aoe spams before dipping to his mana pool.
This is heavily dependent on content design. WHM's still pretty prog friendly to me, if "Prog" strats still mean very safe and designed to be 'foolproof' and simple, even at the cost of DPS. It's just not "Prog King" with unlimited MP for fixing errors or healing huge hits in a row at no cost. I'd say it's still pretty competitive as a prog healer. Your counter-part to progging in the pure-healer slot is AST - but AST's toolkit is very reliant on predicting damage ahead of time.

In terms of emergency & unplanned healing for AST, Microcosmos isn't effective if you use it after people mess up on a mechanic since it has to be activated beforehand... and doesn't work if they actually died to the next mechanic before the AST manually triggers the heal. Earthly Star won't reach it's max potency until after 10 seconds, (and while it takes 10 secs to reach full potential for 720 aoe heal, the new dps adjustment might make it worth using on cooldown over healing, which is somewhat similar to Assize). AST relies on your time and regens from Collective Unconscious, Celestial Opposition, and Aspected Helios. The problem is... if you have time for HoTs to tick, you're probably not in a spot where things have gone to hell.

In terms of emergency & unplanned healing, WHM has stronger flexibility in upfront heals on-demand with their toolkit, especially with Confession, Asylum's trait, and Temperance lasting a set amount of time - your GCD heals can be heavily beefed up as a result and work as direct healing. This includes lilies being affected by their enhanced healing trait. Although it's not by much, if it's a really urgent situation and you need as much healing throughput within 2-3 GCDs, WHM does this really well.

If you compare their GCD healing buff synergies, AST's heals are have less flexibility in immediate potency for everything other than Neutral Sect. Synastry only works with 1 target, so it heals a maximum of 2 people. Horoscope helios is a one-use skill every 60 seconds, but you're going to clip if you try to trigger Horoscope outside of Lightspeed if you want to continually heal with a second use of Helios right after Aspected Helios. After all, Horoscope Helios is meant to be used in a delayed form but can be activated earlier if necessary.


In terms of lasting MP? AST's Astrodyne definitely makes it stronger in prog - doubly so because their MP cost for all spells are cheaper.

In terms of accessible Burst MP? With 2 charges on Thin Air, it's basically a variable -secondary- MP bar. It's actually a pretty neat way to look at it in that perspective. While other healers restore MP faster, WHM holds a secondary MP bar in reserve.


I will say AST looks a lot more powerful overall simply from design kit and gameplay, but WHM is no means weak for prog. Each has their advantages. Of course, nothing is yet set in stone until we experience it in Endwalker to be sure of anything being changed.

... but if MP on WHM really becomes an issue, there's a lot of different quick band-aid solutions while keeping the Thin Air charge system.
-They could add extra MP regen when using thin air.
-Make each charge of thin air work for the next 2 spells instead of the next spell (a.k.a. old thin air but more flexible).
-Lower the charge time of Thin Air greatly (~30 to ~45 seconds per charge).
-Lower the charge time slightly but increase the number of charges to 3 (creates greater flexibility in holding a "reserve MP pool").