Endwalker White Mage has Issues

[RinaShinomiya]

For the love of Hydaelyn can someone please reduce Holy cast time to 1.5s. It makes for some awful dungeon experience being unable to weave or slidecast esp once getting used to AST's 1.5s cast time and SCH's and SGE's instant cast time.
If they're gonna change anything for 6.08 they need to change this.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

For the love of Hydaelyn can someone please reduce Holy cast time to 1.5s. It makes for some awful dungeon experience being unable to weave or slidecast esp once getting used to AST's 1.5s cast time and SCH's and SGE's instant cast time.
If they're gonna change anything for 6.08 they need to change this.

Frankly I don’t mind the 2.5s cast time. It’s a break from the 1.5s monotony & gave me an actual reason to use lilies for movement+heal+weaving without clipping (outside "lol burn lily at downtime for misery go brr brr")

I certainly wouldn’t mind an adjustment, though. I just wish Holy III does more to warrant that 2.5s. They had the opportunity to make it more interesting beside the lazy 10p upgrade and new pretty sparkles, but alas.

[Liam_Harper]

Frankly I don’t mind the 2.5s cast time. It’s a break from the 1.5s monotony

Personally I find it more monotonous to be unable to weave without clipping. Lilies work if you need the heal, but using one just to weave is trying to band-aid clunky design and feels bad.

Not that it matters to me. As far as I'm concerned, Sage is the dungeon king now and WHM is gathering dust on the shelf.

[Ryme]

So after having read through a ton of discussion both here and in other post/websites regarding how people feel and what people think about whm I have some additional thoughts I'd like to share. Personally, I think whm's current identity as the simple, gcd healer is exactly as it should be and currently it's biggest issue is a lack of consistent internal design. Now while I still don't think whm needs a rework to feel good, I do think a rework is required for the current iteration to be the best it can be. So I would like to share my idea for such a rework based on the myriad of different ideas and suggestions I have seen across the community.

Changes:

1. All of whm's gcd mp costs are reduced to match astro

2. Assize gains a second charge

3. Thin Air becomes a 2 charge ability on a 60 second cooldown that restores 15% mp

4. Freecure is removed and Cure I upgrades directly into Cure II (Cure II replaces Cure I), Cure III is still its own spell

5. Medica I upgrades directly into Medica II (Medica II replaces Medica I)

6. Glare III gains the additional effect: Adds 2.5 seconds to your lily gauge (this would make it so whm would gain an additional lilies about every 30 seconds)

7. Holy III's cast time is reduced to 1.5 seconds, and gain's the following additional effects: adds 1 second to your lily gauge for each enemy hit by holy III up to a maximum of 3 seconds per cast; afflicts to all enemies hit by holy III with Dia if any of them were already effected by Dia.

8. Afflatus skills are no longer separate bindable spells, instead while you at least 1 lily available on you gauge, Cure II, Medica II and Cure III transform into an Afflatus version of the spell. The Afflatus versions have the exact same effect that the normal spell but cost 1 lily instead of mana and are instant cast.

9. Using consuming a lily grants Afflatus Misery 1 charge. Misery is useable after accumulating 3 charges, but can hold up to 5. When used, Misery deal damage in the same way as it does now (aoe fall off included) equal to the number of charges expended times the potency of glare.

10. Liturgy of the Bell is changed to put down a lilybell as it does now, and grant the whm 5 stacks of lilybell, Liturgy of the Bell can then be reactivated as an ocgd to use its heal pulse, the reactivation is on a 1 second recast time and when all stack are used or expire the ability has a 3 minute cooldown, no final burst.

Potency will have to be changed to accommodate the extra misery damage, but whm only has 3 potency levers to change, glare, dia and assize so it should be easy to balance whm's damage to be exactly where the dev's think it should be in comparison to the other healers. Again I am not claiming all these idea are all mine just that based on what I've heard and read I think this is the best rework for whm right now. I would love to hear people's thoughts on this and to any devs that may see this, I hope this helps with the direction of whm.

[Liam_Harper]

I think WHM badly needs some new Lily heals as well as an oGCD that generates one or more on demand. The Lily system only has a Medica and Cure II clone, while both Aetherflow and Addersgall get 4 heals each, 2 being extremely strong. Ideally we'd have 4 Lily heals, one roughly every 20 seconds.

Misery is a tricky one since it will always be better to hold Lilies for downtime as long as it exists. As much as a big nuke can feel fun for big numbers, perhaps a better idea would be to have Afflatus heals additionally "drain" Aether from the nearest target within 25y in the form of 310 potency damage, then the Blood Lily becomes a 310 aoe with no fall off that heals allies for a large amount of potency, similar to Pneuma.

Liturgy's issue for me is the cooldown. I'd reduce the potency of each stack to 300 and the cooldown to 2 minutes, as well as a detonate function, allowing it to line up with mechanics more easily and become flexible.

[Ryme]

I think WHM badly needs some new Lily heals as well as an oGCD that generates one or more on demand. The Lily system only has a Medica and Cure II clone, while both Aetherflow and Addersgall get 4 heals each, 2 being extremely strong. Ideally we'd have 4 Lily heals, one roughly every 20 seconds.

Misery is a tricky one since it will always be better to hold Lilies for downtime as long as it exists. As much as a big nuke can feel fun for big numbers, perhaps a better idea would be to have Afflatus heals additionally "drain" Aether from the nearest target within 25y in the form of 310 potency damage, then the Blood Lily becomes a 310 aoe with no fall off that heals allies for a large amount of potency, similar to Pneuma.

Liturgy's issue for me is the cooldown. I'd reduce the potency of each stack to 300 and the cooldown to 2 minutes, as well as a detonate function, allowing it to line up with mechanics more easily and become flexible.

I completely agree with the ogcd that generates 1-2 lilies on demand, I think that would be a great addition to whm, I left it out of my proposed rework simply because I think with the extra lily generation through glare/holy I proposed it would make it feel less like something that is direly needed and more like a nice new tools to inject some additional consistency. I do have to disagree with whm needing more lily heals, not that it wouldn't be cool or fun to have them just that they aren't required, at the end of the day a job's healing ability boils down to two things, potency and availability. As long as those two criteria are at a level that satisfies whatever the job needs to do it doesn't really matter how many abilities its spread over. That being said I do think whm does have plenty of room to expand into new lily abilities in the future both currently and with the proposed rework.

I also have to disagree with the misery thing, while its absolutely true that it is currently better to hold lilies for down time, this is basically just because they are a dps loss. As Mortex brought up, the moment misery is dps neutral, or rather the moment using a lily contributes the same potency as casting glare, as long as you don't over cap on lilies or stacks of misery, holding lilies for downtime becomes objectively worse than using them to heal as you are getting the same dps and either way. While also still being able to burn any additional lilies during downtime for the extra misery dps.

As for liturgy I think your proposed fix is also great, having the ability to detonate it would actually be the simplest way to return some much needed control and utility to the ability without fundamentally changing it.

[Liam_Harper]

I also have to disagree with the misery thing, while its absolutely true that it is currently better to hold lilies for down time, this is basically just because they are a dps loss.

It's because unlike Glare, Blood Lily stacks can be stockpiled while the boss can't be targeted.

I can't use Glare while the boss can't be targeted. But I can blow 3 Lilies and stockpile a Misery. Now it's no longer dps neutral, it's 900 free dps potency I accumulated during a time where I couldn't Glare.

[Ryme]

It's because unlike Glare, Blood Lily stacks can be stockpiled while the boss can't be targeted.

I can't use Glare while the boss can't be targeted. But I can blow 3 Lilies and stockpile a Misery. Now it's no longer dps neutral, it's 900 free dps potency I accumulated during a time where I couldn't Glare.

Alright I understand what you mean now, but I still don't think it has to be all or nothing, again as Mortex brought up in some fights there is no down time to take advantage of in that way but let's just assume for a second that all fights have some downtime in them in which burning stocked lilies is advantageous. I think this still works perfectly well with misery in its current form. From my perspective, it gives whm players an opportunity to optimize play in a job that is otherwise fairly straightforward by planning ahead and using their resources smartly. Fights aren't 100% downtime and going with my proposed rework, if whms were getting about 1 lily about every 15 seconds (or 2 every 30) and especially if they end up eventually getting an ability that generates additional lilies like Rhizomata they would have access to lilies going way above the cap of 3 throughout the fight. In my mind this gives whm players who know the fights, and plan ahead the ability to use their lily throughout the fight and then switch over to weaving their ogcds with glare leading up to downtime.

Thus with proper planning a whm can (potentially) dump the misery they most recently built up during the fight and then stock up lilies again to burn during the downtime. Since only 3 lilies can be stocked there is already a cap on the potential benefit misery can gain from downtime. So if the whm starts stocking lilies about 30sec-1min before downtime (depending on their situation) they can still do exactly what you have suggested, while still having plenty of lilies to use for healing, movement or just charging misery in the fight proper. I think my proposed change offers more than enough lily generation to make that a very realistic situation. But let me know if you agree or if you think more lily generation would be needed to make that viable.

[Mortex]

I think WHM badly needs some new Lily heals as well as an oGCD that generates one or more on demand. The Lily system only has a Medica and Cure II clone, while both Aetherflow and Addersgall get 4 heals each, 2 being extremely strong. Ideally we'd have 4 Lily heals, one roughly every 20 seconds.

Misery is a tricky one since it will always be better to hold Lilies for downtime as long as it exists. As much as a big nuke can feel fun for big numbers, perhaps a better idea would be to have Afflatus heals additionally "drain" Aether from the nearest target within 25y in the form of 310 potency damage, then the Blood Lily becomes a 310 aoe with no fall off that heals allies for a large amount of potency, similar to Pneuma.

Liturgy's issue for me is the cooldown. I'd reduce the potency of each stack to 300 and the cooldown to 2 minutes, as well as a detonate function, allowing it to line up with mechanics more easily and become flexible.

I mean if these would make misery actually dmg neutral it would make the entire job way more flexible i my option. At the moment every good whm player dreads itself for using lily heals just because you lose tons of dmg. But with that change you wouldn’t have the problem and even better you could actually safe it for raid buff windows if you try too nin max. Assize as people already said needs 2 charges because you use it for dmg and not healing except if both lines up. And maybe give aqua veil a build in regen I do find it pretty weak in comparison too all other 86 healer skills.

[Mortex]

It's because unlike Glare, Blood Lily stacks can be stockpiled while the boss can't be targeted.

I can't use Glare while the boss can't be targeted. But I can blow 3 Lilies and stockpile a Misery. Now it's no longer dps neutral, it's 900 free dps potency I accumulated during a time where I couldn't Glare.

But that is always depending on the boss. And we both know atm p1s too p4s have zero downtime and if they keep this whm will not gain and advantage. And also same can be said for sage and toxikon in downtime. Is free mobility tools with a potency of 990 even in downtime.