Endwalker White Mage has Issues

[Shuuli]

Meanwhile you CAN clear all content, but P3S highly favors AST over WHM for sure.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

snippity.

AST’s Lightspeed has been reworked since 5.3 and onward: it no longers reduces MP cost. It’s purely mobility tool now that reduce all cast time by 2.5s. This DOES NOT make you cast anything faster. All this does is to frontload the next heal. If any, Lightspeed can be used to make it easier to weave your cards to your party with longer weaving window without clipping.

Essential being at 40s cooldown literally means it will -always- be available for 1 use every single pull. This is an advantage ASTs have over WHM because they can Gravity few more before they need to fall back to use Benefic II. Stacking asp helios regen at this level range may be a controversial method, but it adds a decent, comfy period of 300p regen for the tank of where you can safely push out more Gravities. Of course you’re not going to frontload these regens in middle of pull.

SGE’s Kardion has never been intended as their ‘main healing’ actions. It works like a maintenance healing but it adds up over time, similarly like SCH’s constant fairy embraces. The difference is SGE are rewarded more if they’re playing aggressively (to my opinion, they should). Do not underestimate Kardion/Embrace healing, they usually adds up to disgusting portion of SCH/SGE’s total healing. By the time you’ve exhausted third Druochole most of the mobs would’ve been dead or close to dying, there won’t be any need to ‘spam E.Diagnosis and hope for the best.’ This goes the same for SCHs too. Unless… if both DPSes are single targeting.

With all that I’ll have to respectfully disagree with your last paragraph. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying ”LoL wHm CaN’t Do AnYtHiNg.”. I just genuinely feel devs are too scared in making their favorite healer job a liiitttle bit smoother and decided to put these weird limitations vs other healers cause it’s ‘simpler’. If it’s simpler then why make it harder vs the other?

This is why I’ve stopped suggesting newcomer healer to start with WHM…

[T-Owl]

AST’s Lightspeed has been reworked since 5.3 and onward: it no longers reduces MP cost. It’s purely mobility tool now that reduce all cast time by 2.5s. This DOES NOT make you cast anything faster. All this does is to frontload the next heal. If any, Lightspeed can be used to make it easier to weave your cards to your party with longer weaving window without clipping.

Essential being at 40s cooldown literally means it will -always- be available for 1 use every single pull. This is an advantage ASTs have over WHM because they can Gravity few more before they need to fall back to use Benefic II. Stacking asp helios regen at this level range may be a controversial method, but it adds a decent, comfy period of 300p regen for the tank of where you can safely push out more Gravities. Of course you’re not going to frontload these regens in middle of pull.

SGE’s Kardion has never been intended as their ‘main healing’ actions. It works like a maintenance healing but it adds up over time, similarly like SCH’s constant fairy embraces. The difference is SGE are rewarded more if they’re playing aggressively (to my opinion, they should). Do not underestimate Kardion/Embrace healing, they usually adds up to disgusting portion of SCH/SGE’s total healing. By the time you’ve exhausted third Druochole most of the mobs would’ve been dead or close to dying, there won’t be any need to ‘spam E.Diagnosis and hope for the best.’ This goes the same for SCHs too. Unless… if both DPSes are single targeting.

With all that I’ll have to respectfully disagree with your last paragraph. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying ”LoL wHm CaN’t Do AnYtHiNg.”. I just genuinely feel devs are too scared in making their favorite healer job a liiitttle bit smoother and decided to put these weird limitations vs other healers cause it’s ‘simpler’. If it’s simpler then why make it harder vs the other?

This is why I’ve stopped suggesting newcomer healer to start with WHM…

Stacking Soteria with either Physis or kerachole once it has its hot component is actually a pretty strong combo on the tank in pulls. Soteria alone turns Kardias healing potency into a wooping 255 every gcd, so you have either have 385 potency healing every tick plus a healing buff where I'm not sure how it interacts with both spells or still 355 potency healing with an additional 10% mitigation buff.

[execlinca]

I don't think Holy's cast time is an issue - it's working as intended. Holy has a stun while the other AoE damage spells for healers do not, and its very OP for that. It makes dungeon healing much clunkier, but ironically makes lilies better as you can use them to weave. If they reduced Holy's cast they would remove the stun and I think no one wants that.

WHM right now just has bizarre disparities with AST. Cure 2 costs 1000mp for an 800 potency heal... Benefic 2 costs 700 MP for an 800 potency heal. They're identical. In fact, AST has a shorter cast time - if anything Benefic 2 should cost more! It's like this for all WHM and AST's basic heals and it just looks insane, especially when AST has incredible MP recovery and doesn't need the reduced cost.

Even if AST didn't have Astrodyne, it would have Draw for 500 MP every 30 seconds. WHM has Thin Air for 400MP every 60 seconds, and it has nothing extra. Of course I hold a single Thin Air stack for raises or medicas, but in reality the vast VAST majority of Thin Air usage goes on cooldown on Glare. It's extremely poor. With this said, I don't have MP issues unless things go wrong... in which case my MP doesn't recover for 3 minutes, I simply don't have the capacity to regenerate mana faster than I spend it.

I feel like WHM's problems right now are just its kit doesn't fit together, and the current focus on making healing 'easy' while ignoring players who like to optimise and do high end content has left WHM in a very odd place. WHM feels fine to play casually, but if you are trying to optimise it feels awful. You actively DON'T want to use your lilies unless in downtime. The 1.5 cast time has done wonders for WHM, as it can now actually use previously unused abilities like Plenary Indulgence, but as lilies cannot be weaved and Misery is a huge loss it makes them vastly worse.

Liturgy is beautiful and theoretically powerful, but in practice there are very little places you can get its potential out, which makes using it feel bad. Because of its long cooldown and short use period, you can't even use it on all of these places. You pick a specific moment where it will get as much use as possible (P3S add phase) and then work around it (meaning I'm hilariously using it immediately at the start of the fight on the raidwide and... the tankbuster?). It just isn't satisfying and is very frustrating.

[execlinca]

That's enough rambling but these are my thoughts to fix all this:

1. Liturgy CD reduction OR lasts longer OR activates on anyone taking damage, not just the WHM (literally any one of these buffs, not even all of them, would make it so much better)
2. Don't lose lilies when you die. AST and SGE keep their resources and SCH can recover them quickly with Dissipation, WHM has poor MP recovery as it is without being forced to Cure 2 after dying
3. Assize MP buff in line with SCH Aetherflow (so 8% MP or so?) - this would hugely help WHM's MP
4. Change WHM's MP costs (Cure 2, etc) to match AST's - there is no reason for them to cost more
5. Misery potency buff in line with Glare - lilies are good again!!! I also liked the earlier suggestion of Misery costing two lilies as another option, would allow for a lot more strategic Miseries
6. An Aetherflow style buff icon for lilies to show my cohealer how many I have. This is just quality of life and not an actual problem but it would help so much. Often other healers assume WHM can instantly fix things with its powerful heals but when we have no resources, it's actually very difficult...

I'm levelling AST right now but to be honest I'm enjoying it a lot less than I would be if I wasn't thinking 'I should be maining AST instead of WHM'. There is fun in AST but I don't super love the gimmick and I'm not ready to let WHM go, but I might if there aren't any changes... the changes are all very simple fixes that wouldn't make the job more difficult for newbies and casual players. They would make it easier and more fun for everyone.

The other healers are in amazing spots right now (super super happy with SCH this expansion!!) and it would just be perfect if WHM could have a few adjustments to get on their level.

[Silver-Strider]

I don't think Holy's cast time is an issue - it's working as intended. Holy has a stun while the other AoE damage spells for healers do not, and its very OP for that. It makes dungeon healing much clunkier, but ironically makes lilies better as you can use them to weave. If they reduced Holy's cast they would remove the stun and I think no one wants that.

Let me tell you why the cast time on Holy not being adjusted is a problem. The stun is NOT indefinite. You get 3 stuns before enemies become immune and at that point you are constantly having to move in order to avoid any potential AoEs that are thrown at your position, meaning that because of the 2.5s cast time, you usually end up having to cancel your AoE in order to not get hit and potentially killed in a trash pull. None of the other healers have this issue. SCH and SGE's are instant cast and can get out of the way no problem and AST is ranged and was never a problem to begin with. WHM loses out on damage every time it has to move for its AoE and for the healer that's entire purpose is damage is crap design, especially when it's already bad enough that you have to wait an extra second for the actual stun to take effect due to the animation delay.

I fail to see how exactly a 1.5s cast time on Holy would be OP.
The recast timer is still 2.5s so other than getting that stun out 1s earlier, it doesn't really change anything.

[execlinca]

Let me tell you why the cast time on Holy not being adjusted is a problem. The stun is NOT indefinite. You get 3 stuns before enemies become immune and at that point you are constantly having to move in order to avoid any potential AoEs that are thrown at your position, meaning that because of the 2.5s cast time, you usually end up having to cancel your AoE in order to not get hit and potentially killed in a trash pull. None of the other healers have this issue. SCH and SGE's are instant cast and can get out of the way no problem and AST is ranged and was never a problem to begin with. WHM loses out on damage every time it has to move for its AoE and for the healer that's entire purpose is damage is crap design, especially when it's already bad enough that you have to wait an extra second for the actual stun to take effect due to the animation delay.

I fail to see how exactly a 1.5s cast time on Holy would be OP.
The recast timer is still 2.5s so other than getting that stun out 1s earlier, it doesn't really change anything.

I know what you're saying, but to adjust Holy's cast time they would have to add that special something to other healer's AoE (which they said they would I'm sure? But it didn't materialise).

It's just a bit more difficult to use, which is fair when the stun is so powerful. It shouldn't be as effortless as AST. I don't think it would be balanced to be the same cast time as AST while AST doesn't have any additional power (sure, I would accept Holy being ranged instead? It would probably match better since both shield healers are melee). Not that I think AST needs buffing right now, I just think asking for 1.5 cast time on Holy is one of the things that seems excessive and could easily make the devs ignore the other criticisms that are much bigger issues.

[Semirhage]

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, White Mage was the weakest of the healers by a hilarious margin, but yet still any suggestion to make it stronger is met with "but you have to be careful, or White Mage could become OP!"

Thank god the developers are so careful to make sure WHM doesn't become OP. In fact they're so careful that it's got frequent flyer miles on weakest-in-role.

[Silver-Strider]

I know what you're saying, but to adjust Holy's cast time they would have to add that special something to other healer's AoE (which they said they would I'm sure? But it didn't materialise).

It's just a bit more difficult to use, which is fair when the stun is so powerful. It shouldn't be as effortless as AST. I don't think it would be balanced to be the same cast time as AST while AST doesn't have any additional power (sure, I would accept Holy being ranged instead? It would probably match better since both shield healers are melee). Not that I think AST needs buffing right now, I just think asking for 1.5 cast time on Holy is one of the things that seems excessive and could easily make the devs ignore the other criticisms that are much bigger issues.

I don't see Holy's stun as powerful. I see it as a necessity to offset WHM's lack of oGCDs. The other healers have a plethora of oGCD heals that offset the lack of a secondary effect on their AoE skills, while posing little to no risk to them due to their nature of being instant cast or ranged. Holy in comparison has the longest cast time, making it much more riskier to use while also lacking the oGCDs of the other healers to at least minimize the need to stop using Holy once the stun is no longer in effect. Once Holy's stun is used up, you have to clip what few oGCD heals you have in order to try and continue using Holy but if any AoE attacks come at you, you have to cancel your cast and move, essentially wasting what opportunity your oGCD would have offered since you had to delay your cast even more than the clipping of the oGCD alone.

At this point, whatever advantage Holy used to have is lost beneath the waves of oGCD that other healers have at their disposal and the saddest part about it is that the Devs are so terrified of touching WHM because it's the most "popular" healer and think any changes would cause it to drop in popularity so they just ignore it.

[Azurarok]

If anything shortening Holy's cast would put it on par with Astro's Gravity, which has a shorter cast and is ranged.

I think the current MP cost of CureII would be more acceptable if it charges the Blood Lily and/or Freecure was a 100% proc and/or Freecure worked on/gets procced by more than just CureII.

Also, instead of Liturgy being on a long CD with 5 stacks that we rarely fully use, have something charge up stocks for it and allow the ability to be used whenever it has a stock or two. Then have using Liturgy spend all stocks you have at once, converting them to the number of stacks it has.