Please Tell Me If WHM is OKAY or Not

[Elim]

Hello. I recently returned to the game and I'm being told WHM is a garbage class getting the lowest DPS and healing in the new savages. I'm told any other healer class is better - can anyone shed light on this?

I use to really love WHM but I've been leveling other healers, only because I've been warned WHM is not worth the effort. Is it true? PS, the character listed on the forum is not my main.

[elioaiko]

It's not the worst but I guess by proxy it is? Unlike the SCH vs SGE debacle, WHM has the worst MP recovery (making deaths very punishing).

It's healing is low in raiding due to having less oGCDs than all the healers. And Misery being a DPS loss making using Lilies punishing.

On top of that, it's personal dps is now overshadowed by SGE.

It's the worst but that's because the other healers are doing better than expected. People thought SCH would be DoA but because of the cast time fixes for all healers and Expedient being extremely helpful, it's very much viable.

I wasn't say that WHM is in a terrible place, just that it needs some changes to make it competitive again. Basically they didn't change anything meaningful and now it's flaws are showing.

[ty_taurus]

At the moment, I don't really feel that WHM has any clear advantage over the other healers in any category. By this, I don't just mean that in each key area, one of the healers is better than only this, but that 2-3 of the healers are better than WHM at any given thing whether that be DPS contribution, MP economy, mobility, utility, or even HPS. The only real advantage that it has is that it's easier to use at face value, but if you understand how to manage your tools as a SCH, SGE, or AST, they will outperform WHM fairly noticeably. AST for example, outside of just being a busier job, offers everything WHM offers and more, and often what tools it has are flat out better than WHM's alternatives.

Naturally, this really only matters for Savage. Some players may continue to play it because it's comfortable and they have more control which makes sense, but I really feel that the job is starved of some kind of identity of its own, and I don't think being a less busy healer is enough. WHM players deserve to have something that they hold a clear advantage in. Even when it was MP economy in ShB, that at least gave it a clear value during prog.

We'll have to see if they end up giving WHM some love.

[Acece]

Whm was the worst healer at the end of shb, now it's somehow worse. whm has less healing and less combined healer dps whenever they actually need to heal. Whm have less damage reduction and less range. Whm has the worst mp economy and death recovery. Pretty much everything whm got in endwalker is a worse version of ast. overall whm is the worse healer.

[Risvertasashi]

Hello. I recently returned to the game and I'm being told WHM is a garbage class getting the lowest DPS and healing in the new savages. I'm told any other healer class is better - can anyone shed light on this?

I use to really love WHM but I've been leveling other healers, only because I've been warned WHM is not worth the effort. Is it true? PS, the character listed on the forum is not my main.

Well, so what are you doing?

If you're doing anything other than savages, just don't worry about it at all.

If you're doing savages, you'll need some piety in your build. Healers are rare enough that you should have no issues finding a group, but if your group is even somewhat optimization-minded, they'll probably be wishing you were playing any other healer. However, this has been true for much of white mage's history, so if you've been on the job for a while it should be nothing new...

Whm was the worst healer at the end of shb, now it's somehow worse. whm has less healing and less combined healer dps whenever they actually need to heal. Whm have less damage reduction and less range. Whm has the worst mp economy and death recovery. Pretty much everything whm got in endwalker is a worse version of ast. overall whm is the worse healer.

Not too much somehow about it. SE announced they were nerfing the worst healer in plenty advance of the expac launch, leaving even the JP forums puzzled - so, WHM followed the logical trajectory. The only mystery is SE's thinking since they never talk to us about it.

[Packetdancer]

If you're speaking objectively, WHM's still a totally viable job at endgame; as a longtime WHM main, I had no real issues healing the current extremes as WHM, and I did find the lilybell and the new mitigation (Aquaveil) both useful situationally.

However, in comparison to the other healers, as others have pointed out, there's no one spot where WHM really stands out at present. While it still has good potency on heals, the lack of oGCDs means it suffers in terms of DPS contribution, and the fact that Thin Air got neutered (pour one out...) has not done WHM's MP economy any favors. It used to be that WHM's MP economy was "haha what's MP" and you could run a 0-piety build without concern and never run out of MP, at least as long as you were smart about using Thin Air and Lucid Dreaming. That's no longer an option, and WHM's slipped to the other end of the scale. ("Oh, god, what's MP? I no longer remember!")

So, while it's not unplayable by any means, it's also not got anything in particular to recommend it over the other healers at present. Which is why, despite being a longtime WHM main, I'm running SGE this tier.

(I mean, also, sage just feels so good, and I'm finding that I'm fairly effective with it, so that's also a factor.)

[Silvaren]

It depends on what you are doing. I think WHM is still solid in dungeons, especially lower level 45+ (holy) content where it feels like king, albeit in higher level I think sage feels better as you have an abundance of oGCDs so the stun is less valuable. In higher end raiding, while I know they can clear everything, as a Sage I absolutely hate having a whm in my PF raids as they bring absolutely nothing to the table over the other 3. Having a WHM almost insures I will be stuck doing more healing (50-90% more then the whm) while getting no negligible DPS increase over another healer. Meanwhile an astro has so much utility, a scholar has the fairy + zoom, and if I am playing a scholar I would rather have a sage over a whm as even not taking shield GCDs into account the sage will outheal the WHM, do more DPS, and provide tons of mitigation.

[Sarim]

In situations demanding heavy healing, the WHM is still the king. Big pull, and the tank is not using cooldowns correctly? Just heal through it, np. As SGE, you will struggle much more there (been there, done that).

Unfortunatly though, in most "normal" situations, heavy healing is not needed. And then you start to look at the bonuses other healers bring to the party (WHM doesn't have any really), or the obvious mp/cast time differences between WHM and the other "pure healer" AST.

I would still say WHM is a perfectly fine healer (and it is still my main), it only seems weaker if you compare it to other healers.

[Ironthorne]

WHM is my favorite healer, mostly because I think it has the best aesthetics. In term of gameplay, WHM is the clunkiest, messiest, and weakest healer. Comparing to other healers:
- oGCDs are fewer, weaker, inflexible, and with longer cooldowns
- GCD heals cost more MP, take longer to cast, despite having similar potency
- The lily system feels like an afterthought.
- Weakest MP economy
- Worst mobility in the game
- The entire skill set feels so incoherent, almost as if they created each skill separately without putting a single thought into how these skills would work in tandem

If you read the JP forum, you will see stories about WHM being banned from P3S or P4S popping up a lot. As much as I love WHM and will continue playing it, you'll probably need to play a different healer for high-end contents for now.

[ty_taurus]

In situations demanding heavy healing, the WHM is still the king. Big pull, and the tank is not using cooldowns correctly? Just heal through it, np. As SGE, you will struggle much more there (been there, done that).

Unfortunatly though, in most "normal" situations, heavy healing is not needed. And then you start to look at the bonuses other healers bring to the party (WHM doesn't have any really), or the obvious mp/cast time differences between WHM and the other "pure healer" AST.

I would still say WHM is a perfectly fine healer (and it is still my main), it only seems weaker if you compare it to other healers.

Um... This is kind of an odd statement. I suppose if you pretend that the other healers don't exist, then yes, WHM is the best healer in a WHM-only lens.

Casual content is realistically irrelevant for this type of discussion. Each healer is lightyears ahead of being capable of clearing any content, but high-end raiding actively threatens players with defeat--something dungeons can't even hope to achieve. It's in these situations where defeat is a real concern that players want to start looking at the nitty gritty, because even if an advantage is small, it's adding room for error that may just be the thing that separates a wipe from a clear. If you're in a party as a WHM that hits enrage when the boss is at 1%, there's a very real possibility that had you gone AST or SCH or SGE, you might've met that.

That's not to say that WHM is incapable of clearing or is bad at clearing. It's just difficult to advocate for it when it really doesn't have anything the other healers can't do and better. You can clear all of savage as a WHM and not really have any issues, but a lot of players might prefer the advantages the other healers offer to better there odds that any given messy run could result in a clear instead of a wipe.