WHM Desperately Needs An Overhaul

[Herrisa]

Snip

I agree with you that a lot of skills they removed should come back and be a lower version of higher level skills such as Protect, Shell, & Stoneskin. Not to mention those are classic whm skills and it hurt when they removed them.

For button bloat, having Cure upgrade to Cure II, Medica mimicking Medica II, just a weaker potency, then upgrading to Medica II when the times comes will help. My concern with mp regen is the pre lvl 52 (Assize) problem. Insert story: newbie tank + 1st room Aurum Vale + healer death = <lvl52 whm mp regen horror show. Trust me, Lucid Dreaming doesn't cut it so a better type of mp recovery besides Lucid Dreaming is needed at those levels. Spamming Cure and hoping for a Cure II proc is rough, very rough, on the mp pool.

Names are important since it will at least avoid confusion (why does this Stoneskin do this but this Stoneskin do that?), not to mention the background database stuff going on.

I played WHM on FFXI so I'm partial to Reraise and wish it was in our toolkit but, yeah, it can be problematic which is most likely why they won't let us have it. Thinking about it and reading what Plenary Indulgence in the real world is (getting people out of Purgatory by prayer) what if it was completely changed and became a 2nd Raise skill for whm which will raise a single-target without the weakness buff but on a very long cooldown? It will also remove the Confessions mechanic which seems redundant and underutilized.

[Silver-Strider]

Snip

I suppose if Cure 3 got the radius buff I suggest to 15y, you could merge Medica and Medica 2 in a hypothetical situation but then Afflatus Rapture seems out of place. A 400 potency AoE heal with nothing to compare it to other than being a weaker Cure 3 kind of makes you question why it exists when the original skill is an AoE regen. You could just rework Afflatus Rapture to be a regen as well but I feel as though WHM has lost enough as is without trying to consolidate it even more. The reason it works for Cure is because its just a weaker Cure 2 but Medica and Medica 2 function quite differently from one another that I'm not sure you could merge them normally.

I tried to address MP issues on low level WHM as much as possible, with Lilies skills being available at 30, Fluid Aura acting as a low level Assize with the 5% MP restore, and the low level oGCDs skills of Stoneskin, Protect and Divine Seal offering some extra cushion for those types of scenarios. Believe me, I know WHM's MP issues very well, I stomached it all back in ARR and it was easier with those extra tools, even if they're not the same as they were back then.

On the topic of names, I still feel that they're all meaningless in this game. Bozja and PvP are such minor areas of the game that skills sharing a name between them all is largely inconsequential because you aren't exposed to those areas often enough to even matter and when you are exposed, it doesn't really take all that long to read the tooltip to find out how they differ from one another. It's a minor nitpick and not one that I really care enough to distinguish.

[Shurrikhan]

There's not much of interest in the current WHM kit, regardless, but simple fixes would require little more than...

1. A trait that reduces most MP costs. (Don't bother with Draw/Assize/Aetherflow convolution; just give us a simple passive to reduce costs.)
2. A ~5% rDPS bump. Increase Glare (III) potency by 10 and triple Dia's initial damage. (+460 ppm, up from of 8740 = +5.3%)
3. Having each Lily consumed turn into a Blood Lily, with Afflatus Misery consuming all available --i.e., 1-3-- Lilies (for no potency cost at 3 and, say, 30 lost per extra instant-cast leveraged through using prior to 3 Lilies: 600 for 1 Lily, 940 for 2 Lilies, 1280 for 3 -- equal to 4 Glares, which would now be 320 each).
4. Reducing Liturgy's CD to 120s and either turning its effect into basically Panhaima or allowing for manual, animation-iCD-less activation (likely at higher potency and just 4 stacks as not to get too spammy).

[RinaShinomiya]

*schnip*

I really like the idea of Regen triggering Thundercloud-like feature, something similar could enhance AST too.
If Square goes into the direction of rewarding shield healers for getting their shields broken (so that they actually have a reason to GCD shield heal) then a mechanic like that would incentivise Pure healers to Regen heal like they're "subrole" dictates them to. Right now the Pure & Shield healer labels mean very little.

[Liam_Harper]

Savage, I might see. Post-70 dungeons, perhaps. But Sastasha?

Hilariously, it actually does underperform in Satasha.

Sage has Kardia, SCH has Embrace and AST has Essential Dignity. WHM has nothing extra.

Obviously Satasha is so easy it doesn't matter, but technically WHM is still the worst healer there. It really is a joke of a class right from the start.

[Silver-Strider]

I really like the idea of Regen triggering Thundercloud-like feature, something similar could enhance AST too.
If Square goes into the direction of rewarding shield healers for getting their shields broken (so that they actually have a reason to GCD shield heal) then a mechanic like that would incentivise Pure healers to Regen heal like they're "subrole" dictates them to. Right now the Pure & Shield healer labels mean very little.

I would prefer for healers to play different from one another. The whole Thundercloud proc is to make WHM more like its BLM counterpart and to enhance its own damage so it feels like a powerful healer with strong attacks as well.

As AST is my least played Healer, I'm hesitant on how to actually improve the job to be more engaging as from my past experiences with the job, all the engagement on AST has always been locked behind its card system, rather than actually having more DPS spells (It's always been a 1 Nuke, 1 DoT, 1 AoE class) It had Stella as well I suppose but that was just a weak nuke with a Heavy Debuff attached and was largely irrelevant outside niche mechanics that heavy was helpful in. In regards to its GCD heals, AST has Horoscope, Neutral Sect and I guess Synastry to give their GCD some extra utility so they don't particularly need much help in that department either.

So the only real way to enhance AST gameplay would be to change the Card system to be fun again but I'm not sure returning to the old card system would be the right direction since Balance was so polarizing that all other options just felt like a consolation prize.

I'm not really sure how to improve AST in terms of engagement, other than undo the change to Redraw to give it 3 charges again like in ShB and to reduce some button bloat by merging Play/Crown Play with Draw/Minor Arcana

[Silver-Strider]

Hilariously, it actually does underperform in Satasha.

Sage has Kardia, SCH has Embrace and AST has Essential Dignity. WHM has nothing extra.

Obviously Satasha is so easy it doesn't matter, but technically WHM is still the worst healer there. It really is a joke of a class right from the start.

"But Cure has 50 extra potency than Physick/Benefic/Diagnosis so it's fine" /s.

WHM feels like a meme at this point.

[Mesarthim]

I'd pour one out for WHM but I don't think I can anymore, they nuked Fluid Aura.

[HyperiusUltima]

"But Cure has 50 extra potency than Physick/Benefic/Diagnosis so it's fine" /s.

WHM feels like a meme at this point.

Damn straight. Also, I REALLY am liking the idea of Thundercloud Dia since it gives more agency to the player on where to throw it. All your rework suggestions are good, but I’ll have to wait until I get home to add them to the OP. But all aside, I noticed in the live letter Q&A that WHM is going to get some work done on it, but mostly I’m expecting band-aid potencies and MAYBE MP reductions akin to what they did with AST in 5.2.

[AlexionSkyllark]

OP Snip.

Don't forget to Lower the cooldown of the lilybell from 180 to 120 seconds. This skill is already situational as hell, and STILL we need to choose WHICH situations to use it because if we use it in one, we won't have it up for the other. This sucks big time.