Honest question for people dissatisfied with WHM:

[Naoki34]

If WHM did the most damage out of the healers but everything else was the same, what would you think of it?

I know this is basically the case with DRK. They do the most damage but people are still upset that it's rotation isn't fun, Living Dead is trash without Benediction, etc.

But for WHM, are the problems that big/fundamental? Or would people just treat them like minor inconveniences, if it meant they were doing the most damage?

If WHM just got +30 potency on Glare and +120 on Misery (about 7-8% overall DPS buff) and nothing else, how many people would shift their perspective to something like this? "WHM design is quirky/nuanced, but that allows skilled players to do the most damage." And how many would stick with the opinion that it's outdated/janky/unsatisfying? (But at least it's not unfair anymore, because WHM gets to be the best at something.)

Sorry to ask the same question several times. I just want people to think about it and give their honest answer, not a knee-jerk reaction.

For me, the problem with WHM is not in its Dps, but in its healing mechanics which have not evolved.

Until the arrival of the SGE, I really liked WHM, but now I've abandoned it for the Endwalker healer.

From the skill animation to the gameplay, SGE is in every way more fun, for me.

I was expecting gameplay improvement, there is none of that in Endwalker.

And then as the 2nd post says, it's spam a skill and its AoE flashbang equivalent, and some skills under CD.

[Dhalya]

My brain hurts.

You are way too vocal for the fact that you hide your main character from forums.
WHM is very comfy for dungeons after it gets Holy, WHM is very comfy for prog as it doesn't require nearly as much planning as the other 3 healers that have strong tools but can't just whip them out of nowhere instantly at any time.
I just tried to bring up the fact that WHM also has (or had) some strengths...
Do I like it currently? No.
Have I quit playing it? Yes.
Is it much easier and straight forward than the other 3 healers? From my experience yes. Maybe Sage is almost as easy.

[Dhalya]

No one here is asking for WHM to be the top DPS healer.

That is literally what was asked at the start of this topic

If WHM did the most damage out of the healers but everything else was the same, what would you think of it?
Sorry to ask the same question several times. I just want people to think about it and give their honest answer, not a knee-jerk reaction.

I just tried to give my response while including reasons why I think it would be unfair... Although there still is a high chance they will go the DPS route with WHM, they don't seem to be creative with healers so..

[Silver-Strider]

That is literally what was asked at the start of this topic

And the answer has been a resounding No because we don't necessarily want more DPS.

We want Lilies to be DPS neutral just so they aren't punishing to use and kneecapping WHM at higher tiers of play.
We want our MP economy fixed to not be hot garbage.
We want our gameplay to be more than 2111111 spam from level 1-90.

We want our class to be fun.

You can make Glare 5k potency, cost 0 MP and be instant cast but none of that fixes the problem with WHM in that it's an overwhelmingly dull class with numerous issues that stem far beyond just our laughably low DPS numbers.

[Rika007]

Nope no where even close. I've only touched healers enough to get them up to level 90 like i do every job and after that I have completely abandoned the role, because thats exactly what the dev team has done to it as well. I love this game, i love these devs, but without question, healer design is the biggest blight on it, and White Mage is the number one offender of it. I'm tired of supporting it. Once they start treating healers like people that have an actual brain I'll give the role a spin.

[Semirhage]

I just tried to give my response while including reasons why I think it would be unfair... Although there still is a high chance they will go the DPS route with WHM, they don't seem to be creative with healers so..

I've argued against this position since Stormblood. It's been floating around here for a very long time, in various forms. Something like, "WHM is simpler so it's unfair if it does more damage. More complex classes deserve more output for their higher complexity. If they do less for more work, that doesn't make sense".

Cool, I get it. So. Let's take that then. WHM does the least damage because it's the easiest to play. So what's it actually good at? I don't mean fake strengths like "has more overhealing", I mean things that actually contribute to parties. Well, let's see. It can't have any buffs, that's not ~simple~ enough. It can't have any utility, that's not ~*simple*~ enough. The only thing it brings to the table is GCD heals (which aren't particularly useful, since every healer brings enough healing to comfortably clear encounters by design, and anyway Astro's are better and have been for years) and boring damage spamming. Which, as argued before, is intentionally the weakest, because it's "not fair".

So now WHM is just the designated crap healer for babies that's intentionally designed to be weaker than the other three. It has lower damage, and doesn't bring anything else to the table. Yay, everyone wins! Except WHM mains.

It's the same reason I always firmly push back against the idea that, hey, why don't we just return all the healers to their Stormblood iteration where everyone was having fun! Oh, WHM sucked back then? Who cares they've always sucked lol, the important part is that AST and SCH mains will have fun again, nobody cares about WHM.

[Dhalya]

I've argued against this position since Stormblood. It's been floating around here for a very long time, in various forms. Something like, "WHM is simpler so it's unfair if it does more damage. More complex classes deserve more output for their higher complexity. If they do less for more work, that doesn't make sense".

Well we can argue about difficulty being a correct metric for DPS output, but if you actually look at current statistics for this savage tier, ordered by rDPS, you can see that SE is actually following this formula:
bard > dancer > machinist
black mage > red mage > summoner
You can see that even jobs with amazing support like dancer, bard or red mage outDPS the ones that don't bring much to the table. Why? Because their rotation is very easy and quick to master.
Why would anyone take machinist over bard or dancer? Why would anyone take summoner over red mage? Or even reaper! It currently ranks the last of all melee.
Because the simplicity is often welcome, for prog or just to chill and/or focus on mechanics. An entry level player will probably perform much better pressing whatever on machinist than trying to keep up with dots, songs, procs and many more on bard.

So I think THAT is their goal with WHM even though they failed, I agree with you that currently it doesn't have much except some convenient panic buttons and it needs a boost in some direction.

[Semirhage]

I think easy to pick up, easy to play with moderate competency, high skill ceiling is the dream I'd have for most jobs. I adamantly disagree with Square's oversimplification crusade. In my pipe dream, the healers all get a good level of nuance and complexity that they approach in different ways. In my nightmare scenario, SCH AST and SGE get buffed (back) up to complex high reward jobs, and WHM remains the ankle height skill ceiling preschooler job that sucks on purpose, and that's what I'd rail against at all turns.

[Hellebore_Ghrian]

It's not about complexity or even dps at all.

In EW, we're at the point where you can play an AST using only its healing gcd and randomly cast its cards/astrodyne only for mp regen and still perfom better than a WHM.

And from my pov, that sentence alone resumes the WHM issues.

[Silver-Strider]

.

I'd argue DNC is much simpler than MCH because MCH has high APM and is very ping related while DNC is extremely straight forward. Then we have NIN that is dead last on the melee charts despite having a fairly demanding rotation while MNK is simple and is leading in DPS. Difficulty is not a valid metric for balance.