Creative(?) WHM fix: Freecure rework

[Renathras]

I'm sorry if this has been talked about before, I don't frequent these forums, but kind of had an idea. I'm not sure if it's a GOOD idea, but I hadn't heard anyone suggest it, so I thought it worth suggesting.

I was working with the MP regeneration numbers comparing healers, and WHM's...is sub-par. It has a high variance (if you have a party member dying like clockwork every 60 sec you use a Thin Air to Raise, this gives WHM the best MP economy in the game, but if you don't have that, the worst)

One thought I had was possibly making Lilies generate 5% MP like how AST Cards and SGE Addersgall uses (7%) work (and in a reverse sorta way, Aetherflow, though it generates 20% up front outright). Someone mentioned Freecure and it got me to thinking, are there ways it could be changed to make it (a) work and (b) encourage good play habits?

So I got to thinking, what if Glare/Dia/Holy casts had a 25% chance of procing Freecure, with Freecure reworked as follows:

"Freecure: Your next Cure 1 cast will be instant, cost no MP, and NOT trigger the Global Cooldown."

What does this ACTUALLY achieve?

Firstly, it gives WHM's a more engaging playstyle as they have "more oGCDs" to weave. Statistically, 1 every ~10 seconds. And while you might poo-poo Cure 1, 25% of a Cure 1 is 150 potency. This is equal to SGE's free Kardia heals (150 every 2.5 sec) and ROUGHLY equal to SCH's Embrace (~163 potency when you correct for pet potency, every 3 sec). This is the reason I chose Cure 1 instead of Cure 2.

Secondly, it teaches newer WHM's to use their DPS kit more. One of the worries of new healers, especially coming from other MMOs, is running out of MP and not being able to heal their tanks, or having their GCD counting down at the moment they need a critical heal to go out. This teaches them the good habit of always keeping their GCD rolling on Stone/Glare AND allows them a semi-reliable quick heal for their tank. If we allowed it to stack to 2 charges, this would work even moreso, as people could sit on one stack if they felt they needed to save it while still using the others.

Each Cure 1 freecast would also be an effective 400 MP, and statistically 6 per minute would be 2,400 MP. Note that this exceeds another commonly proposed solution (making Misery DPS neutral so people see burning Lilies, even on 100% overhealing, as DPS flat and a 1,600 MP gain per 1.5 minutes). So this could potentially go a decent way towards reducing WHM's deficit of MP efficiency while allowing them to heal "by doing damage", something that people have been asking for for a bit. It would require a bit more awareness since optimal WHM play would involve proper use of procs, something that it doesn't deal with at all at the moment, and scooshing it a bit closer to BLM in a sense (with how BLM handles Fire 3 and Thunder procs, though for a healing version)

Con't:

[Renathras]

I dunno, I'm posing this here because I'm not sure it's a GOOD idea or not, but I haven't seen anyone propose it, so it might be a CREATIVE one, if nothing else.

Mathematically, it would give WHM ~6 more oGCDs per minute to weave (reducing player boredom and increasing APM slightly), ~2,400 MP worth of better MP economy (reducing their currently terrible MP management a bit), and ~3,000 potency worth of additional healing (a single Cure 1 may not seem like much, but averaging 6 of them per minute over a 10 minute fight is 60 Cure 1s worth, or 30,000 potency of additional healing)

Gameplay wise, it would increase WHM's skill ceiling while leaving the skill FLOOR relatively unchanged, meaning it would still be an approachable healing Job for those new to healing or new to difficult content while allowing people on the high skill end more room to shine. It would also solve the current problem of WHM's having to forego DPS to heal or forego healing to DPS, meaning this change would reduce the "99% parser Glaremage that burdens their co-healer" situations, since they could intelligently weave their free healing in between their Glare rotation. Further, the additional weaves of Cures would give WHM's more to do during combat in general, reducing the WHM general feeling of boredom from simply casting Glare 24/7 while refreshing Dia twice a minute. It would also make using Assize on CD a bit less of a "wasted healing/what if I need it later" concern since you could still conduct fairly continuous spot healing.

Thematically, I feel it would fit WHM well, as WHM right now is not really able to put out healing as it should. For a Pure Healer, its heals (other than Cure 3) are equal or weaker than AST heals, while costing more MP to cast. This would give WHM the feel of casting Cure often while not harming their MP or DPS by doing so, and would be a WHM flavored take on SCH's Eos and SGE's Kardia. It would also give people a reason to keep Cure 1 on their bars, something we see that BLM has with Fire 1. This would more cement WHM as the "heals more, damages more, has less party utility" vs AST, which is SUPPOSEDLY the niche WHM is SUPPOSED to be filling anyway.

Thematically, WHM actually casting more Cures seems pretty on point to me given other FF games, and this would allow them to do it without punishment, and even be encouraged for using their DPS toolkit more, synergyzing it with their healing kit while not making it overpowered but rather bringing them in line with other healers but without homogenizing them. In an odd sort of way, this would make WHM the new oGCD healer (when dealing damage) while allowing it to fall back on its brute force GCD heals if the situation demands it.

Con't:

[Renathras]

And if the uncertainty of it was a concern, it could just be a thing that stacks to 4 and gives you an automatic proc (meaning guaranteed 1 per 4 Glares/Dia), though I'd think this reduces the skill ceiling a bit.

And in an overall "teaching players how to play their Job" sense, this could start as early as level 4 or so, meaning WHM's could finally be taught from day one to deal damage and keep up "Always Be Casting" as both a dps and healing gain.

.

What do you guys think?

Good idea? Terrible idea? Curiosity piqued/not sure what to think/want to give it more consideration?

Do you have any alternatives that you think might work better or be more interesting that would still achieve some of the overall goals listed above?

[Haadrak]

I mean its certainly not a bad idea. However you could take the idea and run with it a little more and reduce button bloat. I still don't think anyone should be casting cure 1 the second they get Cure II. Yes you've made this infinitely better by making this so it wouldn't be a GCD spell, but what would be better still is just making it that Cure II replaces Cure I and then making this apply to Cure II. Now if it applied to Cure II it'd probably need toning down a bit but that way you remove a button that shouldn't be on people's bars anyway and don't encourage people to put it on their bars, while simultaneously giving WHM a meaningful OGCD to press. It would also help aleviate WHMs terrible mana problems. Maybe if the proc rate was 10% for a free, OGCD Cure II?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I like this idea tbh. Rewarding DPSing with efficient healing and making heals not cost dps are imo the best things all around.

Now if only Misery became anywhere close to 1240 potency to make up for using Afflatus heals...

[WaxSw]

I think its a nice thing whm could get but I think it has some flaws:
-To get a freecure proc you need to dps first, but getting into dpsing first is what is hard to the newbies, who heal first, I think going healing->dpsing would be a better way to teach them

-By making cure ogcd you do not reduce the mp consumption in any way as you're not introducing mp generation nor reducing the gcds that cost mp.

-You're assuming that newbies would know to properly weave it which they would likely not, for them the not triggering of the gcd would no be seen as "I can keep dpsing" until much later

-And on a more high end pov, since its rng based it can't be planned around that much (unless its gained after X casts), hasn't that much value as raidwide damage is far more dangerous and common than single target damage. While it can be used for spot healing and tank sustain kardia and eos/selene already cover it and, outside ultimates, with the new tools tanks have the damage they recive is not a big issue, for the spot healing because of its rng nature it perfectly may not be ready. It woudn't change much the skill ceiling imo as it would still be glarespam

Could elaborate my vision on how to fix it but I would have to make another reply

[WaxSw]

snip

To follow up:
First things first:
-Cure 1 upgraded into Cure 2 at lv30
-Cure 2 gets the same mp cost and cast time as cure
-Afflatus missery potency increased to 950
-Misery grants 10% mp
-A dps gain skill/trait is added, gives whm a buff that allows it to execute missery with 2 nourishments
-Thin air unlocked before lv50
-Assize unlocked at lv7-10 (right before the dot, the nuke and cure) and gets a 2nd charge later on

Now the trait Freecure: Upon casting a gcd heal whm has a 30% chance of nourishing the blood lilly

Thin air: Gets the aditional effect of granting a freecure proc when used in a heal

All of this would likely be added from lv1 to 50 so they get used to missery early on the game

Now the explanation:
-Cure 2 replaces cure1 as they fill the same niche (less button bloat)

-The changes to misery are to make it a dps gain, it would deal at least 950 potency per 3 gcds which is a bit higher than 310x3 but below 310x4 so freecure fishing is not optimal

-Assize gets unlocked early for easier mp management as well as to break the illusion newer players may have about healing and dpsing not going together, the second charge is to allow it to be used as a heal

-Thin air unlocked earlier too for better early mp management

-Freecure: There is a common saying "all roads lead to Rome" so applying that principle to gcd heals "all gcd heals lead to misery" and showing a dps reward from the need of healing hopefully newbies will see that dpsing and healing are not far appart and since missery is the flashy skill of whm maybe in search of the good chemicals they become more efficient players.

Freecure coupled with thin air and the dps gain missery would not only make afflatus heals free but would allow whm for a completely free gcd heal every minute which in the most gcd heavy healer could help, also since the rotation would have a little over 1,5 misery cast per minute (which is 1,5 misery casts per minute more than the current optimal rotation) there is small resource management added.

[Silver-Strider]

Pretty inspired idea, albeit flawed. While Cure 1 is still lackluster, making it an oGCD proc effect off our DPS would give it a solid purpose as a health maintenance tool for long fights. My chief concerns though comes from how it would devalue our other GCD heals, namely Lilies, how to balance it and how RNG heals can't really be planned for.

Lilies are in a bad spot as is with the Cast Time changes and lack of Potency upgrade to keep it in line with Glare so to throw in an oGCD heal that could potentially be up every other GCD would just make Lilies even more useless. While Cure 1 is weaker than Solace in terms of potency, if they can be used indiscriminately upon proccing, it really doesn't matter since the 30 second delay between Lilies is more than enough time for multiple procs of Freecure to occur and far outpace the potency difference.

Next is, how would you balance this? oGCDs have CDs/resource limits that keep them in check but if Freecure doesn't have a similar CD attached to it, what's to stop it being available non-stop if you get blessed by RNGesus and just proc it every Glare? Even with Cure 1s relatively low potency, if it procs multiple times in succession, you've essentially make Cure 1 into a 500 potency Regen. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if RNGesus decide "screw you in particular" and it never procs, it kind of defeats the purpose entirely. Since you can't plan it out in advance, it creates an awkward situation of when can you actually utilize it effectively, putting it in a similar boat as Lady of Crown in that you can't rely on it since you can't guarantee it'll be up when you need it.

It's a nice idea but creates a lot of problems too.