Fixing Every Healer Job

[Leonerdo]

White Mage Changes
Aero 3 is back.
A lesser version of Blood Lily is now unlocked at the same time as Lilies.
Glare is now a part of a 3-hit rotation. The Glare combo reduces the cooldown of their new damage GCD, Bloom, by 1 second per cast.
2 charges of Assize. Assize now restores 10% mana.
Gave lilies a spender for when HP is not needed.

New White Mage Abilities
Bud of the Blood Lily - Level 52 version of Blood Lily. Less potency. Replaced with Afflatus Misery at 74.
Shine - Combos off Glare. Deals 310 potency and reduces the cooldown of Bloom by 1 seconds. Combos into...
Smite - Combos off Shine. Deals 330 potency and reduces the cooldown of Bloom by 1 seconds.
Bloom - 30 second GCD AoE with a potency of 400 and empowers the next Blood Lily by 10%. Can not stack. Its cooldown is reduced by 1 seconds for each cast of Holy II and Shine/Smite.
Aero 3 - AoE DoT.
Refulgence - The upgrade to Aero 3. AoE Dia. Has a chance to proc Blinding Refulgence, which works like Thundercloud procs, dealing the full amount of the DoT and reapplying it. This works for Dia as well.
Afflatus Inspiratione - Spends 1 lily to grant a 300 potency shield to all party members.

I guess I'll just throw my feedback on the pile. In the quote, I've bolded the parts that I like. Criticisms first, followed by positive stuff:

Aero 3/Refulgence is okay, but it's not worth an extra button slot. It's just 1 button you press once after mobs are grouped up. People already use Dia on the first pack while running to the next one, and this would overwrite that for almost no gain. You'd just be replacing Dia spam with one Refulgence, and then you have nothing to cast while running. Besides, WHM already has plenty of AoE buttons (especially if Bloom is AoE).

Thundercloud only works on BLM because it's used for movement, filler during Ice phase, or DPS. Balancing those 3 applications makes it interesting. Thundercloud on Dia would change nothing: you would still try to reapply the DoT every 30 seconds.

Afflatus Inspiratione is debatable, but at the very least it needs to be weaker than that. At 300 potency, it's nearly the value of a Succor shield, almost for free (just 1 lily charge, and we have a plenty of lily charges nowadays). For Ultimate and early Savage prog, mitigation is very important, and this could provide an extra mitigation on every single big raidwide. I already think Collective Unconscious on AST is maybe too much mitigation for a pure healer, and this is better than that. Maybe it would be balanced at 200 potency, but it's still feels like an out-of-place ability to throw on WHM. It adds shielding output, but doesn't add interactivity in the kit. (Although it would make WHM/AST a more viable team, to match SCH/SGE. Not sure if that's good or bad.)

On to the positives. Misery is definitely crucial to end-game WHM gameplay, because it shifts a huge amount of power (and fun) into the lily system. As a side-effect, this also make WHM much more flexible because lilies can be used for movement. Making a version of that available at level 52 would help a lot. Being a little conservative though, I would say it's not needed until level 62+. WHM gets a lot in HW, and almost nothing in StB.

The GCD Combo into Bloom I think is pretty much what I would expect SQEX to add to healers. Because it adds a little depth/busywork for the veterans, but ultimately is not very impactful (i.e. casuals can ignore it and not lose much). Maybe that sounds like a complaint, but I think it's good because it gives veterans something extra to track, and you can get very precise about it, but it doesn't hurt much if you drift cooldowns or screw up the combo. (While using Shine/Smite, you want to pay extra attention to the Bloom cooldown, in case the reduction makes it come off cooldown early.) I'd just make Smite reduce the cooldown by 2 seconds to differentiate it from Shine.

The 10% blood lily buff isn't super necessary, but if it's a short buff (like 5 sec), it could be interesting trying to align it with Misery and burst windows. Mixed feelings on that though. It might be one-too-many things to optimize at once, and thus might be frustrating when things can't be aligned properly. I would want to test it before concluding anything.

Oh and I almost forgot. I've advocated for 2 charges on Assize in the past. It's an easy win-win-win. It can be used back-to-back for big burst, so it's fun. It would be available for healing more often (even when trying to use both charges in raid buff windows), so it improves the versatility of WHM. And it's easier to avoid drifting the cooldown, so it lowers the skill floor.

Overall good post, OP. Some of your ideas are crazy, but I like the initiative.

[Sebazy]

I guess I'll just throw my feedback on the pile. In the quote, I've bolded the parts that I like. Criticisms first, followed by positive stuff:

Aero 3/Refulgence is okay, but it's not worth an extra button slot. It's just 1 button you press once after mobs are grouped up. People already use Dia on the first pack while running to the next one, and this would overwrite that for almost no gain. You'd just be replacing Dia spam with one Refulgence, and then you have nothing to cast while running. Besides, WHM already has plenty of AoE buttons (especially if Bloom is AoE).

I assume that SirShady's suggestion of Aero 3 would be as it was back in the day, aka it could stack with Dia. Timing it to land during trash pulls in dungeons was a pretty neat mini game in itself, especially if you didn't want to use swiftcast on it. I could be wrong OFC but that would certainly be my preference.

[SirShady]

I assume that SirShady's suggestion of Aero 3 would be as it was back in the day, aka it could stack with Dia. Timing it to land during trash pulls in dungeons was a pretty neat mini game in itself, especially if you didn't want to use swiftcast on it. I could be wrong OFC but that would certainly be my preference.

Yep! This was what I had in mind, so stacking Dia during pulls would still be your general gameplan, then hit them all with a nice Aero 3/Refulgence and get into your Holy spam, using Bloom, Refulgence procs, and Blood Lily when you can for max damage. Still a simple rotation, but a lot more room for optimizing.

[SirShady]

Yummy feedback!

Hey Leonerdo! Appreciate you weighing in here! As Sebazy stated for me, the effects of Dia/Aero3 (Refulgence) would stack with each other, giving you a reason to use both in trash pulls. Perhaps having the proc work on Dia as well is unnecessary. I was just thinking it would give you more overall damage if you were keeping your eye out for it, and keep you from having to reapply the buff.

Oh yeah, I agree there. The numbers are definitely off now that I think about it. I was just thinking of a Lily spender White Mage's could use when no healing had to go out, and it can't be outright damage since then they'd be penalized for choosing to use the Lilies to heal, as is the intention. With how Bloom works to empower the next Blood Lily I was thinking it would be good to have Afflatus Inspiratione so that if you had lilies to burn you wouldn't just be outright wasting them.

Yeah, I thought about making Smite 2 seconds as well! I just thought that might be too overpowered from a balancing perspective, but I definitely see where you're coming from. The combo finisher should feel better outside of a small amount of potency gain.

To be honest I was just thinking the Bloom buff would be pretty generous. The optimization wouldn't come from timing your Blood Lily within the buff window, but spending your lilies wisely, but liberally so that you could get one off each time Bloom came back up for maximum damage.

I appreciate it! I know my changes are quite significant and would definitely throw some balance out of whack, but I feel they could be balanced number-wise while also bringing some much needed life/fun to the slog that is current day healing.