The Future of WHM

[snuggans]

Although the refresh rate of Lillies reduced down to 20s was nice, it feels like there is often a surplus

this. in some content the tank can be kept alive through some proactive non-Lily healing, it pains me to see those 3 lilies just sitting there, and i KNOW there are some WHM who are spamming Solace on a fully healed tank just to get to use Misery and that's just bad design. we need an extra spell to spend these surplus lilies on that is not a heal, could be a shield, could be a buff, could be a damage spell. and if SE is worried about ability bloat, then let's talk about perhaps transforming Thin Air into something related to surplus lilies, or finally solving the Cure 1 + Freecure dilemma

[Liam_Harper]

A shield you don't need is just as useless as a heal you don't need and WHM can't have a buff or damage spell because Misery locks the whole design into a corner.

Content simply needs to hit harder and/or more often so there are less situations where you're sitting on 3 lilies and don't need any.

[currentlemon]

Okay, so mostly everyone here is in agreement that WHM is in an okay spot, but the levelling and downtime experience needs to drastically improve. The job does feel awful when levelling, so introducing old spells like Divine Seal and Stoneskin and then upgrade them to spells like Divine Benison and Temperance is a good idea. We also need another lily ability as we sometimes have a surplus of lilies ever since the 6.1 buff.

[snuggans]

A shield you don't need is just as useless as a heal you don't need

well no because overhealing does nothing but a shield gives the tank that 2nd HP bar for upcoming damage. more wiggle room for me to pew pew

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

A shield you don't need is just as useless as a heal you don't need and WHM can't have a buff or damage spell because Misery locks the whole design into a corner.

Content simply needs to hit harder and/or more often so there are less situations where you're sitting on 3 lilies and don't need any.

To be frank, I’d very much prefer devs to keep the old 30s default timer BUT can be speed up through a good use of WHM’s other kits. To name a few that I mentioned in the past: a use of tetra speed up lily timer by 15s, breaking benison shield speed up by 5s, and few others that I couldn’t remember without looking back in the list.

[Liam_Harper]

well no because overhealing does nothing but a shield gives the tank that 2nd HP bar for upcoming damage. more wiggle room for me to pew pew

But the shield absorbing damage reduces the damage you need to heal further, leading to something else overhealing instead or still resulting in less lilies needed. It's just like that wasted Solace except you heal in advance instead of afterwards.

In most cases, even Savage, a tank can be sustained purely from free oGCD's, their own self heal and the aoe heal you use for the rest of the party. Pushing a shield onto them on top of that is unnecessary.

The reason WHM's are spamming Solace on a fully healed tank is because there's no damage to heal, like you said. A shield does nothing because there's no damage to heal, they'll still end up fully healed without it, even if you pew pew.

To be frank, I’d very much prefer devs to keep the old 30s default timer BUT can be speed up through a good use of WHM’s other kits. To name a few that I mentioned in the past: a use of tetra speed up lily timer by 15s, breaking benison shield speed up by 5s, and few others that I couldn’t remember without looking back in the list.

I'd tie it to dps personally, but I know that would cause uproar.

Tying it to heals is always awkward (especially a "good" use) because heals aren't always needed or you have a GCD heal spamming co-heal. Even on harder fights Rapture is much better value than Tetra so you'd happily pop a pure overheal Tetra to prep for a raidwide. Breaking a Benison shield is a good idea, although I still think bosses need to hit harder so you aren't just going through the motions despite the fact that your co-healers Kardia and Nascent flash would have it covered if you didn't bother.

It's very hard to properly reward healing. There are too many factors. Co healer, the encounter, gear, group skill and so on. Rewarding dps is easy, it's always useful.

[Silver-Strider]

I can only think of a handful of ways to deal with surplus lilies and none are particularly likely to happen.

1) Return Lilies back to 30s
2) Rework our oGCD toolkit to GCDs tied into the Lily System
3) Remove some oGCDs to make the Lily System more needed
4) Increase damage the party takes
5) Nerf the potency of healing skill.

Returning Lilies to 30s again would hurt WHM's DPS as Misery would no longer align with Raid buffs
Reworking our oGCD into GCDs tied into the Lily system just makes them into GCD Aetherflow abilities and unless Lilies start off capped as well as have them passively generate outside of combat, we'd be unable to utilize them during the start of an instance.
Removing some oGCDs could theoretically work but which oGCDs? Tetra is probably the most likely but what else would you remove?
Increasing the damage would work but SE has already killed that idea
Nerfing Healing potency would work too but considering that they recently buffed potencies, I doubt that's happening too.

SE just needs to admit to being wrong and make the game slightly more demanding in regards to healing. Add mobs/bosses that throw out some spicy DoTs or can Crit party members, have raidwides that do more damage the lower your health is, have mechanics that hit a random DPS multiple times in rapid succession while the boss is hitting the Tank with a Tankbuster. Right now, all SE does is add more and more healing tools and nothing to justify their existence or inclusion because even ignoring half of them will result in overhealing in most cases and Savage/Ultimate can barely justify having 2 healers as is and that needs to change.

[Esmoire]

I can think of like five actions I would immediately yeet into the sun if it meant WHM could have Seraph Strike in PvE because it's some of the most fun I have with WHM.

[Shurrikhan]

Why fixate on excess Lilies, though, when in those same situations every healer has excess free tools?

[snuggans]

But the shield absorbing damage reduces the damage you need to heal further, leading to something else overhealing instead or still resulting in less lilies needed.

not necessarily, the shield would mean that the other heals can be delayed and you'd spend that period DPSing instead of maintaining the tank, your argument is based on not making any alterations to playstyle after new abilities are added to the game. remember, the point is to be able to offload surplus lilies in a way thats still useful when the tank's HP is doing fine, a shield would accomplish this and buy you more time to DPS while helping unlock Misery without Solace overheals

also i have no idea what you mean by "WHM can't have a buff or damage spell because Misery locks the whole design into a corner.", it just seems like you're boycotting any proposed changes just because