White Mage Attraction

[Supersnow845]

"Oh, so...it's...uh...easy to play?"

Yeah, no: Are any of the healers NOT? AST is more plates to juggle and SCH is arguably up there, but SGE isn't really significantly harder than WHM, just takes a different thinking/approach.


"Well, it has the best crutch back-up heals if it is played badly?"

Yeah...that's it.

So why does every other healer have what WHM does (or better) and WHM has no niche in which it excels? I kind of agree that removing HoTs from the other healers is the solution here, since the other obvious solution is make fights that require WHM's raw healing, but that would make WHM must-have for those fights, so that's no good.

.

Really, the only things WHM has going for it are that it IS the easiest to play (though again, others aren't necessarily HARD, per se), it has the best back-up crutches in the game if everything's gone horribly wrong (which can occasionally be useful, but is that a good identity?), and it has Misery (which is a dopamine hit, but...it's only damage neutral, so if you REALLY think about it, it shouldn't be). It's not exceptional in the ways that AST (buffs and raw healing) or SCH (mitigation and powerful shielding) are, and even SGE is half-way to SCH just without Chain Strat.

I really DO like WHM, but it's like all the other healers are stepping on its toes, but if it asks to step on theirs, it's berated by the teacher for being a bully.

Removing HOT’s from the other healers just leads to a nocturnal AST situation where the healer is useless in dungeons and basically a glorified mitigator in 2 healer content

Honestly the only thing in the current environment they could do with WHM is add a buff but that would just be seen as pointless filler for the sake of it, think AST is only well regarded for its cards, without the cards it’s basically time themed WHM, regen healers are just by nature of this game boring but WHM can’t hide behind cards like AST can

I guess you could make WHM’s damage noticeably higher than the other 3 but that would run into the problems of both except for ultimate you don’t even need the healers mitigation to survive making WHM an obvious meta pick and imagine being an AST and playing yugioh just to do less damage than the WHM

Also side note how is fey illumination medica 2

[Supersnow845]

Until that clown fiesta happened and you wasted all your oGCDs already and are forced using GCD heals, and an aoe targets you. Suddenly this turns into an issue. This while such aoegcd could have mitigated a lot of damage (especialy with bosses that show when they are about to do a strong global aoe). Saving some panic heals can do a lot.

Not every team is equaly fluent. And especialy in 4 player content, you do not have a backup healer.

Now you might say, if you had to resolve to that, its still the team that made the flaws, which is true. But your mistake could have still caused the wipe to happen. While your 10 cycles of not using a dps ability barely made any dent to begin with, and the wipe wasted a lot of time.

Sure, not all content requires you to use these (most doesnt). But there are those cases which arent standard. Also, those aoe healing over time abilities can provide a lot of health over time. And 1 gcd for such buffer can be very much worth it. And the less organized a team is, the more you are forced to rely on GCDs (and the higher the difficulty, the less usage they will see since those demand organized teams).

Keeping people on lower health will influence their decison making, since at safe health a lot more things can become viable as tactic. And those things can also result in a higher damage output. But most important: no matter how much GCDs you saved not using those abilities, the moment 1 dps dies, that dps loss will exceed every single dps you saved. Trying to keep them alive is nearly always more viable for dps output (the only case when it isnt, is when the dps was bad anyway).

Designing a class around the thought experiment of “what if everyone in your team except you is dogshit” is not really a valid design strategy nor a sustainable one, if we designed a DPS around “gets an 900% DPS buff when it becomes the MT because the MT died nobody would say it’s good game design because that situation is rare and to be avoided

People still played like garbage in legacy->HW and our tools were fine to get people though, you don’t even need oGCD’s to heal anything, you can survive spamming GCD’s, so if that’s possible then why design the healers like we are both somehow idiots but also prepare you for a massive gigabrain save when everyone else is garbage

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Until that clown fiesta happened[...]Saving some panic heals can do a lot

I personally very rarely see this happening for following reasons:

• If it's a casual content, you (general you, not you UkcsAlias) will rarely run out of those oGCDs & your GCDs are powerful enough for any crutch healing to prevent deaths in case you DO run out of it. Lv syncing is a bit of a different story as it limits our access to more oGCDs. My favorite ly syncing range is at lv60-70 where I think it's close to the balance between just enough to slightly excessive oGCDs to handle the unavoidable damage, but with moderate amount of mistakes (about the amount you expect from DF folks) GCD heals becomes required. This in turn makes the Ivalice Raid my favorite AR series in the game. Enough degree of mistakes to fix from DF folks, enough amount of unavoidable damage to at least use most of your free tools, and should shit hits the fan your GCDs are there to be used. Compare this to NieR and even the mockingly easy Aglaia. Not once you're needed to touch those GCDs even with clown fiestas because the abundant additional oGCDs you learnt and ridiculously less frequent damages coming out.
• If it's a higher end content, clown fiestas shouldn't even be allowed to happen due to one shots and how it often leads to wipes, either from missing players for upcoming mechanic or the dreaded Weakness/BoD crippling DPS. Mistakes like these are signs of morbidly flawed gameplay which can be exhibited by any roles, and they should honestly try to improve. This goes for both casual and high ends but in high ends that flawed gameplay is more apparent than anywhere else. The more you plan to save a panic heal moments, the more that panic heal will happen. Plan to mitigate that from happening instead.

"Strong global AoE" also rarely happens in casual content (the only one that comes to my mind was 5.2 E8n Absolute Zero spam before power creep and O11n or O12n or both... couldn't remember). In higher end it's more of a mitigation game rather than healing, which is not a secret that it's party's responsibility rather than healer's alone, the shielders particularly.

[...]Keeping people on lower health will influence their decison making, since at safe health a lot more things can become viable as tactic.

If being lower in health influences them to actively move out from danger zones more, then I will do it.
If being lower in health influences them to pop their second wind, bloodbath, and any other lossless self sustenance abilities, then props to them & I thank them for that.
Bonus point on not being on max health: My Eos/Selene can keep casting their Embraces!

At bare minimum, people tend to expect players to at least try move out of danger zones. If they willingly stood in the line of fire, they better know what they're doing because if 'forcing' their healer to adjust to their 'eat vuln stack'-strat without consent is not soft griefing in a team based game, then I don't know what is that.

Don't get me wrong, we have abundant tools to facilitate that sort of 'tactic' (remember E6S soccer strat?) but once the free tools are out, they better own it up if some oopsies happens.

[Rilifane]

Until that clown fiesta happened and you wasted all your oGCDs already and are forced using GCD heals, and an aoe targets you. Suddenly this turns into an issue. This while such aoegcd could have mitigated a lot of damage (especialy with bosses that show when they are about to do a strong global aoe). Saving some panic heals can do a lot.

Not every team is equaly fluent. And especialy in 4 player content, you do not have a backup healer.

Now you might say, if you had to resolve to that, its still the team that made the flaws, which is true. But your mistake could have still caused the wipe to happen. While your 10 cycles of not using a dps ability barely made any dent to begin with, and the wipe wasted a lot of time.

Sure, not all content requires you to use these (most doesnt). But there are those cases which arent standard. Also, those aoe healing over time abilities can provide a lot of health over time. And 1 gcd for such buffer can be very much worth it. And the less organized a team is, the more you are forced to rely on GCDs (and the higher the difficulty, the less usage they will see since those demand organized teams).

Keeping people on lower health will influence their decison making, since at safe health a lot more things can become viable as tactic. And those things can also result in a higher damage output. But most important: no matter how much GCDs you saved not using those abilities, the moment 1 dps dies, that dps loss will exceed every single dps you saved. Trying to keep them alive is nearly always more viable for dps output (the only case when it isnt, is when the dps was bad anyway).

You still missed the point.
Nobody said you're forbidden from using GCD heals, ever. We simply said that a pointless GCD heal is wasted and a dps loss.
Just to make it very clear: a GCD is pointless when something else would've done the trick.

Pointless GCD healing bad. Not GCD heals bad. Big difference.
There will be times when a GCD heal is indeed the best choice and I don't think you need to explain that to any healer that is even half-decent.
Rein is still right, if you could've handled the situation without dps loss then chosing the dps loss was pointless. Healers make mistakes and sometimes decide poorly, lack foresight, panic etc. but that is all besides the point that unnecessary GCD heals are a dps loss and as you get better the panic, mistakes and lack of foresight will go away over time.
That's all we've been argueing and no amount of "but sometimes clown fiesta happens!" invalidates this point because these situations are included in that statement as they do not fall under "pointless".

Either our heals need to be nerfed, damage needs to be buffed, oGCDs need to be pruned, or...I dunno, something.

If it was up to me?
All of it.
We have fluff skills that are simply boring/ overkill and could easily be removed for more meaningful skills - be that dps or healing tools with actual interaction and synergy instead of 2 hotbars full off "just press when you feel like it".
Our oGCDs are not only MP free, they're also hilariously strong. It gives them priority because they surpass GCDs so there is no "stronger but costs MP and dps loss" vs "weaker but free" decision making, it would also mean SE could maybe give back some resource management because pressing LD on cooldown isn't it.
Incoming damage is laughably low. I already mentioned it elsewhere but when you can do p1s and p2s at min ilvl without even touching AF heals on SCH, using your other heals only about half as many times as you could and still walk out with some chunky overheal, something is wrong. It needs to be higher.
And in addition to all of it, we also need some better downtime gameplay because there will always be battle content that requires barely/ no healing like solo duties, fates, treasure maps, former level cap dungeons, several of the story trials etc. because healers still should feel engaged in all content like the other roles; not just in clownfiesta parties, not just in "known for high incoming damage" duties. All.

(Also explaining over and over to someone misinterpreting "GCD heals bad" isn't dogpiling especially when vet healers went on record saying they want more to heal. Doesn't change the facts though: pointless GCD heals are a pointless dps loss, period.)

[ToodlesElNoodles]

In terms of Aglaia and (Alliances): Nald’thal is a well-designed fight for healers in casual content.

You have about 60-70 sec of 6 AoEs to handle (4 As Above, 1 AoE stack, and 50% chance 1 line stack). So using your 1 min or 30 sec cooldown heals initially sets it up for being used at the end. Not dealing with the damage will most likely be lethal to your DPS every other AoE. And the stack/cleaves -> As Above and the red/blue -> As Above can kill folks (usually the ranged or caster dps who decided the optimal location is the furthest away from healers so they get no heals and eat it hard on the second As Above they receive).

All healers will go through their kit by the time this is over and then theres two DDR rounds and an Add phase with a copious amount of time from a long (yet amazing) cutscene. It guarantees that healers should have their whole kit back up again for the next onslaught of AoEs (3 As Above, AoE stacks, Hells Trial). After that, when it goes into the next (but randomly selected) DDR phase, the fight should be over.

Other good design is probably (Hollow)/Diabolos from Dun Scaith. Hollow Camisado is used often and deals lots of damage to the tank where both healers casting a heal at the same time is just about right. And it happens often enough that you’ll need to use GCD (but it’s also level 60 so…ya). There are AoEs that need to be handled otherwise things can get out of control. There’s also the mechanics that has orbs slowly drift across which has happens simultaneously to whatever the boss does and has pretty devastating effects.

A not good design is Ultima’s bubble phase where you sit, contemplate the meaning of life, and wait before considering using your AoE ability while your cohealer spams AoE heals while everyone’s at full HP. Or worse: a SGE that continuously spams E.Prog while their shields are still intact…

Also Her Eminence. For the final boss of an Alliance raid series…holy crap is she boring and dull for healing.

[Renathras]

Removing HOT’s from the other healers just leads to a nocturnal AST situation where the healer is useless in dungeons and basically a glorified mitigator in 2 healer content

...

Also side note how is fey illumination medica 2

That's the thing, there aren't good solutions. The game doesn't need raw throughput, and AST is JUST AS GOOD at it as WHM anyway, and when it's happening infrequently (so that CDs can be used to help out), SCH is also just as good, and SGE is good enough. I also contest removing HoTs from other healers wouldn't really change much, since how often are you actually using HoTs to heal everyone up anyway? If Fey Blessing had 2 charges, removing Whispering Dawn wouldn't matter (btw, I meant Whispering Dawn, not Fey Illumination, sorry for the confusion). Does SGE really need Physis AND the HoT from Kerachole? REALLY? Just give Ixochole 2 OR give it a button that makes Kardia party-wide for the next 5 seconds or next 3 GCDs. BAM! You've basically done the same thing without a HoT that actually leans into its Job identity anyway.

I'm not sure the other healers NEED HoTs. Though replacing them with direct heals doesn't really change anything, either. Regen needs to be oGCD and MP free with no CD or something. It would have to be nerfed in potency, but it would let WHM be the "rolling HoTs" healer and work with FFXIV's current healing model (that is anti-GCD healing) since you could weave Regen that way with no DPS loss.

I do agree that WHM needs something. A buff (Brave/Faith could work) and it kind of needs at least one more mitigation because of how long Temperance's CD is and that Assize doesn't offer any mitigation (a 10 sec duration Protect/Shell to reduce damage by 5% or 10% could fill that void). As you note, this steps on AST's toes a bit, and the Barrier healers, but as I said before, they're all stepping on WHM's toes anyway, so how is that any different/unfair

And when I play WHM, I always feel like I'm missing ONE party mitigation. Do the last boss of The Dead Ends. Block one partywide AOE with Temperance. When the next happens in 30 seconds, what mitigation do you have up?

Right, none.

Sure, it's not LETHAL, but if feels bad when literally every other healer can mitigate them both in some way, and SCH/SCH can do so with the same ability a second time, Soil/Kera, much less dip into all their other buttons. WHM needs a second party mitigation on a shorter CD. It just feels bad not having one.

You could say the trade is that it has powerful group healing...but do that same fight not using party mitigation on SCH, AST, or SGE and see if you have ANY problems full healing the party after it. You don't.

(Also explaining over and over to someone misinterpreting "GCD heals bad" isn't dogpiling especially when vet healers went on record saying they want more to heal. Doesn't change the facts though: pointless GCD heals are a pointless dps loss, period.)

When one or two people offer an explanation, sure. When 5-10 people are all quoting and "correcting" the same person, and most are doing so in less than gentle/kind ways, it's a dogpile.

.

One other thing is damage RATE, not just size. If parties and tanks were taking more consistent chip damage, it would mean we'd have to either use GCD heals from time to time to augment or oGCD heals OR we'd have to let people fall far lower on health before using oGCD tools. Since oGCDs are limited by CD time, having frequent but relatively small damage would encourage occasional GCD heal use to patch people up between oGCD use in the healing plan for the bigger spikes of damage.

Just making more damage ALONE doesn't work because party damage can never do more than 99% of party member health otherwise people drop. You can't heal 110% damage if it happens in a single hit, you'd have to use a Raise or shield/barrier/mitigation instead, but that just gets us back to using oGCDs and isn't helpful to address the problem. So damage needs to be higher, heals need to be weaker, but also damage FREQUENCY (of damage that still needs to be healed) needs to be higher.

I largely agree with the rest of your assessments, though. oGCDs should be weaker since the opportunity cost (low CD, no MP cost) is lower than GCD heals (DPS loss, MP loss). The only exceptions should be very long CD spells, of which there aren't any other than (sorta) Bene and the tank Invulns (and not even all of those). MP management is non-existent. So many abilities are redundant - WHM has at least three versions of Cure 2 (C2, Tetra, Solace), etc etc.

[Semirhage]

I do agree that WHM needs something. A buff (Brave/Faith could work) and it kind of needs at least one more mitigation because of how long Temperance's CD is and that Assize doesn't offer any mitigation

This is one of the many obnoxious aspects of WHM's "design" "identity". WHM's always been the healer that has cooldowns a teensy bit stronger....with an absurdly longer cooldown. In a vacuum, sure Benediction could have a 3-minute cooldown. When compared to the other healers? What in the hell is so strong about one single target fullcure that warrants 3 eternal minutes of cooldown? Essential Dignity is nearly a Fullcure with its scaling potency, and it has two charges with a 45-second cooldown. Macrocosmos is in practice often an AOE Benediction, and it does damage, also on a 3-minute cooldown.

I voiced my concerns about this weird developer nervousness I sensed about WHM back when Heavensward dropped. Proshell needed to be made universal, not just a WHM trait. That extra magic defense might make it mandatory in parties. Stoneskin needed to be nerfed from an 18% shield. Too strong, might make WHM mandatory. Can't give WHM powerful, short cooldown tools. Too strong, might make it mandatory.

Meanwhile this rule magically evaporates when talking about literally any other healer, and the meta has borne the fruits of it ever since. WHM mandatory you say? Perish the thought. 20% Balance? Come right in!