Healers, then and now:

[Renathras]

[NOTE: Posting this in reply, but going to try and continue what the thread was doing - look at the past. Next up SCH...should be fun. I might let someone else do AST, since I didn't play it seriously before ShB.]

Now comments:

I am not trying to pick fault with what you say, I agree that the numbers show that we cast roughly the same number of Non-Glare casts per minute as the past.

Believe it or not, I actually DO like it when we agree. And I somewhat agree with this (and what you said right after about the strings). I think it KIND of depends on the way you look at it. Let me...try to say it this way, then you can tell me how you think I'm wrong:

Abilities with set timers (e.g. DoTs) are not skill in the sense they don't allow meaningful choice IN MOST CASES. You refresh them about as they fall off or you're wrong, not counting edge cases where the boss is going untargetable or whatever. There's no real skill expression there other than "being wrong or not", which is binary. I know you often talk about how you feel healing/tanking are binary things, and this is the problem with them; I see DoTs as binary things. There's no "you're not refreshing it on duration but you're doing something right somehow by not doing so". Your DoT ability doesn't increase its potency the longer it's not applied or something where you could have an optional rotation that still competes with keeping 100% DoT uptime. You're either right or wrong, and that's binary.

On the other hand, abilities that you can move around allow choice. It may not always be MEANINGFUL, but it is more likely to allow skill expression, even if it's minor. For example, one of my arguments related to New PLD (for the record, just as with SMN, I feel they should have kept the old Job for people that liked it but added the new one as a separate Job, because I always hold the position of "don't take away from people"; what I said in that thread you didn't reply to about Additive vs Subtractive magic) is that New PLD actually IS more flexible. Since disengages are seldom more than 1-2 GCDs, a single use Holy Spirit that you can move forward or back within a 5 GCD window is far more flexible than the old rotation, which crammed 4 of them into a Requiescat window, but you couldn't use them otherwise without a DPS loss and possibly having to push your burst if you went below 80% MP. But the new rotation, while being nominally simpler, actually allows MORE skill expression. And, of course, HS has a healing component, meaning a skilled PLD can move it around for both disengage needs and for healing/sustain needs. Tankbuster coming up? Hold your Divine Might HS until after it hits. The old rotation was rigid and you were, again, either doing it right or doing it wrong. There was no choice. The choice was doing it right or doing it wrong. But the new one actually allows you to move some abilities around, which allows for meaningful skill expression.

To me, this is more valuable (play experience/feel) and actually a higher skill cap (since skill is based on active decision making, not muscle memory with a target dummy after reading an online guide where theorycrafters did all the work for you in determining what was optimal). Skill is still needed for execution, but there's actual choice, and those choices aren't DPS losses, they're - when made well - things that allow you to either match DPS while doing things differently (choice) or even allow you to be slightly more optimal than a standard rotation (meaningful choice).

In this sense, Lilies allow meaningful choice whereas Aero 1/2 and later 2/3 did not allow meaningful choice. The ability to move them around - spacing them out or cramming them together - seems to me to be better because it IS skill expression and flexibility/choice. Where before, you had to use the Aeros at set times or you were wrong, it's not necessarily "wrong" to use a Rapture after 3 Glares or 7 Glares. It's up to the fight and up to you. And doing it well means you can save yourself some other healing resources (granted, this compounds the problem of casting so few GCD heals, but still...it's skill expression/optimization), which makes it meaningful choice that you can tailor to your playstyle, your party's strats, and the fight mechanics and cadence. To me, that seems BETTER than an upkeep DoT, not worse.

I'm curious why you think the opposite?

And, again, I mean no slight by this. I'm curious why you find a rigid, muscle memory (sorta...) DoT to be more engaging gameplay than abilities you can shift around and optimize to increase your performance. Why is the first a greater measure of skill and complexity to you than the latter?

I guess this is what I mean by it depending on how you look at it.

All this is to say, it might really be as simple as just, 'bring back the SB rotation (the first pic), and put the new Lily system on top of it':

Honestly, I don't entirely disagree. Though note bringing back the SB rotation would have to be modified. 24 seconds technically fits into 120 by 5 (e.g. Aero 3 would work with the modern 2 min meta), 18 does not, however. So assuming Aero 3 became Banish, Aero 1/2/Dia 1/2 would need to be 30 second or 15 second, preferably 30 sec since we DO have those Lilies to use in our rotations. So that wouldn't be too terrible. We'd need to free up a button or two. So what abilities are we dropping to achieve that?

Though I feel again I must ask the question: Why are DoTs so prized? DoTs, particularly ones with no ties to any of the rest of the kit (Thundercloud procs, Bardsongs, etc) are boring and uninteresting. I genuinely don't understand the drive to those over...something - literally anything - else that could be more interesting.

I might be biased, but I can't really see how that'd be objectionable gameplay.

I think it's more a question of "Why?" As I say, I'm not sure what the value of another DoT is other than "just to have one", as DoTs with no kit interactions are just...there. They aren't a skill metric, they're just a "if you don't do this, you're bad" metric. Which isn't skill expression, it's a binary pass/fail mechanic. That is, it's like taking a pass/fail test rather than a test where you actually get graded from A to F. In mechanical practice, a DoT is identical to a CD GCD. Imagine Plegma 3 on SGE wasn't a direct damage spell with a 40 sec CD but rather was a DoT with 45 potency and a duration of 40 seconds. In practice, the use would be almost identical. In fact, being a direct damage spell with a charge system, the skill expression is higher since you can choose between using on CD or pooling for burst windows, which is actually MORE skill expression than the DoT version would be.

Imagine Aero 3/Banish being not a 24 sec duration DoT but rather a 2 stack GCD with a 24 sec CD on stack generation. That's already more interesting and has a higher skill expression than it being a DoT. That is, I don't see why people love DoTs so much, when DoTs are not only the most boring kind of spells possible, but also have the lowest actual skill expression. They're a "can you see tiny icons/do you set a timer to go off at set intervals/do you use an add-on to track DoTs" check, not an actual skill or choice check.

So to summarise (TL;DR):

- Rescale Dia to be 18s

120 isn't divisible by 18. It needs to be something divisible by 120. 12, 24, and 30 all work. I'd stick with 30, just because that's what it is right now AND that we're adding more buttons to push and still have Solace/Rapture to work in.

- Bring back Aero3 (or Banish) as a 24s AOE DOT, or a 25s CD GCD that does burst damage if the debuff cap is going to be a problem (debuff caps, what is this classic wow)

Again, why a DoT? Why not a 2 stack direct damage CD instead?

- Give back Cleric as a 5% 60s selfbuff (to steer people towards 'hey use Misery once a minute') or a slightly stronger, 2min selfbuff. Knowing SE, it'll just be added as a trait to POM

How about just lowering PoM's CD to 60 sec (and balancing the duration or whatever instead)? You can't argue "that'd be a nerf because less burst window" since Cleric would already require us to reduce overall potencies of the kit since it would be making WHM too strong on the burst end anyway. Might as well just make PoM more useable, like NIN's Trick Attack. Adding Cleric as you say here is just button bloat for the sake of button bloat.

- Eye for an Eye should come back IMO, but not on WHM, but instead on SCH, where it originally got stolen from

Honestly, looking at Eye for an Eye...it was a GARBAGE ability. 10 sec duration only 10% chance to activate. Given 3-4 boss attacks in that timespan, you only have something like a 25% chance it would activate at all. It was just a worse Arm's Length. A better idea might be to take either the E4E or Arm's Length effect and give it to SCH as an ability that they get at lower level and then it can upgrade later. E.g. suppose you get "targetable Arm's Length" (or whatever) at level 40-60ish, then at level 86, it upgrades to Protraction, giving Protraction its current abilities plus that. Little less button bloat and makes Protraction a little more interesting of an ability to use for something other than just "making even more absurdly huge spreadlos".

- Protect can come back but as a lower level version of Aquaveil

Alternate suggestion: Protect comes back as a party mitigation CD (think Magicked Barrier) on a 60 sec CD. Reduces all damage for the party by 5% for 6 seconds. At level 70, it upgrades to Plenary Indulgence, which reduces party damage by 5% for 10 seconds + its current 200 bonus potency on AOE healing effects. I've said many times I think the ONE change I would really make to WHM right now is give it a 60 sec party mitigation, as literally every other Healer (even AST) has one. And there's no reason to add more button bloat, since we already have Plenary which is mainly used for high AOE damage anyway. This would mean you activate Plenary before the hit, then use its effect to aid in healing the (slightly reduced) damage. And Plenary is already one of the least used WHM abilities, so this would give it a more practical use on a more consistent basis. Win-win-win.

- Divine Seal can come back as a lower level version of Temperance, without the mit effect

Agreed. I've even proposed this myself. It's basically the first half of Temperance's effect, so why not just have it at lower level then have it upgrade to the damage mitigation at 80? Again, win-win-win.

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One more thing I'd do that you didn't:

Cure 2 MP cost reduced to 500 MP and cast time reduced to 1.5 sec, direct upgrade of Cure 1. Why?

...there's literally never a reason to use Cure 1 or keep it on your bars other than you might fear doing synced content. This would "fix" that issue of having to hot swap your hotbar. But more than that, WHM is supposed to be a strong throughput healer, but all its spells cost more than AST's for identical effects. Since WHM is already using Solace/Tetra to minimize Cure 2 use, this wouldn't REALLY change much, but would free a hotbar spot and make WHM slightly preferred for "single target heavy damage fights"; which, as they don't exist, would change nothing in a practical sense. In other words, this would change literally nothing except we'd need to retire the FreeCure trait.

...oh nooooooo... /sarcasm

So we'd only need 2 more hotbar slots (for A3/Banish, and Cleric). I think that'd solve most people's issues. Emphasis on 'most'.

0.

By reducing PoM's CD and NOT adding Cleric (I know some of you guys - and I genuinely don't mean this as a slight, I think it's just a psychological thing or...something - REALLY want SOMETHING that is "Cleric Stance" related, but we don't need it. Hell, rename PoM "Cleric Stance", I don't care), and by merging Cure 1 into Cure 2, we need no new slots since Aero 3/Banish would take Cure 1's slot and PoM is just hit twice as often.

This whole 'feel' thing tracks with what I'm pretty sure I said at some point about AST. We play the same number of major arcana cards now as we did back then (four per 2 mins), but because we throw three of them at the same time during 2min windows now, the 'feel' is very different. Though, I guess we had 'the old Sleeve Draw' back then too so it was more like 6. SCH is it's own beast, GL with that one. Anyway, if anyone wants to come in here and complain that this (SB DPS skills, with SHB and EW additions) isn't enough for them, that's up to them. I'd be up for this, and I'm sure most would be, and it may well be the closest thing to a 'compromise' we'd get

I agree with most of this, though.

So in summary:

- Dia stays the same
- Aero 3 (upgrades to banish) as something of a 24 sec duration (either a 2 charge ability with 24 sec CD or an AOE DoT with 24 sec duration - the former is clearly better than the DoT...)
- PoM CD reduced to 60 sec. Possibly renamed "Cleric Mind" or something...
- Protect as a lower level 5% damage reduction, 60 sec CD 6 sec duration, upgrades to Plenary Indulgence at level 70 adding the AOE heal boost effect and increasing duration to 10 sec.
- Divine Seal as 20% healing magic boost for 10/15/20 sec (whichever), upgrades at level 80 to Temperance
- Cure 1 upgrades to Cure 2, which has Cure 1's cast time and MP cost. FreeCure trait removed. And literally no one will care.

That could work. My preference for Aero 3/Banish is obviously as a ranged Plegma, since that actually has a higher skill ceiling and is more interesting/less annoying. CDs are far easier to track than DoT debuffs on bosses. The game's UI is just TERRIBLE about showing you DoT information, but really good at showing you when abilities are close to coming off CD/getting another charge since those are actively on your bars as long as you have them on a bar that's visible on screen.

Though note that these changes (either of mine or yours here) would be White Mage being the most complex it's been in the game's history. That may be a "that's not saying much" statement, but it would actually be true that it would be the most expansive and complex DPS kit in WHM's entire history in FFXIV.