Minor Idea: White Mage eddition

[Renathras]

Old version:

You guys are going to say no to this, too, but here's testing an idea...anyway, the change:

1) Make Holy work like Cure 3. For those who don't know, Cure 3 can be cast on a target, and centers its effect around them OR it can be cast with no target or the WHM targeted, and will center the effect around the WHM. It works this way in both PvP and PvE. If Holy worked this way, it could be employed EXACTLY as it is now by the WHM player targeting themselves or any friendly party member (Holy would NOT be usable on party members), either case centering it on the WHM. If targeting an enemy, the Holy effect would be centered on their location instead.

2) Add EITHER ONE of the following:

2a) Thundercloud-like Proc to Dia - Dia ticks have a chance of procing Improved Holy. Doing so boosts the power of the next Holy cast 3x and makes it instant cast. Casting Holy removes the buff. Buff cannot stack, new procs overwrite (extend the duration) of an existing version of the proc on the WHM (in other words, you can't stack them; just like Thundercloud), OR,

2b) Casting Glare builds up 3 charges. On the third charge, the WHM is granted Improved Holy, which works just like above - instant cast 3x damage Holy.

[Note in both cases: 3x Holy = 450 Potency, a 140 gain over Glare III's 310]

OPTIONAL:

3) Holy generates 1/2 charge of Blood Lily per cast. This means in 4 man dungeons, when spamming Holy, every 6th Holy would allow a use of Misery. Just something to change up the rotation. [Could be a full charge, but that MIGHT be OP in other situations, not sure, would have to think of it some more. Note this is just kind of a side idea - hence the all caps "OPTIONAL" - and can be viewed as distinct from the other two. I suppose we could throw it in with the other two, where 2 Holy + 2 Afflatus = 1 Misery, but...meh, I wasn't thinking that myself at the time. Could have Improved Holy NOT generate this effect as well, if we didn't want that happening in single-target fights.]

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What do these changes do?

Without adding to button bloat or new abilities, the first change makes WHM's AOE damage kit more flexible and allows Holy to slot into its single target rotation more effectively (the WHM wouldn't have to scoot their happy buns into melee range to use the Holy or delay their rotation during periods where they can't close to melee range) but also allow players to use Holy exactly as they do today in cases that they wished to do so.

The second change makes WHM's kit more dynamic/less Glarespamy. The first is more dynamic and random, which some people might like more but could cause issues with RNG and annoyed parsers (e.g. the person that gets tons of Dia procs over a fight/in burst windows vs the one who does not), depending on if we care about those people or not. Also, some people hate procs and tracking them/noticing they happened (the game's UI doesn't do a great job of this, but it could maybe do something like have the Job gauge shine super bright on procs to notify the player they've happened or something?)

The second variation is more static, but achieves the same result of making WHM less Glarespamy. A 1 min rotation would be Dia, Glare, Glare, Glare, Holy, Glare, Glare, Afflatus, Glare, Holy, Dia, Glare, Glare, Glare, Afflatus, Holy, Glare, Glare, Glare, Holy, Dia, Afflatus, Misery, ...and so on. On average, you'd be hitting Holy 3-4x per minute. Note that this would place EW (or 7.0) WHM on par in terms of non-Glare GCDs per minute to ARR's WHM non-Stone GCDs per minute. A Holy ever 12 seconds, though nudged to the right by Dia/Afflatus abilities.

The final change is just to spice up the 4 man dungeon AOE rotation. It could also grant some niche optimization in boss fight add phases, though that's probably a higher level topic.

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Now, proceed to hate away and tell me how these changes would somehow dumb down the game (seriously, HOW??) and make things worse, and how current WHM is far more nuanced, high skill ceiling, etc than this lobotomized (HOW??) baby version would be.

I'm prepped for it this time! \o/

New version:

Since then, I've come to this basic overall plan:

1) Holy is a ranged attack like Cure 3, as above. When cast without a target, with the caster targeted, or with a friendly target targeted, the cast will center on the caster. With an enemy targeted, the cast will center on the target enemy.

2) Every cast of Glare generates one stack of "Empowered Glare", lasts for 30 seconds, stacks up to two times; At the third stack, becomes "Empowered Holy", lasts for 30 seconds, and graints the following effect: "The next Holy is instant cast and does 4x normal damage" (a DPS gain on single target over Glare); Empowered Glare can stack with Empowered Holy, but at the third stack will overwrite Empowered Holy.

3) Every non-empowered Holy cast generates one stack of "Holy Retribution", lasts for 30 seconds, stacks up to two times; At the third stack, becomes "Holy Purgation", lasts for 30 seconds, and grants the following effect (like Dark Arts on DRK): "The next Misery cast does not consume the Blood Lily and does not require a full bloom Blood Lily to cast, but only does half damage." (or only does 25% if half is still too powerful); Holy Retribution can stack with Holy Purgation, but at the third stack will overwrite Holy Purgation.

4) Assize is converted into a GCD with a 30 sec CD; potency adjusted to 600 for the first target and 300 (50%) for all other targets. Or something roughly around there; the idea here is to give it potency about equal to Assize normalized from 40 to 30 seconds, plus the foregone Glare cast, so that it's approximately DPS neutral to its PRESENT DAY incarnation (that is, not weaker than what we have now, and thus balanced), but like Plegma gives a GCD to further interrupt the nukespam. Stacks to 2.

OPTIONAL ADDITIONS:

5) Dia can stack to 60 seconds. Refreshing the Dot snapshots at current potency values (so refreshing a Dia in progress when you hit burst buffs is a DPS gain, but then refreshing that one early is a DPS loss).

ALTERNATIVE (dislike this one, personally):

5b) Dia ticks have a chance to make the next Dia cast cost no MP and, instead of applying the damage over time effect, deal the full 770 potency damage as a single hit. ("Diacloud" proc method). I tend to think of WHM as like HydEx; a fight of order and structure. Umbral is order vs Astral being chaotic, so it should be regular. Procs are not regular and are disruptive, chaotic things, thus they belong more with something like BLM.

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This results in a rotation that is not dissimilar to today, but has more variation in the GCD buttons we press. Instead of Dia, Glare for 30 sec, using Solace/Rapture as needed along the way, and Misery 1 time per minute, with Assize weaved on CD; this has 3 Glare then 1 Holy casts as a foundational rotation, Dia refreshed every 30 seconds, Assize used every 30, 60, then twice at 120 seconds, with Solace/Rapture peppered in, and Misery used once per minute.

Note that with the optional Dia change, this means it would be optimal to ride Dia close to but not over 30 seconds into buff windows so you could boost it to near 60 seconds of buffed potency, but then not refresh it until it falls off that time. It would be kind of like old SMN where you got three DoT refreshes with Tri-Disaster per 2 min rotation but did the manual refresh once, giving you a sort of "backbeat" cycle instead of a metronome one. Dia with this method would be cast before burst, cast in burst, don't touch for 1 min, refresh for 30 sec, refresh again (either then for 60 or once half a min later for 30), then refresh once more before going into burst to give you the 60 sec buffed one when you refresh it in burst. While you could just cast 2x Dia in burst, this would cost you a buffed Glare 3, and thus be suboptimal.

Under (5b) instead, the rotation would be less complex, but have more wild variance, feast-or-famine, and one's performance metrics (forbidden website) would be far more dependent on crit chance and "white noise" variance. Thus this is the worse of the two options by quite a stretch.

The AOE rotation for dungeons becomes Dia on targets while running, then once the Tank has positioned them, 3x Holy + 1x Misery, along with any Solace/Rapture use on the tank for healing and an additional Misery once per minute as per the normal Lily cycle. I'm worried a bit about the Misery damage, so that's why the half (620 to the first enemy and 310 to all others) or 25% (310 to all enemies is how it would need to work, though, since half of that is 155, which is a SLIGHT gain over Holy's 150, but I don't know if it would feel particularly good. Still optimal, so I guess that works...)

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Pros of this proposal:

1) No new hotbar bloat.

2) No new ability names/VFX that require additional asset development.

3) More complex rotation, both in the 1-1-1-4 (single target and AOE both do this, but using different buttons), and in the more complex Dia refresh pattern (for either options (5) or (5b)) for optimal damage.

4) It's very intuitive, other than (5)/(5b) options, which are still not terribly unintuitive, either. It retains WHM's easy to pick up and play nature, and while raising the complexity and skill ceiling, the skill floor will be not much higher than at present. Assize's GCD Medica 1/Rapture effect will also help WHM continue to lean into being "the GCD healer", which is the other half of its mechanical identity. So it retains most of what WHM is, plays into what WHM is, while nudging up the skill floor and raising the skill ceiling, but in a way that is still flexible and intuitive.

[fulminating]

Again I really really don’t see how changing the (holy) targeting system is an improvement.

Re holycloud procs, I think it would be fine to add a) and b); you don’t single target in aoe much. I think it might necessitate some potency changes, but should break up the spam a bit without using more dots. That said, lifting thundercloud wholesale and sticking it onto aero would also be an option.

Re holy lilies: it’s going to be a free full gauge + 3 stored in any fight with downtime mechanics. You could tie it to hitting a target, but that seems like exactly the kind of thing people would immediately complain about.

[Icecylee]

For what it's worth, this is easily your least offensive idea put forth. On it's own it's probably fine? Almost certainly not 'enough' for most people, but like, yeah, adding this wouldn't really hurt anything and would make it slightly less boring so why not. Lets do it. Well, 2a or 2b, not big on 3 myself. The dia proc would occasionally allow for some really stupid amounts of damage, esp on pull 2 when you've built up for a misery so maybe the glare boost is the way to go if we don't want to think too hard about potential balance goofiness.

That said you can probably expect the most push back on the holy targeting thing. Having a full 25y cast range when you got the damage boost proc so you can use it in your ST rotation? Yeah sure, go nuts. On the base cast, though? Probably not. Holy being a long cast, centered centered AoE is like... one of the major defining characteristics of WHMs that somehow hasn't changed at all since 2.0. The risk/reward built into it was kind of a big part of WHM's identity. And it's highly likely if we got the option to cast it at range it'd wind up having the stun removed which... would suck.

[fulminating]

If we didn’t have the 2 minute thing, a small chance that glare could proc a lily would maybe be interesting. It is pretty hard to tie damage and healing together in a satisfying manner, which is probably why all the historic whm procs have been on the dreadful side. Ideally there’d be some kind of compensation for healing with a damage proc and compensation for damage with a healing proc, but not having everything drift horribly would be a pain.

Maybe something along the lines of GCD heals taking 20s off fluid aura recast (2-3 stacks of FA so there’s no bard issue), and/or regen/medica2 ticks as a sort of inverse thundercloud granting access to stone x. Really not sold on the last one, it’d probably encourage 100% hot uptime which is silly. The other side of this would be the glare 5% lily chance or whatever makes it sufficiently uncommon but not dead certain. Ideally it would be primarily spells to preserve the casting heavy gameplay. Dunno it’s just spitballing really.

[ForsakenRoe]

Hmm, 2b reminds me of a holy priest talent called Rhapsody



Note that Holy Nova's starting power is pretty dog compared to HP's other healing skills, so we will have to make an adjustment, such as:

'Each time you cast Glare or Dia, your next Holy is increased by 40 potency. This stacks up to 5 times.' This would, at max empowerment, make Holy a more conservative 350 compared to Glare's 310. It'd also incentivize 'use your DOT on stuff while the tank's running to the next pack' as you'd be powering up that first Holy. After that though, spamming Holy is still the better damage option, 'single targetting in AOE' would not be optimal.

edit: alternatively, 'Each time your Dia deals damage, your next Holy is increased by X potency, this stacks up to Y times', if they want to tie it to the DOT. They don't exactly have a track record of incentivizing DOTs in recent years though, so it's more likely the former that would be their choice

As for 3, I like the general idea, it again reminds me of Holy Word resets. A gameplay loop of '3 Glares = Holy, 3 Holy's = Misery' doesn't sound bad. But the problem is you'd be using a Misery every X GCDs (if half-misery charges are possible, it'd be every 24, which conveniently is every 1 min, but using lilies to heal would throw it off and people wouldn't like that), plus the extra potency from the Holy. If we had other skills, we could build a more fitting rotation from them (basically replace the payoff with something else instead of Misery) but alas


Edit edit: 'Each time you cast Glare, Dia, or Holy, you gain a stack of 'Nature's Wrath'. At X (let's say 10) stacks, Holy transforms into Afflatus: Purgation.'

Afflatus Purgation:
Instant cast, no MP cost, GCD, lower animation lock than the PVP version since it's not an LB here
Line AOE, same length/width as PVP version
Deals damage in a line in front of you with a potency of 600, and 50% less to all secondary enemies

Numbers adjust as needed, it should feel cool to use without feeling like 'I need to puposely overcap to make sure this lands in raidbuffs'

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

1. No. I have nothing else to add why exactly, others have spoken well in this front in here and other thread(s).

2a. I like this. With multiple target situation, this can potentially lead to what I imagined would be similar to back in ShB playing BRD in their Mage's Ballad phase: when you have a total of 6 or more DoT ticking at the same time during trash pulls, you're basically weave-spamming Rain of Death like mad between your Quick Nocks, it was fun & highly rewarding.

2b. In my own hopium, I wrote something similar in this vein however unpolished it was. This somewhat alleviate my dislike toward 'dead buttons' that we normally only use strictly in AoE situations.

Both are simple but effective way to break the Glare spam. Whacky potency is normal, but that can be adjusted later on. I don't mind having any of them, or both of them, whatever. Gimme these changes, SE, ty.

3. I'm fifty-fifty for this. Maybe add a proc rate for each target hit instead of having them 100% generation rate? One thing that I liked from this suggestion is player are able to influence their Lily Gauge someway, somehow, instead of just letting the gauge slowly refill on its own.

[Renathras]

Honestly, while I had the idea a while back, PLD basically made this with the 6.3 rework/addition of Holy Might. It's just figuring out how to mechanic that into a Glare x3 combo instead of a 1-2-3 combo.

The Holy range thing is needed for the single target thing to really be viable. Much as people like being in melee on a caster (for...some reason), some fights and times in fights don't allow for it, and the goal here is to breakup the Glarespam, not necessarily raise the skill ceiling. (1) kind of needs to be done before (2a)/(2b) can be considered viable.

(3) is mostly "how can we make it where you're not casting only Holy in AOE?" The issue is that it could create some strange/niche optimization uses...but as I recently learned when suggesting a change to Art of War - niche optimization uses are apparently what people here WANT. So if anything, this would provide for that.

For what it's worth, this is easily your least offensive idea put forth.

I honestly do appreciate that. Thank you.

[ForsakenRoe]

I think the main thing that differentiates this idea from other ideas is that others are more desirous of having more buttons on the bar. So for example, the end result of this idea (that you press a nonGlare button every X Glares) is similar to eg what I've said re: Banish being a 15s CD GCD (thereby making it 'button you press every 6th GCD, or after 5 Glare/Dias). While trying to keep the button count down, it also makes it harder to work with for certain design decisions. For example, the above suggestion I made of Holy building into Purgation. It's still the same button, nothing really changes in AOE in terms of 'how you do the damage as a player'. In fact, due to it being the same button, you may well lose track of your stacks and fire the Purgation while you're positioned in a way that doesn't hit the whole pack. If we were to, for example, have Banish as a separate skill, maybe that could be the skill that upgrades to Purgation for one cast, meaning that in AOE, you'd have an extra button to use instead of just pressing Holy till the cows come home.

In fact, can you do me a favor and reread the old idea for me:

Plenary Indulgence moved to level 74
Afflatus Rapture moved to level 70 (now available in UCOB!)

New skill: Stoneskin (learned at 52 alongside lily gauge), GCD that puts a shield on the target equal to 300p heal, costs 1 lily
New skill: Afflatus Tragedy (learned at 62 just because there's a gap there), basically a downgrade from Misery, does 800p damage (4 stone3's is 880 so its a small loss still), this is just to help new players get into the idea of 'use lilies, get big hit that compensates the lost dps', upgrades to Misery at 76
New skill: Afflatus Bastion (upgrade from Stoneskin at 70), increases the shield from 300 to 400p
New skill: Afflatus Sanctuary (Learned at level 70 alongside Afflatus Rapture), GCD that shields all nearby party members equal to 200p healing, costs 1 lily

By keeping the potencies on the shields low, it lets the 'shield healers' be more specialised at shielding, but still giving WHM options to shield if it absolutely has to

Returning skill: Divine Seal (learned at 40), 2min CD that buffs healing actions by 20%, so 'Temperance without the damage mitigation', becomes Temperance at 80
Returning skill: Protect (learned at 10 or something), 60s CD that gives 5% damage mitigation for 8sec, upgrades to 10% with a trait called Shell at 66, again into Aquaveil at 86

Returned from the dead skill: Fluid Aura (now named Water), now an instant cast GCD with a seperate 15 second recast (affected by spellspeed), scaling damage like Stone, becomes Banish at Glare/Dia levels, does more damage than Stone/Glare equivalent at any given level (say Glare3 is 310, maybe this could be 350?)

Aero/Dia changed to be 12 seconds duration, potency adjusted to balance, to mix up how often we're using Glare vs Dia (and to give the rotation a more 'bursty' feel) edit: 150 + 70per tick would total 430, while still keeping the base damage of the cast low to prevent spamming early application

A new HUD element, the 'Nature Gauge' (name is WIP), a simple 0-100 gauge that fills by doing certain actions. Stone/Glare gives 1 point. Aero/Dia gives 1 point on cast, and 1 per tick (5 total over full duration). Water would give 5 due to being used less often than Stone. Holy is 'Each enemy hit by Holy grants 2 gauge' so bigger pulls = more gauge

New skill: Blessing of the Elementals, AOE GCD heal, instant cast, same AOE size as Medica2, 500p, costs 50 gauge. Grants 'Rage of the River, Ire of the Earth and Wrath of the Winds' upon use (these effects can stack up to twice), each allowing one cast of Flood, Quake and Tornado respectively.

Quake: 410p compared to Glare3's 310p, has 50% damage falloff for AOE
Flood: 450p compared to Banish's 350p, has 50% damage falloff for AOE
Tornado: 180p, plus 90 per tick to main target, compared to reworked-Dia's 150+70, has 50% falloff for both cast and DOT effect for AOE

If I recall, the main concern with this was that people would be forced to do damage to get access to the new gauge skill. So I've been thinking, screw it, if people want to gimp their damage on healing why not let them, it'll help in enrage sequences like Curtain Call anyway, so I'm adding a new section:

Cure1 evolves into Cure2, Medica evolves into Medica2. Cure 2 generates 5 Nature Gauge on cast. Regen generates 4 Nature Gauge on cast, and 1 Nature Gauge per tick (total 10, only counts one Regen tick, multi-HOTting does not increase rate). Medica 2 generates 0 per player hit, and 3 per tick (total of 15 over full duration). Cure 3 generates 10 Nature Gauge on cast. Additionally, when Medica 2's HOT effect is present on the WHM, the MP cost of Cure 3 is halved (from 1500 to 750), to encourage using it over just spamming Medica 2 over and over (as it'd be changed to 400p, plus 5 ticks of 100p due to combining with Medica 1).

That should at least fix the 'forced to do damage to access cool new thing' issue, right, and while I'm adding one button for damage, I'm also adding like 5 or 6 that are specifically 'designated for healing, or HPS throughput, or mitigation'

[AmiableApkallu]

Much as people like being in melee on a caster (for...some reason), some fights and times in fights don't allow for it, and the goal here is to breakup the Glarespam, not necessarily raise the skill ceiling. (1) kind of needs to be done before (2a)/(2b) can be considered viable.

Melee range is not that dangerous. Seriously. The actual melee DPS jobs hang out in melee range all the time and don't need baby sitting from the healers.

On top of that, 8y is actually a fair bit of distance. Pull up AST's Collective Unconscious. Then to go the extra yalm, combine that with Endwalker hitbox sizes. You might as well be hanging out in Narnia as far as the actual enemy character is concerned.

I'm on board with Improved Holy, or whatever you want to call it, being ranged. The base Holy is fine as is, though. /two cents

[Semirhage]

I don't dislike these ideas. I'd need to try them and find new things to want to tweak about them of course, but there's potential. They don't commit the sin of current-WHM design i.e. rewarding using healing abilities without regard to their effectiveness.

Honestly I think that's the major thing that separates DPS procs from healing ones. When you use Dancer or Red Mage abilities, you have your baseline proc-less rotation. You hope for a proc, because it's a nice little damage bump. Your outcomes are "good" and "better"; hitting the boss is never a bad thing. FFXIV's combat doesn't really ask you to stop your damage output at any point when you could choose to. Healing procs aren't like this. So I used Cure. Okay, cool. I got a Freecure proc. I could u-oh wait everyone's full. Better hope it doesn't fall off before I can use it. Oh I'm nearly capped on lilies! If I don't use one I'll lose a Misery. But everyone's full, guess I'll dedicate a moment to using a dead GCD then.

I guess if you frame procs as opportunities, the distinction becomes clear. The opportunity to deal damage is always useful. You don't have to take it if you have something more important to do, but the option is there. Healing opportunities are only useful if health is missing. DPS procs (like the ones you're suggesting here) are more satisfying because there's never any "wasted work". You didn't sit around doing the usefulness-equivalent of thumbing the Peloton button just because the devs decided to tie an extra boost somewhere else to it.

I'd definitely want much more of a skill ceiling on WHM, but I wouldn't object to this specific rearranging of the deck chairs.