Evolved WHM concerns

[Alice_Rivers]

Rather, doesn't the 30s cooldown tell us that they're intending content to 'need' only three heals maximum in a 30s window? Not exactly encouraging when read that way.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Rather, doesn't the 30s cooldown tell us that they're intending content to 'need' only three heals maximum in a 30s window? Not exactly encouraging when read that way.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. They have historically added new toys to healer kits designed to tackle certain mechanics such as adding Panhaima & Lilybell on the same expansion they start using more multi-hitting raidwides/stack markers, when it’s already perfectly doable without those additions.

In the end, them saying “we will give healers more healing to do” but also giving us the very tools to make it easier or outright delete said mechanics pretty much defeats the purpose.

[Azurarok]

technically they could not give you any healing to do for 30s and then throw a section that requires up to 6 heals in the next 30s, not that that's really different from the current scheduled heal checks.

Although, since moves like DRG's Skyhigh exists we may end up seeing more moments where specific jobs will take avoidable damage to do more dps? If some jobs could cheese parts of mechanics for more uptime and make damage taken less consistent, that could potentially mix things up.

[WaxSw]

Although, since moves like DRG's Skyhigh exists we may end up seeing more moments where specific jobs will take avoidable damage to do more dps? If some jobs could cheese parts of mechanics for more uptime and make damage taken less consistent, that could potentially mix things up.

This part is a bit unlikely since SE started giving damage downs from taking avoidable damage from mechanics, especially in the highest end where the damage downs are so severe that death is preferable

[Azurarok]

This part is a bit unlikely since SE started giving damage downs from taking avoidable damage from mechanics, especially in the highest end where the damage downs are so severe that death is preferable

yeah... their track record certainly hasn't been great. They're more likely to gut those options than lean into it, especially if they get complaints from healers losing their personal dps for it or healers refusing to adjust for stuff like that.

[Sarantserel]

Evolved WHM seems to be... okay?

More damage buttons to press, mobility is down "doing DPS", while healing is offset automatically akin to the current lily system. The one big worry is: Will we actually ever need to heal?

If not, then at worst that new system is exactly as bad as the current one. It cannot be worse, so that's a positive element I suppose.
If any actual healing is required (given the massively shrunk healing toolkit it might very well be!) then the new system would be 100% superior.

I'm curious how Evolved WHM has more damage buttons to press. Current WHM has Glare 3, Dia, Holy 3, Misery, Assize and PoM/Glare 4. Meanwhile, Evolved WHM seemingly only has Glare/High Glare, Holy and Holy Judgment. So it went from 6 currently, to 3 with Evolved.

[Supersnow845]

I'm curious how Evolved WHM has more damage buttons to press. Current WHM has Glare 3, Dia, Holy 3, Misery, Assize and PoM/Glare 4. Meanwhile, Evolved WHM seemingly only has Glare/High Glare, Holy and Holy Judgment. So it went from 6 currently, to 3 with Evolved.

From the perspective of “non glare GCD’s that contribute to damage” WHM currently has 15 per 2 minutes (6 blue lilies 2 red lilies 4 dia’s, 3 glare 4’s). new WHM would have 16 (12 casts of a GCD that give a sanctity stack and 4 casts of sanctuary)

So it’s a very slight increase to GCD’s not related to glare with an increase in the freedom of where they can be placed but in exchange you get a reduction in oGCD damage through POM and assize being deleted

[Carighan]

The issue is that like all jobs, current WHM litters it's hotbar with damage buttons you press once in a blue moon. There's no reason to do that. And yeah sorry I typed the above on a phone ("done" autocorrected to "down" >.>) and did not explain it well.

The new WHM shown puts the focus where it should be. Damage is all done without a castbar. Healing uses a castbar. This automatically "focuses" the feel on healing, that's the actual thing you do. Even if healing is never asked for much, that conceptually anchors the design. I was in favor of making all damage oGCD with a 2.5s CD, sadly they didn't do that but hey, all instant GCDs works in a pinch I suppose. I am kinda sad DoTs are gone but since DoT was just the same across all 4 healers it also offered nothing. It wasn't like one healer had only DoTs for dealing damage while the other 3 healers had no DoTS (that'd be cool, don't get me wrong, I'd love that!). So now we have a bigger focus on doing damage on the GCDs we do damage with - it's not watered down by being spread over way too many buttons all just doing damage.

Am I sad the blood lily is gone? Yes. That's a renaming absolutely unnecessary, I can only imagine this is needed for technical reasons as old-mode will stick around at least for the 9.x-expansion time.

[Supersnow845]

I think the problem comes in that in order to have a greater focus on healing there has to be an actual reason to heal which as we know this game has long struggled with.

They seem to be trying to counter this by removing oGCD’s so if you say need an AOE GCD heal then medica is basically your only option which feeds back into the system but that’s still built on the assumption that you will be required to heal. Because now only healing has casts, so if all you are doing is healing just to occasionally fix chip damage to get sanctity stacks then instant casts glares will get very boring very quickly

[Carighan]

That's still a change I like I should add. I find oGCD-weaving as a concept outdated given my trajectory of MMORPGs (M59->EQ1->DAoC->WoW->GW2->FF14), but not allowing important functionality via oGCDs is to me important. Actually short-term reactionary abilities ought to be instant (in the GW2 sense, they can be used even mid-animation-lock basically), but with the exception of that the less is oGCD the better. Of course, at some point I hope they just remove ~all oGCDs and then shorten the GCD timer to 1.5s or so at most, and cut all potencies and durations according to the new output (10 abilites over 15s instead of 6).

But yeah a lot hinges on whether they'll actually increase healing required. Not just with now-GCDs-formerly-oGCDs, but importantly actual healing requirements. In theory they easily could: Increase raw HP massively, but remove most passive damage reduction even more tanks (instead they have significantly more HP). They'd still die slowly from chip damage, but now there's actual effort in re-healing the HP lost (compare old vanilla or TBC era WoW Druid tanks which were massive HP sponges as tanks). Not perfect, but a relatively simple solution if wanted.