(10-27-2013, 07:58 AM)Ildur Wrote: The problem is that healing is mindnumbing unless you are fighting a boss with interesting mechanics. But if there are no interesting mechanics during that combat encounter, like most fights against trash mobs, then spamming your class' spammable heal is sometimes the only thing you are required to do.
This, pretty much. xD
(10-27-2013, 03:09 AM)TheCurls Wrote: CNJ/WHM isn't a boring class. You're just not doing enough things in that case. If you're finding it easy to heal and keep your team topped up, go cleric stance and DPS between heals. CC some mobs to prevent more damage being done. Don't just sit there and say it's boring when all you do is cast Cure 1 over and over. If that's how you're playing, you're playing it wrong.
I do that frequently and still think it's a fairly dull healing class. Less dull than dps though (which I've never enjoyed outside of random alting). I mean thing about it. You're trying to say WHM isn't boring as long as you spam Stone II and Aero in between heals - in other words, as long as party damage is low and you aren't healing much so that you can dps instead. That... doesn't actually say a lot of good things about the class's design.
Okay, I'll bite with this. I just can't resist anymore. I'm horrible at holding myself back. xD
Stoneskin needs a complete revamp. It either needs to become some form of party-wide buff to complement Protect (the less interesting option), or it needs to be made instant cast, given a CD, and transformed into a powerful defensive cooldown (the actually interesting option).Â
Freecure should work with Medica as well as Cure II. Let's ignore for the moment that RNG-dependent mana efficiency is horrible and needs to go die in a fire. But assume that Freecure is here to stay. The least they could do is make it so proccing it introduces a decision the player has to make rather than just twiddling one's thumbs until there's enough HP off the tank to justify casting Cure II. (Another rant: You would not believe how many Freecures I have wasted because it procs at completely useless times. RNG healing is not fun, guys!) Oh look, I got a Freecure proc! Okay, is the tank taking a lot of damage or do I want to spend it on an AoE heal to buffer the whole group? No, it's not a particularly interesting decision, but it's better than thumb twiddling and mindlessly hitting Cure II.
And then there's Cure III. This spell would be awesome - an AoE heal that doesn't require you to cross into deadly melee territory to be useful - except its miniscule range means that for it to be effective, the people your casting it on need to be practically humping each others' butts. Someone previously in the thread mentioned they think Cure III is just a spell for a fight that hasn't come along yet, but let me stop you right there. I am not a fan at all of spells designed to work at one particular moment during one particular fight when the stars align just so and then for a few seconds out of the years you play the game, you get to cast your spell. When a fight would have to be specifically designed with the spell in mind in order for it to be useful, that is a sign of a poorly designed spell. How to fix this? Just increase the range of Cure III by a few yards. It's really that simple. Not as large as Medica, but not a piddly 4y either.
Aero II is useless as it is now and a complete waste of an action slot. Okay, so what if when you applied it, the spell generated splash AoE healing with each DoT tick in a radius around the mob with it on? Suddenly it's interesting and useful to a WHM's toolkit!
I have a similar complaint with Stone. Once you get Stone II, there's pretty much zero reason to cast Stone I ever again. Now, we could keep Stone II as a dps spell, because lord knows CNJ/WHM still deserves some soloing capacity, so what if it became an AoE centered around the target? Cast it and rubble bursts up from the ground around the monster, damaging all in range. Stone I's damage would be tuned up to adjust for the change in Stone II.
WHMs have two pretty straightforward ohshit cooldowns: a +healing CD (Divine Seal) and a +spell speed CD (Presence of Mind). Okay. Boring, but okay. Due to the very minimal effects of spell speed and the ability's short duration, PoM is of extremely limited use, but that could be fixed with some tuning.
The next thing I'm going to say is probably going to annoy people, but Holy as a spell is just flat out illogical. It has a very short duration stun, but casting it takes so long and the mana cost is so obscenely high that there's quite literally no point in using it outside of maybe spamming it in a FATE (though I have better luck just spamming Aero all around because of the mana cost) or just to look pretty. Something's gotta change with Holy. Maybe just a mana cost reduction would be fine, but as is, it's pretty ridiculously useless. And no, this is not a spell that will shine in PvP as is, as some might think. The length of time it takes to cast is its killer there. Your targets will run out or interrupt you well before anything goes off. And with the DR on stuns, a 4s stun is effectively little more than an interrupt, yet the spell takes so long to cast that it can't actually be used as such.
My beef with Benediction has more to do with the overall functionality of the game's spells and animations than anything, but I'll mention it anyway. Having an oshit instant heal all health button is great, but having to spam it several times before it actually goes off and then having to wait two seconds for the animation to finish before the heal actually triggers quite nearly ruins the spell. With its long CD, this is not something you want to just pop willy-nilly, so when you do use it, it's usually because you freaking need to heal that person right now ASAP no ifs, ands, or buts. *ahem*
So think of the problems with CNJ/WHM as this: The class's design reads off as a checklist of necessary spells. Single target, stronger single target, AoE, HoT, CD to increase healing. The only spells with any real synergy are Cure I and Cure II. The Overcure proc for Cure III is a little silly, as having a powerful single target heal proc an powerful AoE is a bit backwards (theoretically, you're casting single target heals because you only need to heal one person), but I'll give it credit anyway. So out of our entire toolkit, only three spells actually work together. The others are a hodge podge of completely independent abilities. There's no motivation to cast damage spells outside of times when you're just bored as fuck because casting damage spells does nothing except drain your mana, which means it's only something you want to do when you're confident that your mana pool is not going to be needed for other healing. (So basically, when I'm loling it up in 4 mans or Ifrit HM. Definitely not dpsing on Garuda or Titan HM, though, and Coil? Nope.) Now, if casting a particular damage spell applied some sort of buff to yourself (or the mob's target, or everyone around it, or something) that complemented your healing? That would be spell synergy and that would make damaging things something more than just "I am trying very hard not to collapse from boredom".
*deep breath* Okay. I'm good now!
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