On Healing Hands - A Comprehensive WHM Guide (V2)

Run has high meva AND inherent traits and abilities that raise resist rates further. Most DDs dont have high meva. You need the MEVA AND the status bars AND regular bars to see any noticable effect.

Because 14 isnt outdated. It doesnt "hold your hand", it does a better job showing and explaining what is important. FFXI is just too old to do so effectively.

I actually agree a bit. FFXI is harder to learn for new players as it doesn't really hold your hand as much. It holds it a lot more than what it did in 2006 but there is still an element of discovery which is mostly solved through online research. Something as trivial as leveling to 99 and getting a full i119 set takes a tremendous amount of effort and thought. FFXIV really holds your hand and leveling to 70 and getting a full set of i400 gear requires little thought and you can almost just mindafk through it.

That being said when both games try to present challenging content, FFXIV requires way more thought process and skill expression than FFXI could show. That isn't to say that FFXI doesn't have some form of skill expression, its saying that all of it is proven nil with better gear. Some content only has two modes ; Impossible or easy. based on the gear you have. Comparatively XIV doesn't really care about your gear in savage / ultimates, it cares a lot more about your ability to play your class properly and perform a sequence of mechanics better.

I say this as someone who has done end game content successfully on both games.

I'd wager that a good chunk of XI's playerbase couldn't complete endgame content in XIV and that an even bigger chunk of XIV's playerbase couldn't complete the first limit break.

But they are harder in different areas, XIV's I think is more akin to a modern MMO where difficulty lies in doing the endgame, not getting to the endgame.

You are right then you are wrong, which is nothing really new.

FFXIV is a modern game because it holds your hand. It treats you as a mother would treat a baby through infancy. 95% of the content in that game could be done with one hand while playing your job ineffectively with incredibly wrong gear. The other 5% of the content does require you to have a good understanding of your job and the encounter though. And since FFXIV is much faster pace and jobs are more complex in terms of how someone interacts with them then that is when it starts getting more difficult.

Can resist stuns in dyna with just barthunder, alternatively on run i can just pop 3 earth runes, point is meva hit a high enough amount to make stun a non-issue. Throw in attunement or vex where applicable, -macc through addle or pining, go a step further and use evasionists? Even the heavy dds with crap meva can get enough to laugh at debuffs at even higher level targets like as stated albumen, or WoC.

But again these are DDs, dead as soon as they engage etc.

Why would you barthundra the DDs, if they get stunned just replace them with the next DD

I agree with regards to the pressure and expectation, but like I said a couple of pages back, there needs to be more viable healing jobs. Imagine if warrior was the only viable melee damage dealer. Imagine if rune fencer was the only viable tank (lol, oops). Imagine if bard was the only buffer. Yet somehow we've been conditioned to think that this is perfectly acceptable in XI?

Other MMOs have different styles of healer and more of a broad appeal for the role as a result. In XIV you have one healer who gets a pet and shields. You have your standard white mage, who is more reactive. And you have a healer who has 2 stances, along with its own unique RNG-based mechanic.

If there were multiple play styles, even with the pressure of being a healer, I think you'd see more people willing to take it up seriously. White mage has a pretty dull reactive style of healing. It's stressful but it is repetitive and dull. So now you have the worst possible combination. It used to be that players in XI didn't want to play support but the support are honestly more dynamic to play. Bard has a lot of melee gear and weapons. Corsair has melee and ranged dps, which is almost as good as "actual" DDs. Geomancer has strong nukes. Red mage has strong melee and good nuking.

I guess what I'm saying is, make the difficulty scale, easier at the lower end, but give players more ways to solve the problem of how to keep the party alive.

If Square-Enix had any clue they would tackle the entire healing role. And they would tackle the entire tanking role. Neither of those roles are in a good place right now. Support are better than ever. Damage dealers are better than ever.

FFXI doesn't really have the design space to create another healer. And its not like multiple healers work in other games too. XIV has three healers and only two are viable. If Limit break wasn't effected by duplicates then most groups would probably just run the same healer.

In a sense this game already has that sort of versatility though. WHM is only really needed in heavy healing situations. RDM is better when the healing requirement is less since they provide more damage and such. A RDM healer would be much better than WHM healer for this months ambuscade (for example). SCH can also heal when its offensive utilities are needed and there is less stress on healing. For example, we brought a SCH to healer our RNG party in Dynamis D this past week because the healing requirement is low and Aurorastorm II is incredibly potent.

I'd actually argue that FFXI handles multiple healers better than FFXIV because I can't think of any situation where I'd want a WHM over a SCH/AST comp in FFXIV.

thats the thing, they dont even have to create them, just allow the current healers some viable aoe options, SCH has a bit of this via Regen V and accession, rdm however is reliant on /sch or curaga 2 of /whm. Giving those jobs some real aoe cures, be it naturally or by letting /whm get curaga 3 would improve those jobs in the healing aspect, and wouldnt really hurt whm in any way, as the job has far more in its arsenal to both cure better, more efficently and have better status management, moreso after this update from the looks of it.

How is it even possible to have incredibly wrong gear in FFXIV? Underleveled gear sure, but everything is linear and all gear sets are pretty much job locked to only 2 or 3 classes or so. The only difference is the amount of stats on a NQ version of set versus the HQ version, compared what the next tier level set offers. And until you actually reach high raid level difficulty where things start to matter (meaning organized groups rather than using the duty finder so they actually WILL force you to gear properly), all the story fights come with minimum equipment level requirements and most even give you the echo when you fail. Raid gear can't be melded, and melding itself is straightforward. There is literally no way to equip "incorrect" gear, it's just grinding to keep your sets current for whatever content level you're doing.

That doesn't really fix the problem. Either A) /WHM is more effective at healing since SCH/WHM now gets a massive regen and potent-enough Curaga, or B) It still just isn't enough and WHM is still king when healing is needed.

RDM and SCH already heal adequate enough while providing other bonuses and in situations where you need adequate healing they will always be the best choice.

The only amicable solution then would be to give WHM another unique trait. And then give cure power to RDM/SCH, which they just don't have the design space for.

PLD / RUN currently suffer from the same thing. PLD just flat out won't be better unless they receive some other form of uniqueness that is more than just "Tanking".

Raid gear can be melded. Also you can meld incorrect things, and its pretty easy to just not gear right. I've done level 70 leveling roulettes with people who have level 40 gear on. Ilvl requirements can be cheesed and people can easily just throw on incorrect sets.

Also secondaries really matter for some classes in that game so even in the upper level of gearing wrong you can have a Machinist melding Skillspeed or buying Skillspeed pieces.

ability to block status ailments, ability to provide highest level of meva per element, ability to aoe na's either on demand via yag or through /sch or DS/veil proc, cureskin, free cures.

WHM has plenty of things to keep it a step above other healers even if they were on the same AoE or even plain curing field

EDIT: its more just to open up the field of "we need a whm for this" which is essentially anything that spams aoe's nowadays

Those are sub-elements of healing though. And while WHM has strength in those areas, is that really that much of a deviation to merit boosting SCH or RDM to their level of healing?

You are trying create definitions that already exist. If you need aggressive healing, or something like Asylum then you will bring a whm. Not all content requires that extra healing or those extra defensive utilities so bringing a more offensive caster such as RDM or SCH is beneficial.

Adding Curaga III would either close that gap a bit (Maybe allowing RDM to heal a bit more content) or just take away from WHM completely (Only needed when Asylum is required or something).

The level of variation is already incredibly healthy right now. The problem is more an extension of how the player base treats healing.

Also RDM is already pretty much required in the same instances you would require a WHM, so buffing RDM will just go in a way of pushing WHM out rather than including other jobs. If anything you could argue for SCH but they need more than Curaga III.

Good game and visual design =/= handholding. FFXI was made back in the PS2 era, and was ambitious for its time, back when MMO design was mostly format everything behind menus. FFXI isnt complex because it doesnt hold your hand, its complex because most of its intricacies were hidden somewhere in a menu or never stated, which is not exactly good design (but options were limited at the time for MMOs.)

Discovery is a long forgotten element of MMOs and probably what made early FFXI incredible. It is something that games have grown away from though. I don't think its bad design, but its design from another era. Regardless FFXIV still holds your hand through visual tells, echo, and generally easier paths that you tread from 1-70.

Well I guess that shows what I know about raid gear. I never got into raiding when I played, and it's been a while since I touched the game. I'll admit to my oversight on the raid melding. Your other points don't really go against what I said though, but I think at this point we're just arguing semantics. Underleveled gear and incorrect gear are two different things to me. If someone brings equipment 30 levels too low that's underleveled. Incorrect would be a like a black mage in FFXI nuking in HMP gear, or a melee weaponskilling in regen gear.

The point I was trying to make was that FFXIV holds your hand and forces your class into only being able to wear gear sets that are catered specifically to that class's role. Then they just make incrementally stronger sets with more of the stuff that you need. So it's just a linear treadmill of getting higher Ilvl sets rather than swapping between gear sets that are situationally useful for one thing rather than another like in 11.

Yeah, I realized that a bit after writing it. The term of "Incredibly wrong gear" is relevant to the game.

Though there are gearing differences for most jobs that will have a huge impact on how you perform endgame. Those only really apply to endgame. Such as tanks melding VIT instead of STR or BRDs not building towards crit, you see a real downfall in effectiveness.

Ffxiv is an action based MMO, of course theres going to be visual queues and tells. Thats the form of game it is compared to ffxi, which is moreso based on a modified turnbased/atb system.

Everything you said here are just "game works this way because I said so", while disregard everyone else's pov if they disagree with you.

I've used rdm and sch as main healer in multiple ambu VD, they worked just fine. And yet you claimed the game only has 1 viable healer.

You claimed whm as repetitive and dull, then listed brd cor geo as an example of having better gameplay because they can melee and nuke. Did you forget whm can do both?

Kaja club and black halo is there for you to use for those who wants more playstyle than just heal. If you choose not to use It, don't blame the job.

Can you stop pretending DD whm is a thing that SE actually allows? Unless you go out of your way to get very specific clubs you wouldnt otherwise use AND you get at least the +2 AF set, youre not going to do any real damage. Ontop of that, misery is suboptimal, sacrifice is always a bad option, and esuna desperately needs ots rework. You also get drk and plds who *** if you use auspice, and dd rdms will too. Overall melee whm needs a lot of adjustments to really be useful in practical situations. Its fun, but thats really it.

I literally grabbed a Kaja rod and spent maybe 20mil to get my WHM to melee. Did Ambuscade on Thursday with her and she did 100~150k while opening with Shell Crusher then switching to Kaja Rod. Yeah she did around 1/3rd or 1/4th of what a real DPS(Cor w/ Naegling was doing ~550k in the same time frame) could do but she did it while buffing the party and healing.

Can you stop pretending you know anything about this game? Because clearly you haven't tried a single thing you have said. You just sit in a chair and presume you know everything when in reality your knowledge on any topic is limited to the small scope that you can see.

Oh wow what a huge milestone, a set that is generally inexpensive aside the legs and body, any dd will be spending far more on possibly a single piece of gear for tp/ws. If you wanna say supplies low on bis, buy medals or do dyna for whm parts.

Can make due with just ayanmo, btw. Its not about doing the best dps, its about providing support through dmg, if the healings covered enough you can pull out some clubs, hop to it.

"I went out of my way and spent an assload of gil on something that i could only get because i already got all my primary sets already". Again, just proving my point. And its not like most players just have 20m laying around.

Ayanmo doesnt have the AD to allow you to deal damage. And the whm AF +2 set is a pretty big milestone, given most of it doesnt have other uses, so youll only naturally get a piece or two of it for your main builds.

20 mil isn't really that much...

Just to be clear, you mean relic right? You arent saying to ws in actual af. And ayanmo has all it needs, acc, da, dt, stp, haste. Idk what you mean by AD there but af wont have that

Sure, if you have 3-4 botted alts during gain exp its not. If you dont, then youre looking at 4-5m unless you bot other things as well. And then youre still assuming you dont need to spend gil on the other things you need first.

I don't think anyone is saying a WHM should build Melee sets first. I am personally saying that it should be something done eventually, after your support sets are built out enough.

Most of the melee gear is free. Ayanmo is more than suitable for adding some form of supplemental damage. Relic +2 just ups that damage by giving you more Attack and helping you hit pdif.

Regardless of the gil cost, WHM gearing should not end once your support sets are done.

Piety, yes. And you physically need AD, whm gets none inherent to it, so your autos and WSs do nothing without it. Youll be lucky to land 4k WSs, and theres nothing you can really do to boost auto damage in a TP set for whm.