On Healing Hands - A Comprehensive WHM Guide (V2)

It's a strategy decision made before the fight becomes, choose the mode and stay with it. Remember new-Esuna still removes all -na debuffs from a player, you don't need to be in Misery for that to happen. If you are in Misery then it also removes all erasable debuffs similar to Sacrifice in solace. Effectively in both stances you get a remove-all spell that works a bit differently in each.


The big benefit to this update is Esuna going from a 10 yalm spell to a normal 20 yalm spell making it actually usable for healers, and Sacrifice not transferring the debuff to the WHM in the first place. A WHM in solace should be able to toss in Sacrifices (once it's fixed) in between their cures, same with Esuna's. They are on different recasts so it's possible to be in solace, toss a Esuna to remove Blind/Paralyze and Sacrifice someone else.

Not if you know how to stand outside AOE range. Which is WHM 101 knowledge.

Yes they can, but Erase only removes 2 at a time, and -na only removes one. Sometimes a DD has, say, 4 eraseable status ailments plus Bio or Slow. You don't want to cast Erase 3 times trying to get Bio or Slow off, especially if it's a fast-paced fight where you can't neglect healing duties for very long. That's where Sacrifice came in. One cast, and you're back to casting Cures. You can Erase them off yourself at your leisure, or just ignore them, but the point is you got them off the front-line jobs immediately.

On that note, what are you doing in AOE range on WHM in the first place? Why do you care about lowering your cure potential? What is even going to do that? MND Down? You worried about losing 10 HP from your Cure4?

Good to know your standing over 30 feet from you group. Or have you not played WHM seriously in the past 4 years?

Good to know your standing over 30 feet from you group. Or have you not played WHM seriously in the past 4 years?

And fun fact; hate resets and AoEs larger than 20 yalms are things in this game. Things do go wrong. The optimal play is the safest one, and the safest one means youre not putting debuffs on yourself.

And anyone advocating the use of Sacrifice in its prior form has been very clear that you would never use it to take Paralyze onto yourself. Slow isn't a big deal for the healer at all.

So who is the one arguing with a straw man?

Not if you know how to stand outside AOE range. Which is WHM 101 knowledge.

Paralyze, Silence, and Doom are the ONLY ailments that are worse on the WHM than on the front line.

That's fair, and maybe in some fights cureskin isn't critical, but to me, it's a nice bonus when healing and I can't foresee a situaiton where cureskin would be less desirable unless the mob is specifically just spammy with amnesia.

Amnesia is a huge hit to a DPS's, crippling even. The ability to remove it, even if it's on a long recast, is amazing. Some fights have it as an AoE ability, in which case you just remove it from the most important DPS and keep going. Many times it's a single target attack, then the WHM just removes it from that person and keeps going. The choice of stance to be in would be fight specific, the loss of cureskin sounds bad until we realize that cureskin doesn't work on WHM's most important healing spells, Curaga's.

Remember Esuna wasn't a MT target spell, it was a self-target spells with a smallish circular range. The WHM would have to be standing on top of the melee's for them to get the effect which is largely regarded as dangerously stupid. Things like Sleepga, Breakga, Paralyga and so forth can devastate a team if it also hits the healer. That restriction alone made esuna almost entirely useless. Now it can be cast on other players just like the rest of the healing spells making it usable by a WHM standing at 20 yalms. Sacrifice was practically never used by any serious WHM. There were a handful of situations where someone would get hit by a zombie or multiple-stat down effect that could ~only~ be removed by sacrifice. No WHM would want to willingly nerf themselves by putting Slow / Paralyze / Curse / ect when they could just remove the damn debuff safely with other spells and even take it off multiple people. The Cleric Neck removed the final use for Sacrifice (multiple erasable debuffs) with it's ability to remove two debuffs per target per cast.

That is why it's a buff regardless of what the trolls think. Get rid of rarely used features for a commonly used feature.

There is almost nothing with 30' range. And I can't recall a single fight with 30' AOE which also involved ailments that would make me more vulnerable to said AOE. Care to give an example or are you just blowing hot air? Speaking of playing WHM seriously, do you even PLAY WHM?

Sure, like Saevel, you can probably find that perfect 1 in a million situation where that isn't true and your point is valid.

Yes you're right, MOST of the time I would do that. I'm not saying I used Sacrifice on a regular basis, but I did use it.

How can you guys recognize that misery and esuna will be situational now but somehow fail to grasp Sacrifice and Misery/Esuna was also situational before?

I tend to focus on situations involving big groups and lots of coordinated strategies. Currently that's mostly Dynamis D and some Aeonic clears (without SMN).

A typical DD party would be

DD
DD
COR (also a DD)
BRD (maybe a DD)
GEO
WHM

3~5 members of that team are going to be standing less then 5 yalms from the bad guy. The bad guy is usually going to have some very high damage attacks that will hit all 3~5 of those team members. This means Curaga II / III (or Curaga III / IV if no Raetic +1) will be the primary means of healing and Cureskin doesn't work on it.

SE has been giving 25 or 30 yalm attacks to most of their boss's these past few years and almost everything has one attack that this 20 yalms. Max cure range is 20.8 yalms meaning there is a very small spot the healer can stand at and not get hit and frequently this places some party members out of direct cure range (but curaga still hits them). I've seen far too many WHM's flattened by high powered attacks to just assume their safe from everything and anything. In our team it's a requirement that every WHM have a super DT set they can immediately switch into on demand.

Seems' like your the one searching for reasons to use it while the rest of the game's population just treats it as a super situational tool.

Yes you're right, MOST of the time I would do that. I'm not saying I used Sacrifice on a regular basis, but I did use it.

I haven't been able to test it yet, can people confirm solace+sacrifice no longer absorbs 7 debuffs and it's now buffed instead by misery?

I haven't been able to test it yet, can people confirm solace+sacrifice no longer absorbs 7 debuffs and it's now buffed instead by misery?

ST20 is the only thing ill use sacrifice for, changing stances and losing cure skin for 1 debuff that will naturally ware off is not worth anything with double marches recast is 34 seconds on esuna, I can remove most spells in that time myself(yag and clerics)

For a WHM withot a Yagrusg, however, it looks pretty grim.

You've already agreed with me.


Seems' like your the one searching for reasons to use it while the rest of the game's population just treats it as a super situational tool.


Other way around dear. I've said from the very start that old Sacrifice and Esuna where situational, too situational and rarely used because of how situational they were.

Then yourself and other white knights felt the call to come defend your damsel in distress and tried to make it not-situationally situational. Now if we follow this back to the original point, that a troll was arguing that making Sacrifice / Esuna less situational was actually a nerf we can see the silliness of your statement.

Anyhow anything that makes spells like Sacrifice and Esuna more commonly used is a great thing in my book. They removed the biggest restriction to using old-Sacrifice and now it can be used more frequently.

Fun fact, what's optimal in this game depends on the particular fight. So instead of making idiotic blanket statements like "ailments on the WHM are bad" maybe you should realize that most of the time they are totally harmless on the WHM.

Sure, like Saevel, you can probably find that perfect 1 in a million situation where that isn't true and your point is valid. And in those cases... JUST DON'T USE SACRIFICE! It's not rocket science. In almost every case though, ailments on the WHM are completely harmless.

No, you just stand in range and curaga the entire party, including yourself. It's trivial to cap DT while maintaining a high level of magic evasion. It's not as dangerous to stand in range as you want to make it seem. Guess what you can do if you're in range anyways?

What do you mean switch into? They should be in it full time most of the run if they're getting Ballads.

The sacrifice argument is a bit moot. Anyone who thinks a WHM had no situations where Solace Sac was optimal probably never played WHM.

That being said the new Sacrifice seems useless unless the Solace thing is a bug.

Given literally any wave 2 boss will 1 shot a whm outside a DT set, such as curing, thats a no.