On Healing Hands - A Comprehensive WHM Guide (V2)

As much as I like Monk, and believe Monk is a good DD, I really gotta disagree with "Monk already has the highest melee DPS" statement. This has been proven many times; War, Drk, Sam and Run are pretty much the big DDs. This isn't saying Monk can't deal good damage, I'm not that HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE, yet.

Also why is this on the Whm forum?

Also again lol. If the mob has regain, or very high innate TP gain naturally, Subtle blow won't do very much. Subtle blow is amazing for fights like Omen, but not so much Aeonics.

I think they should give everyone a Yagrush to encourage people to play white mage.


Also give them a free punch and pie !

Everyone loves punch and pie.

Thank you for injecting some genuine humor into my morning, this is really great.
Something of a tangent, but believe it or not, I've actually outparsed a Godhands / Kendatsuba +1 HQ Monk in a CP party on Whm. It was damned close though, and I wouldnt be surpised if there was some other mitigating factor going on.

This is only the case with Endark and Enlight tier one spells, Endark II and EnLight II will both overwrite, and cannot be overwritten by Auspice. They will overwrite Rdm Enspell tier one spells, which can and has annoyed a certain Crocea Mors Rdm in my linkshell when we've been in the same PT together in Dynamis. Now days I just run out of range to cast it if we are in the same PT. An issue, just not as big an issue as you make it out to be.

For the most part the magic burt nerf did kill the old Sch/Blm strats, though my LS still uses them for Zerde. We melee burn pretty much everything else. Summoner strats are boring, and we do events for fun, so why bother?

CP parties arent the best example, given theres a few seconds between fights before you can engage again unless you get continuous pulls (in which case a lot of camps youll get less CP as youll clear the camp too fast), so a lot of JA buffs that arent up 100% see less milage. And its easier to hit damage caps on them. CP mobs just dont survive long enough for auto DPS to matter when you can self SC and kill the mob outright.

Um....you do know that the playing field is even, right?

A DD WHM and a MNK would have the exact same situation 100% of the time, as neither of them are pulling mobs. A DD WHM would have less time to actually do damage since, you know, they heal also.

The fact that a WHM parsed as much as a Godhands MNK even with an apparent disadvantage due to the WHM having to also heal/cast spells while the MNK does nothing but fisting things should show you that a DD WHM can and probably should DD as much as it's feasible.

But if you are using sparks gear for your WHM, then you probably shouldn't DD. Or better yet, let somebody else be WHM, cause you are a detriment to the party in that case. Which, going by your posts, I would completely believe a sparks WHM would do a better job at healing than you.

My guess is, like 97% of the people on Monk, they were utter rubbish, straight gahbij, and didn't know how to use Godhands. And in a CP party, Monk shouldn't really be using full Su3, but that's besides the point. One of the main reasons Monk suffers from Job Bias so much is because things like this happens too often, and you never see the inverse of amazing Monks dominating opposition.

I bet he was using Shijin Spiral :D

Asuran Fists or GTFO

Asuran Fists is what the Monk used last time I DD'd on WHM with a Monk in the party!

Granted... that was in King Ranperre's Tomb like a decade ago...

Any DD getting out damaged by a healer or buffer (that actually takes time to buff, not nearly instant like Cor) really needs to reevaluate what they’re doing.

Its unlikely they were curing often, unless the monk was literally afk. And again, monks main boon is white damage. White damage doesnt matter much when the mob dies almost as fast as you engage it.

How do you people even have time to DD on serious fights?

But according to you, DDs die all the time and aren't a value anyway. According to you, a majority of time a WHM spends is healing the tank or raising the DDs from a TP move a CP mob uses.

So, what's killing the mobs as fast as you engage it? The WHM? The tank?

Straw man arguments dont work. Stop.

If that's a real question then answer would be the same again. None is saying to melee on WHM everywhere. If the fight is "serious" for WHM aka he needs to cure/na/etc all the time, you just dont melee. That's the whole point. When people talks about melee WHM they usually have on mind things like Ambuscade, when you have some important things to do on WHM but often with quite a lot of time between those mechanics, or other edn game mid ilvl activities, when WHM damage might make it faster, while not really adding any risk if played right.

Its been a while since that PT as I've been master Whm for quite a long time now. Trying to remember gear, I don't think they were 5/5 Ken+1, gear seemed quite good and I know it included Moonbow Belt +1. I was the only healer, there was no outside support, we were at the Dho Gates bat bowl camp. It still doesn't make sense without some kind of mitgating factor, my best guess is that this Mnk was dualboxing and that cut their engage time. Of course, it could be something else, that party was a long time ago.

In any case my damage on Whm in that party was quite high, and Whm damage should absolutely not be overlooked. Pretty sure I was using AG Mjollnir / Sindri, mostly Ayanmo+2 gear (Should be before I got Piety +3) and focusing on Hexa strike, only using Black Halo when TP spiked high. Also using Curagas over single target cures to cut curing time. In any case meleeing made CP parties far more bearable on Whm, I'm sure I wouldn't have had the patience to master the job without having something to bludgeon.

Let's not make our decisions based on someone who primarily posts about melee WHM having a months old claim about a parse they no longer have.

Having a melee set is nice and all, and it's certainly worthwhile in CP, but as the content gets harder your damage becomes secondary to the smoothness of the run. If you really have so much time between casts, you could be cureskinning or debuffing or helping with crowd control or whatever else.

The truth is the WHMs want to melee, it makes it more fun for them, and it's not always a significant detriment. You aren't making any event significantly faster by meleeing, and in many cases a badly timed para/silence aoe, being one shot in ws gear, or similar will cost the entire group more time than your damage saved.

If you want to do it, and your group is ok with it, cool. It isn't the optimal path, and it's misleading to suggest it is. Bard is entirely different, as they have much higher damage output and large gaps of time to melee uninterrupted.

I don't think anyone is going to make that decision, but let's face it, a lot of MNKs could/would be outparsed by a decent WHM melee in this game.

What you are trying to say? That MNK player are idiots, undergeared or both? Because otherwise its not really possible.

No, I'm saying that most people who have MNK generally have other DD jobs, such as WAR or DRK.

Any true, faithful MNK player wouldn't be outparsed by a melee WHM, but, until they make MNK into a bandwagon job again, most anyone who plays MNK in a CP party (remember, this is the type of party we are talking about) generally will have another, better geared job that they main or at least use in events.

Which goes back to the "97% of MNKs would be outparsed by a melee WHM" from earlier.

Still I have no idea what are you trying to say, unless you are trying to say MNK players are undergeared, because they have other main DD jobs, but you have said "No" to undergeared, so I'm confused.

Nothing, because what hes saying makes 0 sense.

All MNK players? No. MNK players who only leveled the job for completion's sake? Yes.

Let me ask you this then: Are you going to put in as much effort on DD job #5 as you would in DD job #1?

I would and is what I do. I try to complete one job to almost maximum, then go for next one.

In statistical terms, you are outside of the bell curve.

Your actions do not reflect the playerbase in my experience. I highly doubt that many people would do the same.

I still stand by my observation about most MNKs being able to be outdamaged by a fairly decent melee WHM in CP content. Mainly due to the fact that the WHM in question actually took the effort into creating sets for doing damage as a WHM.

I don't really think you know what "Optimal" means.

I find it laughable how you suggest that "Cureskining" is optimal as if you play the same game that Nyaarun does where mobs may just randomly deal high bursts of damage. I mean what do you think it is optimal to just Cure V every person in the party to maintain stoneskin for fights where you know the incoming damage? Then you suggest debuffing as if its some taxable scenario. Most debuffs a WHM can do are just functions of their healing anyway. Slow and Paralyze give you more casting gaps and are hardly required.

Fact is, if a WHM can keep a party alive and provide some level of melee damage then that is the optimal scenario. I just don't see how you could argue otherwise. They are doing their job and ending the encounter quicker.



This is ignorant, at least when you assume damage outputs. A well geared Melee WHM will compete with a well geared Melee BRD where the only difference in damage comes from cast frequency. This is pretty apparent if you have actually ran one or the other. My Kaja Rod / Piety +2 WHM deals only slightly less than my Kaja dagger / otherwise BiS BRD. While my WHM has higher casting frequency.

Also dying in a WS set is just a function of gearswap and is already a problem tanks have, that point is a bit moot since a good hybrid setup will fix that issue.

Playing optimal is assessing the fight you are in it and doing what you can to end it. In a lot of cases that means that a melee WHM is optimal and in some cases it means a WHM should stay back and just cure and dispel enfeebles. In an open forum where people come for advice, we should be suggesting the best path and offering advice in regards to that. We should be applying conservative outlooks, since that is just detrimental to any sort of game where progression can be made.

Comparing kaja to kaja is laughable. The only upgrade whm gets from kaja is final stage amb. Brd has 3 strong rmea weapons, any of whicb adds a huge chunk of damage. So right off the bat, your personal damage assessment is heavily biased toward whm (which still loses, by your own word).

If you actually read my post, I said it is fine in cp and falls off as content gets harder. If you are meleeing on hardest level content, you are a fool. Your damage is crippled by your cast rate to the point of irrelevance.

A good tank doesnt use ws gear that will get them killed. Sure, you can do the same on whm, and reduce your already minimal damage even further. Otherwise, yes, you run a risk of dying in ws set. A whm keeping up with their duties will not make up a significant portion of a group's dps, it is that simple. Whm melee is only ideal if there is zero threat to the whm and minimal curing needed.

I agree that my assessment isn't entirely accurate, but if anything it favors the BRD more than the WHM. The WHM is very undergeared and missing a better weapon while the BRD is just an aeonic away. And yes they lose, but not by much more, the difference could easily be the extra casts or the fact that I had the WHM start with Shell crusher. (The damage difference was ~1-2 WS)


And what content do you think that happens in? The only type of content I'm ignorant on at this point are Master Trials. WHM can easily melee a majority(exceptions being blu/rdm volte pulls) of Wave 3 with no repercussions. Wave 3 dynamis is probably one of the best applications of Melee WHM because any amount of time saved can matter and that is approaching the upper echelons of content.

For the omen bosses that can be meleed, I'd say Kin can be a bit dicey without Dark Carols but Gin can easily be melee'd and being in Melee is probably a bigger boon. Ou has a few gimmicks but having the WHM dding, especially at the end, can make a difference.

So what content? What examples do you have that haven't already been listed?



What do you think the ratio of WHM damage to DD damage is?

Dyna wave3 can be cleared with an hour remaining without whm melee, and there are countless moves that can incapacitate or kill you in it. The fact you would even suggest it makes it obvious you cant see past your own bias.

Saving 20 seconds on a 20 min omen run? Nobody cares, it is about you wanting to melee, not you believing it to be best.

I think most can agree on certain situations regarding when a WHM can/cannot melee. It also needs to be pointed out that a melee WHM knows that they are going to melee in said content. Does the rest of the party know at the time?

It would be nice if the WHM lets others know and not assume that it's ok. Sure, in a CP party and some Ambuscades it's no issue, but in other content?