On Healing Hands - A Comprehensive WHM Guide (V2)

Guys, we need to overcome our disagreements and come together to start ignoring Nyaarun. The last 20 pages or so are basically just him baiting us with inane statements and everybody else feeding the troll, and the thread is going to crap because of it. By now we all know he has no idea how to play WHM and what the job can do, so please stop arguing with him at all.

I know it's difficult, but we can do it.



Now for some serious talk.

This update is really good imo. Yes, it significantly changed two very niche spells that some of us had built strategies upon, and those some of us are upset at it, but I think we end up at an advantage.

Being able to resist Sacrifice'd statuses is a big boon, as is removing Amnesia. Consider this: some NMs can land Amnesia that lasts more than a minute on your average heavy DD. Cutting that down to:
- 1-2s on first DD
- 23-25s on second DD
- 46-28s on third DD
is MUCH better than having those same 3 DDs unable to WS for a full minute. So yeah it's not an instant relief, but Amnesia is no longer completely unremovable, and that alone is an improvement. Amnesia has always been a significantly difficult debuff to deal with, it makes sense that they did not want to completely trivialize it by giving us "Amnesiana" and turn it into just another Silence. Same logic as Doom having a chance to stay through Cursna, tho in a different way.

(Also consider that some times, the one that REALLY needs to get rid of amnesia is not a DD, but the tank.)

Gotta be honest, the changes are a bit nerfy. They're both good and bad, just more on the baddish side.

More cureskin is great. Making misery more appealing is great. Esuna single target is a direct nerf to non-yagrush.... But necessary. Sacrifice I really don't like that change.

Regular Na needs to be AoE(WHM main only) without yagrush, and not chance, without cooldown(accession).

I like the ability to remove amnesia now but problem for me with it is you're giving up on Stoneskin cure to do so. What i mean by this is lets say you get hit with amnesia. You would then hit misery and remove it off 1 character now you are stuck in Misery to remove it from a 2nd or 3rd character because if you switch straight back to Solace you have a 1minute CD on going back into Misery.

So either you make do without the cureskin to remove Amnesia off multiple Characters or You remove it from 1 Person and then go back into solace for the cureskin.

It's really going to be very situational.

Now what i do like 100% is the boost to cureskin we are getting from merits :D

Cure VI has a niche but really useful role: pre-emptive cureskin. I use it a lot to buy myself more time for status removals or self buffing during hectic fights. Last ambu, when somebody was getting HP down, I was doing Cure VI > Erase > Cure IV.

Another use is tanking to recover during a possible wipe, which again relies on cureskin. Provided you already have Stoneskin and Aquaveil up (you should), Blink > Flash NM > Penury+Arise tank > Cure 6 > Flash > Blink > Cure 6 > Protect V tank > Cure 6 > etc etc etc, it's generally enough to get things running again while keeping everybody else safe. It's taxing on MP but once the tank has the NM back on himself you can raise the bard and have them ballad you. Again, niche, but useful.

On the other hand, the only time I ever used Curaga V has been when I was in a party with PLD DRK DRK and they got hit by Zero Hour...

It couldnt be that im just intelligent and most of you are morons, right? I have to be a troll. Doesnt matter that im literally right.

r/iamverysmart material right here.

Kind of bummed out that Sacrifice now only takes one ailment at random now, even under Solace. That seems like a pretty substantial nerf.

Esuna's buff is really good but requires capped haste to really make it viable.

Bit of a mixed bag this update.

Didn’t someone say pro/shell was nerfed too? Now it only does as much as yoran instead of whatever 5/5 + gear was?

That should be added to the above lists too if true.

Serious question: What is that capped DT+Inyanga set? Mainly curious about the weapon/sub. Someone said 10/10 PDT on Main and Sub, and I'm trying to think which one-handed weapon has -10 PDT for WHM.

Also, I just want to make sure, but I'm guessing merits are 5/5 Solace now?

mafic cudgel

In the update notes, they said that potency of Protectra V/Shellra V was now the same as having them at 5/5 merits + relic gear bonus. As tested, they only give 5/5 merits, and no relic bonus, so we're inclined to think it's a bug that will eventually get fixed.


Mafic Cudgel + Genmei shield, 10 PDT each.
Mafic drops from Titan merit fight.
Another option is Terra's Staff + That One DT Grip We Can Use.

Even if you do accession erase is still MUCH slower than pre nerf esuna because of 1 sec ja delay. In fact even yagrush erase with neck is still a bit slower than esuna because of higher casting time, which makes precast on animation limited to tp move with higher ready windows.

Esuna was the fastest aoe erase/na tool before nerf even for yagrush owner, id never trade it for 24(?) Sec single target amnesia removal that only benefit 1 DD on very few mobs.

Most amnesia doesnt even last more than 24 secs so if you are 2nd best DD, dd cor, dd brd, fat chance is that your amnesia still wont be removed before it wears off. Not worth it.

This is one of the worst nerf in ffxi in past 10 years and ironically people are saying its "good" just because they want to ws during amnesia, lol.

I think that's a bug not a nerf, at least from reading the notes.


Doesn't mention anything about changing behavior during Solace, only during Misery. It removing only one debuff at random is the normal behavior of Sacrifice if a WHM doesn't have a stance up.

The problem likely has to do with an error in coding due to them changing the Merit categories.


Adding these merit categories means SE had to modify the Solace / Misery related code meaning they could of easily screwed up how Sacrifice works with it. Protectra V / Shellra V are also bugged in that their not taking the JSE boost into account even though SE specific said they would.

People being trolls and wanting to start riots. It's clearly a bug as the SE update notes said the potency would include the JSE bonus. Lots of the "nerfs" are actually bugs, which is understandable since this is the first time SE's "un-merited" a merit spell. Something the player base has been begging to be done for years now. I expect whatever they learn from this will be applied when they do this for the other jobs.

I haven't played the game for almost 7 years and I already really miss old Esuna and Sacrifice ;_; Hopefully the Solace + Sacrifice is a bug because WHM being able to pull everything and the kitchen sink off a target definitely had some potent uses when I was still playing the game. [Edit] Given the fact Sacrifice is now affected by Misery, it may be intentional that they removed the Solace additional effect on it..

*Randomly waves Mjollnir*

It's almost like this update was dog ***.

But that's only true if you don't have FC sets. Even with just 65% fastcast, Erase is again down to under 1s of cast time, making it effectively instant like Esuna.
(and if you're not using gearswap, then you're probably not casting Esuna in FC gear anyway, which you still can for Erase)


This is a fair point. But I feel that most people were using Esuna as a mini-Yagrush of sorts, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Honestly, even when I did not have Yagrush, I almost never used Esuna. The situations where you could use it effectively without exposing yourself to too much danger were just too few and far in between. It's only because it's fresh in our minds from last month's ambu that we can see the difference. If this update had happened two months ago, most people would have barely noticed.


No, it's good because now we can do something that we were not able to do before.
Everything that we "lost", we can still do in other ways, albeit a bit slower/differently/in ways that require more planning/more shuffling around.

Could have it been handled differently/better? I'm not going to say no to that. But this is a net gain, at the cost of some very niche things that we were doing before.

No it isnt. 0.6 sec isnt fast enough if you precast on animation and aiming to land before additional effect that moves your character. I explained it in another thread with a video. And yes I cast both in FC set, you dont need GS to cast spells in a FC set.

Heres my origional post:


Basically, even at capped FC erase is still slower than esuna.


I dont agree with you, and I feel the community is downplaying whm surviability or biased. You can have significant amount of DT in casting sets and still capped on fc or cure pot. Whm has magic def bonus 6. You can also self cast SS. Very rarely there are things that kills a whm with some DT in every casting set before they kill a DD going for max dps.

Its often faster to cure frontline and Id say 50% of my time in endgame I cure frontline. I find the benefit of curing frontline(esuna pre nerf, curaga hits everybody including myself, doesnt have to waste time to move for boost/bar/sacro/accession regen or SS recast, melee for mystic boon mp recharge) outweight the benefit of curing backline. Only on NM with aoe petri/silence/para Id consider cure backline.

In an era that time is everything as whm, the more time I save on every single action the more reaction time I have. Frontline curing is underrated, period.


But whm is ALL about speed. If you can cast na in 0.3 sec, then you wouldnt want to cast na 1 sec slower instead. And the difference between a good whm or bad one is entirely depend on their -na/cure speed. Im complaining here because I dont want dds get -na slower than before, thats a nerf, not a buff. Now for none yagrush is even harder for them to meet the very basic requirement of landing erase for everybody as soon as debuff lands.

Amnesia is rarely ever dangerous, its not a worse debuff than def/mdef-, nor para, nor stone, nor charm. I honestly dont care if 1 dd gets amnesia removed every 24 sec or not, it doesnt make a difference from bigger pov.

But aoe erase speed does.

Which NM is that? I dont recall getting amnesia for 1+ min for really long time. Most of them doesnt last longer than 30 sec.

If its short fight then SV carol/bloster vex attunement should block them all.

Buff in all cases, but dogshit update. Damn, worst buffs ever.

So in summary - If you have a yagrush this is an overall buff. If you don't have a yagrush this is nerf.

If you have a yagrush, it's a nerf. If you don't have one, it's an even bigger nerf.

You're gonna remove amnesia from your tank because like you want your yahoo DD's going all out while the tank has amnesia and then it's gonna wear off naturally on everyone else.

All at the expense of sacrifice, cure skin, enhanced cure potency, asklepius, the removal of between 3 to 6 aoe debuffs on your party and shorter timers.

I do cure frontline most of the time as well, even if I'm not meleeing, and I 100% agree with the benefits you list, and that it is underrated. But even then, I never used Esuna most of the time. Partly because I idle in so much meva that I resist most stuff anyway, which made old Esuna not work anyway :P

You're not wrong about speed being important. But we're talking about a third of a second of difference, which is not nothing, but is MUCH less relevant than reaction time. Not to mention packet interval and lag. Pretty sure that Esuna trick also works with Yagrush Erase - probably not with Accession tho, I agree.
Fumble a keypress, get a lag spike, get distracted, miss a line in the log, and you're worse than before. Unless you're using bots, I guess.

This video, I feel, does a good job of explaining what's going on about this update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8

Pre-update:
- Solace Sacrifice is our Everything-at-once-na button, except petrification/silence
- Misery Sacrifice is useless unless the recipient only has ST20 and nothing else
- Solace Esuna aoe removes a single debuff, -na only, sort of a 4th poor man's Yagrush alternative (with Accession, Divine Seal, and empy head proc) that does not work with Erase debuffs and has the strange caveat of needing to have the debuff on the WHM
- Misery Esuna is the same, but removes 2 debuffs including Eraseable ones

Post update:
- Solace Sacrifice is slightly buffed with the reduced duration thing but only removes one status (big nerf, unless it's a bug, then it's a minor buff once the bug is fixed. We all hope it's a bug D:)
- Misery Sacrifice is a weird thing that rolls Divine Caress and Everything-na in a single spell, again for a single debuff (both a buff and a nerf, and a weird one tbh)
- Solace Esuna now removes all six -na debuffs at once (yay!), but does not work with Yagrush/Divine Veil/Accession
- Misery Esuna can now remove thirty-two debuffs at once, not limited to -na debuffs, and including Amnesia that is exclusive to it.

32 debuffs: 6 -na debuffs, Bio, Dia, Gravity, Flash, Addle, Slow, Elegy, Requiem, all Helix spells (counting these as one), HP/MP/TP/stats down (10 total), Attack/Defense/Accuracy/Evasion/Magic Attack/Magic Defense, and Amnesia.

(Incidentally, new Esuna not working with Yagrush/Accession/Divine Veil effectively makes you choose between removing one status from everybody or all statuses from a single target.)

There's probably a cap on how many debuffs can be removed at the same time, but I have no idea how anybody can say this is not a huge buff. Cast a spell and bam, one person is 100% debuff free from everything except Doom, Terror and Charm. This is well worth the tradeoff of having to be under Misery, honestly.

Sacrifice only being able to remove a single status is kind of a bummer, but Esuna now does it. And did we really need a fourth way to make -na spells AoE? Sure, it was convenient, and let people do without Yagrush - but diminishing the usefulness of a damn mythic weapon should be seen as a negative thing, not a positive one.

All things considered, this change makes the balance between Solace and Misery a little more even. Previously there were very few reasons to spend an entire fight in Misery, now we have a couple more - but the net effect is definitely positive, even if we gave up something in exchange.

EDIT: change to Asklepius is stupid, hands down. Seems like an after thought.

When tp move comes with status ailment AND drawn in/knockback, the 0.3 sec difference can be 1-2 sec difference because you either land erase before character gets moved from origional position or you dont. If you dont then it adds up.

More so if its knockback and everyone got knocked to different direction.

I agree though, with yagrush the nerf is probably toleratable, without it its not.

You dont have to idle in meva btw, if you want pre nerf esuna to work use different idle for it.

As far as yagrush+erase for the technique in video, I posted calculation. NM tp move has to be higher than 1.4 sec to successfully cast on animation for human players. Or else you will have to use react add on. Basically its easier to pull off with esuna, harder with erase. Theres just not enough reaction time for human player because every 0.1 sec counts.


Except very rarely theres any NM that puts THAT many debuff in one single move unless it has an aura or something. Most tp move has 1 to 2 debuff. In that case you can just remove it asap before next batch of debuff comes.

If you always remove debuff asap then very rarely youll see dd with 3+ debuff on outside of impact. And even then you can sacrifice impact before.

So yeah, imo this "buff" is mostly irrelevant nor it outweight the nerf.




Yagrush didnt get diminished since its still best mystic boon weapon, and probably best melee too.

Esuna nerf makes none yagrush whm nearly unplayable in serious content, unless you dont care about na speed at all. In an era that whm is hard to find we dont need anymore nerfs to punish people trying to help event by playing casually geared whm.

I had a LOT of endgame whm cure strategy build from Esuna spam, now all of them can no longer be used. Just because it doesnt affect you, doesnt mean it applies to everyone else.



It is not 4th way to make na spell aoe that we need. It is a FASTER way to aoe na spell that we need.

Theres a 1 sec job ability delay associate with ja use, theres also limited charge for it. So its a horrible solution. For a job thats is all about nothing but speed.

In serious raid like dyna D theres entirely too much going on, silence blu rdm, cure cross alliance, and every other normal whm duty. The faster you get a task done the more time you can have on other tasks, and less likely that ***will go wrong with debuffs on dd. Bastok aoe knockback/gravity is one thing that esuna makes huge difference.

Theres also multiple ambuscade that really need esuna. This month, jan, and a couple more.

JA delay and cool down just doesnt cut it in todays ffxi. And I dont care about amnesia nearly as much as some other people here, especially when only 1 dd gets remove then it just wears off on everyone else, or it got blocked by buffs completely. Amnesia difference is trivial at best.

Esuna was garbage before, useful now.

Sacrifice could never be used before, can be used now.

Solace overall got a major buff with cureskin.

Misery now has a reason to use it with added debuff removal.

Curas are likely now at least on par with curagas, with a lower MP cost and higher recast timer.

End of story. Entire buff all the way through.

I really loved my Su5 WHM club with Esuna pre-update. Might not have been Yag but it was so convenient for stuff that wouldn't one-shot me or put on a very debilitating debuff. I also miss old Sacrifice for things like Impact. Ran into something tonight and had to use a few erases to get through Impact to Defense down.

Sacrifice change is a gigantic nerf. I don't see how anyone could say otherwise.

Esuna wasn't perfect but new esuna is a downgrade for sure too.

How do you get rid of St20 now? it's only a chance with sacrifice and nothing else? *** that. Or does new esuna remove ST20?

New esuna likely removes it id assume.

Sac is a pure buff. You could never use it before because it transfered debuffs, which is always bad. Now it doesnt, so it is by definition a buff.

If new esuna removes ST20 then that's ok, until something starts doing AoE ST20. (sacrifice has a lower recast time)

If it doesn't there is literally no way to remove it. That's broken.

If something lands a 1 minute petrify and 1 minute Defense down and you accidentally sac before erase while in solace, congrats you just wiped the party.