Afflatus Misery: Creating an alternative WHM play style

[Gwathuial]

While afflatus solace did a good job of augmenting the normal MO of a white mage, misery has been left as little more than an ability activated when needed for esuna, before swapping back to solace.

With a view to making afflatus misery an actual alternative stance and play style to solace, I have thought of a few spells to enable this:

Regenja
Cost - 150 MP
Cast - 5 seconds
Recast - 60 seconds
Duration - 6 minutes
Self target only, affects allies in area of effect
Heals 1% of max HP/3 seconds.
Afflatus Misery active: Regenja can be stacked with itself, up to five times, for a maximum of 5% of max HP/tick.
Regen merits work as normal (+1-5 HP/tick), cleric's briault adds 0.1%, for 1.1%/tick.

Curaja
Cost - 200 MP
Cast - 3 seconds
Recast - 30 seconds
Self target only, affects allies in area of effect
Heals 25% of missing HP.
Afflatus Misery active: Each successive cast of Curaja increases the amount healed, to a maximum of 50% of missing HP. Cancelling Afflatus Misery will reset the counter.
Cure potency+ will work as normal, with CP+50% raising the base Curaja to 37.5% of missing HP, and the cap to 75%.

Divine Shield
Cost - 35 MP
Cast - 3 seconds
Recast - 10 seconds
Duration - 5 minutes
Single target, self only
Increases shield block rate.
Afflatus Solace active: Increases rate of enmity decay.
Afflatus Misery active: Converts 10% of damage taken to MP.

[Dmer]

The problem with Misery is that is so situational. Solace is just by far more beneficial to idle in. Misery is for Esuna and fights where you know you will take damage (such as wyrms where everyone is standing in range of AOE).

The regenja spell you mention wouldn't be worth the stance change when you can simply Accession + regen 3. You don't even need to be in range to cast it.

Your Divine Shield spell seems like it might be nice if a shield isn't required to receive the two benefits of being in a stance. If it would require a shield then it has the same problem that misery has itself: the need to switch stance (or gear in this case) prior to taking damage.

[Gwathuial]

The idea is to create an entirely alternative style, while afflatus solace would be for back line, instant curing, misery would provide front line, gradual/continuous healing. WHM would require gear suitable for being on the front line, of course, and what I posted was intended to just be a start.

As it stands, misery may as well be removed and solace made a trait. Having a JA that's just used as a prelude to casting esuna seems pointless.

[Dmer]

Aw, this is for lolmeleewhms? ok.

[Gwathuial]

I thought that SE effectively intented misery to be for melee WHMs, or to encourage WHMs to melee, along with mystic boon. Afflatus misery just feels like they had an idea and started implementing it, then changed their minds or gave up and forgot about it.

Hmm, to add some more:

Curasa
Cost - 50 MP
Cast - 2 seconds
Recast - 10 seconds
Single target version of curaja, shares the same counter (successive casts of curasa will boost curaja, and vice versa).

Covenant
Cost - 65 MP
Cast - 4 seconds
Recast - 60 seconds
Duration - 10 minutes
Single target, not self
Adds additional HP restoral to any healing spell used on the target.
Afflatus Misery active: Allows Covenant to be stacked on a target, up to 5 times.
Bonus HP restored: 50+1/3*MND*# times stacked stacked

[Ahrana]

I'll preface this with saying that I haven't played since January, but I found misery very useful....before abyssea.

In einherjar and limbus it did pretty well. Skeletons, bats, spiders, triple bats, leeches, and the like that did 250-300 damage AoE + status effects became jokes with the addition of mistery + cura + esuna. The ability to quickly strip off status effects like blind, slow, or attack down from the entire party with one quick cast kept damage output high, and being able to cure up the middling 250-300 damage with a cheap spell was a godsend. I still remember I would cruise through rooms where other white mages struggled, because they didn't take the time to learn when to use misery.

But then abyssea came, and misery became a lot less worth while. The ability of monsters to throw out wtfpwn aoe damage, aura's that couldn't be cured, and other such mechanics just turned white mage back into the stand in the back and curebomb job that it was before the esuna/cura patch. My job being able to be played to "full effect" as a dual box cure bomber was part of the reason why I lost interested and moved on, although I'm still thinking about coming back if they manage to bring back the feeling of being a useful member if you do more then cure bomb all the fights.

[Kaych]

I really like this idea Gwathuial. I mele all the time as WHM. It saves alot of MP with Cura, Esuna and Mystic Boon. What I would also like is Hastega and possibly make Auspice last longer. I personally go /sch so I can have sublimation up incase I get slept. If there was a way to wake ourselfs up also, without subbing /sch that would be great^_- I remember that the when you got cured in other Final Fantasy games, you woke up from the sleep, that includes the cures from Regen. Maybe that should be implemented for Afflatus Misery + Regenja. The Regenja would keep people awake(and would only be active as long as you mele)^_-

[Aleste]

Regenja
Very overpowered. For 750mp, recovering 5.5%/tic (average DD would have ~1,300hp, so ~70/tic) to all allies in range puts fully merited+geared regen3ga and regen4 to shame. Once the initial cost to get regenja boosted to that potency, the 150mp cost seems fairly cheap for a 6 minute super-regen-ga.

Curaja / Curasa
Pretty much a quicker casting version of a curaga/cura crossbreed... I can't be the only one thinking that 75% hp (~700+) recovered to everyone for 200 mp seems a bit high. Could be abused by casting curasa on self multiple times times until the potency ramps up to 'efficient' levels.

Divine Shield
Interesting, but does it require a shield to gain the benefit? I can't see many whitemages willingly choosing to switch from staff (22% potency boost) to a club/shield combo (Side note: why aren't there many cure potency clubs? max 10% single, 12% double dweomer).

Covenant
Seems a viable spell to cast on anyone tanking (moreso on a paladin), as the additional curing will help reduce the amount of healing that the whitemage would have to cast. Has use for backline whitemages, as the recast timer matches the recast on misery allowing them to toggle in and cast. It's an interesting idea in practice, although you'd definitely need to tweak the formula.

Example: With 5 casts (w/ average 130 MND), you'll have an additional 266 HP (truncated) recovery for every healing magic spell. Casting cure 1 (w/ AF3+2 pants) would return ~15 MP on a 8MP (ie give you 7 MP every cast) cost spell and heal for 300. >.>;




I'm mildly confused as to why your spells are increased by successive casts (with relation to misery being up) rather than taking damage, which is what boosts misery in the first place ("Inspires you to draw strength from the damage you take."). Your spells seem rather overpowered IMHO, although, whether or not that was the intended purpose could be up for debate.

The main problem with misery isn't the fact that the spells are underpowered (It's the reverse, the spells are incredibly powerful and efficient) it has more to do with the situations when misery becomes more viable than solace are grossly far and few between.

In the games current state (ie. abyssea), most of the NMs have ludacrisly stupid auras (para, silence, amnesia, petrification, doom) that significantly reduces the viability of front lining. In addition to severely hampering your ability to heal, most of these NM's also like to spam heavy AOE damage, whether it be TP moves or magic; and as it stands, it is far too risky to warrant sticking a whitemage up into the fray where a Blizz-ga followed by a TP move will drop a mage.

In order to efficiently front-line you'll be needing to recover MORE MP with mystic boon (assuming an agreeable TP rate) than you would by taking a knee outside of range, whilst at the same time healing for MORE HP (remember, you're now in range; you'll also not have cureskin to help mitigate damage aswell) with less potency gear to do so.

Afflatus Misery seems to be designed with this purpose in mind, as the esuna and cura series become exceptionally efficient (recovering more hp for less mp cost) when a whitemage is closer to their allies. Although this hasn't helped reduce the chance of us getting 2-3 hit ko'd in the slightest, or us suffering incredibly debilitating ailments; and that is the direction I'd prefer SE to have a look at. Even if it was some minor enhancing-type spells such as:

Some sort of afflatus misery-aura spell that limits incoming damage to say.. 30% of maximum HP, allowing us to take 3 good hits and still be standing. Under solace, limit it to maybe ~90% max HP; thusly back line jobs won't get insta-ko'd by anything coming their way assuming they're standing near their whitemage. Maybe have it take MP for every time it takes effect.

Some self-targeting enhancing spell (with a decent duration) that removes a single ailment every 10 (15?) or so seconds (timer runs from when spell was initially cast) would be pretty awesome when front lining. We would still suffer the effects of a nasty para/silence/petrify, but only temporarily, although, it would lower the viability of esuna.

[Gwathuial]

Wow, responses.
Yeah, they are pretty overpowered, though that was half-intentional as a starting point.

Thinking about altering them:

Regenja - Still AoE, self target only, getting rid of the stacking stuff. Instead it has a base value of say, 10 hp/tick (and maybe 1 mp/tick), but after taking damage, is temporarily boosted to say 50 hp/tick (+5 mp/tick) for ~10 seconds. Maybe only after taking damage above a certain threshold value, so regular hits aren't enough to activate it.

Covenant - Altering the additional healing effect to be like the misery effect, so the additional hp healed varies based on last damage taken (by the target of the spell, rather than the WHM). Under solace it would just give some small base amount, +50~100.

Conviction - Increases attack while decreasing damage taken. Base value of around +10/-10%. Under misery values increase as hp decreases, cap of something like +100/-50% at 20% hp.

And no, I didn't intend for divine shield to require a shield for the additional effects, although it's not so bad (Owleyes + shield).