Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Reiryuu]

This post is edited to include points and feedback posted in this thread for easier access for those interested and development team attention. If you wish me to add something, please yell at me, quote me, highlight my name and I will do my best to squeeze it in

We were promised balance:
http://twinfinite.net/2017/03/ffxiv-...view-pax-east/

We wanted to revisit our existing tank and healer jobs and make sure [we’re doing] what can we do to improve their player experience and what can we do to tweak the balance so that it’s not as stressful for the players that do prefer to play as tank or healer.

We were promised incentives/encouragement:
http://www.dualshockers.com/final-fa...ments-paladin/

DS: Considering that there won’t be a new tank or healer job in Stormblood, are you thinking of any measure to encourage players to play tanks and healers as much as possible, to balance the large influx of those covering DPS roles?

NY: We don’t want to force people to transition into those roles. Yet, for those who already like to play a tank or a healer, we’ll prepare more content encouraging players to play those roles. This is the direction that we’d like to take, as we don’t want to force DPS players to play tanks of healers if they don’t want to.

What we got is a proposal that is anything but balanced with its fellow healers and just more discouragement in the form of more lost abilities, nothing of what we asked for, the following of some obscure vision which doesn't seem to have a place or any desire in the current set-up of the game, and an uninspiring mechanic that punishes the use of many of our skills.

1. The Vision of a Pure Healer
- Yoshi P has said that WHM are supposed to be a Pure Healing job and their focus was to enhance this ability of the WHM

-The WHM community has, since 3.X been requesting some form of raid utility so we can compete or at least feel as useful as SCH and AST to our raids and parties. Unfortunately, we have lost buffs/traits (pro-shell) and received nerfs (holy) because of this "pure healer" vision.

- We don't really need more heals, Stones or Aeros. Many people would like more interesting things: Quake/Tornado/Flood, Buffs/Debuffs for Raid Utility such as Dia or some form of Reflect/Damage shield, etc.

- Pure Healers are not needed in content. We are not talking about 4 man content, but 8 man content and especially savage raiding when we say WHM has no real place because SCH and AST can do everything it can and bring more to the table.

- Quite frankly, the idea of being labeled a "pure healer" just sounds kind of dull and boring. We would like an identity like the other two healers have which we seem to have lost with the removal of many of our unique spells and the distribution of them to the other healers. A lot of us would like a little bit more "wow" (no, not World of Warcraft) in our spells and design effects too.

- There have been suggestions for a "Pure Healer" mindset ability: An improved Raise (Raise II).

Edit:
Well, I guess we do have to worry after all

As a “Pure Healer” White Mage is invaluable during the progression phase of raiding, but as players learn to make less mistakes, and push higher damage, Astrologian and its’ buffs start to give more of a benefit, while not losing much in the way of healing throughput. Stormblood – Doesn’t fix this at all… But hey, you get a barrier type spell, an interesting stack mechanic, an awesome cooldown, bigger rocks, and some pretty flowers!

From https://gamerescape.com/2017/05/30/f...lysis-healers/

2. Cross-Role Skills
- WHMs have been seeing their abilities and traits stripped from them and given to other roles since 3.0 and we have received nothing to compensate for their loss.

- WHM has lost Protect, Divine Seal, Cleric Stance, Shroud of Saints (Lucid Dream). Taking these 4 back + Swiftcast is 5 skills, plus there's Eye For an Eye and Esuna for 7 skills just to get back what we have now.

- Can I just take a moment to ask: Why is there a level 8 cross-role ability (for all roles) when you don't even get the first cross-role slot until level 12? It seems like this was not well thought out.

- If Cross-Role ability slots are supposed to be available with abilities that our jobs need to fulfill their role purpose, why do we not get a 6th slot at 56 and and a 7th at 64? And why can't all roles receive new cross-role abilites available to all jobs post 50? It seems less like this is a newly revamped system and more like this is a desperate attempt to make sense of an archaic system no one really knows what to do with, but you just can't let it go. If this is supposed to be new and revitalized, it should grow with our jobs and not stop at level 48.

Good to hear that you guys are taking our views into account.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4175752

TLDR: Don't "steal" existing abilities all 3 jobs have in order to force them to take them back with role abilities.

3. Job skills

I've compiled the data in a Google Docs spreadsheet if it would be helpful for people to see it mapped out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...oQ0/edit#gid=0

- White Mages have access to the fewest skills of all 3 healers:
WHM: Spells in List: 25....................Spells after consolidation: 21....................Bonus Spells/Abilities: 0.............Total Usable Abilities: 21
SCH: Spells in List: 26......................Spells after consolidation: 23....................Bonus Spells/Abilities: 8 (Faerie).Total Usable Abilities: 31
AST: Spells in List: 28......................Spells after Consolidation: 24...................Bonus Spells/Abilities: 8 (Cards).Total Usable Abilities: 32*
* Undraw is not counted in this number.
** We understand that AST cards are RNG oriented. This is why they are so powerful. This does not mean the WHM can't have access to weak abilities that are reliable and consistent to make up for situations when you have a WHM/AST or WHM/SCH.

Is it really too much to ask that you look at the list and say, "Hey, WHM has fewer skills than the other two healers, why don't we go back and fill out their lower level abilities and spells to pad out and fill gaps for abilities that we took from them?" How could something like this escape quality assessment especially in an expansion where the balance between us healers was supposed to be a focus?

- Why are Faeries/Cards considered in the above? Simple: Summoners have been begging since 2.X for more egis to summon and every time Square-Enix has replied no citing that ability numbers had to be similar across all jobs. I (yes, I the OP) just want to make sure they are holding themselves accountable to that statement.

- A concern that comes to mind, which should also be a concern to you, is the effect of the loss of these skills natively from WHM on how new players will level it in dungeons such as Brayflox Longstop through Aurum Vale. While gaining Lucid Dreaming at 24 when Shroud of Saints was 38 is a nice change, the number of slots available to WHMs is going to require juggling of cross-role abilities as Protect, Lucid Dreaming, Esuna and Swiftcast are all going to be pretty important. And the loss of Stoneskin in these dungeons is going to hurt quite a bit, too. Remember, to a new player Conjurer is the only healer available at low levels and, until the system changes in 5.0 or later, will make WHM the most accessible healer to new players. If these changes are meant to reduce stress... I can't really say they were effective in that regard. SCH and AST on the other hand, do at least have some tools available to them to help address some of these problems without using the cross-role ability slots (Bole/Ewer, Adloquium, Succor, Sacred Soil, etc.)

- With the nerf to Fluid Aura (losing its damage component), the spell becomes undesirable. We used to use it to damage bosses on occassion for a free, easy damage oGCD ability. Now it only serves to move mobs out of the packs which are AoE'd down in 50+ content. Repose, our sleep ability, sees similar disuse post 50 for this same reason. Yet, we have retained these spells and lost a spell we actually use quite often (see below)

- We have lost Stoneskin and Stoneskin II meaning we have no mitigation or shielding ability until level 66. And it not only requires lilies, it consumes all of them for a barrier on one person every 60 seconds. This will make leveling WHM harder on those people who are under level 60 especially so under 50.

- [7/2/2017] Divine Benison is awkward to use in both 4 and 8 man content. In 8 man content, if the tank and group are full HP and you happen to have no lilies when the tank buster comes up, you're unable to cast the ability on the tank. Likewise, since you don't get a lily upon healing a tank out of combat, getting a lily at the end of a fight when you try to top your tank off and cast benison for the next pull means you are sometimes left with no lily with which to cast benison. This has happened to me several times during the expert roulette and it drives me insane =/

- White Mages have no unique abilities to buff their party with compared to the AST and SCH who have many options.

- Astrologians, in their current state, have higher total potencies (with Diurnal buff taken into account) for less MP than white mages meaning they can not only heal better than the "pure healer" but they can buff the party far better as well. Plus... let's just toss this one out there too... their abilities just *LOOK* a whole lot better.

D. Is any other WHM kinda tired of being the most visually dull healer? Its like the Charlie Brown Halloween special. Everyone else: I GOT CANDY. I GOT A QUARTER. I GOT A CHOCOLATE BAR. White mages:...I got a rock.

I have a really big problem with the "removal" of Stoneskin and "addition" of Divine Benison....
Divine Benison is just a cheap cooldown, Lily consuming, replacement for Stoneskin.
...
Why not just buff Stoneskin for us?!

I would also like to have a toggle on whether or not Lilies are consumed.
Why should I be forced into the Lily consumption?

I also would like to adress the lack of abilities that low level players will have. After 4.0
The abilities for lvl 6, 8, 15, 34, 38
Trait lvl 36
Job lvl 40
You also take away fluid aura which is 150 potency at level 15 and add nothing else of value.
The lvl 8 to 40 gap needs to be relooked at. Especially for dungeons like Qarn, Cutters cry, Brayfox when it comes to new players. How is this not being addressed..
There is issues with low and high level White Mage. I outright think the levels and kit needs to be relooked at not only for level 70s but for new players as well who are just starting out.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4175409
Conclusion:
It's not that WHM mains want to whine, moan and complain, it's that without even having played yet, the toolkit as given has widened the gap for the series' staple healer. Sure, WHM can still heal your a** off like a mother, but the job may be even less required/preferred in level 70 raids than it was at level 60.

The Lily Gauge/Level 70 ability
- Only gain lilies on cure 1 or cure 2 casts spells that white mages use infrequently and mainly on the tank. No lilies gained from DPS, Regen, Medica, etc.

- The lilies are easily consumed by skills that we would use in normal rotations: Assize, Asylum, Tetra making them hard to accumulate to get any meaningful effect from them.

- The "reward" for having and building lilies isn't very rewarding or exciting.

- Because of the above point, the 100% proc rate from Cure II doesn't really help the system.

- The lily mechanic seems thrown on. You can play a WHM as we do now and never even notice it while other jobs with gauges are played like they always have been, build gauge, and are rewarded with new abilities to use with said gauge. And, as far as I have seen so far, not one of those new job abilities consumes the entire gauge like all of our abilities do.

- Confessions are a buff element WHMs have to keep track of... on the whole party no less... this is exactly what the new UI elements were supposed to be designed to remove. Why is it backwards for us?

- Our level 70 ability only works from confessions stacks which are gained by a target after a cure I or cure II and last for 30 seconds. There are very few instances where a player other than the tank is going to be taking damage consistently enough to require more healing after casting a cure I or cure II on them. And since confessions are not gained from medica, regen, etc. AoE healing situations where this ability should shine are largely useless because not enough people are going to have confessions. It'd be far more useful if these confessions stacked on the white mage themselves instead. But then the ability might be a little overpowered... but frankly... damn it all we don't need any more heals!

Lucid Dreaming will at least cut enmity by half like Shroud of Saints did, but if WHM is going to be stacking Crit... heaven help those tanks because the over heal is going to nab it a ton. Crit WHM is a beast with aggro... and the second Lily trait encourages WHM to go full Crit if they're going to make use of lilies at all. >___< That's actually something I haven't seen touched on in this thread and it's bothered me quite a bit. :/

You know what's really bad about this? SCH and AST gets their GCD reduction as a bonus. WHM has an entire mechanic surrounding it that accomplishes the same thing.

It's almost like they've gone out if their way to make WHM the most uninspired and boring healer to play for no reason at all. It didn't have an identity at first. And now it's identity is based around a mechanic that both other healers can do in their spare time. Lmao.

Suggestions:
Please note: There are SO many suggestions in this thread, many of them good, I probably can't get them all in. I will try to get the ones with a lot of likes when I see them. If you readers out there find something you like again, let me know and I'll fish it out and add it. Thanks.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4175539

Conclusion: The above changes would greatly help in not only giving White Mage a proper Identity as a Healer, one based in its lore, but would also bring sorely needed synergy to the Job as well. The numbers above would need proper balancing, but the concept behind the abilities would breathe new life and energy into the job and those whom love it, without threatening the identity and place of the two other healing jobs.

I have to disagree with anyone suggesting proc rate increases or making the lilies build from regen/medica/stone/whatever. None of those edits would fix the mechanic, because the root issue is that the reward is pretty uninspiring. Your spells could proc lilies 100% of the time for all I care. Three lilies, a full gauge, the biggest rarest bonus you could possibly hope to achieve from the new job mechanic is a 20% discount coupon on one of four off-GCDs.

Lemme put this in Astrologian terms, see if a change of setting makes it more clear.

Your new job UI is going to revolve around Secret of the Cards. Whenever you use Benefic or Benefic 2 (not aspected), there's a chance you get a draw! Not just any draw though, this draw will always be a piece of a Spear card. You can't Royal Road it, you can't use it on anyone but yourself, the only buff you can give it is drawing another Spear card piece (up to a whole Spear card, wow!) it only works on four of your off-globals instead of universally, and the buff vanishes when you use one of the related skills.

Keep in mind, this is a Spear card. The one known in the community as Royal Road food, because it's the least useful one. A massively restricted, hamstrung Spear card at that. I don't think a few number boosts or playing musical chairs with where the mechanic comes from will solve the issue, only highlight what the real problem is. And I'm not even getting into the Stoneskin downgrade that is Benison or the weird backward mechanic that is Confession (why would you want to quickly mega heal someone you just spot Cured other than the tank, they're presumably FULL now).

I wish we had more Water-aspected spells for White Mage. Black mage makes great use of their 3 primary elements (Fire, Ice and Thunder) but we only just stick with Earth and Wind. Fluid Aura and Esuna is the exception but... lol.
Give us a flashy water spell SE! Water is such an underused element and to get the chance to see Flood or something similar would be beyond awesome.

I agree as long as it comes in the company of additional fun, useful abilities. It would be unfortunate if WHM's niche were defined as being the best healer to have around when your party is terrible and dies too much.

On the other hand, more powerful or preemptive resurrection spells could be amazing in raid progression.

[Risvertasashi]

So much chicken little. AFAIK Holy/Assize/etc isn't going anywhere, and the video showed stone 4.

Edit:
Well I guess we do have to worry afterall

As a “Pure Healer” White Mage is invaluable during the progression phase of raiding, but as players learn to make less mistakes, and push higher damage, Astrologian and its’ buffs start to give more of a benefit, while not losing much in the way of healing throughput. Stormblood – Doesn’t fix this at all… But hey, you get a barrier type spell, an interesting stack mechanic, an awesome cooldown, bigger rocks, and some pretty flowers!

From https://gamerescape.com/2017/05/30/f...lysis-healers/

--

and...

[Reiryuu]

Like I said, more of the same. WHM doesn't need more healing and damage. It needs some freaking utility. It got nothing. You don't need a pure healer in content because all healers have to be viable so being the best at healing is pointless.

[Yuyuka3]

I'm peeved about no utility as well. WTF are they even thinking oO
Pure healer won't get the class anywhere unless there's so much damage going around that you absolutely need WHM to heal it up, at which point SCH and AST will bitch and moan so long until they change it back and we got the same situation as before. And it's sad how many people just want to cover their eyes and ears about it...

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Are they insane? Pure healer didn't work in 3.0, but they keep it for 4.0? Why!? I can't wrap my head around this. Pure healer will never work because damage is designed to be healed by any healer. So WHM extra healing comes off as unnecessary.

Can they really not understand this? WHM needs utility and unique abilities over everything and they do this. This is so upsetting.

[Reivya]

It seems like we can consume those flowers to put up a shield. But really that seems minor.

[Keridwyn]

Anyone know what the extra abilities were in the Role Skill window? I don't read japanese and I'm hoping a few of the unfamiliar abilities might provide a little bit of utility.

[Snat]

Are they insane? Pure healer didn't work in 3.0, but they keep it for 4.0? Why!? I can't wrap my head around this. Pure healer will never work because damage is designed to be healed by any healer. So WHM extra healing comes off as unnecessary.

Can they really not understand this? WHM needs utility and unique abilities over everything and they do this. This is so upsetting.

That's pretty much the problem I don't think the developers get. While the game has a focus on high DPS output to clear content - a pure healer is always going to be on the back bench. Now we don't know what new skills we yet "yet", we do need utility to have an equal standing against the other two healers :/

[Yuyuka3]

It seems like we can consume those flowers to put up a shield. But really that seems minor.

That doesn't really help the class much when every other healer can dish out shields much more freely and are able to buff etc. on top of that, though... it just closes the gap a tiny little bit.
And know what? The first SCH/AST player already told me "I hope the shield is for all healers!"
Cannot have anything nice for ourselves as WHM no matter how tiny, right...

Anyone know what the extra abilities were in the Role Skill window? I don't read japanese and I'm hoping a few of the unfamiliar abilities might provide a little bit of utility.

WHM won't get much use out of utility everyone else has as well, sadly, because if someone else can do the same, it still won't incite anyone to pick WHM over them.

[myahele]

So WHM is going to have a stone 4? That's what many people dreaded and WHM will get it .... yay? Here's hoping it has some sort of status debuff