dev1024 - healing magic

specific role... is good.... for the mom i cant see the place for rdm.
when the party need healing- i go whm, when the party need nukes-blm, support and enfeebling-blu or smn.
only when the alli/party have this magejobs you can come rdm.
Or is a lol event with lowlvl mobs , then is a rdm ok.

~Maybe a solo player , with a bit for the party~

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cidbahamut

If Cure V is the only thing keeping White Mage at the top of the hill then the game has some serious design issues to work out.

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That's the sad thing, it isn't why WHM is the top healer. Even if RDM and SCH had cure5, they still wouldn't compare to a WHM, especially next update. Why?:

1) Cureskin is amazing
2) JA MDB bonus thingy? omg so amazing
3) Amazingly strong barspells
4) Shellra5 5/5 is amazing

WHM offers too much survivability, even without factoring in Cure5. I'd still feel sooo much safer with a WHM than any RDM or SCH, but oh well?

The problem is that those assets are, while extremely powerful, unnecessary in quite a lot of casual content.

Things like stoneskin conferred by Cure are only useful 100% of the time when you're cure bombing a tanking monk or something like that; in any other scenario I find maybe 80% of those stoneskin effects wearing off naturally, either due to Utsusemi users or hate bouncing around. Sure, that's 20% that are doing something useful, and it is a significant benefit, but not as significant as it appears on paper. Likewise, my barspells with full merits and gear offer only a few points of potency above those of a RDM, so my only real advantage is the magic defence bonus - again, it's very good to have but not as black and white as it appears. The same goes for Shellra V with full merits - a 3% increase in magic defence over Shell V. Useful, but not groundbreaking. Again, for our other high potency spells - Cure VI is hugely expensive and never useful outside Abyssea (and not always inside), I've used Curaga IV maybe four times this year, and Regen IV is only practically useful when blood tanking. Very powerful spells and effects that have a potency that's rarely necessary.

I agree 100% that support casters like RDM should be able to cope with a WHM's duties when high potency support isn't needed - things like paper NMs, or EXP and the like. However, WHMs have only recently recovered from being shunned in low-man content and experience points parties at 75 cap. We don't want to go back to the status quo where medium potency support casters are preferred to us for things like that which don't require our high potency. After all, we can only do one thing - heal and protect - whilst support casters can generally do a lot more than that.

Yes, WHM shouldn't be the only healing option 100% of the time - that's ridiculous - but we should at least be AN option 100% of the time. Giving Cure V to support casters may not change that, but we've still got a way to go to 99 cap and Cure V narrows that gap significantly. Making room in parties for two mages - specialist and support casters together - is a much better solution than cloning parts of jobs and running the risk of treading on toes. If SE's introduction of SCH is anything to go by, they need to focus on understanding this before working on magic casting jobs any more.

For me, it's never mattered much which support job is a slightly better healer for more laid back content. That's the point of laid back content: you can mostly do whatever you want. As long as White Mage remains the obvious first choice for challenging content and situations where healing is really important, things feel balanced to me.

Even Fellowship NPCs get Cure 5...

blus white wind- aoe heal ~ 700 hp- "........"

Yeah, bluemage gets cure5 -1, curaga4 -1 and tons of DDing options. We still don't have cure5 and have curaga0(or curaga2 but lol @ subbing whm, and accession cure3/4 destroy your single target healing). But it's ok, we get a brutal earring spell!

Makes no sense at all, I wonder if the entire dev team is trolling us.

the devs play blus and hates all rdm.... maybe i dream

where is the whm community?
rly... by rdms want cure5.... (whm)"no no is too much" "rdm with cure5 is the new main healer"....
by blu cure5 ....(whm)"...."
by blu cure5 andcuraga4 (whm)"....."

lol. i know whm+rdm the old 75 friends

It's more than a bit ridiculous that Blue Mage is going to have access to our top tier spells (because Curaga V is going to be completely excessive, Cure VI is currently less so but certainly an OSHI- button). However, the difference is that Blue Mage has a completely different role to Red Mage. In practice, what party is likely to ask a Blue Mage to heal for them? Yes, it does happen, but not often.

Red Mage, on the other hand, generally has a very similar back line role to White Mage in most parties. If Red Mages had access to Cure V they would immediately be using it to augment their existing role and would therefore be better positioned to start giving White Mages something to worry about.

I'm not saying it's right for Blue Mages to have these spells, or that Red Mage shouldn't get something decent to help with healing, I'm just pointing out a possible reason why White Mages aren't foaming at the mouth over this sort of thing.