[Job Adjustmentｓ Manifesto] WHM

[Aleste]

I agree that healing doesnt really seem to effect cursna on doom

I can't say I've ever noticed any sort of conclusive evidence to prove either way...

I'd normally Divine caress (+af3+2 mitts) the first cursna, then keep recasting it in full haste gear.

[Bubeeky]

I'm with you Aleste...I haven't noticed a significant difference in doom-curing success based on healing skill....it would be nice if it did affect it though, as it would be logical for us to have fewer troubles curing it, us being you know...healers >_>

[Ashay]

Adjusting Healing Magic skill to better affect spells such as Cursna would be a great improvement to what we have now, especially when dealing with Doom on multiple people. I definitely think they should adjust the Healing Magic skill to be more powerful for a few other spells as well. Perhaps allow Esuna to cleanse more status ailments the higher your skill so that instead of removing only two, it can remove up to four or five ailments with Afflatus Misery.

Another great addition would be a spell that can remove Amnesia. If they add such a spell, Amnesna for example, it could work similarly to Cursna in that it'd be more accurate the higher your Healing Magic skill is.

As for the Cure V debacle, I feel that Red Mage and Scholar should be able to learn it. It probably wouldn't be usable with Accession, and as White Mage seems to be getting Curaga V by Lv.95, it wouldn't be much of an issue. If they wanted to allow White Mage to maintain its status as the true healing job on XI, then they could always add a job trait that quickens Healing Magic casting similar in effect to Elemental Celerity. Or a job trait that has a chance to reduce the cost of your Healing Magic spells similarly to Conserve MP. Both would be nice, but I'd prefer the latter.

[Bubeeky]

Can we whms get a little love from the devs on the manifesto info?

[Economizer]

At the present time, if another job got Cure V, there would be no reason to play White Mage (as a main healer), except for maybe procs in Abyssea. Don't give me this Cure VI or cure potency crap, both RDM and SCH can cast, recast faster, and have better MP regeneration tools - without having to resort to gear.

On top of that, both jobs have several solid secondary roles they can choose to do in parties aside from just cure botting - enhancing/support, nuking, enfeebling, crowd control. White Mage performs barely decently compared to both when it comes to enhancing/support, where the only major factor White Mage contributes is better magic resistance. White Mage enfeebling is fairly rare. White Mage nukes, at best, outperform a Dark Knight, especially now that Paladin can pack a punch with the occasional Holy (Congrats on that to Paladin by the way). And White Mage's are lucky they even have Repose, but single target sleep isn't exactly crowd control.

Outside of that there is just one thing White Mage can compete at, which would be our melee side. We get all the weapon skills our two weapon (three if throwing counts) selection provides (the only other job in the game limited to two weapons is BLU). We perform competently with both, and are second only to Paladin in Club skill. We have a monopoly on the Club Magian Trials, and a monopoly on the best weapon in the game (which I hope to someday have).

Ignoring Blue Mage, we are the best mage-ish job at melee. And even then, this is slipping. Summoners may soon get access to all weapon skills without having to sport a more melee oriented job, and Red Mages want their melee buffed too. Perhaps some buffs will be in order for them, but please do not forget the powerful, gratuitous amounts of potential you gave to us, and please don't let it languish.

Unlike Black Mage's super comfortable job security in filling a role - any role - White Mage only maintains its position on a paper raft in Ifrit's Cauldron. We could be bumped off at any moment by the ravenous hordes of Scholars that won't rest until we are out of a job, or Red Mages hungering for the days where the could out cure a White Mage.

Twenty-five to thirty-five percent cureskin, and slightly better cure potency gear isn't going to cut it forever, and there are major arguments that other jobs need more curing power. I'm guessing that they'll get their cure power in some way. White Mage either needs to be supreme at what it does, or needs other roles to play.

-

There are a few things that have been said here that have been amazingly insanely good suggestions. I've had a few thoughts too. Some organized thoughs on how to adjust White Mage going forward:

Barlight, and Bardark. For Red Mage too.

Regen cast time should be reduced. Gear and job traits/abilities should not be your answer to this request SE!

Healing Magic Skill should not be useless. This comes on two fronts. First off, Cursna should have better chances at removing Doom if my healing magic skill is higher. Second, the difference between zero skill and capped Healing Magic skill is 30 points of curing for Cure V. This is a major problem. I don't think a Summoner with /WHM should be able to Cure IV as well as a White Mage, and I don't think someone should be able to Abyssea burn a White Mage and cure as much as me without cure bombing undead for a few hours (or I suppose they could just sub Scholar for Light Arts).

A suppressant aura would be very nice with Afflatus Misery, to suppress monster aura effects, but somehow I doubt SE would consider this balanced. Not that having a debuff that cannot be removed on you should be considered balanced.

Afflatus Misery could use a boost.

Benediction is horrifically broken. I know that doing something like removing weakened might be an iffy movement considering that Ninja's 2hour is basically a glorified way to do this, but Amnesia? Mute? Doom? Zombie?

At this point Benediction is just an instant way to pop a Curaga IV and Esuna when you have no MP. Except Curaga IV can be free with the AF3+2 pants under the right circumstances. To be honest, I think all 2hours could use something extra at high levels like what Summoner got. For example, Benediction can actually do what it says, or if the dev team feels generous, even give some extra buff, like absurd amounts of cureskin, or Max MP boost.

White Mage should get Banish IV (maybe even V) and Holy2. These nukes will undoubtedly suck, and not actually help White Mage except for more recast timers for skillups. We know this, just give us them and be over with it.

On that note, Banish and Holy should at least do more damage to undead. Its not like White Mage is gonna suddenly replace Black Mage if we can nuke almost as good as a gimped Red Mage that somehow has no Magic Attack Bonus on one type of mob right?

On Divine Magic, please give White Mage Reposega. Getting ganked by undead sucks.

Charmna is nice and all, but how about removing Amnesia? And as stupid as the mechanic is, at the very least make Silence have a chance of removing Mute, if not outright.

-

And on a final note, since I know SE loves answering questions that sound absurd, and I think this could have a big impact on White Mage regardless of what spells we get to have a monopoly over:

As an experienced healer, I can't help but notice at novice healers who lack skill perform comparably to me. While I appreciate having new faces who are able to keep my comrades alive, it makes me feel like I have failed at honing my skills. What can I do to make my Healing Magic Skill useful?

[Caketime]

Or a job trait that has a chance to reduce the cost of your Healing Magic spells similarly to Conserve MP.

This would be SO awesome, I would take it over every other proposed adjustment.

[Bubeeky]

At the present time, if another job got Cure V, there would be no reason to play White Mage (as a main healer), except for maybe procs in Abyssea. Don't give me this Cure VI or cure potency crap, both RDM and SCH can cast, recast faster, and have better MP regeneration tools - without having to resort to gear.

On top of that, both jobs have several solid secondary roles they can choose to do in parties aside from just cure botting - enhancing/support, nuking, enfeebling, crowd control. White Mage performs barely decently compared to both when it comes to enhancing/support, where the only major factor White Mage contributes is better magic resistance. White Mage enfeebling is fairly rare. White Mage nukes, at best, outperform a Dark Knight, especially now that Paladin can pack a punch with the occasional Holy (Congrats on that to Paladin by the way). And White Mage's are lucky they even have Repose, but single target sleep isn't exactly crowd control.

Outside of that there is just one thing White Mage can compete at, which would be our melee side. We get all the weapon skills our two weapon (three if throwing counts) selection provides (the only other job in the game limited to two weapons is BLU). We perform competently with both, and are second only to Paladin in Club skill. We have a monopoly on the Club Magian Trials, and a monopoly on the best weapon in the game (which I hope to someday have).

Ignoring Blue Mage, we are the best mage-ish job at melee. And even then, this is slipping. Summoners may soon get access to all weapon skills without having to sport a more melee oriented job, and Red Mages want their melee buffed too. Perhaps some buffs will be in order for them, but please do not forget the powerful, gratuitous amounts of potential you gave to us, and please don't let it languish.

Unlike Black Mage's super comfortable job security in filling a role - any role - White Mage only maintains its position on a paper raft in Ifrit's Cauldron. We could be bumped off at any moment by the ravenous hordes of Scholars that won't rest until we are out of a job, or Red Mages hungering for the days where the could out cure a White Mage.

Twenty-five to thirty-five percent cureskin, and slightly better cure potency gear isn't going to cut it forever, and there are major arguments that other jobs need more curing power. I'm guessing that they'll get their cure power in some way. White Mage either needs to be supreme at what it does, or needs other roles to play.

-

There are a few things that have been said here that have been amazingly insanely good suggestions. I've had a few thoughts too. Some organized thoughs on how to adjust White Mage going forward:

Barlight, and Bardark. For Red Mage too.

Regen cast time should be reduced. Gear and job traits/abilities should not be your answer to this request SE!

Healing Magic Skill should not be useless. This comes on two fronts. First off, Cursna should have better chances at removing Doom if my healing magic skill is higher. Second, the difference between zero skill and capped Healing Magic skill is 30 points of curing for Cure V. This is a major problem. I don't think a Summoner with /WHM should be able to Cure IV as well as a White Mage, and I don't think someone should be able to Abyssea burn a White Mage and cure as much as me without cure bombing undead for a few hours (or I suppose they could just sub Scholar for Light Arts).

A suppressant aura would be very nice with Afflatus Misery, to suppress monster aura effects, but somehow I doubt SE would consider this balanced. Not that having a debuff that cannot be removed on you should be considered balanced.

Afflatus Misery could use a boost.

Benediction is horrifically broken. I know that doing something like removing weakened might be an iffy movement considering that Ninja's 2hour is basically a glorified way to do this, but Amnesia? Mute? Doom? Zombie?

At this point Benediction is just an instant way to pop a Curaga IV and Esuna when you have no MP. Except Curaga IV can be free with the AF3+2 pants under the right circumstances. To be honest, I think all 2hours could use something extra at high levels like what Summoner got. For example, Benediction can actually do what it says, or if the dev team feels generous, even give some extra buff, like absurd amounts of cureskin, or Max MP boost.

White Mage should get Banish IV (maybe even V) and Holy2. These nukes will undoubtedly suck, and not actually help White Mage except for more recast timers for skillups. We know this, just give us them and be over with it.

On that note, Banish and Holy should at least do more damage to undead. Its not like White Mage is gonna suddenly replace Black Mage if we can nuke almost as good as a gimped Red Mage that somehow has no Magic Attack Bonus on one type of mob right?

On Divine Magic, please give White Mage Reposega. Getting ganked by undead sucks.

Charmna is nice and all, but how about removing Amnesia? And as stupid as the mechanic is, at the very least make Silence have a chance of removing Mute, if not outright.

-

And on a final note, since I know SE loves answering questions that sound absurd, and I think this could have a big impact on White Mage regardless of what spells we get to have a monopoly over:

As an experienced healer, I can't help but notice at novice healers who lack skill perform comparably to me. While I appreciate having new faces who are able to keep my comrades alive, it makes me feel like I have failed at honing my skills. What can I do to make my Healing Magic Skill useful?

Totally agree...I've fought with sch's an' rdm's before on this subject, and they don't seem to remember that not too long ago, whm was all but obsolete because we couldn't compete for MP restoration....we're getting a tiny bit of glory now and sch/rdm want it, yet then they turn around and claim to not want to be put in a healer's role....

I would fully support having multiple classes that can heal...IF each one of those classes brought something unique and worthwhile to the table that cannot be gotten any other way, not just cutting and pasting whm's stuff to other, more MP-efficient jobs...besides, it's been said before, but it definitely bears repeating...a hybrid mage (rdm or sch) should NOT be able to outclass a specialty mage...the benefit of being a specialty mage is that we have more power than a hybrid, in exchange for losing the hybrid's versatility!

[Economizer]

Or a job trait that has a chance to reduce the cost of your Healing Magic spells similarly to Conserve MP. Both would be nice, but I'd prefer the latter.

I meant to mention this in my post but forgot. Except we sort of have a template for this to some extent - the AF3 pants. With the fully upgraded pants you can supposedly get back the entire cost of MP of what you put into a spell but not a point more, if you do a Curaga or Ascension a Cure IV, you can get free cures if people are wounded enough.

That said, I have doubts that SE would give us more of this as a job trait, although it would certainly be nice to get a small boost of this on top of the pants 2-5%. A 5% savings already translates to roughly a 25%-40% savings for Cure I-V, while a 10% savings would cheapen spells 60-80%, and a 15% savings would make the majority of cures free, meaning that even small numbers have great affect. As a White Mage, I would gladly give up exclusivity of Cure V for an extra 10% of this trait on top of what the AF3 pants already gives, but this would be completely broken.

And although I've posted many suggestions, I still have to be firm that Healing Magic Skill should affect debuff removal and cures more. Looking quickly at the JP forums using a machine translator, I see something similar, and I suspect that SE will answer us about this soon. Perhaps if we lay down the pressure (or alternatively, bribe Camate) we might not only get an answer, but a promise that SE will adjust this skill to play a bigger part into cures. After all, Summoners got a change to their skill that made it matter. Worst thing that could happen is that we get another undead slaying session with 99999 damage cures.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Cure potentcy merits please.

[Economizer]

Cure Potency caps at 50%, so unless you mean a job trait that bypass the gear cap, this would be fairly pointless for White Mage, as it isn't too hard to cap Cure Potency.

As for whether or not they should be merits in the first place is also a point, every White Mage should get increased Cure Potency, because what would you merit over Cure Potency that ignores the current gear cap? Basically, it would be like our current category 1 merit category of "Bar Spell Effect". Who would merit something else? That said, I don't exactly expect SE to make White Mage have a hard choice of what to merit now or in the future.