The Melee Mage

[Plasticleg]

demon, you don't take sarcasm well.

[tyrantsyn]

It could have gone both ways, but the criminal scum line is from Star Wars. Which kind of gives it up.

[Sparthos]

It could have gone both ways, but the criminal scum line is from Star Wars. Which kind of gives it up.

It's from Elder Scrolls IV actually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCsMKypvmB0

[Demon6324236]

demon, you don't take sarcasm well.

Please keep in mind the high levels of stupid on these forums and that it is the internet which means sarcasm does not go across as well as in person.

It's from Elder Scrolls IV actually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCsMKypvmB0

Thats why I didn't get it, never really was a fan of Elder Scrolls.

[Mirage]

Especially white mages should have some more melee options, considering they can't rely on offensive magic to deal with enemies like all other mage jobs can (except smn but they can throw avatars at stuff).

I mean sure, there is some good stuff for white mage, but lots of it is pretty old by now. There should be a better selection of WS gear for them at least, considering they have enough gear to cap or nearly cap gear haste without too much trouble. However, it would be nice with better TP gear as well, seeing as much of the haste gear available to WHM now basically has haste and haste alone when it comes to dd stats.

[Plasticleg]

Especially white mages should have some more melee options, considering they can't rely on offensive magic to deal with enemies like all other mage jobs can (except smn but they can throw avatars at stuff).

I mean sure, there is some good stuff for white mage, but lots of it is pretty old by now. There should be a better selection of WS gear for them at least, considering they have enough gear to cap or nearly cap gear haste without too much trouble. However, it would be nice with better TP gear as well, seeing as much of the haste gear available to WHM now basically has haste and haste alone when it comes to dd stats.

morta's body is a really nice and solid haste+5 piece, you can easily get near 26% haste cap with whm...only thing that sucks is dual wield traits :/

[Mirage]

Yeah capping haste isn't too hard, as I said . It's just that the gear you use to cap haste usually doesn't have any significant amounts of acc, attack, str or multi-attack stats.

Of course, I'm not asking for whm to parse as well as a nin or anything, that would be crazy. But even if you increased whm's damage output by 50% from what you can get today, you'd still be miles behind any real DD, so there's a lot of headroom.

Another thing I noticed recently was that the str path magian club has really low base dmg, so it wouldn't be something you'd mainhand. Maybe there should be an elemental path with real hammers too?

[Economizer]

Yeah capping haste isn't too hard, as I said . It's just that the gear you use to cap haste usually doesn't have any significant amounts of acc, attack, str or multi-attack stats.

Rubeus Spats say hi. :P

Sadly, this is roughly the only piece of gear like it. Holy/Divine Breastplate had a good look to it too, kinda wish they'd let White Mage get a set that had sick stats and looked like a melee set too. (Read: SE Community Reps, if SE is planning new WHM combat armor and you aren't planning a new skin for it, reuse the Holy Breastplate skin, and give it a crap-load of Defense for no reason other then as homage to the level 40 piece).

Of course, I'm not asking for whm to parse as well as a nin or anything, that would be crazy. But even if you increased whm's damage output by 50% from what you can get today, you'd still be miles behind any real DD, so there's a lot of headroom.

Why not? At very least in solo situations, it would start to make a lot of sense, but I guess Haste, the single best buff in the game, and Dia, the single best debuff in the game both don't qualify enough these days to balance it out. Of course, solo has more of a tanking aspect to it as well though...

In a party, if you're dropping absolutely all your healing to take a different role, there is no good reason why you shouldn't be compensated equal to the amount of healing you're not doing to do that role, and White Mage has a lot of healing power if that is the case.

And if you aren't dropping all your healing power, you should still be doing enough extra damage to balance the lost healing power out, especially since other healing jobs can, in the absolutely vast majority of cases do "good enough" with just Cure IV and some Fast Cast. Of course there will always be situations where it is better to go full mage and bust out those Curagas (even if Curaga slightly favors standing in the thick of combat and taking some of those AoEs to the face in order to increase MP efficiency), but for everything else there really needs to be better options.

So really, I have to ask, "Why not?" because it is incredibly unfair and shallow minded to just automatically assume that White Mage shouldn't be able to match a Ninja, at least if they're trading absolutely everything for it. I think there would be far less eyebrows raised if someone requested for a Scholar to be able to do close DPS compared to a Ninja when they go all out Dark Arts mode, and Scholar can swap arts and heal nearly as good as a White Mage so... yeah. This sort of thing should be carefully considered as to why things are the way they are rather then an automatic kneejerk against it.

Another thing I noticed recently was that the str path magian club has really low base dmg, so it wouldn't be something you'd mainhand. Maybe there should be an elemental path with real hammers too?

Yeah, because the things are wands, I once requested that BLU get put on the non-Empyrean path clubs (although BLU got put on a higher level club again, so that's slightly alleviated).

The things are glorified stat-wands, which kinda raises the question why they didn't get unique stats on them to boot, like a cure path for club. Instead we got a copy of what everyone else except Staff did, but without being higher damage hammers.

I mean, they're White Mage only, it isn't like that's an excuse against them being hammers. Maybe SE planned on adding Geomancer to them (and giving Geomancer access to Gambateinn, which wouldn't be too outrageous). But I guess it is just trying to put logic to something where there might not be any.

Another problem with the wands is that between not having any major double/triple/quad attack stats or gear, White Mage pretty much always parses better with a multihitter in the offhand, whether it is the poorman's OA2-4 (or whatever the proper OA weapon is supposed to be), or the glorious Kraken Club, so getting either a STR or MND wand in the offhand doesn't really work as hot as it would for other jobs.

-

Going on about White Mage since I can (and there is really more to cover about all this), I think at this point it would be nice to get a bit more then just gear to bring things more in line where they should be.

One that isn't really a problem, but probably just one of those flavor/background things, White Mage's Club skill should be boosted to A- or even A+ to reflect that we are in fact, 100% undoubtedly the master of the weapon despite what misinformed players may think.

Actually, it might be a bit beyond that now, since Realmrazer has been widely reported to parse better then Hexa Strike now, although some players recently might not have gotten the memo (and sorry to the misinformed player I'm quoting - well unless someone parsed Hexa Strike as better again - I didn't want to correct you in the Producer suggestion thread because that might lead to arguing, which was reasonably asked against from the Producer):

It would also be nice to give the job access to Hexa Strike since PLD has higher club skill than WHM (Sorry, Realmrazer just doesn't cut it as it is right now).

I don't really want to go around asking for a buff to Hexa Strike (although a new WHM exclusive Club WS or two wouldn't hurt) to "fix" Realmrazer being more powerful anyways. More club skill wouldn't hurt though.

Afflatus Misery really needs fixed. It doesn't add much to White Mage in general, but is really lacking in helping White Mage stay up close to a mob, especially since Solace has MDB on barspells, cureskin for when you cure yourself, and the Cura line is lackluster compared to the always ready and MP efficient Curaga line.

Currently, even losing a Holy laser charge from a couple of cures feels worse then getting any of the "benefits" from Afflatus Misery. SE might as well just ungimp Esuna, merge Solace and Misery so you always get the effects of both while Solace is up (and just rename it Afflatus or something) at this point because Misery is so bad.

Another thing that would be really nice is if they unnerfed Auspice. It was always a pain (arguably a balanced pain) to keep it up to avoid losing the accuracy buff, but the absurd accuracy made Misery slightly less terrible while making White Mage feel unique from other jobs in its own way. Also helpful would be changes that make it so Auspice's Enlight effect won't interfere with Mjollnir additional effect procs somehow.

If SE really wants to save Misery, they have to start making Misery make White Mages better at dishing out and taking damage. Of course, the simple way to do this would be just to fix it, but Afflatus Misery gear like the AF3 body's Afflatus Solace boost would be very welcome in addition to some simple fixes.

Making Cura/Banish charges work like Solace does rather then Scarlet Delirium does would be a nice start. Higher tiers of Banish and adjustments to the Cura line would really help as well. Still, gear that enhances Misery (or both Solace and Misery as to save space) would be a nice touch.

[Mirage]

Rubeus spats are indeed nice. I didn't know about them, actually, because I dislike VW and don't plan on investing any significant amount of time into it. Would be nice if they could add some AHable gear (crafted, perhaps?!) that was going in the same direction as those.

As for the fire trial, yeah, you summed up exactly why I thought the fire path to be useless. You won't be offhanding it, and the dmg is poor for WSes. They really should be hammers, and the fire path should get something like over 70 dmg at 99, with a bunch of str and attack on it. If there is something whmelee really needs, it's attack.

When it comes to damage output, sure, I wouldn't exactly mind whm getting close to other non-twohander DD jobs, but I think it's easier to make SE listen if you try to meet them at the middle. I don't think it's fair to let whm deal more damage than for example dnc though, considering whms are better healer than them. At the most, they should be right behind them.

Oh and we should get banish 4+5 as well. Give them the same base damage as blm's tier 4 and 5 nukes before MAB traits and gear.

Maybe afflatus misery should just get a buff that would give us 10% JA haste, and boost light elemental attack spells by a decent amount. How about light-only MAB values equal to what blm gets?

[Mathieu]

And if you aren't dropping all your healing power, you should still be doing enough extra damage to balance the lost healing power out, especially since other healing jobs can, in the absolutely vast majority of cases do "good enough" with just Cure IV and some Fast Cast. Of course there will always be situations where it is better to go full mage and bust out those Curagas (even if Curaga slightly favors standing in the thick of combat and taking some of those AoEs to the face in order to increase MP efficiency), but for everything else there really needs to be better options.

So really, I have to ask, "Why not?" because it is incredibly unfair and shallow minded to just automatically assume that White Mage shouldn't be able to match a Ninja, at least if they're trading absolutely everything for it. I think there would be far less eyebrows raised if someone requested for a Scholar to be able to do close DPS compared to a Ninja when they go all out Dark Arts mode, and Scholar can swap arts and heal nearly as good as a White Mage so... yeah. This sort of thing should be carefully considered as to why things are the way they are rather then an automatic kneejerk against it.

I will agree to this just as soon as you agree to Dark Knight being able to give up their DD capabilities and be able to heal as well as a White Mage.