Enmity System Explanation and Planned Adjustments

[saevel]

With no mage food (+10 MND or INT doesn't count) meaning White Mages everywhere should be eating defense food, cureskin (since Afflatus Misery sucks despite being based around getting hit), decent magic defense stats, a bunch of high enmity spells (Curaga - especially IV/V, Cure V, Cure VI, Flash), and a way to generate MP (Dagan, Mythic Boon, or Starlight), we might just have a tank, especially if we see more of those super high defense Breastplates for White Mage in the future.

To top it all off, we have a guarantee from SE they won't lower the enmity on Cure VI.

Well Curaga IV/V took the same enmity hit that the other cures did so unless it's early in the fight your melee's should have higher TE. The above values were before tranquil heart or -enmity gear and I suspect SE will be updating Cure V eventually.

[Raksha]

Tranquil Heart scales with Healing skill, so you could just swap out all of your healing skill (for +enmity gear, if whm gets any of that).

[Economizer]

Well Curaga IV/V took the same enmity hit that the other cures did

I misspoke about Curaga IV since it is based on -C- but Curaga V gives 300CE/500VE if BGwiki is to be believed (actually that might be pretty terrible if your goal is to pull hate if you compare it to Cure VI's 400CE/800VE, but on the other hand it is more MP efficient in the right situations).

Tranquil Heart scales with Healing skill, so you could just swap out all of your healing skill (for +enmity gear, if whm gets any of that).

Until such a time where Afflatus Misery's effects (which are based on getting hit) are better then cureskin, it will suck a bit to take off your Orison Bliaud +2 with it's 20 skill boost, but if you're like me you already have a baseline 440 Healing Magic without any gear in the first place, so there isn't much to be done about Tranquil Heart. It would also suck to take off your AF3+2 pants (luckily that doesn't have skill and there are no leg or body slot pieces, at least without augments, that have any enmity+ for White Mage).

Ignoring weapon slot items, a White Mage could get about +40 enmity in gear (good luck getting space to macro that all in).

Another issue is that White Mage's damage mitigation (as to avoid losing enmity) is crap. White Mage is one of the few jobs without native parrying (compare this to jobs like SCHOLAR and remember there is no justice or logic in the world at times), and evades like a brick. Additionally Shield is essentially crap unless you're a Paladin, although White Mage does get Shield Defense Bonus and at least gets a Genbu's Shield. We're also no Red Mage when it comes to PDT gear selection.

Despite all these setbacks I have thoughts that perhaps that this could be possible. Unlike our close friends the Red Mage, White Mage hasn't been targeted for extreme enmity reduction to prevent tanking, and with the lack of options in mage food it might just be wise to eat defense food and carry a set to straight tank a mob should things go bad for your party. Now only if movement speed gear for White Mage was easier to obtain...

[Sasaraixx]

Any follow-up from the dev team regarding our concerns about the avatar enmity issues?