Beginning (Sort Of) White Mage Questions

[Naria]

I know you asked about advanced skills, but I would just like to say the personally I have found Cure IV awesome in abyssea and with Atma of the Minikin, have never the seen the hate that it can generate become an issue.

If your many problem is ppl complaining about cure speed then I would suggest:

1) If you haven't already, level /rdm or /sch. "Career" White Mages should have both, but having at least one of them will be the single greatest boon to whm that you can have. Personally, I prefer /sch although it has a steeper learning curve than /rdm in my opinion.

2) Cure cast time down set
-there several good pieces for this in varying degrees of expense/difficulty to obtain: Orison Locket, Cure Clogs, Af3 pants, and incantor stone are some basic ones. Other options are Loquacious Earring, Aceso's Choker and whm merits. The nice thing about /sch is light arts, which does not apply to the fast cast cap. I have seen various arguments on if fast cast/cure cast time down/healing magic cast time are all the same thing and collectively stack at 50% or cap separately, but I have not seen any real testing on it.

3) Macro your spells. You will have lots of macros. People have already gone over this in the thread and which type of macro command is mostly going to be based on you personal preference. Play around and figure out which ones you like. One thing to add is I normally use <me> on spells that can only be self targeted such as esuna/auspice/barspells. That way you only have to hit the macro once. I also have all of my barspells macro'd but have only 2 (a bar-element and a bar-status) in my "active" macro bar at any time, that way I can just copy and paste the one I need for any particular fight, and still have all of my barspell gear changes set. I always macro the bar element and the bar status spell into the same place so I never have to stop and think about which one is which.

4) Experience
The more you pay whm, the better you will get at it. White mage is a player skill based job. Gear helps, but utimately it how good you are at the job comes down the ability of the person playing it. A whm with basic gear but good player skill can do much better than one with perfect gear and a short attention span.

I learned most of my skill as a whm mainhealing my nyzal isle static starting at lvl 61 with a V-cloak. I screamed my way through the 1st few weeks as well. Stick with it and learn to develop a thick skin. Yes the whm can cause a party/ally to wipe (I've done it, seen it done and if any whm says they haven't don't believe them) chances at least half the complaints directed against you are not actually your fault. Sometimes characters die and there was not a thing you could do about it. Learn to differentiate what is an honest criticizism/complaint/suggestion and what is just someone's ego.

5) Pay attention
This one seems rather obvious but whm is a job that I feel requires you to pay much more attention in all situations than many others in the game. With the exception of the soon-to-be-redone dynamis-bastok, having your attention in anyway divided (your parents/friends/pet/roommate/significant other/TV/music/phone/etc) greatly increases the chance of a party wipe, death, lost claim etc. This can be a strain as whm tends to be long periods of tedium followed by shorter periods of sheer panic, which it one of the main factors that tend to burn people (or at least me) out on the job.

Anyways this is just my advice based on my own experience with the job. I hope it helps, and remember: its game, have fun!