WHM Desperately needs a rework

I've recently been replaying the game on this new account due to losing my old one a couple years back. And the experience of playing through 1-50 again as White Mage, my usual main, has left me with some thoughts. Strong ones.

Put simply... White mage desperately needs a rework. I hate to be one of those people who complains that their favorite job is always the worst, but... White mage really is just the worst job. At best, it's worthless, inefficient, i may as well not exist compared to Sage and Astrologian. At worst, it's genuinely, actively unenjoyable.

The other healer jobs run circles around White Mage to an inexplicable extent. Every time i get an 8-man with a Sage, i may as well not exist. It's actually frustrating.

Using my past experience as Astrologian as an example, that job already runs circles around it. From the absolute beginning it gets a better version of Presence of Mind, and Essential Dignity to boot. And that's to say nothing of having more regen skills, better mechanic response skills [collective unconscious and earthly star], and higher heal potency in most cases... and global damage buffs to anyone you want. It's almost insulting... until you realise they rework AST every single expansion. Then it's actually insulting.

I love White mage! I adore the references to core spells in other games, and the fact they added Aquaveil from at least 11 to my knowledge if not from other games is really cool, and i love seeing things like that, not to mention i love the aesthetic of its spells and gear- but i've every mind to get to Ishgard, unlock Astrologian, and genuinely just avoid White Mage like the plague after the experience that has been the 1-50 MSQ as WHM.

White Mage needs a complete, ground-up rework, rethinking its strengths and where it fits in with the other jobs in terms of its usefulness, and that's to say nothing of the disgusting disparity with its capabilities compared to other jobs for 90% of the damn game needing some serious work.

Consider the following; if we took what White Mage currently has, and rebalanced its unlock levels around the capabilities of other jobs- moved things like Presence of Mind to level 6, moved Tetragrammaton to level 15, and other similar ideas- what would that look like?

Me, i think it would look like a gaping void between the levels of about 40 to 90, with skills speckled around every 5 or 6 levels MAYBE- devoid of all the spells that were moved from there to where their equivalents are unlocked on other healers. If that doesn't put the disparity into perspective, nothing will. I genuinely cannot say anything worse about this game than that. That is an outright failure in game design, and the fact the focus keeps going onto making Astrologian less confusing and then more confusing and then less confusing is just... so upsetting, dude.

Please, guys, just... give us some love for once...?

The issue with WHM as I see it, is that after the SHB rework to lilies to make them actually useable, that became WHM's 'identity' for lack of a better term. It's entire gameplay is about the lilies now. Any time there's raidwide damage, you don't think about 'what tool is best to deal with this' like the other three healers, you go 'I will use Rapture, because Rapture is the 'one size fits all' solution button no matter what I'm dealing with'. It's good that it is a more 'reactive' playstyle, compared to AST who has to wait a couple of seconds for their 'full potential' (thanks to Star having it's charge time, or the HOTs ticking), that's good for the more casual players to have reliable fallback options.

But then, what does a more experienced healer do? The exact same thing as the casual player. There's no room to grow your skill as a player. In some regards, it could be argued that WHM's relative simplicity actually stifles growth of players, rather than just being 'the more simple option'. Having basically zero mitigation options for raidwides (just Temperance really) means that a learning player will learn 'I don't really need to worry about mit, that's not my problem', whereas an AST will potentially learn 'my 60s Bubble skill is a powerful mit too, I should try and rearrange my healing so that it is up for X mechanic to help mitigate it'.

Every job suffers from the issue, but none more than healers: We used to have 28ish skills learned over 50 levels. Now, we have 32-35ish skills, now spread over 90 levels. Next expansion, we'll probably have 32-35 again, but now spread over 100 levels. We need lower level versions of tools we have at max level to pad out the lower level experience, and we need to just have... more useful abilities at higher levels. Nobody's using Cure 1 or Benefic at max level, so why are they still on the bar instead of something that we'd find useful, like idk an AOE mitigation tool for WHM, or a couple of damage buttons so our rotations look a little bit more like what we had back in SB

WHM is not the problem, the problem goes much deeper, and affects not just WHM, but the healer role in general, and to an extent, every role suffers a bit because of the issues. WHM just happens to be patient zero, the one who's kit is so wonky in [current year] compared to the fight design, that it is the prime example, the one who makes it so blindingly obvious that 'hang on, this seems kinda weird'

ps: hope you weren't looking to get good at AST as it currently is, because it's slated for ANOTHER rework come 7.0

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

[[...]ps: hope you weren't looking to get good at AST as it currently is, because it's slated for ANOTHER rework come 7.0

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Or alternatively, something that I semi-joked this morning after a raid session with my static: "Go ahead and give it a try at least. Because CBU3 have a bad track record of making things worse for healers. Should you find something to enjoy, you might as well do it now--enjoy it while it lasted before they take it away from you by MeleeDawntrail release."

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

Or alternatively, something that I semi-joked this morning after a raid session with my static: "Go ahead and give it a try at least. Because CBU3 have a bad track record of making things worse for healers. Should you find something to enjoy, you might as well do it now--enjoy it while it lasted before they take it away from you by MeleeDawntrail release."

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I'd dispute that. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. For example, if someone laments that they couldn't try AST before the SHB card prune, I'm kinda glad for them, because it'd hurt for them so much more I'd expect, if they had the firsthand experience of going through that prune, instead of just hearing about 'how it was in the good ol' days' and forming a second hand opinion of it based on the complaints of old grumpy sods like me

With all due respect OP as you did say you aren't new to the game, - as Forsaken said all healers need some love and WHM up to 50 isn't really in a great spot anyways) - not to say that you aren't making some good points about WHM.

However as the saying goes "the grass is always greener" - I wouldn't hop over to AST both due to the upcoming rework and because AST has its own issues. One of them interesting enough is the multiple reworks- which in this specific game, in the case of healers, is not universally viewed as a good thing.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Nobody's using Cure 1 or Benefic at max level, so why are they still on the bar instead of something that we'd find useful, like idk an AOE mitigation tool for WHM, or a couple of damage buttons so our rotations look a little bit more like what we had back in SB

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Hold up! Are you not customizing your hotbars? Part of setting up a new class is getting my crossbars set up how I like them…. Are you not doing that?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I'd dispute that. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. For example, if someone laments that they couldn't try AST before the SHB card prune, I'm kinda glad for them, because it'd hurt for them so much more I'd expect, if they had the firsthand experience of going through that prune, instead of just hearing about 'how it was in the good ol' days' and forming a second hand opinion of it based on the complaints of old grumpy sods like me

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Meh. I've had experience with both.

Coming to the game blind well after the rework, expecting AST cards to require decision-making based only on the game previews and being badly disappointed,

-versus-

learning what DRK used to be in HW before it was lobotomized from reading posts on the forums,

-versus-

actually experiencing a lobotomization of a job I liked with the 6.0 SMN rework,

all made me about the same level of angry.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

One of them interesting enough is the multiple reworks- which in this specific game, in the case of healers, is not universally viewed as a good thing.

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I dunno, seems to me like most major job reworks end up disappointing that job's veterans, not just those of healers. It seems like a trend of CBU3 focusing on attracting new players to try the job to the exclusion of all retention concerns like complexity and opportunity to improve.

I think the main issue is that the other healers have too much "free" healing, especially the barrier healers that are supposed to heal for less and balance that with mitigating more of the damage, and especially SGE which has things like Physis that are just stupid amounts of healing effectively for free.

To add insult to injury, most "healing checks" in the game are actually mitigation checks, and if the boss is targetable, BLACK MAGE has more mitigation potential (Addle every 90 sec vs Temperance ever 120) than WHM does for raidwide magic damage (most raidwides are magic). Which might not be a thing if AST was just as hamstrung as WHM, but it's not, as it gets Collective 2x as often as Temperance AND gets Neutral Sect to use party barriers for shoehorned mitigation potential, making WHM the only healer that is truly a pure healer and not a barrier healer, since AST retains barriers and mitigation in its kit.

RDM would make a better mitigation healer than WHM (Addle and Magick Barrier), and even SCH can output comparable healing.

The only thing WHM has that the others don't is Cure 3, which is an MP hog with Thin Air now only covering two casts and basically no content in the game that requires it. I've done 2x SCH healing through doom checks (have to 100% heal all party members) before, and it's not hard between both Indoms, both Emergency Tactics, and healing boosting effects of Fey Illumination. You don't even need all that. Meaning the one thing WHM has going for it is never needed unless you're trying to solo heal stuff, and even then, AST can generally output nearly as much healing with stuff like Intersection, Horoscope, Holos, and Star.

I don't think WHM needs a rework, but it needs a 60 sec party Pro-shell barrier (I've said before that they should get 10 sec Protect at level 15 or so, have it upgrade to Pro-shell at some point like 50, then have THAT upgrade into Plenary so it still has the 60 sec mit available; it would also have Temperance for more mit than AST but AST would have Neutral for barriers, so that part should even out). I think that more or less would fix the main problem there.

On the other side of the table, SCH and especially SGE should either be doing WAY less healing than they do OR their mitigation suite should be strongly cut down in strength OR it should cost them GCDs to do that much healing, it shouldn't be "free" healing.

And, of course, the obligatory "Tanks and DPSers shouldn't be doing so much healing and DPSers shouldn't be doing so much mitigation" (tanks doing some mitigation kind of makes sense given their role...)

I agree with ren points. I feel honestly sage and sch heals are too powerful, our job as they claim is to try reduce as much as damage as possible and our pure heal parts ast/whm should be repairing damage, I believe forsaken advise this and I agree that shields should not be restoring hp period, and for me our ogc heals needs to be tone down in potency(sch/sage ones), Sometimes I look at it and in content I say have a whm as my co healer(am always sage anyways) and am like why are you not at least once pressing medica 2, well the fact is that my heals are too powerful to top off the party as sage with no cost to boot(physis 2, ixochole/kerachole )while the whm would have to eat 1000 mp lost or a lilly lost with rapture.

I then reconsider and say well honestly the whm dont even need to worry about healing and its not fault of the player, its the fault of the devs for not making battle design the way they are because I can simply physis/ixochole/kerachole all of which cost 0 mp and addergall management is never an issue for me unless its a 7 sprout party . Why are the shield healers not only reduce insane amounts of damage but also easily out healing them with almost no cost and punishment than the pure ones? May as well just do SCH/SGE comps at this points which am shock aint more common than even whm/sge even though thats a strong combo. Certainly the tanks self healing(please dont chew me up tanks) have way too many op self healing, at least dark night do feel like us healers are needed even though we healers(am guilty of it) complains how annoying it is keeping them healed when it comes to big trash pulls, and I should certainly be more appreciative that am needed for once lol.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

And, of course, the obligatory "Tanks and DPSers shouldn't be doing so much healing and DPSers shouldn't be doing so much mitigation" (tanks doing some mitigation kind of makes sense given their role...)

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The funniest thing about this take is that DPS doesn't have a lot of healing. They have abysmal amounts if placed in solo content like in PoTD / HoH / EO that they are required to have a sustaining potion active to even make ends meet. It's just the reality is that they have been consistently lowering the amount of damage relative to the healer's toolkit while raising everyone else's survivability. All those factors combined is what creates this feeling of disparity. They can raise ILVL sync to the point where even if a healer fails it doesn't matter to the run because there's a way to save it, so the problem isn't the toolkit but SE's stance and perspective on how they want the game to be played. The toolkit is only a byproduct of SE's vision on making healers require less responsibility.