Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Actually, I'm not sure we do lose Divine Seal (or at least completely.) Look at the WHM skills in this video (6:53): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFDb3z0aQPI

The first animation is Divine Seal's.

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For whatever reason, they're showcasing cross role skills on WHM, like that tether and Divine Seal. And that scares me, because it probably means the rest isn't worth showing off.

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

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Agreed. WHM is my "main" I started with but AST is pretty much the only heal I play right now because of how much more it brings to the group. Between Synergy, Lightspeed, Collective Unconscious, insta-heal regens, stronger mana regen, powerful attack buffs AND being able to prolong all said effects... it's getting kind of ridiculous.

Is there a consolidated list of WHM changes somewhere I can read? Having trouble finding one.

I'm wondering what's going to happen to Assize. With the Cleric Stance change, is it going to stay a 300/300 potency skill? Are they going to change how it works or nerf it?

Blown away by three, count them three WHM job abilities going onto the cross role buffet table. Hey, you thought WHM had no unique identity before...and extra LOL at the indirect effect some of these changes are going to have on the meta. Lustrate's only 3.0 weakness is being removed (needing to drop Cleric to use it), Scholar's already busted as hell shields are getting access to Divine Seal, cross classed Regen is probably going to stack with Embrace...

Those healing lilies had better be the best thing since sliced bread, because the scant evidence so far sounds like they made Scholar even more obscenely overpowered from those cross role changes alone.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Those healing lilies had better be the best thing since sliced bread, because the scant evidence so far sounds like they made Scholar even more obscenely overpowered from those cross role changes alone.

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They're doing some pretty obscene things to AST too. Kind of sounds like the endgame meta is sch/ast or ast/ast against unless there are some severe nerfs to their healing output. And even if there are, they arn't going to require whm so...does it matter?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I'm wondering what's going to happen to Assize. With the Cleric Stance change, is it going to stay a 300/300 potency skill? Are they going to change how it works or nerf it?

Blown away by three, count them three WHM job abilities going onto the cross role buffet table. Hey, you thought WHM had no unique identity before...and extra LOL at the indirect effect some of these changes are going to have on the meta. Lustrate's only 3.0 weakness is being removed (needing to drop Cleric to use it), Scholar's already busted as hell shields are getting access to Divine Seal, cross classed Regen is probably going to stack with Embrace...

Those healing lilies had better be the best thing since sliced bread, because the scant evidence so far sounds like they made Scholar even more obscenely overpowered from those cross role changes alone.

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... Wait, Crossclass-Regen? Are you serious? Oh gods...
I didn't see the beginning of the stream, but it looks like my acquintance didn't tell me everything since he only mentioned the changes to Cleric's, and the rest I've seen myself...

Known/Tooltip Available

Cleric Stance - Increases damage dealt by 5% // 15s duration // 90s cooldown

Rescue - Pulls target party member towards you // 150s cooldown

Existing Skills

Protect - Likely no changes as it's already identical across all classes.

Esuna - Likely no changes as the ability is already identical besides name across all healers.

Eye for an Eye - Defensive cooldown on single player. Might change some since SCH/SMN have a trait for the cooldown currently.

Swiftcast - Might see some changes since BLM had a trait for it previously.

Surecast - As above, BLM had a trait for this, so might see some tweaks.

Unknown Skills

Break - Casters also have access to this. Looks like it's probably some kind of Stun/CC.

Lucid Dream - Casters also have access to this. Guessing a shared Sleep, since WHM and BLM both had sleeps before?

慈愛 (Affection) - ???

That's the list I found For references, the post right at the bottom

Most of the more solid evidence is for healers in general, and there's a lot of "probably" in the list so far.

In short:
- Cleric Stance as we know it is gone. Healer damage is based on MND now, Cleric changing to something like healer Raging Strikes on a cooldown
- Stone is getting smushed into one skill that upgrades passively as you level. Pro: fewer buttons. Con: Maybe losing the option of applying Stone 1's Heavy?
- Divine Seal, Regen, and Presence of Mind are moving to the cross role list
- The new cross role list includes Esuna (that was a given), a reverse-Aetherial Manipulation that lets you yank party members to you, Swiftcast, Surecast, Cleric Stance, Protect, E4E in addition to the above. The catch is, you have to pick five.
- Yoshi said something like "We want WHM to be more of a pure healer"
- Also said something about no major overhauls to the class like some of the others had.
- WHM's job UI is going to involve flowers. Some actions you use will give you flowers, they might give you cooldown reduction or a passive cast speed increase while you have them, and you will burn them for something. The translator said "barrier". That might be the Stoneskin replacement, since nobody saw Stoneskin on the hotbar during the skill demo (speculation about removing Stoneskin)
- Heard something about a new ability that transfers MP from the WHM to a target party member. Which would be loltastic if they don't do anything about our MP economy.

There might be more but that's off the top of my head.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Most of the more solid evidence is for healers in general, and there's a lot of "probably" in the list so far.

In short:
- Cleric Stance as we know it is gone. Healer damage is based on MND now, Cleric changing to something like healer Raging Strikes on a cooldown
- Stone is getting smushed into one skill that upgrades passively as you level. Pro: fewer buttons. Con: Maybe losing the option of applying Stone 1's Heavy?
- Divine Seal, Regen, and Presence of Mind are moving to the cross role list
- The new cross role list includes Esuna (that was a given), a reverse-Aetherial Manipulation that lets you yank party members to you, Swiftcast, Surecast, Cleric Stance, Protect, E4E in addition to the above. The catch is, you have to pick five.- Yoshi said something like "We want WHM to be more of a pure healer"
- Also said something about no major overhauls to the class like some of the others had.
- WHM's job UI is going to involve flowers. Some actions you use will give you flowers, they might give you cooldown reduction or a passive cast speed increase while you have them, and you will burn them for something. The translator said "barrier". That might be the Stoneskin replacement, since nobody saw Stoneskin on the hotbar during the skill demo (speculation about removing Stoneskin)
- Heard something about a new ability that transfers MP from the WHM to a target party member. Which would be loltastic if they don't do anything about our MP economy.

There might be more but that's off the top of my head.

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Regen is moving over? I didn't see anything about that, nor do I recall seeing the icon there. If regen moved over then Scholar kinda has the whole of White Mage's tool kit and sounds unlikely.

There is no cross-class Regen.

I think a lot of you are doom-saying a little bit too much before even getting to know more about the new core mechanics of WHM. I'd wait to hear more about the job's flower-based stuff before jumping to conclusions. The fact that Protect, Divine Seal, Esuna and Cleric are now in role skills means that either WHM can get new skills that come with utility or mitigation (or both), or that the other healers are losing skills too, since they want to avoid hotbar cluttering. Particularly in the case of Divine Seal, since it is a job action, this means WHM DEFINITELY is gonna get something to replace it.

Stone IV was an obvious addition since all healers need an updated potency nuke to keep up with DPS (which will replace Stone I/II/III in our hotbars, as well as Ruin and Broil, yay!) so I don't see why anyone would complain there...

I know their comments weren't exactly uplifting, but don't go so far as to bury WHM just yet, have a little faith in your main job :(.

Btw, the fairy tether makes me think Scholar's healing output through Eos is getting a rather heavy handed nerf, so there's that at least? lmao. The fact that they decided to showcase AST's cards with Arrow instead of Balance makes me suspect Balance might be reworked somehow... but we'll see.

Regen's one of the shakiest of the claims I've seen thus far. It's being reported as if it were fact over on Reddit from more than one person, so take that with however much salt you want. Could be one person misheard and it memed its way into the community, could be true.

This is true indeed. We do not yet know "what" has changed with White Mage and that is the problem. All they shown us is what we are sharing and even the show case of skills used a few role skills. It makes you wonder why they are not showing us what is new about White Mage when the other jobs did go into a bit of detail about how they changed.

Plus the fact they did say White Mage isn't changing much. Hopefully we hear more soon as I would hate to drop White Mage - I been playing it for so long and couldn't imagine wearing anything that isn't the Healer Robe!

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

There is no cross-class Regen.

I think a lot of you are doom-saying a little bit too much before even getting to know more about the new core mechanics of WHM. I'd wait to hear more about the job's flower-based stuff before jumping to conclusions. The fact that Protect, Divine Seal, Esuna and Cleric are now in role skills means that either WHM can get new skills that come with utility or mitigation (or both), or that the other healers are losing skills too, since they want to avoid hotbar cluttering. Particularly in the case of Divine Seal, since it is a job action, this means WHM DEFINITELY is gonna get something to replace it.

Stone IV was an obvious addition since all healers need an updated potency nuke to keep up with DPS (which will replace Stone I/II/III in our hotbars, as well as Ruin and Broil, yay!) so I don't see why anyone would complain there...

I know their comments weren't exactly uplifting, but don't go so far as to bury WHM just yet, have a little faith in your main job :(.

Btw, the fairy tether makes me think Scholar's healing output through Eos is getting a rather heavy handed nerf, so there's that at least? lmao. The fact that they decided to showcase AST's cards with Arrow instead of Balance makes me suspect Balance might be reworked somehow... but we'll see.

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This is what I think has happened.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Regen's one of the shakiest of the claims I've seen thus far. It's being reported as if it were fact over on Reddit from more than one person, so take that with however much salt you want. Could be one person misheard and it memed its way into the community, could be true.

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maybe they are making fights require whm levels of healing as the other 2 hlrs will have synastry + divine veal or dissapation + divine veal so 40% healing increase to try bring them up for content but yea whm still needs more utility over healing prowress

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

I know their comments weren't exactly uplifting, but don't go so far as to bury WHM just yet, have a little faith in your main job :(.

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The main reason is that we know what needs to happen to make whm useful. Basically either the endgame needs to change to require a hell of a lot more healing than it does now or whm needs some ability to boost raid dps. Since whm has no answer to balance/arrow or fey wind, and they're unwilling to make a raid require the healing power of a whm there's not a lot of hope to be had. Sure we'll wait for final confirmation but it's highly unlikely either of those things is happening. Plain and simple whm needs haste as an answer to cards and fey wind.

https://i.gyazo.com/43b8a346a32a4baf...a35801be49.png

None of this looks like Regen to me.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

There is no cross-class Regen.

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I sure do hope so.

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I know their comments weren't exactly uplifting, but don't go so far as to bury WHM just yet, have a little faith in your main job :(.

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I'm sorry to tell you that my faith in Square's ability to balance healers, especially WHM, properly died quite some time ago. It was a tragic, painful death an the loss will be sorely felt.

I expected WHM to not be so good in SB honestly, but to completely gut them like this...

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Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

I sure do hope so.

I'm sorry to tell you that my faith in Square's ability to balance healers, especially WHM, properly died quite some time ago. It was a tragic, painful death an the loss will be sorely felt.

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I know how you feel. I used to main Paladin throughout late ARR and into early HW and believe me, nothing felt quite as abandoned and left in the dust as PLD. It still feels like it, but even through the lackluster job they've done to balance PLD has me with some surviving hope that it might be a little bit more in-line with the other tanks come SB. Of course, it helps that we got much more info on tank changes than we did for healers, but we'll see.

I'm just saying that it's still waaay too early to count WHM out. They're getting spell-speed buffs, and I don't think the WHM showcase was just to give another demonstration of Rescue. My theory is that they can share this spell/skill-speed buff somehow.

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Originally Posted by Snat

It makes you wonder why they are not showing us what is new about White Mage when the other jobs did go into a bit of detail about how they changed.

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Tbh I was holding out through the entire liveletter for more SCH info and we got even less than we got for WHM, so I wouldn't be so sure that it's because WHM is gonna die forever. The data we got on AST was also pretty vague and didn't go into detail at all.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

https://i.gyazo.com/43b8a346a32a4baf...a35801be49.png

None of this looks like Regen to me.

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I can't read the name of the Divine Seal lookalike, but the one that looks like a colour swapped version of Shroud is the skill called "Lucid Dream" (Ruushidodoriimu), if my kana don't fail me completely... the one below is the new E4E.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

None of this looks like Regen to me.

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It says the cross role abilities are:
Cleric (now a DPS buff)
Break (which looks almost exactly like MCH's Suppressive Fire; we're getting a Stun?)
Protect
Esuna
Lucid Dream (someone guessed Sleep but it looks disturbingly like a re-coloured Shroud of Saints Icon?)
Swiftcast
Eye for an Eye
Affection (?) (I'm assuming this is some form of cross role Divine Seal)
Surecast
Rescue (the GET OVER HERE move)

Us WHM getting a raw deal. Not surprised though.

I'm trying to get caught up..so do we know what barrier does?

From the looks of it, I'll still be playing White Mage..guess we will have to wait to see how good or bad it is.

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Originally Posted by TheLastDream

Us WHM getting a raw deal. Not surprised though.

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We appear to be sharing/ losing two of our major abilities and SCH and AST lose... nothing.

If we lose DS and SoS for more vanilla "cross role" abilities, I'm going to be incredibly disappointed. It's not enough to flatly refuse to give WHM any utility, but to strip it of abilities that give it its defining image in exchange for more healing spells with the tired Holy twirl?

SE, why

Can anyone actually confirm we have lost DS and Shroud?

It's either we keep them and they have given a different version to the job roll section for healers, in which case we're able to take a 2nd version? (Probably unlikely) or...
We've lost them and are pretty much forced to take them anyway since one of the two abilities is our only source of MP regen, which instantly limits us on selection.

I'm really trying to hold my judgement until we actually have a list of our abilities for 4.0 including the new ones but things are not looking good from the get go.

Rewatching the new job actions trailer now, it seems like there is more to these skills than we think.

It is all speculation on my end, but it looks like the "lillies" mechanic seems to fill whenever the whm is using a healing ability. Now at one point, she uses a group ability (I believe it was the one in the benchmark) that doesn't fill the gauge. Utility spell maybe?

Also, the ability used that depletes the lillies (the one believed to be the shield) had an affect on the blm as well as on the totem mob.

I've been playing mmo's for a long time (and healed in most) so while I'm never surprised when a Developer chooses not to release new ability info/changes etc until just before patches/expansions, I guess I'm a little worried that we're a month out and don't really have a clear sense of where they intend to go with the healers, let alone what these new abilities do they showed off today.

Keeping in mind that one of their quoted reasons for not introducing a new Healer job this coming expansion was so that they could balance the 3 they have, I wish they would break their typical SE norm of not communicating with the community, and start more actively engaging with us - I feel like there would be far less worry/downright hysteria, if we had even an inkling of their vision for the three jobs.

Another thing, I see we get Stone 4? Since when did White Mages and stone throwing become a thing, Think they could come up with something else better than that!

Well now Assize becomes the best Ability ingame. Now it deals damage, heals and restores MP all at the same time.

You can go watch the Live Letter and see for yourself. Or check Reddit where there's tons of info about this. There's a part in the broadcast where Yoshi is on a WHM and it shows his UI. No Shroud or DS icons are on his hotbars. No stoneskins, Aero or Stone 1/2/3 either. Those last changes are more positive imo, but not germane to your question. There are pictures of the new cross class skill list that shows icons that look incredibly similar to Shroud and DS. They may still address WHM MP issues through other means (whether new skills or something like reducing relative MP costs), but Shroud and Divine Seal are becoming role-based.

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Originally Posted by AlphaSonic

Well now Assize becomes the best Ability ingame. Now it deals damage, heals and restores MP all at the same time.

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They probably nerfed it or added a longer Cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Istede

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All the Stones are getting lumped under one action that will use the appropriate action for a given level, which is one thing I am happy about. It'll help hotbar bloat quite a bit.

Wait, they consolidated Aero and Aero II even though they stack? I hope they increased the potency of Aero II to compensate, then.

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Originally Posted by Nestmile

Wait, they consolidated Aero and Aero II even though they stack? I hope they increased the potency of Aero II to compensate, then.

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Apologies, I misread. It's only been stated Stone will be, not sure about Aero.

Aero II is instant by the looks of it. I think that's enough to compensate. Aero was only good when you had to move or weave Fluid Aura/Assize.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Apologies, I misread. It's only been stated Stone will be, not sure about Aero.

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Ah, don't worry about it.

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Originally Posted by AlphaSonic

Aero II is instant by the looks of it. I think that's enough to compensate. Aero was only good when you had to move or weave Fluid Aura/Assize.

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Didn't catch that -- but if so, yeah, that should be enough to make up for it. Sort of makes me wonder if they'll throw Heavy onto the rest of the Stone line, too, since we'd lose it off of Stone, not that I think most people would particularly mind.

Here is a quick picture I took that shows everything on the White Mage hotbar during the stream as well as every healer role skill. It should hopefully help to see what is available to White Mage.

http://i.imgur.com/nkS2IPo.png

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

It says the cross role abilities are:
Cleric (now a DPS buff)
Break (which looks almost exactly like MCH's Suppressive Fire; we're getting a Stun?)
Protect
Esuna
Lucid Dream (someone guessed Sleep but it looks disturbingly like a re-coloured Shroud of Saints Icon?)
Swiftcast
Eye for an Eye
Affection (?) (I'm assuming this is some form of cross role Divine Seal)
Surecast
Rescue (the GET OVER HERE move)

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Thanks for the translations!! I was thinking Lucid Dream might be an MP regen, but seeing how caster DPS also have it on their role skills, I'm pretty sure it's a Sleep spell.

Edit: HUH.... they still have Repose, though. Hmmmm, intriguing. Shroud of Saints doesn't seem to be there either, so perhaps they're flat out removing MP regens out of job based abilities for all three healers? Man... if Aetherflow stops giving MP back it's gonna suck! Lmfao.

Also couldn't help but notice that Cure III seems to be gated behind the flower UI thing now, as it's greyed out in the hotbar.

That doesn't sound thrilling... >.>

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

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This is all pure conjecture, but this is what I take from it.

The two abilities at the end of Hotbar 2 look to me like Cure IV and some sort of Tetra-related ability. They don't appear to have MP cost and are greyed out, which makes me think they're related to the "lilies" on the gauge that are supposedly required for certain spells.
And if you look at the ability next to Asylum, it looks quite similar to Divine Seal's icon. Might be a new buff to make up for the fact DS is now cross-role?

Reddit isn't always the best source of information, but somebody supposedly translated all the tooltips they showed, and "Lucid Dream" was identical to Shroud of Saints: Half enmity and 80 potency MP regen.

This sort of works as a Quelling Strikes for the casters with an added benefit for SMN, and will directly replace Luminiferous Aether and stay the same for WHM. But what confuses me is that SCH has access to this and that would literally give them unlimited MP regen. Unless they nerf Aetherflow, but then that might work quite negatively on SMN. This'll be interesting for sure!

So we keep repose but not stoneskin and our main mana regen ability has been removed (possibly cross classed). Im only seeing four new abilities which makes me wonder if thats all we get this time around or if theres some new passive we get thats not on display?

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

My guess is they've taken Stoneskin and given us Shell, possibly the pink icon on the top bar. It makes sense, considering it's white magic, plus they'd be giving WHM the ability no other healer has (yet): a shield against pure magic damage. The blue icon two spaces to the left of it looks related to Esuna; could be an AOE version?

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The icons on the top bar are pvp skills the pink one is mana draw and the blue one is a blm skill called night wing.