Evercold White Mage first impressions

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Originally Posted by Nadda

Does Afflatus rapture give like plenary indulgence ontop of it now? If so that be really cool actually.

I'm not all doom and gloom. Not a heal striker type person. I think it's important to voice the concerns though. Lot of white mage is the skill expression from using the heals at our disposal.

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The Plenary button grants a healing boost to party members around it. The fly text there shows a buff named "●ヒーリングリリー：被回復効果アップ" or "Healing Lily: Increased HP Recovery" with its icon

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

The Plenary button grants a healing boost to party members around it. The fly text there shows a buff named "●ヒーリングリリー：被回復効果アップ" or "Healing Lily: Increased HP Recovery" with its icon

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The more I examine it the more I think maybe things will be okay? It is a test build after all.

Plenary activates Solace, rapture, misery, to spend lilies. THAT actually gives you at least more of a dynamic branching path into this new sanctity guage now that I think of it. AND since Solace and Rapture are GCD heals they build into it.

It might actually be kinda cool. I hope asylum and assize didn't get purged tho... regen too unless that's connected to something also.

Plenary also doesn't seem to be on cool down and with plenary's new buffed state that'll be active I feel?

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Originally Posted by Nadda

The more I examine it the more I think maybe things will be okay? It is a test build after all.

Plenary activates Solace, rapture, misery, to spend lilies. THAT actually gives you at least more of a dynamic branching path into this new sanctity guage now that I think of it. AND since Solace and Rapture are GCD heals they build into it.

It might actually be kinda cool. I hope asylum and assize didn't get purged tho... regen too unless that's connected to something also.

Plenary also doesn't seem to be on cool down and with plenary's new buffed state that'll be active I feel?

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Misery seems to be gone so lillies are only used to transform medica and cure into afflatus heals and Whm currently uses holy sanctuary like a 30s missery that can be used twice for the same amount of casts that dia + afflatus heals per min (3 afflatus heals + 1 missery + 2 dia = 6GCD casts, 4 free sanctuary gcd heals + 2 holy sanctuary = 6 GCD casts).

Its very likely that regen, asylum, assize, Pom and many other Whm cds are gone considering they mentioned aiming for 16 buttons per job and Whm's hotbars already had 16

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Misery seems to be gone so lillies are only used to transform medica and cure into afflatus heals and Whm currently uses holy sanctuary like a 30s missery that can be used twice for the same amount of casts that dia + afflatus heals per min (3 afflatus heals + 1 missery + 2 dia = 6GCD casts, 4 free sanctuary gcd heals + 2 holy sanctuary = 6 GCD casts).

Its very likely that regen, asylum, assize, Pom and many other Whm cds are gone considering they mentioned aiming for 16 buttons per job and Whm's hotbars already had 16

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Aiming for...
Losing regen, asylum, assize, PoM, and thin air are major concerns.
Not for them being missing in Evolved mode, to be precise, but more like not seeing them in a condensed form makes it seem like they just don't exist at all.

(More for others reading)
REASONS WHY THIS BE DIFFERENT for people who know nothing about Whitemage looked at the Paladin and saw a lot of familiarity just smooshed down or limited redundancies, is that:

If we don't see them condensed, that may mean they just don't exist at all. That would be really aids.

The preview is super disappointing. It makes me want to hang up my healer hat for good and go play one of their reworked DPS jobs now that the 2min meta is dying. It feels like instead of adjusting the job to retain existing healers, they've decided to kick us all to the curb and start pandering to new players.

I have some thoughts:

1) Removing cast times doesn't address the issues that new or chronically skill-challenged players have. A player isn't going to magically improve their uptime if you take away their cast times. An interrupted cast challenges a player to optimize. A lazy player will still miss just as many GCDs as before, because they are not trying to maintain uptime.

2) Their claim that this will allow us to heal more actively conflicts with their proposed changes to give more healing and utility skills to phys ranged. Why would I want to stand around pressing instant glare if I can have a better time playing bard and still help heal my party?

3) The fact that they essentially said, "Hey guys, we heard you're tired of hitting glare! That's why we took away all of your fun buttons and turned the rest into glare!" is the most laughable point out of all of this. We want more difficulty and more room for skill expression, not a watered down single button job for dummies that encourages mindless GCD overhealing in the same stroke.

Removing the 2min meta is a great change. The proposed WHM changes are total rubbish.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

Does anyone have a link to this? This sounds...upsetting. Is Evolved mode some optional thing? I don't even know what it is so i'm not sure how to react to this news.

Regen and assize are two of my favorite skills and it's just gone?

Edit: Found a video with google and....errr. I won't be using this.

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For the existing classes for now, it is optional. However, it is highly theorized that with the fact that all new jobs will have Evolved mode only and that balancing two separate kits for existing classes as they add more would be more work than its worth, they will likely get rid of Reborn mode in either 9.0 or 10.0.

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Originally Posted by Vrankyl

For the existing classes for now, it is optional. However, it is highly theorized that with the fact that all new jobs will have Evolved mode only and that balancing two separate kits for existing classes as they add more would be more work than its worth, they will likely get rid of Reborn mode in either 9.0 or 10.0.

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It makes more sense to me to just lock the existing content to Reborn mode and lock new content to Evolved mode. That way if they add skills to evolved mode in 9.0 they don't have to worry about them being balanced in old Ultimates or Eureka or anything.

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Originally Posted by Slayer25c

They also say everything is not finally things would change so stop with doom and gloom

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No, we will give feedback while they're in development mode so things can change for the better
It's not doom and gloom. It's feedback, and they should take it while they've still got 8 months to cook.

They wouldn't show off jobs in such a unfinished state if they weren't looking for feedback

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

You do understand the people asking to be healbots are not the same ones who wanted more complexity? It's not black and white like that. I always agreed I wish as a healer I could heal more, and if not that, that my job gets a more fun rotation or a little more complex. Instead, what I saw yesterday does neither. The job is easier (somehow) and knowing CB3 they'll just keep healing checks the same as they are for the most part and tell healers to "just go play ultimates."

I'm not part of the strike myself but it's not rocket science to see why healers are annoyed. Every little bit of skill expression they had left is getting removed and for what? So the medica III spamming WHM in normal roulettes has an easier time? I understand the game has to be balanced around casuals as much as raiders, I'm in the middle of that I would say, I raid but not hardcore. Yet I feel like this change benefits only people who were already playing WHM sub optimally, I know that's harsh to say but jobs can be simple to play and take skill to master.

They actually KNOW how to make healers fun because in PvP healers are genuinely fun and can do a crapton of healing on top of DMG. Yet for PvE we once again seem to be getting the short end of the stick. That's the frustrating part.

It's not about "winning" it's about the fact that for a lot of healers our feedback just falls on deaf ears. In no world did WHM have to be made any easier. You can absolutely like the changes, that is totally fine but you don't have to be so demeaning and act ignorant just because you're happy.

On that note, I'm genuinely worried for SCH tbh.

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Its not only the deaf ears. If I remember correct, their home market likes to play easy mode after a tiring day from work.
They're not interested in playing busy jobs. They dont want to sweat in casual content.

The whole gameplay direction change is about "less time commitment, play when or whatever you like".

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Originally Posted by flowerfairy

The appeal of healers to me has always been choice. Choosing who’s the best target to heal, choosing the most efficient heal at the moment, managing my resources as best as possible.

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This is exactly what has made healing in FFXIV interesting up to this point. Making choices of which tools to use and where, and the consequences of those choices while trying to strategically DPS as much as possible.

I literally made this forum account just now (Hi!) to echo the dissatisfaction with what we saw with WHM at the dev panel, for what it's worth.

I won't lie: What I saw from WHM was literally the thing we've been complaining about.

Glare Mage? How about Glare Mage+? If you're seriously going to believe that we're going to suck up to that as Healers, then maybe consider that even if you remove the button/heal bloat, you're going to run into the same issues that make Healers untenable in the first place: Lack of a DPS rotation during healing downtime.

I'm going to say it now: 8.05? We're going to see the same problem Healers have been seeing for 6 years now, and it will stay that way because despite Mr. Prime doing work to clear up button bloat on other jobs, we're still running into the same problem except worse with the new Evolved philosophy.

Design probably will skew heavily towards Evolved in Evercold, but I'm not holding my breath for it until they can take Healers seriously in all content, not just high-end.

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Originally Posted by UriLadair

Quote Originally Posted by flowerfairy View Post
The appeal of healers to me has always been choice. Choosing who’s the best target to heal, choosing the most efficient heal at the moment, managing my resources as best as possible.

This is exactly what has made healing in FFXIV interesting up to this point. Making choices of which tools to use and where, and the consequences of those choices while trying to strategically DPS as much as possible.

I literally made this forum account just now (Hi!) to echo the dissatisfaction with what we saw with WHM at the dev panel, for what it's worth.

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I very much agree with flowerfairy. Part of the reason I didn't jive with #Healerstrike is - I'm not looking for a complex dps rotation. Especially the way FF14 does it.

I like the freedom though of my healing kit to be able to use them however I wish.

Without Cure 3 if both healers are seperated in a split room mechanic how can I heal a cluster of players from far away. OR without asylum for that matter.

And like we just got Glare 4 and along with Assize, I enjoy in dungeons while I don't exactly need to flex my healer muscles I like being able to aoe mobs down.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

And like we just got Glare 4 and along with Assize, I enjoy in dungeons while I don't exactly need to flex my healer muscles I like being able to aoe mobs down.

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I understand that part, but part of why you don't see many healers is because they're "uninteresting" or "boring" if you try to compare them to the "fun" of other jobs(while subjective, most people like engagement). That's why they tend to flock to DPS or Tank Jobs since they at least have things going for them in a kind of flow. They have more than one button to hit that matters. Healers have more than one button to hit only when healing is needed; outside of that, there's only Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis.

The Healer Gameplay Loop is pretty much the real thing to address because if we're still the same after this Evolved rework of the battle system? Then people aren't going to want to play Healer unless it's to beat the queues as you saw up front.

The #HealerStrike Thread has already left pages and pages of feedback regarding our discontent about Healers, but I'm not sure if they've thought it through. That's why feedback at this stage is important for Healers as a whole since they're developing still for the next 9 months.

The one saving grace I have is that they didn't touch holy during the demonstration. This means in addition to the new gauge spender, white mage is having three of it's vastly reduced buttons turned into damage buttons. Depending on what holy actually does, it's a good start. The lack of a dot, and the focus on White mage's identity being the "Heals make you do more damage" job has me very, tentatively, cautiously optimistic that we're not going to have the same dps rotation on all healers, even if they're a bit simpler than other roles.

So why isn't any of this being shown off in the demo? For the same reason paladin's full dps rotation wasn't engaged with at length, they wanted to talk about how healers are healing, not how they are dpsing. That's my hopeium, the concerns are still very important to bring up.

I'm concerned, but overall curious and interested to see what they are doing with WHM. I have switched to maining a healer for a couple patches now and I've been having a lot of fun leveling my healer alt, but out of the 4 jobs showcased at the development panel, WHM is definitely one I still have so many questions for.
I guess the first question would be related to the animations themselves, when it comes to job identity I do believe how your character moves/is animated does also play a role in this as well, so even something like the attack casting animation for white mage, to me, is one of the cool things about it. I'll be kind of sad if that animation is completely gone for good, I wonder if we will get to keep it for certain things like Holy...? It was untouched during the presentation, so I wonder if they have anything else in store that they simply haven't showed yet or something.

I would like to say that although I liked the strategic aspect of figuring out when to cast things, including attacks and think it has its charm points, I'm not entirely against this more action-focused mode. My only real concern is for white mage to still *feel* like white mage, I feel like the newer expansions in recent years have been making me rather nervous because of these big changes they do for the jobs. Like, I feel like I'm crazy pointing out the changes they did for DRK, or more recent changes to RDM and discussing the removal or changes to their animation is one of the main complaints i have had as opposed to actually talking about the meta and a job's abilities and referring to its affect in-game, i simply want to know/see... how interesting or cool something looks, and how cool it is to play, and show my friends as i play. I know I fall in the minority because this discussion is rather rare, but overall I would like to just say I sincerely hope that they will be still taking in feedback and I do want to hope that white mage (alongside the rest of the healers, I feel this especially with astrologian is necessary) still retains its job expression. I don't care about playing perfectly and i don't care about damage numbers, I just want my character to look cool when he casts spells lol.

I think its important to keep in mind that we are dealing with a sort of ARR level reset. It would have been better placed in DT, but it is what it is. As such there is no way to go into this without some tradeoffs, and I think those tradeoffs are worth it if the team commits to expanding on evolved reasonably, i.e not simply rebloating but bringing the best old and new ideas that make sense in the new job fantasy paradigm. In other words, yes evolved might feel a bit limited at first, but the team is setting up for it to grow over time, and that was not feasible under the old jobs and the meta.

That all said, I have to echo the observation that I am not seeing the wow factor with WHM. Imo to slim down the actions and keep players happy, you have to commit to the class fantasy, but I am not quite seeing that. If button contraint is an issue then use existing buttons in any number of creative ways. This was just a demo, and maybe we will get more than a winged glarebot. Idk. I feel like its almost there, it just needs that one more thing imo.

I see people writing up dissertations and I get it, but I just think its important to be reasonable given again, this is a reset and its not feasible to expect it to be the lvl 110 version of the old job. The game will offer that if you want that. This is a new lead designer and he does not deserve all the blame for every poor decision ever, especially with so much goodwill from his work on PVP.

I absolutely do not want to see him or the the team get griefed back into the old, dead husk of what was. Lets keep our eyes on the prize even if it means short term pain.

^short term pain

WHM has been in the trash bin for about 11.5 of ARR’s 12 year existence

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

Its not only the deaf ears. If I remember correct, their home market likes to play easy mode after a tiring day from work.
They're not interested in playing busy jobs. They dont want to sweat in casual content.

The whole gameplay direction change is about "less time commitment, play when or whatever you like".

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So keep the job as is? In no way did they ever have to sweat on WHM to do the bare minimum. Again, keep the job simple, but add optimization for those who want. WHM was already super chill in casual content, spam glare, cancel casts is no issue, use lilies, and spam holy in aoe, like the job was already NOT busy in the slightest.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

^short term pain

WHM has been in the trash bin for about 11.5 of ARR’s 12 year existence

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But its not just WHM. There are fair criticisms for a lot of what we saw. From my perspective, feedback is fine but stuff like this is unfair when afaik, this designer did not have this level.of influence or authority until five minutes ago.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

But its not just WHM. There are fair criticisms for a lot of what we saw. From my perspective, feedback is fine but stuff like this is unfair when afaik, this designer did not have this level.of influence or authority until five minutes ago.

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Why is it unfair?

Healer has been the most misunderstood, messy and underdeveloped role since ShB at a bare minimum more like really SB and then they proceed to show off 4 classes where the one healer they show is unequivocally the low point of the presentation

Whether the new designer had influence over the old jobs or not is irrelevant, they understood the average feedback of the collective roles and everyone know healer is the least liked role, and still somehow they put out the worst performance for it. Knowing feedback against the old jobs is worst for healer that would be the one you’d want to put the most effort into, right now the presentation seems to tilt towards “win more” for the already well liked jobs given the order of opinions of the three roles DPS>tank>healer is already the distribution of average opinion of feedback of the current design of the 3 roles

These presentations don’t occur in a vacuum of player feedback, they had to know what they were doing

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Why is it unfair?

Healer has been the most misunderstood, messy and underdeveloped role since ShB at a bare minimum more like really SB and then they proceed to show off 4 classes where the one healer they show is unequivocally the low point of the presentation

Whether the new designer had influence over the old jobs or not is irrelevant, they understood the average feedback of the collective roles and everyone know healer is the least liked role, and still somehow they put out the worst performance for it. Knowing feedback against the old jobs is worst for healer that would be the one you’d want to put the most effort into, right now the presentation seems to tilt towards “win more” for the already well liked jobs given the order of opinions of the three roles DPS>tank>healer is already the distribution of average opinion of feedback of the current design of the 3 roles

These presentations don’t occur in a vacuum of player feedback, they had to know what they were doing

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Maybe its not unfair, I just personally see it as apples and oranges. If the goal was to reset, line the jobs up with lvl 50, I think they did a decent job outside, as I noted, WHM needing adjusting. So we agree. I don't agree you can plug all that feedback directly into this particular form of rework, soi it just depends. What disappoints me is not feedback, its just griefing and doomerism. I understand it, but I want to offer a different perspective and maybe people more reasons to lean cautiously optimistic.

I also posted this in the wrong thread. I meant to originally put it in the general evolved feedback. For some reason unlike JP we make the same topics 300x. Oops

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

What disappoints me is not feedback, its just griefing and doomerism. I understand it, but I want to offer a different perspective and maybe people more reasons to lean cautiously optimistic.

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What disappoints me is giving feedback and being called a griefer or doomer. We've seen this exact situation play out again and again. SE makes changes to healing actual healers didn't ask for > Promise there'll be more to heal to offset the changes > they lie > healer is just not fun despite loving the role or fantasy of said job. If we don't point out our worries now there is ZERO chance SE can see them. So what should we do? Trust blindly in the developers who I appreciate a lot but have clearly shown they don't clearly understand what the healer role wants?

I don't mean this rudely but I'm tired of the healer role being simplified because John levelling finds it too hard to level healers through daily roulettes. You can make healing simple (which WHM already was) while keeping it engaging at higher levels. But the amount of White Mages I see in normal raids spamming nothing but Medica III and seeing SE double down on making healing easier for them just saddens me.

I'm a healer who already used GCD healing when needed, I didn't minmax my damage, but I enjoyed trying to slidecast as much as possible, timing enemy aoes to time a perfect cure III and so forth, all that is just gone now to be insta cast dps with healing. There's nothing left for me to try and improve on, all I can do is press one button and ask my group to stack on me for healing. That sounds so fun!

Why can some jobs cause such a riot to the point SE will buff them or change them mid expansion but healers complain and just nothing ever happens? I'm tired of them going "we want to make healing easier." IT CANT BE ANY EASIER. And even so, for normal raiding and casual content you already have the easiest role imaginable, you have to do nothing, press a couple ogcd heals here and there and spam one button, so what is this "We want it to be more approachable" is all about. In Casual content tanks can practically heal the entire dungeon group by themselves. If they want to make healing more interesting and approachable, let us be an ACTUAL healer and not just a glorified DPS with occasional healing that is useless outside anything that isn't savage/ultimate.

The only healer that has a relatively complex kit left right now is Scholar and is likely going to be completely different now too. If they did this to WHM I shudder to think what they'll do to SCH.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

I don't mean this rudely but I'm tired of the healer role being simplified because John levelling finds it too hard to level healers through daily roulettes. You can make healing simple (which WHM already was) while keeping it engaging at higher levels. But the amount of White Mages I see in normal raids spamming nothing but Medica III and seeing SE double down on making healing easier for them just saddens me.

I'm a healer who already used GCD healing when needed, I didn't minmax my damage, but I enjoyed trying to slidecast as much as possible, timing enemy aoes to time a perfect cure III and so forth, all that is just gone now to be insta cast dps with healing. There's nothing left for me to try and improve on, all I can do is press one button and ask my group to stack on me for healing. That sounds so fun!

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I find it all so insulting honestly from the both the devs and the player base at large who don't even play whitemage.

Whitemage is the first healer this is true - but why do they need to be a job that is super easy? (We were already easy dps rotation wise but with a wide variety of healing of spells, I liked that and for Aoe's dps rotation I like that in dungeons I can melt things with assize and glare 4 and misery)

Nobody looks at Paladin and Warrior and says they should be easier as peoples first tanks.
Nobody looks at Black Mage, Bard, and Monk and go they should be easier as peoples DPS. (In fact they're some of the more complex)

What's also insulting is this notion that Whitemage has to be this simple job but if you want to play the Job fantasy I signed up for I should go play Astro. Fuck you! I say to those people.

No other Job mained by any other player in this game is told to play a different Job to get the experience they want from their own.

With DPS maybe there's a job that DPS's more but for example in 7.0 You wouldn't play Pictomancer just because Blackmage did less damage would you? You wouldn't switch tank roles if it made tanking easier for a certain fight would you?

Those are all meta decisions, but at the end of the day nobody would tell you if you want the Blackmage experience play Picto. If you want to feel more like a Bard play Dancer. etc.

I didn't pick Whitemage because it was the first name on the list.

I picked Whitemage because I wanna play whitemage and have for 10+ years now.

I don't want to play Green Summoner.
I don't want to play a Gypsy
I don't want to play a Gundam

And the funny thing is people know the difference between a Good Whitemage and a Bad one. For every medica spamming Whitemage in a Roulette (which more than likely is just a non-main leveling it to get to 100 and think spamming medica is all it takes)

But when it comes to these changes they just go "Ah Whitemage is simple anyways what are you complaining about?" "Just play another job that will feel more like what whitemage should be" Fuck you.
It's not even complaints these are genuine concerns. Losing Asylum, Cure 3, Assize, Aero, Regen, Thin Air etc that's identity.

It’s the same as the people who try to justify changes to jobs like SMN with “oh but they are more like garnet now”

I’m gonna be honest I don’t care how final fantasy 1246.z2 the final birth by sleep round the twist remake handles a summoning class I care how 14 handles a summoning class

Why should job identity change because you want to cosplay rydia

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

It's not about "winning" it's about the fact that for a lot of healers our feedback just falls on deaf ears. In no world did WHM have to be made any easier. You can absolutely like the changes, that is totally fine but you don't have to be so demeaning and act ignorant just because you're happy.

On that note, I'm genuinely worried for SCH tbh.

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The only thing most of the terminally online in this forum people have been doing is running their mouths senselessly while having piss poor understanding of the job/ game systems that have been existing for YEARS at this point. As for a LOT of healers, who are those? I have been playing 80 to 90% as an Omni healer since I returned, and I have NEVER heard anyone ever complaining about the healing system in this game. There might be some, of course, but forums are NOT a lot of people, because the choice is very easy. If the job is NOT for them, or the game doesn't provide enough, they find something better to do with their time.

Yeah, the direction is very different; it might look a certain way at first glance, it might not be for you, but least have the decency to provide a balanced take and constructively voice your concern.

What we saw was a small glimpse of what is to come. Don't speak in certainties when the entire system is not even fully released or out yet.

It's not rocket science that people are generally resistant to change, and it's the main reason why SE allowed both systems to exist, for now, but for the most part, it's good that SE is FINALLY taking some risks and finally breaking away from the WoW plague that this game has been built upon and take it to a brand new direction, which is fairly unique.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

It's not rocket science that people are generally resistant to change, and it's the main reason why SE allowed both systems to exist, for now, but for the most part, it's good that SE is FINALLY taking some risks and finally breaking away from the WoW plague that this game has been built upon and take it to a brand new direction, which is fairly unique.

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You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about, jesus christ almighty. What WoW plague? WoW and XIV combat and jobs are COMPLETELY different. WoW healing is NOTHING like XIV healing they're completely different. I gave balanced and constructive concerns, said I'm acknowledging that it's still early but what I'm seeing isn't filling me with hope. So idk what you're on about brother

I struggle to see what evidence would convince you about the problems of healers.

The listening posts hate them; I’ve even delved into the pit that is Facebook groups and at BEST they could be described as split 50/50

When square still did job satisfaction surveys both SCH and AST careened off a cliff between 4.x and 5.x

Shield healer remains the most reported role people wait for in PF’s

AIN continues to favour tanks while people report healer queues popping faster

Healer questions going as high as yoshi p himself are callously deflected (go play ultimate)

SGE their paradigm of the new generation of healer collapsed back to being less popular than SCH one tier after it released in savage

We don’t know for sure because square doesn’t tell us, but that’s also a convenient way to basically say “unless A is explicitly mentioned assume B by default” when there is no evidence of B either

If someone has strong genuine evidence of strong satisfaction with healers then please……. The only thing I can find is Japanese players find it “comfortable” to have an easy role but few say they like it, they seem to just prefer to have a role they don’t have to care about

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about, jesus christ almighty. What WoW plague? WoW and XIV combat and jobs are COMPLETELY different. WoW healing is NOTHING like XIV healing they're completely different. I gave balanced and constructive concerns, said I'm acknowledging that it's still early but what I'm seeing isn't filling me with hope. So idk what you're on about brother

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bruuh, you have been playing all this time while having 0 idea what game you are actually playing? It takes 1 second to look at how WoW UI looks and FF14 (for example) to realise that the main core idea of this game was to make a more casual version of WoW. Yeah, FF14 classes now are very different from WoW, but they USED to follow the same garbage WoW design had (and which some ppl have been crying after..lol). Thank god they stopped.

As for the changes, it looks pretty weird to me, but I am willing to try it out. I hope they will also rework some of the animations for spells, because another reason why classes feel so flat and uninteresting is that they are very outdated and feel very unsatisfying when pushing those buttons.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

bruuh, you have been playing all this time while having 0 idea what game you are actually playing? It takes 1 second to look at how WoW UI looks and FF14 (for example) to realise that the main core idea of this game was to make a more casual version of WoW. Yeah, FF14 classes now are very different from WoW, but they USED to follow the same garbage WoW design had (and which some ppl have been crying after..lol). Thank god they stopped.

As for the changes, it looks pretty weird to me, but I am willing to try it out. I hope they will also rework some of the animations for spells, because another reason why classes feel so flat and uninteresting is that they are very outdated and feel very unsatisfying when pushing those buttons.

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WoW is an MMORPG FFXIV is RPGMMO/JPRGMMO. All MMOs take inspiration from each other but XIV was never meant to be a more casual version of WoW. If it was it wouldn't be a visual novel for 90% of the game. It's a typical FF game, and as such, a JRPG.

Also, I play both games, I do savage and did a couple ultimates (though I personally don't enjoy ultimates that much) and hit 3k rating in m+ on WoW, both as healer I have a pretty good idea of what games I am playing and how I feel about the healing role.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

What we saw was a small glimpse of what is to come. Don't speak in certainties when the entire system is not even fully released or out yet.

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It's pattern recognition at this point.
The Evolved Mode they showcased is supposed to be about consolidating buttons, limiting redundancies, and enhancing job fantasy. They even put up a clear visual diagram for Paladin showing exactly that: combos collapsing into single buttons with dual functions, redundancies removed (like merging Interrupt and Low Blow), and everything fitting neatly into a condensed ~16-button layout. Paladin has roughly the same number of skills as White Mage in the current kit, yet the philosophy was applied thoughtfully there.When you look at the White Mage showcase and work backwards logically, the same level of consolidation simply isn't there. The only clear merge we saw was Aquaveil gaining Divine Benison's charges and duration. Everything else we rely on daily just... wasn't shown or hinted at.
Where is Asylum?
Where is Assize (our MP recovery + party AoE heal + damage)?
Where is standalone Regen?
Where is Thin Air?
Where is Cure III (the target-centered AoE we use for split-room mechanics and "healers dead on one side" situations)?
Aero/Dia (we already know the devs aren't fans of DoTs).
Presence of Mind (understandable with instant casts, but still a tool some healers used for clutch timing).

These aren't redundancies that got smartly folded in. They appear to have been removed outright. If the design goal was thoughtful streamlining like Paladin received, why don't these buttons have equivalents or upgrades in the new kit?

This ties directly into the design intent the devs stated on stage. They openly said they wanted the transition for White Mage to be "smooth" and "even easier to use than before" because it's already the most approachable/popular healer. That's been their philosophy for years: prioritize what's played by the most players (DPS first, then tanks, then healers).

They've also leaned into feedback (especially from JP voices) that "doing damage while healing feels hard — I just want to heal." That's fine in theory, but encounter design has never been pure "just heal" content.

Split rooms, spread mechanics, and raid-wide damage still require the exact tools they're not showing consolidated. A lot of us are okay with simple DPS output as long as we can still express ourselves through dynamic, skillful healing.

That's the real concern being voiced across the community right now. If the core design philosophy of "consolidate and enhance individuality" is being met for Paladin and Dragoon but not for White Mage, that's a serious problem.

It undercuts the entire promise of Evolved Mode. Other healers are already trending toward "easy to grasp" playstyles

IF White Mage's more intimidating or situational options are being pruned instead of elevated, it doesn't bode well for healer identity overall.

Reborn Mode is supposed to be the current job as we know it, but after seeing how Evolved was handled for WHM specifically, it's hard not to worry that the base updates might quietly prune things too.

I'm not against change or breaking the 2-minute meta. I just want the changes to make sense for the job I main. Looking forward to more details in July, but this showcase left a lot of long-time WHM players with real questions.

One thing that I just thought of (sorry I know this isn’t about WHM but it concerns healers)

How will the devs handle reborn SCH?

Unless SCH retains its ridiculous Mitigative capacity in evolved (which will require SGE to also maintain something similar) it’ll be an easy decision to lose 3% of a SCH’s damage to have it play in reborn and continue to use spreadlo as it currently functions

I can imagine reborn spreadlo is going to be a major noose around the neck of the evolved shield healers because they either have to match it (which unbalances the game like current spreadlo does) or get dumped for spreadlo

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

One thing that I just thought of (sorry I know this isn’t about WHM but it concerns healers)

How will the devs handle reborn SCH?

Unless SCH retains its ridiculous Mitigative capacity in evolved (which will require SGE to also maintain something similar) it’ll be an easy decision to lose 3% of a SCH’s damage to have it play in reborn and continue to use spreadlo as it currently functions

I can imagine reborn spreadlo is going to be a major noose around the neck of the evolved shield healers because they either have to match it (which unbalances the game like current spreadlo does) or get dumped for spreadlo

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I'm hoping they'll integrate the fairy more, SCH has potential to be even more fun, I always felt like SCH is this weird hybrid between fairy magick and tactician spells, so if they give Sage the tactician fantasy and bring SCH more towards fairy magic I'd quite like that overall, I'm also not going to 100% write off WHM yet ofc, I'm waiting to see if they'll actually deliver on their promise of changing fight design going forward. But I think SCH can be either more fun or they're going to completely ruin it. Thats why I'm like a little concerned for it.

I'll copy-paste my thoughts from another thread because as somebody who enjoys PvP a lot (and who used to main AST but switched to PCT in PvE because I didn't like where AST was going) I am carefully optimistic.

If they manage to recreate the individual identities and (in my humble opinion) enjoyable gameplay of PvP healers in conjunction with a new fight design that accommodates their kits/gameplay loops then I think this could be a big win for healers.

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Originally Posted by Loggos

Positive

Coming from PvP I am carefully optimistic because my impression was that PvE white mage might be inspired by its PvP counterpart.

WHM in PvP is straight-forward and easy to understand but (I think) it's very fun (and not brain-dead). In my opinion it's a really good embodiment of "easy to learn, hard to master".


If the dev team manages to recreate the gameplay and class design of PvP healers then this is going to be a win because each healer has their completely unique identity. They're not reskins of each other. They also feel meaningful because despite their reduced buttons they have diverse tools for different gameplay decisions. They just don't suffer from redundancy.

For example (in my humble opinion), as WHM you have a gameplay loop with satisfying variety because damage, healing and utility alternate in quick succession but are never static/always random so you still have to think on your feet. This also makes the fact that you often cast (insta) glare a lot less frustrating because your DPS is constantly "interrupted" by healing or utility.
(In terms of utility something like Polymorph is probably hard to adapt for PvE because obviously you can't polymorph a boss but maybe the devs can find suitable PvE replacement skills.)

Healing also feels a lot more strategic and meaningful because you have to hard-cast it and you are punished a lot for bad positioning/distance/risky maneuvers. And your heals are limited. This means every heal has to be deliberate and well-planned because you need to be sure you can commit to it and you won’t miss it later as long as it’s still on CD. (Of course heals are also limited to the specific number they are because of recuperate. But I think you can recreate the same principle of resource management in PvE.)

This brings me to the point about PvE hard-casting heals (vs. instant DPS). I've seen criticism of it but I really like this choice if they manage to recreate this same kind of strategy/commitment requirement in PvE.
When I play healer I want the main part of my brain power go to the question how I heal best/most effectively.
No, I am not saying healers shouldn't DPS! (On the contrary, as I pointed out above, the unscripted alternation between healing and dps is what makes PvP WHM fun.)
And of course since it's the "easy" healing job I know they won't go for super punishing set-ups in normal content. But maybe in the new mid-core raid tier and above.

Concerns

I can't give a definitive "negative" because we don’t have the actual kit and new fight design yet but it’s definitely a big concern.

Of course PvP and PvE are very different modes.

So the success of WHM and the other healers will stand and fall with the question whether the dev team will be able to mimic the fast-paced randomness/unpredictability of PvP in PvE, that demands of players to make different active decisions vs. a strict routine.

I completely understand players worrying that an even more simplified rotation will completely neuter the job and not bring the promised individuality and challenge.

The dev team really needs to commit to their promise/insight that currently boss fights have too much downtime (to accommodate the 2 min meta) and that evolved jobs will lead to a lot more active and dynamic boss fights.
Randomness is a really important factor here in addition to pace/activity so I sincerely hope the dev team will make this a core principle of their fight design (or at least pseudo-randomness).
That is the key ingredient that makes every PvP class work.

If those are just empty words and the fights stay too similar to how they are now a WHM design like in PvP will be incredibly unsatisfying.

So I hope, their new approach will reflect the philosophy of easy to learn, hard to master.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

I'm hoping they'll integrate the fairy more, SCH has potential to be even more fun, I always felt like SCH is this weird hybrid between fairy magick and tactician spells, so if they give Sage the tactician fantasy and bring SCH more towards fairy magic I'd quite like that overall.

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Can SCH just get to be the tactician with a healing companion and SGE just be the battle medic it's presented as? I'm kinda not on board with SGE seemingly only existing to leech SCH's identity... which is not to say I'm against the faerie getting more use as it's part of said tactician fantasy, but I don't want SCH to turn into a pixie itself. I love it for the distinction between the SCH and it's companion when it comes to how the spells effects look, they compliment each other rather than being only butterflies and sparkles or stratagems and commands.

As for WHM what was shown is raising several red flags for me, not just about WHM itself but for all the healers, I didn't feel like the job fantasy was preserved or enhanced but rather diminished and I'm especially bothered by temperance getting a speed boost attached, feeling like it's stepping on SCH's toes there or that SCH has had a fun skill removed (expedient) WHM just got a dash added, so can't that stay as a movement tool instead?

I really want evolved mode to be fun, and I like the base idea of it in concept, just can't help but worry and feel prematurely upset after so long...

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Originally Posted by Doopliss

Obviously I know the Reborn version is still there to play, but given that the Evolved versions are going to be a little bit stronger (and that, really, the Reborn versions are probably going to get eventually phased out), this feels especially bad. I can only hope that the fifth time they've claimed that encounters will require more healing will be actually true this time.

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It won't. I'll say the same thing I've been saying for years. The healing in ultimates is already not enough to compensate for the flaws in their design philosophy and the player base would NEVER manage to handle that as a new standard, so clearly the fix needs to be something else. The only hope is that they start randomizing healing requirements in encounters. But I somehow highly doubt they would do that drastic of a change with their continual effort to keep things backwards compatible with priori encounters.

My main concern is that they showed off Evolved White Mage, but not when next to a Reborn White Mage. Like cool, we know Evo White mage gets a instant cast glare "combo", a high cure spell, a holy bomb thing that gets stronger with the number of stacks it has, Afflatus Solace getting the single target Regen effect, Aquaveil and Benison being made into one, etc etc. But all of this means nothing if I don't see how it plays when compared alongside how Reb White Mage will play in Evercold.

If Reb White Mage keeps things like Assize, Asylum, Dia, Presence Of Mind, Cure III, and Thin Air for a few examples, then just how does that stack up against Evo White Mage's kit/damage output? They kind of tried to emphasis the Evo versions were not going to be the "easy" mode versions of the jobs, yet stated like 5 or 6 times for White Mage during it's presentation that the Evo Version made things "easier" for the job, which already was very simple to begin with. They also didn't even use some of the buttons as both Holy III and Liturgy Of The Bell were never pressed during the presentation once, so who knows if some of the skills I mentioned got baked into them as well already, like Evo White Mage's Bell Liturgy also getting the Asylum puddle, or Evo White Mage's Medica allowing you to select a target for it's AOE heal like Cure III does for examples.

Obviously until we get the Evercold Job Trailer for the new stuff they're getting they can't really show off too much, but it's kind of hard for me to be really "happy" or "disappointed" about it all or even give any type of usable feedback until we can actually see a clear comparison between the two job modes and not just "well here is what it's going to look like" and then just have to imagine what it can be going forward, especially if we're being told upfront that the Evolved versions of the jobs, to Yoshi-P and the other devs anyway, are going to be STRONGER then the Reborn versions. It doesn't matter if it's "slightly" stronger either, immediately going "Evolved mode jobs will be stronger then Reborn Mode jobs" to something you JUST revealed that is coming next expansion is going to send a lot of red flags to people, especially when you cannot really show too much off currently and the only re-assurance people are going to get for the next several months is going to be "I swear it'll be okay, just trust me."

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

One thing that I just thought of (sorry I know this isn’t about WHM but it concerns healers)

How will the devs handle reborn SCH?

Unless SCH retains its ridiculous Mitigative capacity in evolved (which will require SGE to also maintain something similar) it’ll be an easy decision to lose 3% of a SCH’s damage to have it play in reborn and continue to use spreadlo as it currently functions

I can imagine reborn spreadlo is going to be a major noose around the neck of the evolved shield healers because they either have to match it (which unbalances the game like current spreadlo does) or get dumped for spreadlo

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I assume this is what they meant by "evolved had better damage than reborn in our testing".

It's not because evolved has higher potency or its churning out more attacks per second, it's because fights may start to compliment evolved rotations over reborn ones. IE: You get to keep the spreadlo on reborn SCH, but it's not actually worth using anymore because fights don't account for it/the extra mitigation is wasteful while evolved SCH provides more than enough shielding while ALSO being able to keep firing off attacks.

It may be the same with all jobs where the reborn version is at a specific disadvantage because fights actively work against them going forward. Take the BRD's evolved side-roll versus their current backstep, where all it would take is a fight dropping AOEs in the outer parts of the arena in a spread that will murk a backstepper and not a side-roller and now suddenly the debuffed/dead reborn BRD is "doing less damage as per their testing".

With the 2-minute meta going away too, there's no telling how fights are going to be changed to where a reborn job's kit may be an actual detriment in certain encounters because it lacks for mobility or has to take extra steps to accomplish the same thing an evolved job can do. (Like an evolved NIN not having to deal with Mudras while a reborn one still does.)

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Originally Posted by ZXN

especially when you cannot really show too much off currently and the only re-assurance people are going to get for the next several months is going to be "I swear it'll be okay, just trust me."

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"This lily system looks like garbage, but you'll love it, trust me."
"You won't miss those damage spells, you'll need to GCD heal more and that'll make up for it, trust me."
"You won't miss all those spells and cooldowns, the system will be great, trust me."

I barely play healers, and I want to be optimistic about this because it's such a large departure from what they've been doing for the last 7 or 8 years, but the warning signs are there yet again.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I assume this is what they meant by "evolved had better damage than reborn in our testing".

It's not because evolved has higher potency or its churning out more attacks per second, it's because fights may start to compliment evolved rotations over reborn ones. IE: You get to keep the spreadlo on reborn SCH, but it's not actually worth using anymore because fights don't account for it/the extra mitigation is wasteful while evolved SCH provides more than enough shielding while ALSO being able to keep firing off attacks.

It may be the same with all jobs where the reborn version is at a specific disadvantage because fights actively work against them going forward. Take the BRD's evolved side-roll versus their current backstep, where all it would take is a fight dropping AOEs in the outer parts of the arena in a spread that will murk a backstepper and not a side-roller and now suddenly the debuffed/dead reborn BRD is "doing less damage as per their testing".

With the 2-minute meta going away too, there's no telling how fights are going to be changed to where a reborn job's kit may be an actual detriment in certain encounters because it lacks for mobility or has to take extra steps to accomplish the same thing an evolved job can do. (Like an evolved NIN not having to deal with Mudras while a reborn one still does.)

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I’m not saying you are wrong but I really don’t trust the devs to made 23 evolved jobs, retain the 21 reborn jobs and specifically tailor encounters to always ensure the reborn jobs are just worse enough to always want to pick the evolved jobs but to not make the reborn jobs unplayable that doesn’t amount to anything other than a slight damage nerf

Like I used SCH because everyone knows spreadlo’s effect on the game meta but like what about current mechanics where cure 3 has a niche? Anytime you split the party cure 3 has a niche as it’s WHM’s only distance AOE heal. As soon as cure 3 makes a mechanic easier then 3% nerf on damage becomes a small price to pay

I briefly looked at a video and saw the sanctity thing.
Looks like they just brought back the system they tried in Stormblood for lilies where you could cure II (or fish cure I procs, why? idk) and then spend them on your next divine benison for a reduced cast time, or something? It's been a long time so my memory is a bit foggy, but I still recall it existing at some point.

I don't really have any judgement on how the class has been presented so far, but I'm not surprised about these design choices.