Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

Are lillies/confessions counter-intuitive to the way WHM works? Somewhat. If someone is telling you they don't cast cures they're a liar, especially in progression content or undergeared content where regens alone get you killed. But regen effects are an undeniable part of our toolkit and as has been mentioned time and again it's bizarre that they don't give us a method of leaning into those more. Is CDR a terrible mechanic? No, absolutely not. Boring? Absolutely yes. Sometimes underwhelming? Sure. Unreliable? Maybe if you're not the kind of player who is able to adapt or plan.

The class is, on the whole, stronger in Stormblood if we pretend Lillies/Confessions don't exist at all than it is right now. While I'd love to see a more interesting mechanic in place and brand new toys to play with, this sky is falling rhetoric has to stop. As has been mentioned in here already, the players themselves are the ones creating this PR disaster for the class. We need more constructive feedback and less outright hysteria.

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Frankly, the Lily-related information from the media release build was enough to get the fire started.

WHM resentment has been building for years, though I didn't really consider it that warranted until somewhat recently. When you take a sub-community that had been largely hoping for certain improvements and for the overall Job identity to be shored up and give them a first look at a new Job mechanic that is so problematic that you can tell through theorycrafting alone that it needs help, well...the shitstorm should surprise no one.

I'm all for constructive discussion and am happy to support the dev team even when they don't get everything perfect the first time (god knows they've still missed a spot here and there), but this one was a serious "what the hell were they thinking" moment.

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

I feel like a lot of this thread thread and the community reaction to this has been nothing but a disappointing embarrassment. Half of the complaints are low-key begging for AST nerfs, and I don't even know how many are coming from players who parrot the first thing they hear about meta this and meta that like it's gospel.

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I've only been in this thread for ~60 pages or so, but I haven't seen people here asking for AST nerfs. The only people I've seen ask for AST nerfs are ASTs that don't want to be digging for balance cards constantly.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

Oh, please. If you are paying attention, and not just hitting buttons automatically, you can manage your overhealing, hate, and mana.

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Asking for people to care about anything other than damage might be asking for a tad much than is reasonable.

1000 character limit sucks...
What I really think could work though that can really benefit white mages is the ability to stack up to 3 lilies and having the consumption of them actually empower your skills to a stronger form. I think this could allow an appropriate balance of stronger / more valuable skills for WHM without necessarily making them overpowered and also creates a great deal more strategy by choosing when to utilize your Lily stacks in battle.

As far as examples:

-3 Stacks could empower a Cure to Medica
-Cure III cost no MP
-Medica could empower to Medica II
-Medica II could get a potency buff (up to 300) and buff to regen
-Raise could get power up to Raise II - restore at 50% HP with no weakness
-Regen is applied to all allies around target within 5 yards
-Holy Increased Potency and heal all allies in area of effect
-Esuna targets all allies

As for oCDs - The 1 and 2 lily stacks can continue to reduce Cooldown, but three Lily Stacks would empower them. In addition, oCD skills could have some added benefit such as always adding a Lily stack.
-Divine Benison applies to full party
-Asylum gains Refresh for allies in area of effect
-Lucid Dreaming cuts enmity by 75% and increases duration of Refresh
-Presence of Mind provides a crit rate bonus of 20% to self
-Thin Air procs free Presence of Mind
-Assize gives Refresh to allies in area
-Benediction cures 50% of allies health within 5 yards of target
-Tetragrammaton heals all allies within 15 yards of target

That's really all I was hoping to say earlier today. It's a lot, and I'm sure more informed minds could probably tear this all to pieces, but I also don't look at it and think it is any less balanced than what SE currently has for the class. I also hate that I'm forced to split this in two and make a double post just to get my point fully across...

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

And I'm not trying to sound agressive here. Just please, try to see our arguments before you just brush them aside.

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There's definitely a *lot* of sky is falling around some of these comments, not just here but on reddit. Maybe not the majority, but they steer the tone. These are the kinds of comments that my rant is directed toward and that need to be curtailed. If we're talking about groups excluding white mage based on lilly hysteria then there's nothing to be done about that, but if you're talking about raid content where AST and SCH are more desired at the moment then sure, absolutely, it's a shame. But I'd maybe make the suggestion that it's a reaction to how normal WHM is compared to how abnormal AST currently is.

If you're seeking balance among healers then abilities like Chain Stratagem and the Balance card are the last place we should be looking, because they're inherently unbalanced and exploitable by high skilled players and the playstyle those players employ filters down and creates this meta we all keep talking about and emulating. I personally am not advocating for this, but if you want to actually balance healers then you remove spells like that entirely. As long as there exists a class that can almost permanently, luck permitting, raise an entire raid's DPS by such numbers then there will always be an overwhelming preference for that class.

As I said briefly in my post, I do agree that the mechanic is underwhelming. It doesn't interact with the most important part of our kit, which I mentioned as well. There have been good ideas shared by constructive posters about how to fix this, including having regens stack confessions or having lillies interact with our toolkit in a better way. They seem to want White Mage to be a more pure and straightforward class, so what are WHM-specific ways to make lillies both straightforward and stronger? Maybe they buff your regen potencies, maybe if we keep CDR then they also accelerate the cooldowns on all your spells currently on CD, whatever else along those lines. Do we want lillies to be more of an interactive choice? Do we spend them to enhance shields? Party buffs? If we gain some kind of strong utility in one area though, do we lose something in another? I'm not sure.

Edit: Also, SNESterday up above had some good feedback too. Maybe too strong, but it's something to work from.

I guess let me step back here a moment. I'm in agreement that Lillies are less than what I'd hoped for, although I do think Confessions are neat but could use some tweaking on how they're handled somewhat. I'm glad that they're listening to players, and if they want to offer some strong mechanical changes to how WHM mechanics are going to work then I'm game for it.

Absolutely voice your complaints and make them heard. If you look into my post history you'll see instances where I tell people who try to shut down complaints that their dismissive posts aren't helpful. I always want feedback, and this game was rebuilt on the back of player feedback, but the emphasis of my post was for certain individuals to re-examine whether or not their tone was helpful or hurtful to not only the feedback that the developers are looking for but also the job in general in the eyes of the community. If people are actually kicking White Mages from content now as a result of all of this, then it's a player-made problem and not a developer-made one. Whatever the "meta" is going to be we're all guessing in the dark at the moment anyway.

Sorry if this seems kinda spotty, I'm trying to keep a few discussions going at once. If you'd like me to further clarify something I can.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

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I feel like my biggest issue with it personally is that job identity that you brought up. If we leave aside mechanics for a moment, I'm not really sure where it makes me feel more like a White Mage.

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Originally Posted by Keridwyn

If these values are also the same in PvE then I can start seeing value in them. If we know we have a 100% lily from cure 2 (and presumably procs from at least cure as well) the question becomes which skills need what reduction. Is 150s Benediction worth 3 casts of Cure 2?

We might all prefer the lilies give us something else but those CD reduction percentages are higher than what a lot of folks suggested as a fix.

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The possibility of having Assize up twice per minute plus Thin Air plus Lucid Dreaming is much more MP than what SCH can ever get in Heavensward, which is one of the job's main strengths, so WHM's MP sustain will be hands down the best in the game if this is the case. This, of course, translates to much better DPS uptime, specially coupled with the changes to Cleric Stance and all the oGCD tools WHM has. WHM might even be able to go without Lucid Dreaming and use that for another Skill slot, tbh, something which the other two healers can't do, from the looks of it.

I know having to cast Cure II to ensure a Lilly proc is far from ideal, but this is a very big fix that I think could be a precedent for other good news, like Regens causing procs, or Confesion stacks not being used up when a target is healed by Plenary Indulgence.

tl;dr: I think this means the devs are listening about the most unhelpful or useless features, and seem to be going to lengths in order to give WHM an actually improved toolkit for SB instead of just slapping a 12 second spellspring and calling it a day.

Honestly, if Lillies could proc out of Regen and group healing and they keep that amount of CD reduction for PvE instead of just PvP, WHM playstyle would be pretty enticing, imo, specially considering the Cleric Stance change and how it affects Assize. I think Plenary Indulgence needs a slight buff to make the direct healing playstyle more viable for promoting Assize spam, but it does open up more possibilities, so I think WHM is headed in a better direction.

Of course, this will hardly change the meta so long as Balance exists, but I think in general WHM mains should stop giving themselves so much bad PR now that we're aware of this. I hate to say it, but if the stories of WHMs getting kicked just cause they're WHM are true, AST and SCH mains would be the last people I'd accuse of being at fault, since they're not the ones that are so vocal about WHM being dead :/

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Originally Posted by Tsunenori

. We need more constructive feedback and less outright hysteria.

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There is little to no hysteria going on. Nearly all of us have discussed why the lily system is flawed and underwhelming and doesn't push WHM ahead at all.
WHM is more or less exactly the same as it was in 3.0, with better mama management perhaps.
The entire system though, is a huge letdown. To the point where it feels like it was just tacked on just so WHM wouldn't be left out of everyone getting UI elements for their mechanics.

We've wanted a true identity for WHM for the longest. And after so much waiting, we get the lily system. The backlash is completely warranted IMO, SE really needs to know how behind WHM is compared to their competition.

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Originally Posted by Thunda_Cat_SMASH

Asking for people to care about anything other than damage might be asking for a tad much than is reasonable.

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It saddens me that I have to agree with this.

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Originally Posted by SNESterday

1000 character limit sucks... And Snipping

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Yes it does, i think at least 80% of my posts start like that, the auto edit right after.

While yes that would be more interesting, but also broken as hell. Itd be like if ASTs deliberately picked a card every 30s, imagine that oft touted AOE Balance with 50% up time. Yep broken as hell, thus why even when some stupid ASTs tried to get such things we didn't. Cause to balance it (lol) the numbers would have to be nerfed into the ground, were talking 50-75% of every cards single target effect just to counter that reliability. Which would be on balance as low as 5-7.5% single target and 2.5% AOE. At that point worthless. Reliability and choice necessitate weakness to counter it, while Unreliability and gambling necessitate strength to counter it.

Also seriously, what the hell would you do with significantly stronger healing potencies? WHM/D AST overhealing is rediculous enough already, the most efficient heal in the game in regards to overhealing is Eos/Selene Embrace, doubled by the MP cost going down with each cast effectively (Summon MP/Embrace Count). And that has more to do with players not controlling it so much and the system waiting for it to be mostly usable before it casts.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

There is little to no hysteria going on.

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If we're kicking White Mages out of 24 man content and starting in with the dead job memes then I'd say it's not unwarranted to call it that.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

WHM is more or less exactly the same as it was in 3.0, with better mama management perhaps.
The entire system though, is a huge letdown.

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Again, you won't see me disagreeing that it's a disappointing system or doesn't feel... let's say flavorful. If we ask "what makes me feel like a Warrior?" and we answer with charging in with an axe, punching things, getting angry and swinging an axe around then that feels like a definitive direction. If we ask "what makes me feel like an Astrologian?" and we answer with looking for cards and strategically using them, manipulating buffs on players and supporting our party by empowering them then that also feels definitive. If we ask what makes White Mage, then we're looking for powerful white magic spells and regen effects, something that's been core to the White Mage experience from Day 1. I absolutely agree that Lillies as they are currently don't fit that fantasy very well.