Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lukha

Wait, what? Holy crap I didn't even think of that. I know it's old content and all, but did it really not occur to anyone that it was a bad idea to make such a drastic change to the system that it would be actually impossible for a class to do said old content synced?

---

Yep WHM cant do old content SYNCED

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TaranTatsuuchi

I suddenly had the urge to post this quote in reference to the amount of cures used...







This just seems to me that the way White Mage is played, isn't the way the devs envision it played.

And it seems that their vision wasn't the most efficent way to play it.

---

or they just undertuned the current dungeons so much that keeping some regens rolling is often more than enough to heal through any of it.
they clearly have a running theme of wanting groups to only pull ~3 monsters at a time in these previews and could easily crank up the damage a lot so that actual curing is necessary like in raids
divine benison tooltip is just redundant in restating how way of the lily works
plenary indulgence seems really cool even single target it's a sizeable free ogc heal on a short cooldown
and if you happen to have it on more targets its a bonus (should be 100% though, its clearly a discipline priest from WoW nod)

the only thing i don't particularly like is the 20%, too low of a percentage to be reliable.
could just as easily made the lilies grow in 3 steps so it's a hard "every 3rd cure" and way of lilies II just reduces cooldown whenever one 'blooms' or whatever

the other healers have weird things too. earthly star is dropped on the ground and detonated like a bomb and has a 10-20s window after using it for it to be potent.It's not just a "better assize", It's quirky as hell.
and sleeve draw randomy fills your draw, spread, royal road, and minor arcanum with various effects(but apparently won't overwrite)
It's basically just a second chance at a 30s skill on a 120s cooldown unless the stars align and give you the perfect combination. I'm betting the odds of bole bole bole are about 1 in 3 too

With all the weird datacenter / game-play changes after collecting pre-orders, we're going back to 1.0 decision making it seems. What a sad meme.

Please rethink your aproach before all the whm jump to the shiny dps roles and further destroy your qeues yoshida-san.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheLastDream

i use Cure1/2 all the time...... in Level 30-50 dungeons... Maybe that's where that want us to shine, old content!

---

You don't get the lilies till 62 so your dream is dead

The fact that it's Skyrior somehow makes it sadder, like a clown shedding tears with everyone.

I just want to point out that it's been, at minimum, confirmed by dengenki that diurnal sect was mistranslated, and is a 10% heal buff not 15%. And many many more things were wrong, and others changed in newer builds (live letter) since the media tour. Don't take any values/numbers seriously, majority of them are already different and will continue to change by release.

I've mained WHM since 2.0's launch. I've raided on it since T5 was relevant content... I stuck with it even through A9-12s... I was disappointed in the changes with HW, but I remained hopeful for a balance for WHM with SB. Something to make it more unique and actually wanted in raids!

Now, that hope is dashed completely. :/ And I'm not very excited about the expansion anymore. AST is all well and good... but it's never been my WHM. I've never once changed my main. Well, unless this gets fixed, I'm done with WHM. I have to level it for my retainers, but that's it. Done after that, I'll be raiding on AST from now on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KarstenS

You missed the worst part of Confession:

These stacks don't build up on yourself. Your healing targets (only when healed with Cure1&2) get the Confession stacks. So you have to build up the Confession stacks on every single party member you want to heal with the Lvl 70 Skill.

Even more worse is this buff only lasts for 30 seconds without refresh.

---

Don't forget the 20% chance for you even GET a confession on them. Gotta nail that coffin in properly!

I could cry.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dark494

I just want to point out that it's been, at minimum, confirmed by dengenki that diurnal sect was mistranslated, and is a 10% heal buff not 15%. And many many more things were wrong, and others changed in newer builds (live letter) since the media tour. Don't take any values/numbers seriously, majority of them are already different and will continue to change by release.

---

It would take adding entirely new abilities, rather than just fiddling with a few numbers, to make this mess fun to play. I mean, it's good to know that AST isn't as much better than WHM as initially thought but it's not going to stop my decision to drop WHM when the core 4.0 mechanics are so inherently lacking.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skyrior

All of the following is written from a raiding perspective. ...
Square Enix, what were you thinking?...

---

Maybe they were thinking:
Raiding players: 2% dissatisfied;
Everyone else... 98% OK/don't care/will play it before make comments.

Mission accomplished. Skill tweaks later IF needed.

Right now, going into SB it drives me crazy that so many WHM JOB SKILLS are being moved to cross class. We are losing job skills, being forced to waste our very little cross-class actions on what WAS ours, they haven't added cross class slots which I think is silly (why keep us at 5??) I feel a little worried that WHM is about to seriously fall behind.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheLastDream

i use Cure1/2 all the time...... in Level 30-50 dungeons... Maybe that's where that want us to shine, old content!

---

Hey you know what... What's leveling WHM going to even be like for new players?
They've lost so much stuff, even JOB UNIQUE ABILITIES like Divine Seal. This was important shit... There's going to be this really weird gaps where they just don't obtain anything. Sigh. Jesus.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LalaRu

Maybe they were thinking:
Raiding players: 2% dissatisfied;
Everyone else... 98% OK/don't care/will play it before make comments.

Mission accomplished. Skill tweaks later IF needed.

---

I'd argue they were actually thinking "hmm, how can we make an entry-level healer that any dolt with half a brain can play up to potential on?"

I mean, the WHM changes seem targeted squarely at the most inexperienced and/or lazy players out there. Don't want to think about DD? Don't worry - we're building mechanics so you can claim C1 / C2 spam is intended play. Afraid of having to assess when a tank actually needs healing? Just throw a cure on him regardless - it might proc a Lily or a Confession stack! Don't want to have to think about when you can run close to an enemy to squeeze in a Fluid Aura? Worry not - it doesn't do damage anymore!

The funny thing is, if SE just came out and designated certain DD / Healer / Tank jobs as 'learner-friendly classes', I actually wouldn't much mind. I'm not automatically opposed to the idea of intentionally dumbing down a few jobs so that they're accessible, at the cost of those jobs not being viable in end-game raids. What's making me angry is that SE isn't acting as if this is intentional, implying that they're either (a) lying to us, or (b) vastly more incompetent than I had previously thought, which is an increasingly difficult trait to demonstrate.

How are you already playing the game? I want too! /sarcasm

Wait till the game launch before assume everything is bad on this job.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vhailor

Don't want to have to think about when you can run close to an enemy to squeeze in a Fluid Aura? Worry not - it doesn't do damage anymore!

---

This is a good change, all damage has been removed from stuns/silences so now those can be important again. Right now people use that OGCD skilll and most of the times enemies that require being interrupted end immune, also the amount of bad WHM (or BRD/MCH) that use fluid aura at the wrong time lowering the overall party DPS is huge.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MisterLucie

Seriously though, it really bothers me that people can look at these changes and think "Oh it'll be fine on release."

No. These are core mechanic and job defining gameplay changes that can't be fixed with a potency tweak in a patch a few weeks out.

---

1. Confession stacks on every 4-5th tick of Regen. Making it stack with the AoE Heals would most likely be too powerful.
2. The initial use of Regen and Medica 2, as well as using Medica and Cure 3 can also build up Lilies. So basically every GCD heal - this might be overkill though, so something in between would be more balanced.
3. The first offensive spell used while under the effect of Thin Air makes effected targets take more damage for 10 seconds, 10% for single target spells and 5% for AoE; or grant a damage buff to the whole party with the same concept.

There, fixed. I don't even play WHM and some of the things I have in mind are probably a bit much in the field, but don't act like it's rocket science to implement non-numerical buffs/changes.

I don't usually post on the forums, but I have to say I'm extremely disappointed in the new updates to WHM. I know it's been said ad nauseum but I'm hoping the devs hear just how many of us are disappointed and discouraged by these changes. For an expansion focused on creating synergy within a party white mage has been left with nothing to contribute to that, and as far as we can tell a useless ability at 70. Even more concerning is since our skills are now role skills, I won't have room on my bar for protect since I need swiftcast, esuna, eye for an eye, lucid dreaming, and legrasse in case things go south. So I'll be levelling my white mage to 70, but unless I see significant changes when I get there I'll immediately level my astro and other classes.

All of the things you mentioned (the encouragement of Cure I/II over regens, the introduction of RNG, etc.) have bothered me as well. Additionally, while scholars gained utility and astrologians kept theirs, we still bring nothing to the table in that regard. In fact, with the removal of Stoneskin, we've effectively lost our only form of active mitigation for any pre-SB content. Instead, we get to use all of our (RNG-dependent) lilies on a new level 66 single-target shield. Not to mention, the confession stacks are based on spamming Cures on party members-- for a group heal? It just seems really inefficient.

But hey, we get to keep Repose.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nihility

or they just undertuned the current dungeons so much that keeping some regens rolling is often more than enough to heal through any of it.

---

Play the level 50 Storyline dungeons for ARR. It's such a faceroll right now, that I was in a group for The Praetorium that had one other WHM who didn't do CS either, but kept spamming regen instead of cure and it was kinda like "they aren't even bleeding?" At least they weren't spamming Medica II until the boss.

But if everyone is wearing level 60 gear after completing V3.0's content, then they are at least 20% more overpowered than the WoD level 50 gear (I checked.) So before that content even became available people would have only had level 42-50 gear in various configurations.

So what should SE do to reduce the amount of faceroll in older content? Make everything hit harder to make up for overpowered tanks? Maybe the storyline content should be the exception and if anyone "hasn't completed it" sync it to the weakest ilevel character in the party so there's some challenge. If everyone's completed it, sync it to the average ilevel. But then we'd have people kicking players for not having BiS gear. So that would be an issue.

How do you balance something without making people complain? Well for starters, actually survey players, ask their consent to record their game input for certain dungeons and when it's complete, give them a score (eg DPS %, Enmity %, Heal %) and "Do you feel this content was too long or too short?", and "Did you feel this content was too easy, about right, or too hard?"

Throw away the data from people who provide low quality data (eg idle, pressing few keys,) and people who are not playing their role as defined (more DPS actions than Tank/Heal on Tank/Healer roles) and you have your tuning parameters. So let's say the WHM is too easy because they are healing too much, then you either nerf the healing potency, increase the MP cost, or increase the CD time. From experience playing the game "as Yoshi-P seems to think people should play it", without using Shroud of Saints, you have just enough MP to get through everything. You run out if you are doing anything BUT healing. Shroud gets you over that MP hump if you use it when there is enough mp consumed to use it. Like to me, it feels like all the regular dungeon content is balanced for that play style. But then you have players who want to mainly DPS and heal as little as possible, so they blow all their HoT's at every opportunity so they have more DPS uptime. If they are seriously expensing more MP DPS'ing than healing then they are certainly playing it as far from Yoshi-P intended it to be played as possible, so that would call for a nerf to the regen and medica II. However players playing WHM as intended still want those skills, so perhaps the CD on these skills should be extended so that they can't just be on full time.

So what does StormBlood actually do?
Lily system at level 52, so of no help in older content
Fluid Aura no longer does damage (wait people were using this for damage?)
Aero and Aero II folded into the same skill at level 42
Benediction recast down to 180s from 300s
Cure potency up to 450 from 400
Aero DoT potency up to 30 from 25
Cleric Stance changed to buff with GCD
Stones all folded into the same skill

What doesn't it do?
Holy is still nerfed from it's 2.0 incarnation.
Regen is unchanged, instant cast but still has a GCD
Medica is unchanged
Medica II is unchanged
Stone is unchanged

So on all the level 50 content and earlier, nothing has actually changed for the WHM other than no more StoneSkin that nobody ever used because the tanks ran off and it drops off after one hit in just about every situation. I pretty doubt pretty much that any changes to pre-50 content would happen since people just don't seem to care about the mechanics any more.

On the HW content you can start using the lilies at 52. So as far as I'm concerned they could have made it so that the enemies at level 52 and higher actually hit harder. When you play HW storyline content you typically get more milage out of the level 50-60 skills anyway (including medica II and regen) So the loss of one of the stackable DoT's from Aero is a loss, but that's pretty much it. If the point of the lilies is to make Cure and Cure II relevant, that's probably what Yoshi-P intended.

There's another solution. Make not following the mechanics more often instant-kills and bring in some version of "Life 2"(arise) and "Life 3"(reraise) from FF6. Basically the fight with Ultima Weapon at the end of ARR 2.0 should have been instant-kills for missing the telegraphed attacks regardless of gear.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Hey you know what... What's leveling WHM going to even be like for new players?
They've lost so much stuff, even JOB UNIQUE ABILITIES like Divine Seal. This was important shit... There's going to be this really weird gaps where they just don't obtain anything. Sigh. Jesus.

---

Divine Seal :(

I am unhappy with a lot of the WHM changes. However, for some reason, the change that ticks me off the most is Divine Seal.

SE says they want WHM to be the pure healer. The healer with the strongest heal. Now, the other healers do not need divine seal. They are perfectly able to heal without it. So, why in the world would they take Divine Seal away from WHM, nerf it and give it to every single healer? If SE wanted to stay true to the concept of WHM having the strongest heal, then they should not have done what they did with Divine Seal. It only shows that they have no idea what they are doing and are contradicting themselves.

It seems the people happy with changes don't raid and the people unhappy with the changes do raid. Coincidence? I think not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skyrior

This is absolutely the silliest thing I've seen in a long while.

---

http://www.gifbin.com/bin/300g667434.gif


I dunno man, this past week I've seen some pretty silly things being posted. Give the guy a break.

In the past, WHMs have received nerfs--proshell was handed out to the other healers and Stoneskin was nerfed, and I was all right with those... I was even okay with the holy nerf. But while the other jobs received buffs, WHMs have continuously been neglected. When I first saw that a bunch of our core abilities had been gutted and placed into the 'Role Shared' category, forcing us to use slots in order to get them back, I wasn't happy. But I conceded that I didn't know what we were getting in return, so I wanted to withhold judgement.

Now, with the information of the abilities having been released, I can say that I'm disappointed. For one thing, we're suddenly being discouraged from using our regens and other more-efficient heals in order to spam Cure to proc lilies. Doing so will also use GCDs, effectively decreasing our DPS. Our new mechanics are now gated on RNG/procs--not a constant resource like aetherflow. Effectively, our healing becomes RNG-dependent.

We've also effectively lost our only form of active mitigation (Stoneskin) for any pre-SB content. Instead, we have to use all of our lilies (RNG-dependent that they are) on a new level 66 single-target shield. It feels really strange that we got to keep Repose and a damageless Fluid Aura, but we lost Stoneskin and Divine Seal.

One area where White Mages were struggling was utility-- but once again, we didn't receive any in this expansion, while Astrologians kept their overpowered Balance buff and scholars received their own form of battle litany. Don't get me wrong--some abilities look great--Thin Air in particular looks like an amazing ability, but it doesn't make me feel any better about WHM's state in the game presently.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aramina

It seems the people happy with changes don't raid and the people unhappy with the changes do raid. Coincidence? I think not.

---

Nope, the changes to WHM are bad still in dungeon and pre-SB, lose of skills and utilities. I use all my skills as i can in both content (cause this is a Healer work)..and the new expansion will feel WHM so boring even in dungeon.

So it isn't a coincidence

That Feeling When Chickens Little start screaming "The Sky is Falling!"

Lilies don't even proc off Assize, Asylum, Tetra.
A part of me was so hopeful for the Lily gauge we were gonna use flower power to really bring something useful to the raid.
I now have to hold on to the hope that in-game content is designed to allow WHM to shine, but shine with what? SB Astro does it all better.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aramina

It seems the people happy with changes don't raid and the people unhappy with the changes do raid. Coincidence? I think not.

---

I don't do any progression raiding at all and I'm still very much unhappy. This is a hollow shell of what WHM is supposed to be about. I don't mind them changing the playstyle, but it should at least be to a playstyle which makes sense.

Don't understand the end of the world comments on this development build. Everything is subject to change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aramina

It seems the people happy with changes don't raid and the people unhappy with the changes do raid. Coincidence? I think not.

---

I don't do any savage content and I'm not happy with the state of WHM going into 4.0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AlexanderThorolund

Don't understand the end of the world comments on this development build. Everything is subject to change.

---

I should have worded my comment better :) I know plenty of dungeon-runners that are also unhappy with the changes... I guess a better way to have said it would be "I haven't seen anyone who raids praise the change and the only one's I have seen praise the change are non-raiders." Sorry if my comment seemed to imply that dungeon runners were all thrilled with the changes because I do *not* think that at all. :)

They should just delete WHM at this point. It's clear now that it is nothing but a noob trap, something people level because it looks useful only for them to find out they spent all that time leveling and gearing for a job that does everything worse than its competitors.

There is NOTHING that WHM does that the other two jobs can't, while they have plenty of buffs they can do on their own.

Just delete WHM and allow for ACN to heal for the 1-30 wasteland where no real healers exist.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AlexanderThorolund

Don't understand the end of the world comments on this development build. Everything is subject to change.

---

Number tweaks, it is highly unlikely any new abilities or major reworks to the current systems will have time to change in time for SB and it's unlikely SE will make such changes until the next major expansions.

And when Stormblood ACTUALLY is here people may see that whm may be fine.
Not saying it will but rather pre-mature to be bitching (as always) about something not even here yet.
Looking at something on paper and actually trying it out is different you know...
They still have time to make changes, just look at how bad in shape Monk (seems)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aeoncs

...There, fixed. I don't even play WHM and some of the things I have in mind are probably a bit much in the field, but don't act like it's rocket science to implement non-numerical buffs/changes.

---

You've done a lot better than 80% of the people on this thread did. So take my like. So many threads (like we needed another?) with nothing but complaining and no real solutions, if there are they're deep in the 16+ pages of this thread and are lost inside all the mud that people are slinging.

Like someone said, we don't know if these potencies are final, scrolling through some pages all I see is the 900 potency AST jumping out at me. So if they decide to reduce that...

I think using the Regens and cool downs that aren't just Cure I / II to gather lilies is a better idea. This game relies on us as white mages to take care of AoE wide damage. Medica (maybe not medica II?) would help with that, we would gather more flowers. As for Plenary, same deal let Medica / Cure III and a smaller chance of Regen help add the stacks.

Regen for me at least is a major utility when it can sustain a tank for long enough for me to get out an Aero III / Stone. Letting Regen sustain a member while gathering flowers and placing a stackable / aoe triggered heal is a lot going on with one more, but it builds.

That 20% could change also, at least that's what I'm hoping. That's a low % for something that can be very helpful.

To those who just simply put "get rid of it! disgusting..I'm applaud!" Okay, well pretend like it is deleted and go play something else, because saying "just delete whm" is not helping. It's like you came over from Summoner with that attitude, and we saw what you little yippers did with that. No, really..you can leave. The quality of the job will not get better with things like "this is trash. fix it fix it!" Hell, half the time people come up with their own version and it's just as much filled with worthless crap as the original design. We understand the potential problems that can come from this and now we should be at a point where we need to do a few things. One is accept the possibility that things aren't final, so lets prepare for what could be tweaked that would help.

aeoncs tweaks are small, and very possible to adjust. Lets also take into account that other jobs will be reworked. Most peoples complaints are valid, but some are just over the top. We're not panicking because we like to see the final version. Half of these people like that person who sees the low tire pressure sign on their car come up and go "Oh god..oh god..i'm going to die. My tire is going to go flat and it's going to fly off..i'll flip..it will crash into the other car killing them but something in the tire brings them back to life as a zombie. No..no apocalypse! I...will...survive! Out of my way all of you! Move!" We see a signal, we know there's a potential problem..lets find out if we got a nail in our tire to screw it up or if the cap just wasn't tightened all the way.

In the end I guess there's no use, people will complain. Go on..go for it. See you in two weeks..or not. I won't notice. I'll be busy...playing white mage. #flowerpower #youdontpaymysub

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maero

And when Stormblood ACTUALLY is here people may see that whm may be fine.
Not saying it will but rather pre-mature to be bitching (as always) about something not even here yet.
Looking at something on paper and actually trying it out is different you know...
They still have time to make changes, just look at how bad in shape Monk (seems)

---

The issue is it isn't just a problem with numbers but design philosophy. The structure of WHM mechanics is effectively designed encourage WHM's to over heal or heal inefficiently to use. This, combined with sparse utility set, leaves WHM as a healing cannon with nothing sufficient to justify its power and balanced against other classes that have very strong healing in their own right as well as multiple utility options. Its like using an artillery piece to try and kill rabbits. Wrong tool for the job. Tweaking some numbers won't fix this. At the very least it would require them to adjust the core abilities themselves.

Unless they can resolve the disconnect between their Job design and their gameplay design WHM, and healers in general, will have balance issues.

WHM lilies should be used to buff current actions and no more. As I said in a previous comment, RNG doesn't belong on WHM. Important healing abilities should not be gated based on our actions; no other healer has to deal with this, it's like they've taken WHM's "power-healing" identity and put handcuffs on us. A good WHM avoids unnecessary heals/ over-healing, and makes full use of their toolkit for optimum HP restoration while weaving in damage where appropriate. This is effectively forcing a rotation on us, making us lose freedom in how we heal (as well as affecting how often we can DPS) in order to spam Cure II to hopefully get the right proc for the right ability for the right mechanic. It's absurd.

And with the delightul Confession stacks you have to watch and juggle with overheals to make our 70 ability not useless trash, they've also managed to make the job more unnecessarily complex and irritating than it ever needed to be. All SB brings us is limitation after limitation.

That may very well be true, but it still comes down to the point that Stormblood is still not here yet, none have a level 70 whm nor have tried all of it's abilities, etc..
Not trying to take away from your point though, as you do make sense :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maero

That may very well be true, but it still comes down to the point that Stormblood is still not here yet, none have a level 70 whm nor have tried all of it's abilities, etc..
Not trying to take away from your point though, as you do make sense :)

---

The thing is, people are basing this off people that *HAVE* played with all the abilities at level 70.. the complaints/fears aren't coming straight out of the blue. That's not to say things can't/won't change (though I doubt how much would be possible 2 weeks before EA), but saying "no one has tried the abilities yet!" isn't quite true.

In ARR initially, the cure and cure2 was to utilize the traits and maintain mana efficiency. I wonder if they are attempting to enforce that again?