Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by DuskTS

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.

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Lilies are consumed by assize and asylum why would the consumer proc them?

I just came back from a 2-year hiatus as a WHM main hoping to enjoy SB to the fullest. This does put a dent in my plan for sure. I don't know if I can wait a few months for them to fix WHM though.

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Originally Posted by Feidam

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?

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And then make the most mana efficient heal, Regen, not contribute to the system at all...?

The most mana efficient way to heal (and often most efficient way in general) is to let Regen do the job and use your OGCD abilities as often as possible, because they are free, rather than using Cure.

They actually want you to be mana inefficient.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

And then make the most mana efficient heal, Regen, not contribute to the system at all...?

The most mana efficient way to heal (and often most efficient way in general) is to let Regen do the job and use your OGCD abilities as often as possible, because they are free, rather than using Cure.

They actually want you to be mana inefficient.

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Now it is mana is mana inefficient, but it wasn't then. Which is my point. Instead of changing the old traits they are doubling down on them and trying to enforce their use.

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Originally Posted by Hayward

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

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That feeling when you see a bus speeding towards you and say "I'll wait and see if it hurts."

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Originally Posted by Leigaon

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.

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The reason I say to delete WHM isn't for me. Sure, I can just drop it and never touch it again, and I plan to do so. What bothers me though is that people may pick it up expecting it to be a decent healer, only to find out later that it's objectively worse.

This isn't just "The meta prefers other jobs", this is a case of other jobs doing better at literally ever aspect of WHM, and steps should be taken to ensure people don't make the mistake of playing it.

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Originally Posted by Maero

And when Stormblood ACTUALLY is here people may see that whm may be fine.

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Yes, everyone please look forward to June 16th.

https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/...4/66885884.jpg

:(

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

The reason I say to delete WHM isn't for me. Sure, I can just drop it and never touch it again, and I plan to do so. What bothers me though is that people may pick it up expecting it to be a decent healer, only to find out later that it's objectively worse.

This isn't just "The meta prefers other jobs", this is a case of other jobs doing better at literally ever aspect of WHM, and steps should be taken to ensure people don't make the mistake of playing it.

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Comparing the other jobs without testing out and trying out wont do anything either. Just because its written on the paper and other healer jobs look like they will do better than WHM cant be argued right now. It might be that everything for WHM looks really bad at the moment. But this doesnt mean, the WHM may not be buffed later on. Dont be suprised if the other healers get actually nerfed, because that would actually cause a real shitstorm.

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

Comparing the other jobs without testing out and trying out wont do anything either. Just because its written on the paper and other healer jobs look like they will do better than WHM cant be argued right now. It might be that everything for WHM looks really bad at the moment. But this doesnt mean, the WHM may not be buffed later on. Dont be suprised if the other healers get actually nerfed, because that would actually cause a real shitstorm.

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If things are changed then by all means I'll change my stance. As it is now though, not only are the potencies terrible, but the type of gameplay required to utilize the new stuff encourages terrible play (Mostly by discouraging anything that isn't cure, cure 2, or assize)

I too have to add my name to the list of disappointed White Mages. They said they were going to balance both tanks and healers for SB, but I guess they just thought that balancing healers meant buffing AST one more time, and gutting WHM while they were at it.

I'm glad I have my AST ready to go, because it looks like my main is dead. I'm just so sad about this.

Add me to the list of the dissapointed WHMs too.
I’m maining WHM since I started playing FF14 over 3 years ago. I felt so happy which skills they gave them in Heavensward. All the skills harmonized so well with each other.
But it was really sad that WHM not viable anymore in this AST/SCH meta. But neverthless, i still mained WHM cause I hate AST (I tried it in raids, but i sucked hard lol).
I was still happy to play WHM, if I had the chance to (Midas WHM, in Creator I switched to SCH - but raid-only).
But this changes in 4.0, it’s so heartbreaking. I don’t know if I really want to level my WHM first, or try another class, or even delete this game…
How can this happen? It feels like SE hates WHM and want to delete them from the game.
No, I can’t believe this changes, this RNG, this useless new Skills, etc… No, that must definitely be a joke.

btw does anyone got a picture of the holy discription in 4.0?

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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 :)

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Many of the reviewers who attended the media tour and actually played with level 70 characters (and made vids you can watch right now), have given indepth analysis of the new skills, changes, and their opinions on each job. I am hard pressed to find a single one of them that has glowing praise for the 4.0 WHM. The consensus seems to be "meh".

It's clear to see to anyone paying attention that whm will be able to perform its role (healing) just as well as it ever has. But then healing has never been a problem for WHM. Its providing any other way to help their party that's been lacking, been asked for, and summarily denied.

The issues in 4.0 are mostly these (at least for me):

WHM lost the most class/job specific skills to shared role and outright removal of all the healers.

One of the new skills (Divine Benison) is just giving us back something we had taken away (Stoneskin) but with a cooldown

The new level 70 skill (Plenary Indulgence) is just more healing that WHM doesn't need and the way it works makes it kinda suck.

And the real biggie of the bunch, WHM didn't get the one thing it needs and the one thing players have been asking for so it can compete with the other healers: a party-wide buff that improves the group's dps in some way.


SCH will improve their entire group's crit vs a boss by 20% periodically

AST will improve their entire group's damage by 20% periodically

WHM will... spam cure trying to stack Confession so its level 70 skill can actually heal something? Yea, you'd have to be blind to not see the disparity... which I suppose makes your choice in headslot glamour quite fitting.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Wait to see how Omega will work before saying White Mage has no raid utility or if they made a mistake.

This meta looks to be really defensive so I guess the damages could be really heavy and sometimes, White Mage could make the different.

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As they don't seem to increase the difficulty over what we got with creator: no, we don't will need heavy healing.

Maybe in that "Super-Savage" bossfight. But not in the regular Savage raid. But even this will be balanced to be doable with AST/SCH too. So again: Not that much healing will be needed.

Their mistake with the new spells is to rely it on rng.

The fact that we have to use cure and cure ii to get confessions et lily is badly design cause, let's be honest, you don't spam cure that much on anyone else than the tank, so how to you want to put some stack of confessions on other.
For massive aoe damages, we use spells like medica, medica ii and assize (or even cure iii).

Some spells should basically grant confession stack on people aside cure.

I just wanted to add myself to the conversation here.

I will play WHM to see and understand how it is at 70 but as it stands now I may stop healing and play some boring DPS instead until it's rebalanced (especially if AST and SCH become preferred AGAIN). I have SCH and AST to 60 but I'm not the fan of the playstyle either bring to the table. I'd prefer to keep playing WHM, but with losing so many skills, with spells replacing each other at higher levels with the Stone/Aero Mastery traits and RNG buffs based on spam healing, I can't help but feel that I've received a significant nerf in lieu of the AST's new toys.

I could probably deal with them taking a bunch of our best skills and turning them over to cross-role if they had given us anything worthwhile in return, but they didn't. The ONLY new ability that looks good is Thin Air.
Unless the single-target damage is drastically increasing in SB, the lilies and Plenary Indulgence won't see any real use because our HoTs and oGCDs take care of so much. No WHM worth their salt sits around spamming Cure/Cure II. The lilies are also counter-intuitive. Delaying a CD in order to get a CD reduction...what? The whole thing is just a hot mess.
Plus, we won't even have Stoneskin/Stoneskin II anymore.
I hope SE fixes this, because otherwise it's AST/SCH for me from here on out. I have such a soft spot for WHM, but I hate the direction they're taking it in.

When I saw the live letter and saw how we had contributed virtually everything to the 'Role System' (SCH gave us one ability and AST gave us half an MP regen ability that we lost) I was nervous but cautiously optimistic for what the new heals might be and the lilies might do. I was flat out excited that I didn't have to stance dance anymore. But now...all I can hope is that potency and proc rate is adjusted before the class goes live. I will level WHM to 70 but if the gameplay is as meh as the tooltips make it seem I won't be actively using it beyond that. I'll go play AST for the eyecandy effects and better utility.

Everything written here is just my opinion. I main WHM, but only started playing around 3 months ago so don't take my word for it.

Also these changes are just my fantasy. They will never happen in 4.0 since they require too many changes.

Introduction

OK so new 4.0 WHM "changes" wasn't really well received by people.

• WHM feel forced to rely on Cure/Cure II.

• Plenary Indulgence will generally only ever heal 1/2 people.

• Lilies will be a pain to get.

• Stoneskin removed (granted it wasn't really all that great to begin with).

• WHM is "pure healer". Meanwhile Divine Seal becomes cross healer skill lol (and gets nerfed).

• Once again no group utility except the sheer pure healer-ness.

My changes

One thing that might not bother most people but bothers me alot is the thematic value of the Lily mechanic. Most classes got a gauge that matches their class aesthetic very well. BLMs got fire/ice + enochian, MNK got chakra, PLD got sword/shield oath, etc.

Meanwhile I feel like WHM got lilies because the designers just had to slap on a mechanic for the WHM because, honestly, we didn't really have a gauge-worthy mechanic to begin with.

I know WHM is a class with mainly Light magic supplemented by Wind, Earth and Water elements. Lilies kinda make sense, but it's still very random and off-putting for me. There were no mentions of lilies throughout the entire WHM storyline (It's possible lilies might be mentioned in 4.0 storyline).

My idea for the WHM gauge/mechanic is this:

Mock-up: http://imgur.com/Nm94zaa
http://imgur.com/Nm94zaa

• Three orbs representing Wind, Earth and Water.

• Additional middle orb for Light/White magic.

• Each orb has a meter (could be the perimeter of the orb for aesthetic purposes). Meter goes up to 100.

• Orbs are dim. Glow when their meter reaches 100. Middle orb glows when all 3 other orbs are at 100.

• Each orb meter gets filled by different actions. (Rate of filling not balanced)
  
  Earth orb: filled by heal/overheal. Direct overheal will fill very little (or not at all). Regen overheal will fill moderate. Non-overheal will fill the most.
  
  Wind orb: filled by Aero DOT tick. Aoe Aero will probably fill less.
  
  Water orb: filled by (not sure). Mana spent? Healing done?

• Each orb will be fully filled in around 60 seconds if you pay moderate attention to that particular mechanic. You can have Regen up on 8 ppl and fill Earth orb really fast, but you'll waste a shitton of GCDs applying them.

New skills/traits:

• Trait - Blessing of the Elementals: Allows the accumulation of Elemental Blessings. Blessing of Earth can be earned by healing/overhealing. Blessing of Wind can be earned by dealing damage over time with aero effects. Blessing of Water idk lol. When all three Blessings are acquired, acquire Blessing of the White.
  
  This trait unlocks the WHM gauge.

• Ability - Divine Seal: Expend one (100 point) of each Blessing (doesn't consume if Blessing meter < 100), and apply the following effects to yourself according the blessings used.
  
  Earth: Decrease enmity generation by (25)%
  Wind: Increase attack spell potency by (10)%
  Water: Increase healing spell potency by (20)%
  White: Next Raise spell cast has MP cost and cast time halved. (not sure)
  
  Duration: 15s
  Cooldown: 60s (its like the divine seal that was robbed from WHM!)

• Ability - Will of the Elementals: Expend one of each Blessing, and apply the following effects to all party members.
  
  Earth: Grant a damage shield for 10% of max HP.
  Wind: Increase movement speed by x% (idk, but i put this here since it seems like movement will be important in 4.0)
  Water: Increase healing received by (10)%.
  White: Don't know yet.
  
  Duration: (20)s, damage shield might last 30min like stoneskin
  Cooldown: 120s
  
  Group buff!

• Trait - Elemental Attunement: Blessing meter have 200 capacity. Can store up to 2 of each Blessing. Meter fill rate after 100 is halved.

• Ability - (no cool name in mind): Gain 100 points for each Blessing meter.
  
  Cooldown: 180s

Stuff:

• Earth gets filled by overheal since regen is a big mechanic that WHM has. Meter filling will probably be on a by-tick basis, since engine limitation and stuff?

• Cooldowns and durations aren't really finalized. Neither are buff %.

• Since the Blessings take time to fill up, and the abilities themselves have cooldown, skilled players can guarantee maximum uptime, while most people can guarantee uptime on atleast one Blessing or 2 (Non DPS WHM won't ever get Wind/White :P)

After writing all this I'm ever sadder about WHM in 4.0. Atleast the 15% off GCD shield and the no MP cost abilities are pretty nice.

TL/DR: lilies mechanic feels like it was slapped on WHM since WHM didn't have a gauge-worthy mechanic to begin with. Feels random. Elemental theme is better!

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Stoneskin removed (granted it wasn't really all that great to begin with).

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Because I feel a need to correct you on this, stoneskin was great before it was nerfed. It was 18% on Whm. They nerfed it to 10% to "equalize it". It was the one good mitigation Whm had.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

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

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Permanent solutions to temporary problems.

On paper, WHM needs help. It's been my main since 2013, and I'm nervous right now. Hopefully we can get enough constructive feedback that SE will make some adjustments.

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Originally Posted by Seraphyna

Because I feel a need to correct you on this, stoneskin was great before it was nerfed. It was 18% on Whm. They nerfed it to 10% to "equalize it". It was the one good mitigation Whm had.

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18% was indeed pretty OP (didn't play back then), but removing Stoneskin outright in 4.0 doesn't feel like the best solution :/.

They could have just made it not get removed when shield runs out, and shield replenishes outside combat.

Joined the Forums just so I could add my name to this thread.

It is ridiculous to me that anyone thought that these changes would be a good idea. Take away what little utility the Job already has, force players to expend Cross-Role slots on skills that are pivotal to the Job, and add abilities that are gated behind BOTH low RNG chance as well as overhealing (a la spamming Cure I/II). I question just how much SE understands the WHM Job and how it is played. In general it seems like they have a serious problem with balancing healers.

Unless SE steps up their game and delivers a WHM worth playing, all I can say is this: #RIPWHM. I'll level WHM for the (inevitable) new Disciple of Magic title, but I definitely won't be using it.

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Originally Posted by Wanzer

No, the right answer is : tell us why you think the new WHM changes are amazing.
I'm very curious about this. From my point of view the new WHM... Well... /sigh

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You are wrong, you are always wrong.

All of the QQ handle it

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Originally Posted by magnanimousCynic

snip

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Better yet, make Lilies 100% proc on all selected spells so you can actually rely on the CD reduction because RNG on healing CDs is cancer and you can't plan their use if it's unreliable. That would be way better than giving multiple spells random proc chance.

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Originally Posted by Retribution_79

You are wrong, you are always wrong.

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I'm wrong because i'm saying not to jump too fast on people and to ask right questions to make a real debate to understand all points of view? Sure. I'm even a beast. :)

And about your "always" wrong : most of the time i'm not taking part in any sort of debate. So, unless you are one of the alt of a certain person, I don't see your point here. And even so, there was still no reason to come to me here.

Even after all of this it's disheartening to know SE will continue not to add more healers so long as the current 3 are as unbalanced as they are ;_;

I hope you fix this SE.

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Originally Posted by JararoNatsu

Joined the Forums just so I could add my name to this thread.

It is ridiculous to me that anyone thought that these changes would be a good idea. Take away what little utility the Job already has, force players to expend Cross-Role slots on skills that are pivotal to the Job, and add abilities that are gated behind BOTH low RNG chance as well as overhealing (a la spamming Cure I/II).

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And didn't you know? you don't always get them...and if the person you're healing is at FULL HP, the lily proc chance is apparently 0% so it's not just overhealing, it's "let's just cure spam, because otherwise i can't do anything, Medica 2? Regen? nah, cure 1. all the way, unless cure 2 procs. because otherwise, no lily possibility"

Im a WHM main and i feel really very let down by what Ive seen in the reveals this week. The changes feel incredibly lazy and unimaginative to me. You are leaving White Mages behind while every other job evolves further. If thats really the best you can come up with you may as well just leave it at 60. Theres no point continuing a job just for the sake if it if your team of developers are clearly more interested in the other two healers.

Adding my voice as well. I have been WHM my entire Eorzean career, period. I AM one of those "pure healers" at heart, but I am also a team player -- like any good gamer in MMOs. That means I heal but good dps and good utility are also important in this game. I even leveled all those dps and by now also tanking ONLY so that I could become a better WHM by understanding the other jobs truly from the inside and intuitively (by having experienced them myself). Things like timing my heals and stuns and everything as perfectly as possible for the tank (e.g. Holy stun while DRK is in blood price? BAD!), giving what little utility I have to the DPS when needed, positioning myself tactically the best way depending on the other jobs present and their typical patterns of movement, you name it.

I won't go over the 50 shades of clusterf*** done to WHM, everyone else already has pointed them out here again and again.

Now I am going through the 4 stages of grief and will spend the remaining days til SB to force-level AST from current 45 to 60 because it does almost everything "typical WHM" equal or better than WHM come SB. Thing is... I DO NOT LIKE AST, cause I hate RNG in heals/buffs (and proactive SCH is 100% not my style of healing). But with all the clobbering done to WHM you are a fool if you still play white mage, stunting your own performance levels for the sake of... what?

SE got my money and I will keep playing til my paid-for subscription is up, or at least til I am done with MSQ (cause I am curious). Then I will see if they give us back a WHM design that is worth playing or if I can make peace with AST (unlikely...). Otherwise I will unsub for good, most likely.

Well done, SE. You totally massacred WHM you claimed to be your "iconic healer" and with it any joy and anticipation I had for Stormblood. Now I am awaiting it with a pretty miserable feeling and cling to the small sliver of hope that you will fix this massive failure before I lose any interest in FFXIV, because going DPS or tank instead as my main just won't cut it for me in the long run :(

That's not how you keep people subscribed.

Lilies:

• Each lily increases the damage of everyone around you by 1%, up to a maximum of 3%.

  In addition to the cooldown reductions. Also reduces the cooldown of any skill with recast of 60 or longer. Reduction lowered slightly to 5/10/15%.

• Cure and Cure 2 have a 35% chance per cast (70% on crit) to grant a lily.
• Cure 3 and the initial cast of Medica and Medica 2 have 15% chance per person healed for at least 15% of their maximum HP to grant a lily.

  Meaning 60% chance when healing four people. Has a healing requirement to prevent fishing for procs.

• Each tick of Regen has a 10% chance (20% on crit) and Medica 2 has a 5% chance to grant a lily.

  Each tick would be individual chance, like Thundercloud. Medica 2 on eight people would be roughly 33% chance to gain a lily every tick.

• You can only gain a lily once every 7 seconds.

  Prevents you from immediately getting fully stacked.

Confessions:

• Any direct healing has a 30% chance (100% on crit) to grant a stack and any heal over time effects have a 10% chance to grant a stack per tick.
• Assize and Cure 3 refreshes the stacks to full duration for any person hit.

  My first thought when I saw them was that they should never expire unless you go out of combat.

• Each stack increases healing received from the WHM by 3%, up to a maximum of 9%.

  Maybe? Lower amounts feel insignificant. 6% from all sources? Probably not needed at all.

Something like this maybe? Personally I'm not a fan of RNG while healing, but eh.

Bumping this up, please change WHM before launch of SB. That job is my jam :(

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Fluid Aura no longer does damage (wait people were using this for damage?)

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.

However players playing WHM as intended still want those skills [Regen and Medica II], so perhaps the CD on these skills should be extended so that they can't just be on full time.

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http://i.imgur.com/Aocowt2.gif

Is this real life?

...Anyway, people do still care about mechanics. And what if someone (a WHM) wants to get a group together to do old content at minimum ilvl sync? Your belief that the lack of Stoneskin won't make any difference is ludicrous. As someone mentioned in another thread, certain fights will make you suffer for it, most notably T8 and T11.

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Originally Posted by Waliel

Something like this maybe? Personally I'm not a fan of RNG while healing, but eh.

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I'm a fan.

Then again I'm of the belief that literally anything is better than what we have now. If the only use of Lilies was a single-target 50 potency damage spell that caused the target to shoot fireworks out of its sphincter, it would still be an improvement.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Literal trash

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https://media.giphy.com/media/I1U9DTjCqOF3i/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by fantasticm

http://i.imgur.com/Aocowt2.gif

Is this real life?

...Anyway, people do still care about mechanics. And what if someone (a WHM) wants to get a group together to do old content at minimum ilvl sync? Your belief that the lack of Stoneskin won't make any difference is ludicrous. As someone mentioned in another thread, certain fights will make you suffer for it, most notably T8 and T11.

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This basically.

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Originally Posted by Miste

Well despite a bit of sass they did they do have a point...there is already a thread in General Discussion about WHM (which you've posted in so you know it is there) so flooding with more topics on the exact same subject is just cluttering and unnecessary :/

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I doono where this other thread is but relevant:
https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/...603&height=704

I just wonder why people are this obsessed with dps. It seems like there should be other important things to consider, besides what does the most "MUH DEEPZ." At least, IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Saraphin

And didn't you know? you don't always get them...and if the person you're healing is at FULL HP, the lily proc chance is apparently 0%

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Do you have a source on this? I'd love to see it.

Well this is fitting for this thread:
https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/...603&height=704