Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

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Originally Posted by Adventica6

Which FF game was Whm not a pure healer? please tell me I want to know.

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Paralyze, Dia, Silence, Blink, Reflect, Haste, Berserk, Slow, etc. are all WHM abilities from games in all the series, except for this one =p

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

Paralyze, Dia, Silence, Blink, Reflect, Haste, Berserk, Slow, etc. are all WHM abilities from games in all the series, except for this one =p

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But do they need them?

Like, you're also forgetting the fact that they may just be saving these skills for 70+, maybe even some skills on the way to 70, as well as replacement skills for 1-60 will be some of these skills?

The opening post to this thread reads like a bad doomsday prediction.

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Originally Posted by ErryK

Probably because those games aren't MMOs.

Just saying.

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Excuse me, he asked for a Final Fantasy game. And Um.... what about FFXI?
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/spelll...ml?job=whtmage

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Originally Posted by Adventica6

You don't get to be a pure healer and have utility, that's not how balance works.

You get crappy healing and lots of utility or you get good healing and crappy utility, pick one.

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Except AST and SCH don't have crappy healing. That's the entire point.

Too early to call. We don't know exactly what the WHM kit will be or what the 4.0 8man raid mechanics will be.

WHM is currently a very good pick for dungeons and 24 man raids. There is nothing to suggest it won't be in 4.0.

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Originally Posted by Anastacy

You won't always need Esuna.

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A solution to a problem should never be "you don't always need it". If the skill is so vital to the jobs in the first place it should be there period. Infact, I don't even see why all the role skills isn't just there for all to be taken anyway without the need to limiting it. Customisation isn't a thing in this game, may as well let all the skills be selected in the role list in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Snat

A solution to a problem should never be "you don't always need it". If the skill is so vital to the jobs in the first place it should be there period. Infact, I don't even see why all the role skills isn't just there for all to be taken anyway without the need to limiting it. Customisation isn't a thing in this game, may as well let all the skills be selected in the role list in the first place.

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Is "Why don't you have Esuna chosen" the new Cleric Stance argument for 4.0. Totally agree with some of those job role skills should have been base line period.

For now while my hopes are low but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For all we know (even thought it's unlikely) our current took kit could have been updated. Assize could restore more MP to balance the loss of Shroud. Asylum could have been given an addition to just regen, time will tell.

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Originally Posted by Adventica6

You don't get to be a pure healer and have utility, that's not how balance works.

You get crappy healing and lots of utility or you get good healing and crappy utility, pick one.

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...
Do you even play this game? Healers all have the same potency on basic heals, and the little WHM has ahead of them, is NOT NEEDED because there is literally no AoE in this game that cannot be healed by the other two healers.
And that's not even going into detail what the other two offers as heals... like, SCH having the best instant group heal in the ENTIRE GAME. SCH. The shield/utility healer. NOT WHM, the oh-so-great "pure healer".

On the down side, WHM gets severely hampered in terms of dps, for example, because they, contrary to the other two healers, don't provide any to the group AND have the problem that their mp pool and recovery mechanics don't suffice to support extended periods of dps. As, again, the other healers can do, at least one or the other though they have options for both.

I'm sorry, but looks like it's you who doesn't know how balance works...

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Originally Posted by Acidblood

...Stone IV, really?...

...Cleric Stance is now no longer required for Healer DPS, does that mean Healers are now offically expected to contribute to DPS?

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Personally, I adore earth based spells but if it's just another single target, then yeah I agree.

You know the answer to the DPS argument, so lets not go down that road. If not, check the other 1000 threads on it filled with 30 pages of people who say the same thing. Answer is the same, it won't change in SB.

Thank you to the OP for updating, I didn't want to read through 11 pages of stuff since one full page was all about twirling. I did have some questions to clear things up.

- We don't know exactly what these flowers do except shorten casting and lets us perform certain abilities / spells?

- Do we know if Cure / Cure II / Cure III's additional procs / mp / potency / radius have been changed?

- In the video I could have sworn they said one of the moves was Barrier, I had to turn it up. Was that barrier that was said? If not what did they say the move was? If so, do we know what barrier does?

- The changes to Thunder II going to AoE, will our aero go through the same thing? I wanted to know if I missed that. An early Aero AoE would be nice.

- Just because we didn't see Stoneskin or Stoneskin II, doesn't mean it is going away. It seems 50/50 because someone's guess is as good as mine. Though this could bring utility to the game if they did something with StoneSkin and if I did hear correctly about Barrier. Or was it said Stoneskin is going away?

All of these things could change the job to a better fit, small adjustments. Though someone said before was right, we don't need to do this insane amount of healing damage when what we need is the ability to avoid some of it all together like SCH / AST can.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

It's so weird that Esuna becomes a cross role skill when every healer already had something like that but things like Raise, Resurrection and Ascend or Cure, Physick and Benefic stay on their healers. Why not just keep Esuna and their equivalents on the healers?

I also really don't get that we lose Stoneskin and keep Repose...

... What kind of choice is it, when like 4 or even 5 of them will me mandatory most of the time?

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Where is the stoneskin part? Besides the speculation that it wasn't on the hotbar? Sorry in advance since I am trying to catch up to everything.

As for the roles Protect I can see staying on, but going from all walks of life not just savage. Lucid Dream is going to be an Enmity Reducing or act like SoS with MP refresh? Others, thinking up to non-savage top tier content are all very much optional. We don't know what Break does. Do we know if E4E is changing or staying the exact same? Swiftcast + Raise seems like it would stay with me for now but we don't know that in 4.0.

Esuna probably could have just been stapled into each job at that level, only thing it really helps out is a new sch that gets into Cutters Cry for sludge. That's a very very rare situation though. Maybe there are changes to be made for debuff actions from mobs. We don't know.

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Originally Posted by Snat

A solution to a problem should never be "you don't always need it". If the skill is so vital to the jobs in the first place it should be there period. Infact, I don't even see why all the role skills isn't just there for all to be taken anyway without the need to limiting it. Customisation isn't a thing in this game, may as well let all the skills be selected in the role list in the first place.

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I never mentioned a "solution".

I was responding to someone who was talking about being taken "seriously", to which I inferred they were talking about raiding encounters.

You aren't always going to need Esuna (unless SE specifically designs a dispel mechanic into every boss fight). Both healers won't need Protect. Work it out with your raid group.

I'm not disagreeing that Esuna should be baseline, though. I just disagree that it can't be worked around.

It's so weird that Esuna becomes a cross role skill when every healer already had something like that but things like Raise, Resurrection and Ascend or Cure, Physick and Benefic stay on their healers. Why not just keep Esuna and their equivalents on the healers? I really hope that we won't need Esuna very often, because most healers won't have it anyway.

I also really don't get that we lose Stoneskin and keep Repose. They should rather have changed something about Stoneskin but let WHMs keep it. It actually really fits their nature and holy theme, so I find that a little bit sad.

And if they give almost all nice WHM skills to the other healers but don't give WHM anything else but pure healing, why would anyone keep playing WHM? People don't want WHM already. I thought they would do something AGAINST that, not make it even worse.

Nice making us choose 5 out of 10 skills of which we now have most of them FOR FREE not having to choose from them. What kind of choice is it, when like 4 or even 5 of them will me mandatory most of the time?

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

Just in theory.

When looking into fflogs creator savage clears (I only looked into the old ones, not the diadem and echo resets), the amount of whitemages is still between AST (the lowest one) and SCH (the highest one).

So just by looking into statistics, there was no reason for SE to change much.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...of_a12s_party/

This analysis suggests otherwise. Scholar remained fairly consistent throughout Heavensward while Astro pulled ahead significantly the higher parse percentile climbed. Checking overall rankings on FFLogs based on parse uploaded, White Mage averaged approximately half their other healer counterparts through Creator; a substantially drop from Midas where they averaged more than double Astro.

Don't worry, I was just explaining that the solution to the problem shouldn't be to switch it around. Just like you said about baseline, there are just so many skills on that role list that "should" be involved by default. I don't see why they are still even limiting cross skills at this point.

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Originally Posted by Anastacy

I never mentioned a "solution".

I was responding to someone who was talking about being taken "seriously", to which I inferred they were talking about raiding encounters.

You aren't always going to need Esuna (unless SE specifically designs a dispel mechanic into every boss fight). Both healers won't need Protect. Work it out with your raid group.

I'm not disagreeing that Esuna should be baseline, though. I just disagree that it can't be worked around.

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@Limonia the reason the resurrection spells stayed as is is mostly likely because of the arc/smn/sch. The smn retains the red as part of his utility and if they moved it he would either lose acces or they would have had to give all the caster res as well.

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

I was around when the game went from 2.0 to 3.0.

But Yoshi P said himself on the live stream: "WHM hasn't really changed at all. We wanted to keep it as a pure healer." That pretty much tells you all you need to know and he said the same thing regarding AST and SCH (minus the pure healer bit)

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on the other hand no-one knows how the raids will be designed... maybe we will see major changes in endgame-content too? so whm still got the strongest reg-ticks and with mind as dmg stat whm can become a really strong burst dmg dealer... if they solve the mp-issue for dpsing... but yeah... I don't know why so many think that whm are dead or are going to die (again and again...) – let's see what will happen to us whms ^^

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Originally Posted by Limonia

And if they give almost all nice WHM skills to the other healers but don't give WHM anything else but pure healing, why would anyone keep playing WHM? People don't want WHM already. I thought they would do something AGAINST that, not make it even worse.

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It's a really weird move on their part which makes me think they must have given WHM something really good. But I just can't see it.
First of all, the lilies seem to build only during healing, which is already bad because most healers slap on regens and keep dpsing. So we'll only benefit from our new abilities as we heal.
Then, I really didn't notice any speed increase at max lilies, which makes me think the increase is negligible. We'll see in the coming days, but right now it looks like WHM was completely screwed.

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Originally Posted by Neela

and with mind as dmg stat whm can become a really strong burst dmg dealer... if they solve the mp-issue for dpsing...

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pre-SB cleric stance swapped your int and mnd stat. So in a sense mnd already was a dps stat for healers.

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Originally Posted by Neela

on the other hand no-one knows how the raids will be designed... maybe we will see major changes in endgame-content too? so whm still got the strongest reg-ticks and with mind as dmg stat whm can become a really strong burst dmg dealer... if they solve the mp-issue for dpsing... but yeah... I don't know why so many think that whm are dead or are going to die (again and again...) – let's see what will happen to us whms ^^

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They can't make changes to raid content that will force raids to take a white mage because that will wind up forcing one of the other two out. Unfortunately, this way of thinking SE has done is excluding whm now because they can't get it through their heads that a pure healer just isn't in demand by the game or the players.

well they actually can do that for sure... if the dmg and the mechanics are designed the way that you'll have to compensate way more impact than just tank busters the whole design for one pure healer and only one utility healer is easily set. sure the comm would cry for whatever reason but I don't see a problem with that. the grps have to chose between sch and ast for the 2nd spot if whm would be pre set as raid healer in 4.0.

pure healer isnt in demand yet but who knows how 4.0 turns out? let's see ^^

Despite the devs stating that they want to keep WHM a pure healer, which I understand, I just get this feeling WHM dps potential is going way up.

Taking cleric stance to increase damage seems favorable, and no longer having to stance dance turns tetra into a mini bene, and assuming the CD duration remains the same, that can lead to a significant increase in overall dps. Aero 2 in the video was clearly an instant cast, so being able to weave it in on the move would be crazy awesome. Stone IV has the same animation as holy and Aero 3, so it is clearly AoE. What remains speculative is how the damage is applied to multiple targets. Either way, they now have four AoEs innately. Take along break and swiftcast, and just whoa! That not taking into account what some of their other new abilities do.

Will have to see how much improvement is made to their mana management as its always been their limitations. But I'm definitely curious to thoughts about WHM role in endgame if they can cause more damage than any other healer.

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Originally Posted by Neela

pure healer isnt in demand yet but who knows how 4.0 turns out? let's see ^^

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It was nice in 2.0 where a sch/sch team was a pretty nasty thing and it was generally best to to have a whm/sch team. They blew that up with ast and now if you required healing, ast would take the whm spot cause of utility and similar healing output. They're not going to require the healing output cause they don't want to have a specific healer be required. Without giving whm more utility I just don't see anything they could reasonably do to make whm desired in 8 man content.

When Yoshi mentioned that WHMs will remain "pure healers"-- I cringed a little bit, but at this point, we still don't know what new abilities we'll be receiving. I hope we do get some form of utility. Hopefully all three healers will get decent treatment in Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by fujiwuji

My usual response to that is 'who cares about raiding?'

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Tons of people. More than people like to let on actually. Everyone loves to pull out their arbitrary % of endgame raiders to argue job balance, but in reality, there are probably more people on your server that raid (ex trials,savage etc) compared to sitting around spamming level 60 dungeons.

And even if this was the case and you don't raid; why stay ignorant to obvious balance issues? Just seems silly to pretend everything is alright and watch your job get branded as trash over time.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

In more casual content it just doesn't matter. It's plenty viable, it does solid personal DPS, what's the issue?

It's issues are really only in progression content right at the pointy end. Outside of that it's perfectly fine.

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Can we just STOP this? Balance isn't only relevant to progression raiding, or world first raiding or whatever you want to say. The only content it truly doesn't matter in is dungeon content. Ex trials and on, IT MATTERS. There's a huge disparity between the healers, and it shouldn't be ignored just because you can suck it up and handicap your party if it came down to it.

Sooner or later, WHMs are going to be locked out of PFs like AST was.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

There's a huge disparity between the healers, and it shouldn't be ignored just because you can suck it up and handicap your party if it came down to it.

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Don't get me wrong, I agree that WHM is currently the weakest of the three healers overall, but unless you are relying on a balance card to meet a DPS check or skip a mechanic, a well played WHM most certainly isn't going to hold a group back in any current content with or without echo.

Assuming potencies don't change wildly, WHM stands to gain the most from the removal of standing dancing and accuracy by a healthy margin IMHO. Assize is going to be incredible in 4.0, Fluid Aura will be consistent free DPS and Aero 3 resists will be little more than a horrible memory thank god. My main concern with WHM for 4.0 is that SE won't address the MP deficit it faces compared to AST and SCH. Beyond that, if Omega starts throwing J-Storm style aoes at us, you can bet your bottom dollar that WHMs quickly start finding favour again.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Sooner or later, WHMs are going to be locked out of PFs like AST was.

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And yet I still see PFs for A12s that lock out DRK and AST which never fails to give me a giggle.

I'll add, I've seen this all before, you'd see people proclaiming that WHM was useless in Turn 5 yet I was healing for one of the top EU progression FCs at the time and we always ran WHM/SCH (Primarily because we could reliably time our cures to land between death sentence and infirmity). It was also amusing to watch how BLMs fell out of favour in SCOB and then promptly bounced right back in FCOB primarily due to the content favouring a particular job over the other.

I'm still hopeful for WHM. Two of the new abilities are clearly water-based, and look much more like utility skills than heals, and many have been asking for abilities along those lines. Also, if that is indeed an AoE tetra, having the insta-heal at that potency would be great - that's something AST doesn't have without using Swiftcast. Plus, as Gemina mentioned, the DPS potential will probably be the best of the three healers (as I think it should be). No sulking for me until they release the patch notes!

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

My main concern with WHM for 4.0 is that SE won't address the MP deficit it faces compared to AST and SCH.

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I wouldn't worry much about it. Lucid Dream has two more ticks over Shroud of Saints, and with LD being available to all healers, I'm sure Aetherflow will get an MP getback nerf and Luminiferous Aether will disappear. Also, with casters now being able to gain Lucid Dream for themselves and with the ability to "goad" MP for healers, I think MP problems are a thing of the past. I also wouldn't put it past the devs to lower the MP costs of a lot of abilities, we can't know for sure until the expansion is out.

This also doesn't take into account that now that Accuracy is FINALLY dead, and that Piety is a substat, we could potentially pentameld Piety if we find ourselves hurting for more MP.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

Also, with casters now being able to gain Lucid Dream for themselves and with the ability to "goad" MP for healers, I think MP problems are a thing of the past.

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I wouldn't count on this too much. The only one who is likely to be able to even do it is blm. Smn has finite MP, and it looks like rdm probably does too. Casters arn't going to want to just drop 20% of their mp. Keep in mind too a smn has good reason to want to use ruin III out of dreadwyrm.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

I wouldn't worry much about it. Lucid Dream has two more ticks over Shroud of Saints, and with LD being available to all healers, I'm sure Aetherflow will get an MP getback nerf and Luminiferous Aether will disappear. Also, with casters now being able to gain Lucid Dream for themselves and with the ability to "goad" MP for healers

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Well, two things.
First, if Luminiferous is gone, that means shroud is gone too. What this adds up to is WHM getting two more ticks, and AST still being able to greatly extend their own MP recovery while also still having less MP costs across the board.
Second, don't bet on casters giving up 20% of their MP for us. I know some casters that would sooner wipe then give up their resources or detarget the boss to out a buff on you.

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Originally Posted by Yorumi

I wouldn't count on this too much. The only one who is likely to be able to even do it is blm. Smn has finite MP, and it looks like rdm probably does too. Casters arn't going to want to just drop 20% of their mp. Keep in mind too a smn has good reason to want to use ruin III out of dreadwyrm.

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SMN does have finite MP, but can also take Lucid Dream now. It is a similar thing to combat resurrection: SMNs lose a lot of their MP when they do it, but if it's necessary, you suck it up and do it. As a SMN, it's better to give the healer MP and pop Lucid Dream if it means not wiping a non-speedrun instance. Ofc, the MP goad is much better on BLM during Umbral Ice, but it's a very decent option for party synergy with all casters. Can't really talk about RDM at all until we see how the job functions.

That said, WHM's MP regen got a slight buff because of the longer duration Lucid Dream has over Shroud of Saints, so there's that too.

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Originally Posted by Fernosaur

SMN does have finite MP, but can also take Lucid Dream now. It is a similar thing to combat resurrection: SMNs lose a lot of their MP when they do it, but if it's necessary, you suck it up and do it.

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That works for dire emergencies but honestly I despise using res. A lot of smns, properly played, won't likely even have the mp to give. I wouldn't be happy to give up that mp in an emergency, giving it up to some twat who can't manage his mp? Oh hell no. Which is exactly what I said, don't count on this.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Well, two things.
First, if Luminiferous is gone, that means shroud is gone too. What this adds up to is WHM getting two more ticks, and AST still being able to greatly extend their own MP recovery while also still having less MP costs across the board.
Second, don't bet on casters giving up 20% of their MP for us. I know some casters that would sooner wipe then give up their resources or detarget the boss to out a buff on you.

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Probably for Black Mage wouldn't be a problem in Umbral Ice or in phase transitions. I think that with Umbral Ice III even if you give 20% MP you would only need 2 ticks to be full MP so BLM wouldn't even notice since you already needed 2 tick for getting full MP.

I don't see Stone IV being AoE. Aero II replaces Aero because they are both single target. Thunder and Thunder III stack while Thunder II and Thunder IV stack since Thunder II and Thunder IV are now AoEs. Since Stone IV stacks with Stone, Stone II, and Stone III (none of which are AoEs), it makes zero since that Stone IV would be an AoE.

To OP: You forget about healers now having to choose Esuna and losing Esuna/ Leeches/ Exalted Detriment. WHM is losing 5 skills. We can't pick up everything we lose and get swiftcast. On the plus side, if they keep Cleric Stance with it's current tooltip from the live letter, it's basically worthless with a 5% damage buff (down from the current 10%) for 15 seconds on a 90 second cooldown.

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Originally Posted by MizArai

You forget about healers now having to choose Esuna and losing Esuna/ Leeches/ Exalted Detriment. WHM is losing 5 skills. We can't pick up everything we lose and get swiftcast. On the plus side, if they keep Cleric Stance with it's current tooltip from the live letter, it's basically worthless with a 5% damage buff (down from the current 10%) for 15 seconds on a 90 second cooldown.

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yyea im not gona waste a slot on cleric when i can dps witout it now , im just really hating this cross role system already

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Originally Posted by MizArai

I don't see Stone IV being AoE. Aero II replaces Aero because they are both single target. Thunder and Thunder III stack while Thunder II and Thunder IV stack since Thunder II and Thunder IV are now AoEs. Since Stone IV stacks with Stone, Stone II, and Stone III (none of which are AoEs), it makes zero since that Stone IV would be an AoE.

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How i see it, they will merge Stone 1 & 2 into one single target ability (Stone 1), while Stone 3 will be the stronger equivalent (Stone 2) and the "new" Stone 4 will then be Stone 3 AoE, because the animation looked a lot like a quake with torn ground textures. It just has to be a AoE, since a fourth stone single target wouldnt make ANY sense. In case they merge 1&2 why would they do that in the first place if they just add another single target stone spell.

They said all the Stone spells stack. It would make no sense for one to be an AoE while the others are single target. I also don't see why SE would give us another AoE when we already have Aero III, Holy, and Assize. Based on how the spell looked, I thought Aero II was an AoE when I was first starting out. Just because a spell looks like it should be an AoE doesn't mean it is.

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Originally Posted by MizArai

To OP: You forget about healers now having to choose Esuna and losing Esuna/ Leeches/ Exalted Detriment. WHM is losing 5 skills. We can't pick up everything we lose and get swiftcast. On the plus side, if they keep Cleric Stance with it's current tooltip from the live letter, it's basically worthless with a 5% damage buff (down from the current 10%) for 15 seconds on a 90 second cooldown.

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Scrubs better learn to survive now. But yeah, I analyzed what the loss of skills to this great new system means for WHM yesterday. It's not pretty. And I'm afraid we might be forced to take Cleric's up if the DPS meta stays the way it is right now. Those 5% will likely still be noticable in the long run, even, or maybe especially, if you just put up your DoTs between heals. Hard to gauge how much we will have to stay healing in the future...


Also, to those who say maybe they don't take away Stoneskin:
Why show off a bar with most skills, but not all, if the skills not on the bar are still in the game? That's not very logical to me, sorry.

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Originally Posted by AlphaSonic

Probably for Black Mage wouldn't be a problem in Umbral Ice or in phase transitions. I think that with Umbral Ice III even if you give 20% MP you would only need 2 ticks to be full MP so BLM wouldn't even notice since you already needed 2 tick for getting full MP.

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It would still make them stay longer in Umbral, equalling a DPS loss, and DPS loss is bad. Ask any bard who ever had to play mp song, ever. So, not going to happen.

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Originally Posted by MizArai

To OP: You forget about healers now having to choose Esuna and losing Esuna/ Leeches/ Exalted Detriment. WHM is losing 5 skills. We can't pick up everything we lose and get swiftcast. On the plus side, if they keep Cleric Stance with it's current tooltip from the live letter, it's basically worthless with a 5% damage buff (down from the current 10%) for 15 seconds on a 90 second cooldown.

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Putting esuna on the role bar is concerning to me. Really for both tanks and healers they've put many of the most essential actions on the role skills. I worry that we'll get tanks and healers showing up woefully unprepared for content. Going to be fun when healers show up to sastasha hard with no esuna. Isn't is going to be fun healing tanks who not only don't use cooldowns but don't even have them? I get they want everyone to have access to these skills, but really just scrap the system and give out the skills to everyone.