Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

After playing a touch of SAM, something more akin to their system could work and both fill those gaps WHM now has from the role move pool.

Lilies grow after certain actions, and you can use a unique skill based on how many you build up.

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Originally Posted by Kopela

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It's not just you; Break is terrible and utterly useless (20% slow? If you actually needed a mob to move more slowly, this would not be an impressive debuff). If you're an odd duck who wanted to avoid getting hit as much as possible despite having more heals than god, you'd be better off using a nuke with actual potency behind it to kill faster.

Cleric Stance is a joke. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but only in the tightest of raid progression scenarios will anyone give a shit about a 5% damage buff for healers that has 15 sec of uptime and 90 sec CD. Ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Cleric Stance is a joke. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but only in the tightest of raid progression scenarios will anyone give a shit about a 5% damage buff for healers that has 15 sec of uptime and 90 sec CD. Ridiculous.

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I mean, I get that they didn't want healers to feel the need to have to bring this tool for dpsing, but good god, 5% for 15s? What is that Actually achieving? Could have at least been 10% and on a CD of 60s.

So I have been following the thread but didn't want to post until Stormblood released. I will agree with others that Whm feels boring and monotonous.

However in PvP, Whm and the lily mechanic plays fairly well. It could be that there is only one regen and limited abilities, but I enjoyed it. I'm guessing I'll stick to Ast for most content and Whm for PvP.

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Originally Posted by crazedtoo

So I have been following the thread but didn't want to post until Stormblood released. I will agree with others that Whm feels boring and monotonous.

However in PvP, Whm and the lily mechanic plays fairly well. It could be that there is only one regen and limited abilities, but I enjoyed it. I'm guessing I'll stick to Ast for most content and Whm for PvP.

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It does feel very good in PvP. To the point where you'd think it was MADE for PvP...
That thought really scares me. WHM being a PvP focused healer...

I can't but agree with most that has been said here.

I love playing WHM and I don't want to switch my main to a different class but the only positive thing about the changes I can see is Thin Air and some of the CD reductions. But in no way they outweigh or just even out the huge losses and nerfs we suffered. I kept telling myself it's not so bad, but when I saw all the crossed out skills in my own hotbars and started putting in role skills, it really hit me just how bad this is for anyone other than AST. They sure have it nice. Meanwhile I feel forced to utilize role action swap macros just to ease the fact I can no longer have access to my much needed slots. Role skills to me feel like they are mostly filled just from what they took from WHM. How could anyone have thought this was balanced? :confused: Scholar "rebalance" was also kinda ugly, but nothing this bad. I find it hard to even dedicate a slot to cleric stance that at its current % just doesn't feel worth it. Maybe to AST. Enjoy another buff.


And why are the lillies tied to just using cure I and cure II? I don't even want to use cure I and II. Definitely not as much as I'd need to use it to get a good use out of the mechanic. I want to be able to use regen or medica when the situation calls for it and not feel punished for using something different. Not to mention this whole mechanic does basically nothing when synced down so all you get at lower levels is just the nerfs. But what I consider the worst thing of all is the loss of Stoneskin. It is in no way replaced by a skill you get at level 66 (and even then you get to barely use it due to its mechanics). What about playing CNJ/WHM for the 65 levels before that? Or is everyone expected to jump potion now?

When I saw Esuna was a role skill, I could only facepalm. At that point you might as well turn raise into role skill too. That's about the same level of it making sense.

Actually, there is another positive to all this. I get to enjoy RDM a lot more cos I no longer enjoy my main job. If you can call that a positive....

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

I use Protect at the start of a run, or in between pulls. When I don't need it anymore I swap it with E4E.

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Not attacking you as the tip is logical, but this just sounds like more busywork of the kind that they wanted to reduce with the big skill rethink in the first place. Having to fiddle around with changing bars to store situational macros to flip abilities and hotbar shortcuts, or (worse) the obnoxious menu interface on a pad every time I enter an instance with another healer or want to get more value out of the role system is really clunky. Protect needs to go or have a facelift, badly.

No comment on WHM as I already know I hate the changes and really did switch to AST to be a statistic.

(PART 1)

All of these posts just make me feel so sad about White Mage. I've mained White Mage ever since the game first started it, and I always felt needed or was able to do something useful. However, with all the Lillies controversy and the lack of fixing for it, I don't really see how it's fair to White Mages, when all the other classes seem to have gotten new moves that fit them, or new buffs to match their class.

We get Thin Air, which is a great move for White Mages, but we lost Protect, Shroud of Saints, Divine Seal, and Cleric Stance to all the other Healers, so they basically get all these moves for free instead of having to go to Conjurer and earning them like how some WHM had to just to get Swift Cast.

And we lost Stoneskin for good, why?! TTATT

(PART 2)

And Lillies?! Ugh. 20% chance?! And only on Cure I and Cure II can I get them? I rarely use those moves unless I need to, because I'm mostly spamming Medica II to heal the whole party instead of one at a time!

Idk, I just feel like White Mages seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to expansions and such, but now it's never been more apparent. It almost makes me feel like all that hard work I did leveling up and becoming a White Mage didn't matter, because the other Healer classes are just given most of our moves now for free, and we just get "Lillies", that sometimes aren't even guaranteed to drop and are kind of confusing to be honest. I hope White Mage is fixed very soon, because I don't want to keep being the butt-end of the ongoing joke that is White Mages in Stormblood, even as I continue to Main as one. There's no way I'm wasting all that hard effort put in, just to have people tell me "Just change your class if you don't like it". TTATT

I main as WHM and this recent patch notes sting me like hell! Why would they take our essential skills and place it in Role Skills and give us crap skills in return.
and speaking of that Crap Lilies, I tried to run dungeons and 8-man trial, at first I have the desire to use the function of it but overtime, I won't even bother to it. It is just to mundane to cast Cure I and Cure II just to get Lilies pop out... That #stupidyoshi ruin the root of healer class and over-buff AST instead...

SE time to replace and hire a competent person please. I know that #stupidyoshi was the God who brought back FF 14 from calamity before, but now he's just a lazy ass person... =.=a

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Originally Posted by ximxim

That #stupidyoshi ruin the root of healer class and over-buff AST instead...

SE time to replace and hire a competent person please. I know that #stupidyoshi was the God who brought back FF 14 from calamity before, but now he's just a lazy ass person... =.=a

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I don't agree with what you're saying. Sure, the things that are going on with White Mage sucks, but thats no reason to blame it all on YoshiP and demand that someone take his job. It sounds you just want to rant about hating on YoshiP for something that possibly wasn't thought over as much as some other classes. Yeah, WHM is getting the short end, but making new abilities and making WHM more interesting is hard; it's hard to change he play style to something new while keeping everything that everyone already likes.

I'm annoyed too, but that's no reason to blatantly go after someone, especially the Producer of the game that you are currently playing. >.>

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Originally Posted by mallory627

I'm annoyed too, but that's no reason to blatantly go after someone, especially the Producer of the game that you are currently playing. >.>

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Now, if you go to Mcdonalds, and you find a larva inside your yummy cheeseburger, who is the first person you will call / blame? it is the Manager! In FF14 case, it's Yoshi! Right now, WHM got lots of larva in their arsenal skills and Yoshi thinks that those larva is good for human to digest... =.= As a consumer who sub to their game, am I forbid to complaint?

If SE wise enough, they will see complaints from players as suggestions which will make their product become better in the future which will keep their players sub longer which means more income for the company, no?
If majority of WHM complaint, means that something isn't right and needs to be fixed! And how to make our voice to be heard by them? Well, complaints is the first step.

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Originally Posted by ximxim

Now, if you go to Mcdonalds, and you find a larva inside your yummy cheeseburger, who is the first person you will call / blame? it is the Manager! In FF14 case, it's Yoshi! Right now, WHM got lots of larva in their arsenal skills and Yoshi thinks that those larva is good for human to digest... =.= As a consumer who sub to their game, am I forbid to complaint?

If SE wise enough, they will see complaints from players as suggestions which will make their product become better in the future which will keep their players sub longer which means more income for the company, no?
If majority of WHM complaint, means that something isn't right and needs to be fixed! And how to make our voice to be heard by them? Well, complaints is the first step.

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This is probably the worst analogy I've read. These things are not even remotely the same.

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Originally Posted by ximxim

Now, if you go to Mcdonalds, and you find a larva inside your yummy cheeseburger, who is the first person you will call / blame? it is the Manager! In FF14 case, it's Yoshi! Right now, WHM got lots of larva in their arsenal skills and Yoshi thinks that those larva is good for human to digest... =.= As a consumer who sub to their game, am I forbid to complaint?

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Yeah, You can't really compare getting bugs in your food, to a glitch or a bug in a game. Those are not the same things.

As well, if SE is wise enough to fix the problem, which they currently are right now, firing their Producer for the game that helps oversee and get everything done is obviously not the best choice. You're just being salty, so just wait until the next patch and then maybe things will start to change.

That's all any of us can hope for for now.

I know others might not feel the same way, but as WHM I feel like I have almost TOO many healing skills. I actually took Benediction off my main hot bar and put it on a secondary one because they all just don't fit and so many of them do almost identical things. For instance, Benediction and Tetragrammaton: they are the same type of spell (emergency single target instant heal) but with different cooldowns and potency (also isn't it dumb that it's called Benediction and not Full Cure, since that's an actual WHM FF spell?).

I obviously haven't tried out Plenary Indulgence yet either, but I anticipate it'll kind of be a clunkier version of spells we already have. It's either a single target weak emergency heal on the tank like Tetra or it will be an a weak limited target aoe heal similar to how you might use Assize.

A lot of spell and ability names were taken from FFXI. Benediction is a healing spell in FFXI.

Also, Bene and Tetra are SIMILAR but not nearly the same thing. Tetra is up much more often making it more reliable in most situation. I use them in different situations (For example, Bene allows more free time to DPS than Tetra) and WHM doesn't need to lose any more abilities, so I would be royally peeved if they removed either.

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Originally Posted by VanilleFang

Tetra is up much more often making it more reliable in most situation. I use them in different situations...

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Yes, they aren't exactly the same, but they are very similar. Bene heals for more than Tetra but is it really accurate to say that you use them in different situations? I'd be interested to hear how you use them in different situations. For me, the situation is the same the only real difference is that I can use tetra more.

With the addition of lillies and plenary I just feel like WHM isn't very elegant or exciting.

FFXI is just one game... it would make more sense to me to take names from that are present across the entire franchise, but it's just a name so not really a big deal.

Tetra isn't really an emergency heal by itself. It has the same potency as Cure II so unless you consider Cure II an "emergency heal" too it's not an emergency heal. You usually stack it on top of one of your other heals to augment that healing or squeeze in a few more seconds of DPS for a heal bomb. Benediction is usually my "oh fuck I DPS'd too long and the tank is about to die" button, or "I want to DPS an make the tank have a heart attack because they suck at tanking and won't use their CDs" button.

I am not sure why people are still complaining after the patch. I was a bit concern just because I read all these posts about whm. But honestly, after I play it in 4.0. I love it more. I went on a roulette: 50/60 yesterday and the tank kept dc the entire time. So you know what. I healed a machinist and a blm without a tank in that dungeon and I also got to dps, we finished the dungeon as 3 man with no wipe. I took cleric stance over Largesse too. Healing, and dps as a whm is much easier than before. If anything the lillies make our lives easier, cure I has a 50% proc, and cure II is 100%. Those who said 20% (after the patch) either didn't play the game, or don't know how to read.

and you know what I spammed holy without thin air in lvl 60 dung. MP isn't even an issue, I played all the roulette yesterday without mp reaching below 50%.

I just want to say the new expansion is great even if I can't get my msq done. I hope they do fix the msq soon.

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Originally Posted by PhoLover

and you know what I spammed holy without thin air in lvl 60 dung. MP isn't even an issue, I played all the roulette yesterday without mp reaching below 50%.

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I rezzed 4 people in a trial and was back at full MP after a minute >_>

Just ran the first SB dungeon as a White Mage and got 3 lilies the entire run. They may as well have not been there. I'll keep pushing on to see how it goes because this is only dungeon play but it's not a good first impression.

DPS also feels a bit boring without stance dancing. There's no risk-reward anymore. But again, I'll keep going to 70 to get a full opinion.

The only thing SquarEnix has messed up more than White Mage is the bottlenecks at Raubahn and Pipin EX.

And THAT, in and of itself, says something.

After playing a number of dungeons I wanted to share my early impression of the lily system. I have been trying to play with the system and not ignore it like many people so I could get a taste of what it is like. The first thing I have noticed that lilies seem to create the problem they solve. While they give me access to assize faster so I can regen my mana I wind up spamming Cure II a bunch to get the cooldown reduced. This just winds of creating a mana efficiency problem... which all started because I wanted to solve a mana efficiency problem and so on (it's like a darn paradox.) Ultimately, mana is not an issue because at least the system does not fail to solve the problem it creates but I wonder what I am gaining from all of this? The next big thing that stood out to me is how completely split gameplay is by level. When I am in a leveling roulette and I don't have my lilies its like I am playing a completely different class and making the mental shift back to the old way of playing is difficult. I find myself wanting to spam Cure II only realize I don't have lilies to make up for all the mp I am spending. The next thing I noticed is that my power as a WHM is tied to skill level of the people I am playing with and not in a good way. I am more efficient, heal more, and do more damage the WORSE my group is at handling mechanics. When I am with a group that knows how to handle mechanics I cannot generate nearly as many lilies and I find myself casting Cure II after large AOE damage and when party members are at like 98% health. Again, this is not how I would normally play as a WHM but I wanted to try to play SE's game and I can honestly say I am baffled by their thinking here the whole thing contradicts itself.

Tbh, with the CD reduction brought by the Lillies being only 20% (which is only ever relatively meaningful for Benediction, which is the longest cast time), you're better off just ignoring the Lillies. You won't save more MP by trying to reduce Assize's CD because it's not significant enough for it to matter.

If it wasa 50% CD reduction like in PvP, it might be worth it. But a 20%? Nope.

Yeah, the smartest way to play is the way you're used to. Lilies only come into it when you're undergeared or don't know how the fight works.

(which is why they're a bad mechanic!!!!)

Since I've been blocked by the one arm friendly giant, I've been mostly just doing DRs on WHM just to pass some time. I don't make use of the Lily mechanic much which was to be expected but am enjoying the absolute MP freedom 60s Assize with no detriement and 21s Lucid Dreaming gives me. Pretty much hitting the Holy button front to back in any 60 DRs with little concern for going OOM and overall the kit (outside of the Lilys) feel stronger than it was pre-SB even without the 61-70 abilities.

[edit] Since this seems to be a common misconception - according to the trait tooltip Secret of the Lilies has no effect on the recast of Benediction.

Lilies actually never come into play. You can ignore them completely and not notice them. CD reduction is bad in games where cooldowns are long in general. It would be great if it were something like 75% reduction on the next skill. Anything less than 50% is bad TBH.

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Originally Posted by PhoLover

I am not sure why people are still complaining after the patch. I was a bit concern just because I read all these posts about whm. But honestly, after I play it in 4.0. I love it more. I went on a roulette: 50/60 yesterday and the tank kept dc the entire time. So you know what. I healed a machinist

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everyone already knew whm would be the dungeon master that never was the issue , its when it comes to higher level content is why people are upset

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Originally Posted by bswpayton

everyone already knew whm would be the dungeon master that never was the issue , its when it comes to higher level content is why people are upset

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One among many other issues. I feel like focusing entirely on the raid issue would be detrimental to WHM in the long run.

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Originally Posted by PhoLover

I am not sure why people are still complaining after the patch. I was a bit concern just because I read all these posts about whm. But honestly, after I play it in 4.0. I love it more. I went on a roulette: 50/60 yesterday and the tank kept dc the entire time. So you know what. I healed a machinist and a blm without a tank in that dungeon and I also got to dps, we finished the dungeon as 3 man with no wipe.

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You mean the same thing I've been able to do for over two years now? It's not exactly hard healing most dungeons. >.>

Ways to make WHM a "pure healer" and make it useful.

1. Give the WHM reraise as a class exclusive.
2. Allow WHMs to negate the "fall" mechanic (iE titan)
3. Give the WHM a group rez (think Overwatch Mercy)
4. Give cure back its damage undead/demons ability
5. Give the WHM "Reflect"
6. Give the WHM "Raise 2" and or/the ability to negate weakness.
7. Give the WHM an ability that reflects the damage back on to the mob.
8. Use the lilies to increase the duration of effects such as regen.
9. Give the WHM an ability to improve accuracy "Aim"
10. Give the WHM a scan like ability that says something random like "takes extra damage from fire" or "take extra damage from flanking attacks"

These suggestions are in the mold of a pure healer/classic WHM but would add a need for WHM especially with people who are actually learning the raid. A good WHM with a group rez could literally negate the chance of failure barring a party kill event(not getting the nail, etc.)

The Lily system should be ignored by healers because it's not good for efficient healing. You can't predict using your next ability, since it forces use on clutch healing abilities like Tetra, or AoE healing with assize.

Then, after using lilies on something like Assize or Tetra, you can't use Divine Benison. This is where it gets worse...I'd rather just do away with the whole lily system and keep Divine Benison without requiring a minimum of 1 lily. Maybe just keep the, "On critical heal, reduce cooldown" and increase the % chance of it to actually work.

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Originally Posted by PhoLover

I am not sure why people are still complaining after the patch. I was a bit concern just because I read all these posts about whm. But honestly, after I play it in 4.0. I love it more. I went on a roulette: 50/60 yesterday and the tank kept dc the entire time. So you know what. I healed a machinist and a blm without a tank in that dungeon and I also got to dps, we finished the dungeon as 3 man with no wipe. I took cleric stance over Largesse too. Healing, and dps as a whm is much easier than before. If anything the lillies make our lives easier, cure I has a 50% proc, and cure II is 100%. Those who said 20% (after the patch) either didn't play the game, or don't know how to read.

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And what you said above, we have done it like 2 years before without problem and without Lilies. So, what's the new interesting mechanic for whm now??

Whm in 4.0 just feels mundane in current condition while the others got new shiny toy in their hands >.>

I enjoy whm's overall style, tetra and assize feel good to use but... the lillies are useless. Often times I dont even heal with cure 1 or 2, so they arent even being used. Then, if I happen to only have 1 lily when aforementioned spells needs come up, its basically wasted, 4% whoo

Gone through the level 63 dungeon and Susano, as well as the 61 dungeon a few more times on WHM to help friends skip the queues. Outside of one pull in the 63 dungeon where things just hit the fan I still haven't had more than 4 in an entire run, and the 4% on Assize doesn't help if it comes off cooldown mid-cast of Stone. Get hype for that effective 1 second cooldown reduction, I guess?

A few of these runs were with my tank friend that I've run more dungeons with than I can count so I think we're both aware of how much give and take we have with regard to each other, and it does certainly feel like incoming damage has been kicked up a notch. Still not enough for the standard practice of Regen/Asylum/Tetra/Bene to be obsolete, by the looks of it, though. Especially now that they let us use Bene as a semi-regular heal now and Assize doesn't need a choice. I'd argue, in fact, that it's EASIER to heal without resorting to Cure/II which seems very counterproductive to the lilies.

Still of the opinion that DPS as WHM is in a worse place with the removal of CS. Sure it's EASIER, there's less to think about and there's no arbitrary gate to healer DPS, but it's just mind-numbing now. At least stance dancing gave us something to be conscious of while spamming our one button.

I probably won't update my thoughts again until I hit the level 70 content as it doesn't look like any upcoming skills are going to change anything. Otherwise I imagine it will just be me repeating myself again.

Are people seriously saying that the removal of Cleric stance has made is mind numbing? There was nothing complex about Cleric Stance. It was just an annoying cooldown. Gameplay for me as a WHM (ditched SCH for now) has been nothing short of amazing. In dungeons, using Aero III, Assize and Holy while being able to negate the MP cost is absolutely fantastic. In Sasuno, using Stone IV and DPSing while using Cure II and Tetra once in a while with the occassional AOE heal feels great. It's a very fluent class now and much more satisfying than Scholar. MP management is incredibly good. The way I see it, WHM is a pure healer but also the best DPS. It has fantastic capabilities of bringing so much DPS to the party. Especially with Assize and Tetra being so frequent. And even more so with Benediction being a three minute cooldown. The only thing that needs changing about WHM is the level 68 trait and give regen a chance to proc a lilly. That's it.

I am devastated over what was done to our class ; ;. However and I am not sure if anyone has posted this yet but just in case I hope this helps...You can macro your skills to be able to swap them. I changed the icon to match the ability in question. Here is how it works, you jump in dungeon cast protect, hit your macro it swaps it out for say clerics since you wont need protect again. You have the icon be the same as clerics, then you have another macro that swaps it off of clerics and back onto protect that uses the same icon as protect. Which ever icon is lit up is the one that is currently turned on. Example below is my Turn off Eye for an Eye and turn on Largesse, this is used for dungeons where big pulls really benefit eye for an eye but you still want to be able to use your largesse in between cool downs. Example of my macro below. (had to multi post may be on another page)

/macroicon "Largesse"
/aaction "Eye for an Eye" off
/aaction "Largesse" on
/wait 180
/echo EYE FOR AN EYE READY <se.10>

Right after Eye for an Eye (and if you time it right so you use it right before the tank actually pulls the first mob then you can swap out to largesse and be able to use it for the same pull as E4E) you hit this macro and it will give you an echo chime to remind you when to swap largesse back out to E4E seen below.

/macroicon "Eye for an Eye"
/aaction "Largesse" off
/aaction "Eye for an Eye" on

Again using the icon for the ability you are turning on lets you quick glance and see which ability is currently being used. This should easily allow for the use of almost all our taken abilities, yes it sucks they took them however with this it will not be as bad.

One last note, if you have the swap out for protect please remember once a fight starts you can no longer swap, so because of this if you feel your party cant do the fight without dying and ergo needing protect recast on them, just stick with protect as the on ability for boss fight or if its a 8 man just keep protect on the entire time.

I have been in love with whm my fave class (tied with SMN) since 1989 when I first played Final Fantasy 1 I know we have been done so dirty on this however, if this helped even the slightest tiny bit I feel I did something for the class I so dearly love. Stay Strong whitemages!

We are all doomed. Sylphie is our quest giver... T_T;