White Mage Redesign [Fast Paced 16]
Fast Paced 16-button Concepts
This series is an attempt to condense all FFXIV jobs into 16 buttons (although some buttons may map to more than one action) and focus on making most of the 16 buttons feel unique from each other and require thought. I’m not really concerned with how likely the devs would implement this. It’s moreso for me to theorycraft a fun job that I would play. Note that role actions are not included in the 16-button limit.
Design Philosophy
1. All jobs must have cooldowns within 60 seconds, with rare exceptions.
Quick cycling of the cooldowns lowers the filler phase of each job and increases the “excitement” phases executed in an encounter.
2. Jobs should not cycle exactly every 60 seconds.
We don’t want every minute of each job to have the exact same button executions. This allows the jobs to feel more organic and not like rehearsing a short script again and again. Each minute on the job should feel sufficiently different from the last.
3. Depth for optimization but simplicity for casual players
All jobs should feel easy to pick up for casual players. Reducing most jobs to 16 buttons should help tremendously on this front. There shouldn't be too many failure states in the job to help new players adjust to the job well. The skill ceiling for all jobs should be very high but not done so in a way that players feel pressured to pursue optimization if they don't want to.
4. Identity and distinctiveness
All jobs should feel different from each other, not just in their art style but more importantly in their playstyle.
WHITE MAGE
Elementalist, Holy Magic
The job identity for White Mage would involve using the conjurer elements of Wind, Water, Earth to great effect, using holy magicks, and unearthing the old Amdapori arts that they wielded against Mhach.
White Mage will be the most straightforward healer, where the interactions between different buttons are easy to understand and require little preparation.
GCD healing is very strong across all healers in this series to give new healers a way out of a pickle. However, oGCD healing is weaker, requiring some thought and coordination in order to reduce as many GCDs as possible, to allow for a sense of achievement when pursuing healing efficiency optimization. WHM's healing specialty includes easy, strong Regens on Cure II and a very powerful Cure III, with a strong 60s Lilybell. It lacks strong shielding capabilities, though it has a bit of on-demand mitigation.
The optimization tricks of this design are primarily on usage of Water IV and usages of the Amdapori skills.
Water IV is both a movement tool and a potency gain when the WHM will take damage in the near future. This rewards WHMs who are proactively using Water IV in anticipation of damage. The choice between using Amdapori Attunements on either Banish III or Reverse is also pretty nuanced. Using Banishes is most helpful on coordinated burst phases especially in conjunction with Elementalism. However it also boosts the power of Holy Bolt, a combo action after Reverse. Knowing when to use Banish III and when to start exploiting the accumulated Weakness to Holy stacks to use Holy Bolt would be a key skill for WHM optimization.
Finally there are some fun things you can do with WHM. Transferral allows you to give a tank a hefty Stoneskin pretty regularly, or to transfer an Aquaveil onto someone taking damage if the WHM themselves are not. The follow-up action Transposition is a tool that players can use in many creative ways.
https://i.ibb.co/kGXCkz5/Screenshot-...-13-010233.png
https://i.ibb.co/KKr5whG/Screenshot-...-13-010307.png
https://i.ibb.co/f2LpF2B/Screenshot-...-13-010337.png
https://i.ibb.co/jWMKs0v/Screenshot-...-13-010413.png
https://i.ibb.co/8YY5Tbc/Screenshot-...-13-010442.png
https://i.ibb.co/5RJD3cN/Screenshot-...-13-010511.png
https://i.ibb.co/VNzcj3C/Screenshot-...-13-010535.png