Conjurer & White Mage Abilities and Spells Feedback

[Nahara]

• An inability to retain MP or recover lost MP other than simply remaining idle and waiting.

I wanted to make a thread talking about this last night, but apparently you can't make any threads unless your set character is level 25+.

I love playing as a White Mage, but looking at the other casting classes, WHMs really don't seem to have any reliable means of recovering MP for prolonged fights. THM/BLMs have some crazy mana regeneration via Umbral Ice (at least that I've seen) and ARN/SMN/SCH have mana regeneration through Aetherflow and Energy Drain. WHMs only really have Shroud of Saints, but that only lasts 12 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown.

I dunno, maybe 80 potency is more than I realize, but also consider that ARNs get 20% of their max MP back every minute, on top of the mana returned from Energy Drain, which can be used up to three times per minute depending on their rank of Aetherdam.

[Aedra]

I wanted to make a thread talking about this last night, but apparently you can't make any threads unless your set character is level 25+.

I love playing as a White Mage, but looking at the other casting classes, WHMs really don't seem to have any reliable means of recovering MP for prolonged fights. THM/BLMs have some crazy mana regeneration via Umbral Ice (at least that I've seen) and ARN/SMN/SCH have mana regeneration through Aetherflow and Energy Drain. WHMs only really have Shroud of Saints, but that only lasts 12 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown.

I dunno, maybe 80 potency is more than I realize, but also consider that ARNs get 20% of their max MP back every minute, on top of the mana returned from Energy Drain, which can be used up to three times per minute depending on their rank of Aetherdam.

Last time I tested, you gain around 1.5-1.8k mp (in combat + self regen) after 15sec (buff duration from shroud of saint). Your MP @lv50 in AF should be around 3.5k-4k without PIE.

From what I notice now, Refresh potency 80 should be like 80 mp per sec e.g. (80 x 15 = 1,200 mp) + self regen ~300-500 mp in 15 sec in combat.

[Maldalewyn]

I wanted to make a thread talking about this last night, but apparently you can't make any threads unless your set character is level 25+.

I love playing as a White Mage, but looking at the other casting classes, WHMs really don't seem to have any reliable means of recovering MP for prolonged fights. THM/BLMs have some crazy mana regeneration via Umbral Ice (at least that I've seen) and ARN/SMN/SCH have mana regeneration through Aetherflow and Energy Drain. WHMs only really have Shroud of Saints, but that only lasts 12 seconds on a 2 minute cooldown.

I dunno, maybe 80 potency is more than I realize, but also consider that ARNs get 20% of their max MP back every minute, on top of the mana returned from Energy Drain, which can be used up to three times per minute depending on their rank of Aetherdam.

This was a huge problem at level 50 in phase 3. I could drain my entire MP pool in minutes if I just went nuts. Obviously in a real situation I would be much more careful with my MP, and I could make it last for some time, but prolonged fights would very likely drain me and leave me with no choice but to remain idle and try to remain active as my MP slowly returned to me.

Shroud of Saints has now been buffed, and from what I saw in Phase 4, I believe the cost of our spells has been reduced while their potency increased.

I have to wait and try this in a real situation before I make and serious judgement but I think they may have fixed the issue with our increased potency. Regen for instance use to be worthless but because it is more effective for its MP cost now, it does help a great deal in saving you MP it would seem.

[Zyzone]

I was hoping this thread would make a comeback! I tried making it myself but I'm not high enough level.

While I might say it not clearly due to text limit in above post. I might as well give more explanation.

1st: Stoneskin, is never meant for absorb damage for Tank in the past, which I believe will be also in the future. There are only few occasions you should cast stoneskin on Tank, which are
1) Before Pulling Boss / Pack of Mobs .
2) You have nothing to do, and Tank doesn't take much damage.
3) When you have enmity problems.

2nd: Stoneskin, usually cast on other, even us, WHM @lv50 hp~ 3.5k can absorb for 630 damage. and this 630 <> 0. You can take hit more 630 dmg as well as no interruption while casting spell. I won't call this 'nothing' and serves no purpose.
3rd: OK, Warrior has the biggest HP pool, esp at lv50 which hp ~5.5k - 6k. So what? PLD might not as high but stoneskin on 4k+ hp is also not 0 dmg. And PLD take much less damage from all of his defensive skill. I won't call this 'nothing' and serves no purpose also.

The problem with Stoneskin is that even at 18% Cure I does more healing than it does and is cheaper and faster to cast. The only targets that are worth using it on are classes with really high HP. Unless it changed in phase 4 I see no reason to cast it.


Another issue that CNJ has is that Aero's damage scaling makes it become less worth it to cast as you get higher level. My Stone II normal hits in phase 3 were doing as much damage as a full duration Aero. Even in phase 4 Aero was barely doing more damage than Stone.

On top of this, Thunder is even worse as it costs more MP than Stone I/II and does less damage than Stone I/II.
Since Aero, Stone I, Stone II, and Thunder are our only damage moves for most of the game, It's disappointing to see that Stone II is the only spell we'll be casting for damage.

[Regdar]

Agreed, stoneskin is really lacking right now outside of tanks. Maybe SCH's Adloquium would be a nice compliment (assuming they stack), but it definitely lost its use compared to 1.0. I'd love to see SS become based on WHM mnd and the trait gives it a bonus based on targets hp.

As for the traits, they need some changes. Yoshi specifically said the reason we will not get reraise is to prevent zombie tactics from 11 though so I cant see us ever getting that one.

Aero being instant cast, can be cast on the move. Not great but makes it slightly less useless though.

[Maldalewyn]

The problem with Stoneskin is that even at 18% Cure I does more healing than it does and is cheaper and faster to cast. The only targets that are worth using it on are classes with really high HP. Unless it changed in phase 4 I see no reason to cast it.

It didn't change at all in phase 4. So yes, it's still just as worthless as always.

I think, if they want SCHs to be the master of the Stoneskin-Effect now with their Cure Effects, they should just change Stoneskin to reflect that.

Maybe instead of making it powerful like it once was, make it very cheap on its current cast time, but also AoE. With an AoE effect, I'd lower its potency some, but still make it based off our Cures rather than our targets HP. Maybe grant it a potency of 300 based off MND?


Also, it's nice to hear from you again Zyzone.

[Maldalewyn]

Yoshi specifically said the reason we will not get reraise is to prevent zombie tactics from 11 though so I cant see us ever getting that one.

I never saw this done so I'm not sure how that worked exactly. I quit shortly before the mini-expansions started coming out.

All the same, I would still remove the ability for other classes to equip Raise or Resurrection altogether. From what we've seen so far, it serves no purpose to equip it as another class/job when the dungeons, which are the only place it might have been useful, provide less of a penalty for returning to the entrance and just taking the shortcut back to your party.

[Sneakaboo]

Nice to see that this thread didn't go to waste, good job.
I'll be trying scholar myself and see how that works out.
Perhaps later on the devs will take note and work on the conjurer/white mage a bit.

Edit:

The conjurer plays very much like most oldschool healers, a tat generic.
This is not a bad thing , the gripe I have with it is that they both copied the good and the bad from this oldschool type of healer.
The main question I ask myself is 'what makes a conjurer/white mage fun' which abilities trigger some creativity and peak my interest.

With a scholar I can name a few right away, pet control (it has various abilities) a tool box with some fun cooldowns and absorb healing.


With the conjurer it just feels like a few links are missing here and there.

[Cataleana_Amarth]

My biggest problem with CNJ is the monotone button mashing when playing the healer role, which leads to very boring play. You just push Heal I from time to time and just stand there being pretty. It lacks "creative" play. I decided to mix things up, and ended up running all instances in Cleric stance.

The changes made the MP usage allow full use of Stone I, Areo I and Fluid Aura. I never ran out of MP, not even during the Boss fights. Never used Medica, used Heal I only. With the tank losing aggro, I could deal without any issue with the damage. Or used Fluid Aura.

I ran Halitali around 60 times for gearing up and was capable of running them in Cleric stance, including all the end bosses. I would like to point out that you do need to switch from stance, when some of them start using the more serious AoE spells.

My suggestion would be more "creative" spells. Some buffs, debuffs, AoE spells. CNJ really needs more spells, or people might lose interest in playing them.

[Aedra]

Raise used to be useful because of EXP loss and Level Down xD
Stoneskin's usefulness is because of its duration (30 min) and ability to cast before combat, to increase your hp pool. In fight, you usually won't cast this as much beside AoE SS (if have some in ff14), much less on tank as cast speed and MP consumption is not friendly wise (except swiftcast stoneskin). Beside that, you already quote mine just read carefully so I won't repeat it again.
In term of DMG, I don't know much in ARR as CNJ is 50, but I believe you shouldn't put Thunder at all. THM only use Thunder because of trait and and while waiting for transpose cooldown.
Btw.. Aero kite dot CNJ can win any boss...

My biggest problem with CNJ is the monotone button mashing when playing the healer role, which leads to very boring play. You just push Heal I from time to time and just stand there being pretty. It lacks "creative" play. I decided to mix things up, and ended up running all instances in Cleric stance.
My suggestion would be more "creative" spells. Some buffs, debuffs, AoE spells. CNJ really needs more spells, or people might lose interest in playing them.

This was the reason why I stopped playing WHM in 1.23. FF11 used to have all fun remove status as each mob's family usually have 3-4 status attack move..