WHM stoneskin II and virus

[StrategistShiroe]

Why everyone complains about untraited Virus instead of actually learning how to use it? A lot of fights have uses for it even when your co-healer is a Scholar. Also to compensate lack of mitigation they have consistent bursty heals and strong regens while being the only heler with Mind Party Buff, thats the whole identity of the job.

Base Virus is awesome for physical tankbusters. PLDs can save their shelltron usually.

[StrategistShiroe]

Please, Senpai, tell us of your mythical gearing that allows you to survive 48k hits. I'm woefully undergeared as my i236 SCH has a measly 17.3k HP. ¬_¬

Got VIT melds on your right side? That's an easy boost to 20k+

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I didn't think I had to mention this, but please for godssake don't mention the Tank Limit Break when discussing healer mitigation.
It makes it sound like WHM doesn't know what they're talking about and are just whining.

[Cabalabob]

Why everyone complains about untraited Virus instead of actually learning how to use it? A lot of fights have uses for it even when your co-healer is a Scholar.

Because it's not a matter of "is untraited virus good", it's a matter of why is WHM the only healer that gets gimped mitigation when there are DPS classes that can do it better? Why when SCH can reduce BOTH types, AST can reduce BOTH types, SMN can reduce BOTH types and even BLM can reduce BOTH types (virus + apocastasis), does WHM only get to reduce ONE type?

Why should WHM virus be rendered completely useless against enemies like Ramuh when SCH's virus and AST's disable are not?

[HPDelron]

Because it's not a matter of "is untraited virus good", it's a matter of why is WHM the only healer that gets gimped mitigation when there are DPS classes that can do it better? Why when SCH can reduce BOTH types, AST can reduce BOTH types, SMN can reduce BOTH types and even BLM can reduce BOTH types (virus + apocastasis), does WHM only get to reduce ONE type?

Why should WHM virus be rendered completely useless against enemies like Ramuh when SCH's virus and AST's disable are not?

Why should paladin's Rage of Halone debuff only reduce one damage category while a warrior's Storm's Path reduces all?
Why should a ninja's Shade Shift reduce only physical damage when black mages get Manawall AND Manaward?
Why should bards only damage boost casters when machinist can damage boost casters AND physical dps?
Why should scholar only have a 3% group speed buff when spread arrow is 5%?

We can keep asking these hypothetical questions forever. The answer is ultimately that different classes have different abilities and sometimes they have comparable abilities where one has a stronger version than another. If we made mitigation debuffs the same for WHM and the other healers would could simply move down the list to the next situation where one or the other has an advantage in a certain area. Not to get too slippery-slope on you here but you repeat that process enough and class identity disappears as you consolidate and equalize things.

If I was to wager about this area specifically White Mage by design seems to have poor mitigation & preventative tools in general. With tools like Benediction, Divine Seal, Cure 3 and Assize the White Mage seems to be taking the old adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" to heart by simply brining 10 lbs cure of the table instead of any prevention. Obviously the entire thrust of this thread is if that is a good design decision or not, but that definitely is the "WHY?" of it as put forward in your post. White Mages only reduce one thing because preventing damage just isn't their shtick.

I'm not convinced the game would be well-served by a lot of homogenization personally. If there were to be an expansion of the White Mages kit to make up for their lack of preventative measures I'd like to see it done in a way that explores unique design space and underscores the difference between the class identity of white mages, and the class identity of SCH or AST.

[Watachy]

Why should paladin's Rage of Halone debuff only reduce one damage category while a warrior's Storm's Path reduces all?
Why should a ninja's Shade Shift reduce only physical damage when black mages get Manawall AND Manaward?
Why should bards only damage boost casters when machinist can damage boost casters AND physical dps?
Why should scholar only have a 3% group speed buff when spread arrow is 5%?

PS3 Limitations *running away*

[Khubla_Kha]

Isn't the point of WHM that it lacks mitigation while having much higher healing output?

We have 1 WHM... we don't need 3 vanilla mages that are all identical with the only difference being the pretty sparkle effects they each get. More homogenization is not what will make things better.

[ValentineSnow]

This thread reminds me of when WAR needed buffs and people made threads about it and all the WARs came in going "no we don't need buffs! WAR just needs more skill to play!".

Then when WAR got buffs if anyone said nerf WAR or the WAR buffs were too much, those same WARs would come in and go "Blasphemy! Burn the heretic!".

Not sure why anyone would fight having more utility. pride? stubbornness? What would be so wrong with being able to do stoneskin, something you can already do, but in AoE? And what's the problem with having your virus do all the things it already does + work on more moves?

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Isn't the point of WHM that it lacks mitigation while having much higher healing output?

We have 1 WHM... we don't need 3 vanilla mages that are all identical with the only difference being the pretty sparkle effects they each get. More homogenization is not what will make things better.

Well there's the thing. It isn't "much" higher healing. Maybe if our healing output was noticeably higher than SCH and AST it would be fine, but AST can outright best our healing throughput and SCH has a cure III level aoe burst heal on a CD.
Every other class can do high healing, but WHM can't do mitigation. That's where it becomes unfair.

[mp-please]

Well there's the thing. It isn't "much" higher healing. Maybe if our healing output was noticeably higher than SCH and AST it would be fine, but AST can outright best our healing throughput and SCH has a cure III level aoe burst heal on a CD.
Every other class can do high healing, but WHM can't do mitigation. That's where it becomes unfair.

The issue isn't that the other healers can heal it or not, the issue is that WHM is ready to heal stuff that doesn't exist.
AST and SCH can heal a lot of damage in a couple of gcds, that its true but they can't do it constantly. If you have a fight where everyone takes 15k dmg every 3 gcds, AST and SCH will be able to heal the 1st 2 hits in turns, but after that? They better start spamming the hell out of their aoes, now WHM? Every single time, DS+cure III or cureIII+medica, don't even need co-healer help as long it has mp. However that kind of damage doesn't exist, at least on this patch.