Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I still don't see why ppl are against WHM being the PLD (easy safe option) of healing? If the safety net that a whm provides is marginal to the ast/sch combo... not just the top 1% will phase it out. Make AST/SCH composition more extremely dependent on party composition and Optimal execution. There should be some noticeable trade off for opting out of a whm. Still make all comps VIABLE. Just raise the difficulty level.

For those that are against Whm being a PURE healer, there is no other direction they can take WHM and not make them a copy of Ast (which AST SHOULD BE A SUB COPY OF WHM) or a direct copy of SCH.

Because a pure anything has no role to fill in this game. Why take a one dimensional White Mage into Savage when Astro and Scholar offer near equivalent healing and significantly superior utility? The devs don't want to make any one healer stronger than the other, thus White Mage isn't even a "pure healer," it's neutered Astro.

You simply cannot balance for the top 1%, for the people who play all day, raid 7 times a week and want to be competitive for world firsts and the likes.

WHM will stay the go to healer for people like me, people who just raid in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, and don't compete to bring a boss down asap. Everything in here is getting blown out of proportion as always happens on MMO forums . People preach doom and gloom and look, the game will live on.

And arguing and circlejerking about this one 'issue' (which I hardly call an issue) is not doing something, as everyone views this from their personal viewpoint. Devs always have access to more data and statistics than you can ever dream of.

Bunch of whiney crybabies, WHM surely are.

Raiding is the only content where balance matters.

Nothing else hits even remotely hard enough for anyone to care what isn't "good" outside Savage and Extremes. Currently, Paladin has trash aoe yet it does fine in dungeons. People start to care in A12S, where Paladin's lack of magic mitigation makes it a huge hindrance compared to Dark Knight. So the devs should be focusing on what makes groups want certain jobs because their failure to do so often means said jobs will be omitted from Savage statics. White Mages saw an enormous decline from their usage in Gordias and Midas because Astro is simply better than them in every way.

[Jkap_Goat]

Play the jobs you enjoy playing, That includes white mage. I main AST but will be moving over to play WHM in stormblood, A WHM will always be good, reliable healer to bring to raids and end game content. I am very excited to bring my WHM into stormblood!

[Yorumi]

I still don't see why ppl are against WHM being the PLD (easy safe option) of healing?

I don't see why people are so against whm getting some white magic buffs(haste, brave, faith, aura etc).

[Evumeimei]

Raiding is the only content where balance matters.

Nothing else hits even remotely hard enough for anyone to care what isn't "good" outside Savage and Extremes.

I think the problem is more that the raiding meta becomes law in this game. Doesn't matter whether or not you're competent as a player. Don't play that one job that happens to be a bit more optimal? Can't join a group. I realize that's a generalization, but you get the idea.

A majority of the community doesn't do top-tier raiding, but they still follow that raiding meta as if it's the only way to do things. That, in turn, puts pressure on the people who enjoy the jobs that happen to be seen as "worse," when the jobs are perfectly viable at the level of play of 80% of the player-base.

[Yorumi]

A majority of the community doesn't do top-tier raiding, but they still follow that raiding meta as if it's the only way to do things. That, in turn, puts pressure on the people who enjoy the jobs that happen to be seen as "worse," when the jobs are perfectly viable at the level of play of 80% of the player-base.

All the more reason to have actual balance. The raiding meta is not some arbitrary dictate, it's based on the balance of the classes. While casual content is easy, it's still a heck of a lot faster and easier with proper classes. Technically all classes can clear raid content, and yet we pick the best ones to do the job. That's human nature, people don't pick for pity. The people saying we shouldn't balance for raiding are the exact ones who are making it so that certain classes don't get picked for any content. You can't stop people from discussing what's the best way to play a class or clear content, but what they can do is ensure the classes are properly balanced so no class is excluded.

[ToasterMan]

I've a friend who mains WHM who gets overlooked in favour of a SCH or a 2nd AST in 8 man content constantly.

That's my biggest issue with this. I don't mind playing a job that might be a bit under powered compared to others, but as soon as it's getting passed over like that, well, that's motivation enough for me to consider changing mains. I like to believe I see the writing on the wall here and have been taking the other two healers into roulette's to try them. So far on WHM, I've been pretty lucky with the raid group I have that's made up of friends right now. As soon as I step out of that group for randoms though? I have a really difficult time getting into parties for 8 man content. If your friend keeps getting passed over like that just because of their main, then it might be time to consider switching. Probably not what they want to hear but I'm not sure what else to tell them other than keep trying.

Enough people will switch mains and clear rates for WHM will drop more than they already have. That's the only way I see the Dev's changing their stance on that. Yoshi has to know about the problem because we all saw someone tell him about it live. Once they start seeing hard numbers like clear rates and other data, it'll be pretty difficult to convince themselves that a pure healer in this game still works. I think they can do that because I think they did a pretty nice job with all of the DPS in the live letter.

The developers might design the raids in favor of WHM but that's not too likely considering their statement that all of the healers need to be able to heal the content. SE has surprised us before. Sure they weren't good surprises but they're still surprises right?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I think the problem is more that the raiding meta becomes law in this game. Doesn't matter whether or not you're competent as a player. Don't play that one job that happens to be a bit more optimal? Can't join a group. I realize that's a generalization, but you get the idea.

A majority of the community doesn't do top-tier raiding, but they still follow that raiding meta as if it's the only way to do things. That, in turn, puts pressure on the people who enjoy the jobs that happen to be seen as "worse," when the jobs are perfectly viable at the level of play of 80% of the player-base.

It doesn't. People were far more willing to bring Summoners and Black Mages into groups despite neither being optimal. The difference is both are strong. White Mage suffered this tier because it offers virtually nothing an Astro isn't capable of. Can it clear content? Absolutely. And at the more casual level, people generally don't care. Once you step into upper midcore, it changes because these are players who want to down content quickly for loot. Bole is incredible for prog since you can see more mechanics and Balance is, well, Balance. Even giving White Mage access to Stoneskin II during combat and a Raise that doesn't apply weakness would have been huge for prog at least. Sure, Cure III is nice but Creator didn't hit hard enough for groups to favour it over what Astro offers. Another factor is the ease of transition. You'd be silly forcing your Monk to play Ninja because "meta" if said Monk can push out monstrous numbers. Healers lack the same complex rotation, making it significantly easier to bounce between each.

Outside Savage, most people don't care. You almost never see the "meta" for Extremes. And once the odd number patch or echo comes out, most play whatever they feel like. It's the initial release where people hype certain jobs because we're all technically below the ilvl, thus whatever extra edge you can bring helps. Yorumi summed it up well. People are always going to discuss the best. The devs should aim for each job to be similar to where casters were this tier. Not necessarily "meta" but strong enough only speed killers really care. White Mage just isn't there, which is why more people look down on it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

I highly recommend your friend practice Diurnal Astro. It plays quite similarly to White Mage and I suspect they will find the potential transition pretty seamless. It sucks she can't find groups, but I fear that will get worse unless the devs unveil something radical regarding White Mage. I don't mean that in the sense of "follow the meta" either. Just that... I pugged Creator and the amount of people looking for Astro/Scholar was quite telling.

[Seku]

...so SE's answer to that is to apparently remove Stoneskin[/IMG]

I hope they do remove Stoneskin and replace it with a instant shield, the likes SCH and AST get. I don't raid on WHM, but in a majority of the content, I forget about SS as HoT's are enough.

Also, iirc, at the start of the video they said just because a skill is missing from the hotbar, doesn't mean it's removed.

[Alkimi]

Unless SCH and AST are nerfed to the ground which is probably not happening.

Honestly I think Balance wil go back to it's pre 3.4 values. It's a good enough healer now that 20% was just overkill. They messed up with that one and I think they know it.