Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Vanitas]

Your CNJ is level 15.

I have an alt you see.

[KDSilver]

Wait to see how Omega will work before saying White Mage has no raid utility or if they made a mistake.

This meta looks to be really defensive so I guess the damages could be really heavy and sometimes, White Mage could make the different.

[KisaiTenshi]

i don't know what WHM out there were casting mostly Cure I and Cure II but the changes they've announced so far seem to cement that as a WHM main job: cast Cure I and Cure II on as many targets as possible as often as possible to proc Lillies and Confession.

The problem: wasn't WHM the Heals over Time job? So Medica II, Regen, Asylum don't interact with the new systems at all. I know personally, my healing style is to stack HoTs on a target and heal whatever needs to be made up with Cure I and II. Now it'll be flipped, I'll want to reduce how much I rely on HoTs so that I can get as many stacks as possible? It just doesn't feel like it's working how it's supposed to.

I think WHM dps is fine, Holy is still there and we have new MP management. But what the heck happened to our healing??

Clearly Yoshi-P made these changes because Healers were not playing Healers, they were playing DPS.
The way the changes are made are the way you are supposed to play WHM in the first place.

[Risvertasashi]

Wait to see how Omega will work before saying White Mage has no raid utility or if they made a mistake.

This meta looks to be really defensive so I guess the damages could be really heavy and sometimes, White Mage could make the different.

AST has the stronger heals so even if the encounter is super damage heavy, you still want AST and not WHM.

[Derekloffin]

All I have to say is what I'm seeing is a total mess. I have AST and SCH leveled, so I can easily switch, and at this point it looks like I'll have to as this current WHM design is very... well, let's just go with bad. We lose several things that now MUST be cross classed where they didn't have to be before, resulting in us actually losing abilities that we used to have access to. The RNG mechanics are totally wrong headed and poorly thought out. And we have gained very little to replace what we lost. So unless something has radically changed since these tour events for WHM it is looking an awful lot like my off main of AST is going to become my main and WHM will be the last healer I level despite being my former favorite.

[Adventica6]

Anyone with a brain knows 1 balance card is more powerful than any of the whms new skills. Math isn't as hard as you think and you shouldn't really have a hard time figuring that out.

The quicker the boss dies the less people need to be healed. Start using your brains please, the thread is warranted.

[AlphaSonic]

I'm sorry but you can't make all the healers the same.
You just can't, it would end up to not having a choice anymore.

Just because you put scenarios that can make it broken doesn't mean it needs to be broken. You can cap it. You can make it Single target, there's different ways to not make the ability a complete shitshow. Again that ability that I've put it's better than the new mechanics we are getting with the lilies or the new lvl 70 ability that feels like a complete joke.

[Alkimi]

It isn't intended to be another aoe heal, rather the radius is there to allow it to be used on multiple targets, e.g. in FaustZ, you'll likely be casting a fair amount of cures across both tanks, in this situation you'll likely be able to use Plenary almost on cooldown either to play it safe or buy yourself a few more DPS GCDs.

In a single tank situation, it's simply going to be a tank specific instant free heal on a short cooldown assuming the incoming damage is sufficient to actually proc it.

I like the idea of it, but a 20% activation rate on confession is far too low in my opinion. I honestly don't think it would hurt if it was 50% or even higher.

Certain fights like A11S it's not uncommon to not cast a single cure or cure 2 the entire fight. (although that is with echo, and Cruise Chaser's damage on the tanks is stupidly low)

[Sebazy]

AST's new skill (Earthly Star) is similar to assize and outclasses it completely. Assize has 300+300 potency and Earthly Star has 900 (!!!) + 200 potency, it just requires a bit of planning ahead for maximum efficiency. With this new skill AST will have an even easier time healing content plus the broken Balance. Honestly, anyone saying that WHM is fine must be trolling.

Hi.

Earthly Star isn't going to be anything like Assize and it'll have a completely different style of usage, I actually think Earthly Star is going to be AST's spin on Cure III. The key detail to note here is that it has a radius and currently, that radius is 1 yalm (Which I strongly hope is a typo in the tooltip), the effect for it makes me think it's going to be more around the 8 yalm radius once the dust has settled. Much like Cure III it's a big and precise burst of aoe HPS to a specific spot (or target).

In some respects it'll be the better ability, no MP cost, ground targetable for more precision and a raw potency advantage. On the flipside, you've got that cooldown so you'd better place it careful, and it's also worth noting that it's highly likely that the new Divine Seal won't buff it as well.

I do agree that the Lilly mechanic is underwhelming tho. Fingers crossed Omega brings some nice big consistent healer checks to get some use out of our 4.0 abilities.

[Vhailor]

i really think just doing something about the Cure I/II proc limitation would be enough. I'll leave the raid meta balancing to others to let them figure out the perfect potency values for everyone, but the reliance on hard casted Cure I and Cure II's is so bizarre that it's going to drive people away from the job quick.

I think this was SE's very half-assed attempt at solving the damage-dealing expectations in regards to WHM. The only way to do that was to move away from WHM's emphasis on HoT spells, because by their very nature, those leave you free to do other stuff - namely deal damage.

By linking a lot of our new toys to spamming non-HoT spells, they'll take away a lot of the perceived 'idle time' that WHMs previously had to contribute some DPS to the party. Which, honestly, is likely to cost us damage in the long run. I haven't worked out the numbers, but I'd be surprised if the RNG-fueled Lily / Confession system paired with Assize spam actually improved our damage over continuing to ignore Cure / Cure II in favour of Regen, and spamming Stone IV the rest of the time. That said, it'll still be close enough for people to not bitch about people who stupidly maintain that healers should never cast a non-healing spell ever.

I also agree with your sentiments, by the way - this is likely to drive people away from the job. I long ago decided to hold off on purchasing Stormblood until I saw the combat changes go live, and played around with them a bit. It's already looking like I'll need to find a different main, and considering WHM is my favourite job to play right now, it's quite likely that Stormblood will usher in a less-fun gameplay experience for me. Whether or not I can live with the changes or find a new entertaining job to play post-4.0 will go a long way toward determining if I continue to play FFXIV.

What a shame.