Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

WHM really should have gotten an AOE version of Presence of Mind as its group utility at the very least IMO. Call it Divine Alacrity, give it a 120 second cooldown and call it a day. Give Stoneskin/Stoneskin II back while you're at it and make all resses instant by default :P

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I... am just completely dumbfounded how poorly designed White Mage is going into 4.0. I hate to be hyperbolic but... it's a dead job. Like, this is worse than Paladin currently. Despite being relatively weak throughout Creator, White Mage at least boasted stronger heals. Not only are the new mechanic a convoluted mess, it is a direct raid hindrance. I'm not even certain it'll be beneficial to bring as a prog healer. That doesn't even get into how Lilies almost seem to work against it. You are actively published for planning your heals two steps ahead. Assize is nearly off cooldown but the tank is about to get hit with a buster and needs to be topped? Better use Tetra! Oh wait, now Assize doesn't benefit from the cooldown reduction because all your lilies are gone! And since no one needs healing, casting Cure or Cure II to replenish lilies would be a waste. Speaking of, do they expect us to overheal as a playstyle? Seriously. Half of White Mage's core mechanics seem to revolve around literally wasting MP on heals just to build lilies.

The only hope White Mage has now is enough people realizing how absolute garbage it is and the devs panic buffing it like they did Astro.

[SlogDog]

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.

[NefarioCall]

[Vhailor]

Doesn't make sense.
If no healing is required, why would people spam cure for them lilies? They'll throw stones just as before.
If healing is required, you heal with the appropriate tools, same as before.

3 lilies is 20% of a given cooldown. Sure, it's nice, but it's nothing "game breaking" to necessitate maximum cure spam at all costs.

As I said later in my post, I doubt that we'll actually get a damage boost from going down this path. What I also pointed out, though, is that this system will "bring up the floor" for lazy / new healers who are under the misconception that the way to play WHM involves constant healing and no damage dealing.

I personally expect to almost entirely ignore the Lily / Confession system unless I'm in one of those rare fights that actually requires a sustained focus on healing. For the people not in this boat, though, these new mechanics place a strong emphasis on spamming Cure / Cure II, with an easier-to-manage boost to their damage thrown in as a cherry on top.

[SaitoHikari]

I want to say, how devs are treating White Mages going into Stormblood is already far, FAR worse than what I witnessed in the previous MMO I played.

In that MMO known as Dragon Nest, I played Saint, which was the original healer class in that game. A while later, the developers released a branch of the Assassin class known as Light Bringer, which was essentially a better healer than Saint in every way AND provided ridiculous party utility at the time. Light Bringer was essentially what would happen if you mashed Scholar and Astrologian together, just replace the fairy with a very spammable near map-wide multi-target 2.x Lustrate, while almost every other healing skill in the game ran off of low potencies. On top of that, they took away Saint party buffs for half a year for some inexplicable reason (when LB party buffs were -already- stronger), before reversing that decision (although only part way).

Saints went extinct during that time period - and if there was one thing I learned about MMO communities in general from the aftermath, it's that you should never, ever piss off the entire population of the original healer class - because they're the ones that tend to have the most influence in the community, either as content creators, building more connections than the average player due to the very nature of their role, or they have greater knowledge on the game's inner workings than most. And when they quit en masse, no longer able to trust the developers on such matters, everyone noticed, from raiders who could no longer find dedicated healer mains and were forced to create alternate healing mules, to potential new players that were scared off of playing the game by the stories of the healers that were burned. Even when the developers finally got their crap together two years after the fact, that trust was shattered forever, and the players never came back.

(It also didn't help that LB was the very definition of a bandwagon class - once they were nerfed, THEIR players quit en-masse, because as it turns out like I correctly predicted day 1 of release, the class was so poorly designed that the only reason people didn't realize it was due to how broken 2-3 of their skills were. As soon as they got hit with the nerf bat, they became near unplayable as a consequence.)

When Astrologian was buffed, I began to see parallels between what happened in Dragon Nest and what could happen in FFXIV. I always told myself that the FFXIV devs would never let this game's balance ever touch the trainwreck that happened to Dragon Nest two years ago.

So far, it would appear the FFXIV devs are dead set on proving me wrong.

[javid]

They gave sch "Battle litany" with half the recast of current "Battle litany"

DAMN MY FELLOW WHM's we've been kicked out of meta again!! LOL.

(it's not conclusive yet.....we need content.....)










At least Benison is our new oGCD Stoneskin; we always wanted an instant shield

Ast Celestial continues to extend everrry buff you have up :P on basically everybody.................such a powerful powerful skill......


MARK MY WORDS; PLD+WHM are gonna become raid meta Opting fot the 2 tank 5 dps whm healer combo!!! So far all the utilizes mentioned for the healers, though synergy-wise APPEARS ast/sch will be meta for duel healer comps; but even the avg party dps increase you get for rolling ast will not match the dps you'll get if you can remove a healer completely....... if that's whm saving grace I'll glady parade my WHM around town!!!. WHM still has the highest avg HPS of the 3 healers even with AST lil 15% buff and better "assize" .

SCH Got a very cute personal regen; looks very strong like 300 potency per tick; but embrace was already 300 potency per tick WITH the option to hit whoever was first to need it; not just one person (assuming several ppl taking dmg). While the pet is tethered it unable to do any other action; so no feys, no embrace, no nothing.......

Bk to why PLD/WHM will be the new core meta; bc PLD offers raid all the utilities that whm lacks; the two synergize very very well.

[Granyala]

I personally expect to almost entirely ignore the Lily / Confession system unless I'm in one of those rare fights that actually requires a sustained focus on healing.

That would be my guess as well. Nice bonus if it happens, but nothing I'm going to try to force.

[missybee]

The heavy reliance on RNG and over-healing seems...odd. I was really starting to like WHM as of late, so I am mildly disappointed with the changes, but I will try to remain optimistic until I get some hands-on time with it.

Might be time for me to get better at playing Yu-Gi-Oh!

[Seraphyna]

I gave you another chance now, but as it is, I'm adding my voice to this list. Not only do I not intend to play WHM, but at the moment I do not intend to play Stormblood. You've already got my pre-order money, so good for you, but I'll be one more sub that will likely wane when this month expires. Who knows how I'll feel in 10 days, but I've never felt so....disdained over a redesign than this. It makes it so so so so so hard for me to want to log in right now, at all.

I was excited, all I wanted was for this job to get a good look from the developers.

But it hasn't.

Every single time we're shown these changes, we're met with "Just wait until it releases." Every new set of changes we see makes it less and less likely significant modifications will be seen. Of course, we can wait even longer and maybe all these numbers and effects are different. But it's simply not likely. The live letter made it less likely than when we knew nothing. This makes it even less likely than what we knew after the live letter.

You don't get the benefit of the doubt when hopeful eyes continue to be brushed aside. I really didn't know I felt so strongly about this job until today, but apparently I do. I'll always be happy to be proven wrong with what actual changes and mechanics go in, but I simply believe it's incredibly unlikely right now.

Stop being scared of doing anything meaningful with white mage mechanics because the job has Cure 3, please.

You gave them way more faith than I ever did. The moment I got wind of some of these changes I cut way back on my playing. Waited for more word, didn't bother with a pre-order. Now after this, complete faith in SE is gone.

Are my SO and I going to order or play SB? Nope. We've actually stopped playing altogether the past few weeks. After this news, there's no reason for me to play. They killed my healer. What's there to play?