White Mage just might be okay

[Satyre]

White Mage hasn't gone down at all.

First of all; seven of our skills were taken away from us, just so they could be re-added as cross class skills that we only get to pick five of.
Next up; Divine Seal. This skill made it possible for us to let our heal ticks do some work for us so we could focus on other things, has been stripped from us and thrown back in reduced form as a cross class ability.
Third point; Because of the skills that were taken and re-added as cross class abilities, the little uniqueness that allowed us to still slightly stand out in our own way has been shared with the other healers so now they can do most of the relevant things we could do better due to their better shielding, potencies and utility.

The lilly system I can live with. It's not as great as some of the gauge stuff other classes get but I see it as a bonus and whenever it happens, it happens. But don't you bloody dare say White Mage hasn't gone down at all.

[RhettSerris]

Unfortunately everything is relative. Without going into the debate over WHM going up, down or staying the same and accepting for this point that it's remained at the same level, you yourself have said that the other two healers went up in standing.

Relatively that means the average level has been moved up while we remain in place, so it certainly feels like we've been left behind or had an indirect nerf through buffs of others.

Understandably so, given the new job meters. WHM's does feel lacking with the full picture by comparison. Though I think I misspoke when I said everyone else had gone up, everyone's gone up and down in varying regards. Like DPS are now the primary mitigation handlers! What a time to be alive, right?
WHM got some great MP management tools, SCH lost some and we don't know if AST's situation has changed much since--as far as I know--we've no idea if Lucid Dreaming and Celery Opportunist interact with each other.

SCH got an awesome party DPS enhancer, WHM didn't and AST has already been activating spell cards across the realm for months now. (A bit off topic but would we call Earthly Star a trap card? ...a question for later.)

Everything's in flux and there's no concrete answer where anyone's ending up. We can definitely draw conclusions, and we should generate discussion--discussion is good for advancing ideas and the like. WHM got hit in some areas, Divine Seal, my beloved Fluid Aura (I'm waiting for an ability where you cry enough tears to supplement its loss but alas), but there's positives! Just...the lilies are a bit of a difficult sell as one of them.

It's not all bad is what I'm getting at, and that seems to be what I'm seeing as the prevailing theme right now. But, that's just one Square-Enix apologist's take on the matter.

Too long.10ch

It's not all bad is what I'm getting at, and that seems to be what I'm seeing as the prevailing theme right now. But, that's just one Square-Enix apologist's take on the matter.
...wait.

[DreamWeaver]

I'm sorry but did you just say SCH lost some MP management tools?

[RhettSerris]

I'm sorry but did you just say SCH lost some MP management tools?

Aetherflow took a hit, lowered from 20% to 10%.

The lilly system I can live with. It's not as great as some of the gauge stuff other classes get but I see it as a bonus and whenever it happens, it happens. But don't you bloody dare say White Mage hasn't gone down at all.

That was poor wording on my part, I apologize. The idea I was trying to get across was that like everyone else White Mage has had its shares of buffs and nerfs, but I'd like to believe the buffs outweigh the nerfs.

[DreamWeaver]

And they gained Lucid Dreaming, Divine Seal (Do not nitpick with me, I know it's no longer called DS, but I will call it DS forever and ever just to remind people WHM lost one of their PREMIER JOB skills to Role Actions).

The idea I was trying to get across was that like everyone else White Mage has had its shares of buffs and nerfs, but I'd like to believe the buffs outweigh the nerfs.

The fact that you have to think twice before stating whether WHM got nerfed or buffed is in itself ridiculous.
WHM has already been lagging behind ever since(even before in the hands of good players) the stupid Balance buff, and we expected SB to even out the balance.

But now? Instead of us discussing how much we're buffed, we're actually discussing "are we nerfed or are we buffed", this speak volumes of the imbalance in the healer circle so far.

[RhettSerris]

And they gained Lucid Dreaming.

I guess that would go a ways to bringing them back to a 20% restore, huh? My bad. Granted Assize and Aetherflow share both a recast time and restored MP total now so that's neat, a nice bonus for WHM MP restoration.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There if you were skimming this is the part where it’s important. White Mage has no job utility. Now before you copypaste that back in my face let me add, they don’t need it. Now before you copypaste that back in my face let me add, their personal DPS is the utility.

I wanted to grab this because it highlights an existing issue. Personal DPS only matters if you do enough damage to compensate for the loss. Monk suffered notably through Heavensward because despite being the supposed king of personal DPS, it only barely pulled ahead of the other DPS. Does White Mage's personal DPS trump that of giving an enhanced balance to a Dragoon or the monstrous powerful Samurai? No. Not even remotely. The damage potential of a dedicated DPS getting a 10-20% buff will demolish anything a White Mage can do relatively to its healer counterparts. None of this even factors in the added layer of crit buffs half the jobs now have.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I'll let the math whiz kids figure out if this is the case but... I have a hard time believing that even with perfect play, WHM personal dps would somehow equal a 20% increase to the overall group/raid damage from AST or increasing the overall group/raid crit against a boss by 20% periodically. I could be wrong... but I'd be surprised if I was.

[Risvertasashi]

The idea I was trying to get across was that like everyone else White Mage has had its shares of buffs and nerfs, but I'd like to believe the buffs outweigh the nerfs.

For 3.0 I agree; the additional skills did a lot to round out WHM's weakpoints, despite losing proshell, granite skin, and another round of holy nerfs.

But for 4.0 there's far less uncertainly. We know every trait, skill, and all the potencies and such. Our only hope is that those values are indeed not final, but they've broken the job in such a way that number tweaks alone will not fix it.

Lastly, I'd like to point to a parallel. Even back in 3.0, once we had enough time to level and test AST at 60, people were still calling us doomsayers and chicken littles for saying AST is weak and will need buffs to be competitive. And back then, AST and WHM were a lot closer than they will be going into 4.0. My biggest fear is that we're going to have pretty much an exact repeat. People simply won't believe it until WHM is actually shunned (far more than now), and only then will SE begin the slow, incremental process of starting to buff it.

My optimistic case is 4.2 for viability. Maybe it will happen in 4.0x if I'm being too pessimistic and SE moves much faster. Worst case would be like PLD, where the job is considered bottom tier until the next expansion, 5.0.

Call us pessimistic if you like, but I really do not want to wait months, or potentially even years, for the job to be in a good spot.

[Iepuras]

Everything I wanted to say has mostly been said. All I'll add is that WHM will be fine in dungeons and solo content. That's it. When compared to the other 2 healer classes they are behind overall. If we put it in points AST and SCH are at 75/100 while WHM is 55/100 with 4.0 changes. No math behind numbers. Just the feel of it. I'm positive most will agree.

Also why does pure healing involve RNG -_-