Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[dark494]

I really hope that SE is listening to the community's feedback regarding our unhappiness with WHM. No use making an iconic FF job that wont be fun to play.

That depends heavily on how the JP side of the board feels.

Edit: And from what I can tell, they don't have many issue with it.

[Yallaid]

That depends heavily on how the JP side of the board feels.

Edit: And from what I can tell, they don't have any issue with it.

I'm just curious, because I cannot read the JP boards but why do you feel they don't have any issues? I've been linked to at least one post from earlier that was translated where a JP player voiced similar concerns as those on our side of the fence.

Not doubting, but I feel like SE responds more strongly to feedback from JP community so I'd like to know where they stand right now.

[Risvertasashi]

I'm just curious, because I cannot read the JP boards but why do you feel they don't have any issues? I've been linked to at least one post from earlier that was translated where a JP player voiced similar concerns as those on our side of the fence.

Not doubting, but I feel like SE responds more strongly to feedback from JP community so I'd like to know where they stand right now.

They're still using a thread from 2015 complaining about the holy and stoneskin nerf in HW.

If I can risk a generalization... their culture tends to be a bit reserved, which also means they don't create a bunch of different threads like we do. That said, my perception from my limited understanding of the language is definitely that it's not really at 'outcry' levels. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

That said, if you take this post from the aforementioned thread for example:

とりあえず4.0の白の新アクションや変更点などを見た総評として、ストンスキンの件を差し引いても、
白魔導士に関しては、下方修正や弱体はされてないと個人的には思いました(*-ω-)ﾝﾑ

S/he is also saying that it feels like WHM has been weakened even more after reviewing the 4.0 actions/changes.

[mcspamm]

WARNING: Wall of text incoming~

My biggest gripe about the WHM changes in SB right now is that their new abilities and job gauge seem unfun.

Of the fifteen jobs, I only count three jobs whose new core mechanic / job gauge has a random element:

1. BRD
2. AST
3. WHM

BRD relies on crit procs from their DoTs for song-specific effects, but they still have the effects of their new songs and can make use Troubadour without needing DoT procs. i.e. Only a part of their new job gauge has a random element. Also, with both DoTs lasting 30s each and Iron Jaws no longer having a cast time, BRDs require minimal GCD investment to gain Repertoire stacks and song procs (1-2 GCDs every 30s).

AST's core mechanic of drawing cards has been designed around being random. As such, they have many tools to mitigate the randomness (Spread, Royal Road, Redraw, and now Minor Arcana and Sleeve Draw). Furthermore, the pay-offs for AST's random draw system are fantastic! The Balance is currently overly powerful. Arrow, Bole, Spire, and Ewer all have their uses. At its very worst, assuming everything but Redraw is on cooldown, and an AST draws an unneeded Spire/Ewer, then redraws that into a Spear. Spear is without a doubt AST's worst card, and it grants a blanket 20% cooldown reduction for a single player to all their abilities for 30s.

Let's have a look at WHM now in comparison.

WHM's new job gauge is entirely dependent on random procs, with no way to mitigate against bad luck.

With the current system, WHM's best case scenario is casting Cure / Cure II three times, getting a lily each time (0.8% average chance of this with the current numbers!), and then spending them all (because they get consumed) to reduce a single oGCD heal skill by 20%, at the expense of 3 GCDs at the absolute minimum, and much more like 15 single target heal GCDs on average (every 37.5s on a 2.5s GCD). So WHM's best case scenario is a 0.8% chance of spending three GCDs (7.5s) for a 20% cooldown reduction on a single ability, and more typically once every 37.5s (with no ceiling for bad luck!), whereas AST's worst case scenario is granting a player 20% cooldown reduction to all their skills, spells, and abilities for 30s every 30s.

Even if we disregard the fact that high level WHM players rarely spend many GCDs on Cure and Cure II, WHM - as currently previewed - will be the only job in SB whose entire new system is completely dependent on RNG. Aside from a reworked Stoneskin ability, and the Thin Air cooldown (which is awesome btw), the rest of WHM's new abilities are fully gated behind random procs, cost GCDs, require single target heals (which are GCD inefficient), have a weak pay-off even at three lilies (especially when compared with their fellow healer AST), and players are provided with no way to mitigate against bad luck.

No other job in the game has a core job mechanic so dependent on both randomness and inefficient use of your GCD. The lily system, and similarly, Plenary Indulgence both suffer from this problem.

To me, these new core WHM mechanics and abilities are not fun. If I wanted to gamble like that, I would go play slots in a casino - at least there's a potential pay-off there.

------

So what can we do about it now?

My proposed solution for the time being is to remove all randomness from generating lilies and also for Plenary Indulgence's Confession stacks, and then give players time to see how they feel about the new abilities without any reliance on random luck or procs.

Potencies and cooldown times can always tweaked, but if this change doesn't make WHM players happy, then we as a community can acknowledge that the core design of the new abilities and mechanics themselves were a mistake, and try to redesign them and find a new more promising direction for WHM.

Perhaps controversial, but these new changes to WHM remind me of the Diadem rework. Yes, players were complaining and making a lot of noise about the randomness of the Emergency Mission and the i280 weapon drop rate thereafter, but this really just diverted attention from and masked what I believe to be the core problem with the reworked Diadem - that the core experience of running around killing FATEs isn't fun.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the current iteration of WHM in Stormblood is suffering the same FATE (heh), with the randomness issues masking crucial design flaws with the new WHM changes, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[dark494]

I'm just curious, because I cannot read the JP boards but why do you feel they don't have any issues? I've been linked to at least one post from earlier that was translated where a JP player voiced similar concerns as those on our side of the fence.

Not doubting, but I feel like SE responds more strongly to feedback from JP community so I'd like to know where they stand right now.

There's just very little chatter on the JP forums compared to here, and they're much more organized with their board and topic usage (we have more than 10x the number of threads in nearly every board than they do), and the healer changes discussion is primarily focused on the same thread they've been using for the last 4 years. A lot of the topics are more focused on things like custom emotes, QoL suggestions, how AST should use their cards, SCH's lack of damage, and worry over Rescue being abused.

The one thread where they talk about it (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...83%83%E3%83%89), doesn't have a ton in it (only 10 pages of SB discussion on many different topics). This thread here, for example, is already 10x bigger than that. A few people mention primarily that WHM looks uninteresting, but not "broken" and "dead" like the NA side suggests. One of their biggest complaints I see more often is the disparate number of skill difference between the healers, how WHM has less skills than the other 2 overall. Some people sad that they don't have stoneskin (and how that affects lower level dungeons). Even more conversation dedicated to talking about the WHM Barrier skill, trying to figure out its usage and how many lilies it costs and whether or not it should buff based on how many lilies get used up by it (because it currently uses all of them but doesn't change potency based on how many get used, and 15% is low), and how it'll interact with barriers from other jobs. Some of them are quite excited at the prospect of building crit WHM and becoming "super fast" healers with all the CD reductions. Also lots of talk about balance of healers at lower levels, like in Aurum Vale, not at 70. There are some people voicing sentiments like they think it's a great feeling that they're changing the playstyle of healers to be more healer-ish and WHM is going in the right direction for that. SCH and WHM appear interchangeable based on content. WHM just needs to contribute to party DPS since they don't bring damage utility, which is fine because their strong healing abilities will give them more time to DPS. There a couple suggestions early on on how to tweak a few numbers to make it desirable.

But, they also seem to be in general agreement that they will withhold any judgement until the final mechanics and values are set when the game is released. And a lot less (read: none) of the rage and doom & gloom from here.

[Reiryuu]

But, they also seem to be in general agreement that they will withhold any judgement until the final mechanics and values are set when the game is released. And a lot less (read: none) of the rage and doom & gloom from here.

Which JP forum are you reading? There's quite a bit of the same general stuff that's going on here going on in their main healing thread. While we may be a bit more overdramatic here, we tend to be so whereas they do not. That's all it boils down to. There are plenty of healers arguing that WHM is in need of fixes. There are lots of people who, like here, are telling them to be quiet and that everything is fine.