Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Verdan]

The white mage mechanics are terrible in every way and Ast heals are now more powerful than white mage and scholar ones for less mana.

[javid]

Feedback:

Right now, Cures are generally the last spells an experienced WHM is going to use for healing...

That isn't at all true.... What you should have said was: WELL GEARED HEALERS & TANKS combo, likely in end game gear, and possibly with echo, can more reliably depend solely on regen and ogcds to maintain long auto attack sequences with the occasional cures to pick up the slack.

Meanwhile during progression ilv gear it is nearly impossible, even this extremely dumb down content known as Creator savage, to rely on regens and ogcds alone for the good part of 60 sec, let alone a 8-10min fight....

Let's skip faust and just do a9s boss....his auto attacks hits for 10k every 3 secs and every 6-9 sec he hits with an additional auto attack. So at progression gear there isn't enough utilities in game to consistently and only rely on regens and ogcds for minute after minute after minute of damage sequences-- not even to include addressing the tankbusters.

To help get a more realistic look at how many instant healing cure-like gcds are used in a minute: go to youtube and pull up any world first/second/third/fourth....etc to gain a prospective on how often in a minutes time progression geared statics that pride themselves in utility efficiency, spam cure-like gcds in serious raid content.

If SE will continue to require the same level of rigor in the new content as it is in this content (LULZ) or past content (ok? I'm listening...), those cure spams would serve as the baseline for what a proc rate our lilies and confessions should be based on!

Here is a prefect example for a highly revered raid team "Elysium of Gilgamesh", World first in mostly progression gear, from a WHM POV, however on a raid tier a step harder than current Creator savage. No need to watch the whole video to just watch from 2:00 up to 3:20 and count the number of cures he, the WHM had to spam in that time frame dealin with sequences of AUTO attacks! (he cast between 7-9... I'd have to rewatch for exact numbers)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HCoEImNWL0&t=189s

The point is sequences like these are extremely common in progression serious raid content which will require some dedicated cure spams in a short window of time. That avg spam should be considered when SE adjust their RNG lil gauge procs, crit procs, confession procs, free cures, etc!



You guys are so spoiled with the simplicity of Creator savage that you're now begging SE to Tune the JoB utilties to be MOST rewarding once you've already completed the progression phase and moved into the Speed clears/Farming phases. The only reason the last tier had such a long speed clear/ farming phase is b/c it was made sooo EZ by comparison to the last two tiers beforehand. After you're at max gear....which is what I stipulated to begin with, you no longer need as many utilities and cure-like gcd spamming!! Once you got the gear you will now transition to the optimal compositions that will increase overall raid dps and will require stronger attention to detail and even less forgiven execution times!

WHM predominantly has been design as an easy to grasp healer that is highly reliable as you progress and transition into the speed clear/farm phase of the game. Requiring a Job that is extremely easy to handle and forgiving by comparison to AST and SCH to be JUST as rewarding as the higher APM required, more detailed oriented utility based jobs isn't at all fair.....

Be honest.. as much noise as some of you are making you will most likely stay WHM even beyond progression b/c a lot of you either can't manage the high APM of AST/SCH efficiently or all together find it too cumbersome.... you can't have the easiest healing class and want it to also be the best healing class...... Let's put it in persecptive

a decent sch has to manage pet placement, soil placement, shadow flare placement, personal cd, pet cds, pet gcds, and finally personal gcds.........

A decent ast has to efficiently handle a RNG card system with now additional card utilities every 30 sec, one aoe placement, personal cds, and personal gcds

A good whm has to handle, one aoe placement, a simple set of personal cds, and an even simplier gcd sequence...

You want the WHM with its set of responsibilities to be as rewarding as the other two??? And to you that's fair???

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Ugh, the whining is ridiculous. The numbers could be adjusted, but WHM is far from being "literally unplayable" or "you can't do cutting edge content" with. All I see is that people want the same abilities on every healer, every healer should have a spammable shield, every healer should have a party damage boost...it's just boring.

Note: I do think Balance needs a small nerf.

....Just read the thread for God's sake, you'll realize how wrong you are with everything you just said.
No one's asking for anything even CLOSE to that.

[Risvertasashi]

That isn't at all true.... What you meant to say was is WELL GEARED HEALERS & TANKS combo, likely in end game gear, and possibly with echo, can more reliably depend solely on regen and ogcds to maintain long auto attack sequences with the occasional cures to pick up the slack.

Let me try to explain what we mean by this because you pretty much get it here.

Cure/Cure II are some of the lowest priority/last resort spells to use. You might need to, but you don't want to. And the first 2 weeks of a raid release that lasts 6 months are... maybe not the best thing to go by.

[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.

[Erys]

What about proposing the lilly mechanic to proc from maintaining regens? Like BLM's polyglot but with regens. Make it 100% gives a stack for single regens (the regens you usually put on tanks or dps who just got ressed) and a 25% or less chance to proc from maintaining the aoe regen (since that's 8 people with a regen the chances should be lower).
Or you could add lillies from healing someone from critical HP in a certain time window, ie tank gets tankbuster and drops to 10% or less HP and you benediction them. That'd grant you a lilly 100%.

With this two changes the lillies would be at least usable. Even if the "utility" they give is abysmal.

[Verdan]

1: Everything about the Lilies is bad. They're random, they're slow to get, they're weak to use, they're uncontrollable. It needs a rethink.

2: Secret of the Lilies 2 is garbage. It's also random and slow to get and weak. Erase it. THAT should be when we get confessions, and confessions should DO something for the player they're on. Also they shouldn't be off of the same lame casts at the same low percentage as lilies.

3: Plenary Indulgence shouldn't consume confessions, instead it should extend their duration by a small amount. Otherwise, there's no way that confessions could be balanced in having an effect, and thus couldn't be fleshed out into being something actually interesting instead of a weird buff we have to watch for.

4: Give us back Divine Seal. It's ours. Other people can have Largesse, but Divine Seal has been the "yeah but WHM heals a lot" button since the beginning.

5: Honestly take a look at what you've done to Ast. The power that class has on the build we saw is obscene. It outclasses all others in the roles they were supposed to excel in, while still having the greatest buffing power.

[KDSilver]

Confession stack shouldn't be random.

It is used as a bomb heal.
But when you know astrologian can put his bomb heal, wait 10s and make it explode for 900 potency...

White Mage should get a way of granting confession stack on the party with no timer on it and make it explode whenever he wants (and the potency based on how many stack people have, with a maximum of 3stacks). This could be a 60s cooldown, just like Astrologian's skill.

[Muchmidget]

Adding in my two cents, which have possibly been said by others as well. I won't focus on cross-role, as those are for every job and I think others have explained it as well as or better than I would have. I'll also try to focus more on the mechanics of it rather than numbers.

1. The lilies (as shown) main effect is to reduce the cooldown of certain abilities, with a maximum effect of 20% reduction . Most cooldowns aren't used as soon as they're available on healer - you save them for when you actually need the healing. This effectively negates any effect the lilies actually have.

2. The fact that Tetragrammaton, Assize, Divine Benison, and Asylum all remove all lilies makes our own skills compete with each other in the worst way.
For example, let's say I'm trying to spam Assize as often as possible. In order to still use my other abilities but not interfere with the cooldown reduction for Assize, I'd have to use ALL my cooldowns in rapid succession to prevent them from removing a precious lily for Assize in the next 60 seconds or so.

3. As a caveat to #2, using your abilities when you need them instead of spamming them all means they might only get 1, or maaaybe two, lilies each (being very optimistic here at media tour RNG rates). Due to scaling, you won't even notice the effect this has (as opposed to noticing you're holding the skill for 12 more seconds before use); this means that actually using your skills wisely means you get no benefit from the new system.

4. Divine Benison just feels like a really big nerf to Stoneskin. We used to have 18% shield to put on a friendly target whenever we wanted. Then it had a potency cut. Now it's halfway back to where it was under a new name (and free of mp cost) but we have to have a lily and we can only do it once every 60 seconds. It also does not scale with lilies, but removes them all. Considering the hurdles needed to cast it, the detriment it is to my other skills if I'm saving lilies, and the fact that the tanks can shield HP for other party members more reliably, I probably won't even put this skill on my hotbar.

5. On a positive note, Thin Air is amazing and we love you for it already. TY TY TY

6. Plenary Indulgence seems like a huge let-down as it was shown from the media tour. The main reason I think it fails as a useful skill is because it requires us to have ALREADY done the healing with Cure I and II. There just aren't too many scenarios when I can make use of randomly stacking confession on someone and healing them again with Plenary Indulgence in a 30-second timeframe. If the confession stacks were on the white mage instead of party members, there was another way besides Cure I and II to generate stacks, and/or the stacks lasted longer than 30 seconds, then it could be very useful. Heck, one amazing change would be to have the skill activate a 10-yalm aoe heal around those with confession stacks. But in its demonstrated iteration? Simply a more active Regen that I have to click every 15 seconds.

7. Having all the new changes lumped into Cure I and II also makes our own skills compete with each other:
---I can spam Cure I and II for minimal benefit, ooooor I can use my other skills in an effective, mp-efficient manner while ignoring the new system entirely.
---I can spam Cure I and II for minimal benefit, ooooor I can use some damage dealing skills to offset my lack of party DPS utility...while ignoring the new system entirely....and simultaneously not building confession stacks.
---I can spam Cure I and II hoping for a crit to give me some cooldown reduction from the new trait....or I can realize this happens so infrequently it doesn't have a tangible effect on my own throughput.
(I do recognize that spamming single target Cures is necessary sometimes, but it's definitely NOT the majority of my time in combat)

I completely understand some of the RNG numbers if everything is balanced around end-game raid content that requires cure spam in some cases....but for most content you've delivered so far it's just not needed. Having such low RNG percentages (or any RNG tied to our skills, really) in casual content is going to mean the majority of the playerbase won't really get to use the new skills or lily system that often. Add that to the fact that our base tooklit was stripped pretty heavily, and it feels like we're left with a much weaker version of our 3.0 selves.