Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Airget]

The mechanics of Lilly are a but to RNG compared to the other healers.

AST, they have 6 buff cards, and can even exchange a card they don't want for a healing card or a Damage card, they have a decent amount of flexibility to go with the flow.

SCH, has a good amount of support and a nice addition of new abilities that aid even further in DPS.

WHM lacks any of this, while I imagine your thought is to have WHM not have to DPS, you shoot yourself in the foot by saying let's focus on Cures and ignore Stone, Aero I/II, Aero III/IV and Holy. In a way by pretending those don't exist you limit the potential of what a WHM could do.

If you use these abilities you could do the following.

Mechanic 1: Elemental Synergy. After using an Earth, Wind or Holy based action you next curative ability will be augmented.

Reason: Because of the design of WHM to already heal by a lot, adding a mechanic in which they weave in Damage to augment their curative spells in some way gives WHM more depth compared to the RNG mechanic which you currently have planned for them.

Mechanic 2:A stance which puts a limiter on WHM's healing say 20% and as time passes the gauge slowly builds up while in combat. This mechanic could in a sense by like NIN's auto-attack buildup of their gauge except this is a gauge that builds up overtime as long as the WHM is willing to put a -20% healing potency on the Cures. With the build up gauge you could then add another ability which gives WHM's control over when the exhaust their gauge. The lack of an option when it comes to exhausting resources also hurts WHM, AST can hold a card, redraw cards and have decent flexibility with their cards, yet WHM, with 3 Lille's is forced to use them if they want to use one of their OGC abiltiies. A WHM may want to wait for the right moment to use the Lilly since they have 0 input on when to activate it other than when they choose the ability that uses said mechanic.

Reason: WHM's are already capable of overhealing with ease, so why create mechanics which just make their heals even more OP? The Lille doesn't create a scenario of an uh oh button because of the way Confession and Lille's work, Confessions are to RNG that you have to actively cure/cureII allies in your party and then hope you can keep them up in the 30 second duration all for a pitiful 300-400-500 potency AOE cure. Which isn't the best payoff when you consier the AOE utility other jobs have like Indomitability, which is also instant, 400 potency, AOE cure, that just uses aetherflow. Meanwhile for WHM to get 300 potency for a target they need to have at least 1 confession up, meaning that this instant ability is pretty much worthless because of the effort it takes to just get 300 potency on all allies.

Mechanic 3: Same as above but instead introduce an Exhaust ability which "upgrades" Stone, Aero I/II, Aero III/IV, Holy and Fluid Aura to have a buff effect on target ally. You can only use one buff every 15-30 seconds as the Exhaust wears off once you use said buff but this would allow WHM some form of buffing in the game that they need.

Reason: WHM need buffs that assist allies, It works for DPS jobs to not have buffs for the party because they bring their DPS to the game, healers on the otherhand as you have mentioned before, may just want to heal, but by only giving WHM the options to heal or DPS, you kill their opportunity to be of use to most groups because they provide 0 utility compared to SCH and AST.

Mechanic 4: Purify, like Esuna, but it takes an enfeeble and turns it into a Buff. An ally can only be Purified once every 30-60 seconds.

Reason: Utility, give WHM something to make them special, the ability to turn certain enfeebles into buffs would be a decent one, maybe have it where only the white bar enfeebles can be purified but then the thought is, do all the enfeebles get purified or only one? Honestly I"d say all, maybe have it where where for each enfeeble Purified it adds 30 seconds to the limit of when said person can be hit with purify again. So say you get hit by bad Breath, Purify it removing all applicable abilities that can be swapped to positive effect to positive effects while leaving the negative ones on.

So let's say, Blind become Crit rate up. Heavy becomes Sprint, Slow becomes Haste, Any attribute down becomes an attribute up and nothing else comes off the to of my head but the following couldn't be purified.

Paralysis, Bind, Amnesia, Silence, basically only enfeebles which reduce your attributes in some way could be purified.

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Those are the 4 that currently come off the top of my head, but basically, with WHM you need to add more utility to them, people don't care if WHM can overheal a tank by 400% because that 300% waste is just that, waste. Remember you called WHM/SCH/AST "Support" Roles, they aren't "Healer" Roles, they Support the party. Currently AST/SCH provide Support to the party, WHM doesn't and that's what you need to reevaluate when it comes to their mechanic and overall playstyle.

[Royardee]

I decided I would copy paste something I typed out on reddit. It seems like a good time to do so.

This is the origin of all the healer cross class skills:
WHM- 3 (Cleric Stance*, Protect*,Divine Seal/Largesse*)
AST/WHM- 1 (Shroud/Luminous Aether/Lucid Dreaming*)
SCH- 1 (Eye for an Eye*)
Other/new- 4 (Break, Swiftcast*, Surecast*, Rescue)
All- 1 (Esuna*)

*Required for current WHM functionality.

I should point out, that my other 3 personal (midcore-ish) cross class skills were Virus, Blizzard 2 , and Surecast. However, I never used any of these, nor did I have them on my hotbar. Please don't scold me for not using Virus. I know I'm bad. ;~;

[Royardee]

From this we can see that WHMs lose 1-2 (Esuna isn't used in all instances, and only 1 healer needs Protect. Although, it can be argued that Break is like Stone 1, but we're losing all lower leveled stones too. I'm not sure where I'm going with this.) usable actions because of the roll skill system. Not only that, but we don't get to try out Rescue or the new Surecast without giving up something that was part of our toolkit.

[Royardee]

I would also like to point out that Largesse, the new Divine Seal, is worse for WHMs. Divine seal is a 30% buff for 15 seconds. Largesse is a 20% buff for 20 seconds. Not only does Divine Seal have an overall better potency (assuming 6 gcds for Divine Seal, and 8 gcds for Largesse), but Largesse has a 30 second longer cooldown (unaffected by the lilies too!). WHMs do not need a Divine Seal for a longer duration. My personal main function of Divine Seal is to buff Medica 2 and Regen for the tank(s). I don't even need the full 15 seconds to do this. In a continuous HoT situation the idea was that every other Medica 2 and every third Regen would be buffed.

(Note: Since I made this post originally, it was pointed out that Largesse works on oGCD spells like Tetra and Assize. But I still think Divine Seal is better mostly because of the 60 second cooldown.)

[Royardee]

Next, I calculated how many skills each healer has as of 4.0. I used this as my source.
SCH
12 base skills (excluding Summon 1 and 2)
13 job skills
3 pet skills
25 condensed skills (including Dissipation which everyone sees as pointless)

AST
28 job skills
25 condensed skills

WHM
12 base skills
13 job skills
21 condensed skills (including Repose, which is useless outside pvp)

[Royardee]

For the total condensed skills, I simply removed skills that were replaced with a better one (Stone to Stone 2, etc). AST and SCH both lose 3 skills this way while WHM loses 4. This isn't a bad thing. The problem here is the expanding discrepancy in complexity between the healers. WHM was always the less complex healer, which is fine, but we're losing usable skills to this update. Skill bloat has been an issue in FFXIV, but WHM was not one of the classes that needed to be fixed. For example, I currently have 27 skills on my hotbar (better WHMs probably use more of their cross class skills, plus Stone 1 or something); when 4.0 hits, the maximum usable skills I'll have on my hotbar is 25 (not including Repose). I'm not even super super salty about the lilies or Plenary Indulgence right now because there's legitimate hope that those can be reworked or updated (maybe even before 4.0).

[Royardee]

How I think we can fix it:
Give WHM Divine Seal back, and replace Largesse: My suggestion? Something from AST like Disable or Lightspeed (No, I don't think it's too similar to Presence of Mind). I'm also completely open to something new.
AoE Esuna (Esunaga?): Esunaga sounds dope. Yes, Selene has this ability already. I actually think it would be okay to copy paste it too. But because Selene is the inferior fairy, Fey Caress sees limited usage. WHM will see more use of it, and it fits into that "pure healer" archetype better.
Reraise: Cast time: 1.5 sec. Recast time: 5 min. Mana usage: at least as much as Raise. Places a 60 sec buff on the target. If the target dies within the 60 second buff, they are immediately revived to a weakened state. If any healer gets Reraise it should be the "pure healer", right?

[Risvertasashi]

Post 1 of 5 (wow the character limit is bad)

Bit late now but for future reference, you can edit your post to bypass the limit (which is why so many posts start with one line or "edit incoming" or similar...)

[Jxnibbles]

Info on changes to White Mage since ARR.
2.x Series Cure 3 (Buff), PoM (Buff), Med 2 (Slight Nerf), Holy (Nerf), Stoneskin II (QoL).
3.x Series Protect/shell trait (Nerf), POM (Nerf), Holy (Nerf), Stoneskin/graniteskin (Nerf), Stoneskin ii(QoL).
Changes that I couldn't find data for Stone, Stone II, Aero 2 (I want to say slight buffs).
4.0 (Changes we know so far) Note: All abilities moved to Role Actions are considered Nerfs to Whm overall.
Cure (Buff..), Cure II (Buff..), Benediction (Buff), Thin Air (Buff), Shroud of Saints (Buff..), Surecast (Buff..), Stone (QoL slight nerf), Divine seal (Nerf), Esuna (Nerf), Protect (Nerf), Fluid Aura (Nerf).
Swiftcast (No change) Eye 4 eye (No change), Cleric Stance (QoL), Aero II (QoL),
Secrets of Lily (Dead on Arrival), Divine Bension (DoA), Plenary Indulgence (DoA).
Major Nerfs to Whm Include: Holy, Protect, Stoneskin, Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, Esuna, Med 2.
Major Buffs to Whm Include: Benediction.
Buffs to the following that mean very little Include: Cure, Cure II, Cure III, Stone, Stone II, Aero II, Surecast.
Note to fellow Whm this is our "Balance" nothing but general nerfs since 2.x. If I am missing any abilities or info please let me know.

[javid]

Next, I calculated how many skills each healer has as of 4.0. I used this as my source.
SCH
12 base skills (excluding Summon 1 and 2)
13 job skills
3 pet skills
25 condensed skills (including Dissipation which everyone sees as pointless)

AST
28 job skills
25 condensed skills

WHM
12 base skills
13 job skills
21 condensed skills (including Repose, which is useless outside pvp)

you can combine all these separate post by first posting 1k or less; then clicking edit and pasting the rest of what you had to say. Also since there is a limit to how many times you can post in a day, if you like to have long conversations with ppl you just killed 4 potential responses :P