Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Saraphin]

I think MANY can agree that AST made out well (the new AOE, whine all you want, it's an amazing ability, even if you have to wait. your oGCD starts ticking the second you put it down, so waiting 10s? you still have it in under a minute and it's potency far outstrips what many healers theoretically can do now. the shields they get are insane 300% really? is the AST-baby trying to take everything away from SCH just like it's heals are now as potent as a WHM? just asking.) in Stormblood.

Did SCH DPS get gutted, yes. we can all see that. Did all classes lose something to the pool? yes. that was wrong. we didn't need those skills ripped (ANY of us).


AST-baby is now (and numbers have shown) just as good as SCH and WHM depending on their sect. From what i've seen in the media releases, there will be NOTHING that is going to require as much healing as the WHM will need to get lily stacks. They also now get a Skill that Does all their draw skills WITHOUT overwriting anything they're holding.

That said...SCH got gutted of it's DPS (one of the main reasons most brought a SCH along for 8/24man content) and WHM got...it's entire kit yanked away. The lily system, by numbers, has been shown to be D.O.A. over the course of things from 1.0 to now, WHMs don't use Cure 1/2 after they've become comfortable with the class. we try to DPS to help, use our oGCDs to heal up and use Cure 1/2 when necessary, but over 10 minutes, cure 1/2 is used...typically (Other than Baelsar's Wall...Evil, Evil Archers there.) at a very low rate.

I'm not saying Thin Air is not a good Skill, the CD is rather large on it. For those that say "well you should use it for raising" ...No, if people are dying that badly, that means that if it's a 1/2/5 or 2/2/4 party comp, the other healer was not helping keep people up OR if it's in a 4 man, the party got in over their heads and that means that the Raise will be interrupted because we're the last one standing. Thin Air Raise Spam will be, most likely, used situationally in an 8/24 man scenario and almost never in a 4man one (that i can foresee at this point) and if there is a Red Mage (who also has access, along with SMN and BLM to Lucid Dream/SoS) they will be able to raise far faster than a WHM with the Dual Cast system, it's been shown that they can raise 4 people in under 20 seconds. Red Mages, I commend you on this. Most of time, I will guess about 80% of the WHMs that currently play, will be using that for DPS.

So, to be blunt, not only did we lose a good portion of our Toolkit, but we're also giving it to our Caster Partners. Not saying this is a bad thing, but again, it was given to someone outside of healers (it will help SMN/RDM, i'm sure).

Now, moving along, Losing SS 1/2 for a 60s cooldown one, that appears to be gated behind Lilies...based on RNG. As many have said, Stoneskin was a situational use. When someone died, a Stoneskin could help them take less damage from Arena wide damage that was coming up, or they did add a bit of help in a12 (normal, i've not cleared a12s) during the Tank LB phase. I've run it on WHM, with a PLD and a SCH. the tank LB, Divine Shield, Stoneskin and Galvanize made it so we took a few...HUNDRED in dmg, instead of a massive blow. We tested to see the difference that no Stoneskin would make and it's a good chunk of HP (1-3K depending on HP of target).

Now, someone on the JP forums did the math and it boils down (with all class specifics) that WHM with the "changes" is 2/3 of a SCH, who's barely on par with an AST. Even then, the AST has been buffed enough that if you look, you've got threads in this forum where there at some AST Mains going "WHY!? we didn't need this!! WHY!?!?!" (paraphrased, obviously).

Change things. that's the only thing i can say. SE, Dev Team, you've got over 150 pages of input from not only WHM mains, but AST mains, SCH mains and MANY agree on three things: WHM was gutted, and you've half gutted SCH, while AST as gotten buffed, and buffed and is pushing out both SCH and WHM in everything.