Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Cynfael]

But that's the point of the changes they're trying to make: They're trying to shift the role more towards their proper roles. Healers more towards actual healing. Tanking more towards actual tanking. So they gave healers more healer tools, buffed their healing, reined in their dps capabilities. They added more tank tools for tanks, and active tools to mitigate both self and party members. The reason they do this is so they can start designing and tailoring new content towards these intended roles and how they designed them. That's what I see them doing here.

I actually don't perceive this shift. If anything, they've increased playstyle fluidity for healers by removing the stance-dance that turned off a (surprising) number of players. To be fair, I am also strongly biased against this popular notion of cookie-cutter roles being somehow desirable. Structure can be a useful thing to a certain extent, but this game has only 3 roles to begin with.

The problem isn't that SE wants to give WHM more healing tools; it's that the tools are bad. This is a very rare case where you don't even need to play the content to know that the premise itself is faulty simply because the indicators are so obvious. As soon as you see that there is an RNG system based solely on Cure and Cure II that grants somewhat dubious rewards to mutually exclusive actions (use anything Lily-related and they are all gone), there is an issue.

Plenary Indulgence is the only thing that isn't indisputably awful, but even that is a skill that seems to be suggesting way more utility than it can actually deliver. As a tank heal, it has potential for progression since you will almost certainly be casting Cure and Cure II more frequently. For average content where you cast Cures infrequently, its value is little or none depending on RNG.

[dark494]

snip

I just gave you an example of content that completely contradicts this notion that a whm will never use cures and will always use other tools to get through everything. But that's the point I'm trying to make: This game has always been about the content that dictates how each jobs pans out and plays. DRK was a terrible job in the beginning, and people always took PLD at first. And very much so, something like A2S was horrible for DRK, and PLD excelled in there. But then A3S and A4S DRK excelled, and then people figured out how to play it in that content, and suddenly it became the best MT and PLD was never seen again in the meta and all the cries to revamp DRK went away with it. The content is what says how each job performs and where they perform well at. In that vein, there are 2 things I want to point out. Firstly, Stormblood is coming out, not Heavensward. They didn't design any job changes or tailor them whatsoever for Alex, and none of you are hella excited to go do Alex progression and raiding in Alex and Dun Scaithe and all the old 60 content. Secondly, whatever the content in Stormblood is, and it may be a rehash of similar Alex requirements, nobody knows what it even is. It's not out yet, so we need to chill out with the bashing and drama. That's why the raider community is somewhat laughing at the kneejerk reaction this has turned into, and why they have been repeatedly putting out video after tweet after blog post telling people they need to calm down and see what the content says each job's role will be. The JP forums are saying the exact same thing, "let's see what the content shows before judging how the changes work out".

[Cynfael]

I just gave you an example of content that completely contradicts this notion that a whm will never use cures and will always use other tools to get through everything. But that's the point I'm trying to make: This game has always been about the content that dictates how each jobs pans out and plays. DRK was a terrible job in the beginning, and people always took PLD at first. And very much so, something like A2S was horrible for DRK, and PLD excelled in there. But then A3S and A4S DRK excelled, and then people figured out how to play it in that content, and suddenly it became the best MT and PLD was never seen again in the meta and all the cries to revamp DRK went away with it. The content is what says how each job performs and where they perform well at. In that vein, there are 2 things I want to point out. Firstly, Stormblood is coming out, not Heavensward. They didn't design any job changes or tailor them whatsoever for Alex, and none of you are hella excited to go do Alex progression and raiding in Alex and Dun Scaithe and all the old 60 content. Secondly, whatever the content in Stormblood is, and it may be a rehash of similar Alex requirements, nobody knows what it even is. It's not out yet, so we need to chill out with the bashing and drama. That's why the raider community is somewhat laughing at the kneejerk reaction this has turned into, and why they have been repeatedly putting out video after tweet after blog post telling people they need to calm down and see what the content says each job's role will be. The JP forums are saying the exact same thing, "let's see what the content shows before judging how the changes work out".

Many people suggesting that players take it easy and refrain from offering speculative feedback are outright failing to acknowledge the very solid reasons to be concerned. Just because there are people out there threatening to close their accounts and march in the streets, that doesn't mean that all critical opinions are invalidated.

The key reasons for concern are virtually independent of content. DRK ended up performing better than expected in raid content in large part because some people failed to take into account how valuable its synergy with the raid groups would be. There is no such pitfall in evaluating the media release version of WHM, which again is a Job that people have been playing for years already, not a brand new one being introduced at expansion launch.

The absolute best thing we can assume about 4.0 WHM changes is that Plenary Indulgence will end up being amazing for healing tanks in a raid setting where Cures are cast more frequently. The Lily gauge, on the other hand, is an inherently flawed concept as of media release, and very obviously so.

Imagine the absolute best case scenario (taking into account somewhat realistic limitations on gameplay and RNG) leveraging the Lily and Confession systems, then compare those benefits to those offered by AST and even SCH. Probably not the most comfortable comparison.

Now dial the best case scenario down to something resembling more what current scenarios look like and assume relative status quo going into 4.0. This isn't even the worst case scenario, but it's a pretty discouraging thought.