Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Saraphin]

I have to disagree with anyone suggesting proc rate increases or making the lilies build from regen/medica/stone/whatever. None of those edits would fix the mechanic, because the root issue is that the reward is pretty uninspiring. Your spells could proc lilies 100% of the time for all I care. Three lilies, a full gauge, the biggest rarest bonus you could possibly hope to achieve from the new job mechanic is a 20% discount coupon on one of four off-GCDs.

Lemme put this in Astrologian terms, see if a change of setting makes it more clear.

Your new job UI is going to revolve around Secret of the Cards. Whenever you use Benefic or Benefic 2 (not aspected), there's a chance you get a draw! Not just any draw though, this draw will always be a piece of a Spear card. You can't Royal Road it, you can't use it on anyone but yourself, the only buff you can give it is drawing another Spear card piece (up to a whole Spear card, wow!) it only works on four of your off-globals instead of universally, and the buff vanishes when you use one of the related skills.

Keep in mind, this is a Spear card. The one known in the community as Royal Road food, because it's the least useful one. A massively restricted, hamstrung Spear card at that. I don't think a few number boosts or playing musical chairs with where the mechanic comes from will solve the issue, only highlight what the real problem is. And I'm not even getting into the Stoneskin downgrade that is Benison or the weird backward mechanic that is Confession (why would you want to quickly mega heal someone you just spot Cured other than the tank, they're presumably FULL now).

This. all of this.

[dark494]

If that happens, I'll laugh with you, but there's nothing in SE's history of designing this game that should lead anyone to believe that desperately high healing requirements will be implemented across the board with 4.0.

You don't need to have played the 4.0 client to express legitimate concerns based on the information available thus far. The Lily system alone should have everyone, including SE, scratching their heads.

But that's the point of the changes they're trying to make: They're trying to shift the jobs 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.

To take this one step further, we have no reason to believe that 4.0 WHM is designed such that it would be better at handling this than any other healer. I do not believe that SE would think that would be a good idea either.

You missed the point, and what I said. That content, especially raid content, is 8-man content. There's always 2 healers. It's not about designing any 1 healer to be able to handle it. But rather something that can only be handled by both healers, together. That's why I said both healers spamming.

[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.

[Mahkii]

You missed the point, and what I said. That content, especially raid content, is 8-man content. There's always 2 healers. It's not about designing any 1 healer to be able to handle it. But rather something that can only be handled by both healers, together. That's why I said both healers spamming.

But why would I bring a WHM when I could have The Balance and Chain Stratagem?

[Saraphin]

But why would I bring a WHM when I could have The Balance and Chain Stratagem?

This will be the thoughts of possibly 80% of premade groups for 8man raiding and the 24 man super savage. (i can see people kicking until they get the healers they 'want' not what they're 'given' by DF/RF)

[jovination]

Just to clarify what we mean by regen being more efficient:

Cure is 400 potency at a cost of 442MP. 1 gcd. So that's 0.948 potency per mp
Regen, all in, is 1050 potency at a cost of 619MP on 1gcd. Overall 1.696 potency per mp.

That's not far off twice as efficient.

For regen to match the efficieny of Cure it would have to be reapplied after 4 ticks rather than the full 7.

Factors are involved, how efficiently can you maintain that potency?

My math had to get cut out due to 1000 character limits (though its simple to do yourself with a striking dummy to emulate combat mana regen). My main point is that when I play "optimally" (Regen > Cure) I have mana issues, when I use Regen more or less as a quick cast-and-forget and just focus on using Cure, I don't (even with moderate DPS). Updates to WHM seem to reward that style. Also the whole mp regen point is just because I see that being the primary point of avoiding Cure / Cure II.

[Cynfael]

Factors are involved, how efficiently can you maintain that potency?

My math had to get cut out due to 1000 character limits (though its simple to do yourself with a striking dummy to emulate combat mana regen). My main point is that when I play "optimally" (Regen > Cure) I have mana issues, when I use Regen more or less as a quick cast-and-forget and just focus on using Cure, I don't (even with moderate DPS). Updates to WHM seem to reward that style. Also the whole mp regen point is just because I see that being the primary point of avoiding Cure / Cure II.

I would suggest that it varies somewhat by situation. Suitable application of Regen is undeniably more efficient than Cure casting, but we also have times when a Regen will cause prolonged overheal or otherwise be undesirable. We also can't forget to mention abilities like Asylum and Tetra used in lieu of a Cure to enhance MP efficiency and cut GCDs.

It's easy to construe from the conversations around here that everyone hates Cure spells and that no self-respecting WHM ever uses them, but of course that would be an exaggeration. It's just that the frequency of Cure/Cure II casting suddenly became an important point of discussion when Lilies and Confession stacks were announced to be tied to these two spells alone. Lilies not seeming to give a great benefit also compounds the issue.

[Metsonm]

Factors are involved, how efficiently can you maintain that potency?

Pretty easily? I just don't refresh it until after 12 seconds have passed, ideally not until it's about to fall off or has fallen off. You have to actually try and lower the potency of regen.

My math had to get cut out due to 1000 character limits (though its simple to do yourself with a striking dummy to emulate combat mana regen). My main point is that when I play "optimally" (Regen > Cure) I have mana issues, when I use Regen more or less as a quick cast-and-forget and just focus on using Cure, I don't (even with moderate DPS). Updates to WHM seem to reward that style. Also the whole mp regen point is just because I see that being the primary point of avoiding Cure / Cure II.

The idea of the regen use over Cure to save MP despite costing more is that it heals for almost twice as much p/MP. Even looking at raw potencies that's 2.6x stronger. So you're casting Cure twice to get the same benefit as Regen, resulting in not only more MP spent to heal the tank for the same (being generous, it's actually half a Cure cast less) amount as regen, but also more GCDs spent on healing for the same amount.

Unless the target needs that health NOW OMG HE'S GONNA DIE then regen is stronger, cheaper and frees up another GCD that can be spent on something else.

Though I'm very interested to see your maths because I'm curious how you came to these conclusions. You can make a post and edit it afterwards to work around the 1000 character limit.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I'm gonna laugh when we get content that does repeated tank busters or raid aoe's for a full minute requiring both healers to spam cures/medicas over and over and over again to deal with it.

I find this whole thing just funny. Like back before HW came out how everyone was all over how "dead" and "garbage" DRK was. And then the raiders took it and got world first with it, and it immediately became the meta tank that pushed out pld. And received no significant changes for the entirety of HW.

This is just crazy kneejerk reactions.

I'll be laughing too, because even if it did have crazy healing requirements in raids, WHM can't handle it any better than AST can. Or or you going to be that one guy casting Cure II fishing for confessions while your entire party gets nuked. (And even Plenary can't heal everyone, only those with confessions stacks lmao)

[Mahkii]

The idea of the regen use over Cure to save MP despite costing more is that it heals for almost twice as much p/MP. Even looking at raw potencies that's 2.6x stronger. So you're casting Cure twice to get the same benefit as Regen, resulting in not only more MP spent to heal the tank for the same (being generous, it's actually half a Cure cast less) amount as regen, but also more GCDs spent on healing for the same amount.

Unless the target needs that health NOW OMG HE'S GONNA DIE then regen is stronger, cheaper and frees up another GCD that can be spent on something else.

Though I'm very interested to see your maths because I'm curious how you came to these conclusions. You can make a post and edit it afterwards to work around the 1000 character limit.

I use regen so that I can keep casting Stone 3. Every time I have to use a Cure 1 or 2 means I lost a Stone 3.