Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Aurum]

This is an example of a troll... the fact that you said this means you did not go and do your homework (like my posted started off saying not to take my word for it; and then later encouraged you to do the heavily lifting yourself) and pull up the link to the full HPS page and click on parse after parse after parse after parse, while YES we can't have a conclusive report from looking at 1 to 3 parses, but if you took the time and looked up 10 or 15 of them, while still not conclusive, it would give you a general idea what may be going on.


BUT HUMOR ME...since you think the cherry picking to make a point is easy.... how about you find one that supports a different claim then what i suppose?? Should be easy right??

Here's an example of the power of cherry-picking to support an argument:

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/ptAZz...ing&source=403

You'll notice in this log that the whm and the sch had almost identical amounts healed, and that the whm cast med2 7 times and regen 6 times for a total of 13 casts. 2 cure 2s were cast along with 3 cure 1s for a total of 5 casts. If you were going to go by this data then clearly since medica 2 and regen were cast more times total than cure 1 and cure 2 then lily stacks should be tied to med2/regen, which may not necessarily be the case.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

It's so funny to see how ppl cry for something they can't even test and deny completly all others aspect of the class with no clue of what the raids will look like in 4.0.

It's also funny to compare with Spear when Spear cost a card and a royal road and that's now free for WHM just by healing properly.

WHMs will be "viable" in raids. But that's looking at the job in the extremely narrow viewpoint of "can it clear?". In reality, WHM is more of a handicap right now because they offer nothing to the raid in any form of utility or synergy.
Meanwhile their new healing spells are all locked behind multiple layers of RNG, which are neither fun to get, nor satisfying to use, or even a reliable means of healing your party, which was supposed to be WHMs strongest point. Reliable strong healing.

And as a WHM main who has raised in savage, I can tell you right now that healing "properly" with the job does not consist of spamming Cure/II almost exclusively. In fact that's a good way to get you kicked from a raid.

[Kitfox]

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/ptAZz...ing&source=403

Those Cure numbers are beautiful.

[Saraphin]

Those Cure numbers are beautiful.

yes, yes they were...i am not sure i get those numbers...but i think i get close on my cures in EXP roulette

[Saigo]

In fact that's a good way to get you kicked from a raid.

As spamming Med2 braindedly will.

Anyway being behind other healer bother you ? Rerol or do your best to shut other ppl mouth but stop whining about the unfariness of classes (that havn't be tester yet) that's the case for every role to have someone "behind"

[Limecat]

Well, I've got to say, the planned changes for WHM are pretty damned sorry. So, let's go over the problems.

Divine Benison - I can understand actually, why you'd think to prune Stoneskin. After the launch of Heavensward, people stopped using it because without the Graniteskin trait it's virtually useless. We kept firing it off before a fight more because it was expected of us, not because it was particularly handy. So now what do we have here? A slightly better than average Stoneskin... on a 60 second timer. This will never be noticed except in some 1 in 100(200? 300?) fight where you barely pull a ragged victory from the jaws of being one tick away from losing or winning. It'll see some limited use as a poor man's Graniteskin during mass dungeon pulls and Holy spam, at least.

I think part of the problem overall around WHM and mitigation is that for whatever reason, you've ignored or discount that the job has very strong soft mitigation in the form of its HoTs. Focus there. The fire-and-forget potential of Hot is what frees up the WHM to do other things and is what I've long considered one of WHM's greatest strengths across many of the FF games.

Plenary Indulgence - A rng chance to get 30-second stacks, granted by single-target spells, which ultimately results in an AoE heal that strips the stacks. Everything about this is horrible. The chances that you'll have a stack on anyone but the tank are already low enough, but if you actively went out of your way to put them there you'd be wasting time and MP that could have been more productive. And, even with Thin Air coming up, MP recovery has always been one of WHM's biggest obstacles.

Some people have suggested making Confessions proc more often, or from all types of healing, but in this regard I disagree; Plenary and Confessions both should simply be removed. The reason for this is that I can't picture a happy medium for the skill. Take it far enough that it's consistent, and it could quickly become overpowered. Imagine if you're filling Confessions on everyone constantly within 6 or 9 seconds, or at least fast enough to always top them off between Plenary cooldowns. Or another variant, setting it up so Confessions have much greater persistence so you can easily build up to full stacks on the entire pt over the course of a long fight. Of course, even then without some encounters designed to put the entire pt on the edge of death there wouldn't be a need for two insta-AoE heals. Given that the devs don't want to craft battles that require a specific job, putting in one that would necessitate a twofer cure bomb with a side of Medica I/II isn't in the cards.

On the other side of that gap, leave it where it is and it's a sack of moldy haggis. A grand, pointless capstone Lv70 ability. My cup runneth over. If I could swap core skills for an extra role slot, I'd ditch this hot garbage and pick Eye for an Eye back up. Which brings us to point three in the walk of shame...

Cross-role skills - Well, this was over before it began. You stripped out several core abilities as built-in, and are now making us give up all our role skill slots to get them back. I don't mind at all that the other healers get similar cooldowns, but WHM from its beginning was designed to have all of these available to it. Divine Seal is not optional. Shroud of Saints is not optional. Protect and Esuna theoretically can be covered by just one healer, but for most intents and purposes you'll need to have them set. Cleric Stance, even if it's just a gimp Raging Strikes now, sadly won't make the cut because - wait for it - Swiftcast is not optional. Making things worse, WHM got nothing in return for them. Esuna in particular was a pointless adjustment. Why not simply keep each job's cleanse, and make them all Lv18 abilities if having it available in time for the first dungeon is the concern? And so, every other new role skill may as well not exist because unless we're tooling around there isn't room for them.

The lilies - This feels completely tacked-on, like you just had to do something with a meter for the job because all the others are getting one, but had no goddamned idea what to actually do with it. RNG aside and assuming you could hit max with three Cure I/II casts every time, even at full lilies your OGCDs aren't going to get enough cooldown reduction to be used more than couple extra times before the longest of enrages would kick in. This ends up being moot anyway since those selfsame abilities are panic buttons that you generally hold until they're strictly needed. Giving these procs on any type of healing wouldn't be a bad idea, but the larger problem is that they simply aren't very useful.

They are, however, where I think the most good can be done, so I'll outline some possibilities here. Primarily this comes in the form of making held lilies give a meaningful bonus to what the WHM already does, and abilities to spend them on. For the sake of theoretical balance I'm also going to leave their generation alone, assuming they're only a 20% or whever it was proc off Cure I/II.

First off, give them a slight decay. Make the player work to maintain them, but not extremely onerous. I'd think something like a 15-20s duration, after which your lily count goes down by 1, and the duration refreshes unless you're out completely. Can refresh at any time with a proc, even at max lilies. Next up, their inherent bonuses.

+% potency on all HoT ticks you own per lily at time of HoT ability use. Make this an even scale, like +5/+10/+15%.

Completely remove Divine Benison. Put back in Stoneskin, restrict it to WHM. Put back in the Graniteskin trait, but have it function as follows: Per lily bonus, +2/+5/+8%(meaning that three lily SS will have the full 18% HP shield that old Graniteskin SS gave; seriously why the hell did you remove this in the first place)

Casting time reduction on normal spells per lily. Doesn't affect recast time, just how quick you can get your spells out. Not too sure where the golden number would be here without going too overboard, but I'd say a 20% reduction would be the absolute maximum.

In getting rid of Benison/Plenary, we'll need some new abilities. I think they should all cost one or more lilies to use. Might even suggest something along the lines that lilies you spend on them can't be recovered(though you can refresh whatever you still had) for some short amount of time. I'd say make it around 15s, maybe add five more seconds for each lily beyond the first? The need in the balancing would be determined by just how many passive buffs the lilies gave at the end of the day.

Sublimation - SCH is jacking some of WHM's stuff, so why not go in reverse after a fashion? Spend two lilies, get something sort of like Convert, except probably with less MP returned than HP lost. If you want to stay closer to the XI version you could have it be simultaneously a DoT and Refresh on the user, though making it severe enough to be a real trade-off when the WHM can so easily heal itself would take some careful examination. But, maybe I'm reading too much into it that it absolutely has to have a cost the user will feel.

Reraise - This would be the new Lv70 ability. Three lilies, puts a Reraise effect on one target for... let's say 60 seconds. Long enough to not have to be a clutch move, at any rate. This would also be a no-weakness Raise.

Reflect - Sounds good in my head, but kinda tricky to implement I think. You can't have it reflect 100% of magic damage, and you can't restrict it to single-target only since most of the time it's AoEs hitting everyone. Also have to consider whether it'll go on one or all players. I'm thinking... it's a bit like a SCH shield, where it soaks 50% of magic damage but only to a certain amount, and the 50% you didn't take goes back on the source. Probably single-target, probably one lily.

Haste - Very straightforward. One lily, -% cast/cooldown on GCDs. This would be my vote for raid utility, so the duration would be pretty decent, say 30-35s. The skill itself should have next to no cooldown so you have the option of dropping Haste on three of your DPS all in rapid succession.

In conclusion, I think we can work with the clay you've got laid out, but it's going to need a lot of kneading and reworking before we can do something good with it, and it also has some nasty sharp rocks embedded in it that we have to find and throw away before anything else.

[Aramina]

As spamming Med2 braindedly will.

Which no one is claiming you should do, so good job attacking a point that no one has actually made.

Anyway being behind other healer bother you ? Rerol or do your best to shut mouth but stop whining about the unfariness of classes that's the case for every role to have someone "behind"

It should bother anyone. Yes, there will always be *some* discrepancy but that does not excuse not caring what the parity between the healers is.

[BroodingFicus]

As spamming Med2 braindedly will.

Anyway being behind other healer bother you ? Rerol or do your best to shut mouth but stop whining about the unfariness of classes that's the case for every role to have someone "behind"

Yes, its true that there will be instances of 'being behind' in most cases. As in, yes there will be some dps that do less damage than others but in most cases you balance that out by giving them utility or something else to bring to the table to counter act that deficiency. Seeing as they have said WHM should be a 'pure healer' it stands to reason that they should have more healing output than the other two healers in exchange for having almost no raid utility. We won't even get into the flaws of this way of thinking right now because Square has always ignored logic in this regard but the fact of the matter is that WHH does not significantly outdo the other healers in any respect. Not utility and not healing.

Now, if the new mechanics were rewarding and fun, this would still be an issue but at least the class would have something new and interesting added that might make it enjoyable to play even if it is not optimum for late game. However, as things stand, neither the lily or the confession system offer anything to look forward to. Frankly they seem like tacked on RNG mechanics that most competent healers will be better off ignoring and that isn't really acceptable considering the whole reason we did not get another healer or tank is because this was supposed to be the expansion for balancing the existing ones. This isn't a case of a few individuals complaining on the forums or heralding doom. Commentators and those that got hands on time at the event have also posted vidoes etc about WHM and even those who have been polite about it seemed to come to the conclusion that there is no way it should be released as it stands and that major changes are required.

Edit (for those who don't get why a WHM would be upset about Cure/Cure II spam):

A WHM worth their staff (as far as I've ever known) will never be spamming those two abilities enough to make a 20% proc chance viable except for /maybe/ on the tank. Even then, regen helps to keep them topped of to some extent and it would still take far too long to gain lilies. If there is party wide damage coming, a good WHM will not wait for it to hit and then spam cures on each individual. They will, hopefully, look at possibly precasting Med II to negate some of the damage, following up with med I or Assize if they can't afford to let the hots do all the work. Tetra/Cure/Cure II can be used to bring someone back up after a targeted attack but in most cases, you have little reason to go around spamming cure of any kind on someone who isn't the tank unless people are botching up mechanics which, obviously, is not something we should be hoping for or basing a whole new system around. Perhaps I'm wrong there but it seems that many WHM's at least agree that they are doing something other than cure spamming as Square seems to think.

[magnanimousCynic]

It's also funny to compare with Spear when Spear cost a card and a royal road and that's now free for WHM just by healing properly.

>Healing properly

Spamming Cure I and Cure II isn't healing properly as a WHM. You use Regen as your primary source of healing because of it being almost twice as MP-efficient as Cure I in potency.

Spear is also considered the worst card an AST can get, and it's still better or just as good than Lilies could ever be. The Recast reduction from the Lilies is 4% at one Lily, 10% at 2 Lilies, and 20% at 3 Lilies, which takes about 15 Cure I/II WITHOUT USING ANYTHING THAT USES UP YOUR LILIES. Assuming you need 5 Cures for a Lily, that means you'd have to spend about 30 seconds of doing nothing but Cure I/II for a measly 20% Recast while AST can get the same amount by just pressing one button, or 10% for the whole party. Congratulations you may have spent 30 seconds spamming Cure I for 20% Recast for up to 6,630 MP (for level 60). Totally worth it.

Spear is basically free, Lilies aren't.

In Savage content healers have to plan their cooldowns to how damage in a fight pans out. WHM randomly getting a few seconds off their recast has 0 effect on how they use their abilities in fights that require them to be planned out. You simply cannot take RNG into consideration for planning out your ability usage.

EDIT #1: 1-3 Lilies is actually 4-10-20% Recast, not 4-8-12%. Not sure how that happened.

[Saigo]

Bringing a potential problem to light -before- it has a chance to happen is, and will always be, better than waiting for the disaster to happen and then cleaning up the mess.

Woot so much a disaster not to be the BEST healer around but still efficient enought to made it with the non-true hardcore player that can't be worst than astro at 3.0

Let's be honest with the direction SE is taking with raiding content pretty much everything will be down with any comp (exept the new difficult that will require extremly good player and/or an optimised comp)

So funny to see so many protector of the weakest class in game when they're concerned but not before nor after for the future balance problem within Tank/DPS x)

Spamming Cure I and Cure II isn't healing properly as a WHM. You use Regen as your primary source of healing because of it being almost twice as MP-efficient as Cure I in potency.

Enought with this shty nonsense OFC every WHM that have a brain will drop Regen but you only spam regen ? No you drop it and then cure I and cure 2 they're to fil stop playing dumb or think a bit before saying shty nonsense. x)

12% CDR ? Source ? Cause actually everyone saying that 4%/10%/20% dude x)

while AST can get 20% recast just by pressing one button

And wasting it for other -better- purpose. Congratulation you have no idea of what you're talking about.

EVERYONE has to plan their CD during fight but when you have a brain you can understand that their is ALMOST NO situation where you'll need them ALL and that having CDR to have them up at other time is still usefull.

You remind me of a redit "PGM" that seems to think that everything can be planed before hand if that's true what the point playing instead of using a heal bot ?