White Mage - an analysis on the upcoming meta

[Gemina]

Nobody is going to bring Whm as it stands, I know I won't and my friends won't either.

This meta reminds me of a narrow minded sorority that only allows in certain people, and has a bunch of strict rules to stay in it. It's no wonder it doesn't interest me. And supposedly the community wishes more players would participate in endgame? All evidence to the contrary.

[Sebazy]

Most word first progression also use white mages in heavensward. That didn't change that white mage wasn't part of the meta.

Not sure what you're getting at, things have changed as HW's raid tiers (and the associated class buffs each patch) have progressed. In case you didn't follow the raid scene throughout HW:

For 3.0 and Gordias, the Meta was firmly WHM/SCH due to AST being woefully undertuned for savage. The most notable server progression capable team I saw running AST/SCH hit a wall with A3S and sadly melted down before the leader was willing to accept defeat and switch to WHM to get the job done.

AST was fixed by 3.2 and you saw a reasonable spread of all 3 healers. AST still had a bit of a stigma at this point and the earliest kills were still typically WHM/SCH, but this steadily faded away as the months went by and average iLVLs went up. The rise of logs and rankings saw AST's popularity start rising with it. Many progression healers including myself played both AST and WHM on a turn by turn basis with SCH still remaining the constant here.

Finally, Creator gave us the meta we have now due to the combination of it being the easiest raid tier this game has had yet, coupled with AST getting some very potent buffs. Needless to say, this time round the majority of world first progression teams were running AST/SCH, Elysium were the main ones that bucked the trend but even they promptly switched to AST/SCH after the first kill.

Thus WHM fell out of the meta. Nothing in it's kit offered much value in Creator and frankly, the bulk of this tier really felt like it was tuned around an AST/SCH team's cooldowns.

This meta reminds me of a narrow minded sorority that only allows in certain people, and has a bunch of strict rules to stay in it. It's no wonder it doesn't interest me. And supposedly the community wishes more players would participate in endgame? All evidence to the contrary.

Ironically and perhaps fortunately, a rather large proportion of the people shouting these views have somewhere between very little and no savage/coil experience. As your quote demonstrates, it almost seems that the more extreme their views, the less raid capable or experienced they actually are. It's interesting to have a browse over some of these people's achievements, mounts and logs.

I can promise you first hand that the actual people preparing to chase progression rankings are much more open minded and flexible. Whilst these forums do a decent job of reflecting the general feeling amongst the community at large, views can get a little OTT and thus it's always worthwhile taking such comments with a pinch of salt.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Most word first progression also use white mages in heavensward. That didn't change that white mage wasn't part of the meta.

White mages always had more bursty AoE dps compared to all the healers. They were arguably the best healer for speed running dungeons. White mage becomes more powerful the less amount of people they have to heal while the other two healers scale with more people on a group.

But the amount of white mage personal dps doesn't make up for +10% group damage or +20% crit chance that AST and SCH bring.

Correction. They used White Mage prior to 3.4, when Astro got buffed into the move. This tier saw a massive decline in White Mages at higher levels, which trickled down throughout raiders of all skill levels.

And thankfully you are wrong. It's a pretty safe assumption that plenty of abilities and values are yet to be tuned and tweaked. There's also the huge unknown that is exactly what the upcoming raid tier is going to bring. As things stand, it's most likely to either be AST/SCH or WHM/AST but you never know.

How is it safe to assume? No assumptions are safe. Had their not been such a huge uproar, I doubt the devs would make any adjustments, if they do anyway. Despite a slight nerf in some areas, I sincerely doubt Scholar gets benched.

[Sebazy]

How is it safe to assume? No assumptions are safe.

Because some of the potency values shown in the tooltips are absolutely bonkers?

I do agree that assumption is a risky business at the moment though, go back to HW or even NIN beforehand and SE clearly demonstrated a habit of being over cautious with new jobs to seemingly try and avoid disrupting things so to speak. The 3.4 buffs to AST seemed to suggest a more Blizzard style approach to getting the job played aka 'buff it till it's OP'.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Because some of the potency values shown in the tooltips are absolutely bonkers?

Hey, would be nice! I just... don't have much faith we'll see adjustments before release. The devs... haven't actually proven they balance healers well, xD

[Cynfael]

I can promise you first hand that the actual people preparing to chase progression rankings are much more open minded and flexible. Whilst these forums do a decent job of reflecting the general feeling amongst the community at large, views can get a little OTT and thus it's always worthwhile taking such comments with a pinch of salt.

I'll agree with you that negative spin does tend to get out of hand on the forums, but the reason I generally support (and admittedly contribute to) critical discussion around 4.0 WHM in particular is the concern that what info SE has let slip thus far indicates a "wrong way" direction in WHM development. Sure, you get nutty people here and there threatening to drown baby chocobos if WHM isn't rescued from development hell, but I think that offering feedback at all stages can be valuable.

As far as raid situations go, they are both important as showcases of ultimate class balance and somewhat irrelevant to the fuzzier, but important-to-game-revenue bigger picture of "are subscribers having fun with overall daily gameplay?" If an important mechanic that basically defines new WHM end-game comes out as un-fun and unnecessary for the majority of daily content, some poor decisions will have been made.

A skilled, coordinated raid group can make almost anything work, especially depending on the encounter design. I can easily imagine a situation in which WHM could abuse PI to greatly alleviate heavy tank healing requirements and thus secure their spot at that point of progression, for example, but it would still be unfortunate if the WHM's toolkit were mostly irrelevant for the other hours spent on their weekly tome grind etc.

[Seraphyna]

We can expect 1 Confession stack on the first 5 Cures

That's not how range/probability works.

The tooltip says "There's a 20% chance that party members are granted a Confession each time you heal their HP via Cure and Cure II".

Using your 5 cures example:

1st Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
2nd Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
3rd Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
4th Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
5th Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%

Just because you use Cure/Cure II 5 times doesn't mean it equates to 100%. It's still a 20% chance it procs. (See how much worse this actual skill is? Range is a horrible thing.)

[chesnaught]

Now, that the commotion regarding the changes has calmed down a bit, I'd like to look at the impact of the new mechanics on White Mage.

Confession's impact on single target throughput

Within 15 seconds, you can cast 6 Cures/Cure IIs, which amount to a total of 2700p/4200p respectively. We can expect 1 Confession stack on the first 5 Cures and another 0.2 stacks on the 6th cast.

Sure you can cast 6 Cure or Cure II, but why on earth would you? I will definitely be impressed if outgoing damage increases that dramatically in SB, but that seems very unlikely.

[D00meriksen]

Sure you can cast 6 Cure or Cure II, but why on earth would you? I will definitely be impressed if outgoing damage increases that dramatically in SB, but that seems very unlikely.

A single cast of cure has a 20% chance to proc the free 400 healing. So you get an average of 80 healing every cast.

I'm aware that this is napkin math. I am assuming a 12.5s cooldown on Plenary Indulgence, but I'm also ignoring getting more than 1 stack. The actual math is more complicated, but not necessary to demonstrate my point.

Also remember that stacks last for 30s and it states nowhere in the tooltip that the stacks are consumed on using Plenary Indulgence, meaning the potency for the free heal on tanks will stack up to 600 over the course of a fight and stay there.

That's not how range/probability works.

The tooltip says "There's a 20% chance that party members are granted a Confession each time you heal their HP via Cure and Cure II".

Using your 5 cures example:

1st Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
2nd Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
3rd Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
4th Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%
5th Cure/CureII percent chance: 20%

Just because you use Cure/Cure II 5 times doesn't mean it equates to 100%. It's still a 20% chance it procs. (See how much worse this actual skill is? Range is a horrible thing.)

Are you sure, you understand how probability works?
You have 5 20% chances to get a proc. The mathmetical expectation is one proc every 5 cures. It's not guaranteed, but it evens out, which is how all RNG works. Astros are not "bad", because they can draw Spear 10 times in a row either, because they know that the average outcome is going to be better than that.

[Seraphyna]

Are you sure, you understand how probability works?
You have 5 20% chances to get a proc. The mathmetical expectation is one proc every 5 cures. It's not guaranteed, but it evens out, which is how all RNG works. Astros are not "bad", because they can draw Spear 10 times in a row either, because they know that the average outcome is going to be better than that.

Yeah I do know how it works. You're using percentages, not range/probability. Yes, the devs use percent marks but its NOT percent that they are using. It's range/probability. It will ALWAYS be 20% no matter how many times you cast it. Just because you use it 5 times doesn't mean 20+20+20+20+20 = 100. It's STILL 20% each cast.