Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Reiryuu]

snip

We should all boycott and refuse to level our healers and/or refuse to level them in dungeons in protest! (semi-serious suggestion). If the changes are really as bad as they are come launch, it's probably the best thing to do to make them listen. I feel they really dropped the ball on this after leading us with these promises of balance, incentives, etc. I know a lot of people out there did not want another healing class, but I kinda did. I like new classes and I'm disheartened that healers are kinda getting the short end of the stick. No job, no balance, hell at least the tanks get another mount =/

Just dropping by for a daily reminder to the SE devs - why would raiders bring a WHM when we could have The Balance and Chain Stratagem?

And reliable mitigation!

[Mahkii]

We should all boycott and refuse to level our healers and/or refuse to level them in dungeons in protest! (semi-serious suggestion). If the changes are really as bad as they are come launch, it's probably the best thing to do to make them listen. I feel they really dropped the ball on this after leading us with these promises of balance, incentives, etc. I know a lot of people out there did not want another healing class, but I kinda did. I like new classes and I'm disheartened that healers are kinda getting the short end of the stick. No job, no balance, hell at least the tanks get another mount =/



And reliable mitigation!

Don't get me started about addle. Playing healer without Virus/Disable feels way less tactical.

[Seraphyna]

They have just posted some previews of the new PVP skill system and it\'s very interesting as they used WHM to show it off: http://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/blog/002066.html

Why do I have this horrible, sinking feeling that they focused solely on PVP implementation ( because you know, esports lol) then slapped on PVE as an afterthought.

[Reiryuu]

Why do I gave this horrible, sinking feeling that they focused solely on PVP implementation ( because you know, esports lol) then slapped on PVE as an afterthought.

Please... Please do not even suggest that. You're going to give me nightmares ><;

Wait... did they seriously give protect a 40sec recast time just to give the lily shorten recast mechanic a purpose?! And protect benediction and even Fluid aura are going to eat all lilies too?! lol... sigh good thing I don't PVP and I hope that's not the case in PVE =/

Even if those tooltips are the same or similar in PVE... still seems kinda meh to me. I dunno =/

[Ghishlain]

I'm just going to finally throw a post onto here just to include my own feedback towards S-E.

I'm personally okay with the currently known WHM design. While I understand the current known information contradicts the current optimized healer play, the idea of having a small cure snow ball into larger cures and abilities is appealing. To me, Cure proccing Confession, Lily, and/or Freecure which then leads to more effects and decision making trees that WHMs can do at lower cost and knowing how to optimize the randomness of the WHM kit for both the fight and player aptitude definitely has it's draws - very similar to how optimizing for Card choices for AST was good before "BALANCE OR NOTHING" hit the table.

My main gripe is less about White Mage in the currently known iteration and more about the potency numbers and buffs AST is getting. When I first saw the White Mage tool kit, I wasn't excited but I was most certainly intrigued by the thought of it and wanted to wrap my head around how to optimize the work. But then I saw the AST changes and it basically just crapped all over the other healers - why play WHM (or perhaps even SCH) when AST can do things better and be much more streamlined at the same time?

While I would like to see minor tweaks to the Lily system, I would prefer much more if S-E can start to scale back what AST has to offer. If the currently known potencys and tooltips go live, I would absolutely lose faith in the S-E dev team at their ability to balance Healers effectively.

/FeedbackSent~

[OcieKo]

AST tentatively received a trait called Hyper Lightspeed, that reduces the recast time of Lightspeed by 5 seconds on a critical Benefic or Benefic II. AST also has a trait to force a critical Benefic II. Everything in the AST toolkit synergizes well with itself. The WHM Lily II trait lowers recast time on Assize and Asylum for some reason on critical heals (not Presence of Mind, the longer recast time). However the WHM Cure trait also procs a FREE MP Cure, not a Critical Cure. There is no synergy.

Now if you're referring to the overall Lily system (Secret of the Lily I), the media tour build is broken, and not in a good way. The OGCD skills (Assize, Asylum, Tetra, and Benison) would be used on average every.. 15~20 seconds? Something like that. All lilies are spent by using ANY of those 4 abilities guaranteed that a WHM would never actually get to 3 lilies and reap the benefit of the exponential cool down reduction by having more lilies.

On the damage / utility side, I'm asking is that WHM get SOMETHING for party utility. Even your Diurnal Sect AST (in mourning) gets a 10% party-wide mitigation ability for some odd reason. I'd also drop royal road AOE ability down to 33 or maybe even 25% potency for balance, but in lieu of that, yes WHM needs to bring something extra to the party (HASTE), or substantially increase its personal damage potential over the other two healers.

Yet again someone touting MP efficiency as worthless... Honestly, most of my Bene 2 procs fall off since I usually never need a heal that big, and the MP loss isnt worth it just to Overheal, looks awesome and all, but I'm more worried about not running dry.

Why is it that you have to get the full effect or the CDR is worthless? Having your tools abailable is always a good thing... Also with how much you guys seem to use your OGCDs in place of Cures (impression I got from here) wouldnt having them available even more often be useful?

Utility. Yes, Balance and Bole can be very powerful utilities when used. This power is mitigated by the quite decent possibility it wont be available. Yes we can mitigate with spread a bit, and slightly with redraw (ups RNG to 20% from around 16.6% or so). But even then, if you just play an AST gor a bit youll realize, its not uncommon to only get maybe 1 AOE Balance every 10min, and depending on which order you save cards in, you may not use the effect more than once every 2-3 min just so you dont screw your setup. Personally I got into the habit of saving Balance or Arrow first, just so I can use anything that isnt Ewer/Spire in the mean time. And in Bole case, even more situationally useful than Balance/Arrow, to the point that its lack of reliability prevents its use, the stars are seriously aligning if thats up when its useful and can be used as needed. Id say most ASTs are like myself on that matter and mostly use it on the tank when their phishing and it comes up after redraw, more to start up the CD than it being actually useful at the time, the "new" skill is going to see A LOT of action with Bole/Spear. So now if WHM wants one of these how about make it a 6y channeled ability that give 15% dmg and speed increase for 20s, then we can let you join ASTs and SCHs in debating if losing access to all or part of your toolkit while its happening is worth it.

Stop underestimating how powerful reliability, keeping MP, and a lack of drawbacks are. Rest of us learned that, and manage to play with it in effect.

[Mahkii]

On a positive note, anyone else feel like WHM will be the best healer for 4-man dungeons? I think the off-cooldown heals and aoe damage potential/sustain will work out great for that.

[Seraphyna]

Please... Please do not even suggest that. You're going to give me nightmares ><;

Wait... did they seriously give protect a 40sec recast time just to give the lily shorten recast mechanic a purpose?! And protect benediction and even Fluid aura are going to eat all lilies too?! lol... sigh good thing I don't PVP and I hope that's not the case in PVE =/

Even if those tooltips are the same or similar in PVE... still seems kinda meh to me. I dunno =/

Considering that almost every mmo out there right now focuses first on pvp then pve... ( if you can even call some pve when its open season pvp)

Seens that they reworked all jobs skills to be different in pvp vs pve? Is this really what they spent their time doing?

[AlphaSonic]

Please... Please do not even suggest that. You're going to give me nightmares ><;

Wait... did they seriously give protect a 40sec recast time just to give the lily shorten recast mechanic a purpose?! And protect benediction and even Fluid aura are going to eat all lilies too?! lol... sigh good thing I don't PVP and I hope that's not the case in PVE =/

Even if those tooltips are the same or similar in PVE... still seems kinda meh to me. I dunno =/

It actually works in PvP because you are spamming Cure and Cure II all the time. So I could see how it can work in PvP this approach, moreover, I wish the Protect version of pvp was the one we got in PvE.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

On a positive note, anyone else feel like WHM will be the best healer for 4-man dungeons? I think the off-cooldown heals and aoe damage potential/sustain will work out great for that.

WHM will by far be the best in dungeons.

I'm actually a little worried that SE just gave up balancing 3 healers for raiding and decided to focus two healers on raiding and one healer just floats around being "viable" but not actually desirable or sought after. It would suck if this was the case, but I can't think of any other reason why SE would make WHM so obviously underpowered compared to its competition.