Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Elamys]

How about you do a fair comparison and see who wants to take a equally skilled WHM vs an equally skilled AST.

There are a lot of reasons why a leader would take one class over another, it could even come down to just attitude. Maybe the group could do one WHM with the other healer just being there to DPS, or even another DPS entirely (depends on how rough the damage is vs. how good WHM's healing is but if they're supposed to have the strongest healing, it could presumably be the case). Or maybe the group just needs some extra healing. Maybe WHM's personal DPS ends up being really good and makes the loss of Balance or Chain Stratagem not so bad.

There are a lot of people that want to act like they are very hardcore raiders when they are not. The bleeding edge is not something even worth discussing here because the amount of people that do that is ridiculously tiny, and bleeding edge raiders will always do things that aren't really necessary for everyone else to get those clears. It's really frustrating. Moreover, every healer has their day in the sun. WHM might not be top at SB release, maybe it becomes so later. The fact remains that there is nothing preventing you from playing WHM in any stage of content but because it is not THE BEST you act as though it might as well not exist. How is that even logical?

Look, I'm not saying WHM is perfect, I would in fact like to see some original utility, but the sky is falling rhetoric is extremely tiresome. I love WHM, it was my original healer, and I don't see anything so gamebreaking that I'm not going to play it anymore.

[javid]

Balance is a different thing that's about whether the jobs will be equally good, or at least roughly. That is an independent discussion from viability - you can have all jobs balanced without any of them being viable and all viable without any of them being balanced. And this is what people are worried about with white mage. It will most definitely be able to clear all content - but is there any reason to pick one over an Astrologian? Is there a reason to pick a Conjurer over a White Mage? That's the thing people are worried about. The content will be clearable, that's taken for granted.

Agreed! Philosophically!!

But then define "balance".... The majority of this thread's definition of "balance" is they want WHM's max contribution to be comparable in terms of preemptive mitigation (more soils, CU, Fey Cove, Bole*) and Total raid DPS contribution (AST's cards and now SCH's crit).



Now in terms of general mitigation, I have been in direction opposition to majority, arguing that preemptive mitigation (bole, soil, hp extension*, virus, etc) has NO advantage over retroactive mitigation ( Divine Seal, Fey illum, Mantra, etc) EXCEPT in the instance where MAX HP is insufficient to handle the income dmg----which in this game is somewhat uncommon, even with weakness. Also in this game retroactive mitigation has more effective mitigation potency than preemptive mitigation.

ex: a virus 15% reduction on a 18k Whirlwind = 2,700 dmg reduced! this reduction is cool and all but if all your party members are plus 18k HP a retroactive cd would have net you more effective mitigation, i.e. Assize 300 potency (ilv270) = 4.1k. (note: I know it's not always a matter of either or for whether using a preemptive or retroactive utility. This was JUST an example to make a point of preemptive vs retroactive)



Secondly on the matter of preemptive vs retroactive mitigation, SE has never made all preemptive mitigation exclusive to AST/SCH. So even in the instance where preemptive mitigation is ABSOLUTELY NEEDED you will now have all your casters for magic debuffs, and all your melee for physical and your range melee with unique debuffs. This will mean the only time A WHM in terms of preemptive mitigation will fall short to AST/SCH personal preemptive mitigation is when all your dps refuse to cross class them & you have no pld & both WHM's e4e are on cd/didn't proc---i.e. NEVERR!!!

WHM has no HEALING gap....they don't play in a vacuum. "Healing" is balanced in FAVOR of WHM which has less to do and still get the same healing outcome.





RAID DPS

... This portion of the "balance among healers", conversation stressed me out... More or less ppl are crying that the MAX WHM dps contribution isn't nearly as significant as MAX AST's dps contribution, and also subordinate to MAX SCH's dps contribution. Now these are truthful observations...but it neglects to mention the VAST majority of healers are not comfortable managing to DPS while healing a DUNGEON??!! So it would be fair to say, "the vast majority of healers are not pushing each healing job to its respective max DPS contribution potential."

Which begs the question? How would making yet another complex healing job that the majority WILL NOT push to its max potential solve your REAL dps GRIPE?? For example Balance is up nominally 30-35% of the fight on the whole party meaning only a 3-3.5% raid dps increase. A 3-3.5% raid dps will NOT displace a healers personal dps contribution. This means you have more dps lost thru a non-dpsing healer (or healers...) WITH BALANCE, than you would with a no balance and no SCH crit healer that is maxing his personal dps contributions.

Here is the non echo Best A12S clear times; go down the list and check the party Balance up-times (20-40% up-time), then do the math on the complete party dps (to include the healers personal dps) and compare the Balance contribution to any healer personal dps.... Then COME BACK!!! And realize these are the results of the BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST..... and their Balance contributions do not displace any of their healer's personal contributions......yet you have the vast majority of the heal community UNCOMFORTABLE dpsing in a dungeon..... and you think the problem is "WHM doesn't have any raid dps utility"........

https://www.fflogs.com/rankings/13#boss=37&partition=1

[odintius]

My only question is if Cure II is 100% is just casting it and get a Lilly or has to be off a proc cureII? Sorry if I miss that info if was alrdy said...

[Ghishlain]

My only question is if Cure II is 100% is just casting it and get a Lilly or has to be off a proc cureII? Sorry if I miss that info if was alrdy said...

Nothing will be confirmed until Friday though my guess is that it'll be 100% regardless of freecure Proc or not because the entire idea is to encourage to use Cure, get a freecure proc, use Cure II to get a 0MP cast and a Lily and then move onto a healing ability to Reduce their cooldown / Divine Benison.

[BroodingFicus]

There are a lot of reasons why a leader would take one class over another, it could even come down to just attitude. Maybe the group could do one WHM with the other healer just being there to DPS, or even another DPS entirely (depends on how rough the damage is vs. how good WHM's healing is but if they're supposed to have the strongest healing, it could presumably be the case). Or maybe the group just needs some extra healing. Maybe WHM's personal DPS ends up being really good and makes the loss of Balance or Chain Stratagem not so bad.

There are a lot of people that want to act like they are very hardcore raiders when they are not. The bleeding edge is not something even worth discussing here because the amount of people that do that is ridiculously tiny, and bleeding edge raiders will always do things that aren't really necessary for everyone else to get those clears. It's really frustrating. Moreover, every healer has their day in the sun. WHM might not be top at SB release, maybe it becomes so later. The fact remains that there is nothing preventing you from playing WHM in any stage of content but because it is not THE BEST you act as though it might as well not exist. How is that even logical?

Look, I'm not saying WHM is perfect, I would in fact like to see some original utility, but the sky is falling rhetoric is extremely tiresome. I love WHM, it was my original healer, and I don't see anything so gamebreaking that I'm not going to play it anymore.

Speaking as someone who is not a hard core, 'bleeding edge' anything, and mostly lingers safely in the 24 man raid, sometimes an extreme primal, section of the player base, my biggest problems with WHM are not wanting it be the best or fear that I can't complete content. I will say that if they want to stick to the pure healer fantasy that Yoshi seems fixated on, it probably should be the best in just pure, unmitigated numbers when it comes to restoring hp as a trade off for having no utility but I also hold to the idea that it's an undesirable direction to go in for all parties involved and they should have given that up long ago.

Frankly, most of my fears and concerns come from the fact that the job really just didn't get anything that seems fun or interesting added in Stormblood. Lily system, even if it procs 100% of the time off cures, isn't really logical to plan your off global cool downs around because a good deal of them are not some consistent, planned part of your rotation, but used re-actively as the situation demands. If it offered a constant buff and you had to plan when to spend them to either strengthen the effect or launch certain moves, it would seem less like a tacked on reason to have a new graphic on screen. The shield ability that consumes lilies feels like them just giving us some sort of stone skin remake and not a new action. Thin air, similarly, seems like pay back for taking and nerfing Divine Seal as well as making Shroud of Saints part of the job actions because there was fear we might have MP issues. It feels more like it should have been put in /place/ of divine seal as a job quest reward and something else added at higher levels. Stone is...another stone with a slightly different graphic. Nothing feels exciting, new, or engaging and personally the look of the new abilities in comparison to what I've seen of other classes is just lack luster which seems to be a running theme with WHM. I haven't actually been excited about how one of our moves looks since back when I got Holy in ARR.

The issue is compounded by the fact that many WHMs voiced similar concerns when HW dropped and nothing was ever addressed since it seemed Square was focused on reworking AST. So SB was, obviously, where most of our hopes were placed for a rework that would give us some identity and hopefully engaging, new actions so that we didn't feel like the kid who got socks for Christmas and then watched all the neighbors get ponies. Do I feel I'll struggle to do the levels of content I did in HW? Not at all. I do feel like they have added nothing of substance to our kit. Rather most of it is filling in holes they made when they stripped us for parts to make the new job move system. I have no issue not being 'the best' by numbers so long as the job is interesting and engaging to play. Nothing I have seen or heard thus far says WHM will be either of those things.

[Yuyuka3]

snip

Know what the problem with this is? People are already looking for AST/SCH combos exclusively, nobody even considers WHM anymore if you look at the FFXIVRECRUITMENT reddit (or party finder, for that matter...). And I'm not talking about 'bleeding-edge' raids. I'm talking about sHC, MC, SC groups. The class isn't even considered for raids anymore at the moment, and I don't really know why that should suddenly change when SB rolls in, unless WHM got something truely OP between that presentation and now. Which I frankly don't believe. Yoshi telling people to calm down yesterday also just poored oil into the fire. That's not how you handle fans being dissatisfied with something. Not at all. It really wouldn't have hurt them to release some more information that could have calmed things down. But now, all we got was a 'calm down'. Awful...

Also, you are wrong. There is something that prevents someone from playing WHM in any stage of content: feeling like a burden because you know, and get outright told, that the group would be faster with AST/SCH instead of you as WHM in it. And no, that wasn't a 'bleeding-edge' raid group, either.

It's an awful feeling to feel like a burden because the devs are too incompetent to properly balance classes.

[Erudito]

This whole WHM debacle is rather worrisome both mechanically and mathematically. Mechanics in an MMO don't just change, more and new mechanics are added while older ones are often mashed together. Sure it might be able to heal through it fine enough as its talent is raw, powerful heals, that is all it has now. Protect, heals and some DPS. By itself (as in no job role abilities) all it can provide in terms of non healing support is a crummy barrier that is on a minute cooldown and needs lily to activate. Like, really? Are you pulling a 2.x summoner where the good abilities are coming later because they were too good? For the love of all that is good, please tell me the changes made are good enough to not warrant any mention in questions. Heck, please let there be changes period!

[Entilper]

Here are the updated tooltips from the Susano Battle Challenge build: IMGUR Album

All I have to say is that I am extremely sad about my favorite class and I feel like quitting the game. They managed to "fix" lilies generation, but Confession is still an un-fun mess and the cooldown reduction for 1 lily does nothing but trigger my OCD - seriously, why is it not 5% at least? WHY FOUR? Another problem is that Divine Benison still consumes ALL lilies. Making it 15% doesn't help, SE!

I am really really sad about these changes. I expected a lot more from a dev team that saved a game.

[Maltothoris]

Here are the updated tooltips from the Susano Battle Challenge build: IMGUR Album

All I have to say is that I am extremely sad about my favorite class and I feel like quitting the game. They managed to "fix" lilies generation, but Confession is still an un-fun mess and the cooldown reduction for 1 lily does nothing but trigger my OCD - seriously, why is it not 5% at least? WHY FOUR? Another problem is that Divine Benison still consumes ALL lilies. Making it 15% doesn't help, SE!

I am really really sad about these changes. I expected a lot more from a dev team that saved a game.

That's better in some respects but not others. Stone 4 got reduced from 260 to 250. But other than that, theyt did try to make it better for the most part. Cure 1 being 50 percent and cure 2 100 but still doesn't change that CDR isn't all that valuable. THe lvl 68 trait is still the same. Thin Air wasn't touched. Divine Bension got reduced from 60s to 30s so its more reliable now but still not on demand. So some things were adjusted but I would it won't be til 4.1 for the major changes based how Omega goes.

[Entilper]

That's better in some respects but not others. Stone 4 got reduced from 260 to 250. But other than that, theyt did try to make it better for the most part. Cure 1 being 50 percent and cure 2 100 but still doesn't change that CDR isn't all that valuable. THe lvl 68 trait is still the same. Thin Air wasn't touched. Divine Bension got reduced from 60s to 30s so its more reliable now but still not on demand. So some things were adjusted but I would it won't be til 4.1 for the major changes based how Omega goes.

I will level WHM to 70 through MSQ and then change my main. If they don't fix it by 4.1 I will be unsubbing. Now I get how Bard loyalists felt when 3.0 hit.