The White Mage Issue - #CalmDownFFXIV

[Rai_Takara]

...there is a consolidated thread for this. That said. My concern is I don't want to go through a patch of being locked out of PFs any time I want to play WHM. As another note...

It's safe to say WHM will never be a "burden" to a group like AST was in 3.0 to make people omit it from PFs. Anyone that does it now isn't very informed and not worth your time. WHM is perfectly viable even with it's bad lily system and under-tuned confession mechanic. AST in 3.0 was serviceable only by the best of the best and even then, required a bit of work with the group while WHM did not. Ever since 3.07 that was fixed mostly but it didn't fit the dps meta at the time.

WHM will be fine. But obviously, keep the constructive feedback coming as it will give the team ideas on how to approach tuning the job further.

[NanaWiloh]

It's safe to say WHM will never be a "burden" to a group like AST was in 3.0 to make people omit it from PFs. Anyone that does it now isn't very informed and not worth your time. WHM is perfectly viable even with it's bad lily system and under-tuned confession mechanic. AST in 3.0 was serviceable only by the best of the best and even then, required a bit of work with the group while WHM did not. Ever since 3.07 that was fixed mostly but it didn't fit the dps meta at the time.

WHM will be fine. But obviously, keep the constructive feedback coming as it will give the team ideas on how to approach tuning the job further.

Only bad part about the lily system is the part I hate the RNG!! Random chance and healing are a bad mix tuning can help ease the randomness but it will still be there too pester you at the wrong time.

[SuzakuCMX]

Only bad part about the lily system is the part I hate the RNG!! Random chance and healing are a bad mix tuning can help ease the randomness but it will still be there too pester you at the wrong time.

Agreed, but the tooltips we've seen from E3 (50%/100%) are not THAT much RNG anymore. Confession RNG (20%) is much worse. It's still far from "WHM dead and useless" though that most of the forum seems to be spouting.

Balancewise I think WHM will be fine on release. Funwise is a different story.

[Rai_Takara]

Only bad part about the lily system is the part I hate the RNG!! Random chance and healing are a bad mix tuning can help ease the randomness but it will still be there too pester you at the wrong time.

The RNG is controllable, the problem is the reward for Lillies is kind of bad. Cool down reduction is either useless or broken, generally speaking. On top of that, to generate lillies, you have to use the most inefficient spells you have, aka Cure 1 and 2. If say lillies could be procced by regens and other ogcds, then they would see a lot more use. Same with confession stacks.

[Lemuria]

Only bad part about the lily system is the part I hate the RNG!! Random chance and healing are a bad mix tuning can help ease the randomness but it will still be there too pester you at the wrong time.

Overall, the Lily system is awful. If the 'best' it can do is give us a 20% cooldown on existing skills or give us a poor replacement for Stoneskin, then it's as good as non-existent as far as I'm concerned. You can't choose when to use it, and it won't add anything new or interesting, it's just there.

What did we lose in exchange for this terrible system? Stoneskin / Esuna / Shroud of Saints / Divine Seal / Protect / Cleric Stance. What did Astrologian and Scholar lose? Err... their own Esuna clones and Eye for an Eye? That's about it really. We also lost our 0-MP proc from Cure, MP reduction from Medica, damage from Fluid Aura. It's all take so far, with very little given in return.

The way I see it, Square-Enix has absolutely no idea what to do with white mage so they're basically turning it into the new 'base class' for every other healer to leech from.

[Sebazy]

The way I see it, Square-Enix has absolutely no idea what to do with white mage so they're basically turning it into the new 'base class' for every other healer to leech from.

I don't think they have anyone in the job design team that has a good understanding of end game healing nor has experience of how other games have approached the problem of offering diverse yet balanced healer classes. All 3 healer jobs are flawed still, SCH has had far too much of it's core gameplay hacked out and just looks like a hollow sad mess in general gameplay now. WHM is close but isn't quite there with a mere CD reduction being far more interesting than it's supposed new key mechanic. AST is just a horrible combination of a mistake and missed opportunities.

Blizzard approached this issue by hiring a number of experienced theory crafters and raid leaders out of the Everquest community as they were in the stages of fleshing WoW out. Needless to say, it worked wonders, SE really should consider doing the same.

[Ghishlain]

We also lost our 0-MP proc from Cure

Random nitpick - we didn't lose this trait.