What exactly IS a White Mage?

[Ghishlain]

Prior to 4.3 is prior to healer rebalancing, and not particularly relevant anymore.

Ultimate was relevant during 4.3. I'm not sure the relevance of your comment.

Yet this is where the meta comes from. This is why we're being asked to switch to/play AST.

Again, if you look only at easy content, no job this expac has needed buffs. DRK, BLM, SAM and so on could have been left exactly as they were.

I reiterate, WHM had the best DPS out of all three healers in UwU. Where does that put WHM then?

No, it's not. I've tried to say this in a few different ways so let me try again...

In the early weeks of progression raiding with low gear levels, AST meets all of the hardest healchecks in the game with the same ease white mage does. While still doing more damage and throwing out raid buffs.

AST isn't struggling with MP, AST isn't struggling to heal prog parties, and so on and so forth. WHM isn't somehow better at healing.

And if you are really struggling, a RDM with MP support probably makes more difference than any particular healer choice. All healers suck when they have to hardcast rez, but all them have some tools to very slightly mitigate how much it sucks. Nothing compares to dualcast, though.

You're misconstruing my comment.

WHMs kit is still a better triage kit then AST because:
1) More OGCDs to use (Tetra, Bene, Divine Benison, Asylum, Assize, Plenary Indulgence vs Earthly Star, Essential Dignity, Collective Unconsciousness)
2) Better MP kit (Thin Air, Assize vs Lightspeed)
3) GCD heals that augment the WHM oGCD kit

In a vacuum, the WHM kit is better than AST for triage healing.

My comment this entire thread is less about the AST vs WHM dynamic and more about what WHM's role is because that's what the OP asked for. It just happened to flow into that direction due to the replies I was getting.

Just because AST can clear the content at a world first level doesn't change the fact that the WHM kit is still better than AST for triage healing. It speaks more to the volume of the content design and the heal check requirements for the content because WHM can't bring its strengths to the table in any fashion.

WHM needs buffs. I don't disagree with that. But don't attack me and tell me I don't understand the context of your post when you don't understand mine.

[edit] And just for additional clarity. TLDR: The WHM triage kit is better than ASTs - but the AST kit does enough to get through the current raid content thus invalidating WHMs strength in the discussion. That's all.

[Erakir]

Neither of you are dum dums, I've read plenty of your posts throughout the years. Stop it~

I'd say the white mage triage kit is being misrepresented simply by listing the OGCDs the class has as they all serve different purposes but they're certainly not all snap-demand saving graces (and these things should never be mentioned without giving proper consideration to their respective cooldowns as well). I'd argue this might make white mage a more flexible healer when it comes to what sort of triage needs attention, but really none of the OGCDs compare to the saving grace of Cure 3 in such parties since often the issue is healing multiple people ENOUGH to survive, and assize ain't gonna do it in a lot of those cases.

Same thing with the lilies - even in triage, hardcasting Cure 2 a bunch is not necessarily what's going to happen - expect to spend a lot on AoE (and regen should time allow on one target or you're moving), and at best you'll reduce the cooldown of tetra to still be greater than ED. Regardless, I get way more mileage in bad runs out of cure 3 than anything else, including the fact that it's a targeted heal.

Can't negate lightspeed's benefit of healing on the move during such triage, too. Noct Asp Benefic is very good at certain clutches as well.

It's a very muddied discussion because triage is catch all term for 'stuff is going bad' and that can mean a lot of things. For instance, an ED can save someone before lightning with vulnerability in Midgardsomr had they taken a hit because of its higher potency at lower HP values where Tetra or Lustrate would need to crit. WHM has benediction, true, but the delay on it honestly does make a difference in super snap situations like that. On the flipside Asylum gets to be used as raid healing should the situation arise or extra tank throughput, which is also needed if everyone's getting their collective butts handed to them. Meanwhile CU gets its own benefit of not requiring a stack (for long) to get the most mileage out of it. When chickens are running around like their heads are cut off, that can also be a godsend.

Scholar's fantastic at it if people happen to be spacing out their derps enough.

I'd say WHM is a bit more like an all purpose cleaner than the 'industrial strength gets the gunk out' material, but that doesn't make it the best across the board - just the most likely to have something to help out in more situations.

As for what content should be discussed when it comes to general class balance? Simple as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure there are those who will disagree, though.

Once classes are fine for 4-man content and normal 8-man, as in no one's gonna boot you for being one in a dungeon (and this is a long ways from happening to anyone) you move on to Savage.

Not ultimate. Savage. Ultimate is stretching current classes and design to their limit and that's going to cause changes and adaptations not seen in other fights. Remember when Yoshi apologized to black mages in advance for Bahamut? If they had adjusted BLMs for that fight before it came out they might have broken them way more for savage, much as it sucks for those at that level. Climb up the latter of progression. When people consider classes pretty well managed across the board for Savage, then you start nitpicking more into ultimate. This is also coincidentally balancing based on participation. I mean, there was that time before I played that warriors were considered ridiculously broken in 2.0, even in dungeons, right? They got adjustments.

It just so happens the bars are so low for things outside of Savage (and I suppose extremes) that we're so focused on savage raiding as the benchmark because the 'Is it bad relevant to the other choices' doesn't matter in the normal content. It'd have to be VERY broken for that. If we had something on par with, say, mythic+ dungeons that offered a higher difficulty and an alternative for a lot of players to savage, we'd have to consider that more as well. But we don't. That's not to say never consider content higher than Savage, but I would argue it's the content that should get the most focus for class balance as things stand.

We're still not at the point where no one is taking WHM for savage, too. Much as it sucks to feel like a significant detriment for not playing the others, WHM isn't at trash-tier levels.

Seems everyone here is on board with WHM needing adjustments because, however you want to say it, there is not enough current content that requires coordination or optimization that panders to any strengths WHM has. Whether that's accomplished by class adjustments or combat/encounter design changes, it will remain a problem until addressed.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

3) GCD heals that augment the WHM oGCD kit

As a WHM main, it actually took me a minute to understand what you were talking about here.

Man the lily system is horrible lol.

[Ghishlain]

-Snip-

+1, always love reading your comments xD I do agree perhaps I should've presented WHM kit as a more flex heal then triage healer. I think the one thing I like about the WHM kit is, even if the oGCDs may be smaller, you can combo a few of them together to get the desired effect - thus you always have something of a correct magnitude for the situation. You don't get that kinda of flexibility with other healers.

Which also means if 4 people are getting hit in 4 separate instances within a minute, WHM has the means to fix those problems without needing to stop their GCD outside of a potential clip - AST would definitely need to spend GCDs and SCH has to decide if it's worth the Lustrate cost or if the fairy can handle it (while removing any healing on the MT while this is going on).

I am in agreement that WHM isn't trash-tier level, but it definitely needs some love because AST and SCH just surpasses the solutions that WHM can bring.

[edit]I think Savage should be the benchmark for balance with some examination into the outliers that can showcase an individual class kit such as Ultimate, EX Primals, or 24-mans. Don't use Savage as the only benchmark, but I would say it should be considered for a good 60-70% of it as it would be the most played content that is tuned for any form of difficulty.[/edit]

If WHM gets a solid pDPS boost, even without a Lily fix, I wouldn't be surprised if WHM gets a shoe into the meta slot because of the high DPS contribution combined with the myriad of tools that allow it to heal anything.

As a WHM main, it actually took me a minute to understand what you were talking about here.

Man the lily system is horrible lol.

No disagreement here, lol. It sucks that the only time where a Lily feels like it means anything remotely is when things are going south really hard.

...I almost want to link my Lily proposal again but I don't think anyone really wants to see that dug out at this juncture, lol.

[Erakir]

+1, always love reading your comments xD

The love is mutual <3

[edit]I think Savage should be the benchmark for balance with some examination into the outliers that can showcase an individual class kit such as Ultimate, EX Primals, or 24-mans. Don't use Savage as the only benchmark, but I would say it should be considered for a good 60-70% of it as it would be the most played content that is tuned for any form of difficulty.[/edit]

Aye, I'm in agreement - I went back and added a similar outlier cause it felt wrong to say only savage, hehe. I admit I didn't consider the 24m as well (Or extremes, but I personally kinda view them as savage 'turn 0's if you will~). To be fair, heaven on high / potd stuff could be worth mentioning as well for the higher floors...but I think its reward structure would have to change to start seeing more people delving in and then getting frustrated if their jobs aren't great for it.....plus it doesn't have the gear structure preventing people from easily swapping, too, so there's that on top of it all.

[miraidensetsu]

As a WHM main, it actually took me a minute to understand what you were talking about here.

Man the lily system is horrible lol.

Actually, as WHM main, I can say that S-E should fix lily system to it become horrible.

As it is now, it's beyond horrible. It's just plain useless.

[Wice]

I think there are two abilities in particular which highlight what WHM's identity is when compared to the other healers. These are WHM's Assize and AST's Earthly Star.

To recap (but as most of you know) these are both abilities with a one minute cooldown (but less for WHM if you have lillies, but lillies are meaningless so just forget about that for now. Most WHM's do). Assize is a simple "you press the button, all baddies get a potency 300 attack, all allies get a potency 300 heal." It's awesome.

Earthly Star is a placed ground AOE. If you leave it there for at least 10 seconds it becomes a potency 200 attack and a potency 720 heal to everything in the area. Range is shorter than Assize.

So when comparing these what we see that Earthly Star is a more effective ability (unless we're just looking at these as oGCD attacks) than Assize but due to it's shorter range and the need to place the AOE ten+ seconds before it goes off it is much more fiddly to use properly. That's the difference between the two jobs as well- AST is more effective at most levels of play (or at least just as effective) but when you take into account it's various gimmicks (such as the cards) it is a more fiddly job to use well than WHM is. When we look at SCH and consider the importance of pet management, Atherflow management, the Faerie gauge etc, SCH is also more fiddly than WHM. That's what WHM is, it's the healer that doesn't have a fiddly gimmick. That is it's identity and while I agree that WHM could do with something of a rework to make the healers more balanced I think this identity should be preserved.

[Caduagm]

In the early weeks of progression raiding with low gear levels, AST meets all of the hardest healchecks in the game with the same ease white mage does. While still doing more damage and throwing out raid buffs.

You don't have to ridicule someone's post by using big-sized black letters just because you don't have a little potential to argue and ratiocinate about what they're trying to say.
I'm tired, seriously, of your mindless posts, since the beginning of this expansion, about WHM. You don't even have your main bound to your forum's account, because you're afraid about what people will think, since they won't judge about your playstyle while you do it about the others. And whereas your ''best'' argument is: ''It's all about FFlogs''; why are you so afraid to show them, then?


But, anyway. Back to the topic.

In the early weeks of progression raiding with low gear levels, AST meets all of the hardest healchecks in the game with the same ease white mage does.

*Sigh* Another argument without a minimum of searching.

This comes from the AST who is world's second UwU. Contradicting what you were saying above.

with the same ease white mage does.

These are the clears from the past 2 weeks on UCoB (I don't know if you ever really tried it, but, according to your comment, you probably did all of the content progging as AST). Again, even tho AST had significant changes, we can still see how WHM shines, compared to the first, in that fight.

And these are the clears from patch 4.3 (when the AST changes came out) until now.

While still doing more damage and throwing out raid buffs.

Well, the ''throwing out raid buffs'' is one of AST identities. And, yes. We know how ''good'' the Dev. team (we can see with the SMN and PLD's buffs, nerfs, buffs, nerfs While still doing more damage and throwing out raid buffs --- and i'm not even gonna start with SCH/WAR unecessary buffs---) is when we talk about balancing. While they finally made AST fun to play (back on the old dark days when the clipping was ridiculously insane), they made WHM players miserable... I unfortunately can't deny on that.

Now... Dear OP. I never have read that much of meaningless crap in my entire life. And, since I won't waste my precious time, I'd love if you could fix these whenever you can.

AST - Introduced, but was very weak at the start due to improper potencies and MP management issues. Gained gradual buffs, and honestly NEVER got nerfed.

AST had the Balance card nerfed in the beginning of Stormblood (while the change to Spear was to ''compensate'' it, that is still a nerf). Also have had increased MP consumption (due to Aspected Benefic having its MP increased by almost double of the initial value and Luminiferous Aether being a little more powerful than Lucid Dreaming).

Come 3.4 it became stronger than WHM due to how Diurnal Sect gained a +10% Healing buff. It also brought strong utilities in terms of its cards.

The +10% healing buff on Diurnal came, again, with Stormblood. Back on Heavensward it had +5% cast speed.

[Sylvain]

Regarding planetary indulgence, to me the core issue with this skill is the buff duration. You just can't use the 3 stack except on a select few mechanic (Os10 ark morn folloed by thunder for instance). If the buff had.a 30s duration, oh boy this would be good. We could actually spread our medica over time and pop that 3 stack whenever needed.

Regarding the lilies, I just can't wait to see what they'll add as a replacement.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Regarding planetary indulgence, to me the core issue with this skill is the buff duration. You just can't use the 3 stack except on a select few mechanic (Os10 ark morn folloed by thunder for instance). If the buff had.a 30s duration, oh boy this would be good. We could actually spread our medica over time and pop that 3 stack whenever needed.

I'm really wondering why plenary indulgence needs a timer on it at all. It should be something you can rely on when you need it. I don't see it being such a broken thing, saving a medica cast or two per fight with Plenary. I actually wouldn't mind the spell if it functioned like this.