What exactly IS a White Mage?

[tinythinker]

You'll have to forgive me if that wasn't the intent of your post, but that is the argument I gleaned from it, and it's not a new argument that's been presented on the forums.

No, wasn't my intention. I wrote at the end about fixing WHM for end game
Was replying to others about WHM being dead to raiding. My lol to you was over your clever 10 character limit reply. I like that

[tinythinker]

I was only joking, but your message brings another topic in actually.
Basically, White Mage is the first healer in the game (the only one that starts at level 1). Its design is straightforward. This button heals one guy, this button heals several people, this button throws a stone at a foe. We get it.

So yes, it is a good job to learn healing, it is a good job to do roulettes with, it does not require a mastering of the game's overall gameplay and system to keep your party alive (I'm exagerating on this one but you get my point, SCH needs a bit more optimization by design). By this logic, every job is more or less fine. Some are more complicated than others, but they all make sense in a ground level (which is normal mode / dungeons etc.) comparison.

But

Some of the "easier" jobs also do a great job outside of that ground level. RDM is arguably the easiest caster, if not the easiest DPS. But it has a strong identity, a simple but fun dual rotation between casting and rapier poking, high numbers, support tools. If you find more damage and healing too boring, you can put something else in for the two lily activation buttons.
PLD is in my opinion the "easiest" tank, in the way that you see which tools build agro, which tools hit harder, and which tools allow you to survive great damage. But in the raid scene, it does extraordinarily well with another tank. It gives room for optimizing DPS output. I see people coming with the DRK argument so I'm telling in advance I don't play tank that much, and not at all in Savage content so I won't go further on that topic. My point is that each tanking job is enjoyable in casual content and high end raid.
All these jobs have a nice progression through their own leveling (even if it is clunky for some of them, namely MCH).

But WHM has nothing to offer at its lvl 70 peak, compared to ALL other jobs (and not tjust the lillies). It remains simply "push here to heal and push here to DPS if you feel like it". I think the argument actually starts here, because WHM does not get anything significantly interesting the higher it goes in level, and in endgame -while still enjoyable, it's up to everyone's taste- it feels really poor compared to the other healers, and to other jobs in general. It's not even about clipping, weaving options and potencies; it's the overall job design. And yet it is the most popular healer outside of Extreme / Savage.
I understand the devs' position, because you can assume WHM is ok based on the figures of how many people play it anyway, outside of the raiding arena. It's still unfair that the job is awkward in extreme/savage content because they won't touch it for some reason.

I get it. I've said something similar: WHM is much easier to get into/more accessible. No managing cards or aetherflow or pets. That's "what it is". Unadorned and straightforward.

That's also why the lily gauge feels so tacked on by appearing so far into leveling. There *is no* WHM minigame to manage that relies on some special resource (aetherflow, pets, cards). SE seems to acknowledge that this is "what white mage is" by making lilies nice but optional and ignorable, especially for non-raiders. That keeps the "plain, simple, powerful" theme intact. Confession stacks don't even get a gauge, and outside of less forgiving content they are also nice but easily ignorable.

WHM can fit into prog by offering some great OGCD heals useful in optimization, and the job still does good damage, but it doesn't have anything engaging on the same level as AST or SCH. Which again takes it back to its overall niche in the game. If you see it that way, then lilies and confession stacks make sense -- something that might help in top tier end-game but that you might barely notice or use if you aren't optimizing. It's like trying to keep what makes WHM popular but also give a little something for prog.

Really then the issue becomes whether SE can keep the "simple" WHM dream alive for non-prog content (referring to that which isn't extreme, savage, or ultimate) while still giving something for optimizers to play with. How can the job be more useful and engaging at the same time while staying so lean and focused? Useful is easy -- buff their damage a bit so they get the healer dps crown back with no pretenders to the throne. Engaging? That's a little tougher. If you make it more engaging, that typically means adding something to manage which means a more complicated form of gameplay. Stray but a little...

If you give something optional that's too useful, it eventually becomes mandatory. Not useful enough and who cares? Too engaging and now the job is no longer sufficiently simple, not engaging enough and who cares? That's quite the minefield. One option is to buff WHM dps and leave it alone. Those who like it as it is for raiding and such will stick with it and feel more useful. The end. Another options is to tweak the current system with surgical precision.


I'm not a dev nor have I had the time or built up the competence to be an optimizing progger. Having laid out the challenge above, I don't claim to have the most amazing answer. I will probably edit what I type below this point later. I don't have time to flesh it out now. I just want to get the gist started. Others can tell me where and how this is good or bad and how they would thread the WHM needle themselves.

1. Introduce lilies at 30. Let it be part of the job as a whole, not a tacked on after-thought 30+ levels after you unlock the job. But do keep it at just one lily for a while and also feather-weight in impact at first. Get players used to it but don't make it too heavy. Let the number of lilies and the impact they bring increase slowly by spreading out the increases of both.

2a. Have lilies give something simple to understand and use. For example the option to either get a personal dps buff or a personal healing buff. Click one button to buff dps, another to buff healing. These are OGCD clicks. Once you have three, you can cast them one at a time or all at once. That is, you could click and wait for a short cool-down. Click-click and wait for a medium cool-down. Or click three at once and wait for a looooooooooooong cool-down. Once you click one type of buff, the other is unavailable until the one you clicked comes off of its cool-down.

~or~

2b. Same as 2a but you only get to press a button once, so you have to decide whether to wait until you get more lilies and you always have to use all lilies at once.

Decide if this should be for DoTs (Aero) or burst (Stone) or both for the dps boost.

Decide if this should be for GCDs or OGCDs or both for the healing boost.

3. Reconsider whether Cure and Cure II are the only ways to earn lilies given #2. Adjust accordingly.

4. Add something small and simple to the lily gauge to show confession stacks are available that glimmer when they are about to expire. This could be starts over the lilies, or roots, or whatever. Plenary Indulgence seems useful for heavy healing but seeing a gauge, even a modest, unobtrusive gauge, would help.

5. Do something useful with Fluid Aura. It's great for levels 1-20 in overland for new players, but then...? Let's get with Fluid Aura II at level 25 or 30. Either in addition to our as a replacement for Fluid Aura I. Maybe it could be an AoE bind with a vuln up debuff for wind and ice damage. That gives some extra utility to WHM and ups their Aero III ticks (and the ice damage during the mana recovery phase for BLM -- even ice(-only) mages will see an uptick in their dps).

This keeps it relatively simple but allows you to manage lilies (if you want) by choosing how and when to spend them. Fluid Aura 2 gives a bit more utility in trash pulls. Yes WHM has Largesse but now they would have a second healing boost cool-down for emergencies. Yes WHM has Cleric stance but now they would have another burst window.

[HyperiusUltima]

Even though WHM can be considered the training wheels of healing, being able to keep that interest in a job is important, and most of that enjoyment is the job actions themselves. Just having buttons to push for the sake of pushing and not being rewarded significantly for it(Lilies being something that is against how WHM should be played vs. others’ job gauges which enhance gameplay) is not good job design. If there’s no flow* to it, it’ll wind up being not fun for a lot of people in both Casual and High-end content.

*Flow relates to the fluency of GCDs and oGCDs when used in a rotation or mid-fight.

[Lyth]

Nothing exists in a bubble. If you're starting the game out on your first job, watching someone play at a higher skill level can be extremely influential. There's a sense of "Wow, I can't believe that we were capable of doing that." In order for this to happen, the core gameplay has to be simple enough for a beginner to grasp, but engaging enough that there are still players who have dedicated themselves to mastering it at higher levels.

This stuff filters down. If you look up and you see better players switching off once they reach a certain skill level, you're going to do the same thing. Why practice the job when you know that you'll be expected to eventually swap when you become good enough?

WHM's problem is that AST is a better WHM. You have to pull these two jobs in different directions and give them room to excel independently of each other.

[Mansion]

WHM's problem is that AST is a better WHM. You have to pull these two jobs in different directions and give them room to excel independently of each other.

That's how you summarize my idea in a short sentence while I rambled around in a wall of text haha, I need to work on that. Thanks for pointing the core idea. But essentially, yes. And I would add you need more variety in the overall healing gameplay in general so that you leave more room for each healer to build its identity and utility.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I just can't understand the "WHM is for beginners" argument. At level 70, coming on soon to 80 you aren't a beginner anymore. There isn't any other beginner job in the game, even the easier jobs like RDM, PLD and SAM have ways to really make themselves shine and be useful to your group, why would they make a single job for beginners and every other job in the game advanced? It doesn't make sense.

It's really just a failed identity. They want WHM to be this pure healer, but it can't happen because they also want every other healer to heal just as good as WHM and design their content based on this. It doesn't work and I wish they would move on instead of trying to force it to work.

[Mansion]

I just can't understand the "WHM is for beginners" argument. At level 70, coming on soon to 80 you aren't a beginner anymore. There isn't any other beginner job in the game, even the easier jobs like RDM, PLD and SAM have ways to really make themselves shine and be useful to your group, why would they make a single job for beginners and every other job in the game advanced? It doesn't make sense.

Yeah that's exactly what I said. Thinking about it (though I don't have the data), I think the devs "fear" somehow that making it too complicated would be dissuading casual players healing in level 70 roulettes... that's the only thing that comes to my mind, and it is far from acceptable, as we said before there are other easy jobs that do well when it comes to identity and high end content.
I realize I'm taking a lot of time to think about it... I'm going to the Fan Fest in February, I'll try if I can sneak the question in, during a session.

[tinythinker]

Yeah that's exactly what I said. Thinking about it (though I don't have the data), I think the devs "fear" somehow that making it too complicated would be dissuading casual players healing in level 70 roulettes... that's the only thing that comes to my mind, and it is far from acceptable, as we said before there are other easy jobs that do well when it comes to identity and high end content.
I realize I'm taking a lot of time to think about it... I'm going to the Fan Fest in February, I'll try if I can sneak the question in, during a session.

Yes, as I described a little ealier, it seems SE wants to keep WHM simple and easy to access even at cap, hence lilies and confession stacks added late in the leveling process that are ignorable (confession doesn't even get a gauge). In adding those late extras to WHM they appear to want to avoid introducing much complexity while adding a little something extra for prog players/optimizers. People who only do non-prog content and/or play infrequently/casually can use WHM as easy-to-get-(back)-into job for healing, while the other healing jobs offer more complexity and management of resources. I have dropped in and out of the game a lot over the past 2 1/2 year, and can say that WHM being so basic and easy to use has really helped me jump back in and given me a cushion for making mistakes and some confidence trying new content because it's easy to remember/relearn/use all the way up to the current expert roulette.

Not arguing whether or not this is how SE should approach it, just that this looks like their goal. Which again I go into in a wall of text above for elaboration on the logic of such an approach (again not supporting or refuting it). Something to consider: if there are enough people who like having a healing job that is so simple and accessible, why would SE see it as "unacceptable"? Does every job have to have extra bells and whistles for optimizers? From what I gather is SE's perspective, there are two healer jobs with more complexity/management minigames/options for optimization and one with less of all of that to meet different preferences and skill levels. Many players say AST is WHM with cards. True, you can heal on AST just fine never drawing a single card. But you will be under pressure to do so and to do so knowledgeably and effectively. Anything too strong or useful added to WHM in terms of complexity/management minigames/options for optimization will become an expectation, not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. Even Holy spam is often seen as a requirement and that's not complex at all.

I see the WHM design philosophy as being a nice option for the casual player, the part-timer, the person wanting an easier-mode for whatever reason, the player who can't be bothered but still queues roulettes as healer, etc. Again not arguing whether or not SE should change their approach. Just why WHM might be in (and mostly stay in) the niche it occupies.

[miraidensetsu]

5. Do something useful with Fluid Aura. It's great for levels 1-20 in overland for new players, but then...? Let's get with Fluid Aura II at level 25 or 30. Either in addition to our as a replacement for Fluid Aura I. Maybe it could be an AoE bind with a vuln up debuff for wind and ice damage. That gives some extra utility to WHM and ups their Aero III ticks (and the ice damage during the mana recovery phase for BLM -- even ice(-only) mages will see an uptick in their dps).

That would be great also for Red Mages (it would be a damage gain for VerAero) and Summoners (Garuda Egi would thank you for that). Monks also can be augmented also with Fists of Wind, Tornado Kick, Wind Tackle and Riddle of Wind damage bonus, Ninjas with Aeolian Edge and Hyoton, Bards with Windbite and Stormbite... Almost all of them wind moves.

If WHM gain that ability to buff wind and ice damage, he would be a part of a Caster META, being part of a WHM/AST (because Balance is too good to ignore) or WHM/SCH (because critlo is too good to ignore) healer comp just because Fluid Aura II would be too good to ignore. And that could help to bring some DPS to the stage, such as monks (that have a plenty number of wind moves) or Black Mages.

[tinythinker]

That would be great also for Red Mages (it would be a damage gain for VerAero) and Summoners (Garuda Egi would thank you for that). Monks also can be augmented also with Fists of Wind, Tornado Kick, Wind Tackle and Riddle of Wind damage bonus, Ninjas with Aeolian Edge and Hyoton, Bards with Windbite and Stormbite... Almost all of them wind moves.

If WHM gain that ability to buff wind and ice damage, he would be a part of a Caster META, being part of a WHM/AST (because Balance is too good to ignore) or WHM/SCH (because critlo is too good to ignore) healer comp just because Fluid Aura II would be too good to ignore. And that could help to bring some DPS to the stage, such as monks (that have a plenty number of wind moves) or Black Mages.

Forgot about RDM's Veraero and SMN using Garuda Egi. That would be a good synergy. Wasn't familiar enough with MNK to see a connection there, but yeah I figured getting a boost for the Umbral phase for BLM would be appreciated.