White Mage - Skill Acquisition Changes

[Sylvain]

Back when I could swift-cast stoneskin 2 between trash mob pulls White Mage felt great. It felt like a complete concept. Now trying to figure out when Plenary Indulgence has a purpose is not the same. I hope they actually breathe some life back into the class.

Eh.... I really can't understand how people can be so excited about that trash spell.
I mean, we're talking about a 10% max hp shield unusable in combat. How is that even remotely interesting?
Utterly trash in a raiding environnement (I mean, it wouldn't have any impact in any boss from os1 to 12, because 10% max hp on the very first AoE is just barely noticeable)
Barely useful in dungeon, since only the tank is actually being hit... 10% max hp for a swiftcast, what is it? One regen tick saved? (technically you got Divine Benison which does the same, is ogcd and usable in battle)

And instead (not sure "instead" is appropriate... not like they serve the same purpose) we have Plenary Indulgence, an ogcd that can reach 450 potency heal, and you're trying to figure out "when it has a purpose"?

Easy, anytime you can weave, even if only for the 150 on the tank, it's still better than a 10% max hp shield that will be soaked by the first explosion the boss will deal (which is, in most scenario, not the one people care about)
Ofc, if the hardest fight you've done is o9s or o10s, ok fine maybe you might have an issue finding a use of PI, after all, these fight (especially o9s) require so little healing, 2 fairy could heal the fight. (Beside Earthphase and ArkMorn)

[Semirhage]

I don't exactly miss Stoneskin for all the reasons stated, but I do have a small issue with Benison: it is Stoneskin. It's a version of Stoneskin fixed for usability. And that's great! So why is it not obtained at level 34? And why did fixing one ability go into the job's 60-70 new skill budget? It's not new. Minor Arcana and Chain Strategem are actual new level 66 abilities. Fixing Stoneskin and moving it 32 levels higher is not. If they'd fixed Stoneskin and given a new ability to the healer that already has the most gutted kit, then I'd be totally on board.

[Ceasaria]

The cost of Divine Benison was originally at least 1 Lily and you unlock Lilies lvl 52 (with Asylum).

[Rilifane]

The cost of Divine Benison was originally at least 1 Lily and you unlock Lilies lvl 52 (with Asylum).

True, but it was a flawed design from the start.
Let's rework SS and add a clunky req to it, WHM will love it!

Now that the lily req is gone (good riddance!) it could and should be moved down. With an oGCD shield at mid 30, WHM wouldn't only feel more rounded at lower levels but it's also a good way of teaching people early on the usefulness of oGCDs and how it frees up gcd time for dpsing and adds mobility. Between 35 and 50 you get nothing relevant in terms of healing. It's exactly the same.
The only thing that changes between 16 (when you get MedI) and 50 is basically pushing one button every 18sec when you get Regen, because CureII simply replaces CureI in most situations unless you are really tight on mp.

[Noitems]

WHM is so friggin strong at raw healing it makes any dungeon from Satasha to Aurum Vale a joke.

I'd say AST needs those skills early on to balance(Yes I have jokes) the card mechanics as it's supplying raid buffs mainly and needs tools to heal efficiently. While WHM is absolute raw healing and doesn't need to worry about anything past keeping every healed and the occasional esuna.

Also WHM is generally advertised as the first healer job most people will play in the game, and having those skills gated for later levels does reinforce the idea that you're in charge of healing your party. By 35-50 you start getting skills like Refresh and Medica II which allows for HoT which does take part of the load off (which in turn means more dps but new healers may be foreign to this idea), but the early levels prime yourself for when you need to take charge in healing if stuff goes wrong.

SCH and AST have so many other things going on that they need the earlier high potency heals to make up for their locked out toolkit early on and don't really blossom until 60.

[Rilifane]

And adjusting the WHM skill acquisition affects SCH/ AST how exactly...?
WHM aren't going to eat your SCH/ AST cookies, no worries!
They can also be adjusted but this was about WHM skill acquisition. You don't "get skills like Refresh (you mean Regen?) and Med2 35-50", you get precisely two skills: Regen at 35 and Med2 at 50. Period. Nothing else. That's it. Done. Nothing useful inbetween.
Adjusting skill acquisition is also less about adding raw healing power and more about giving the right gameplay vibes earlier. Because escpecially at 60 with Tetra in addition to Assize, Asylum and Bene most if not all of the healing comes via oGCDs. The gameplay completely changes at that point.
30, or even 40 level if you must, is plenty enough time to reinforce the idea that healers are in charge of healing (which really shouldn't come as a surprise, even for people new to healing). With the extremely small WHM toolkit that's more than enough time to not only get a grip on healing but also weaving in dps. And the latter is how you'll spent most of your time later on.
The more oGCDs you get post-50 the more useless the previous "lessons" become. So spreading the oGCDs a bit more instead of squeezing most of them between 52-60 would actually help WHM players in terms of getting a grip on the playstyle and teach way more than "you have 3 useful heal buttons. congrats. spam cure2 if stuff goes wrong".
It also helps when leveling all subsequent healer classes because oGCD is and probably always will be extremely important.

[Kabooa]

WHM is so friggin strong at raw healing it makes any dungeon from Satasha to Aurum Vale a joke.

Back when we could cross class into the healing spells proper, literally any of the Caster DPS jobs could heal them too.

I don't think White mage is the problem.

[Grimoire-M]

Back when we could cross class into the healing spells proper, literally any of the Caster DPS jobs could heal them too.

I don't think White mage is the problem.

One of my fondest memories as a new player back in ARR was playing on a 8-12 FPS laptop and healing the tank through 2/3rds of the last boss on Keeper of the Lake as a BLM, because the healer had died to some random AoE in the first phase. The other DPS kept themselves alive via bloodbath while I used manaward and the garbage Physicks were enough to keep the tank alive the entire time. Plus I sometimes used Physick in A4N in order to ensure I could soak two orbs when that instance was new.

Mind you it wasn't all that interesting in retrospect, but it's proof that those instances were pretty weak compared to what people talk about for balance.

[Cheremia]

I didn't read much but i do feel sad when i don't have Tetra but have Bene.

But i usually don't need either in those types of dungeons either even if i heavily prefer using Tetra over Cures but what can you do.

For Ast on the other hand, they heavily suffer from "i have no aoe" syndrome for a WHILE and that is what really gets to me.

[Seraphor]

For Ast on the other hand, they heavily suffer from "i have no aoe" syndrome for a WHILE and that is what really gets to me.

SCH isn’t much better.
With SCH you technically have AoE, but it requires you to apply two DoTs and Bane, that’s 3 GCD’s to set up an AoE DoT. By that point, everything is half dead and a DoT isn’t the most efficient method you could use.
But at least it has Shadowflare by 50.