WHM 5.0 First Impressions

[EaMett]

WHM are killing the dps meters in the ex trials. There's that

I don't like the new changes in WHM, but its not enough for me for it to be unbearable and hate it. The wings are cheesy tho... lol

I think the only thing I have to get used to, is the new lily system...

I don't understand why I need to use Solace, just to spam my blue lilies away just to get a red one out (eventually). It's a bit tedious to waste on, and its also adding into your recast cooldown timer with other skills. Misery adds more DPSing on the table and its rather boring with just Dia and Glare. So if it wasnt for that... You could be DPSing while everyone is still above 75%HP if these new skills didnt add it as part of your recast CD.

And as for Divine Seal... I'm certain Temperance was the replacer.

I think the point is to ignore misery, use your kit as you would and then if you get your blood lily that's great. If not no big deal.

Potentially cheese the whole thing when you have downtime or you know an add phase is incoming.

[HyoMinPark]

1). Cure seems way more powerful than it was. I was running my MP into the ground spamming Cure2 and I just randomly threw a Cure to save some MP and wound up dumping 40% of a tank's max HP with a Cure crit and I was like "woah!" so now I started using Cure a lot more, it feels more comfortable.

Cure's potency was not increased in 5.0, only its cast time was reduced to allow for weaving/mobility (you cannot cast it any fast than before, since its GCD is still the same - just the recast is shorter. Getting a lucky crit on a Cure may still not be enough in some of the leveling dungeons when a tank is taking a lot of damage. I've seen several WHMs just spamming Cure I on a tank and being unable to keep them alive because they need to use something more powerful sometimes. So make sure not to neglect Cure II. If you are running into MP issues, make sure to utilize Lucid at 75% MP, Thin Air, and keep Assize on CD. In terms of the three healers, I hear WHM still has the best MP management of all of them, where as AST and SCH struggle now.

2). Assize seems more powerful now too.

Likewise, Assize was unchanged aside from the MP recovery being reduced from 10% to 5%. Potency wise, its damage and heal is the same as it was in the 4.5 change.

5). Removing Aero III, while some people might bemoan it, I actually like the fact we got rid of it, just felt like useless clutter. My Holy and Stone spells seem like they hurt more, so I don't really feel like I'm losing DPS to be honest. I am, however, happy to be getting rid of another spell with a cast timer I was pressured to cast all the time.

Aero III was more damage in AOE situations. Holy > Swiftcast + Aero III > Holy spam was the usual AOE rotation for WHM. Not really useless clutter, since you could also upkeep it on a single-target as well, and it allowed you another button to press to break up the monotony of rock throwing. I preferred having 2 DoTs to juggle instead of the one - this is coming from someone who plays AST the most and who finds their DPS "rotation" one of the most boring out there.

[Reiryuu]

WHM are killing the dps meters in the ex trials. There's that



I think the point is to ignore misery, use your kit as you would and then if you get your blood lily that's great. If not no big deal.

If the whole point of a new ability is to ignore it, something is wrong.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

Still working through MSQ as BLM, as I'd planned for aesthetic months before I saw any hint of the healer changes.

But, in casual old content, White Mage feels worse. Not as gimped as SCH or AST, but even more boring as an already boring (in anything short of solo healing extremes) job.

Nor does anything in the levels ahead wow me. Glare/Dia remove some of the unique druid-lite flavor WHM had that made it feel fresh again after many Final Fantasy's with a generic priest. If we still had more elemental spells elsewhere I wouldn't mind it, but now at best our heals and shield have wind and water'y animations (oh, and fluid aura LOL). Misery is a DPS refund with a cool animation. Asylum upgrade and Temperance are Divine Seal being sold back to us as something "new." Afflatus rapture is similarly "meh" in the vast majority of the game's content. I'll probably appreciate it a little in Savage, maybe even Extreme, but I'm more appreciative of niche usefulness (Fluid Aura, Repose) when it does something my kit ISN'T already top-heavy with.

Without content being tense to heal on a WIDE scale (instead of select instances in select top end content), or some major DPS or buff/debuff rotation for downtime, I see myself drifting away from being a WHM (or healer in general) main once prog is past. I just cannot comprehend how people can get excited to play this job when there's nothing pushing us to utilize even half of our kit in a given instance and nothing but Glare/Holy to spam besides.

[EaMett]

If the whole point of a new ability is to ignore it, something is wrong.

Not necessarily. It seems to be meant as a means of mitigating WHM DPS loss from GCD healing. In that case you don't need to strive for it, you just need to use it if/when it becomes available. It also changes your healing priority to using the Afflatus set of skills before any other gcd. It's just not something you should be actively gunning for unless you have an upcoming add phase or can cheese it during boss invulns

[Orbus]

I think the opinion on ignoring it misery is off since after you've used one afflatus spell you've already lost that dps.
Misery only loses 300 potency over not using afflatus spells at all, that's only one cast of glare, or one GCD.
The damage of misery makes up for the other two uses of afflatus spells and misery itself, so if you've used one afflatus spell you might as well use the other two as soon as healing is needed to get to misery as soon as you can and get it over with.
After the first afflatus spell it's not a damage loss for the second and third.

On another note, the aoe damage generally feels fine, in fact the new holy is a beast.
But you really feel the loss of aero 3.
It's one thing to have good aoe damage, it's another when your aoe rotation is literally one button.
I get they wanted to simplify things, but after a certain point it goes from simplification to straight up dumming down and removing the aoe dot goes hard in that direction.
Maybe they didn't want you stacking it with dia, and in fairness dia does have a pretty high potency on its own, but this is not a good design choice and is one they've had years to think about before the release of ShB.
Even tanks don't do all of their damage with literally one or two buttons despite how much work they've gone to further simplify them.

[Celef]

WHM has always been the job I played when I wanted to grind while rolling my head on the keyboard or watching Netflix.
So far, it has not change so.... keeps doing the job for me....

[Raminax]

After having done the Extremes and whatnot, it feels like we went from Heavensward to Stormblood. In other words, White Mage gameplay hasn't changed drastically. MP still feels nearly bottomless and I can still keep pace with the actual DPS in dungeons while keeping everyone alive. Lilies feel overall 'meh' still. Afflatus Rapture is alright to use, but Solace feels really underwhelming. As such, unless I have to use Rapture fairly often, I have to burn most of my Lilies between pulls so I can actually use Misery. Temperance needs some fixes; the delay on the damage reduction aura is incredibly inconsistent, I thought we were beyond server tick shenanigans after the updates in 4.4 (or 4.5? I don't remember exactly when). Some other things I've noticed, though not necessarily exclusively White Mage-related:

- Healing numbers have been murdered. This is incredibly obvious with Assize; despite having the same potency on both the damage and healing, the healing numbers are about 30% less than the damage numbers (with my current gear, Assize hits for about 18k damage, but only restores 13k health). Despite that, I didn't find myself particularly struggling during the Extremes. Damage intake is still on the low end. While the damage you take is obviously higher and your heals are weaker, I still feel that overall, the frequency of the actual damage you take is significantly reduced. As such, once we learn the current encounters I bet we could return to old shenanigans of entirely ignoring GCD heals again. In other words, if you excuse the snark, I suppose we can look forward to the "But s-savage mode!" commentary erupting soon as more people hit 80.

As an addendum, it's somewhat amusing that I've 'struggled' the most with Expert dungeons. But that's arguably more of a DPS or tank issue; when most of the mobs in a 3 pack pull are still alive after cooldowns and Stuns are gone, it's actually kinda terrifying seeing tanks actually drop faster than Cure II spam can heal back. Otherwise, if mobs die in a timely fashion, there hasn't been much of a problem.

- Enhanced Asylum affects abilities. Rejoice! Temperance doesn't, which, admittedly, probably isn't a surprise. But Asylum's effects were a nice surprise!

[TaleraRistain]

Soloing / Solo duties-
About as much fun as watching paint dry. I get a lily or two per kill and I see other jobs just shredding mobs down. I mean... it literally takes me like twice to three times as long to kill something as a DPS does.

We aren't supposed to melt things down as fast as a dps does. A dps has to finish the fight as quickly as possible because they can't keep themselves alive in longer fights. We can, and the trade off there is that we don't hit as hard.

My hubby and I play together. He finishes solo duties first a lot because he melts things down, but sometimes he just squeaks by with a sliver of health. Whereas I take longer but I have full health or near full health at the end. The unreasonable thing would be to expect that we can have that capability of keeping ourselves alive AND putting out anywhere near the same dps as an actual dps. That would be far too overpowered.

[Shurrikhan]

You should at least wait for the first Stun to wear off, before applying a second though.

No, you shouldn't. At present, the stun won't (usually?) take effect anyways if there's already a stun effect up, so there is absolutely no reason for you to be wasting uptime like that.

Moreover, slight overlap, as previously possible, would actually be better than greater total stun time, given that unless there's been a recent change, enemy auto-attacks recharge while stunned. If there's a 3-second delay between a mob's auto-attacks, and you stun immediately after an AA, you've mitigated 0 damage. (This is, again, unless they changed that, too.)