White Mage Overflow

[JonFarron]

There is a HUGE population of White Mage healers, and it’s a symptom of a problem. White Mage is very overpowered in comparison to Scholar and especially Astrologian. They sneeze and everyone is full health. They can glare spam all day with how strong their heals are and easy to play the class is.

Astro became very complicated and busy to play. Between drawing and redrawing cards, trying to heal with weak potencies and high MP costs, it is a headache. Divination has a cool down that is way too long for what you get and the amount of work you put in for it.

Celestial Opposition is extremely weak and has a long CD. Either increase the potency or decrease the cooldown. Having this ability give mana would help a lot.

The cards are a mess and boring. Draw, potentially redraw if you only have ranged or so in your party, minor arcana and then play. VERY TIME CONSUMING. Between all of that you still have to heal, ideally DPS, and not die because you’re too busy playing with cards and getting hit by an aoe. Sleeve draw just makes me feel overwhelmed, I’d rather it give me cards already minor arcana’d. We have a 3 minute cooldown on Divination, it’s not like we don’t have time to figure out our seals.

I think the cards would be better if they gave us back all of the old effects, but kept minor arcana how it is now. This way we can still control some RNG by minor arcana for DPS buffs, but still have utility like MP regen and defense increase. Maybe have spire increase direct hit rate or increase healing potency.

Astro MP is like gasping for air. Lucid is always on CD, and light speed helps but it doesn’t restore MP. If you’re in a crutch and people are dying you simply do not have the mana sustain to keep resurrecting. WHM has lucid, Assize, and Thin Air. SCH has lucid and aetherflow. The MP management difference is laughable. 1000 mana for aspected benefic in Nocturnal stance is insane. I get that it’s supposed to compare to Adlo, but scholar has way better MP management and strong heals that don’t require mana to make up for it.

The shield for Celestial intersection needs a slight buff IMO. I would scale it off HP% vs healing potency. I’m happy with the regen on it.

Scholar isn’t completely terrible (I’m actually enjoying it and love Seraph) but just needs some tweaks. Fey Blessing has a lot of lag between cast and execution. Art of war needs to be reworked, the animation is terrible compared to Holy and Gravity and just feels underwhelming.

Anyway, some things need to be addressed because everyone is playing WHM for obvious reasons and it’s going to get stale without any variety.

[kidalutz]

I've always generally mained whm but back in stormblood that switched to astro and from there scholar honestly I love healing in general if the hither come lately whm enjoy the class more power to them.

[Taika]

This is true from my experience as well, but I don't think it's only because WHM is so powerful right now, but more because WHM is actually fun to play in Shadowbringers, unlike SCH and AST. AST is obviously undertuned, but what SCH needs the most is more engaging gameplay instead of just ridiculously strong OCD heals and Broil spam.

[TonberiScholar]

WHM's been the most popular (in terms of overall created numbers) Healer since ARR.

I think specifically that Suncatgirl White Mages are the single most popular race/tribe/gender/Job combo in the game, at least if I'm remembering my census right.

Doesn't help that they're also the only Healer with an actual useful Job mechanic and the only Healer that didn't get gutted in the SB->ShB transition, but they were wildly popular before that.

[Rivxkobe]

I doubt this is the reason.

As TonberiScholar said WHM has always been the most popular Healer.

I also further doubt this because the number of WHM barely changed whenever it was considered the worst healer. Players didn't really switch to AST, or SCH (who was "powerpowered" a few times in the past) just because they were strong, some did, but they barely changed the numbers of actually players maining said Healer.

[EaMett]

This is true from my experience as well, but I don't think it's only because WHM is so powerful right now, but more because WHM is actually fun to play in Shadowbringers, unlike SCH and AST. AST is obviously undertuned, but what SCH needs the most is more engaging gameplay instead of just ridiculously strong OCD heals and Broil spam.

This. Whm is fun to play. It’s still missing potency on fluid aura to make it complete but otherwise it’s gameplay was nicely improved thanks to the new lily system. In addition it’s so powerful you really feel like you’re pulling your weight in content, just enhances the whole experience

[Risvertasashi]

There's not that many WHMs compared to scholars. If the AST and WHM populations were balanced, SCH would be the top clearing healer (as usual).

So, give it a little bit. 5.05 will buff AST, which should take a chunk out of the WHM population and put SCH back on top.

[Dualblade]

Based on what I've personally seen it does seem like AST numbers have dropped, but SCH and WHM show up about equally with each other. Again based on exp, no hard numbers here.

[Risvertasashi]

Based on what I've personally seen it does seem like AST numbers have dropped, but SCH and WHM show up about equally with each other. Again based on exp, no hard numbers here.

There are hard numbers on that one log website ~.^

And you're correct, ish. WHM is in the lead, but again, SCH is not that far behind. AST is far behind but once AST/WHM balances out, SCH will be the leading healer on clears.

[fantasticm]

They sneeze and everyone is full health. They can glare spam all day with how strong their heals are and easy to play the class is.

Sounds just like Scholar.

Poor AST, though.