White-mage is doomed - and why

[Sunako]

i guess it depends on the amount of healing needed. Sage has many off global heals that they actually want to use to refresh MP. meanwhile whm lilies are a dps loss so usually whms try to avoid using them until there is downtime.

i do agree sage has it rough. i originally wrote my code to see how bad sage's mp economy would be, and to my surprise i ended up seeing whm lagging behind.
Also why does eukrasian dosis iii cost 600 mp the dev teams chocies puzzle me at times



haha, guess i took too long to reply

Right now lilies are pretty minimal dps loss, because they bring you ability to weave outside of Dia. Lily heals are less dps loss than overlapping Dia. But in the expansion situation can be different with 1.5sec cast.

[Pyitoechito]

Endwalker Draw restore only 5% and Astrodyne 6% every 90 seconds? Yes you can use it every 30sec if you wanna waste your damage buff.

Just wanted to clarify that Astrodyne "can only be executed after reading three astrosigns," so the minimum time between each Astrodyne is 90s.

[Sunako]

Just wanted to clarify that Astrodyne "can only be executed after reading three astrosigns," so the minimum time between each Astrodyne is 90s.

Yes it was my mistake. It is overall 30% mana every 90 seconds. 6% per mana tick over 15 seconds. And require three cards every time. I though at first it could be used with only one, because their current skill can be used that way.

[Sylvain]

So... I'm unsure on how you actually get those numbers.

All healers have the same base Regen and lucid dream, with that in mind we have
Whm : assize , lilies, thin air
AST : cards
Sch : Aetherflux
Sage : addersting

In term of mp gain per minute SCH get the most altough we have to consider that they loose the first minute unless they open with dissipation or heavily delay their AF.

AST gets 1000 + astrodyne which has the benefit of being usable at all levels of seals (so every 30s or 90s)

Sage has 15% per min without SCH's drawback

WHM has 5% but also 1 lily every 30 and thin air every 60s. Thin air mp/min can range from 400 to 1500 excluding rez. Assuming a heal requirement above dungeon and / or some movement. At least one lily per min will be used which saves 1000mp if used for heal and 400 if used for movement and blood lily generation only.

Assuming a "healing required" scenario with thin air and Lily used for healing.
We have:
Assize 5%
Thin air 10%
Lily x2 10% x2

So 35% of our max mp per minute.
If used on cure3 we can add another 5%.
So way ahead all other healers except maybe AST if astrodyne used on mp every 30s

Assuming lily replacing a glare for movement
Assize 5%
Thin air 4%
Lily x2 8%
So either 9% without lily 17% with lily.

There's clearly a big gap of mp economy I cannot deny it but then again, *assuming* healing requirement goes up, the mp economy should be closer to the first case (35%) rather than the second (9%, only healing with ogcd)
This does not consider any thin air + rez combo which would boost when mp economy further ahead.

By the time a fight can be healed only with ogcd the DPS should also be high enough to shorten the fight removing any need of extra piety compared to the other healers.

So ... Is whm truly doomed?
Well if all you're doing is glaring a dummy. Perhaps, yes, you might run oom around 8min. But that's assuming a fight without using a single lily either for healing or movement.
However if your actually engaged in healing then you will definitely be fine. Especially if rez are required.

If anything sage is the one in deep trouble as all I've seen is 5% / adder

[Pyitoechito]

Yes it was my mistake. It is overall 30% mana every 90 seconds. 6% per mana tick over 15 seconds. And require three cards every time. I though at first it could be used with only one, because their current skill can be used that way.

Are you referring to Divination? Current Divination also requires "Can only be executed after obtaining three Seals of Arcana by playing at least three arcanum."

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

snip

Don't forget Presence of Mind.

[Sylvain]

Don't forget Presence of Mind.

Ah indeed I totally forgot about it!
Well again depending on which case we look at it ranges from "non issue" to "issue".

Glare-spam-dummy yeah it will make a dent. I can't look right now but I know they reduced the CD to 2min. They probably reduced the duration as well. But my guess is that it will roughly amount for the same amount of cast/min hasted.

However I don't think it will account for much if we're considering the lily+thinair on heal case. That should still be a solid mp economy. Let's just hope we'll actually get to use those lilies more than the first month of savage.

[Semirhage]

So... I'm unsure on how you actually get those numbers.

All healers have the same base Regen and lucid dream, with that in mind we have
Whm : assize , lilies, thin air

Because lilies and Thin Air don't *restore* MP. They make a GCD cost zero MP. That's not the same as adding 2400 MP to your bar if you cast Raise under it. Here's an idealized training dummy scenario. I'll be as kind to the dummy WHM as possible.

At base spell speed, you have a 2.5 second GCD. That's 24 GCDs per minute, if you stay on top of your casts. Since Presence of Mind adds an extra GCD and comes up every other minute, let's call that 24.5 GCDs. The cheapest spell you can cast during that GCD is Dia or Glare, both at 400 MP. If you cast healing spells or holy, that amount goes up. So let's stick with the ideal situation, where all of those GCDs cost 400 MP.

400 x 24.5 = 9800 MP down the drain per minute.
But that's just the expenditure. Now to deduct the recovery tools.

Base piety is 200 MP per tick, with 20 server ticks per minute - 4000
Lucid is 3500 MP, unless they changed it - 3500
Assize is 500 MP per use, usable 1.33 times per minute - 666
1634

With those in mind, we're still at a deficit of 1634 MP per minute. Now, you can nullify one of those casts with Thin Air. In that case, it doesn't matter whether it was Glare or swapped out with Raise, Medica 2, or Repose. The cost is zero, and you save 400 MP in that GCD. That gets you down to 1234. You also get two lilies per minute, and you can blow them for their DPS loss but also not spend 400 MP for each of them. That gets you down to 434 MP lost per minute.

To reiterate, that's the minimum MP you can expend in a minute.
Things that will mitigate that: More piety. Dropped casts.
Things that will exacerbate that: More spellspeed. Casting literally anything other than Glare without Thin Airing it.

WHM is running at a gross MP loss just by using their base kit. Any extra spellspeed or healing above three GCDs per minute will make it drain even more rapidly. The amount of piety you need to make up a few hundred MP per minute is (currently) in the thousands.

Once again, WHM is a horribly designed job that seems almost purposefully designed to punish you for playing well.

[Iedarus]

I was thinking how much better White Mage would be if the devs amped up its damage potencies, and while Misery should be DPS neutral, if they went the damage route, in order to bring it up to par with the other healers, they would have to increase it so much that the buffs and debuff from Astrologian and Scholar, respectively, would effectively not matter since they would be working harder for the same value. Being the "super healer pug carrier" only takes it so far when a good healer can carry with any of the three jobs. The only way for White Mage to not be in the bottom for another expansion while not rendering the other two obsolete is if they have their own unique team utility.

[Silver-Strider]

I was thinking how much better White Mage would be if the devs amped up its damage potencies, and while Misery should be DPS neutral, if they went the damage route, in order to bring it up to par with the other healers, they would have to increase it so much that the buffs and debuff from Astrologian and Scholar, respectively, would effectively not matter since they would be working harder for the same value. Being the "super healer pug carrier" only takes it so far when a good healer can carry with any of the three jobs. The only way for White Mage to not be in the bottom for another expansion while not rendering the other two obsolete is if they have their own unique team utility.

There's a few ways that SE can amp up WHM's damage without buffing it to kingdom come.

They could add an extra charge to Tetragrammaton so that WHM has an extra oGCD heal in their pocket so that they could keep up their Glare spam more freely.
They could decrease the time it takes to accumulate a Lily down to 20 seconds so that Misery would align better with Raid Buff every 60 seconds instead of the current 90 seconds. While still a DPS loss for WHM, getting Misery into Burst Windows more frequently would go a great ways into making that loss much less substantial as a whole.
Hell, they could simply return Aero 3 and that would do it too.

The options are there, SE just has to implement them is all.