White-mage is doomed - and why

[Icecylee]

Let's not forget that the "it" there is merely having to reapply basic M. Defense, Phys. Defense, status-effect-specific immunity buffs, or element-specific resistance buffs. And if we're already so reluctant to spend a GCD on Lily casts that ultimately recoup three-quarters of their would-be offensive value, how fond do you really think WHMs are going to be of having to recast Protect once per 30 seconds, etc.?

It's not like the devs are going to allow a permanently maintainable buff to be powerful enough to be significant; at best, like Regen, it will merely save you a bit more than a GCD of healing per its duration, making it a slightly more efficient use of that GCD (but likely without Regen's instant-cast mobility or its ability to see significant use for apart from whichever will be MTing over Protect's duration).

I feel like there's a couple ways that even within the context of 14 they could play around with getting stuff to sort of feel like the classical buffs while still making sense here, they'd just need to get creative and maybe have the effects be slightly overkill to compensate for eating GCDs, such that they'd make up for potential GCD attack/heals lost. An idea just came to me that might do stupid stuff in the context of savage, but could be fun to mess around with in normal dungeons/trials and at least illustrates the point.

So something like protect would be a single target GCD ability with a cooldown, probably in the minute range. Acts as a channeled ability that gives 40~50% damage reduction while it's active, with the MP cost to keep channeling it ramping up the longer it goes on. After the channeled effect ends, it'd give the target a Shell status that would grant a smaller 5~10% DR effect, with the duration of that scaling higher the longer you channeled the protect effect.

Reflect could work in a similar way too, I think. You'd probably knock down the DR granted to something more reasonable like 20~30, and rather than an after effect, whenever you ended the channel it'd do damage to any enemy that hit the target while it was active, either based on the amount of damage dealt, or the number or hits or the length of the reflect or w/e would be make the most sense or be easier to balance around.

Even re-raise wouldn't be too hard to do, I don't think, with a bit of inventiveness. Make it an instant cast spell you can only cast in combat, grants re-raise to the target. Whenever that target dies, it'd immediately refund the WHM enough MP to cast raise, and grant a short duration status that makes their next raise instant cast. I don't know how useful something like that might actually be but like... there's definitely *some* merit, especially with something like whitemage that's been a series staple since the very first game, in considering how they could potentially reconfigure classic abilities into something that could make sense for 14, especially if they're going to keep moving away from the lore's more shamanistic aspects and refuse to commit harder to making the lily system more interesting.

[Silver-Strider]

Considering how many problems the Thin Air change alone is causing, it really brings up some red flags for WHM as a whole.

I mean, let's look at AST in comparison on just the copy/pasted skills

WHM

1. Cure 2
   • 1000 MP
   • 2s Cast time
   • 700 potency
2. Regen
   • 500 MP
   • Potency: 200
   • Duration: 18s
3. Medica
   • 1000 MP
   • 2.5s Cast time
   • Potency:300
4. Medica 2
   • 1300 MP cost
   • 2.5s Cast time
   • Radius: 20y
   • Cure Potency: 200
   • Regen: 100
   • Duration: 15s

AST

1. Benefic 2
   • 700 MP
   • 2s Cast time
   • Potency: 700
2. Aspected Benefic
   
   • 400 MP
   • Cure Potency: 200
   • Regen Potency: 200
   • Duration: 15s
3. Helios
   • 700 MP
   • 2s Cast time
   • Potency: 330
4. Aspected Helios
   • 800 MP
   • 2s Cast time
   • Radius: 15y
   • Potency: 200
   • Regen: 100
   • Duration: 15s

In the overwhelming majority, AST equivalent skill was equal to or superior than WHM's in cost, potency and/or cast time. The lone exception was the Radius of Medica 2 over that of Aspected Helios but A.Helios is quicker to cast so both have a benefit over the other.

Bare minimum, WHM spells should cost the same as AST spells. There is 0 justification not to do that much. If Radius vs Cast time is a factor in balancing Medica 2 vs A.Helios, I will concede that the extra radius trumps the quicker cast time in 90% of situations so I can see Medica 2 having a slightly higher cost, 100-200 MP max but I would want Medica to be cheaper than Helios in that case because of both the faster cast and higher potency.

That alone takes off such a substantial burden for WHM in terms of their MP economy and that's only in the most basic toolkit department. There's a million other things that can be done to help out but this has already become pretty long so I'll stop there for now.

[Shurrikhan]

I feel like there's a couple ways that even within the context of 14 they could play around with getting stuff to sort of feel like the classical buffs while still making sense here, they'd just need to get creative and maybe have the effects be slightly overkill to compensate for eating GCDs, such that they'd make up for potential GCD attack/heals lost.

Just don't forget the context, e.g., the other thematic spaces with whom WHM shares this role and the way fights, and the healing within them, actually occur in XIV.

Protect: External percentile single-target mitigation CD? Fair enough. You are absolutely not going to get a whopping "40-50% damage reduction" out of it, though, since that's already enough to act as more than a stacked Rampart and Sentinel/Nebula/Vengeance/Shadow Wall against a single tank-buster, even if you only maintain the cast for just the length of its animation lock. The drain cost over channel would be a non-issue for the way that'd work in practice.

Reflect: Now you're looking at two issues. First, you already have better claimants for the capacity (SCH, especially). Second, it ties your offensive potency-per-minute to defensive events. If significant (e.g., more so than Hissatsu:Seigan), how do you balance that?

Re-Raise: The version you suggested would be reasonably balanced, but also... pretty odd (and would probably need to be oGCD to react in time to events like "Well, that idiot's gonna bite it..."). Just for food for thought, though, think of the occasionally suggested auto-raise with no Weakness on target's next death (a la LB3). By avoiding weakness alone (even before factoring in desync), that's more than a 33.3% damage bonus for 90 seconds (as they'd be raised from 75% damage to 100%). That would be so brokenly good that, despite it's being horribly situational, you'd have to balance around it, leaving WHM with even more of a "WHM tax", whereby they're increasingly punished for not needing to bail out their party.

[Icecylee]

Just don't forget the context, e.g., the other thematic spaces with whom WHM shares this role and the way fights, and the healing within them, actually occur in XIV.

Yeah, those are definitely all fair points, but the point was more that the ideas *could* still be repurposed and work, even if numbers would need balancing. The thinking with protect was along the lines of it being strong enough to not need to drop a big heal after the fact, but maybe that starts to step on the toes of barrier healers (and reflect, I guess, not that there's any real distinction between the two right now, but I suppose we can imagine a world in which there is!). Maybe instead you'd lean more into having something resembling a healing... maybe not rotation, but priority system. Protect could give a smaller heal and then a saner DR status effect that last in the 12~18 second range, that you could use in conjuncture with things like regen and other smaller heal + lingering effects, rather than just dropping massive chunks of HP once in a blue moon. If I had to fit it into the kit WHM has right now and not an entirely redesigned one that was better thought out, I'd probably make it a lily ability instead of of a normal spell so it'd mostly just be competing with cure2/medica analogues and have it be a better option to dump a lily on if you didn't need a big heal.

For reflect, well, if you balanced it to have the potential for high damage output that's theoretically what the cooldown would be for, and figuring out which tank busters get the most out of it would be part of what made the skill interesting, as long as the cooldown was long enough, so it wouldn't be fighting against w/e normal dps option you're spamming would be. Not like WHM has much going for it as is. But if that's too much of a concern, you could just do it like the new AST skill can keep it dps neutral, just with the damage backloaded instead of front.

As for the re-raise comments, I basically agree. It'd be a bit more usable and interesting as a ogcd! And yeah ways for it to ignore raise weakness would just bring back memories of 2.x with WHM having the superior version of protect due to the proshell trait and wouldn't be good for anyone, really.

In general I feel tho I feel like there's a *ton* of design space, especially for healers, that they're just... not exploring at all.

[Shurrikhan]

In general I feel tho I feel like there's a *ton* of design space, especially for healers, that they're just... not exploring at all.

Agreed. I'd just rather build primarily upon what we've liked best of iterations within XIV.

For me, for instance, that's most involved the elemental aspects of its aesthetic. Imagine if...

• The potency re-couping element to healing spells weren't limited to Lily casts and its CD, but instead applied to all heals, through your Water-element spells (which all the Cures are, iirc, technically classified under) either feeding a Fluid Aura mechanic (by which to have a duplicate of yourself rush through enemies and/or allies, damaging and healing, interrupting or esuna-ing) or, say, building up a granular Attack Speed mechanic (call it Water's Wake or whatnot) which could be consumed for further burst, allowing WHM to essentially wind up through heals before burst phases and better milk damage windows.
• Every Stone-element spell charged or accelerated a Stoneskin (additionally capable of preventing most knockbacks [i.e., all but those that purge debuffs or are otherwise actually desireable]) or Rupture ability (ground-targeted, stuns, mitigation via line of sight vs. raid-wides and blocks LoS for normal enemy attacks).
• Every Wind-element spell caused your next spell to complete even if you move up to X seconds early, and you had a couple 3.5-second casts available to you by which to make use of that for saving uptime, too.
• If you could create motes of turbulent wind that could knock enemies back for damage or significantly accelerate allies as they move through them, or if your Aero spells cast through or near allies would give movement acceleration to them or allies moving along that path.
• Finally, let's say you'd have a... Soulfont ability by which you'd temporarily combine all the light-aspect elements into actually Holy spells, effectively gaining all those benefits at once as a burst phase, draining a gauge that's, say, typically maxed out in just over 2 minutes. In that way, Glare spam wouldn't feel like a mere 11111, but it'd at least be a burst phase, with Dia likely returned to an 18s duration and refreshed just before dropping out of phase.

That'd be something that we've already seen hinted at here in XIV, especially from the HW era, and would be vivid, integral, decently nuanced, capable of gameplay-affecting support -- not merely more +% damage, but something that requires more precise situations and, in balance, is capable of far more unique tricks.

[Semirhage]

That sounds suspiciously like *interesting* gameplay young lady. But answer me this: however will a poor new healer main, by virtue of role choice clearly too stupid to understand anything more complex than WHYT MAIG CAST CURR and MABBE CAST ROK BLASTT IF GROG REMIMBUR GROG HAV TWO BUTTUNZ understand how to play it? Gottem!

[Icecylee]

Absolutely. Honestly all of that seems fun, and I've always been more partial to the 1.x and 2/3.x versions of the class myself as well. I still remember me and another lore nerd being super confused when yoshida announced that CNJ was going to grab WHM and not BLM, lol. Wonder if at the time it made more sense since they were planning on making dual jobs for everyone and wanted to leave the elemental dps side open for a theoretical geomancer... ah, well.

I'd *really* like to see them go back to the more conjure lore flavored stuff instead of awkwardly shoving series legacy stuff into it... but if they're gunna do that anyway, they should lean into it even harder IMO. If we have to be White Mages running around doing nothing but slinging direct curess and blasting with holy magic, they should find a way to work in more of the iconic stuff, too, to at least make it feel complete instead of this weird halfassed thing we have now.

But if I had my way, WHM and SCH would get complete overhauls in how they were built from the ground up. I think AST kinda works for what it's going for conceptually as is, so it'd just need some minor adjustments and Sage is... probably a workable framework they could salvage, but at this point there's just so much wrong with WHM and SCH it's almost certainly going to be easier to just scrap everything and rebuild entirely rather than hoping some minor additions can change it much.

[Shurrikhan]

That sounds suspiciously like *interesting* gameplay young lady. But answer me this: however will a poor new healer main, by virtue of role choice clearly too stupid to understand anything more complex than WHYT MAIG CAST CURR and MABBE CAST ROK BLASTT IF GROG REMIMBUR GROG HAV TWO BUTTUNZ understand how to play it? Gottem!

Is there bad on good; no want good go dead? Blue buttons on good.

Want bad on bad, til bad go dead? Green buttons, then Brown buttons when green is there already. On bad, yeah.

White bar full? Press White button. It turn Green and Brown buttons white. Then can use white buttons on bad til white buttons gone. White buttons strong.

Grog know now? Grog good?

[Deceptus]

Let's not forget that the "it" there is merely having to reapply basic M. Defense, Phys. Defense, status-effect-specific immunity buffs, or element-specific resistance buffs. And if we're already so reluctant to spend a GCD on Lily casts that ultimately recoup three-quarters of their would-be offensive value, how fond do you really think WHMs are going to be of having to recast Protect once per 30 seconds, etc.?

If the Devs really wanted Protect to have a place in this game it would be extremely easy to do.

Protect: Short duration, Short CD Physical Damage Taken Reduction Buff to all party members (or 1 person), similar to Reprisal or Feint but on Party members

Shell: Short duration, Short CD Magic Damage Taken Reduction Buff to all party members (or 1 person), similar to Addle but on Party members

Make them role actions so every healer has access to them.

[Silver-Strider]

Make them role actions so every healer has access to them.

You had me until this part.
Why can't WHM have something unique for itself?