White Mage Attraction

[vetch]

A major problem with threads like these is that forum posters approach the problems with the job by assuming the devs are thinking about whether the job feels fun to play and what would make it feel fun, but the developers actually approach the problems with the job by... checking aggregated player data to see whether Key Performance Indicators like 'number of players playing the job at X level' are being met, and White Mage will never fail to meet those KPIs because it's the iconic Final Fantasy healer, so there is no problem with the job.

It has the red and white robes, it has the canes, it has the cuteness, it has the flashy white magic. It's distilled nostalgia. Of course everyone wants to play a White Mage. So it receives only the most basic changes: numbers tweaks and a couple flashy-but-superfluous new heals each expansion to inveigle people to buy the expac. Why would it get more? All the KPIs say that it's doing fine.

[Supersnow845]

Because the value is simply excessive in this case. Your argument would also have worked fine with a value of 2000.

Mitigation and direct healing both still have an effective potency. And healing generaly does end up higher than most 10% damage reduction effects. But healing only lacks 1 thing: building a buffer. 10% damage reduction at 100%hp, still gives an effective 110% hp. And shield healers can on that maintain that buffer in a very stable way.

But as most attacks have significant delays between them and generaly dont exceed the 100% (or they massively exceed it causing targets to die even with protection buffs), healing between these attacks can matter. But this demands instant healing when demanded to properly work. And up to level 80, WHM only has 1 ability for this. While AST has 3 (although most of them are conditional).

Thats why the healing of WHM feels underwhelming, and why its just useless overhealing. It lacks control.

You’ve missed my point entirely here, mitigation is always more useful than reactionary healing because it doesn’t matter how strong your heals are if you get one shot your healing is absolutely useless which is why WHM is such a garbage healer in higher end content, high potency healing is not a niche, it’s not needed and it’s just a waste

It’s not so much WHM can control it’s healing just that it’s not needed, why would I would want plenary cure 3 when kerachole gives me the mitigation needed to survive the raidwide and it’s regen can fully tick because damage is spaced in this game

[Supersnow845]

A major problem with threads like these is that forum posters approach the problems with the job by assuming the devs are thinking about whether the job feels fun to play and what would make it feel fun, but the developers actually approach the problems with the job by... checking aggregated player data to see whether Key Performance Indicators like 'number of players playing the job at X level' are being met, and White Mage will never fail to meet those KPIs because it's the iconic Final Fantasy healer, so there is no problem with the job.

It has the red and white robes, it has the canes, it has the cuteness, it has the flashy white magic. It's distilled nostalgia. Of course everyone wants to play a White Mage. So it receives only the most basic changes: numbers tweaks and a couple flashy-but-superfluous new heals each expansion to inveigle people to buy the expac. Why would it get more? All the KPIs say that it's doing fine.

WHM is a problem because no matter how much the sylphies gpose with wings in ill mheg WHM drags collective healer design down and has done so since HW

if people want the iconic job so bad then just make it a damn limited job so they can gpose in it without it completely destroying the healers because of its everlasting popularity

[AnotherPerson]

I like the direction of this, but it raises another question: how does this solve the problem of WHM bringing unique strengths to the table? Giving WHM access to weaker, inefficient versions of what the other healers have shores up the gaping holes in its kit, and that's important. What at that point does it have that elevates it from "crappier, less efficient version of the other three healers" if we're still stuck in that design rut where giving it anything useful needs to come with tradeoffs because otherwise it steps on "has an answer to literally everything" toes? As we've seen from past expansions, raw healing throughput isn't an identity; it's a one way ticket to being the weakest healer in the role, a spot it's occupied with few breaks for four expansions now.

A big thing to note is that to improve healer gameplay to develop unique strengths: in terms of healing, we're not talking about inefficiency, but rather versatility. Because at this point, what every healer need is NOT more upfront healing power (besides, tanks already take a large portion of the healing away). And that's another issue with healers and encounter design in general. Due to the scripted nature of encounter design, there is only a certain amount of unavoidable damage that all healers must be able to heal through. Players can have a large amount of time not using some of their skills. Because of how much of the mechanics are scripted, healers start to measure their healing throughput through the total effective raw healing value they contribute to the team. All that does is force the healer to press Glare / Dosis / Malefic / Broil more. A lack of DPS skills is a problem, but an overabundance of healing for all jobs is another problem in itself, because then it becomes a numbers comparison game and only "one real way to play healers using their healing rotation" rather than having a wide breadth of versatility to adapt to the needs of the situation and the needs of the team -- which is what the healing toolkit is originally designed to be for.

When your healing numbers are so high that versatility no longer matter, then there's no talk about unique strengths because the reality is that people are talking about just being weaker numerically rather than talking about wanting a unique strength. Healer toolkits have been too overpowered exactly due to this that the changes can't be made in a vacuum for each individual healer purely for healing numbers. The other healers currently have 'stronger and straightforward healing tools', but they don't feel as much of an improvement because their versatility gets overshadowed by bigger healing numbers, resulting in the remaining time all spent on just 500+ actions of Dosis, Glare, Broil, and Malefic by the end of an encounter instead. Unique strengths can only exist when each healer toolkit is unique enough to stand apart from each other, but the freedom of choice to adapt is what makes the gameplay feel fun rather than mind-numbingly boring and the same.

To develop unique strengths, we want a couple of pre-requisites:
-All healers must be able to heal at a similar level to be able to clear content (MP/Healing core foundation with initial job gauge, total free healing should not exceed each other by very much for unavoidable damage)
-All healers must have a different gameplay design that is fun and engaging in its own way

Then we can develop different versatility for strengths that would work for an encounter.


With the introduction of DPS-neutral lilies, WHM gained their equivalent of oGCD healing but with a different playstyle. With GCD-support oriented abilities like Plenary and Temperance, WHM gained support skills towards their core gameplay loop, solidifying the core healing fundamentals that every job needs. All jobs already now possess the ability to heal solidly.

Now, WHM needs ways to highlight their GCD gameplay by bringing additional unique strengths that other jobs don't have for support. This can be done with unique effects or more unique playstyles.

AST has been buffed to insane amounts - they gained lots of MP regeneration, have divination utility, have tons of healing, and ways to create a delayed healing effect. This isn't an identity, but an overtuned toolkit... However, healing delay and card effects is their highlight and what sets them apart from normal raw healing.
SCH did not get any ridiculously powerful healing potency skill this expansion, but they are still a priority pick as a healer -- this is exactly because they offer stronger shields and most importantly - the versatility of having group mobility buff / mitigation when possible. They are incredibly stable to use and adjust.
SGE is still picked because it can mitigate without issues and has strength in its unique flexibility (Kerachole being a very strong highlight), but it's shields are weaker. In contrast to SCH, it does not suffer from any limitations of their toolkit (Dissipation and Seraph creating locking other skills). It does exceedingly well to multi-hit encounters with Panhaima, Haima, and Kardion. It also has mobility for itself with Icarus.
WHM has Free GCD DPS-neutral healing -- which means all they did was be able to compete with other healers at a similar level for visible healing values in content. However, they did not yet develop a very strong gameplay design other than using GCDs as their priority. They are lacking additions to set them apart from a standard healer whereas other jobs have more layers of utility to play around.

There is a strategy game I play -- Arknights -- and it has a clear example of how each character in the game have a different rarity and different skills. Usually, the higher the rarity, the stronger the character is. However, even lower rarities may outperform higher-rarities due to their niche in what they can contribute based on how the encounters are designed for a battle. Perhaps some healers heal 500 HP per attack interval (GCD) and others heal 370 HP, but some can use their skill to gain absurdly fast burst healing (Reduce GCD cast and recast time) or grant crowd control or moves the enemies, which exceeds the potential of what other healers can perform at that level or under a given moment in time to survive in a pinch. This is something I think needs to be translated well for the healing design in particular. Because FFXIV have 4 healers + many skills + the design philosophy is to make a pair of healers able to clear any content together, healing output should not be a 1-to-1 comparison, but instead a series of strengths and weaknesses that certain healers can handle better than others based on their unique playstyle. Encounter design should then reflect that change afterwards.

Now, here's the big thing I want to show to you guys for comparison sake in a vacuum.

Holy.
An absolutely fantastic mitigation skill. When used against mobs, it essentially provides roughly 7 seconds of stun per encounter. This can be treated like 7 seconds of Hallowed Ground for mobs. This is what made WHM very amazing when fighting in dungeons at lower levels whereas other healers simply had more free healing.
The problem is that this skill is only usable for [Mobs]. It has no effect on [Bosses]. This creates a disparity between healers because originally, WHM lacked free healing, but had Holy to replace the amount of healing it required via Crowd Control effects. In a game where both [Mobs] and [Bosses] are equally relevant, Holy should have been made in a way where it still had some form of reduced effect on [Bosses] because most boss encounters doesn't give any benefit to having this skill. This tradeoff for utility to healing power is very clear-cut in a Vacuum. Now, if [Mobs] actually hit significantly harder? Would Holy be seen in a better light? Perhaps, but we don't encounter [Mobs] frequently for 8-man content, nor do they target everyone in the party consistently. It has very limited value otherwise, which makes it seem like a weakness rather than a strength.

Likewise, SCH's Expedient.

A great [Boss] skill, it allows players to quickly move and dodge mechanics. It also provides a 10% mitigation buff. Against [Mobs], the effect is reduced because you don't really need to move after the tank finishes pulling the enemies. Instead, it just becomes a 10% damage reduction. However, damage reduction is still *useful* regardless. The difference is the degree of versatility.

Likewise, SGE's Panhaima.

A great [Mob] skill and a [Boss] skill - it shields all allies in multi-layer shields. Each shield mitigates a portion of the damage. For large groups of mobs, there will be many auto-attacks and few weak hits, this is an amazing skill. However, [Bosses] usually have 1 heavy-hitting tankbuster. This skill does not nearly get as much value against a tankbuster, and also has a delay before the excess barriers expire and refund half the remaining shields' potency into a heal. There are clear drawbacks. However, it doesn't mean the skill is weak to all [Bosses]. For example, you have multi-stack mechanics in Endwalker Trials. In those fights, suddenly, Sage's Panhaima becomes very powerful because it can attain full value. This is an example where the Encounter fits the design of the skill.

Now... imagine if Expedient lasts for 25 seconds, has 120 second cooldown ... and there's a mechanic in the background that lasts for 30 seconds that requires you to move around the map a lot every 120 seconds... Expedient will be very useful here.
Now... imagine if 'Fetters Road' lasts for 8 seconds, has a 60 second cooldown with 2 charges, and there's a mechanic that lasts for 10 seconds and requires you to move around the map a lot to avoid big damage ... BUT this is mechanic happens twice between 30 second intervals from the each cast, before the boss repeats a different set of mechanics. Suddenly, 'Fetters Road' becomes much more comfy even though Expedient has a niche there. This is inherently due to the design choice of a "weaker but faster activation skill" versus a "longer but bigger cooldown skill", which ultimates drives different usages and utility of the same skill.
Now... imagine if the boss doesn't really have a mechanic that forces you to run everywhere, but there are still mechanics that require movement. 'Fetter's Road' has a shorter cooldown and can be placed for more ideal burst mobility windows, but not everyone may be able to take advantage of it based on the mechanic. In contrast, Expedient has a longer duration and can be guaranteed to hit everyone while providing mitigation. Different case usages, different effects.

These skills are all designed to improve "versatility" for a job and give it unique strengths. However, it's not going to do much for the gameplay if encounter doesn't change and if we still have to use Glare x 300 in a fight when you have so much healing that the need for versatility directly gets invalidated. Likewise, even if healing doesn't invalidate versatility, you would still have to use Glare over 300x in a fight like SCH/SGE/AST without any extra DPS skills in the gameplay to make some decision making. Once you memorize the encounter, the gameplay will still get boring as a result without an additional way to engage the player.

[Semirhage]

A big thing to note is that to improve healer gameplay to develop unique strengths: in terms of healing, we're not talking about inefficiency, but rather versatility.

Highlighting this, and it's another reason why WHM has pretty much always blown the big one: it's also always been the explicitly non-versatile healer. Tetra vs Essential Dignity is the classic microcosm. You have Tetra, a heal that's stronger in theory but weaker in practice, that is on a longer cooldown and only one charge. Essential Dignity is stronger if you use it at the right time (versatility ho!), has two charges, shorter cooldown, and you even get it at a far lower level. If you look at WHM's oGCD tools compared to the other healers, they pretty much all follow this pattern: they have no flexibility, they're "stronger" but less available so that extra potency doesn't even matter (hypothetically, why would you think a 1000 potency heal available once every three minutes is better than an 800 potency heal available every 30 seconds?).

It's like the job has been designed to run counter to every single thing that makes a job attractive in this game. One of the things I find concerning about how Squeenix designs WHM is that, should they choose to add diversity back to the healers, interesting versatility, different niches where each one has its own tradeoffs that make things good to play around? That design is going to get applied to AST, SCH and SGE. Not WHM. Because WHM's "identity" is being stupid, inflexible, having no niche, and excelling at things that don't matter.

[ForteNightshade]

WHM is a problem because no matter how much the sylphies gpose with wings in ill mheg WHM drags collective healer design down and has done so since HW

if people want the iconic job so bad then just make it a damn limited job so they can gpose in it without it completely destroying the healers because of its everlasting popularity

To be fair, they aren't wrong in their assessment. The devs likely aren't approaching White Mage, or several of the jobs, with the same mindset veteran players are. Their primary concerns are:

1. Overall job popularity
2. Ease of accessibility to new players
3. Job fantasy

The current design accomplishes all three, albeit in the most mundane and uninspired way possible. I've long been of the opinion the devs idea of how healers play (or how they want them to) is by allowing them a chance to wait around for outgoing to damage to plan out heals, holding oGCDs for emergencies and only occasionally contributing damage. They know the high end players are far more aggressive, though I doubt they actually realize just how little you can actually get away with not healing. Nonetheless, jobs aren't designed with good or even average players in mind. They're designed around players who barely have an understanding how anything functions and will panic with the slightest bit of complexity. That WHM freaking out because the tank dropped to 80% and keeping Medica II up almost by the second? That's who they care about.

[Gemina]

HOT’s aren’t even WHM’s “niche” (not that WHM actually has a niche but eh), if they were going to have regens on only one healer it should be AST, not that that situation should ever arise

I think what makes it a pure healer's "niche" is the percentage of heals that come from HoTs. And this percentage tends to go up along with the healing requirements of any given encounter. Pure healers also use the GCD as a resource for some of their HoT abilities. It is more compartmentalized now in EW.

The problem with WHM is that it doesn't do anything all the other healers can't do whilst lacking the utility of shielding and buffing.

Healers are pretty homogenized TBH. There are variations to some of their skills, and there are some situations where one healer will have an advantage over another, but it is only slightly so, and nothing that any of the other healers can't handle, just less efficient. The exception to this is AST. Their card mech makes AST the only true niche healer because it requires consistent interaction from the player. It also ramps up their APM.
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The job gauges of the other three healers are pretty much entirely passive, requiring little to no interaction from the healer. I can't speak for all healers, and especially more experienced AST, but I have to abandon the cards in healing intense scenarios. It takes my focus off where it needs to be, and the benefits from astrodyne don't warrant that focus either. Due to this, I have no doubt that giving any other healer an interactive job gauge would cause the exact same issue. While I don't claim to be the best healer, I can still confidently state that if I have that problem, I know other casual healers will also.

The disconnect between players and devs that I see is actually due to lack of transparency from the dev team. I have absolutely no doubt that a decision like removing Divination from the card mechanic and replacing it with a lackluster Astrodyne was made exactly for the reason in the above statement. I think the dev team even stated that they did not want group DPS to suffer as a result of bad RNG from played cards. I think they're just sugarcoating that many AST lose focus on even executing Divination at all in its previous state. And now, if an AST isn't consistently using Astrodyne, it really isn't that big of a deal, especially in casual content.

With that in mind in regards to WHM, players will pick it up under the impression that it is the most straight forward healer, and the easiest to play. But healing in general is pretty straight forward; and it is easy until it isn't. That is what a player learns over time.

[Burmecia]

I always hoped they would just give whm Might.


(FFIX)

For how jumping mad that would make people.

[Supersnow845]

I think what makes it a pure healer's "niche" is the percentage of heals that come from HoTs. And this percentage tends to go up along with the healing requirements of any given encounter. Pure healers also use the GCD as a resource for some of their HoT abilities. It is more compartmentalized now in EW.


Healers are pretty homogenized TBH. There are variations to some of their skills, and there are some situations where one healer will have an advantage over another, but it is only slightly so, and nothing that any of the other healers can't handle, just less efficient. The exception to this is AST. Their card mech makes AST the only true niche healer because it requires consistent interaction from the player. It also ramps up their APM.
==========

The job gauges of the other three healers are pretty much entirely passive, requiring little to no interaction from the healer. I can't speak for all healers, and especially more experienced AST, but I have to abandon the cards in healing intense scenarios. It takes my focus off where it needs to be, and the benefits from astrodyne don't warrant that focus either. Due to this, I have no doubt that giving any other healer an interactive job gauge would cause the exact same issue. While I don't claim to be the best healer, I can still confidently state that if I have that problem, I know other casual healers will also.

The disconnect between players and devs that I see is actually due to lack of transparency from the dev team. I have absolutely no doubt that a decision like removing Divination from the card mechanic and replacing it with a lackluster Astrodyne was made exactly for the reason in the above statement. I think the dev team even stated that they did not want group DPS to suffer as a result of bad RNG from played cards. I think they're just sugarcoating that many AST lose focus on even executing Divination at all in its previous state. And now, if an AST isn't consistently using Astrodyne, it really isn't that big of a deal, especially in casual content.

With that in mind in regards to WHM, players will pick it up under the impression that it is the most straight forward healer, and the easiest to play. But healing in general is pretty straight forward; and it is easy until it isn't. That is what a player learns over time.

Though the strongest healer on a HOT basis is SGE so it’s not even really a pure healer niche, they just happen to have it on their GCD

[Gemina]

Though the strongest healer on a HOT basis is SGE so it’s not even really a pure healer niche, they just happen to have it on their GCD

It's not about the strongest, and never was. And even if it was, this can easily can change from one patch to the next with a flick of a wrist from the devs. If we want to there, I can say WHM and AST can both shield ST better than a SCH. As I said in my previous post, I believe it's the percentage of their overall healing and that they have ready access to their HoTs via the GCD.

Again though, nothing is really "niche" with the healers with the exception of AST card mech.