#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[Azurarok]

A little bit more access to party-wide shields and mitigations would go a long ways towards having some semblance of control over the raid-wides that hit for ~100% of HP bars — instead of hoping that literally anyone else in the party hits a mitigation, which is an asinine identity for a healer and WHM. It would pair well with reducing tanks' and DPS's access to those same tools.

This so much. Even Kan-E-Senna's seen using that mit in Ghimlyt Dark (she also still uses StoneIV and AeroIII in her EW role quest too). I've seen folks get one-shotted to raidwides in savage because someone's slacked on mitigation, and AST can handle a lot of those by just adding in Collective Unconscious where WHM's Temperance would be on cooldown.

It's also been requested countless times even on the JP boards. Rework StoneSkinII, rework Protect, separate Divine Caress from Temperance, add some max HP buff, etc. WHM is the best reactive healer but that becomes less and less relevant in higher level content where you either do it right or you're dead.

[ForsakenRoe]

This so much. Even Kan-E-Senna's seen using that mit in Ghimlyt Dark (she also still uses StoneIV and AeroIII in her EW role quest too). I've seen folks get one-shotted to raidwides in savage because someone's slacked on mitigation, and AST can handle a lot of those by just adding in Collective Unconscious where WHM's Temperance would be on cooldown.

It's also been requested countless times even on the JP boards. Rework StoneSkinII, rework Protect, separate Divine Caress from Temperance, add some max HP buff, etc. WHM is the best reactive healer but that becomes less and less relevant in higher level content where you either do it right or you're dead.

Wonder what the explanation for that is? Y'shtola's use of it was explained at one point IIRC as 'well it's Sharlayan Conjury rather than Gridanian Conjury', but then Sharlayan Astrology (what we use as AST) can also do the same technique, so maybe it's just a shared lesson between the disciplines of 'here is a technique that all healers should know, that can be used to protect an area from harm'. But now A: apparently it's not Sharlayan related because Kan-E can use it (unless they want to amend the lore to 'Y'shtola taught her it at some point') and B: Sage doesn't use it despite being a Sharlayan-based Job.

As for WHM and its lack of mitigation options, you know what makes me feel 'stressed' as a healer, SE? Seeing a raidwide coming, knowing we're going to die to it because the Melee didn't Feint/Caster didn't Addle when we needed them to, and me as the WHM having zero ways to cover the missing mitigation because what little I have (Temperance) is already on cooldown because I used it on the thing I needed to use it on. In their efforts to reduce the 'stress' of the Job, by making it so one-track in its focus (if there is missing HP, your one job is 'make the bar go up again'), they've actually made it more stressful because if ANYthing happens that is outside of the Job's one-track (of restoring HP), it can't really do anything about it.

It reminds me of WOW a little. I'll put it in a dropdown to save space.

There, there's 4 main debuff types that can be cleansed: Poisons, Diseases, Curses and Magic effects. Each healer can only clear certain debuff types, with all of them being able to clear Magic (a lot of raid effects are Magic types to allow all healers to participate in the mechanic properly). Any time I played a healer, and ran into a debuff of a type that I couldn't deal with (eg I couldn't remove Curses as a Priest, which doesn't really make sense to me lore-wise), it annoyed me to no end, because A: I don't have the means to handle something that is clearly a Healer mechanic (because other healers CAN handle it), and B: having to explain to people that 'no I can't do Curses' when they ask why I didn't remove the Curse from them. And when Curses involve things like 'your GCD speed is halved, f*** you' and it gets applied to a class like a Rogue, you can bet your bottom dollar they're going to bring it up. Possibly even during the fight instead of after.

All of this is to say, by making WHM be 'I heal good' and not much else (to keep the 'stress' of approaching the job low), it really hampers the number of situations the job is capable of handling, and thus when something comes along that the job has no answer for, it just feels bad. When 'large healing now' is asked of the player, like Seat of Sacrifice's Doom, the SCH can Emergency Tactics, Recitation to force a Crit, Fey Illumination/Dissipation to boost their healing output, and now Seraphism to effectively become a WHM (both in appearance and in healing throughput) for 20s. A SGE can Zoe-Pneuma, Physis amplifies their healing, etc. But when the inverse occurs, 'use Mit/Barrier to prevent some of this damage else it will oneshot you', the WHM has only Temperance, and so if it's on CD, we have to just watch as the attack hits us, and subsequently sends us back to the start of the fight. When our role is 'keep the allies alive', but we can't because we don't have the tools to do so, then we're failing in our intended gameplay, with no way to change the outcome, and feeling like 'there is nothing I could have done' is awful in a game.

Imagine the situation of 'we died because the SCH didn't apply a Succor'. The only thing you can do as a WHM there is say 'that sucks, oh well guess we try again'. But if you're an AST, you can see the SCH isn't using a Succor, and you can try to get a Neutral Sect Aspected Helios out, or at least hit Collective Unconscious for the 10% mit and try to salvage it, if either are available. If you DO live through it by the skin of your teeth, through your quick thinking, it feels great to go 'hey I just saved the run from guaranteed failure, I'm so good'. And if you don't live, you still get to say 'damn that sucks, but at least I was able to try and salvage it', as WHM you don't even get to attempt to save it. Look at any time that someone Healer LB3's, but dies mid animation so the LB doesn't save the run. There's never a situation where the team goes 'you fool how did you fail to get the LB off', it's always 'ah damn, unlucky but valiant effort'

[Aravell]

While calling WHM a waste of a party slot may be a bit harsh, WHM does unfortunately fall into the same position as BLM does.

While WHM/BLM can get the job done just fine, that slot would be contributing more to the party if it was an AST/PCT instead, that's the unfortunate reality of it.

[Connor]

What I don’t get about White Mage is that the devs tout it as being the ‘traditional, iconic FF healer’ despite FFXIV’s White Mage drawing so scarcely from that identity.

Like, if I was asked about ‘what are some iconic White Magic spells’ I’d immediately say like, Cure, Protect, Shell, Haste. So even with those four extremely basic spells White Mages can be seen healing the party and shoring up party defenses (i.e mitigation), and buffing party members in some way. Their idea that White Mage is some job that ‘heals and heals more’ hasn’t ever really been the case from what I’ve experienced.

To make it even more hilarious the previous incarnations of White Mage were much more in line with what you’d expect from the job. I mean, if you ask someone what ‘fundamental’ WHM spells were in 2.0 they’d probably say ‘Cure, Protect, Stone/Aero, Stoneskin’. Which like, in those four extremely basic spells the job is able to offer healing, mitigate damage, deal damage and give HP shields for additional mitigation.

Obviously Protect isn’t the best example because it had so many issues like needing 100% uptime and people hated having to cast it, but like, they could’ve just reworked it instead of being like ‘let’s just remove this entire capability from White Mage (then readd it later as a 120s cool-down)’ lol

[Hyperia]

Heh, there not locking this topic like they have done in the past when they go over 10,000 posts.

Are they so afraid of this topic that they don’t want to touch it in any way?

[Azurarok]

Seems the mitigation bit's even sillier in JP since their using raidfinder sometimes gets them grouped with 2 WHMs in things like Sphene Ex.

Not sure if there's anything really holding them back from doing it. Maybe some dev is super attached to the Pure/Barrier split despite the lv100 skills being designed to act like the other healer type.

Otherwise if their being spells on the GCD is a problem that's a non-issue because lilies are right there. WHM already has an established gimmick of healing tools on the GCD that don't cost them dps to perform. Adding StoneSkinII or Protect back in as a lily spender'd also somewhat reduce 'wasting' a lily to charge the blood lily for buffs too, so it seems like the fastest, most effective way to bring them back with their current setup.

[TheDustyOne]

Seems the mitigation bit's even sillier in JP since their using raidfinder sometimes gets them grouped with 2 WHMs in things like Sphene Ex.

Not sure if there's anything really holding them back from doing it, maybe some dev is super attached to the Pure/Barrier split despite the lv100 skills being designed to act like the other healer type.

Otherwise if their being spells on the GCD is a problem that's a non-issue because lilies are right there. WHM already has an established gimmick of healing tools on the GCD that don't cost them dps to perform. Add StoneSkinII or Protect back in as a lily spender'd also somewhat reduce 'wasting' a lily to charge the blood lily for buffs too, so it seems like fastest, most effective way to bring them back with their current setup.

It isn't a lot to implement lily variants of those older spells, although Stoneskin doesn't really fit the holy feel of Afflatus spells, so I'd tweak it to something like Afflatus Gratia (I'd also look into replacing Divine Benison into a lily spell for a single target variant and naming it Afflatus Benison). Protect however just needs Afflatus put into the name to fit the theme and that's it, no new animations would be needed.

[TBerry]

Was it ever about improving though or is it really just enabling your power trip?
You try to bring others down to elevate yourselves up.

[Supersnow845]

Was it ever about improving though or is it really just enabling your power trip?
You try to bring others down to elevate youraselves up.

You mean after we offered 6 years of “good faith feedback” from the moment ShB lobotomised the healers only to be told “lol go play ultimates”

Was that phrase really about improving healers or was it just enabling yoshi p’s power trip as you so eloquently put it

[TBerry]

You mean after we offered 6 years of “good faith feedback” from the moment ShB lobotomised the healers only to be told “lol go play ultimates”

Was that phrase really about improving healers or was it just enabling yoshi p’s power trip as you so eloquently put it

So how does that power trip, as you so eloquently accuse Yoshi-P of, justify you attempting to just putting others down to lift yourselves up?
Elaborate.