Evercold White Mage first impressions

[Turtledeluxe]

Why is it unfair?

Healer has been the most misunderstood, messy and underdeveloped role since ShB at a bare minimum more like really SB and then they proceed to show off 4 classes where the one healer they show is unequivocally the low point of the presentation

Whether the new designer had influence over the old jobs or not is irrelevant, they understood the average feedback of the collective roles and everyone know healer is the least liked role, and still somehow they put out the worst performance for it. Knowing feedback against the old jobs is worst for healer that would be the one you’d want to put the most effort into, right now the presentation seems to tilt towards “win more” for the already well liked jobs given the order of opinions of the three roles DPS>tank>healer is already the distribution of average opinion of feedback of the current design of the 3 roles

These presentations don’t occur in a vacuum of player feedback, they had to know what they were doing

Maybe its not unfair, I just personally see it as apples and oranges. If the goal was to reset, line the jobs up with lvl 50, I think they did a decent job outside, as I noted, WHM needing adjusting. So we agree. I don't agree you can plug all that feedback directly into this particular form of rework, soi it just depends. What disappoints me is not feedback, its just griefing and doomerism. I understand it, but I want to offer a different perspective and maybe people more reasons to lean cautiously optimistic.

I also posted this in the wrong thread. I meant to originally put it in the general evolved feedback. For some reason unlike JP we make the same topics 300x. Oops

[Ankhira]

What disappoints me is not feedback, its just griefing and doomerism. I understand it, but I want to offer a different perspective and maybe people more reasons to lean cautiously optimistic.

What disappoints me is giving feedback and being called a griefer or doomer. We've seen this exact situation play out again and again. SE makes changes to healing actual healers didn't ask for > Promise there'll be more to heal to offset the changes > they lie > healer is just not fun despite loving the role or fantasy of said job. If we don't point out our worries now there is ZERO chance SE can see them. So what should we do? Trust blindly in the developers who I appreciate a lot but have clearly shown they don't clearly understand what the healer role wants?

I don't mean this rudely but I'm tired of the healer role being simplified because John levelling finds it too hard to level healers through daily roulettes. You can make healing simple (which WHM already was) while keeping it engaging at higher levels. But the amount of White Mages I see in normal raids spamming nothing but Medica III and seeing SE double down on making healing easier for them just saddens me.

I'm a healer who already used GCD healing when needed, I didn't minmax my damage, but I enjoyed trying to slidecast as much as possible, timing enemy aoes to time a perfect cure III and so forth, all that is just gone now to be insta cast dps with healing. There's nothing left for me to try and improve on, all I can do is press one button and ask my group to stack on me for healing. That sounds so fun!

Why can some jobs cause such a riot to the point SE will buff them or change them mid expansion but healers complain and just nothing ever happens? I'm tired of them going "we want to make healing easier." IT CANT BE ANY EASIER. And even so, for normal raiding and casual content you already have the easiest role imaginable, you have to do nothing, press a couple ogcd heals here and there and spam one button, so what is this "We want it to be more approachable" is all about. In Casual content tanks can practically heal the entire dungeon group by themselves. If they want to make healing more interesting and approachable, let us be an ACTUAL healer and not just a glorified DPS with occasional healing that is useless outside anything that isn't savage/ultimate.

The only healer that has a relatively complex kit left right now is Scholar and is likely going to be completely different now too. If they did this to WHM I shudder to think what they'll do to SCH.

[Nadda]

I don't mean this rudely but I'm tired of the healer role being simplified because John levelling finds it too hard to level healers through daily roulettes. You can make healing simple (which WHM already was) while keeping it engaging at higher levels. But the amount of White Mages I see in normal raids spamming nothing but Medica III and seeing SE double down on making healing easier for them just saddens me.

I'm a healer who already used GCD healing when needed, I didn't minmax my damage, but I enjoyed trying to slidecast as much as possible, timing enemy aoes to time a perfect cure III and so forth, all that is just gone now to be insta cast dps with healing. There's nothing left for me to try and improve on, all I can do is press one button and ask my group to stack on me for healing. That sounds so fun!

I find it all so insulting honestly from the both the devs and the player base at large who don't even play whitemage.

Whitemage is the first healer this is true - but why do they need to be a job that is super easy? (We were already easy dps rotation wise but with a wide variety of healing of spells, I liked that and for Aoe's dps rotation I like that in dungeons I can melt things with assize and glare 4 and misery)

Nobody looks at Paladin and Warrior and says they should be easier as peoples first tanks.
Nobody looks at Black Mage, Bard, and Monk and go they should be easier as peoples DPS. (In fact they're some of the more complex)

What's also insulting is this notion that Whitemage has to be this simple job but if you want to play the Job fantasy I signed up for I should go play Astro. Fuck you! I say to those people.

No other Job mained by any other player in this game is told to play a different Job to get the experience they want from their own.

With DPS maybe there's a job that DPS's more but for example in 7.0 You wouldn't play Pictomancer just because Blackmage did less damage would you? You wouldn't switch tank roles if it made tanking easier for a certain fight would you?

Those are all meta decisions, but at the end of the day nobody would tell you if you want the Blackmage experience play Picto. If you want to feel more like a Bard play Dancer. etc.

I didn't pick Whitemage because it was the first name on the list.

I picked Whitemage because I wanna play whitemage and have for 10+ years now.

I don't want to play Green Summoner.
I don't want to play a Gypsy
I don't want to play a Gundam

And the funny thing is people know the difference between a Good Whitemage and a Bad one. For every medica spamming Whitemage in a Roulette (which more than likely is just a non-main leveling it to get to 100 and think spamming medica is all it takes)

But when it comes to these changes they just go "Ah Whitemage is simple anyways what are you complaining about?" "Just play another job that will feel more like what whitemage should be" Fuck you.
It's not even complaints these are genuine concerns. Losing Asylum, Cure 3, Assize, Aero, Regen, Thin Air etc that's identity.

[Supersnow845]

It’s the same as the people who try to justify changes to jobs like SMN with “oh but they are more like garnet now”

I’m gonna be honest I don’t care how final fantasy 1246.z2 the final birth by sleep round the twist remake handles a summoning class I care how 14 handles a summoning class

Why should job identity change because you want to cosplay rydia

[Kohashi]

It's not about "winning" it's about the fact that for a lot of healers our feedback just falls on deaf ears. In no world did WHM have to be made any easier. You can absolutely like the changes, that is totally fine but you don't have to be so demeaning and act ignorant just because you're happy.

On that note, I'm genuinely worried for SCH tbh.

The only thing most of the terminally online in this forum people have been doing is running their mouths senselessly while having piss poor understanding of the job/ game systems that have been existing for YEARS at this point. As for a LOT of healers, who are those? I have been playing 80 to 90% as an Omni healer since I returned, and I have NEVER heard anyone ever complaining about the healing system in this game. There might be some, of course, but forums are NOT a lot of people, because the choice is very easy. If the job is NOT for them, or the game doesn't provide enough, they find something better to do with their time.

Yeah, the direction is very different; it might look a certain way at first glance, it might not be for you, but least have the decency to provide a balanced take and constructively voice your concern.

What we saw was a small glimpse of what is to come. Don't speak in certainties when the entire system is not even fully released or out yet.

It's not rocket science that people are generally resistant to change, and it's the main reason why SE allowed both systems to exist, for now, but for the most part, it's good that SE is FINALLY taking some risks and finally breaking away from the WoW plague that this game has been built upon and take it to a brand new direction, which is fairly unique.

[Ankhira]

It's not rocket science that people are generally resistant to change, and it's the main reason why SE allowed both systems to exist, for now, but for the most part, it's good that SE is FINALLY taking some risks and finally breaking away from the WoW plague that this game has been built upon and take it to a brand new direction, which is fairly unique.

You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about, jesus christ almighty. What WoW plague? WoW and XIV combat and jobs are COMPLETELY different. WoW healing is NOTHING like XIV healing they're completely different. I gave balanced and constructive concerns, said I'm acknowledging that it's still early but what I'm seeing isn't filling me with hope. So idk what you're on about brother

[Supersnow845]

I struggle to see what evidence would convince you about the problems of healers.

The listening posts hate them; I’ve even delved into the pit that is Facebook groups and at BEST they could be described as split 50/50

When square still did job satisfaction surveys both SCH and AST careened off a cliff between 4.x and 5.x

Shield healer remains the most reported role people wait for in PF’s

AIN continues to favour tanks while people report healer queues popping faster

Healer questions going as high as yoshi p himself are callously deflected (go play ultimate)

SGE their paradigm of the new generation of healer collapsed back to being less popular than SCH one tier after it released in savage

We don’t know for sure because square doesn’t tell us, but that’s also a convenient way to basically say “unless A is explicitly mentioned assume B by default” when there is no evidence of B either

If someone has strong genuine evidence of strong satisfaction with healers then please……. The only thing I can find is Japanese players find it “comfortable” to have an easy role but few say they like it, they seem to just prefer to have a role they don’t have to care about

[Kohashi]

You genuinely have no idea what you are talking about, jesus christ almighty. What WoW plague? WoW and XIV combat and jobs are COMPLETELY different. WoW healing is NOTHING like XIV healing they're completely different. I gave balanced and constructive concerns, said I'm acknowledging that it's still early but what I'm seeing isn't filling me with hope. So idk what you're on about brother

bruuh, you have been playing all this time while having 0 idea what game you are actually playing? It takes 1 second to look at how WoW UI looks and FF14 (for example) to realise that the main core idea of this game was to make a more casual version of WoW. Yeah, FF14 classes now are very different from WoW, but they USED to follow the same garbage WoW design had (and which some ppl have been crying after..lol). Thank god they stopped.

As for the changes, it looks pretty weird to me, but I am willing to try it out. I hope they will also rework some of the animations for spells, because another reason why classes feel so flat and uninteresting is that they are very outdated and feel very unsatisfying when pushing those buttons.

[Ankhira]

bruuh, you have been playing all this time while having 0 idea what game you are actually playing? It takes 1 second to look at how WoW UI looks and FF14 (for example) to realise that the main core idea of this game was to make a more casual version of WoW. Yeah, FF14 classes now are very different from WoW, but they USED to follow the same garbage WoW design had (and which some ppl have been crying after..lol). Thank god they stopped.

As for the changes, it looks pretty weird to me, but I am willing to try it out. I hope they will also rework some of the animations for spells, because another reason why classes feel so flat and uninteresting is that they are very outdated and feel very unsatisfying when pushing those buttons.

WoW is an MMORPG FFXIV is RPGMMO/JPRGMMO. All MMOs take inspiration from each other but XIV was never meant to be a more casual version of WoW. If it was it wouldn't be a visual novel for 90% of the game. It's a typical FF game, and as such, a JRPG.

Also, I play both games, I do savage and did a couple ultimates (though I personally don't enjoy ultimates that much) and hit 3k rating in m+ on WoW, both as healer I have a pretty good idea of what games I am playing and how I feel about the healing role.

[Nadda]

What we saw was a small glimpse of what is to come. Don't speak in certainties when the entire system is not even fully released or out yet.

It's pattern recognition at this point.
The Evolved Mode they showcased is supposed to be about consolidating buttons, limiting redundancies, and enhancing job fantasy. They even put up a clear visual diagram for Paladin showing exactly that: combos collapsing into single buttons with dual functions, redundancies removed (like merging Interrupt and Low Blow), and everything fitting neatly into a condensed ~16-button layout. Paladin has roughly the same number of skills as White Mage in the current kit, yet the philosophy was applied thoughtfully there.When you look at the White Mage showcase and work backwards logically, the same level of consolidation simply isn't there. The only clear merge we saw was Aquaveil gaining Divine Benison's charges and duration. Everything else we rely on daily just... wasn't shown or hinted at.
Where is Asylum?
Where is Assize (our MP recovery + party AoE heal + damage)?
Where is standalone Regen?
Where is Thin Air?
Where is Cure III (the target-centered AoE we use for split-room mechanics and "healers dead on one side" situations)?
Aero/Dia (we already know the devs aren't fans of DoTs).
Presence of Mind (understandable with instant casts, but still a tool some healers used for clutch timing).

These aren't redundancies that got smartly folded in. They appear to have been removed outright. If the design goal was thoughtful streamlining like Paladin received, why don't these buttons have equivalents or upgrades in the new kit?

This ties directly into the design intent the devs stated on stage. They openly said they wanted the transition for White Mage to be "smooth" and "even easier to use than before" because it's already the most approachable/popular healer. That's been their philosophy for years: prioritize what's played by the most players (DPS first, then tanks, then healers).

They've also leaned into feedback (especially from JP voices) that "doing damage while healing feels hard — I just want to heal." That's fine in theory, but encounter design has never been pure "just heal" content.

Split rooms, spread mechanics, and raid-wide damage still require the exact tools they're not showing consolidated. A lot of us are okay with simple DPS output as long as we can still express ourselves through dynamic, skillful healing.

That's the real concern being voiced across the community right now. If the core design philosophy of "consolidate and enhance individuality" is being met for Paladin and Dragoon but not for White Mage, that's a serious problem.

It undercuts the entire promise of Evolved Mode. Other healers are already trending toward "easy to grasp" playstyles

IF White Mage's more intimidating or situational options are being pruned instead of elevated, it doesn't bode well for healer identity overall.

Reborn Mode is supposed to be the current job as we know it, but after seeing how Evolved was handled for WHM specifically, it's hard not to worry that the base updates might quietly prune things too.

I'm not against change or breaking the 2-minute meta. I just want the changes to make sense for the job I main. Looking forward to more details in July, but this showcase left a lot of long-time WHM players with real questions.