Evercold White Mage first impressions

[Ninaran]

I also just noticed I see no assize in the demo... I'm sad

Aw no, really? That is my favorite ability for WHM.

[Ankhira]

Aw no, really? That is my favorite ability for WHM.

Yeppp It might still be there in reborn mode at least..

[ForsakenRoe]

Aw no, really? That is my favorite ability for WHM.

Yeppp It might still be there in reborn mode at least..

Holy Sanctuary (the damage refund) appears to deal damage and also heal, so I guess they baked Assize's functionality into that somewhat. It's also an AOE around the enemy rather than yourself, so it's more controllable in something like Deep Dungeon

[ZephyrMenodora]

I'm curious if some jobs will end up losing some animations in the culling of buttons. Even if they replace Assize's effect somewhere else....the movement is just...gone?

I'm curious to see how much is lost between all the jobs I play or how it ends up feeling aesthetically as well as functionally.

I'm already a bit alarmed at losing some casting animations as someone who plays, well, casters.

[VeyaAkemi]

I'm curious if some jobs will end up losing some animations in the culling of buttons. Even if they replace Assize's effect somewhere else....the movement is just...gone?

This is honestly my biggest concern and I don't love the idea of losing out on Afflatus Misery even if the exact same effect still exists, and my current *hope* is that the skill glamour system they announced will account for this in terms of feeling, that is, allow us to skin Afflatus Misery over Totally-Not-Afflatus Misery.

[Sunhwapark]

I do like the idea of skill skins, I am wondering why they hadn't done them sooner.
I remember there being quite a few in Aion when I played that a lot.

Hmm, now I am a bit worried they might try and re-sell us something like Aero III's staff twirling animation.

[Aidorouge]

I’m not saying you are wrong but I really don’t trust the devs to made 23 evolved jobs, retain the 21 reborn jobs and specifically tailor encounters to always ensure the reborn jobs are just worse enough to always want to pick the evolved jobs but to not make the reborn jobs unplayable that doesn’t amount to anything other than a slight damage nerf

Like I used SCH because everyone knows spreadlo’s effect on the game meta but like what about current mechanics where cure 3 has a niche? Anytime you split the party cure 3 has a niche as it’s WHM’s only distance AOE heal. As soon as cure 3 makes a mechanic easier then 3% nerf on damage becomes a small price to pay

They've always made jobs dance to the tune of encounters though, so unless they're radically changing fights too, then its the same cadence but two different approaches to it. The fact that the next 2 jobs don't even have reborn kits would suggest they aren't planning to keep reborn mode around forever, or we don't know how they'll retool skills along with giving us new ones from 101-110. Cure 3 may not even exist in Evercold, or it has its effects/range changed, reborn versus evolved, so everything we know now may not apply anymore.

It's less about making reborn jobs unplayable and more about not going out of their way to accommodate them after a certain point, or how evolved might be objectively better in certain future encounters (while reborn remains neutral, neither a boon or a bane) or that other types of content may benefit more from evolved. Right now we're only thinking in terms of raiding, but what about Deep Dungeons or Field Operations, what if evolved allows easier play or unexpected synergy than reborn ever did?

We know they're changing open world content too, where depending on what they do with that, reborn kits may be functional but not necessarily optimal in Evercold's open world. Skill syncing is also changing, where they already plan to give evolved jobs a different road to getting all their signature skills by 50, whereas reborn jobs may not see any variance from what they have now. Even something as simple as "evolved DPS jobs get AOEs before reborn ones" is technically a "did more DPS in our testing" because we don't know the what, where, and when of their mystery metrics. And arguably, making reborn jobs continue to wait for their AOEs in that example is still "functional but not optimal" because those jobs have been doing that lower level content as they are for years, so in their eyes at least, there's nothing wrong with this picture.

I'm also curious how this is going to affect NPCs. Are Duty Support/Squadrons/Trusts also being changed to evolved or kept as they are? Even as things stand all of them are using different kits from each other with DS using current reborn kits but no AOEs, Squads are still using skills from before Shadowbringers, and Trusts use varied reborn kits with some uniqueness. We also know they're going to allow people to use NPCs while partied with other people (even if its just duos with 2 NPCs) so all the more reason they may revise NPC kits, and what would be more ideal for their limited AI than a evolved kit with fewer skills to keep track of yet still impactful enough to allow effective, if still slow, progress?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

It’s also interesting how showcases of PLD, DRG, and BRD are at worst a sidegrade to current iteration(?) seeminly, but when it comes to WHM, they put far more emphasis on “We have made this easier…”