How does SE plan to restore White Mage's identity as a healer?

[FoxyAreku]

White mage never lost its identity...?

It has always been and probably will always be the strongest healer for pure healing bar none, and it even does the most damage (in short bursts cos lol mp management). What more of an identity does it need?

White mages are still being used in savage progression to make heal-intensive fights easier at low item level, and they bring the mind buff which is basically a permanent balance on itself and the offhealer, if you think white mage is bad you might just be bad with it (or overthinking it).

[Leigaon]

I'd like them to continue with the HoT aspect of the job, along with the burst heals. Spreading them around. This won't be enough though. Adding various additions so that cures critical and regens can be stacked / reapplied in various ways. So that AST can still have the single or aoe heal that regens, but whm has a few more in their toolkits.

I feel we're seriously lacking in mitigation. I'd love to see something like NulMagi that increases the parties defense to magical damage for 15s. En-light / en-brave to add to the party for either increased damage / tp regen etc. It's hard though, looking back at white mage I see them as those that really cure, remove poisons. Problem is curing is a staple but there's not much needed in terms of Esuna, things like stacks of poisons can make a party for a bad time but also some situations they can just leave it.

In terms of something in the end-game land. I can see how AST are loved since they can toss a balance at a proper time. I want to see how they re-do the skills in 4.0. Like repose, don't need that and when you do it's resisted. Fluid aura, no need for that knock back with the exception of early dungeons. I haven't done PVP in a while but it was fun to use there! Maybe keep the KB a PvP trait.

Hard to think about ways to make it sustain the party since most of the instances the way a party stays alive is by knowing the dance or damage dealing the living crap out of it.

I think in the end the healing aspect will be very little in terms of difference between the 3 jobs. We may get more ways to add regens, critical heal while SCH can have the fairy do some outside healing + a few things like a regen while the SCH casts barriers. AST will be able to toggle to one or the other and keep up but will have a few toolkits to make sure they don't fall behind. What will most likely determine their identity is what support they can give. That..to me, is difficult. But this is why I play games instead of making them.

[Docteur_Fluttershy]

SE could do some good regen spells that would be for WHM while being really helped by SCH and AST toolkit, with for example:

A regen that would either heal if the target isnt full life, or add a stack of 1% damage reduction if the target is full health when the regen ticks. put the Regen potency at 40, make it go for 60s.

If in this 60s, the target was full for 5 ticks on the 20 there are, he will have 5% reduction for the remaining time, up to 20% at the end (which would last for 3s).

May feel really powerfull, but i dont think anyone can manage to have a tank full life in a raid for 60s straight on every tick of 3s, unless the sch/ast spam shield on it.

(i'm not saying WHM need that, i'm just sayin there are a lot of possible aspect that arent exploited, this ability may be really overpowered, or totally useless depending on who use it.)

[Neela]

I think this is something every healer main can agree on. White Mage is currently seriously lacking in an identity as a healer.

actually not true...

their identity is build around the strongest stacking HoTs & the strongest burst heal out of the three healer cls'. honestly i don't get why the whm-topics increased in the last few weeks out to heaven... "whm are dead", "whm toolkit lacks compared to bla", "why should i play whm at all?" and now even "whats the whm identity?"... i really don't get it... well maybe its just me

edit: and holy & assizes are the best aoe dmg skill of all healers toolkits... maybe just in my opionen as well though xD

Cheers
Yuni

[Dzian]

its in the mind of people that WHM is the "pure healer with most OP heals" since it was the case back before 3.0, where there was only SCH and WHM, and sch didnt have emergency tactic and indom, making the WHM the only healer with 150+ potency AoE and 400+ solo target heal.

That isnt the case anymore since 3.0, but the mindset of the players havent changed a bit, so we're stuck labelled as the "pure healer".

I've always thought of white mage as the reactive healer. As it reacts to damage taken and heals it accordingly.

Scholars have always been the pro active healer. Where the idea is to shield the party before the damage is taken and thus you don't need to heal it after.

This is where I think so many scholars are bad because they play it in a reactive fashion and find they struggle or can't keep up. It's very rare to see a scholar galvanise a party before a stacking mechanic hits for example instead they all toss it out afterwards and end up tossing even more heals to top people off. Or struggling because they don't have the powerfully heals of a Whm. They try to play scholar reactively like white mage and it doesn't work well that way.

Ast I believe is meant to be the middle of the road. Half way between proactive and reactive bit I've not unlocked it so can't comment on how it plays. Maybe it's stepping on whm's toes a little too much I dunno. going only on what I've read it seems that ast is almost a carbon copy of whm with a couple of gimmicks thrown in. which would suggest the problem is with the asts identity and not the whms

I do find it amusing that the op wants to reinforce whm's identity as a healer. And most replies pertain to its dps. Says alot for the state of the game lol

[Exiled_Tonberry]

@Dzlan: There's no such thing as a reactive healer. Healing in it's nature is reactive, the only exception being shielding.
Labeling WHM as a "reactive" healer is basically saying it functions as a standard healer.
Same with people calling WHM a "pure" healer. It's just a fancy way of saying that WHM offers nothing else but healing. There's no difference between the way I heal and the way a AST heals. It's a silly buzzword that needs to stop.

[Dzian]

@Dzlan: There's no such thing as a reactive healer. Healing in it's nature is reactive,

your second sentence directly contradicts your first. you do realise that?

WHM is a reactive healer by very definition of the word Reactive. it is a job that reacts to the damage the party takes and heals accordingly. thus it is a reactive job.

SCH is a proactive job. because the idea is to shield the party before the damage happens and thus mitigate it.

if A boss is going to whack the tank for 15k. the whm typically waits for the hit to land and then heals it up after wards. (Reactive)

A scholar should shield the tank before that 15k hit lands and thus mitigate as much of it as possible thus the tank only takes 6 or 7k damage instead of 15k. (proactive)

the problem many scholars seem to have is they play it reactively like whm. they wait for that 15k to hit the tank and then try to heal it all. and this is why they struggle and say scholars lack powerful healing power. if they had shieleded the tank then theyd only have 6-7k to heal and not 15.

WHM identity is fine. if there's a problem it would be with asts identity as seems a fairly common opinion from various reading its a carbon copy of a whm with a couple of gimmicks.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

@Neela
Because them having the "strongest" hots and "strongest burst heals" is not true anymore AST and SCH heals are just as strong, with Cure III being the last strong heal they have left.
Also what strong heals and regens actually translates to is a plain healer. Both healers can do both of these, but they can also do more. There's nothing WHM bring uniquely to a raid, and it's blatantly obvious

Basically you fall into the category of people that Fluttershy just mentioned. The group that still thinks WHM is strongest healer, even though that was only true until AST became a thing and SCH got high burst heals.
Heck it was even true in 3.0 where AST has weaker base heals. Now it's not. Everyone can burst heal. Everyone can regen. Everyone can mitigate damage (except WHM lmfao). WHM needs some improvements, because right now it's just a plain healer that offers absolutely nothing but the basics.

[Neela]

@Neela
Because them having the "strongest" hots and "strongest burst heals" is not true anymore AST and SCH heals are just as strong, with Cure III being the last strong heal they have left.
Also what strong heals and regens actually translates to is a plain healer. Both healers can do both of these, but they can also do more. There's nothing WHM bring uniquely to a raid, and it's blatantly obvious

not true again...

Either Ast nor Eos regs will ever reach the amount of stacked media ll + regen + asylium on the HoT side. On burst healing whm got insta Benediction, Tetra and Assizes and is way more flexibel on "oh shit" moments than Scho with his "weak" aether insta Heal or Asts Essential.

It's true that Sch/Ast are way ahead with their utility-skills but looking on raw healing whms are still king.

edit: All these whm complaining threads are just annoying... because half of the arguments aren't even thought till the end. im lazy right now so i don't will get the name but someone in here already stated that Schs identity is build around preprotection via the shield skills and Ast around the card utility - whm stays loyal to their proper identity back in the days its not about preventing dmg or boost dmg but instantly react to dmg. that's what its all about - honestly its pretty simple.... i wonder why so less people get it.

[Docteur_Fluttershy]

again with that? really?
Benediction isnt a oh-shit button, it has a long animation sequence, and if you use it as an oh-shit button, you'll just heal yourself.
tetra is 700 potency every minute, sch has lustrate up to 6 times per minute for 600 potency => 3600 potency.
When you know you need about 3200 potency to fully heal 40k HP, you'll see that the lustrate are way better at that than tetra or benediction, because you can control it, where benediction, if it actualy land, will have a portion of it in overhealing.

and AST instant heal is at 1000 potency when the HP are low, so if you forget about benediction as a oh-shit button, whm is dead last.

For the regen aspect, diurnal AST has the same regen ability as WHM. (medica II + regen + asylum => 50+150+100 is nearly the same regen than collective unconscious + aspected benefic + aspected helios 150+140+40, which make the AST do more regen.)

So in both way, WHM doesnt have the upper hand.
The only real upper hand WHM have is cure III and benediction (not as an oh-shit button).

And dont talk about aspected helios and medica II range, else i'll bring the asylum necessity of staying on the same spot for 24s, while CO gives the regen and you can move out. (moreover, AST can prolongates the regens).

oh, and by the way, sch has indom instead of assize, which heal for higher, has a lower CD, and isnt required to use often cause it doesnt influence a lot in his mp management.