Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Originally Posted by Vexander

snip.

I adore these changes. Wonderful job ironing out an identity for White Mage. If I could include an additional skill, it would be Haste since it is among the few FF staple abilities we have not seen directly. It could functional similarly to Arrow, albeit with TP adjustments to perhaps offset the struggle melee DPS have with TP consumption. Furthermore, I would drop Thin Air down to level 40, thus replacing Divine Seal while keeping with White Mage's theme of being the strongest "pure healer."

Originally Posted by Heilstos

Hey Semirhage,

This Point finnished the lilies are stacking with the "Spear" from the AST. So it we can say:

1 Lilye : 25 % CD reduction (Assize, Tetragrammaton and Divine Benison have than 45 seconds CD than 60 seconds and Asylum 68 seconds CD than 90 seconds)

2 Lilies : 32 % CD reduction (Assize, Tetragrammaton and Divine Benison have than 41 seconds CD than 60 seconds and Asylum 61 seconds CD than 90 seconds)

3 Lilies : 44 % CD reduction (Assize, Tetragrammaton and Divine Benison have than seconds 33 CD than 60 seconds and Asylum 50 seconds CD than 50 seconds)

That is could be great for the Whm. BUT the AST can not get feedback about the lilies form his/her Whm partner (without voicechat). There is the Problem for me :C . I would help as AST with my Cards to support the whm with his/her lilies.

That... still isn't a good solution. The Astro is significantly better off burning Spear for an enhanced Balance they can place on Samurai, Dragoon or Monk. As good as Assize is, nothing will surpass raw power on a dedicated DPS.

The only two suggestions I could think of for Astro sects are, Allow them to be used as a cooldown with something like a 30 second recast timer and for the next 15 seconds Astro would be allowed to use Shields/regens of course probably nerf these absurd potencies.
Remove Sects, and the Balance Card from the game both are unhealthy and extremely hard to balance.
Also Sch with Regens.. This has got to stop you keep saying we want all healers to have their own idenity and then you give all 3 with HoT, Shields. Healers in general need to be be changed. This feels more like we are getting homogenized and I am scared for any future healer at this point.

I feel like the iconic pure healer of the Final Fantasy series is losing its way in 4.0, and the gap between WHM, SCH, and AST is larger than ever before.

Scholar and Astrologian looked great, with new, flashy, and fun skills that compliment them. WHM seemed to have their new skills slapped on, not fully thought out, and are just there, instead of complimenting what a WHM can already do.

For starters, WHM is losing a lot of skills to Role Skills.

This is like being robbed, and then having you stuff sold back to you. Just to get back to where WHM were, they must take 5 skills they already inherently learned (Lucid Dreaming, Largesse, Esuna, Cleric Stance, Protect). At that point, they cannot take E4E (a wonderful skill for damage mitigation), Rescue (the lives I could have saves with this!), or any others.

Sure, Protect and Esuna may not be needed by two healers in 8 / 24 man content, and on paper that seems fine. In reality, when it comes to non-statics, half the time your co-healer doesn't communicate with you, and people will get annoyed waiting for healers to sort their skills out. You don't want to be a bad healer, and since you cannot trust your partner to support you, you are left slotting these skills. Everyone has Esuna right now, yet people still die to Doom in Dun Scaith.

Secret of the Lily:
Lilies themselves only lower the cooldown of a few select skills. This mechanic is boring. Procs aren't fun, they're unpredictable, and have no place in keeping someone alive. I could have this gauge turned off, and it wouldn't make a difference on how I heal. With how often a WHM uses Assize & Tetra, that's all Secret of the Lily will be going towards anyways. The bonuses are mediocre, and what we can do with the lilies is lackluster

When was the last time someone got excited over seeing Freecure proc? Exactly. Yet here we have an entire gauge and skills based what is nothing more than a fancy looking Spear buff.

Divine Benison:

Locked behind lilies, and they burn all lilies on your gauge when used, with no extra benifit for using more than one Lily. I like the idea of this spell, but it feels more like a punishment for using it if it burns all lilies without extra benefit. Maybe a bonus of 12%/15%/18% damage absorbed? This makes it stronger than Stoneskin, with the middle ground being what we currently know it as. Course, all numbers aren't final, and for all I know this is how it now is.

Plenary Indulgence:

This skill is bad, and whoever came up with it should feel bad. More RNG based nonsense. It only works if I heal someone and proc Confession, and within a 30 second window, and they have to be near me, and the moon has to be in the fifth house while I'm singing "I'm a Little Teapot" in D Minor, and am wearing my lucky Hatsune Miku socks. Get rid of it entirely and give us a real healing skill, please. Something that enhances or compliments what we already do, as opposed to something that's a gamble.

All this RNG stuff makes me feel like I'm going to be working at Gold Saucer, not healing a party.

In conclusion,
White Mages are supposed to be the "pure healing job", yet the only thing good I have heard anyone say is that Thin Air will make our DPS amazing. There's a serious issue when the best thing one can say about a healer will be its ability to DPS, instead of performing its primary role.

The Live Letter made WHM look uninteresting compared to the other two healers, and everything since the embargo enforced this. There's nothing interesting here compared to what the other two healers are getting, and can already bring to the table.

The iconic healing job of Final Fantasy should be shown off and get people excited, not make them shake their head in disappointment and talk about DPS. Give us Haste / Hastega, Dispel as a Role Skill (that's right, let's get some buffs going on bosses for all healers to remove!), Slow/Slowga. The entire gauge mechanic should compliment what we can do, not feel like it was tacked on because people were running out of time.

Sorry about the wall of text. Been thinking on this for days, but too busy to find the time to post

Whm: Utility needs to be addressed.
Mp we should have a trait that increases our Mp Regen while in battle.
Lilies and all of the new abilities need reworking.
Thin Air and PoM should be added together..
Ast: Sects should be a cd that allow a small time to regen or shield or removed.
Balance Card should allow timer of sects to be doubled so you can be in regen or shield stance longer instead.
Earthly Star this potency needs to be changed.
Sch: Whisper Dawn is my only concern with this job it should be changed so it can interact with adlo, and or Succor crit chance.
Scholar honestly seems to be very well balanced maybe look into giving them a tiny bit of aoe.
Also with the ability pruning you made very obvious gaps in abilities for alot of jobs for low level players. You should add traits at the very least for the really huge gaps for low level new players; And while you are at it you should look into low level dungeons for these new players.

Originally Posted by Zhexos

As some of you may have noticed, we have consolidated the white mage feedback threads into one location, so we can keep track and collect valuable information to relay to the development team.

We appreciate your understanding, and please continue to share your feedback on this thread.

Good to hear that you guys are taking our views into account.

I'll let the White Mages continue to give their opinions on White Mage specifics but I would like to express my concerns about the Healer Role skills in general. When compared to the Tank, Caster, Melee and Ranged Physical role skills there is such stark contrast its ridiculous. The three tank's all lost abilities that were part of their core kits. However for every loss of a Silence for PLD, it was given to the other two. Or for every loss of a Off GCD Stun from 2, the third received it. This is the philosophy that **SHOULD** have been used across all roles. Melee and Ranged lost core synergy and support abilities to the Role Ability list which allows all of those jobs to fill that synergy, thus opening up more group compositions. This too was good. Even casters received abilities that were niche but only 1 of the 2 casters had and now both of them do. These are once again the types of abilities that SHOULD be in the cross role skills lists.

However, the Healer Role Abilities literally steals the same/similar skills from all three Healer Jobs just to force them to take them back. Esuna/Leeches/Exalted Detriment is the biggest culprit here, but the Healing Potency abilities of both WHM and AST were removed and given back via the Role Skills while the SCH remains. I include the Enmity Reduction/Mana Refresh skills of Shroud of Saints and Luminious Aether here even though SCH does not have either skill, but because of Aetherflow and the fact that SCH enmity is split between the Player and the Pet they do not require the skill. All the while leaving all three healers with flavour versions of Raise.

In general it feels like the development team could not think of any useful/interesting cross role abilities for healers and decided they'd just take away abilities all 3 jobs had and replace them with flavorless versions. Thus making the cross-role abilities less of a choice, more of a forced meta and completely unfun. Unless there is no need to cleanse, the majority of healers will be forced into a meta of Protect, Esuna, Lucid Dreams, Swiftcast + 1 more. Please consider putting back the flavored Cleanses, Shroud/Luminous Aether, and Divine Seal/Synastry as the Job abilities they are in 3.x. Even if we had 7 or 8 choices instead of the 10 most other classes have it would be a huge step forward for the class. Its simply UNFUN for you to remove abilities everyone already has in order to force them to choose them.

TLDR: Don't "steal" existing abilities all 3 jobs have in order to force them to take them back with role abilities.