Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Originally Posted by javid

Logs listed in this post:
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/zXbgN...aling&source=8

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/8HDyt...ing&source=753

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/NQbWL...ing&source=129

This guy is trolling all of you. If you go into these logs and look at what the cohealers are doing what you'll see that:
- The astro in the first log precast aspected benefic and did 0 healing for the rest of the fight.
- The astro in the second log cast helios 5 times, aspected helios 5 times, used essential dignity once, and used collective unconscious once.
- The astro in the third log had 9 casts of aspected helios, 3 casts of helios, 1 essential dignity, and 3 casts of aspected benefic.

So in effect these white mages were all solo healing while their cohealers just did whatever.

GIANT WALL OF TEXT INCOMING! ('cause I have thought about this extensively for the last few days)

After having gone through the stages of grief about the massacre committed on my main (as in... I learn other classes only to become a better WHM!) here are some (okay, plenty of) thoughts from me, on how to fix the mess created with White Mage 4.0. Partially inspired by what others have written here, I also try to keep in mind three things:

1) Any rework should require as little new code as possible, given that would be expensive (time is money). So let's make it as easy and cheap for SE as possible.

2) Require as few new things as possible. It is obvious to me that the devs did not have any new, shiny ideas for role skills, so for the most part they just plundered existing ones and some classes got the short stick there -- most of all WHM, just as in general healers were just stuck painfully with "lets plunder what we have and make them pay for it", while for DPS things look considerably less painful. I admit I draw a blank in terms of truly useful new healing role skills myself (duh, you keep people alive when not making mobs more dead, what is to do there beyond that!), so lets work with what exists (which in one go also adresses #1).

3) The topic of "button bloat" -- given I play on a controller I feel this painfully, so my ideas revolve around "I have one cross hotbar for healing, one for damaging, one for "everything else" (and a few things on all three hotbars, like sprint -- just in case I need to be fast).

Tinkering & Tweaking for Role Skills

1) Give us back Stoneskin I & II

There was no good reason of robbing us of our only, last remaining mitigation after ALREADY it had been needlessly nerfed into the ground. Instead increase the mitigation to make our raw power a bit more even to what AST brings to the table while not overly so. The former 18% might be too much, but I think around 15% would be good (while 10 is a joke). Given Stoneskin II can't be used in combat as it is, our Stoneskin I could then be used as a pre-emptive help against tank busters IF we have the time for that (instead -- more commonly -- just healing through them), and Stoneskin II giving us the breathing room during initital pulls.

It is okay if WHM has mainly only one real mitigating option and that is a bit limited, we are White Mages not Scholars -- but make that ONE thing we have at least remotely good, not the "lol Stoneskin" it is right now, with tanks running off without almost by default since it feels so feeble that it's not worth waiting for it. This "used somemtimes but at important points" skill can happily stay on my 3rd hotbar that way, together with Protect and Eye for an Eye if I chose it. Something to contemplate about Stoneskin in general would be to change it from based on the HP of the receiver to a stat of the WHM casting it -- I don't know whether our attack power, healing power, or even a secondary stat would be a good candidate, just something to throw out there to contemplate -- it sucks if you cast Stoneskin and you are stuck with undergeared folks who are squishy before and stay squishy afterward...

2) Change what we contribute to the role skills.

a) As others have stated already, removing Esuna from everyone to buy it back -- bad. It is not always needed but it is needed way too often to carelessly remove it, and people don't like healers to sort out their skills before an instance can start. So give everyone back their version of Esuna (and for simplicity, why not call it the same thing for everyone: the iconic Esuna). One role skill option freed for everyone and fixes a gap in development as we level up.

b) Removing Shroud of Saints / Luminous Aether into role skills was a bad move as well, we White Mages and Astrologians NEED that for MP management, period. I think removing the nerf from Aetherflow would make sure that SCH has no need for that one at all, and as you give it back to WHM / AST it fixes another gap in our development as we level and again there is one more role skill option for AST/WHM that would be felt painfully otherwise.

Of course that means two role skill options need to be filled now, and you know what: As a main WHM I am happy to contribute! Therefore:

c) Repose becomes a role skill. Role skills seem to be centered mainly about tactical choices and options, and this is a very tactial, optional one. It's not that important in most instances (if at all) but where it is, it is GOOD (Brayflox…), plus it is helpful in solo content, just as if you play with a team that actually utilizes it tactically. So: Repose/Sleep becomes a role skill.

d) As others have stated, Fluid Aura is… eh. And now that damage is removed it will have even less use because YOU DO NOT PUSH MOBS IN INSTANCES (few, rare situations aside). While in solo content, with a group that uses it tactically etc., it can be VERY helpful. So make Fluid Aura (probably under a new name) a role skill.

And last but not least

e) Divine Seal… ONE OF OUR JOB SKILLS. Something iconic about the iconic White Mage. Now, I get that this would be EXTREMELY useful for the other two healers (not as much as Protect, but still…), so removing it from role skills would be … eh. Therefore here my suggestion: Divine Seal stays with White Mage as it was before -- the boost and duration was good, since we mainly use it for short time but powerful bursts either to refresh Regen & Medica 2 or as one of our "oh shit" buttons (and those "oh shit" buttons are part of our core identity!). While at the same time Largesse ALSO stays as it is -- weaker potency but with longer duration, which would offer some benefit to SCH and AST and their play style, but not as powerfully as the powerhouse of healing, WHM, and if a WHM wants that as an additional "moar healz pls" button they can make that tactical choice as a role skill.

Another thing you could absolutely use as a role skill for healers is

f) the old Virus. Yes other roles have it as well now, so what? It is a good but not overly powerful tool for damage mititation and in tune with the general role / identities of all healers. So depending of whether Virus becomes a role skill for healers (again) or not, you could scratch one of the contributions above from WHM for this one to have your number of options for role skills.

With these changes things essential to our toolkit(s) would stay where they belong (in our guaranteed toolkit) while things that are optional but useful become role skills, and White Mage would have good options instead of being forced to buy back all the things that are part of our essential dignity err identity ^^

(As a side note here… Rescue? Really, SE, really? Nice idea on paper, yeah, but every single healer I talked with -- just as myself -- says the same: This has little to no beneficial uses for the game as it is, but TONS of uses to be abused for trolling. Almost like… if you have that as a role skill you admit you are fond of trolling…)

(Side note #2 here, lending my voice to my beloved tanks… stun as a role skill? That is even worse than Esuna / Shroud of Saints. As a tank there are plenty of things You.Have.To.Stun (or at least you should, if you can). So please reconsider putting that among role skills and maybe instead put another protective buff there --something tanks can never have enough of, as I can vouch for as a healer who picks up the pieces when they don't (use them)… ^^; )

Reworking the new gauge and skills

Here I fear we have to do some serious coding work, no way around it because right now this thing is broken and DoA across the board, only a few pieces can be raised from the dead. But lets stay as close as possible to the broken pieces we have…

First of all: DO YOU NEVER AGAIN DARE COME NEAR WHM WITH ANYTHING THAT IS RNG! Again for those in the back, NO MORE RNG EVER WITH WHM! When it comes to healing it needs to be reliable anyway, but for WHM? We are the reliable powerhouses of heals and damage you can count on, so we are the LEAST likely candidate for anything RNG. Keep that for our fellow ASTs, if any. You don't gamble if you are a white mage.

That being said, here we go…

All in all, keep things as they are but change three fundamental things:

Secret of the Lily:
We still have a gauge here, but one that has two parts to it now (like quite a few others out there as well). One is a meter that slowly fills up every time we provide direct heals (Cure 1 & 2, Medica 1 & 2, Tetragrammaton, Benedict, maybe Assize) and/or it fills up by the amount we have healed with our direct heals and regenerative effects (raw healing power = pure healer identity). But given that it is GOOD playstyle for a WHM to also do some darn powerful damage (that is our main utility!) I think it would be a good idea to reward this as well so the meter also fills up as we cast Aeros, Holies and Stones and/or it fills up by the amount of damage we have dished out (so essentially heals and damage are treated the same for the gauge). NO PROCS HERE! Reliably filling the meter a little bit more with every cast, every point of damage/heals.

Once the meter reaches 100% a lily blooms while the meter resets, and we can get up to 3 lilies (no need to rework that part of the UI). Every lily we have provides a small boost to our power as a healer and damage dealer, maybe even scaled so we have an incentive not to just burn them and instead work toward an "ascended state" where we are closer to nature = stronger forces of nature. Numbers are a matter of balance, but maybe something like one lily gives you 2% to your heals & damage, two lilies give you 5%, and three lilies give you 10% -- that way if you have three lillies you are as powerful as a damage dealer as you were before if you switched on Cleric Stance and you get a higher reward for every additional lily and thus an incentive not to just mindlessly burn any lilies you get straight away. And please… never again tinkering with the time of cooldowns like this. As others have stated, we plan on the use of those CDs at specific points of fights, so it is totally useless to WHM (and usually healers & tanks in general).

But of course you also need reasons to burn lilies, so WHM has fun things to play with and tactical choices to make. In come our two new toys -- same name, different effects.

A "Secret of the Lily II" trait could just somehow boost this entire mechanic somehow -- by making the meter fill faster, unlock additional options (see below), give us 4 or 5 instead 3 lilies (an additional buffer we can burn as needed, while not increasing the buff to ourselves as we have it with 3 lilies!), something like that. Just not too OP please, I don't want WHM to become the new (overpowered) AST...

Divine Benison:

I can think of two things here, going by the name of this one (we get a divine blessing). If we trigger this one we burn one lily and in return we get...

a) get a massive boost to our core identity -- heals and damage -- for a short time. Exact numbers are a matter of balancing, but essentially I think we should become (for a short time!) absolutely equals of a dedicated DPS in terms of the damage we dish out, or become able to use this as another "oh shit" button we WHMs are famous for, to pick up the pieces when things go south.

b) a change to certain parts of our core toolkit and thus identity as "the pure, powerful healer with a background in the divine/nature", providing more utility to ourselves and the group. As we burn a lily the next skill/ability with a connection to Divine Benision changes its effect. Examples that make it worth to burn a lily but not being ridiculously OP I think could be:
- Your Esuna becomes a party-wide cleanse of 1 debuff (thus giving us more room to dps more / heal more instead of spamming Esuna… I look at you, Archers at Baelsar's Wall… or whenever too many people eat AoEs that paralyze/sleep them and we have to clean up the mess...)
- Your Stoneskin becomes more powerful (number again a matter of balancing) and/or you can cast Stoneskin 2 in combat.
- Your Presence of Mind a) has a longer duration or b) becomese a party-wide buff (personally I favor the latter, to give us A BIT more utility beyond just "hey we can dps well")
- Your Divine Seal a) has a longer duration and/or b) becomes even stronger or c) becomes a party-wide buff to heals and damage output (the latter please not to powerful, orientation for this should be Balance and Arrow from AST in my opinion, maybe a bit less if you make the heals and DPS of WHM stronger than those of AST -- but a nice synergy would be "WHM in the party increases heals also for our co-healer, so they will be happy to see us!)

Personally I am in favor of option b), because it would give us more utility, has less a chance to either be too weak or too powerful, AND it gives us more tactical choices and things to play with, so we are not just "pushers of three buttons".

Plenary Indulgence:

This becomes our "WE ARE THE HEALZ" one and the forces of nature are smiling on us and our team. First of all, scratch confessions as it is now, it is a broken sytem beyond fixing. No more confessions on our team mates. We could play with confessions as a stack on the White Mage to use but honestly… why? To give us another buff to watch and use? Nope. Lets stay with KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Therefore…

As we hit this button it burns a lily and one of two (or three) potential effects are triggered, depending on what we do next afterwards (and there HAS be a timer on Plenary Indulgence! The gods/nature waits for no one…)

a) Our next raise becomes WAY better than what the others can do. We are the miracle healers! I think there are two things our Raise should be able to do if we combine it with Plenary Indulgence (also again in tune with the name of this skill and our core identity)

1) If we cast it on a fallen comrade that person is revived without weakness. Making white mage the first choice to raise people while at the same time of course this eats more painfully into our MP… so who should cast it, the Red Mage or Scholar who might have the spare MP but weakness follows or the White Mage…? Tactical team choice! Raise and shine, my not-anymore-fallen-comrade!

2) If we cast it on a team mate who is NOT yet Ko'ed, it has a smilar effect to the pomander of restoration, but with a timer to it -- it becomes Rebirth instead of Raise. I am aware that this could be totally OP and broken, but hear me out… So you burn considerably into your MP for this, have this long cast time of Raise (or sacrifice a Swiftcast)… as a lazy failsafe just in case that comrade might die with the next… whatever, 10, 20 seconds or so? No. You would only use it if a) you know shit might hit the fan soon (timer to that one is important!) and b) you know you might not have the time to then cast a raise and c) you know that you can afford the costs (MP … and sacrificing a lily!) and d) you cannot just as well and more cheaply heal them so they DON'T die. So this function should never be something along "oh I just lean back and don't have to worry about heals cause they will come back anyway", but as a costly failsafe. Oh and if they come back they WILL be weakened.

b) Our next party-wide heal becomes POWERFUL. Something that puts us on equal ground with an AST casting lightspeed, in terms of HPS, at the very least. So we see a massive boost to the potency of medica 1 and medica 2 and/or their range becomes increased and/or they can be cast WAY faster. Personally I am in favor of "make it considerably faster and a small but decent amount of potency increase", similar to our current lightspeed for AST. That way we can spam a medica or three very fast but it darn eats into our MP while costing us a lily… but if things are going down the drain room-wide you will be glad to have a WHM in your party.

c) This is something… eh, idk, but it might be worth contemplating it… to stay with the theme of "Indulgence", the next Stoneskin 2 we cast becomes REALLY powerful (heck, if necessary make it more costly in terms of lilies/MP in return). Subject to balancing, but again I think looking at the bole from AST is a good benchmark. So maybe increase it to 20% but we have to pay (and work) for it instead gated behind RNG, and it is not a 20% reduction of damage (powerful!) on a timer but our Stoneskin 2 becomes (the old) 18% or even 20% of a buffer. If combined with Divine Benision (I think then it should burn all 3 lilies!) you could even cast an empowered Stoneskin 2 in combat whenever you know "here comes the big, room-wide ouch that could spell a wipe…" in return for all your resources.

With all these changes you do not make us encroach too much into the territory of SCH (proactive damage mitigation) or AST (versatile jack of all trades) but focus again on our core identity: powerful heals, powerful damage, and some powerful but limited protection and a little bit of extra party utility, while freeing several slots for role skills so we can actually make choices depending on tactical needs and personal style, as it should be.

And last but not least…

Raw Numbers

Please, SE… rethink the numbers we have seen in those tooltips. If AST is more powerful as a healer than WHM (as the number crunchers have proven here) and more or less equal in dpsing power WHILE providing so much powerful utility, something is broken. They need to be able to heal normal content just fine, no question about that. But given the versatility of AST I think they should sacrifice some of their time DPSing/playing with cards for having to heal a bit more in return, while WHM focuses just on powerful healing to give us time for dpsing (our core team utility) and occasionally (if we really have to, those lilies are valuable to us!) protecting / buffing our party and in general being the main healer who takes care of things when "things go south" -- the failsafe of the party. So at the very best AST should be equal in terms of raw healing power, not massively stronger like we saw in those tooltips. If AST (which in many ways is "White Mage with cards and the options of shields instead of regen" right now anyway) is a little bit weaker in base healing power but can balance that with burning their new minor arcana I think that would be a good balance (no pun intended -- have them draw those cards for heals and dps to become our equals in raw power, together with their Earthly (godly) Star.

So make us the strongest healer in numbers and thanks to our strong heals also the one who can spend the most time lobbing those (comparatively) painfully strong stones and really damaging gusts of wind. That way we are "pure healers" but still can provide some much-needed utility and have fun playing with our toolkit while we are the saviors when the best laid plans of SCH/AST are laid to waste.

PS: I am only SCH 50 and all, but please… I lend my voice to my fellow healers here… re-consider the nerf you have done to Bane. It looks really really painful and makes this class less interesting for regular 4-man content where you help mopping up trash pulls frequently (something where WHM, no doubt, shines).

Originally Posted by MintnHoney

You called me out for being rude and unproductive, but you're the one who should check your attitude.

You've suggested that we shouldn't complain about a perfectly broken and useless addition to our Job because RNG is involved, which is a staple of AST's gameplay, ignoring the fact that AST was built around RNG, rather than having it tacked on at the end of its development. AST gets 6x as many potential, unique benefits each with minimum modifiers equalling to the maximum possible potential of WHM's new Lilies, which the AST can give to anyone they like, or manipulate to empower the other benefits. AST can even throw away its bad draw for a second chance if it likes.

WHM didn't get a "less pretty dress" it got handed a diseased blanket that we're supposed to believe is a "less pretty dress."