Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Just got my WHM to 70 today. I also completed both ex primals and expert dungeons.
Thought I'd chime in with my opinion too.



I can't believe how clunky and impractical the confession system is.
Starting from the very top, you can't even read the remaining time for confessions. You have to go to their name just to see if the buff is about to fall off or not, which is extremely annoying. Confessions shouldn't fall off at all.

As for the RNG around it, 20% chance to get one only from a very small part of your healing toolkit is ridiculous. It's not uncommon for me to go an entire boss fight and not get even 2 procs, taking into consideration how often I directly cast heals, let alone a stack of 3 for the full potency. It's much more realistic to use Plenary at 1 stack, which equals up to a 400 potency heal, which is straight garbage not matter how you look at it.

And you would think this would all work better in raids because of how much you heal, but I actually have made EVEN LESS use of confessions in raids than I have in dungeons. Raids consists of high AOE dmg above tons of single target tank damage, so you'll find yourself casting Medica more than anything.

Several things needs to happen to the Confession system for it to be a strong addition to the WHM kit.

-The timer needs to DISAPPEAR.

There's no reason for this to be on a timer, seriously. It only makes using the mechanic that much more annoying.

-It needs a proc buff

20% is very silly. You can sit there spamming Cure II on the tank for over 15 seconds and not get a single proc. I've done it before! The most I've went without getting a proc from cure spam is 26 seconds.
Just put it at 50% for a confession stack.

-It needs a potency buff

One stack of Confession is less than a cure...Three stacks is less than a Cure II. For all the trouble we go through to get this thing going, the least we can get is a extremely potent heal.

-It needs a better way to AOE heal

We can all agree on this. The AOE implementation of this mechanic is garbage. It's hard enough to get a stack on a tank, let alone multiple DPS.
I think it would be perfect if the effect of Clemency was taking and implemented here. Full heal for the target, gradually lower healing for the rest. So a 600 potency heal may end up being 300 potency for the rest of your party, which is fine.

-It needs an added benefit

Having confessions alone on your target doesn't do anything, but what if it gave a healing buff, or small mitigation or something of the sorts to better make it feel like it's worth building these things up in the first place?
With the Lily System (which is flawed in it's own ways), you have to choose between CD reduction, or Bension. Why not choose if we want to leave Confessions stacks on a member for buffs, or exhaust it for a heal?
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Honestly this entire system feels more like it's working against the healer rather than working with it. AST and SCH are both allowed to have extremely powerful skills at their disposal without much penalty, but with WHM there's so many loops and jumps you have to go through just to be rewarded with mediocre healing in a single target.

It just doesn't feel good at all.

Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

...
Several things needs to happen to the Confession system for it to be a strong addition to the WHM kit.

-The timer needs to DISAPPEAR.
...

100% agree.

Ok so another person who's 70 and doing ex primals etc...

My take on WHM:

Has just as good burst healing as before but with infinite mana. Seriously, the combination of lilies, Thin air, lucid dream, assize, and weirdly confession stacks is insane. Absolutely no need to meld piety if you play it well.

All of the above come with caveats though.

First off confession stacks are clunky and gimmicky. At best they'll help you top someone off or save a bit of mana. If you double whm you don't know which stacks are yours, even when you're single whm you don't know how much time is left which is ridiculous.
Stacks should proc 100% on crit heals (in addition to the baseline 20%) and last at least 90s to carry us through from one boss mechanic to another. I feel this would scale well with gear but more on that later. And possibly stacks from different WHM should be combined into the same and both WHM should be able to consume them (we already have shared mechanics with LBs this could be similar). But in hindsight all of these suggestions are kinda pointless because of what I'm going to say next.


Appart from all that here's basically where WHM stands:

Today it's a monster healer, it can pull even the laziest of groups through content. Especially double whm scenarios.
But that's only true for now, WHM DOES NOT scale well with gear and content.
As gear increases and players get more familiar with encounters we will use less Cures, use less mana, and have no raid utility. All the good aspects of lilies, or even confession stacks if they ever fix them will become irrelevant in almost everything but the upmost high end content. And even then... This will make all the other healers shine in comparison.

Basically white mage feels like a pair of training wheels. Really good to have in the beginning but quickly you'll even forget you ever needed them.

Ok lvl. 70 AST here currently levelling WHM lvl. 66
A raid utlitity suggestion

The biggest thing about WHM is the lack of raid utility when progression content is done and clears are easy to come by. Thin Air is a huge tool in the WHM arsenal but what if that became the raid utility. I suggest that the WHM can place Thin Air on someone else while still procuring the effects as well. In a raid setting being able to give the other healer 12 seconds of no mp costs would be huge and other healers would be grateful for it. Other classes could benefit it from, paladin now having a few large mp spenders that are calculated on how much mp you have. Summoners could do large amounts of a rotation and still be fine. it's a simple fix that would make them raid worthy and have raid utility.

I feel like the development team might be a little out of touch with the playstyle of WHM as of late. Ideally you don't want to be spamming Cure or Cure II and only rarely selectively using them for tankbusters, and even then you have things like Tetra and Benediction. In dungeon runs I can go the entire dungeon without seeing three lilies. This is because WHM relies so heavily on Regen. A great change to make lilies practical would be to change Regen ticks to have a 5-20% chance of creating a lily. Or if you really wanted to double down on fixing WHM you could make cleric stance into a passive trait for WHM only that heals nearby allies for 10-20% of damage dealt. Its rather useless as it stands now in role skills.