Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

As a WHM and healers main, I am quite disappointed in the direction that WHM is heading in the upcoming expansion. I feel that because WHM is one of Final Fantasy original jobs, it should get more of the original and familiar spells and abilities from past series, and because WHM in FF14 suppose to be associated with Holy, Wind, Earth, and Water elements, I was hopping for more Water elements. Here are some of my disappointments:

- Stoneskin I/II: why remove stoneskin? It was a simple barrier that WHM has to help negate some damage. Granted that it was more helpful in 2.0, it was still a barrier to help someone survive with the Weakness status in lv 50 and lv 60 dungeons and raids. I know that Divine Benison (a new Water element barrier, yay!) suppose to replace Stoneskin, but it's a level 66 ability and revolves around the new Lily mechanic (get on that in a bit). This means that there is no way for WHM to help add on a barrier if somehow being pair in a party with another WHM. I know that yes, you can do X raids or primal unsynced, but that is not always the case (unless for premade and party finder, but duty finder still exists). Also, the new ability would not be helpful during 4 men dungeons and leveling dungeons, and in the case that two party member has Weakness, in a dungeon that is below level 66.

- Secret of the Lily: I see the point in adding a bonus trait (that associates with flower, which can be viewed as pretty) to help cut down ability cooldown, but the mechanic behind its proc is slow and disappointed; along with having it as requirement to use the new barrier ability, Divine Benison. Cure I/II are the basic healing spells for WHM, but WHM also has Regen, great AoE Medica I/II and Cure III, and abilities that bring single target heal, Tetra, and AoE, Assize. Why make the proc rate only from Cure I/II? From personal experience, Cure I/II are used, but Regen is so good, along with Tetra and Benediction, that would cover greater healing output than Cure I/II and at the same time, give WHM the time to DPS. I think that either based the proc rate from all the healing spells and Hots, or take away the RNG mechanic.

- Confession: Confession time, it's not a good proc ability for WHM for only taking the proc rate from Cure I/II. Confession is needed for the new lv 70 ability, Plenary Indulgence, that suppose to be the new AoE healing ability. It probably is good for healing the tank, but it is gated behind RNG and a stack system that can fall off after 30 seconds. From what was shown so far, the ability heals everyone based on individual party member Confession stack that is generated from a chance of Cure I/II and has a 30 sec timer, so this would mean either the tank is the only one who meant to get the heal, or the WHM has to spend time casting cure on everyone for a chance to actually give them the heal. Again, ability that is gated behind an RNG stack mechanic does not sit well with WHM who suppose to be a simple click for heal healer.

- Lack of Utilities: Honestly, it's a bit discourage that WHM does not get or have utilities, but I would be okay without it if the new traits actually flow and fun for the job. Like many others suggested, why not give WHM a vulnerability up status for the enemy? It could be a secondary effect of (preferably) a damage Water element ability. This will make sure that each healer can bring something a bit different with AST being the main buffer (especially damage up from Balance), SCH being the Critical based and minor attack speed up buffer, and WHM being a de-buffer. Personally, I would not mind if WHM can be a resources buffer by giving party member health regen and at the same time, MP or TP regen based on the job primary resource usage (or whichever resource is lower) (AST can help regen TP or MP too, but they have Balance and Arrow (can even Bole and Spear) that they mainly be using).

PS: For those who want to help , or to change WHM job, please remember to take a look at the level progression for some spells and abilities as it would surely affect the lower level. As mentioned, the lack of Stoneskin would not help leveling and below level 66, and if WHM was suggested to lose Medica I/II, there would be no form of AoE healing in lower dungeon as Cure III is not until level 42 (currently) or level 40 (based on the new famitsu information) (Based on the new famitsu information, AST has Helio at lv 10 and SCH has a fairy to help heal, Whispering Dawn at lv 1, and Succor at lv 35)

First I think the lily mechanic is a great way to start giving White Mages an identity rather than leaving them the bland baseline healer they are now. Both Astrologian and Scholar are defined by their take on random mechanics (cards and crits respectively) but the WHM has no defining mechanic.

Lilies as they are implemented now, take WHM in the direction of AST and SCH by adding in a random mechanic. This is counter to the idea of a “pure healer” as one would expect that healer to be the most consistent and predictable. That doesn’t inherently mean the mechanic has to be uninteresting though. If we had a more controlled manner of generating and manipulating lilies where our spells had synergy and interacted with each other, the class could be both straight forward, consistent and have more depth, which it desperately needs.

Below are a few of the changes I would make to carve out the WHM identity and create a more interesting and dynamic “pure” healer.

1. Regen should perform the same heal over time function that it does now, except when it expires it generates a lily. Now you would want to have a way to tune lily generation so having an internal cooldown of 6-10 seconds would mean staggering your “Regens” and managing when they expire to generate lilies would become part of optimizing your healing (depth). A variation on this would be to have a lily generated every X ticks that successfully heal a target (overheals wouldn't count).

2. Secret of the Lilly II should be moved from a chance on a crit to a mechanic that triggers when using an abilty that consumes three lilies. That way if you use the ability because you absolutely need to then no cooldown reduction but if you can hold out for the third lily (more predictable without the random aspect) then you get reduced cooldown on Assize and Asylum.

3. Divine Benison should move away from being a shied which has more SCH flavor. Instead having it be an ability that converts the next single attack on the target that does 25% or more of the targets health in damage to a damage over time effect that deals the same damage but over 10 seconds. This keeps the WHM more of a pure healer and makes logical sense with the HoT nature we are using as the identity of the WHM. It also removes some of the sting from having stoneskin removed just to be given a shield back that feels worse all around.

4. Utility should be added to WHM through the use of abilities when at max lilies. As example having Assize refresh all HoTs on party members in range, having Asylum split damage amoung those in its radius when cast at three lilies, or assize debuff all enemies hit when cast at max lilies. Things that are still very straight forward and have a low barrier to entry but have the ability to be min/maxed at higher levels of play.

5. The reward system of lilies needs to be addressed as well. Cooldown seems like a poorer option than having a percentage buff to spell speed. That way you could get to full lilies and then when dpsing you would be able to pump out more dps but have the lilies degrade after casting multiple non-healing spells. It then becomes a pro/con evaluation of how best to order the use of your abilities that use lilies because of your ability to generate them through regens you could set up to have a decent burn phase with smart play or a smaller burn phase while still being able to drop a 3 lily spell afterwards.

These are just some of my ideas that I feel would create a more interesting WHM with depth at all levels of play and better align with the stated design goals for WHM.

Originally Posted by Pharazon

Snip.

First off lime to say, it was nice seeing some ideas that aren't making lilies a boring 100% reliable mechanic, also rather well concepted.

Out of order based on personal preference and amount of constructive input.

#3 is just plain a good idea, itd pretty much make it the go to tank buster softener for fresh progression and under geared tanks.

#1 also a good train of thought, needs some more work to prevent abuse tho. And tbh Id be happy if AST/SCH got something along the same thought train. Diurnal has the same issue as WHM in how to prevent someone just refreshing Regen/ABene on everyone. SCH/Nocturnal with their Galvanize/Barrier being fully broken. A little bit more fleshing out and this is a great motivator to play more efficiently.

#5 I think the reason they focused on CDR for WHMs mechanic benefit is because its what the WHM has in spades over the other two healers, a wide abundance of OGCD heals you want available. AST had 2 SCH has 1. (Didnt include lustrate since it really doesnt have its own CD)

#2 I think their goal here was simply to give a little extra for when you crit, cause crits are fun to see, and getting a little more with em just makes it better. Hell I was excited to see a 22k Bene 2 crit earlier this week, and that was a happy moment. Was mostly overheal, but still was like ooh 22k crit.

#4 While could be viewed as interesting, it would probably start feeling heavy, constricted, and required in some cases. IMHO may make some of the current disagreements with the system worse as opposed to better.

Have a post on the previous page on some other possible improvements to the system, if you can try working with what youve started and I contributed and see if you can make it better than both. Theres a few other good ideas flowing around as well, barring the practically remove the mechanic and give us a flat #s buff 100% of the time. If a good solution for your first point can be found, itd negate much of my HoTs based issues from that post.

I just read today that Yoshi P said that WHM Cure II will have a 100% chance of procing a lily. Now with that being said, I think this addition is a step in the right direction but WHM might need a little more.

Cadmium Crows from Youtube said this: "I never thought whm was dead I just believed it just needed stability with the mechanic, considering in most content with a skilled/more aggressive whm regens will be the bulk of their healing, so I still think lillies need to proc off of regen ticks, similar to how wow's resto druids could proc their free cast mechanic of one of their hots, albeit at a lower rate then with Cure I/II."

I for one think Cadmium's idea is a good one since Regen is a for sure spell that WHM's going to use and rely on building more lily stacks. What does everyone else think?