Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Originally Posted by Maltothoris

Well, time to wait for the raid and just how far behind the Whm falls there if the fights don't have the design of the Whm in mind.

I can tell you what's going to happen. WHMs issues are going to be brushed aside because they're considered "viable" as healers.
It happened in 3.4, a d I bet you it'll happen now.

This is beginning to get ridiculous. It really feels like they have something against WHM to where they refuse to give them anything good.
I mean, seriously. Taking away Stoneskin and then bringing it back as a 30s CD lily system mechanic? Jesus

FYI Divine Benison does get cd reduction from lilys, you can check its recast as you get them. Still don't understand why it requires them.,..not always available when I need it =/

I have my WHM at level 68 and I’m enjoying it a lot so far. Lilies aren’t perfect but they are a viable addition that probably needs some tweaks. I qualify my feedback by saying I have never done a Savage raids but have cleared a number of extreme primal fights, and enjoy the more challenging content this game has to offer if I can casually access it. Obviously this feedback is entirely about what I’ve experienced with WHM from 60-68 dungeons and the Susano fight. The tank I’ve run most of this content with usually does a 2x pull so I’m not sleeping at the keyboard trying to keep him alive.

First, the rate and method that lilies come in I think is close to fine. The 50% on Cure I and 100% on Cure II feels good. I can fish for it and be inefficient otherwise, or I can play pretty normally and grab one or two. Cure II drains mana so you you don’t really want to be spamming it for any sustained period of time to build up lilies. The only thing to add here is that the 50% on Cure I is true RNG. That means you may cast Cure I 4 times, 6 times and not have a lily proc. You also might cast Cure I 3 times and it comes up every time. As a matter of game design, players will remember the streaks of not getting a proc as a far more “game breaking” issue than the positive ones. On that note, I might suggest that Square Enix use psuedo-randomness (http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Random_distribution) to eliminate such events from occurring while still having basic randomness. Then again, maybe the answer really is “if you really want that proc, cast cure II.” I find that for dungeon pulls, when you know the mobs are dying down, use Cure II to build up three lilies before the next pull so you can open with Assize. You should have that skill available for every pull now - possibly twice or thrice.

Lily mechanics do lead to interesting “fishing” attempts where sometimes I intentionally take AoE damage at the end of a pull just to free up healing room to Cure II and get a lily, or wish the tank would take more damage so I can Cure II on them. Assuming I have the three lilies at the start of a pull, I usually want to burn the lilies on Assize over any other spell. It’s if it’s still on CD for 10 more seconds and the tank is dying fast enough that I really want to use Asylum and/or Tetra to keep them alive. I know if I use those skills, the lilies go away and Assize has it’s full cooldown. So that situation you can be put in because of lilies is not good. Ultimately, as a healer the tank must be kept alive above everything but ourselves.

Divine Benison: I think this ability is great. A 15% shield that dumps all lilies seems weak but it’s actually a great skill in practice. It has a very low cooldown, and since it’s oGCD it weaves very nicely and find the animation very fun. I’ve found two (common) situations for this skill in dungeons or boss fights: either a pull is about to start and I only have 1 lily so I apply it on the tank right away knowing I won’t safely build 3 without putting the tank at risk to the initial damage rate. Or I’ve already dumped all of my 3 lilies into Assize at the start of a pull so I use it reactively to getting 1 lily on top of a heal that proc’d it. Let’s be clear, Divine Benis is every 30 seconds you get a Cure II with a bonus 15% HP shield or Cure I with a 50% chance at the 15% HP shield. This skill is so much better than Stoneskin in its usefulness in fights, and it’s reactionary mechanic. I think during constant high incoming damage, this is primarily where lilies are meant to be spent.

Mana management: Honestly I felt Heavenward was fine for a WHM. The situation has only gotten better in Stormblood. Yes, SoS moved to cross-role, but I find myself rarely having to use Lucid Dreaming. For the pulls that I find myself wanting or needing to spam Holy, PoM + Thin Air is great for that. For situations where I don’t (maybe 1 or 2) spam Holy, I’m casting Assize far more often due to its reduced cooldown and lilies so I’m getting more mana back during sustained fights. Another situation I could use Thin Air for would be if I already ran out of MP but need to cast certain spells, but that hasn’t come up yet.

If I stack these tools on top of what Plenary Indulgence will give - a 15s cooldown with a 400-600 potency heal on a tank of 0 mana cost. I could sustain a tank or two undergoing serious incoming damage for a while without becoming a mana leak. I do think the toolkit of WHM is as an unparalleled healer. With the extra healing headroom, you (or your co-healer) is free to do more DPS as most of new healing/shielding comes from oGCDs anyways. There may not be any raid utility added in this class, but the raw healing output perhaps makes it pair with the other healing jobs very nicely if they do well focusing mostly on DPS.

I’m in agreement with DreamWeaver’s post (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/325411-Consolidated-White-Mage-4.0-Feedback-Thread?p=4218798&viewfull=1#post4218798) except I don’t spam Holy every pull because I don’t feel the spell is too efficient/necessary on a mob size of three that doesn’t hit hard (I can just Aero III->(Assize)->Aero II spread -> Stone IV weaving in heals as needed. It’s more mana efficient and probably why I rarely use Lucid Dreaming.

As I've gotten more into the stormblood toolkit the consensus seems to be the same. The pure healer concept and tools given in heavensward are contradictory to the lilies mechanic. In dungeons I can DPS while using our heavensward kit to keep the tank topped off. In trials I get more use out of regen, medica, medica II and assize for AoE heals. The only scenario where using Cure and Cure II is effective is if every other skill is on CD and the tank has low enough HP. That doesn't happen often. The lily mechanic needs to change. Period.

I can effectively ignore it and continue healing in the same exact way I was doing before and be just as effective or even more effective. That's not good (or fun) game design.

Ok so trying to read through 200+ pages of this stuff... yeah i'm not going to do so if i'm repeating things that's why and I apologize.

First let me start off with this. I've been a white mage since 1.0 and before when it was just a Conjurer. I've seen this class get downgraded so many times it's not even funny. When it was just the class roles, we lost most of the major attack spells that we had. IE: the ancient spells of Quake and such. It really ticked us off. Then white mage came out and it was pretty decent then, with the Holy spell, and our powerful cures... however after 2.0 came out Holy became nerfed. There were even a lot of us that didn't use certain spells due to preferring different ones over the other (like using medica 2 with it's regen properties and better aoe, than Cure 3 where everyone had to stack) or even pointless ones (or semi pointles) Fluid Aura (that is my opinion only if any disagrees, meh).

Finally we got an easier spell of stoneskin which was an aoe cast, granted it had a hella long cast time but that was compensated with the quickcast. Now even that's gone. We can't cast all three aeros, nor the three different stones if we wanted to. Heck does stone 1 even put slow on a target anymore? (I haven't been in a low level dungeon recently). Honestly what has been done to Whm doesn't feel like it's helping us much. It feels like it's trying to make us obsolete.