Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Originally Posted by Sansa78

Still funny that WHM gets no love this patch. Again ^

Outside of Lilies being an counter intuitive mess against optimized WHM play, I don't see why WHM needs any more than some QoL changes. I think most WHMs agree that the Lily system is a weak addition but it doesn't mean the overall WHM kit is weak.

Originally Posted by Sansa78

Still funny that WHM gets no love this patch. Again ^

WHM has gotten a lot of love since SB has launched. God forbid we miss a patch.

I know they've gotten "some" stuff. But nah, they fixed what they shouldn't have even been a problem

Lol no, but that stuff shouldn't have been an issue to begin with.

Originally Posted by Sansa78

Lol no, but that stuff shouldn't have been an issue to begin with.

That's a very strange way of looking at it. By that logic all changes "shouldn't have been an issue in the first place".

All changes would be much further along if they literally just bite the bullet and make a test server for class balance changes so players could test this stuff before it goes live.

Almost all the minor problems would of been solved but no they refuse to make any meaningful progress. They could even reuse assets and just not show anything outside of battle changes heres to dreaming though.

I'm going to steer off into a tangent and whine about something that has nothing to do with game balance, because I couldn't quite put my finger on why something else seemed weird. There's something a bit wonky with job lore, and it doesn't come from a comparison with the two other healing jobs. It's Red Mage and Paladin. In previous FF games, they dipped into white magic without specializing in it. They accessed lower level spells but ditched the higher level ones for either access to black magic (in the case of RDM) or a heftier health pool and defensive abilities (in the case of PLD). That's pretty close to the case in XIV; Red Mages study both disciplines without leaning too heavily toward either, and paladins are swordsmen with some holy magic sprinkled on top.

For class balance reasons I get why the following odd situations exist. It's why I don't think there's really an answer to them and what makes it a sort of annoying issue that's ultimately in the category of first world problems. Take Red Mages as an example. You'd think from a lore perspective they'd learn Stone, Stone 2, maybe 3 right? But Verstone costs less mana and has more potency than Stone 4. In some respects, you could call it Stone 5. White Mages, supposed specialists in white magic, spend 64 levels training and honing the stone spell into four separate versions. Red Mages, the ones who train white magic with a split focus, learn a far superior version of the stone spell at level 30. Again- class balance? I get it. A DPS class needs to hit much higher numbers in the end. Job lore though? It makes white mages seem like bumbling morons who can't figure out their own discipline if a comparative novice can just whip out something better from their school of magic on the first try. Paladin is similar. Holy Spirit may not be an AOE, but it has a shorter cast time, costs less MP, and does way more damage to a single target. Requiescat is basically nerfed Divine Seal Largesse but better because it affects damage as well as healing, has a damage potency, and has a shorter cooldown. They even get a trait called Divine Magic Mastery, something you'd think hmmm, maybe the masters of white magic would obtain. The odd one out here is Vercure, because it's pretty comparable to Cure. Clemency not so much, that's much closer to a Cure 2 on steroids.

Scholar and Astro don't really have the same lore crossover history with other classes like White Mages do, so this situation doesn't really come up in the same way with them. It's a petty thing to complain about, but from a lore perspective it's really weird and kind of grating that when red mages and paladins dip into the white magic pool in XIV they don't dip in for the rudiments of the discipline, they make off with copies (or even direct upgrades!) of the really powerful stuff. Why spend your time communing with the forest when picking up a fencing saber will teach you more about earth magic than years of studying the earth?