Thread: Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

Sure, there's a discussion about it under the comments section: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLBL3gdxLsw

So... I went to 70 as Yoshi-p said to discover...

... that all the things criticized before were 100% correct.

And things even worse than expected.

There are many situations when mitigation makes a HUGE difference. I have done trials several times now with me and the other healer WHM and it is not fun. No mitigation whatsoever is painful with some mechanics. We race who gets lilies. And who's confession is, if it actually appears?

No control over lilies being spent means that whenever I get a lily I kinda have to toss it into Benison right away, otherwise that shield probably will never happen to begin with. And that it doesn't scale with lilies means burn them fast.

It also furthers a bad play style, because now I have to either overheal with cures 2 whenever I get a chance (esp. in 8 man content) for this shield or simply ignore it.

And Plenary? Sorry, but total GARBAGE. Confessions are too rare, too hard to track in 8 man content, and the reward -- is so ridiculously low (as if we ever get 3 lilies with CDs to be used and what little in mitigation we have) that I would just remove that button form my hotbar ... if it weren't already so empty after losing too much to role skills and the loss of stoneskin that it doesn't matter if it sits there or not.

Essentially the only real change to play style as WHM now in SB (compared to HW) are
a) Tin Air, which is great but not a HUGE thing to make me feel more powerful.
b) Tanks have become more squishy and til they adapt to this (pull less) we will see more wipes because of overeager tanks who refuse to adapt end up eating more damage than even a WHM with all CDs can handle HPS-wise, all the more given we have NO REAL MITIGATION ANYMORE (and of course if in doubt... blame the healer...). And if they adapt we need longer for the same instances than before without anything being more fun -- it is just more boring. And no, this is not a gear issue. I have seen this several times now in pre-SB instances, and other healers report exactly the same thing.
c) We have to become very inefficient by trying to get any use of those lilies/confessions... or mostly ignore them, which means the only thing we got in SB is the aforementioned Thin Air… *yawn*.
d) With reduced tactical choices thanks to lost skills and new skills either complete failures of design or not THAT much a difference for our playstyle… we end up with less options than before and become spambots of Medica/Regen/Cure/Stone/Aero (+Holy into trash pulls if the tank didn't pull too much and is dropping on us like a stone), plus Tetra/Bene/Assize/Asylum as needed (and only if we accept to never really use our lilies for anything except occasionally a Divine Bension, probably at a time when it is barely needed). Spam heals, spam damage. Snore.

Feels really bad, to be in a WORSE place now than before. Because Thin Air simply won't make up for all we have lost.

I honestly do not understand how this made it through playtesting... if any playtesting of WHM happened at all, and by now I am wondering about that.

It is not that WHM isn't viable, but viable is meaningless. It is simply no FUN like that, and since it utterly pales compared to the other healers it's also unfair to the other players to bring WHM into instances if you could go AST (or at worst, SCH despite the nerfs) instead.

I gave my ideas already on how to fix this mess here http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...39#post4176939 and it still pretty much stands the same way now after I have reached 70. Other great ideas have been tossed around as well. So it's not like the devs haven't plenty of material to work with to fix WHM.

One of the most important changes I would also recommend: Lilies are not spent anymore by using CDs like Assize or Tetra. This just messes up our lily management and CD management, badly. If anything, make it so that as long as we have lilies our cast time (instead of CDs) is a little bit faster and/or our heals & dps a little bit more powerful (that way we don't even have to consider the anyway-weak Cleric Stance from role skills and it might remotely make up for the nerf we see on Divine Seal now turned Largesse). This would give us a reason to sit on them if not really needed and allow us to make tactical choices. While consuming lilies for things like Assize or Tetra… BAD! BAD DESIGN!

So give us back our Stoneskin (at EARLY game), fix the mess you created by gutting WHM for role skills, fix the lily system by giving us something GOOD for them while allowing good lily managment to be possible (no more "lost because used a CD")… and please please PLEASE remove any and all RNG from the lily system. RNG has no place in things like that. It is fine for the cards of AST, but not for WHM with their heals and shields. I recommend adding a little bar integrated into the lily gauge that fills up as we heal and dps, steadily, so we can actually have a good feel for when we have lilies at our disposal. The only alternative I see is making not just Cure 2 proc a lily 100% (given Cure 2 is what we should be using least, not most) but also Regen and Medicas -- but then we could pretty much remove the gauge because we would have lilies more or less all the time… and you could as well give us our Stormblood cooldowns without lilies, just as CDs.

And until this is fixed?

I will level AST to 70 as fast as I can and not touch WHM again anymore after that unless it is fixed. But given I don't like AST so far because lo and behold, I don't like RNG as a healer in general (even though it is 100% okay for AST, it's just a matter of play style)… if I can't get myself to make friends with AST... I will probably stop healing at all (given SCH's style of healing is not mine and it got badly nerfed as well anyway), and since I am not interested to become a main DPS or tank... probably cancel my subscription eventually.

SE, how many more healers do you wanna lose, and how many subscriptions? I see tanks and healers by now offering queue for gil, it is THAT bad for DPS to get into instances. Turning WHM into this kind of utterly-no-fun-to-play mess just makes things worse for EVERYONE.

It is okay to screw up, and WHM in Stormblood is screwed up. So PLEASE don't wait with fixing this til the next expansion (like you did with PLD and BRD, and they were not as badly hit as WHM now). You can do better than that, SE. You showed us that you can do better by making so many other great changes and faster response times for problems with other jobs (*cough* AST 3.0 *cough*).

I would be saddened to leave Eorzea because of this

So I finally hit 70 on my WHM today and gave it a try in both 4-player and 8-player situations. Here are my thoughts:

First of all, I actually like the concept behind WHM. The lily gauge, taken out of context, is a neat system. Most of WHM's new abilities are also very neat, conceptually, and go a long way towards solving some of WHM's major issues - namely, its relative lack of oGCD heals, shields, and its problematic MP sustain.

WHM suffers from a critical flaw though:

The player has too little control. The job breaks its own functionality.

Any time we use one of our most useful abilities, we lose all of our Lilies. This causes a torrent of new problems, mainly in 8-player situations. The main difference here is that, in 4-player regular dungeons, the healer is frequently casting single-target heals on the tank, generating Lilies at a rapid rate. However, against any boss, whether it be 4-player or 8-player, the basic and most efficient approach to healing is to use Regen to sustain the tank, and to only use single-target heals to recover from tank busters. In fact, if the party is particularly good, the healer can conserve both time and MP and use AoEs, oGCD heals, and Regens to sustain the tank and everyone else, allowing the healer more DPS time and MP. As a result, Lilies are not being generated, rendering the entire Lily system useless. Therefore, WHM fails to unlock more of its potential when in the hands of a skilled player, hampering experienced healers instead of empowering them.

One potential and simple change that would both fix many of WHM's problems in addition to making the game more difficult would actually be to increase the power of boss' auto attacks. If Regens are no longer enough to sustain the tank through boss auto attacks, then WHM will be able to take up the mantle of the game's premiere "Single-target healer" in light of a change in meta from a main healer/off-healer setup to each healer being absolutely necessary to the fight, with one handling AoE while the other handles single-target heals, focusing on the main tank.

Becoming the premiere single-target healer would not fix all of its problems, however. While Plenary Indulgence would become useful for sustaining the tank, it still fails to be useful in sustaining others. Setting aside the meager 20% Confession rate for now, if we cast Cure or Cure II on a non-tank who accidentally took a hit from a boss mechanic, that player will be sufficiently healed by a single cast, and is not likely to take isolated damage again within the 30s Confession duration. Yes, they may take damage from raid-wide AoEs, but the healer's response to such AoEs has to be Medica, Assize, etc, as it heals the entire party, not just the select few with Confession stacks.

Now, about Confessions. Much like the Lily gauge, the Confession system is very neat. As I'm sure many people have already suggested, we need more Confessions, faster, and we need more control over them. To that end, it may be worth changing Confessions to be granted at a 100% rate on single-target heals, while significantly nerfing the healing potency of Plenary Indulgence on targets with only 1-2 Confessions and either increasing the maximum number of stacks or reducing the potency on 3 stacks as well [Suggested values: 100, 200, 400] and reducing its cooldown to roughly 5 seconds. This gives the WHM unprecedented control over how much its single-target heals will heal for. On the main tank, the stacks would cap very quickly, allowing the WHM to conserve MP by using its Confession stacks to quickly recover from tank busters via a Cure I + Plenary combo, rather than using Cure II. This change would also prevent the combination of AoE and Regen Confession stacking (to be addressed shortly) from being overpowered.

If AoEs are changed to grant Confessions, I would suggest having the base Confession rate be 12.5% (1/8 chance, with the chance increasing by up 37.5% for each individual player, for a maximum of a 50% chance, relative to each player's percent of health remaining). This would allow each AoE to average one Confession on a random player per cast. However, players who have lower HP are given a higher chance at a Confession. This proves extremely useful for recovering when a player makes a mistake. For example, if one or two players fail to use Vril on one of LakshmiEX's attacks and take increased damage or a bleed, the WHM's follow-up AoE heal will give the WHM a chance at quickly healing one or both of those players with Plenary Indulgence, or Cure I + Plenary Indulgence, instead of having to use Cure II or burn Tetragrammaton/Benediction.

For Regens, simply giving each HoT tick a small chance of granting a Confession on each tick would work fine, though I am a bit concerned that Regen Confessions would make the 30s duration inconsequential, as each new Confession would reset the timer. Personally, I would rather not see Regens grant Confessions.

In tackling the issue of both Confessions and the loss of Lilies upon the execution of any skill that uses them, I would like to suggest a few new WHM spells. The objective here is to give WHM players much more control over their job's gauges and stacks.

First, the loss of Lilies can be fixed by removing that system in exchange for a new spell:

Blessing of the Lily:

Cast time: Instant
MP Cost: 0
Cooldown: 5s (?)
Effect: Causes the next applicable spell cast to consume all available Lilies in exchange for reducing the spell's cooldown, proportional to the number of Lilies consumed.

That would be the most straightforward solution, but it doesn't give us maximum control. Here is an alternative solution:

Blessing of the Lily:

Cast time: Instant
MP Cost: 0
Cooldown: 5s (?)
Effect: Causes the next applicable spell cast to consume [X] number of Lilies in exchange for reducing the spell's cooldown, proportional to the number of Lilies consumed. The number of Lilies consumed is based on the current number of Confession stacks in play. (One concern here is having 0 Lilies on 4-player bosses if sustaining the tank through Regen alone is enough, cause a lack of Lilies; one potential fix would be having 0 Confessions cause all Lilies to be consumed, so the Confession:Lily ratios would be 0:3, 1:1, 2:2, 3:3, 4:3, 5:3, 6:3, etc)

This has great synergy with the next skill:

Candid Bloom

Cast time: Instant
MP cost: 0
Cooldown: 30s (?)
Effect: Instantly converts up to three active Confession stacks into Lilies. Prioritizes oldest Confessions. Will only convert as many Confession stacks as necessary to fill the Lily gauge (i.e. if you have 1 Lily, using this skill will convert only two Confessions into two Lilies).

(This acts as a way to both solve the Lily crisis as well as remove nearly-depleted Confession stacks that will not get much use otherwise)

Finally, to give us maximum control over how many Lilies we have active at any given time, as well as to act as a buffer for the remaining RNG nature of Lily generation:

Sprout

Cast-time: Instant
MP cost: 0
Cooldown: 30s (?)
Effect: Generates one Lily.

This allows us to not only supplement our own Lily gain and cast Divine Benison as necessaery, but also allows for skilled WHMs to micromanage their active Confessions by adjusting the number of Confessions that will be converted to Lilies via Candid Bloom.

I came late into this discussion, so I don't pretend to know all what's going on, but I would like to to say something.
I'm a Pure White Mage. Have been since I started this game (and this is my first MMORPG). I can't act like I don't think there's anything missing from the lineup, but at the same time, there hasn't been an RPG where being the healer was ever easy. Healers have the hardest job of them all, precisely because they have to focus on keeping their comrades alive.
The tank might seem like the martyr, but the tank is always given the ability to survive most situations on their own. In a knuckle-down, drag-out confrontation, though, they don't last unless someone's healing them.
The other healing classes, like Astrologer and Scholar, and certain other jobs that also have healing ability, can't focus on team survivability, because that's not their prime role.
The healer, the White Mage, is a pure job, in action as well as name. Survival as a lone White Mage; it's hard. I spent the first chunk of my gameplay on my own, no parties or groups or Free Companies, so I suffered, and died, a lot. A LOT. -.-' And I was told by many I should just cross-job, even a little, just to get the knowledge. But in my eyes, and based on my original intentions for my game career, I only wanted to be the one to patch people up and keep them going, because someone has to. I don't mean to get dramatic about this, like it's real life, but even in video games, the healer is the "bones" of the community (military speak). Without them and their specialization, it's not possible.
I remember seeing someone mention that as long as players make fewer mistakes, other jobs compensate for the lack of a pure healer. That may be true, but there are lots of ways to make mistakes, and lots of scenarios where mistakes get easier to make, even for seasoned players. Which is precisely why I prefer to be Pure White Mage. My job is easy: stand to the side, watch everyone, and keep them green. Put a protective spell and a helpful effect on them now and again, and generally just do everything in my power to make their job a little less stressful. My job is simple and focused. Willpower and wit is often what I've seen get me through my time in the game. Not just this game, but any game with a healing option. (I once played FF 1 with nothing but a team of White Mages; definitely possible). Anything else that helps that (like pumping up my Hand and Field classes to make items/equipment that helps keep players alive) is a plus.
I'm not saying I wouldn't welcome seeing more added to the job to make it more useful, but right now I'm doing fine with it as it is, and we all know how limited it already is.
That being said, my final message to Square Enix: don't take the job for granted. If it wasn't for the local "bones" topping off everyone's HP, player's wouldn't last long enough to enjoy the rest of the game. So if you can, do them a favour and help out the doc.