Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Zhexos]

Greetings,

As some of you may have noticed, we have consolidated the white mage feedback threads into one location, so we can keep track and collect valuable information to relay to the development team.

We appreciate your understanding, and please continue to share your feedback on this thread.

Thank you.

[Shurrikhan]

Greetings,

As some of you may have noticed, we have consolidated the white mage feedback threads into one location, so we can keep track and collect valuable information to relay to the development team.

We appreciate your understanding, and please continue to share your feedback on this thread.

Thank you.

Any chance that you guys may be able to develop a system for sub-threads on these forums?

It seems like it'd only be harder to track useful information when forcing a collision between 5 different threads...

[Edgedy]

First thank you for the information regarding the new job system, there is a lot of positive feedback that makes it so that we're very excited about the expansion.

With a closer look to the synergy between the healers and the tanks we would appreciate if you addressed one issue however.

There is a lot of concern over job roles and identities, and the lost skills that became cross role as a result of that. Would it be possible to perhaps address the loss of skills primarily for White Mage?

I see a lot of issues with the skill count just from the standpoint of 26 skills for white mage, and 29 skills overall for Scholar and Astrologian. Wouldn't the best issue be to expand the number of cross class skills for White Mage and Paladin?

If you could for example given them 7 skills instead of the standard 5, it would give them more functionality and also address the loss of abilities they used to have. I hope that you can pass this information on to the Stormblood development team as I feel it is a prudent solution to a problem which would help to address the concern the community is currently having with both of the jobs.

The disparity gets even worse when you realize that those counts are as favorable to WHM as possible, just counting the native hotbar abilities.

SCH has an additional 7 abilities (Embrace, Fey Covenant, Fey Illumination, Whispering Dawn, Silent Dusk, Fey Caress, Fey Wind) from their pets. And if you want to be pedantic, another 8 on top of that (the pet placement/stance actions: Away, Heel, Place, Stay, Guard, Steady, Sic, Obey). Though only about two of the latter see any use in combat (Place and Heel).

AST has an additional 9 abilities from Cards. The six regular Draw options (Bole, Balance, Arrow, Spear, Spire, Ewer) and the three Royal Road actions (Extend, Enhance, Expand) along with possible the Lord/Lady actions. All of which are iconic-enough that even non-ASTs probably could tell you what they do.

WHM has two abilities that were widely considered candidates for pruning (Repose and Fluid Aura) and that aren't readily-viewable as "useful" with the content design to date (Fluid Aura was widely used as a damaging oGCD but that bit's gone).

I mention all those specific abilities because they give Scholar and Astrologian different ways to affect the outcome of the battle.

When you combine everything they can do to somehow affect the course of battle in Job-identity-reinforcing ways, it gets even more stark:

SCH has 39 abilities in practice (counting Embrace once, counting Heel and Place)
AST has 39 or 41 abilities depending on how you count them, just looking at things that affect the flow of combat
WHM has 26, arguably 24.

For an expansion that was supposed to be about reinforcing Job Identity and giving people options that made the Jobs feel unique and interesting to play, WHM really got the short end of the stick.

Thank you.

[Edgedy]

WHM lost six things to Cross-Role but can only have five of them back at a time. So they're losing one of the following effects at any one time, period:

Shroud of Saints (1-1 with Cross Role, the new version's better)
Protect (was innate, now Cross-Role)
Esuna (was innate, now Cross-Role)
Eye for an Eye (from old Cross-Class)
Divine Seal (now Largesse from Cross-Role)
Cleric Stance (specifically the 10% damage buff)

It also had outright deleted:

Virus (from old Cross-Class but mostly a wash, no Healer has an equivalent now)
Stoneskin (gone
Stoneskin II (gone)

And also freed up four hotbar slots on top of that:

Stone I (Becomes Stone IV)
Stone II (Becomes Stone IV)
Stone III (Becomes Stone IV)
Aero (becomes Aero II)

And they technically "lost" another ability:

Fluid Aura's no longer a damage-weaving oGCD

So it meets the simplification quota almost entirely from the Stone/Aero crunch. But they didn't do like Paladin and go back to fill in any gaps, and it lost more stuff to Cross-Role than it gains back from Cross-Role.

That's where the disparity in abilities come from.

Number of abilities doesn't determine play experience. But having one Job with far less abilities than another (when you count SCH non-Petbar pet actions or AST cards) does give you less levers to pull. Both for Job balance and for distinguishing Jobs from one another.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Greetings,

As some of you may have noticed, we have consolidated the white mage feedback threads into one location, so we can keep track and collect valuable information to relay to the development team.

We appreciate your understanding, and please continue to share your feedback on this thread.

Thank you.

Great news that you're gathering our complaints to take to the dev team, really!

I really do hope they can gather what they need in one huge post though. There were a LOT of threads with a LOT of posts and a lot of different viewpoints and complaints about the system, their identity itself
-Their raid relevance
-the underwhelming performance of the lily system and how it gathers procs
-their healing potency being weaker than ASTs despite healing being their only strong point.
-Their loss of all our cross-skills and even unique abilities and the fact we weren't given anything at all to fill in the gaps.

Well, here's hoping this is really a place to gather information, and not a containment board lol...

[Saraphin]

well, it will most likely take awhile for all the new points to be brought over, so here's to hoping. overall...i hate to say it, but...WHM looks...like it's rewarding things that many of us that play WHM don't do any longer because you've given us huge/massive ogcds to take care of dmg.

I can't see how taking the core toolkit away from White Mage and giving it to the other classes, while we have to buy it back to be 'functional', is a good thing. i could go on, but really. it's all been said:

NO raid Relevance that we can see, The Lily System looks like it's rewarding MP draining Play, Astrologians being better than WHM (and almost better than SCH at some points it seems. and AST even get to sing "Anything you can do I can do better"), given new "skills" that are seemingly gated behind the Lily System...and a 3 Lily...Spear. Spear. we all remember that Spear is Royal Road fodder for the AST, right?

[SuzakuCMX]

1. Lillies need to proc at a higher rate and need to generate a higher baseline Recast Reduction. 20% proc rate is way too low for 4% reduction in Recast time. It's pitiful. You'll barely ever be sitting on more than one lily between oGCD casts and 4% is at most 3.6 seconds off the recast of a skill, which is basically nothing.
2. Please don't make WHM scale off of crit. We're supposed to be the reliable healer. We don't want reasons to stack an RNG mechanic in addition to our RNG procs that you gave us. We want to be the premiere reliable healer who you know can pump out those heal bombs. This includes the Secret of the Lily II Assize/Asylum 5 sec Recast reduction on crit and the Confession crit stacks. We don't want RNG procs gated behind other RNG. Just make them normal procs at a higher rate. If you're going to keep it gated behind crit at least make it able to proc off Medica II/Regen tick crits.
3. Why does Plenary Indulgence consume all stacks of Confession when you use it when it's already gated behind two RNG procs PLUS they have a 30s duration on them so they can drop off. Thanks, we got a really bad version of Freecure as our level 60 skill gated behind RNG.


Solutions
These aren't new but I'll just restate them here for succinct-ness

Option 1: Lillies proc at a higher rate and there's a higher baseline recast reduction (Example: Lillies proc at 50% rate on Cure I/II cast and reduce recast time by 15/20/30%). Additionally, consuming a freecure proc will reduce the cooldown of Asylum/Assize by 5 seconds and everytime a Lily is gained from Cure I/II the target has a 50% chance of gaining a Confession Stack.

This makes gaining Lillies much more frequent and Confession is much easier as well though still gated behind two RNG things if that's really what SE is set on, though it removes the requirement of WHM stacking crit so we can be a more reliable healer.

Option 2: Lillies and Confession stacks proc off regen/medica II tics and at a 30% rate instead. Also make Asylum/Assize Recast Reduction proc off them too.

This makes WHM able to DPS and gather Lillies while they have Regens rolling on the party, making them the new kings of DPS as healers, constantly gaining Lillies for their oGCD recast reduction and getting Asylum/Assize down so they can have a lot more MP regain and getting so much more freecasts of heals out.

Personally I think both need to happen so they can be fun to play. Balance be damned cuz have you SEEN those AST tooltips? WHM needs to become a healbombing DPS king to be as fun as AST and making Lillies/Confessions a high-proc non-crit thing that can constantly be rolling while you DPS the hell out of stuff would be a great way to make them feel fun and engaging. I just hope it doesn't take as long as it took AST to reach that point.

[Kethic]

I still want to see a non-RNG method for generating Lily's, like 100% chance on Assize or Tetra or another long cooldown.

[Altanas]

WHM FEEDBACK:

In my opinion, it would be worthwhile examining how very similar healing mechanics play out in other MMOs to see what works and why what we have is not a good variation of said mechanics. I don't raid on WHM but please hear me out.

The lily and confession mechanic sounds similar to healers in SWTOR (not the main mage type healer which is a Jedi though, rather the more dancer-esque equivalent healer being the Smuggler). I am sure it is also similar to a type of healer in WoW but I've never played WoW. In SWTOR I mained a healer-smuggler from the end of 1.0 to release of 2.0 and dabbled back here and there and always suggested the mechanic be brought over to FF14 so blame me lol.


However, the mechanics operates in a very much different way over there:

1. The lillies occur through not criticals or the standard cure type heal, but through ticks of HoTs. You actually flooding in their equivalent of lillies because you can stack the main HoT twice on each party member, and there is another mini HoT which also gave procs. You would have so many stacks of lillies you actually cannot keep up with using them! The benefit of this is that because it always procs and you sit on stacks, the randomness is completely gone. Healers can therefore plan and predict and not play their job based on RNG which is a very dangerous thing when a healer is supposed to be the safety net for the party.

My suggestion therefore would be

1. Either make lillies have a chance to proc from all heals, or from critcs of all heals whether direct heals or ticks of HoTs. This will boost lily procs and erase RNG.

On the issue of raid utility:

1. We also need a raid utility. Again from SWTOR, their smuggler-healer gets an arsenal of utility abilities, albeit some are solo but they are are of better help than what we have presently. Abilities such as reducing AoE damage, while situational, could be of help (note: FF11 WHMs had this in Barspells). Abilities such as bubbles that restore HP when they fade out. Abilities such as HoTs or Cures that also add a short lived damage reduction percentage (point of note: FF11 WHM's also has this in Afflatus Solace)

As an aside on Role Skills:

1. The equivalent of Rescue in SWTOR granted the target party member added defences or reduced damage dealt to them or lowered their enmity, whereas FF14's Rescue does not.

Regarding how lillies are expended

1. Divine Benison is a new ability that grants a sheild, but uses up all the lillies. There seems to be a disconnect however. It is a lily dump, but we will never see it because lillies will be gone when Asylum, Assize and Tetragrammaton are used (they are all lily dumps) (and currently I use those abilities like a standard rotation). Therefore, we have too many lily dumps but not enough ways to obtain lillies in the first place! This is the key problem with the lily mechanic currently. This is the effect is causes. It really does mean some players will probably never see Divine Benison! Should lillies be more plentiful, then all the lily dump spells can benefit.
   
2. As an aside, Divine Benison should be on a shorter recast, and scale with the number of lillies it uses. If it could be used more regularly, you could then juggle between Benison and Indulgence for a sheild and a heal respectively. Thats really what the faster lily mechanic in SWTOR does, stacks come so fast you juggle abilities, not spam one endlessly trying to build up stacks.

Regarding lillies and offensive spells

1. Such an easy oversight. Why can't lillies be used with Aero, Stone or Fluid Aura? Full lily gauge should let us use the next tier or even forbidden magic! I was so excited and all I got was Stone 4

[Risvertasashi]

1. We also need a raid utility. Again from SWTOR, their smuggler-healer gets an arsenal of utility abilities, albeit some are solo but they are are of better help than what we have presently. Abilities such as reducing AoE damage, while situational, could be of help (note: FF11 WHMs had this in Barspells). Abilities such as bubbles that restore HP when they fade out. Abilities such as HoTs or Cures that also add a short lived damage reduction percentage (point of note: FF11 WHM's also has this in Afflatus Solace)

Though I wouldn't expect SE to ever do this... if, instead of sticking core WHM skills in there with a few nerfs... if SE had put Balance and Chain Stratagem in cross role, that would have done far more to balance the healers than anything we've seen so far...