Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Menae]

You wouldn't wait to use Assize. You'd use Assize/Benison/Tetra or whatever first then gain lilies during the period they're on cooldown. Lilies take a little time to build and the time between cooldown periods is when you'd build your lily stacks. Because one or more of your oGCDs has been spent already, you're more likely to cast cure I or II for single target heals at that time. When those skills roll back around for their next use, you'll have lilies waiting for them.

This mechanic isn't designed to make you hold onto your cooldowns. It should make you less reluctant to burn them, because you get some personal utility out of your basic heals during the downtime. The effectiveness of this design is going to depend on how often the 4.0 content entices you to burn through oGCD heals and mitigation. With secret of the lily I, II and confessions combined, you actually have a high chance of getting a proc effect from Cure I or II. /theorycraft

It's also worth mentioning that Cure I and II got a potency boost relative to Regen and Medica. Cure II is now as potent as Tetra. I'm certainly eager to try WHM on the 16th and give feedback, for better or for worse after having spent some time with it.

The problem is that even if you get a 20% reduction on EVERY cd over a given length of time, it's still not GOOD. Even assuming you get three lilies for every single oGCD you use and hit Assizes on the entire raid and three mobs, and Asylums on both tanks and two melee, you still get only slightly more healing potency and LESS damage potency than an AST who uses their ground effect on the tank and a single enemy. That's terrible, and it's assuming good luck of the you-just-won-the-lottery-twice-in-a-row variety from your Cure spam.

The confession system I'm much more sympathetic to - it essentially acts as a chance of an echoed Cure down the line, and provides actual tangible benefits if the content warrants that kind of Curebombing - one sort of ballpark way of looking at it is to just add 80 potency to your Cure/Cure 2 if you are going to spam a single target for a while, and since the CD on PI is so low, you certainly aren't going to have to worry about using it at the wrong time very often. It's less useful if the raids are more similar to how they've been in 2.0-3.5, but I can at least see how it fits into some theoretical boss fight. Lilies, though? At a 20% chance to proc, they are terrible even if we use NOTHING but cure.

[TonberiScholar]

Thanks for posting that spreadsheet! It's interesting seeing the new gaps they'll be introducing in a couple weeks (there seem to be a number of level ranges where you get no new abilities or traits for 3-4 levels), especially the ones where WHM falls behind compared with the other two healers (even considering fairy abilities).

Any chance you could change the colour of the rows with ability gaps and/or make the borders thicker? I'm red colourblind and struggled to notice them.

Also, a tip: you can break the 1000 character limit by editing your post afterwards. That's how I posted my massive wall of text a number of pages back.

Tried something a little different, see if it's any easier to read (went with purple and a double-line border instead).

[Wakka_Flakka]

Secret of the Lily:

- All healing spells with GCDs have a 20% chance of granting you a lily.

> Includes cure I-III, Medica I-II and Regen

With each lily you gain, your mind is increased by a certain percentage.

1 lily = Mind is increased by 1%

2 lilies = Mind is increased by 2%

3 lilies = Mind is increased by 3%

- Lilies can be removed to grant bonus effects to other existing abilities.
- When lilies are removed, your increased mind bonus is reset.



Secret of the Lily II(Trait) gained at level 68:

- All attacking spells with GCDs have a 10% chance of granting you a lily.

> Includes Stone IV, Aero II, Aero III and Holy

Assize:

- 300 potency AOE damage
- 300 potency AOE heal
- 10% MP regained
- 60 second cooldown
- Removes all lilies when executed

Lily effect:

1 lily removed = 20 potency increase to AOE heal and damage + 2% extra MP Regained

2 lilies removed = 50 potency increase to AOE heal and damage + 4% extra MP Regained

3 lilies removed = 100 potency increase to AOE heal and damage + 6% extra MP Regained

Divine Benison:

- Shield equivalent to 15% of the targets maximum hp
- Duration: 30 minutes (or until broken)
- Can be stacked with another defensive shield like Aspected Benefic (Nocturnal Sect) or Galvanize
- 15 second cooldown
- Costs MP to use
- A maximum of 4 Divine Benison shields can be active at one time
- Removes all lilies when executed

Lily effect:

1 lily removed = Increases all damage dealt from targeted party member by 2%

2 lilies removed = Increases all damage dealt from targeted party member by 4%

3 lilies removed = Increases all damage dealt from targeted party member by 6%

Tetragrammaton:

- 60 second cooldown
- Removes all lilies when executed

Lily effect:

1 lily removed = Reduces recast time of the next Tetragrammaton by 20%

2 lilies removed = Reduces recast time of the next Tetragrammaton by 40%

3 lilies removed = Reduces recast time of the next Tetragrammaton by 60%

Asylum:

- Should not have a lily effect, leave it as it is.


Thin air:

- Good, doesn't need to change.


Presence of Mind:

- Increases spell speed by 20% for 15 seconds (same as before)


Presence of Mind (Trait) gained at level 52:

- When active, Presence of Mind also increases the chances of a lily spawning to 50% when casting GCD based healing or attacking spells.

Plenary Indulgence:

- Confessions mechanic removed
- Increases the direct hit rate and attack speed of self and all nearby party members by 15%.
- This skill does not remove lilies, it only requires 3 to be present in order to execute.
- Duration: 20sec
- Cooldown: 120sec

[KonoDioDa]

Can we have some of those abilities back? Why take away Stoneskin and Stoneskin II? Why put Esuna, Shroud of Saints, and Divine Seal on cross-class? Why not do anything with Repose?
Lilies and Confession stacks seem like they going to be pretty important moving forward so can we have more consistent way of generating them? Thanks for clearing off my hotbar but we're going to need to use up all the cross-class slots just to get the abilities that used to be inherent White Mage abilities back.

[Mahkii]

I am only going to post this here since the developers are listening.

I was expecting WHM to receive something to balance it out with The Balance and Chain Stratagem. One idea was a spell like Hastega that would reduce cast times, recast times and tp cost by some reasonable percentages. It would have to be stronger than Selene to keep up with The Balance.

Since the route that the development team decided to take was to increase WHM's healing potential, these changes need to somehow result in WHM's contribution to raid damage being on par with the contribution to raid damage made by The Balance. Without a party buff like Hastega, your options for this look like either increasing WHM's personal damage potential or by making the WHM become the Samurai of healing. By making WHM become the Samurai of healing, I mean make it so capable in a skilled player's hands that you can viably progress through the raid tier from day one with a WHM solo healing and have 5 DPS players in your party.

Either way, here is some food for thought on making due with what you've programmed so far:

• The goal of a high-end raid healer is to minimize the quantity of GCDs spent on healing and maximize the quantity of GCDs spent on damage.
• The logic for maximizing GCDs spent on damage puts the priority for healing abilities somewhere along the lines of Regen > OCDs > Healing GCDs with highest potency (Cure 2 > Cure 1).

In the context of this logic, I can share a few simple thoughts:

• Procs need to occur so frequently that perhaps they should just occur every GCD. At least then, this new system is actually increasing the amount of up-time on damage spells as compared to Heavensward.
• Stone and Aero should be able to proc just like Cure 1 and Cure 2, because we would rather be spamming damage spells than healing spells.
• Confessions would work on all GCD heals (AoE and single target) so that the confession system is actually getting utilized when we do heal.

This is all that I know to tell you based on what I've read for the new WHM system so far. All I can say is that I really would like to see WHM have a purpose again in serious raid groups. Thank you for reading.

[magnanimousCynic]

6 layers of snip

You can break the 1k character limit per post by editing it after posting it, that way you can combine your 6 posts into one larger post.

[Levy9]

Even assuming you get three lilies for every single oGCD you use and hit Assizes on the entire raid and three mobs, and Asylums on both tanks and two melee, you still get less healing potency AND less damage potency than an AST who uses their ground effect on the tank and a single enemy.

<.< Do you mean Earthly Star? I'm pretty sure that Earthly Star has a 200 damage potency, fully charged, unless there was another translation error. Assize has a 300 damage potency. How is it that Earthly Star does more damage to one mob than Assize will across three? Also, Assize's 300 potency heal across the entire raid plus Asylum on four people is way more healing than a 900 potency Earthly Star heal to one target.

one sort of ballpark way of looking at it is to just add 80 potency to your Cure/Cure 2

Why are confessions a 80 potency supplement to Cure/Cure 2? Confessions let you instantly cure the target(s) for either 400/500/600 potency depending on the number of stacks. It's more like having another Tetra available from a Cure proc, except with AoE potential.

[ZephyStar]

My biggest concern is that currently only Cure I and Cure II count for getting stacks of lillies and confessions. There are many times when I am playing WHM where I don't even have to use the cure abilities, much less use them enough to get the stacks at the rate at which they acquire. I would ask that you consider adding regen and medica I and II to the lily and confession stacks and/or increase the rate at which these stacks activate. I would prefer the former over the latter. Thank you for listening to the communities input on this.

[Kacho_Nacho]

I've been thinking about this all day between working on the Trig comic. It just seems there's this huge disconnect between how the experienced players were healing in ARR and HW and this new way with Cure I, Cure II, and the Lilies.

In spite of the some of the more rabid posters, SE cannot be clueless regarding how White Mages were being played. This emphasis on the Cure spells has to signal that the developers wish us players to change our healing methods.

Now, I'm not sure how this new paradigm is supposed to be an improvement. Certainly, if we are spending the bulk of our time casting Cures I and II, we white mages are not going to have time to deal damage. In addition, what abilities and role skills we will be using seem lackluster compared to the other healer's toolkits.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't see the intended design for white mages like I do for my other jobs. My hope is Yoshi-san sees our frustration and takes a moment out of his schedule to talk to us. Because we all are passionate about this job and want to see it shine in its own way in Stormblood.

[RezPls]

This lilly system really makes you wonder if any of the devs actively raid in this game or understand how their jobs are utlized optimally in a high end setting...

Make the lilly system proc off of any healing GCD/offGCD and make it effect the personal DMG of the next cast offensive magic spell by the WHM.

If you don't give WHM some type of DMG utility, you will 100% kill this job in any level of longevity. This isn't FFXI, where you could justify a job being awful just because its different.