Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Verdan]

Utility spells. He's saying: "If everyone can heal with a basic toolkit, what's the point of an advanced toolkit? Get rid of everything but the basics and give the class some utility." However, this analysis is missing that Asts basically get our advanced toolkit, and get utility. The option to keep the flavor of the class is to tie those other heals to utility. There's actually a mechanic they gave us to do that, confessions. But it's useless and shows up at 70 for one spell that I can't see anyone using often.

[ColdKilla]

When I got to 60 I thought whm would be the greatest healer in game. Nope, nothing great visually. I got there recently and all I get is a cool bubble. I rather go back to my black mage and nuke. The AOE heals are horrible they take long to generate and even Cures have a long cast time. Granted Scholar is made for the burst heal. I would like to see regen do more as well. Stoneskin needs to be able to be casted during a fight it made it completely useless to have or least make it a buff that stays on. My over all is whm needing more skillspeed, more visuals, lesser cool down time and something better to replace stoneskin. I never really had too much problem with mana it's always been time casting takes too long. I haven't finished heavensward but I have lvl 60 gear. So disappointed in WHM overall. Hope it's adjusted to be better. Oh and do something better with Stone like Stonega instead. Some AOE stone skill for dps.




We were promised balance:
http://twinfinite.net/2017/03/ffxiv-...view-pax-east/

[OzumaKuma]

Glad to see how much in numbers this thread has picked up.

[Kopela]

I think I'll add my voice to the cacophony and help show the devs how many of us disagree with this.

I see a lot of people talking about adjusting the system to work better and frankly make some kind of sense but I don't think that is the solution. The biggest problem with the changes to WHM by miles is the addition of RNG and no version of this class will work as long as it stays. Honestly, this is game design 101 stuff. People need to feel like they have control over the outcome of a game for it to be fun (they don't actually need to have much control they just need to feel they have control.) It is hard to feel good about winning at something if you don't feel like your actions were the cause of said victory. Aside from how RNG removes a sense of accomplishment from player victory it also removes player control over the outcome of the game.

Take Bingo a game that is basically all RNG, have you ever heard of a super talented pro-Bingo player? No, because the game plays itself. If you do well at Bingo its because you got lucky not because you acted in a way that helped you win the game. Now think about Chess, a game that is all skill and no luck, pro-Chess players are well respected because people know that they worked hard and got good at the game. I know I feel way better when I win at chess than when I win at Bingo. The RNG added by SE makes white mage feel more like playing Bingo than Chess and that is a big problem. I would never argue that MMO's should be as skill-based as Chess, luck will always have a place in MMO's but skill should be way more important than luck (Dr. Richard Garfield has a great lecture on the luck-skill continuum if anyone is interested) This is to say nothing of the rewards for getting lucky that SE is giving us. People like Bingo despite it being luck based because when you win you get prizes people like chess because when you win you get a sense of accomplishment what does WHM get? A meager 20% oGCD reduction.

This is to say nothing of the problem with adding luck to a healer role which depends on predictability. I read a comment in this thread a while back that stated that the rest of the raid group was basically RNG because you couldn't predict their actions and frankly he was correct. Especially when it comes to DF/pug raiding your group represents a sort of RNG. Part of the role of a healer is to minimize that RNG as much as possible. Do you have a DPS that just can't seem to avoid that one tricky AOE? The healer's job is to make up for that unexpected problem and keep things predictable. It is awfully hard to keep things predictable when a healer can't even predict the effects of their own abilities.

Just some thoughts I have been having over the past few days I am dyslexic please be gentle

[koroko220]

snip

I agree with all of this. Ast having RNG for buffs is one thing.... but HEALING? That doesn't make any sense.

[rainblack]

Something to keep in mind as well from a playerbase standpoint is that the lily system is already useless BECAUSE of this pushback. Even if it turns out to have some hidden utility, whether WHM gets brought into raids isn't pure math. It comes down to whether people making parties in the party finder believe it's useful or not. Even if WHM did have some ability to compete with AST and SCH with this system, it needs to be changed because it's already been cemented as a broken system that doesn't contribute to raids, even before release. The problem isn't quite whether that's justified or not, it's whether it's going to happen anyway. And a 200-page thread about how it needs to be fixed suggests it's probably gonna happen anyway.

[Mahkii]

Something to keep in mind as well from a playerbase standpoint is that the lily system is already useless BECAUSE of this pushback. Even if it turns out to have some hidden utility, whether WHM gets brought into raids isn't pure math. It comes down to whether people making parties in the party finder believe it's useful or not. Even if WHM did have some ability to compete with AST and SCH with this system, it needs to be changed because it's already been cemented as a broken system that doesn't contribute to raids, even before release. The problem isn't quite whether that's justified or not, it's whether it's going to happen anyway. And a 200-page thread about how it needs to be fixed suggests it's probably gonna happen anyway.

I have faith that if SE fixes WHM, top raiders will know it and show it and that will trickle down to the rest of the player base.

[rainblack]

I agree that's probably mostly the case, but I think any fix is going to have to be at least a minor thematic breakaway since traditionally stigma like this builds a lot of community inertia. an effect change or ability replacement would probably go a bit further than 5% potency changes or increasing the lily proc change, for example.

[Jade3173]

after read (too many) pages of this thread, all I have to say is that WHM didn't lose Shroud of Saints, it gained Lucid Dreaming. AST is the one that lost their MP regain tool. Shroud, Aether, and Lucid all reduces threat, all have refresh of 80 the difference is the duration between skills, 15s/24s/21s respectively. Yes it sucks that WHM lost skills to the Role section, but that's not a bad thing. What makes it a bad is that they got nothing to replace it. WHM lost Divine Seal which is a Job skill but SCH lost Leeches which is a Job skill as well. Also, SCH had to waste a Job skill on Leeches before. Do agree that RNG for what is supposed to be the core of new mechanics on a class that had little RNG before sucks. Lilies problems aren't so much the proc rate as the reward is simply pointless. I'd rather them keep the proc rate if the effect was at least something you would, ya know, use

[rainblack]

Honestly my only real guess is that the idea is WHM can take over so much of the healing that it contributes party utility and avoids overhealing by letting the other healer almost entirely switch over to DPS/Utility stuff. I don't know enough about AST/SCH, but will it have any increased utility if it doesn't have to spend as much time healing? WHM could actually work with the "pure healer" concept if it's designed to solo heal most of the fight and the other healer only needs to tag in for healing in crisis situations or larger attacks.

I'm probably missing something really basic, but at this point all I can think of is WHM+Lilies is designed for heavy sustained healing now (via constant cure1/2 spam, shielding/plenary applying after heal spam, and lily cooldown reduction pulling your next healing burst closer by 10 seconds or so) and the only way I can think of to make that work is it's meant to free up the other healer long enough (i.e. 90% of the fight) to do double its DPS/Util.

Mostly I just feel like it's fundamentally designed to be constantly overhealing if it's going to require cure1/2 spam alongside us keeping our HoTs, so the only way I can really think of it working is if the other healer has a benefit to WHM covering for half its healing output.