Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[BroodingFicus]

'Viable in raids' in reference to WHM is like saying of a restaurant 'No one has had food poisoning'. That is the bare minimum requirement for all the jobs in FFXIV and not a good indication of quality. I come into an expansion expecting innovative, beautiful, fun mechanics and moves that add to the experience. Not half backed RNG mechanics and a handful of abilities we could all essentially ignore and be no worse for wear. That's not even getting into making a whole new job move system that essentially amounts to a WHM buying back their own toys from a bully.

[Serilda]

I don't need to play WHM at 70 to know that 4.0's WHM isn't a job I want to play any more. Even if they've tweaked lilies and confessions to be great healing/mitigation tools at endgame, they're not the core problems for me. The narrow focus on 8-man content (which is what it amounts to if you're having to assume the other healer takes certain things or keep rearranging your cross-class slots and keybinds every time you join an instance) bothers me as a casual. The gutting of abilities I used in every fight only to replace them with moar healing bothers me as a casual. The fact that helping new players through hours and hours of synced content (at a level where I won't be able to perform as well as I can in 3.x) will be much harder than before if I stubbornly cling to WHM bothers me as a casual. Unless we cheese everything and charge through as Holy machines who don't need to take are of people rather than running at maximum difficulty... but then why bother playing the game if everything is so easy? There are many types of casual.

So I'm playing the heck out of it in the last few days, then retiring it for the greener pastures of RDM and AST in order to be a statistic. I'm not enough of a masochist to play something with so many problems up to 70 just to confirm what I already know. If I want to try it in PVP I still don't need to bother levelling it up to 70, so it's a pretty easy decision to make.

[Hestzhyen]

Your players all around the world are saying "no" to this change, not only because it encourages poor play, but because the mechanic itself is flawed and forces people to hoard stacks (not using abilities) or waste lilies to do their job well. And to add insult to injury, AST is getting some really fun stuff AND gets buffs AND keeps its ridiculous Balance potency. They didn't re-balance the healers at all- they just made AST king of everything and gave SCH a consolation prize. Meanwhile the WHM is staring at their staff, wondering who they pissed off to get such a raw deal. I don't want to get booted and feel like a second-class player because I take WHM into content. I want to have fun with the mechanics you give us. Don't force me to spam Cure I and Cure II to use the fun things and feel powerful. Don't gate my big fun stuff behind lilies that get used whether I want them to be or not. Give me choices and something that makes me desirable in an end-game 8-man raid.

[NanaWiloh]

For those saying calm down; the Whm community has a barrel of apples and bed of hot coals ready to roast Yoshi P and you along with him should Whm prove not to be any good at 70. So pack your bags and write your last will and testment cause if Whm is not better at 70, whm players are going to roast you over those hot coals.

p.s Remember Bards going from 2.0 to 3.0 when saying Calm down...

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

I think WHM could use a little more nerfing in the AoE department personally. (　^ω^)

And SCH.

And Ast.

[Serilda]

The cross-role stuff and its lack of replacements continues to grate. Healer abilities are hard to balance because a lot of them are 'selfless'; if I don't take the optimal cross-role abilities on BLM my DPS will be slightly lower depending on what others do, or maybe things will be harder on the healers. Big deal. I guarantee that nobody will care. If I don't take the optimal cross-role abilities on WHM I will feel crippled and unable to do my job in content which actually requires me to be a healer (as opposed to when I'm a bonus simplified DPS who occasionally uses Regen).

Esuna doesn't generally help me feel stronger, it helps other people do their job. Protect isn't an option, it's a boring baseline stat boost everyone is always presumed to have that has no deeper gameplay impact. If two healers take it in one party, it's inefficient. Even having it on your bar after the initial cast is inefficient. Swiftcast is critical without any other way to speed up important spells like Raise (of course, other jobs are less pressured here - one less thing for the WHM to be in charge of I guess).

Rescue, 'Divine Seal', the new Cleric Stance, Surecast (lol); those are optional things that people can take according to their playstyle, though I'm sure most of us will feel obliged to take the most important ones we used to have to claw back some semblance of our current functionality. Overall, the 'new' abilities represent an inappropriate, lazy use of the cross-role system that make us feel incomplete when it comes to our core roles. I don't like how it feels; it's not satisfying. Psychologically speaking, a healer without Swiftcast is a risk-taker who can still perform so long as nothing goes wrong, especially now Stoneskin II's removal negates one of my preferred reasons to use it. However, a healer without some kind of native Esuna isn't even a proper healer. It's probably 'balanced' for when we get Esunaga in 6.0 (SCH already has their version, after all, and even BRD has a native Esuna of sorts), but I won't be going back to WHM after such a long drought.

[Zojha]

'Viable in raids' in reference to WHM is like saying of a restaurant 'No one has had food poisoning'. That is the bare minimum requirement for all the jobs in FFXIV and not a good indication of quality.

Truth be told, I'd not be surprised if the dev team is secretly all like:
"I don't understand why they're so upset, WHM's heals are great!", as usual completely neglecting every other aspect of the jobs because hey, healers only heal, right? DPS is not taken into account (even though you'll need it until you overgear *winkwink*) and when they first talked about monk utility, they openly admitted that raid synergy had not been taken into account before either, which led to monk in particular being sidelined, hence the new utility (Nevermind the fact they then went ahead and created SAM without such for reasons). I'd not be surprised if they completely overlooked healers in that process.

Ah well! Nothing to do about it. They're gonna ignore the feedback until Omega anyway and chances are, the only feedback they'll care about then will be the statistic <.<

[Xaen]

It's like reading a whiny bunch of kids hue hue hue.

[javid]

Could you, in a succinct, non-hyperbolic manner explain in what way WHM is better than Ast or Sch? As in, what actual worth it has above the other two healers? Or how it is in any way intuitively designed? Please, defend Confession, stacks we have to watch on 3-7 party members. Or how Lilys are even useful or actually​ add to the job's function or fun factor?

huh? Do you really want me to offer up MY OPINION?? Or is this a troll bait??

FINE ILL BITE ANYWAYS!!

The word "better" is completely subjective! For some ppl, "better" can mean "simple", "easier to handle". Meanwhile others attribute another meaning to the word "better".

Simplicity

Actions
Even with the Lily & confessions added complexity, WHM remains the simplest of the 3 healers, with the lowest number of actions overall and lowest actions/min to manage overall. SE has purposely design its content (healing-wise) to make healing management virtually the same among all 3 healers (at least that's what Yoshi said they did...we'll have to play and see if we agree.). So here you have the lowest actions-healer having the same healing output as its higher action & actions/min counterparts. Meaning one can say," A WHM can with much simplicity handle the same content a SCH/AST can handle (healing wise)." That same one could also say, "being able to do the same (healing) job with less resources is BETTER!"

Mana

WHM has the "better" MP management (best management). Now I know a bunch of ppl will try to claim to be MP-managment-demi-gods!! But a more realistic outlook is : MP management in a long up-time fight can and has been an issue for healers. Even though we will now have, mana-shift, brd/mch mp regen, and cross class Lucid Dreaming, WHM has the best personal resources to assist its MP management (thin air, assize, freecure*, & confession procs). Now AST has the worst mp management on avg!.

Let's take a closer look at the mana-shift ability and brd/mch mp regens.

mana-shift
Rdm has NO personal mp regen ability....which means Rdm will not shift you shittttt in a fight, they need their mp! SMN is a bit better since they have Aetherflow, but that's assuming they're managing their MP efficiently (not over doing it on the non-DT ruin III's); so really the only caster at liberty to share its mana is a BLM(and you WHMs think you have it bad?? they took away BLMs party utility, they took away current foe's function, and I highly doubt BLM will remain second in single target raw dps like it is now...
good luck" finding a BLM in best "comp").

range mp ability
Current Mage's Ballad and MP turret and AST's ewer all give 30 potency/tic. Mages and turret, if started at full mp, can last up to 1 min 45 sec. The new Stormblood mp/tp regen range abilities doesn't list the potency, but they only last for 30 sec over a 3min cd. So if their respective potencies are also 30/tic, healers that struggle with MP managment aren't gonna find 300 potency mp regen/3min very useful. And you could do both turret and mage's in current dire situations, but no longer moving forward...





In conclusion

WHM can heal all fights with less resources to manage than its counterparts which leaves it more room for error by comparison. WHM also has the best MP managing utilities which again leaves more room for error compared to AST/SCH. For those players that value these "perks" over everything else, WHM is "better" than SCH/AST




note: I am NOT one of those players... but with a community that currently struggles to dps while healing in a DUNGEONS?? I HIGHLY doubt that most DO NOT prioritize simplicity over everything else.

[winsock]

For those saying calm down; the Whm community has a barrel of apples and bed of hot coals ready to roast Yoshi P and you along with him should Whm prove not to be any good at 70. So pack your bags and write your last will and testment cause if Whm is not better at 70, whm players are going to roast you over those hot coals.

p.s Remember Bards going from 2.0 to 3.0 when saying Calm down...

You are saying that a videogame developer should write a will.... mostly rooted in information from a build from April... in regards to a videogame that hasn't been released.

Regardless of what WHM ends up being, you need to calm down. It's not that deep.