Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[AlphaSonic]

As much as I don't like the Lilies, it wasn't because of this mechanic... You just met a very bad whm. ^^;
We don't need to force Lilies procs, especially since it's not a vital mechanic (barely a little bonus). So there is still no reason to not use our regens, especially if we are dps'ing in the same time.

It's counterintuitive the fact that you need to ignore a mechanic built into the class to be a good WHM.

[Reiryuu]

I'm going to write my final thoughts here.
I don't know if we're going to make a new thread for lvl 70 feedback or what but...

Long story short: I feel like an overglorified healbot. Yes, yes, I know "Heal" is in the role title I should expect to heal. That's not what I mean. The damage changes, the crazy new mechanics, the stupid new lily mechanic, lack of any mitigation type abilities, etc make it very hard for me to do anything but heal in many situations. It is far worse than it was leveling up in Heavensward and in the initial Heavensward endgame. Plus... everything that I had that wasn't a heal or damaging spell that I could cast on party members was taken away from me. Which wasn't much, I'll grant you that, but it gave me the breathing room needed to do other things even if that breathing room was 3~5 seconds. If you were trying to get people to feel more comfortable adding DPS as a healer, which you claim to have in a recent interview, you made a grave, grave mistake in that regard for white mages. It's even worse in lower level dungeons (50 roulette) where we don't have access to spells like Assize and Tetra.

When Stormblood hit, the one thing I wanted from WHM was a few new abilities to buff the party so I could do something besides just damage and heal. What I got was no buffs and being forced into healing far more and having less breathing room for doing other things. It's just not fun. I'm having more fun and feeling more potent on my 60 AST than my 70 WHM in the lower level content and the AST is just going to get better. But make no mistake. I do NOT want to see AST nerfed. I just want to see WHM get the same attention that AST did and have good, solid tools to mitigate damage and provide some utility to my party.

The lack of love that went into the "pure healer vision" of white mage is painfully obvious. Even more so if you've tried RDM which was obviously created with a lot of love and consideration. Playing the job feels good, it's a hell of a lot of fun, and everything just works so well together. The WHM lily system not only isn't fun, it's not rewarding, and you can totally ignore it. In fact, fishing for lilies may cause you to spend more MP than you should in a given situation.

What white mage has begun to feel like is you're out of ideas. What do we give WHM this patch guys? More Heals. More Stones. Sounds good. But no... it doesn't sound good. How would you like to have plain white rice and only plain white rice for every meal for the next 2 years? Doesn't sound very appealing does it? Then why are you giving us the same types of spells to use? And not only that, spells that only cover the most basic function of a healer?

Thin Air is nice. But it emphasizes one point: It encourages spamming spells in a quick time frame which rewards casting the same spell in quick succession usually with presence of mind up since that helps you get more spells out. Is this the sort of thing we're really supposed to be encouraged to do? Whether it be Holy (which would have its stun effect spoiled from the spam) or spamming cures... that's not exactly game play that I feel should be encouraged. And heaven forbid you actually design mechanics where spamming cure 3/Medica with PoM and thin air or something of the like is actually required.

Stone IV: Seriously? Am I hitting things with minecraft mountains now? Not only does it look ugly as hell, do you know how much you have to spam it just to kill something 64+? The same effect over and over and over... I know, ASTS have it just as bad with Malefic III with lower potency, but man... I'd rather have an upgrade to Holy to be honest. Stone III looked better =/

Divine Benison is... okay, I guess? You have to jump through more hoops to cast it, and it's on a cooldown, and it eats your lilies. It just seems like a slighly more powerful instant cast single target stoneskin that costs too many resources be it time or opportunity for what it gives you. The fact that this is a level 66 spell when stoneskin was 34 is just a slap in the face and the fact that NPC healers (Sylphie, the healers in Azim Steppes, etc.) STILL CAST STONESKIN is just salt in the wound. It's better than nothing, but I still go with my assessment that stoneskin was the better skill.

Plenary Indulgence:
This spell goes against everything your new combat mechanics and UI elements were supposed to get rid of. It's a heal that doesn't heal anyone who hasn't got a stack of a gimmic that is only given via one of two healing spells (out of the NINE we have) 20% of the time and only lasts for 30 seconds. Was someone sick or asleep when you had the meeting on what the new UI elements and job skills were supposed to do? For people who have terrible luck with RNG like I do, this spell may as well not even be there because it's unreliable and, in most situations, not even available to use.

The spell would work so much better if it was an AoE 300-ish potency heal that *gave* three confessions and one of such confessions would be consumed upon taking incoming damage to reduce said damage by 10% or so. Give it a cooldown, make it cost all our lilies... maybe even have it to where it gives 1 confession per lily consumed? I dunno, I'm just really dubious to getting *another* spell that just heals. I'm tired of getting heals.

[Risvertasashi]

Feedback after reaching level 70 and running through extreme content:

- Lilies are a noninteractive system. Could turn off the lilies gauge and it wouldn't change anything.
- PI/Confession is an extremely low impact system. You can use it for marginal extra free healing, or completely ignore it, the impact on the fight/mp management/etc isn't significant one way or another.
- Thin Air is amazing. Used right, it's very high impact and frees generous amounts of MP for other purposes.
- Divine Benison is not worth hotbar space.
- WHM MP management feels like it is in a good place, overall. Plays very much like Heavensward... which isn't necessarily a good thing considering there's supposed to be 2 new systems added since then.

[Tridus]

It's counterintuitive the fact that you need to ignore a mechanic built into the class to be a good WHM.

Pretty nice as a newbie trap, though. The biggest mistake a WHM can make is to go fishing for lillies and PI stacks instead of just doing what works, and the game gives you a pretty UI that encourages you to do exactly that... for lilies at least.

[Vircon]

Warning: Load of text ahead!

I'm sure my words will likely go unnoticed but I'll just type this just to rant. Okay so after officially getting my WHM up to level 70 I think it's time for me to insert my input on all of the changes done to WHM.



Divine Seal becoming Largesse: Why the nerf? Like it's not bad enough that we have to rebuy our own ability you had to nerf the potency and CD for us too. DS was one of the best oGCDs the WHM had and part of the reason for their high healing output. At least give the WHM a trait that allows them to have Largesse with the same traits as DS.

General changes to WHM movelist: Assize down to 60 seconds and gives the same potency to both enemies and party members. Love it! Benediction down to 180 seconds. Love it! Losing free Medica and Overcure. Not really that fussed.

Lily system: It has potential but currently it is very much flawed. First why limit the Lily procs to just Cure I and Cure II? Considering a good WHM should be relying on Regens/AoE heals/Tetra as a first priority over Cure I/II shouldn't those be able to proc Lilies as well. Second you'd have to gain 3 Lilies to really make the CD reduction worthwhile. Even then I feel the CD should be higher. Even if you have to reduce the proc rates for Cure I/II having a Lily potentially proc off a Regen/AoE/Tetra/Bene would make the system flow so much better.

Thin Air: Love it! Combining this with Presence of Mind adds a lot of speed to a WHM's HPS/DPS while giving them a free refresh that's not tied to Lucid Dreaming. Between this, Assize's CD reduction, and Lucid Dreaming's extra tick you've successfully solved the WHM's MP issues so I commend you all for this.

Stone IV: Eh. It's Stone IV. Not much to say here.

Divine Benison: A stronger Stoneskin that's instant and oGCD with only a 30 second recast? Nice! Okay great we've just gained that nice mitigation move that we've wanted for so long! Between this and Stoneskin this should help our mitigation game by quite a bit. Oh wait it's tied to the Lily system and we need at least 1 Lily to use it. Okay still not bad. We can still combine this with Stones- wait we're losing Stoneskin too? Not even to Role Actions it's entirely gone for good? Why?! Seriously though all we needed was a bit of mitigation and utility and you give us this while taking away what we had. Stoneskin may not have been good post-3.0 but it was far from useless. It was by far the most reliable source of mitigation we had since E4E is RNG based and Virus was limited to physical attacks. So while we have Divine Benison now let's look at the issues we have with it over Stoneskin.

1. We learn it so late. We originally learned Stoneskin at 34. We're learning Divine Benison at level 66. That's a whole 32 levels difference. In between that time WHMs have to deal with various tankbusters and other stuff that made Stoneskin worth using. Now we don't have access to anything reliable enough to mitigate any damage until then.

2. It's tied to the Lily system which is tied to RNG/potential overhealing. So not only are you potentially spending more MP to use it unless you have Thin Air/Freecure/are lucky but you'd also have to save said stack just for the Divine Benison because no matter what oGCD heal you use you're losing all of your stacks instantly and you can't use it at all. . Same thing with Divine Benison. If you use that on a party member you're using up all of your stacks instantly. Lame.

3. It's duration is much shorter that Stoneskin. The good thing about Stoneskin was that you could potentially cast it and do other things considering how long it lasts. With Divine Benison you actually have to time it with the hit like you would with a SCH/AST or else it'l just fall off before the hit.

Secret of the Lily II: lol. Due to the low proc rate and the low reward I can guarantee you that no one will notice that.

Plenary Indulgence: Yay! More RNG! The concept sounds good on paper. The more you heal, the more powerful the move becomes. The issue lies in the fact that party members must have at least 1 Confession Stack in order to get the heal which defeats the purpose considering not only will you rarely use Cure I/II on a party member but the duration is also so low that you'd have to be lucky to get a Confession stack on more than 2 people within those 30 seconds to make it worthwhile. As it currently is right now it's pretty much a weaker and more unreliable version of Tetra just for the tank.

Overall I love what you did for the MP management issue that the WHM has. I hate the fact that you've locked a good amount of the WHM's new gameplay behind RNG. I hate the fact that you've killed what very little mitigation we had. Finally I hate the fact that WHM still lacks utility that even SCH has some of. Seriously it doesn't have to be enough to step on the toes of the AST/SCH(not like they haven't already) but at least give something that makes it so bring the WHM provides some benefit other than best sustained and burst DPS because AST brings utility and better heals than both healers as we speak and SCH still brings way more mitigation than WHM despite the nerfs. Also a personal opinion of mine I think Excogitation from the SCH would be a move better suited for the WHM instead of the SCH. Just saying.

Anywho onto my suggestions.

Changes to the WHM Lily System.

Change 1: The Lily system exists to reduce the CD of the WHM's pre-level 60 oGCDs while adding oGCDs post-level 60
that can only be used with Lilies. The CD reduction for all WHM pre-level 60 oGCDs will be a flat 30% while consuming 1 Lily.

Divine Benison: Uses 1 Lily for use now and does not use up remaining Lilies.

Planetary Indulgence: Now relies on the Lily system instead of Confession stacks. Will heal everyone as well. Requires at least
1 Lily for use. Will automatically consume all Lilies upon use. Longer CD now. Healing Potency increases with the number of Lily stacks.

1 Lily = 400 Potency
2 Lilies = 500 Potency
3 Lilies= 600 Potency

Change 2: Lilies are now used as a power up of sorts. The controller will decide on how many Lilies they wish to consume to
power up certain moves. Powering up some moves will potentially increase the CD/MP cost of said move however.

Terra Blessing: Consumes a Lily to power up certain actions. No CD until Lilies are used. oGCD. 0 MP consumed. CD determined by number of Lilies used on the last move. 1 Lily = 20 seconds. 2 Lilies = 40 second. 3 Lilies = 60 seconds.

Raise

1 Lily = Restores target's MP/TP to 25 percent. Cost of base MP needed increased by 10 percent
2 Lilies = Restores target's MP/TP to 25 percent and comes back with no weakness gained. Cost of base MP needed increased by 15 percent.
3 Lilies = Restores target's HP/MP/TP to 50 percent with no weakness gained. Cost of base MP needed increased by 25%

Presence of Mind
1 Lily = Extended duration.
2 Lilies = You can pass the base version of it to 1 party member.
3 Lilies = Base version is passed to all nearby party members as well as the user. CD increased to 210 seconds.

Benediction

1 Lily = No delay
2 Lilies = No delay + target's MP/TP is restored by 50 percent. CD increased to 240 seconds
3 Lilies = No delay + target's MP/TP is restored by 50 percent + target is immune to most damage for 5 seconds.
CD increased to 300 seconds

Asylum

1 Lily = Duration is increased to 30 seconds
2 Lilies = Duration is increased to 30 second + potency increased to 150
3 Lilies = Duration is increased to 30 seconds + potency increased to 150 + 10% mitigation. CD increased to 180 seconds.

Assize
1 Lily = CD is reduced by 20 seconds.
2 Lilies = CD is reduced by 20 seconds and 15 percent of MP is restored instead.
3 Lilies = 20 percent of MP is restored and healing/damage potency becomes 400. CD increased to 120 seconds.

Tetragrammation
1 Lily = Reduces damage on the target by 10 percent for 10 seconds
2 Lilies = Reduces damage on the target by 15 percent for 10 seconds. CD increased to 90 seconds.
3 Lilies = Potency is increased to 900. Reduces damage on the target by 15 percent for 15 seconds.
CD increased to 150 seconds.

Divine Benison(Requires 1 Lily for use)
1 Lily = Provides the target with a shield equaling 15% of their max HP.
2 Lilies = Provides the target with a shield equaling 20% of their max HP. CD increased to 60 seconds.
3 Lilies = Provides the party with a shield equaling 15% of their max HP. CD increased to 120 seconds.

Plenary Indulgence(Requires 1 Lily for use. Targets all nearby party members. Base CD increased to 60 seconds)

1 Lily = 400 Potency heal.
2 Lilies = 500 Potency heal.
3 Lilies = 650 Potency heal. CD increased to 90 seconds.



For both I would change the proc rates for gaining lilies. Any form of GCD heals have a chance to proc for gaining a Lily.

Cure: 35 percent
Cure II: 50 percent
Cure III: 50 percent per target
Medica: 20 percent per target
Medica II heal: 20 percent per target
Regen: 10 percent per tick
Medica II regen: 5 percent per tick


I would also change Secret of the Lily II trait as well. This trait would apply to both changes.

Secret of the Lily II: Automatically gain 1 Lily per minute after gaining aggro the enemy. Time is cumulative so this will be active
in dungeons as well.

I'd sooner see change number 1 get used by SE since it takes their system and expands on it but I'd like change number 2 since it adds a bit of utility to the WHM that they desperately need.

[IndoX]

Honestly PI would be fine if confessions were a buff to yourself only and did AoE healing based on the amount of confessions you have. The proc rate could stay the same and the cooldown increased slightly.

[Memoriae]

Honestly I like WHM being a pure/bursty healer, but I disagree with the feedback that WHM does not need more stones and other dps skills. WHM does not need to have utility, what it needs is raw single target dps that brings it on par of a dps class. Even now WHM already fills this role well with if that the team is so good healing isn\\'t as demanding they can add some serious dps.

[Tridus]

Honestly I like WHM being a pure/bursty healer, but I disagree with the feedback that WHM does not need more stones and other dps skills. WHM does not need to have utility, what it needs is raw single target dps that brings it on par of a dps class. Even now WHM already fills this role well with if that the team is so good healing isn\\'t as demanding they can add some serious dps.

If WHM can do as much DPS as say BLM... why would you bring a BLM? WHM can do that DPS and also switch into a healer instantly if the primary healers die. I mean, if the only reason to bring any DPS class is that the game forces you to, there's something wrong.

[Chiami]

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

[Metsonm]

Ok, had some playtime at 70 now. Here's my updated take on things:

Skills

Ok, of the new job skills we got I won't sneeze at Thin Air. That's great. As is Stone IV, even if I preferred the hit animation of III and the spiky death ball. The problems come later:

Divine Benison is alright now I've had hands on play with it. I hadn't taken into account the fact that resurrection doesn't cut health anymore so Stoneskin isn't needed to buffer ultimates any more. And the ability to treat it as a combo from Cure II makes it easier to slot in than SS. I still miss the ability to precast before pulls, but the ease of use can counterbalance that. The only problem is that it's tied to lilies, which I'll get into in a bit.

Secret of the Lily II (because here works) is ok. It's so passive I've never noticed it, but it's not hurting. Do I wish we had space for a different trait that wasn't dependent on RNG upon RNG for a cooldown reduction? Yes, but the effects are way better than the lily system as is because it reduced already used cooldowns so you're not saving things stupidly.

Plenary Indulgence is trash. Just going to say it outright. The ONLY time I've gotten a confession stack is through fishing for it. Then there's the thing about it just being an AoE tank heal because the chances of having it on multiple useful people is extremely low. This really needs sorted, either the confessional system or the skill itself, just something.

Lilies

I still don't like the lily system. Are there many tankbusters that come in the frequency where Tetra being between 48 and 60 seconds is beneficial? If I want to shield the tank it doesn't matter anyway. It boosts too many things, and too few of them I'd want to use lilies on. I mostly just found myself using single lilies on the shield because saving up 3 to make Assize reduction worthwhile is a waste of time. I'd rather if it gave us a spellspeed buff or something rather than a cooldown reduction. They're infrequent enough that it wouldn't be crazy powerful, unless you're spamming Cure II in which case the extra HPS might be useful anyway.

DPS

Dealing damage is just empty now. Some people thought it was clunky, but I honestly miss the feeling of going "Ok, people are good, tank has regen, no damage coming in, time to go nuts with Cleric Stance." With the possibility I screwed up. I also miss the weaving of Fluid Aura with Aero. It somehow made WHM DPS even simpler and that's a line I wasn't ready to cross.

Overall I'm a bit disappointed, but it's not the trash fire I expected. I can safely say WHM exists and that's about it. I hope they take this feedback and have a good long look at the lilies and confessions. I've written the DPS changes off as a lost cause, but those others could be fixed.

My final thoughts: probably going to swap to Red Mage now.