Consolidated White Mage 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Reiryuu]

Let's look at the bright side. At least we already know what WHM is getting in 5.0.

- Stone V
- Aero IV
- A 10th healing spell.
- 2 more traits worth of lilies due to button bloat fears.

[Ayer2015]

Ok, so I finished leveling WHM and I really liked the changes until I hit 70. 20% chance of procing Confession stacks feels bad, and the 30sec duration even worse.

[xNewbx]

I have to admit the fact we are already solo healing the new extreme primals means that an AST is all you should ever take. Buffing up the party's damage while allowing the other healer slot to be a DPS couldn't be any more optimized for damage. What a joke this expansion is for healers so far.

[Niroken]

Let's look at the bright side. At least we already know what WHM is getting in 5.0.

- Stone V
- Aero IV
- A 10th healing spell.
- 2 more traits worth of lilies due to button bloat fears.

This is the scary thing, given the track record of SE you just know most of the new spells in the future will be using Lillies or the confession system. A lot like how they use FATEs and Hunts.

[NocturniaUzuki]

So I finally hit 70 on my WHM today and gave it a try in both 4-player and 8-player situations. Here are my thoughts:

First of all, I actually like the concept behind WHM. The lily gauge, taken out of context, is a neat system. Most of WHM's new abilities are also very neat, conceptually, and go a long way towards solving some of WHM's major issues - namely, its relative lack of oGCD heals, shields, and its problematic MP sustain.

WHM suffers from a critical flaw though:

The player has too little control. The job breaks its own functionality.

Any time we use one of our most useful abilities, we lose all of our Lilies. This causes a torrent of new problems, mainly in 8-player situations. The main difference here is that, in 4-player regular dungeons, the healer is frequently casting single-target heals on the tank, generating Lilies at a rapid rate. However, against any boss, whether it be 4-player or 8-player, the basic and most efficient approach to healing is to use Regen to sustain the tank, and to only use single-target heals to recover from tank busters. In fact, if the party is particularly good, the healer can conserve both time and MP and use AoEs, oGCD heals, and Regens to sustain the tank and everyone else, allowing the healer more DPS time and MP. As a result, Lilies are not being generated, rendering the entire Lily system useless. Therefore, WHM fails to unlock more of its potential when in the hands of a skilled player, hampering experienced healers instead of empowering them.

One potential and simple change that would both fix many of WHM's problems in addition to making the game more difficult would actually be to increase the power of boss' auto attacks. If Regens are no longer enough to sustain the tank through boss auto attacks, then WHM will be able to take up the mantle of the game's premiere "Single-target healer" in light of a change in meta from a main healer/off-healer setup to each healer being absolutely necessary to the fight, with one handling AoE while the other handles single-target heals, focusing on the main tank.

Becoming the premiere single-target healer would not fix all of its problems, however. While Plenary Indulgence would become useful for sustaining the tank, it still fails to be useful in sustaining others. Setting aside the meager 20% Confession rate for now, if we cast Cure or Cure II on a non-tank who accidentally took a hit from a boss mechanic, that player will be sufficiently healed by a single cast, and is not likely to take isolated damage again within the 30s Confession duration. Yes, they may take damage from raid-wide AoEs, but the healer's response to such AoEs has to be Medica, Assize, etc, as it heals the entire party, not just the select few with Confession stacks.

Now, about Confessions. Much like the Lily gauge, the Confession system is very neat. As I'm sure many people have already suggested, we need more Confessions, faster, and we need more control over them. To that end, it may be worth changing Confessions to be granted at a 100% rate on single-target heals, while significantly nerfing the healing potency of Plenary Indulgence on targets with only 1-2 Confessions and either increasing the maximum number of stacks or reducing the potency on 3 stacks as well [Suggested values: 100, 200, 400] and reducing its cooldown to roughly 5 seconds. This gives the WHM unprecedented control over how much its single-target heals will heal for. On the main tank, the stacks would cap very quickly, allowing the WHM to conserve MP by using its Confession stacks to quickly recover from tank busters via a Cure I + Plenary combo, rather than using Cure II. This change would also prevent the combination of AoE and Regen Confession stacking (to be addressed shortly) from being overpowered.

If AoEs are changed to grant Confessions, I would suggest having the base Confession rate be 12.5% (1/8 chance, with the chance increasing by up 37.5% for each individual player, for a maximum of a 50% chance, relative to each player's percent of health remaining). This would allow each AoE to average one Confession on a random player per cast. However, players who have lower HP are given a higher chance at a Confession. This proves extremely useful for recovering when a player makes a mistake. For example, if one or two players fail to use Vril on one of LakshmiEX's attacks and take increased damage or a bleed, the WHM's follow-up AoE heal will give the WHM a chance at quickly healing one or both of those players with Plenary Indulgence, or Cure I + Plenary Indulgence, instead of having to use Cure II or burn Tetragrammaton/Benediction.

For Regens, simply giving each HoT tick a small chance of granting a Confession on each tick would work fine, though I am a bit concerned that Regen Confessions would make the 30s duration inconsequential, as each new Confession would reset the timer. Personally, I would rather not see Regens grant Confessions.

In tackling the issue of both Confessions and the loss of Lilies upon the execution of any skill that uses them, I would like to suggest a few new WHM spells. The objective here is to give WHM players much more control over their job's gauges and stacks.

First, the loss of Lilies can be fixed by removing that system in exchange for a new spell:

Blessing of the Lily:

Cast time: Instant
MP Cost: 0
Cooldown: 5s (?)
Effect: Causes the next applicable spell cast to consume all available Lilies in exchange for reducing the spell's cooldown, proportional to the number of Lilies consumed.

That would be the most straightforward solution, but it doesn't give us maximum control. Here is an alternative solution:

Blessing of the Lily:

Cast time: Instant
MP Cost: 0
Cooldown: 5s (?)
Effect: Causes the next applicable spell cast to consume [X] number of Lilies in exchange for reducing the spell's cooldown, proportional to the number of Lilies consumed. The number of Lilies consumed is based on the current number of Confession stacks in play. (One concern here is having 0 Lilies on 4-player bosses if sustaining the tank through Regen alone is enough, cause a lack of Lilies; one potential fix would be having 0 Confessions cause all Lilies to be consumed, so the Confession:Lily ratios would be 0:3, 1:1, 2:2, 3:3, 4:3, 5:3, 6:3, etc)

This has great synergy with the next skill:

Candid Bloom

Cast time: Instant
MP cost: 0
Cooldown: 30s (?)
Effect: Instantly converts up to three active Confession stacks into Lilies. Prioritizes oldest Confessions. Will only convert as many Confession stacks as necessary to fill the Lily gauge (i.e. if you have 1 Lily, using this skill will convert only two Confessions into two Lilies).

(This acts as a way to both solve the Lily crisis as well as remove nearly-depleted Confession stacks that will not get much use otherwise)

Finally, to give us maximum control over how many Lilies we have active at any given time, as well as to act as a buffer for the remaining RNG nature of Lily generation:

Sprout

Cast-time: Instant
MP cost: 0
Cooldown: 30s (?)
Effect: Generates one Lily.

This allows us to not only supplement our own Lily gain and cast Divine Benison as necessaery, but also allows for skilled WHMs to micromanage their active Confessions by adjusting the number of Confessions that will be converted to Lilies via Candid Bloom.

[Ayer2015]

I have to admit the fact we are already solo healing the new extreme primals means that an AST is all you should ever take. Buffing up the party's damage while allowing the other healer slot to be a DPS couldn't be any more optimized for damage. What a joke this expansion is for healers so far.

You are solo healing with a good group.... The average group will need two healers

[Nixxe]

So now that I'm 70 on WHM and have played with the new stuff a bit, there are two big changes I'd like to see:
1. Give us a Dark Arts style ability for lily consumption. The RNG makes it difficult to use Benison, as several key abilities that see regular use consume the lilies whether I want them to or not.
2. Make the Confessions for Plenary Indulgence more consistent. If the ability needs to be retuned a bit to compensate, that's fine, but the buffs are so inconsistent I can't really count on the heal being there when I need it, so it becomes something I basically just spam on CD with a 1 stack, which is to say I'd never miss the healing it offers if it simply didn't exist and I use it more for the sake of using it to feel like I stuck it to RNGesus and the game than I do because it's helpful. Additionally, the UI is not well suited to keeping track of Confessions durations on others, further increasing the difficulty of making good use of this ability.

[Risvertasashi]

If Divine Benison didn't have a lily requirement, I would use it for every tankbuster. But gating it behind RNG or a required cure II... just really limits its potential.

[Hanayumi]

If Divine Benison didn't have a lily requirement, I would use it for every tankbuster. But gating it behind RNG or a required cure II... just really limits its potential.

Yeah, noticed this in susanoo ex, got a divine out on the tank maybe 1/2 the time for the tankbuster, main problem nothing can do to gain a lily while everyone is healed or when you have to use a lily quickly one something else like a tetra or assize... Also noticed when stuff starts hitting the fan definitely find medicas, cure III, and regans far more reliable than cure and cure II, so lily production pretty much vanishes during those heavy mechanic moments. Another thing noticing not really using Plenary all that much, way too useless, sometime get lucky using it maybe once or twice in the fight to save a tiny MP but... in the moment it actually seems better to just use the cure or cure II for a stupid lily instead... so yeah...

[Risvertasashi]

After thinking on it a bit, I would suggest this change to Divine Benison:

Instead of Requiring a lily: If you have no lilies, make it cost 1200 mp (same cost as cure II). If you have 1+ lilies, it costs no MP. I think this would give it the reliability a mitigation shield needs in high end content, while still keeping a resource cost. Or, honestly, even making it cost 1440 MP (Adlo cost) would probably be fine... just so long as there is an alternative to paying lilies.