Thread: In defense of WHM 4.0

Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

I'm with you on withholding conclusions till we have all the facts, though

What facts don't we have at this point?

Originally Posted by Levy9

It seems like people are looking for a change to the White Mage's playstyle rather than a buff to make it's current style more viable. The .[/B]

My question to u would be what about what youve heard does whm shine better at than the other two healers ?

Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Earthly Star is an instant 900 potency AoE, 30y range heal (Medica is only 25y) and is 200 damage potency. Literally better.

You tell me all Astrologians would be able to planify their Earthly Star, which mean cast 10-20 sec before a big attack ?
Lol, I bet they will be only very few of them. The majority will only cast the thing, and explode it instantly which deal 175 damage potency and 675 healing potency.

Originally Posted by Gespenst

What facts don't we have at this point?

How content is designed in Stormblood. The whm could very well have an easier time healing all content allowing them to add greater personal dps to the encounter. Whether this means much is yet to be seen.

Originally Posted by Gespenst

What facts don't we have at this point?

Forcing myself to be objective, the main things we're missing are (a) actual final-version changes, and (b) the structure of group content.

It's possible that significant changes are made before Stormblood access opens. It's possible SE has built content different from much of what we've seen thus far, content that demands much more of Healers, and emphasizes reaction times in a way that makes WHM's instant-cast spells desirable. It's possible they're adding Trait / Ability enhancements to gear that we haven't seen yet, enhancements that make WHM's Lily system far more compelling.

I personally think any of these scenarios is incredibly unlikely, but if I'm being absolutely objective, we don't have all the facts yet. I think we have enough to be hugely concerned about the direction of WHM, though.

In response to the OP:

Originally Posted by Levy9

It seems like people are looking for a change to the White Mage's playstyle rather than a buff to make it's current style more viable. The White Mage has always been a pure healer.

I disagree with the premise here. WHM, from the outset, has been a healer gifted with a lot of HoT spells and some potent damage spells as well. The playstyle up until now has centered around using HoT spells to handle typical damage loads, casting high-potency healing spells to handle tank busters, and filling the rest of our time rotating through a wealth of damage spells (three stackable DoTs in the form of the Aero spells, a reasonably strong single-target in Stone III, a utilitarian Fluid Aura, a potent spammable AoE spell in Holy, and an even stronger AoE instant-cast ability in Assize).

What people are complaining about is not that the nature of WHM has stayed the same - it's that it has been changed, or at least changes have been strongly encouraged. It has been pushed toward being a pure healer, and I would argue very few people wanted that. Our stackable DoT is reduced; the Fluid Aura damage is gone. The new abilities we've gained, such as they are, depend upon spamming Cure I / II, which is something WHMs very rarely do in the course of things throughout 2.x / 3.x. Spamming Cure I / II obviously conflicts with the existing playstyle.

This was a very poorly thought-out set of changes. Our new toys are dependent upon spamming spells that a successful 2.x / 3.x WHM doesn't spam, our damage spells were slightly downgraded, and our utility was largely stripped off and placed into the Healer role pool. That's called changing the nature of WHM - not keeping it the same.

2 major issues though that are left with WHM. 1) Lack of utility. 2) RNG required for lillies/confessions. You can't expect us to be spamming Cure I/II in order to hope we get stacks of something for it to be useful. The new mechanic is the nail on the coffin.

Now... if ANY heal (hot or direct) would proc lily/confession with say... 15% chance.... that would be a game changer. Doesn't fix the lack of utility but would make the new systems a little more viable for end game.

Originally Posted by Levy9

see beneath [/B]

*sits here speachless*

Are you... are you REALLY serious???
You can't be. You just... can't be.

Originally Posted by Levy9

It seems like people are looking for a change to the White Mage's playstyle rather than a buff to make it's current style more viable. The White Mage has always been a pure healer. Scholar always had more utility. And then Astrologian as well when 3.0 arrived. This makes me wonder why people insist on committing to White Mage if they prefer a more utility based healing style. Why not simply main AST rather than transform the WHM into an AST? I'd rather there be distinct styles within healing, rather than having SE streamline everything for an easy answer to balance issues.

No, nobody wants a complete change in playstyle. All everyone really wanted was a button with a nice party buff so that people take pity on us since we are at least a little useful and actually take us into raids instead of the utility/heal/dps monsters that are AST/SCH. Besides, as somebody else said before me… AST is the WHM copy, not the other way round. You can achieve different playstyles without making one class completely worthless in the process, e.g. HoT healer/direct healer/shield healer. None of this precludes them carrying raid utility, but their healing, aka what defines the healer job, is performed differently, making them unique. However, SE completely, utterly failed at doing this to the point of slapping a stupid, worthless gimmick onto WHM that will barely ever see much use since no WHM in their right mind will ever spam Cure/Cure II to the extend necessary to make it worthwile. Plus, the usefulness of this gimmick is basically non-existent for reasons many, many other people already mentioned, thus I won’t mention them again and sound like a broken record. And, as others said already, they did change WHM playstyle, to the worse because it’s just plain awful playing to spam Cure/Cure II, which is now required to activate the damn useless gimmick.

Originally Posted by Levy9

In my opinion, the White Mage should be buffed in a way that properly compensates for it's lack of utility, not reworked into another utility healer. Whether or not SE accomplished this is yet to be seen. We don't have much information about the actual content of Stormblood calls for or it's healing and damage formulas.

And you want to achieve that how, exactly? A healer without utility can only rely on its healing; however, as pointed out countless times before, by myself and others, here and elsewhere, without a need for that much healing, the excess healing is utter garbage and will never be an incentive to take WHM over SCH and AST. And that healing being needed will never happen because if content actually requires so much healing, AST and SCH will cry because they cannot deliver it, leading Square to buff their healing, bringing us full circle to the situation at hand. That people still don’t get it honestly baffles me the most of all.
And that’s not even the worst even if that was actually the case. The other two healers actually got such good healing abilities on top of their buffing utility that it makes me outright puke seeing the crap WHM got instead. Earthly Star from AST alone single handedly blows everything WHM can do out of the water, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The other two healers got enough healing utility to actually place them above the pure healer!

Originally Posted by Levy9

As far as cross-role skill slots go, the only thing I used regularly on WHM was Swiftcast and Eye for an eye. The rest was just filler that wouldn't be missed. Using those slots to retain a few skills doesn't bother me, plus it's not just the WHM losing skills to cross-role. (Don't believe the hype.)

Virus was useful in some cases, but all healers loose it so that’s okay I guess. However, it’s not okay that WHM lost all those skills to the pool and got not a single one back, one of them being a freaking job skill. So in other words, we just won’t have a level 40 job skill anymore???
As the only class on the entire game? It’s just gone from there? WTF?

Originally Posted by Levy9

-AST loses it's mp refresh skill and it's divine seal counterpart (Synastry's 20% heal increase over 20 seconds is GONE).

Ast looses almost nothing. Their MP refresh was almost the same as WHM’s, sans slightly longer run time than what they will have now, but they don’t loose other MP refreshs as far as I’m aware, plus still got less MP costs on their skills in general(?), so no, they do not loose anything in regards to MP management.
They loose their heal increase? Did you even take a look at the new Diurnal Sect??? If not, it gives them 15% heal increase now. Permanently. NO temporary buff needed. Also, the new class skill has the same temporary heal potency increase as old Synastry, and the ability itself goes nowhere and just looses that portion, so yeah, nothing lost here except a role action skill slot.

Originally Posted by Levy9

-Stoneskin is removed from the game, but the other healers could cross-class it anyway. It was never a WHM exclusive.

Since you apparently don’t know this either; Stoneskin got nerfed in 3.0 to the point where it was no different than the other two jobs, and those jobs have barriers by default and didn’t really need this skill anyway. WHM, on the other hand, had NO other barrier than this, making it a very essential part of their toolkit. Also, them uselessly nerfing this skill also was a pretty bad hit against WHM even back then an part of why the job had a huge identity crisis the past two years, which will only increase in Stormblood; if the job even survives patch 4.1, that is…

Originally Posted by Levy9

-Stoneskin II was exclusive to WHM, but it can't be used in battle anyway. The only way to cast it regularly is to burn your Swiftcast between pulls. In 8 man raids and primal fights, the move is completely negligible.

It was nice as a buff pre-pull. I would have loved seeing them change it to be usable in-fight, maybe on a CD, since that would actually make it a bit more useful; but hey, it was originally only introduced as a QoL change because it took literally forever to cast Stoneskin on everyone back in the days when the skill was still at 18% and useful, so yeah.

Originally Posted by Levy9

B]-Esuna is the biggest loss in my opinion, but every healer had it and now has to spend a cross-role point into getting it back. It's a loss for everyone, not just WHM.[/B]

Esuna is actually the least severe loss WHM suffers, and it’s suffered by the other healers, too, so this is literally the only even remotely fair loss they suffered.

Originally Posted by Levy9

-Scholar doesn't really lose much, but they got a significant damage nerf, wherein Bane does less damage as it spreads, similar to Holy and Gravity.

Their single target DPS got buffed a lot with Broil II etc., meaning that WHM will likely even lose the spot as potentially biggest single target nuke of all healers, if just those pesky MP problems wouldn’t exist. In other words, they lose out even in this regard.

Originally Posted by Levy9

To me, it looks like WHM was buffed, yet not reworked into a different kind of healer and people were expecting a different kind of White Mage.

Again, nobody wanted WHM to be reworked into a different kind of healer, though it would have been nice seeing them getting some unique style of healing to set it apart from the other two healers, of which one is a straight and not even subtle copy of WHM. Also, in a way, they did change WHM playstyle - to the worst, because spamming Cure/Cure II is a just plain awful thing to do, yet we will likely have to to see even one of those damn, useless lillies.

Originally Posted by Levy9

-Assize has a potency of 300. It now does its full damage and full healing simultaneously. Combine this with the recast buffs from Secret of the Lillies I and II and your looking at an extremely strong healer for dealing with packs of mobs.

Only two words: Earthly Star. So much better it hurts. Also, what good is it to be able to deal with packs of mobs when there are barely any mass-adds in boss fights? Besides, it’s not like AST lost Gravity – as mentioned before, they even won Earthly Star. And one last point, WHM has always been highly effective in dealing with packs of mobs, if you didn’t know that, you played WHM wrong.

Originally Posted by Levy9

-Stone IV has a potency of 260. Fire IV has a potency of 280. That's an extremely strong standard attack ability for a healer. You don't even need Enochian to cast .

Was addressed by someone who knows BLM better and proven to be false, too. Still pretty sure SCH offers more direct DPS then WHM now.

Originally Posted by Levy9

-Benediction recast time was decreased from 300 to 180. This along with Assize,
Tetragrammaton and Plenary Indulgence means that the White Mage has a lot of panic-button, instant cast healing. Two of them are aoe/multi-target instant cast heals.

And that helps us how, exactly? Tetra still has 20 seconds longer CD than Essential Dignity, plus a fixed potency, making it inherently inferior. Plenary Indulgence is garbage if the MT does not have at least one Confession stack, meaning I will likely have to spam Cure/Cure II on them, which is really poor WHM play. So, yeah, garbage, or at least close to that.

Originally Posted by Levy9

-I think stacks of confession would be utilized mainly by bosses/mechanics that randomly or sequentially target individual teammates. In these fights, you'll have plenty reason to cast cure 1/2 on people other than the tank, thereby giving them stacks of confession.

Except that nobody in their right mind would even consider taking a WHM into raids, seeing how awfully bad the class got reworked. Also, with a run time of only 30 seconds, it’s basically impossible to uphold it long enough to take any advantage of it, if current raid-wide unavoidable AoEs are any indication.

So, bottom line, you can defend the class as much as you want, but the changes are garbage and not at all what the class needed, leading it to be benched in Stormblood. It really is a shame, since I’m one of the diehard WHM lovers out there and played it ever since I started the game in 2.0 closed beta, but enough is simply enough this insult to any MMO healer is just too much to bear any further.


Holy s**t, I’m so done with you apologists who can see nothing wrong with Square destroying one of the most iconic classes in the franchise.

If things go live as is then you could literally excise whm from the game and no one who doesn't main it would even notice . Its fully and completely irrelevant in the game of healing and running raids . It's a monk fighting Robber Crabs in Boyada Tree.. lonely, sad, and without purpose or party.

I mained WHM from launch to 2.4 before jumping to sch because my raid group already had a whm . I might exclusively do sch now for real content but I had fun going back to whm every now and again. I care for it so much I bothered to finish it's relic over any of my 3 main jobs now. I might not even bother leveling it anymore. With HW it went SCH,DRK,WHM even though I didn't even plan to use it I leveled because it was fun and could pack a mean healing punch. Ast where different so even if they weren't better than sch/whm they were their own style of healing. Whms are now not even what they are in HW! Sad day whms, sad, sad, day. My heart goes out to anyone who mained it.