How the White Mage Lily mechanic disappoints and what could possibly fix it (repost)

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This excellent analysis was posted by ILS-pastry over on Reddit. I wanted to share it here in the hopes the developers actually see an in-depth dissection of what is wrong with the Lily mechanic from a non-raider perspective. Please do click the link and give them a thumbs up!

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...sappoints_and/

Intro and disclaimer

So, now that the recent media embargo has been lifted, we’ve finally been treated to all of the new changes coming to our favourite jobs. And although not all jobs were treated quite equally, it seems people are, in general, happy with most of the changes, as all jobs either get a new mechanic entirely (Bard, Machinist) or a simpler, occasionally more engaging way to manage their current mechanics. All in all, the changes to the combat system coming in Stormblood seem very solid, and well worth the wait.

And then there’s White Mage.

To say that the reaction to the White Mage changes has been negative is almost an understatement. This post seeks to be an analysis of the new job mechanic coming to the White Mage in Stormblood: The Lily mechanic. Before I begin, there are two things that I want to note. The first is that I am unabashed scrub noob casual filth. I barely even scratch the surface of midcore content. I am coming at this not from the perspective of a top 1% fflogs raider, but as a scrub who just likes to press the buttons and do the heals and the deeps. As a result, assume that most of the things I say are probably wrong and/or stupid. I won’t discuss the need/lack of need for a pure healer in a DPS-focused meta, because, frankly, I don’t care.

The second is that, as has been stated multiple times by the development team and the press who were invited to the media tour, things are not set in stone yet. Things may very well change for the better come Early Access, and this whole analysis could easily become invalid, with me being left behind with egg on my face. Final judgement should be reserved for the 16th.
With that out of the way, let’s get into the meat of things. Let’s talk about them purty flowers.
The Lily mechanic

On paper, I think I get what they want to do with the Lily mechanic. And to be honest, I think it sounds like a fine idea. As you use your GCD healing abilities, you build up lilies to a maximum stack of three, which you then expend on your oGCD healing abilities, reducing their cooldown so that you have them available more frequently. It creates an ebb and flow – you use GCD heals to shorten the cooldown on your oGCD heals, giving you more time to spend your GCDs on DPS spells, made much easier now that cleric stance has been abolished. I really like the idea of that mechanic, and it helps separate the flow of White Mage from that of Scholar and Astrologian.

But there’s a problem. And that problem is...

1. The design of the Lily mechanic actively encourages ignoring anything that isn’t Cure 1 and Cure 2
As it stands right now, only Cure 1 and Cure 2 can give you Lily stacks. What this means is, that if you want to make use of the shiny new mechanic, you must use Cure 1 and Cure 2, and only Cure 1 and Cure 2, no matter what the situation is. Let’s say you’re a filthy casual like me, and you’re in a dungeon with three other people. The boss casts an unavoidable AoE that hits the entire party, leaving every party member at roughly 50% HP. What would you normally do in this situation? Well, you could throw a medica or medica 2 out. Perhaps an assize on top or instead. In a single GCD, you have done your job efficiently and healed the party. It makes sense from a design perspective – situations like this are what your AoE heals were designed to solve.

But if you want to actually make use of the Lily mechanic, that’s not what the game encourages you to do. The game is instead encouraging you to cycle through all four party members with Cure 1 or 2, healing everyone individually. Not only is this terrible inefficient for the White Mage’s mana – and we’re not exactly a class known for having vast surpluses of mana in the first place – but it also wastes at least 3 GCDs which could be used to provide healing elsewhere, or to throw stones at bad dudes.

Let’s use another example. The tank is taking steady auto attack damage from the boss – nothing serious, but his health is still going down at a slow but steady rate. As a White Mage, what do you do? Well, you throw a regen on him. It’s practically your bread and butter, after all – the most mana efficient heal we have in our kit. As long as the tank isn’t taking any spikes of damage, a regen will keep him going strong while the healer is free to help elsewhere.

But yet again – if you don’t want to completely ignore the new mechanic – the Lily stacks discourage this. Instead, it encourages you to sit there, waiting until the tank has taken enough damage to throw a cure 1 on him – and then do so again. And again. And again.

As you can probably tell by now, the base design of the Lily mechanic, such as it is at this moment in time, discourages the use of most of your GCD healing toolkit. Cure 3, medica, medica 2 and regen are all pushed to the side, because only two GCD heals matter – Cure 1 and Cure 2 are kings, even in situations where other spells make far, far more sense. This is only reinforced by Plenary Indulgence, the level 70 White Mage capstone skill, but that’s a whole other discussion of its own. Of course, this will (probably) not affect players in the actual game. White Mages will continue to use regen, they’ll continue to use the medicas, they’ll continue to only use cure 3 one or two times in savage raids because cure 3 is still hilariously situational. But it’s such a shame that this has to be the case, because it relegates the whole of White Mages shiny new mechanic to a footnote – to something you’ll almost never actively engage with, because doing so will, by design, lock you out of most of your GCD healing kit. Because there’s only a 20% chance to proc a Lily on the two cure spells, you have to practically use them exclusively, if you want to have any hope of ever reaching three stacks.

Which, incidentally, leads us to the next problem.

2. You will (probably) never reach a stack of 3 lilies
At its current rate of 20%, you will reach three Lily stacks in an average of 15 GCDs – roughly every 38 seconds. Now, if you’re a White Mage main, let me ask you: Do you think you’d ever go 38 seconds without any use of at least one of the four abilities (Asylum, Assize, Tetragrammaton and the new boy on the block Divine Benison) that spend your Lilies when used?
I didn’t think so.

The Lily mechanic seems clearly meant for you to use your oGCD abilities when at three stacks, maybe two. A measly 4% reduction in cooldown on one Lily stack is pathetic, and even the 10% of two Lily stacks is barely worth it. But if you want to make use of the mechanic as (probably) intended, you need to get up to three stacks of Lilies. Which means on average 38 seconds where you’re locked out from using your oGCD heals, because they spend the Lilies. oGCD heals that are typically used by White Mages to lighten the heal burden and save GCDs that can then be used for other things, like damage. And those 38 seconds, the 15 GCDs, assume that they’re spent on nothing other than Cure 1 or Cure 2.

Whooooo boy.

Once again, we see the exact same issue as before. If White Mages want to actually play around with their new mechanic, rather than just completely ignore it, they’re locked out from their oGCD abilities for an average of 38 seconds of only cure 1 and 2 spam. And once you do accumulate three Lily stacks, you get the joy of spending them on one oGCD ability. One. Of four. And then you may have to wait yet another 38 seconds before you can use one again, unless you want to waste Lily stacks.

And really, this is the core of why I think the Lily mechanic is such a big issue – it doesn’t add anything to the White Mage, it actively encourages detracting from it. A common theme with all the new mechanics added to the other jobs is, that they’re all rewarded for using them. Either they grant access to skills, empower the skills the job already has or otherwise adds something to the job, even if it’s just bigger numbers. The most disappointing thing about the Lily mechanic is, that it will just end up being ignored. Where other jobs are rewarded for engaging with their new mechanic, White Mages are essentially locked out of any GCD heal that isn’t Cure 1 and 2, while at the same time being locked out of using their oGCD abilities, because doing so would be a waste.

For other jobs, their mechanics are engaging and vital. For White Mages, their mechanic is tertiary at best, and a forgettable, ignorable footnote at worst.

3. Possible changes
With all that doom and gloom out the way, let’s briefly discuss how this can be fixed. I am not a game designer by any stretch of the imagination, but there are a few solutions that seem incredibly straight forward and, on paper, very easy to implement. Such as, you know.
Making every GCD heal - Cure 1, 2 & 3, Medica 1 & 2 as well as Regen – have a chance to proc a Lily stack.

This change alone would, the way I see it, fix the biggest problem with the Lily mechanic. It allows us to use our different heals as they were intended, and still earn Lily stacks while doing it. Now, I don’t have to cycle through every party member with Cure 1 or 2 when an unavoidable AoE hits – I can simply cast one of my AoE heals. Now, when the tank is just taking auto attack damage, I can throw a regen on him, and (if RNGsus truly died for my sins) still be rewarded with Lily stacks.
We still have the problem of not really wanting to use our oGCD abilities without three stacks of Lilies, but assuming the ticks of Regen/Medica 2 each would have a chance to proc, we could accumulate lilies much faster, thus making it less wasteful to occasionally spend an oGCD on one or two Lily stacks. This isn’t a flawless change, of course – in an 8 man party, casting a Medica 2 on everyone leaves you with 8 people all ticking away, each tick with 20% chance to give you a Lily stack. Which, at least to me, sounds insane. Balancing would have to be done by a much smarter man than me, but with this one change – making all GCD heals have a chance to proc Lilies – our job mechanic would at the very least matter.

Now, it doesn’t change a fact that I haven’t touched on – the fact that the cooldown reduction we get as reward for managing the Lilies is a very minor change overall. The reward for engaging in our job mechanic is almost non-existant – but I don’t really have any ideas as to what the benefit should be instead, hence why I’ve focused more on gameplay and how the basic design interacts with the White Mage’s kit.
In conclusion

There will be a lot of White Mage salt in the coming days. Perhaps through a lot of Stormblood, too. Many of us are salty and disappointed, myself included, at what they’ve added to our main job. Reddit can be very focused on raiding and the raid scene, what’s meta and what’s not, which jobs should be deleted and which shouldn’t, but I just want to stress something important. I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, but I am not salty because White Mage (probably) won’t be in the meta. It’s the name of the game – there are three healers, but only two spots. One healer job will always be excluded from the meta, this is literally unavoidable. I couldn’t care less about the fact that White Mages won’t be able to brag about their elephant-sized genitals as they post their fflogs parses.

No, the reason I’m salty is because engaging with our new mechanic, the new thing for our new expansion, actively encourages us to ignore most of our kit. To just spam Cure 1 and Cure 2 in situations they weren’t designed for. In an environment where most jobs have had cool new changes, some with entirely new and exciting mechanics to try out, some that even change the way the job plays by a significant amount, White Mages will play the same way they’ve always done, because the mechanic we’ve been given is just… bland. There’s a cool idea behind it – an ebb and flow between GCD and oGCD healing – but until things are changed, which they undoubtedly will be, Lily stacks will be a forgettable and pointless mechanic.

And that’s a damn shame. Well, at least until 4.4 comes out. Then we’ll get the AST treatment and get super buff, and then you’ll all witness the White Mage Supremacy!
Thin Air is pretty dope tho, nothing but appreciation for that one. My Holy boner has never been girthier.

Tl;dr: The new job specific mechanic for the White Mage essentially cuts you off from most of your healing kit if you want to actually make use of it. The salt is real - Thin Air is good.