White Mage is falling behind while Astro keeps getting buffs

[number473]

...but I don’t think it’s something you would see in a patch cycle.

I also don't think they will change it before the expansion. But consider that they fixed the cooldown passives of both SCH and AST since the expansion launched and didn't do anything to WHM's which is even more useless (I'm referring to lily 2 at 68).

[Fiorinol]

That's not a buff.
That's a fix to every aoe since we had to wait the server tick to have its effect.
Whm got the same with asylyum.

Minor Arcana reduced CD won't change anything.

It is a buff. Collective Unconscious is now more efficient as it can be weaved properly. Minor Arcana is now more efficient.

Just the CU change might make AST better for proggression than WHM as it's now consistent instead of relying on server ticks, which was the only thing White Mage was good at.

If you raid with competent players, WHM is now the SAM of healers; barely anyone wants you in their composition.

White Mage's whole shtick is healing with no gimmicks (pets or cards), and bringing higher DPS. The latter which they don't do anymore.

[DuskTS]

My friends dad who works at Nintendo says White Mage will get potency buffs across the board it just isn't being revealed until the full patch notes so as to mitigate astro players chimping out.

[Jxnibbles]

So glad I swapped to a different healer.

Can't wait till 5.0 when they decide to throw cure 3, benediction, and thin air into the crossrole system. Stone V 260 potency. I heard you liked rng and cdr lets double down on that for the new expansion.

Devs are a joke at this point nothing will ever be changed.

[GunksFoy]

Honestly. reducing Stone IV cast time to 1.5s like Malefic and maybe Aero 3 as well, though it isn't a big deal, would go a LONG way to fixing Whm compared to Astro. Whm has it's own issues like Lilies, but at least reducing Stone IV would improve their DPS and prevent clipping when we need to heal. I try to time all of my heals in a very specific way to weave with Regen and Aero II, but that means I need to know the fight very well compared to Astro and Sch, and there's no helping when the tank needs healed. I raid in Savage on Whm, and this is just my opinion. I completely ignore lilies honestly, so they need fixed, but I also don't feel gimped the way they are, unlike Stone IV. Sorry for the rambling...

[Ceasaria]

That's only because AST wasn't designed properly at first place, they just put it right step by step now.

Exactly.

I didn't expect them to reduce the CD on Minor Arcana and Lady and Lord.
It's a very good surprise.
More Lord (if lucky enough) with all the buffs and debuffs from teamate during burst, great !

[Erakir]

QoL changes and general system improvements are all well and good, but they DO affect different jobs differently and some will benefit more than others from such changes. You don't just get to say it's quality of life so ignore any repercussions of it. If it's a good system change, you keep it and adjust everywhere else as needed. If it's a good change cause a class was poorly designed to begin with, you keep it and adjust elsewhere.

When your job's "touted role" is already being snuffed by the developers due to other (I'd argue good) changes, it's hard not to see something like this and get annoyed as it's more salt in the wound. Unintentional salt, but salt nonetheless. For what it's worth, this ain't a big thing balancewise I feel but it definitely has the least amount of impact for WHM unless instant application means instant HoT tick (don't see that happening but I could be wrong). It's certainly a welcome change, generally speaking. Activation time of all these abilities being tied to the server tick sucked for everyone.

But you know Square - if it's not scholar, it has to be out of whack for at least an entire raid tier before adjustments. For the love of god it took half a year for another creative-stroke-of-genius fire IV potency buff. At this point I'm just hoping whoever is in charge of healers over there just knows everyone hates lilies for exactly the reasons we told them going into 4.0 in that massive thread, and maybe something will finally come of them in 5.0. It's still absolutely no reason Secret of the Lily II had to remain a complete and utter abomination the whole expansion, though.

don't you think WHM is more than well equipped with the best mana economy, more healing ogcds and the most accessible burst heal, only limited by MP? There gotta be some trade-off for all the goodies and that is efficient weaving potential.

In regards to MP? I don't really think so - If anyone was really hurting for MP they'd be slotting piety as more MP does more for you than anything else when you're struggling with it. You also wouldn't see Miasma II in parses. WHM MP economy means very little at the moment with refresh being as strong as it is and mana shift being available on top of it. Stuff has to go wrong - very wrong, at that, before it really starts to show, or you need to be refresh-less. It's also the only healer that really has to care about threat, which rears its head every now and then for sure.

Nobody would care about the lack of weaving potential if it didn't push WHM well out of its highest-personal-damage-by-design slot, as evidenced by Stone Sea Sky. But alas, it is part of what does. To me it feels the designers are continuously leaning on Cure 3 more and more and more to keep the job afloat, and eventually it's not gonna cut it. Of course, they could just toss some more multi-mob phases in there and it'd help because of Aero 3 (on top of being more able to Holy). It's not a broken job, but it could really benefit from some attention.

[Fiorinol]

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It's getting somewhat grating, as it's the second end of expansion where White Mage is in this weird area where Astrologian feels like White Mage 2.0. I like White Mage because it's straight forward, and doesn't have a bunch of RNG baked into it. It's great for Astrologians that they get QoL improvements, but it's interesting that White Mages don't even get anything, like a Medica II cast reduction, increased potency on Stone IV, or cast reduction on Stone IV. I'm pretty sure that if Asylum/Salted Earth/Shadow Flare applies the same way UC does, I think will also apply the HoT tick.

Here's something else I didn't mention in the OP; now every healer will have Cleric Stance due to the increased class slots. White Mage is the job that will have the most issue with it, while the cooldown lines up with Aero 2, White Mage has other OGCDs it needs to use, and Cleric Stance is worth about 0.3 casts, that's if you cast damage spells for the entire duration, so clipping it isn't worth it at all. Whereas Astrologian will just be able to use it on CD because they can just weave it after Malefic. So technically, that's another Astrologian DPS buff with barely any penalty.

As you mentioned, there's also the aggro problem. If you don't have a Ninja in your party, you're stuck adjusting to either heal less, which defeats the entire point of having Cure III, especially with how the two last raid tiers introduced mechanics that force you to overheal the party, or the other healer/the tanks need to adjust. The latter wouldn't be so much of a problem if players in my data center weren't so obsessed with their fflogs parses, even in Party Finder groups. Astrologian gets Earthly Star which fully charged, is a Cure III and a third, without any aggro implications. Couldn't Plenary Indulgence, Assize, or another ability reduce aggro?

You can argue that Scholar will have issues weaving Cleric Stance as well, but Scholar isn't competing with Astrologian in raid groups.

[Grimoire-M]

I'm still shocked that Thin Air doesn't have 100% Aggro reduction during its effect. That would go a long way to helping WHM mitigate their aggro issues without changing how its played at all.

And really, all WHM needs is a filler spell to weave oGCDs in. SCH has Ruin II. AST has Malefic II. WHM could get Stone I back as an instant-cast spell. I remember back in HW AST used to use Aero to weave with as it was the same potency as Malefic II at the time. I wonder if giving Stone IV and Aero II the same treatment would be a good idea. Upping Stone IV's potency to 270 and reducing Aero II's potency to 40/tick with an initial potency of 30 would boost their single target DPS a fairly small margin and achieve that effect.

It's really annoying that SE said they're not going to require more CC in raids to be honest. That's one area WHM excels at over the other two healers, by a large margin.

[Limonia]

I don't understand why they didn't even reduce the cast time of Stone like they did with Malefic, but well. Reducing the cast time of Medica II to 2.5 seconds would have been nice too. If they did that, it would let WHM at least catch up just a little bit.

And really, all WHM needs is a filler spell to weave oGCDs in. SCH has Ruin II. AST has Malefic II. WHM could get Stone I back as an instant-cast spell.

Or rework Fluid Aura into Water or Aqua and use that as the instant GCD spell. I would like to see some Water spells on WHM. ^^
That could be even better than reducing the cast time of Stone.