Thread: White Mage Overflow

There is a HUGE population of White Mage healers, and it’s a symptom of a problem. White Mage is very overpowered in comparison to Scholar and especially Astrologian. They sneeze and everyone is full health. They can glare spam all day with how strong their heals are and easy to play the class is.

Astro became very complicated and busy to play. Between drawing and redrawing cards, trying to heal with weak potencies and high MP costs, it is a headache. Divination has a cool down that is way too long for what you get and the amount of work you put in for it.

Celestial Opposition is extremely weak and has a long CD. Either increase the potency or decrease the cooldown. Having this ability give mana would help a lot.

The cards are a mess and boring. Draw, potentially redraw if you only have ranged or so in your party, minor arcana and then play. VERY TIME CONSUMING. Between all of that you still have to heal, ideally DPS, and not die because you’re too busy playing with cards and getting hit by an aoe. Sleeve draw just makes me feel overwhelmed, I’d rather it give me cards already minor arcana’d. We have a 3 minute cooldown on Divination, it’s not like we don’t have time to figure out our seals.

I think the cards would be better if they gave us back all of the old effects, but kept minor arcana how it is now. This way we can still control some RNG by minor arcana for DPS buffs, but still have utility like MP regen and defense increase. Maybe have spire increase direct hit rate or increase healing potency.

Astro MP is like gasping for air. Lucid is always on CD, and light speed helps but it doesn’t restore MP. If you’re in a crutch and people are dying you simply do not have the mana sustain to keep resurrecting. WHM has lucid, Assize, and Thin Air. SCH has lucid and aetherflow. The MP management difference is laughable. 1000 mana for aspected benefic in Nocturnal stance is insane. I get that it’s supposed to compare to Adlo, but scholar has way better MP management and strong heals that don’t require mana to make up for it.

The shield for Celestial intersection needs a slight buff IMO. I would scale it off HP% vs healing potency. I’m happy with the regen on it.

Scholar isn’t completely terrible (I’m actually enjoying it and love Seraph) but just needs some tweaks. Fey Blessing has a lot of lag between cast and execution. Art of war needs to be reworked, the animation is terrible compared to Holy and Gravity and just feels underwhelming.

Anyway, some things need to be addressed because everyone is playing WHM for obvious reasons and it’s going to get stale without any variety.

Originally Posted by Taika

This is true from my experience as well, but I don't think it's only because WHM is so powerful right now, but more because WHM is actually fun to play in Shadowbringers, unlike SCH and AST. AST is obviously undertuned, but what SCH needs the most is more engaging gameplay instead of just ridiculously strong OCD heals and Broil spam.

This all the way.

They barely changed White Mage whereas they massively changed Astrologian and Scholar into something people don't like, so people pick White Mage. White Mage is fine, its Scholar and Astrologian that need major changes. (And imo AST didn't need changes at all)

Originally Posted by LukaRoselia

This all the way.

They barely changed White Mage whereas they massively changed Astrologian and Scholar into something people don't like, so people pick White Mage. White Mage is fine, its Scholar and Astrologian that need major changes. (And imo AST didn't need changes at all)

What I don't get is.
WHM was called "boring" for about 4 years now, if not longer. They never really changed anything about how the job feels, never really fixed its main problems, it took them two years to make Lilies useful but the job still feels clunky to me in quite a few situations. So how the frick is WHM suddenly fun if it was "braindead boring" for most before???

Sorry, but in statements like this, from how people talked before, all I see is a lot of bias and making your own job worse than it is... there isn't even that much difference between WHM and SCH anymore (not saying that's good even if I like the new SCH, just how it is), so if WHM feels good to play, apparently even to SCH mains, why not SCH itself? "They changed it, now it sucks" even if the way it got changed makes it similar to another job that's suddenly considered fun? Can you people please make up your minds already, especially on the SCH and WHM issue?

AST is currently the only healer that really needs changes. It just makes me sad that the changes they will get will, with 90% certainty, bench WHM again...

Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

What I don't get is.
WHM was called "boring" for about 4 years now, if not longer. They never really changed anything about how the job feels, never really fixed its main problems, it took them two years to make Lilies useful but the job still feels clunky to me in quite a few situations. So how the frick is WHM suddenly fun if it was "braindead boring" for most before???

Sorry, but in statements like this, from how people talked before, all I see is a lot of bias and making your own job worse than it is... there isn't even that much difference between WHM and SCH anymore (not saying that's good even if I like the new SCH, just how it is), so if WHM feels good to play, apparently even to SCH mains, why not SCH itself? "They changed it, now it sucks" even if the way it got changed makes it similar to another job that's suddenly considered fun? Can you people please make up your minds already, especially on the SCH and WHM issue?

AST is currently the only healer that really needs changes. It just makes me sad that the changes they will get will, with 90% certainty, bench WHM again...

The thing is, and I know this might sound bad, I didn't mind that WHM was boring because I had an alternative that I liked. I assumed that the people who played WHM liked it. Maybe the style appealed more to them than to me. WHM isn't nearly as fun now as SCH used to be, in my opinion. It's just more fun than SCH became in 5.0.

That said, now that I'm aware WHMs want changes, I'm happy to support them. Although the WHMs who seem to resent us for wanting our job to be fun makes it a lot harder to root for them. I wouldn't be surprised if several other players feel much the same.

Originally Posted by Yuyuka3

What I don't get is.
WHM was called "boring" for about 4 years now, if not longer. They never really changed anything about how the job feels, never really fixed its main problems, it took them two years to make Lilies useful but the job still feels clunky to me in quite a few situations. So how the frick is WHM suddenly fun if it was "braindead boring" for most before???

Because the other two got boring-er, so we go to the least boring job.


I started levelling SCH before 5.0, and I was having a blast because I had to press more buttons than just 1 and 2... and then Shadowbringers came and told me I am not allowed to have fun anymore.

As for AST, it became so weak the only thing that could prove our existence was whether or not our team is alive; AST damage and buffs are now so low they're almost noexistent.

WHM? We kept our self buff, and traded our aoe dot for an aoe nuke later on, and on top of that we finally got a real use for our lilies!


My love for WHM might be Stockholm syndrome at this point, but the other healers are simply not appealing to me in their current state.

WHM's been the most popular (in terms of overall created numbers) Healer since ARR.

I think specifically that Suncatgirl White Mages are the single most popular race/tribe/gender/Job combo in the game, at least if I'm remembering my census right.

Doesn't help that they're also the only Healer with an actual useful Job mechanic and the only Healer that didn't get gutted in the SB->ShB transition, but they were wildly popular before that.

Originally Posted by Taika

This is true from my experience as well, but I don't think it's only because WHM is so powerful right now, but more because WHM is actually fun to play in Shadowbringers, unlike SCH and AST. AST is obviously undertuned, but what SCH needs the most is more engaging gameplay instead of just ridiculously strong OCD heals and Broil spam.

This. Whm is fun to play. It’s still missing potency on fluid aura to make it complete but otherwise it’s gameplay was nicely improved thanks to the new lily system. In addition it’s so powerful you really feel like you’re pulling your weight in content, just enhances the whole experience