White Mage: A Guide

[Eldaena]

I would also recommend perhaps La Noscean Toast. It gives VIT and DEF to help your white mage be a bit more durable and helps a little with enhancing magic.

[Sol_Aureus]

I would also recommend perhaps La Noscean Toast. It gives VIT and DEF to help your white mage be a bit more durable and helps a little with enhancing magic.

I thought about this, but given Kaeko's DEF/VIT testing you'll end up getting a lot more mileage out of HP than DEF. The VIT is nice for the bonus to Enhancing to be sure, but it's a negligible bonus. In addition, with my gear setup I have 422 VIT. The bonus that the toast will give me pushes me up to 423, but that level gives no returns on anything except stoneskin, so it's a wasted level.

[Kaeko]

I actually do a max DEF/VIT/Enhancing build on my WHM when running instances in non-boss situations. I'll then switch to an HP build for bosses. This is because with a high effective DEF on "trash mob" targets, you can get relatively close to the damage floor and nearly "tank" up to 4-5 trash mobs yourself with just Regen active. It's actually quite impressive how unkillable any job becomes as you near ~800 DEF on any job when tanking 50-54 mobs. On higher end targets like bosses where your fear is being 1-2 shot by TP moves (e.g. Voice of the Dragon), I'll definitely take the HP though.

I don't use La Noscean Toast though. I worked it out to actually getting more DEF boost from an Acorn Cookie with my current build due to the +%s despite the fact La Noscean has a higher max cap for divine status.

[Sol_Aureus]

I actually do a max DEF/VIT/Enhancing build on my WHM when running instances in non-boss situations. I'll then switch to an HP build for bosses. This is because with a high effective DEF on "trash mob" targets, you can get relatively close to the damage floor and nearly "tank" up to 4-5 trash mobs yourself with just Regen active. It's actually quite impressive how unkillable any job becomes as you near ~800 DEF on any job when tanking 50-54 mobs. On higher end targets like bosses where your fear is being 1-2 shot by TP moves (e.g. Voice of the Dragon), I'll definitely take the HP though.

I don't use La Noscean Toast though. I worked it out to actually getting more DEF boost from an Acorn Cookie with my current build due to the +%s despite the fact La Noscean has a higher max cap for divine status.

Fair enough, there are a couple situations where I pull hate during trash pretty easily (especially in some of the later circular rooms in Cutter's) so I can see the appeal of DEF during non-bosses.

I might have to consider bringing some Acorn Cookies with me to stuff like that. Thanks for the info Kaeko!

[lerunes_second]

I actually do a max DEF/VIT/Enhancing build on my WHM when running instances in non-boss situations. I'll then switch to an HP build for bosses. This is because with a high effective DEF on "trash mob" targets, you can get relatively close to the damage floor and nearly "tank" up to 4-5 trash mobs yourself with just Regen active. It's actually quite impressive how unkillable any job becomes as you near ~800 DEF on any job when tanking 50-54 mobs. On higher end targets like bosses where your fear is being 1-2 shot by TP moves (e.g. Voice of the Dragon), I'll definitely take the HP though.

I don't use La Noscean Toast though. I worked it out to actually getting more DEF boost from an Acorn Cookie with my current build due to the +%s despite the fact La Noscean has a higher max cap for divine status.

this post, this one

[Kaeko]

Shameless plug, but here's a video of us running a 5 chest DH run with 4 players.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H-vgjk0saE

We heavily abuse WHM in the run, but it has nothing to do with the job's healing capabilities. Due to the near-broken strength of Regen, you can basically play WHM as a full time nuker that Regen's every 45 seconds in non-boss situations. It's easily the most broken job in 1.21. I personally go with 5 WHM builds right now...

Max Healing Potency only - bosses with consistent wipe moves (e.g. Coincounter 100tonz)
Max HP and Healing Potency mix - most bosses
Max Enhancing / DEF / VIT - large numbers of trash mobs (instances, strongholds) - also my default gear
Max MATK / Enhancing combo - trash mobs with heavy emphasis on damage dealing
Max MATK only - Limited use, but can be devastating if using a planned Holy strategy (start 18:10 in the video to see an example of this)

For those that play XI, WHM is much more similar to SCH than the XI WHM. Your nuking capabilities are much better in XIV. Gear swapping is a royal pain in the current XIV, but if you macro, it should only take max 10 seconds to get your gear swapped. WHM is the most versatile job right now - best healer, very capable to sometimes best magic DD, and above average at survivability if built right. You want to be able to use multiple gear sets to augment the job's innate versatility.

[Phobos]

Shameless plug, but here's a video of us running a 5 chest DH run with 4 players.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H-vgjk0saE

We heavily abuse WHM in the run, but it has nothing to do with the job's healing capabilities. Due to the near-broken strength of Regen, you can basically play WHM as a full time nuker that Regen's every 45 seconds in non-boss situations. It's easily the most broken job in 1.21. I personally go with 5 WHM builds right now...

Max Healing Potency only - bosses with consistent wipe moves (e.g. Coincounter 100tonz)
Max HP and Healing Potency mix - most bosses
Max Enhancing / DEF / VIT - large numbers of trash mobs (instances, strongholds) - also my default gear
Max MATK / Enhancing combo - trash mobs with heavy emphasis on damage dealing
Max MATK only - Limited use, but can be devastating if using a planned Holy strategy (start 18:10 in the video to see an example of this)

For those that play XI, WHM is much more similar to SCH than the XI WHM. Your nuking capabilities are much better in XIV. Gear swapping is a royal pain in the current XIV, but if you macro, it should only take max 10 seconds to get your gear swapped. WHM is the most versatile job right now - best healer, very capable to sometimes best magic DD, and above average at survivability if built right. You want to be able to use multiple gear sets to augment the job's innate versatility.

Maybe OP could answer this to some degree too, but what gear do you use for this? I've been trying to come up with a decent set for max regen/high stoneskin without sacrificing too much, and all I can come up with is some high powered VIT melds on either pants or body(though I'd hate to lose that enhances cure). I'm just wondering if maybe DL hands (pants too?) is enough to cap regen and get VIT to a nice level. If I'm remembering right, the hands would bring me to ~425 enhancing magic - so I'm just curious how you squeeze out that last little bit. As I see it right now I'd have to make a lot of sacrifices to healing magic potency to get this (guessing that's why you say you use it mostly for trash mobs).

Regen is just so insanely good compared to cure I see more benefit buffing enhancing than I do healing. Particularly when running with another whm where 2x cure ends up being perfectly fine for most things, and I rarely use Cura unless I see low yellow (usually the other whm is doing cura so I like to get in that faster cure for safety).

[Sol_Aureus]

Maybe OP could answer this to some degree too, but what gear do you use for this? I've been trying to come up with a decent set for max regen/high stoneskin without sacrificing too much, and all I can come up with is some high powered VIT melds on either pants or body(though I'd hate to lose that enhances cure). I'm just wondering if maybe DL hands (pants too?) is enough to cap regen and get VIT to a nice level. If I'm remembering right, the hands would bring me to ~425 enhancing magic - so I'm just curious how you squeeze out that last little bit. As I see it right now I'd have to make a lot of sacrifices to healing magic potency to get this (guessing that's why you say you use it mostly for trash mobs).

Regen is just so insanely good compared to cure I see more benefit buffing enhancing than I do healing. Particularly when running with another whm where 2x cure ends up being perfectly fine for most things, and I rarely use Cura unless I see low yellow (usually the other whm is doing cura so I like to get in that faster cure for safety).

My gear is listed in one of my replies here, like I said I have 422 Enhancing Magic normally. If I were to wear an Amber Ring +1 I could push it up to 426-427, But not up to 438 quite yet. To be perfectly honest, it's not worth sacrificing the other stuff you get in those slots in order to get your enhancing that high, especially with Enhancing Magic materia on the horizon. If that materia follows the same value pattern as Healing Magic Potency materia, it'll be stupidly easy to get over 438; hell, with my current gear a single slot minimum value tier 4 (+16) would get me there exactly.

[Phobos]

My gear is listed in one of my replies here, like I said I have 422 Enhancing Magic normally. If I were to wear an Amber Ring +1 I could push it up to 426-427, But not up to 438 quite yet. To be perfectly honest, it's not worth sacrificing the other stuff you get in those slots in order to get your enhancing that high, especially with Enhancing Magic materia on the horizon. If that materia follows the same value pattern as Healing Magic Potency materia, it'll be stupidly easy to get over 438; hell, with my current gear a single slot minimum value tier 4 (+16) would get me there exactly.

I suppose you're right. Waiting will probably be the best option here... more effective and takes up less slots.

Silly that they still have these hard caps on abilities... That's going to make the new materia rather useless aside from a single meld to get Regen capped. I guess at least Protect and Stoneskin don't have an easily attainable cap

[Jet]

Guide up here. Thanks again. Let me know if you'd like me to change anything, including the destination of your name's URL.