White Mage: A Guide

[Estellios]

i have a question, does enfeebling magic do anything anymore? since most enf spells got melted into attk spells

As Kikosha, said, Enfeebling skill helps the success rate/potency of secondary effects. For White Mage this would be:

• Aero's Bleed effect
• Stone's Magic evasion down effect
• Stonera's Heavy effect
• Holy's Bind effect

Kaeko's thoughts on WHM are exactly how I feel, WHM in 14 plays much more like 11's SCH since you are quite versatile. CNJ/WHM spells have a lot of utility beyond their respectable DD numbers, they are currently the best healers, and you can easily switch between the two. SCH was my favorite backline job in FF11 and getting to play it fulltime in a sense in 14 now is quite a treat. Beats Spamming Cure V and Haste any day of the week.

[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.

[carraway]

Yeah, I speculate that a x2 headpiece with mixed healing potency and enhancing potency will become the new standard for WHMs after 1.22.

[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

[Estellios]

The materia is still useful for anyone leveling up since I believe Regen is learnable at 30 or 35? It's been forever since I did the quests for it. It also helps out Classes since the dev team seems to be looking into differentiating between Classes and Jobs more than they are now, with Class-specific gear and stuff, and most of the implemented things seem to be implemented with the long-term in mind so it would be nice to have this stuff in place for any future buffing classes/jobs.

[Warchi]

Really detailed and excellent guide.
Thank you.

[Giit]

wow, sick thread. it helped a lot! thanks

[Sol_Aureus]

I'll be updating the guide within a couple days, for now I'm focused on doing content with my LS.

I'll post my initial thoughts though:

From the looks of it, enhancing magic materia ONLY comes from ifrit/moogle weapons (I got one from an extra Ifrit's cane) which makes it pretty rare. It also only seems to go up to +10 at max tier IV. In my opinion this is a good thing, still makes it kind of difficult to get cap Regen. Double slotting a head piece + darklight breeches and gloves should be enough to get you there. It doesn't even have to be top tier materia, there's a new belt that gives +4 enhancing magic potency (militia belt) that you can use.

These make a case for debating what's "best in slot" for head and waist now. I'll post my complete thoughts on the matter once I update the guide, but basically it'll boil down to personal preference and what other gear you have.

[Estellios]

That seems to be the case with most gear in this game really, and I like that a lot.

One thing you might want to add in your guide is that Repose is only based on Magic Accuracy (Enfeebling skill doesn't do anything at all for it) and Sleep doesn't override itself. If a WHM is in a situation where BLMs are trying to sleep enemies and one or two stay awake (the teleport before Miser's Mistress comes to mind), it's safe to throw out Sleeps when needed as you don't have to worry about lowering its duration. I think it might be the only status effect that acts this way.

edit: Hell, while you're at it might as well add that Enfeebling skill boosts the success rate/potency of the added effects of Aero/ra and Stone/ra lol