WHM downtime thoughts

[MirronTulaxia]

Whilst some inaccuracies on my part, I'll accept. I think in my post, I let myself confuse Light Magic with White Magic and Dark Magic with Black Magic. When light and darkness is umbral & astral.

Even then. The elements are split between White and Black Magic, even if they aren't opposites in terms of light and dark.

White Magic is not the same as Conjury, though in learning it, White Magic derives from the same elements as conjury and acts as an upgrade with light magic included. And it was the same balance for White Magic during the war of the Magi against the Black Mages of Mhach. And Red Magic holds the balance between White and Black Magic because of that war. White Magic in this game just isn't purely light or holy and to move into that direction I just don't think makes sense for this game. Light magic is meant to be an addition to their elemental magic, not an upgrade.

It just seems to be arbitrarily moving it more in line with WHM in other FF titles and touch on their themes, rather than the one they've already established.

The elements were split between them. Now they aren't. White Mages don't typically have a rigid 1:1 opposition with Black Mages in terms of elements. They use Holy/Light, while Black Mages tend to use Fire/Ice/Lightning. Letting another job take up the three elements White Mages were using, especially when they're likely to be more important thematically, isn't a big deal.

As far as how it impacts the lore, it really doesn't. White Mages way back when in the War of the Magi are different from White Mages now, and especially different from White Mage WoL. Nothing wrong with him moving away from those roots. It's not like Black Mages are going around dealing with Voidsent after all.

With regards to how arbitrary it is, if they're adding a job to better focus on those themes then it really isn't. While I personally feel they could have had White Mage and Geomancer both as healers others disagree.

[Allegor]

WHM is the healer with the most downtime, and that's kinda why I personally want it to be the 'green DPS' healer. AST is already busy juggling with their card and seals system, and SCH can get their DoTs back to better compliment all their ogcd, but WHM is the most straightforward, aggressive out of the 3 and that aspect of it should be improved. Not to mention that, as Recon said, it's embarrassingly easy compared to the other 2.


As for its theme and relation to geomancer, despite Yoshi already saying another split job is never gonna happen because SCH/SMN were already hell to code and balance, it'd just be the most logical outcome to have geomancer branch off CNJ in the same fashion.

???

I swear I'm not trying to be snippy, but I take it you haven't played SCH in a while?

Perhaps my wording wasn't the best there, I meant give them back all their DoTs

[Rivinhal]

and SCH can specialize in a bunch of DoT to compliment all their ogcd

???

I swear I'm not trying to be snippy, but I take it you haven't played SCH in a while?

Edit: To actually contribute to the thread, I'll say I don't have a strong feeling on the WHM identity. I'd be okay if it was primarily nature-oriented, and I'm okay that it's primarily holy-oriented now. I feel like those are two halves of the same coin for WHM.

[Tulzscha]

Hmmmm well AST has buffs covered with cards, defensive buffs would be similar to shielding which is more of SCH's thing and that's more pre-emptive healing than something to do during downtime. SCH I feel should either get their 2nd pet back and/or moar dots so for WHM I'd say more nukes and nuke-related things. If SCH is the healing version of SMN and WHM is healing version of BLM (while AST is off prancing around like the special snowflake it is) then yeah just toss in some more straight-forward bursty-type damage things.

Combos, procs, more lily stuff BlOoD fOr ThE bLoOd LilY, lots of ways it could go. Converting heal spells to damage could be neat, could flavor it by making the enemy undead or something. Going on the BLM comparison maybe some of their heals get even more beefy but eat through mana and they can dps to gain it back (with some mana-hungry dps spells as well for good measure). Or they could just dive into melee and tear the hearts out of their enemies upon which they feast to nourish the blood lily because that's what WHM is about now right?

[Vitreus]

I'd much rather WHM focus on the elementals but like others have said they might have been removed for it's iconic FF abilities so that a future healer, like geomancer, might come into play. That being said I do think our downtime kit needs to be changed. It's way too simple. The devs seem adamant about dps being an afterthought so I'd rather bring in more support spells for our downtime. Let us grant haste to our allies or put an vulnerability on the boss. Make it something interesting and fun. As it stands now content slowly becomes more trivial and boring the stronger we become because our downtime increases. Give us something fun to do in that downtime.

[Allegor]

I got to admit though, I do like the afflatus spells have a floral theme so it's not like WHM entirely abandoned their CNJ roots

[QueenSheba]

I main WHM exclusively.

I hate everything in this post.

No.

[Semirhage]

I main WHM exclusively.

I hate everything in this post.

No.

Which part? Filling WHM downtime at all, or the specific suggestions presented?

[Kabooa]

Let us work under the assumption that an Elemental healer isn't the reason that White mage has moved to Holy only offensive spells.

The structure of this kit is similar to Casino Black Mage, the ARR iteration before Eno-Chan came in.

Frankly, I'm not a fan. Wasn't a fan of Casino Mage at the time either, but yakno, Eno-Chan wasn't around to show me the way. Any Spam-> Proc system is just a combo system with extra steps that feel extra bad when you can't plan around it.

The Lily empowerment part can work.

Spend Lily -> Gain Empowered Spell use. Instant single, AoE DoT, Badonka AoE.

[Ayer2015]

I'm more than happy to glare spam on my downtime. Can always play AST if I wanted to buff the party.