WHM downtime thoughts

[Recon1o6]

White mage as we all know has always had the short end of the stick in terms of what to do during downtime. Its perception as the simple but powerful healer or the tutorial healer has led it to suffering a lot during downtime throughout the years.

I would argue however that it should not be the so called tutorial healer- that's what conjurer is for.
Instead I would say it should be the easiest to play of the three healers, but that does not mean it needs to be the current brain dead medica 2, dia then back to glaring with the occasional lily on the tank and blood lily on the enemy

WHM's the world over lament losing Aero 3, our only water ability (fluid aura) being nerfed to uselessness and the rest of our elements and abilities in shadowbringers.
Most want them back or at least aero 3

Throughout final fantasy history, white mages also had access to some useful buffs. Faith, Bravery, Protect, Reflect and Shell being the most common. Reflect for obvious reasons can't be used, but the others can be done or have been done previously in the game.


I'm thinking WHM could incorporate a little of both historical buffs and elemental damage for downtime. It would look something like this:

Note: I am not a balance expert so potencies will likely be a bit off. This is more an idea to bring some actual fun back to the downtime rather than balance

Damage spells:
Stone 1/2/3/4/5 does single damage to an enemy. 40% proc water
Aero 1/2 does DOT to a single enemy
Aero 3/4 does DOT to multiple enemies
Water 1/2/3/4/5 instant cast but must be procced, does single damage to an enemy and weaker aoe damage 3y away. Restores 500mp
Holy- bumped back up to 240 pot and mp cost raised to 900. (make it actually does more than tickle but not so much it can be spammed so frequently)

New ability Faith- self buff for Whm, costs 1 lily, recast 45 seconds: Turns stone into quake, water into flood and aero 1/2 into tornado. All instant cast spells at same mp cost as their bases.

>Quake: Does a potency 350 attack to every engaged enemy within 15y radius (so it doesn't aggro additional mobs in open world)
>Flood: Does a potency 375 attack to one enemy and within 3y of it
>Tornado: Does a potency 250 attack to one enemy and within 3y and inflicts them with a 15 second DOT dealing 150 potency over time.

New ability- Bravery: Boosts ally and self direct hit rate by 10% for 20 seconds and grants a lily. Recast 120 seconds. Cannot be used to gain lilies out of combat.


I can't think of anything to replace dia and glare, nor give protect and shell to allies like whm used to do without revamping or adding skills.



What are your thoughts? Shoudl whm focus more on its elemental roots or more on iconic final fantasy abilities?

[EaMett]

I suspect there's a reason why they removed elemental skills from whm. So I doubt the elemental theme is coming back, ever.
If you really want some elemental skills, please look forward to the new healer in 6.0

[Nethereal]

I suspect there's a reason why they removed elemental skills from whm. So I doubt the elemental theme is coming back, ever.
If you really want some elemental skills, please look forward to the new healer in 6.0

They should make fluid aura a silence.

During down time is usually when lilies get used. Buffs from lilies instead of heals... would be interesting.

[Saefinn]

I suspect there's a reason why they removed elemental skills from whm. So I doubt the elemental theme is coming back, ever.
If you really want some elemental skills, please look forward to the new healer in 6.0

Which I think is daft. It'd be like Thunder, Blizzard and Fire spells all being replaced with darkness-based spells. Whilst WHM going more holy is appropriate for WHM in other FF titles, they've essentially established them differently in FFXIV where BLM and WHM are polar and how "light" and "dark" have their own spectrum of elements. Meaning a mix of light/dark and elemental magic is thematic to both jobs. Dia &Glare if anything should have been additional spells not upgrades.

[basketofseals]

Which I think is daft. It'd be like Thunder, Blizzard and Fire spells all being replaced with darkness-based spells. Whilst WHM going more holy is appropriate for WHM in other FF titles, they've essentially established them differently in FFXIV where BLM and WHM are polar and how "light" and "dark" have their own spectrum of elements. Meaning a mix of light/dark and elemental magic is thematic to both jobs. Dia &Glare if anything should have been additional spells not upgrades.

It'd be funny if they gave us darkness spells again as a sort of balance analogy and then we just end up being 1.0 THM. Bring me my cone heals and blood price please.

[Rivinhal]

I like the idea of using lilies during downtime to buff a spell. That's a cool idea. I'm not so certain I love your upgraded spells (for one, I don't think they should be upgraded to instant cast lol), but I see what you're going for. But I think that flat potency increases and new animations/skill names could suffice. That's less interesting, but it's way more realistic.

Not really a fan of Bravery though. I think if WHM is going to get direct offensive buffs like that (that grant a lily on top) they'd have to have their potencies slightly adjusted across the board to compensate. But I guess that's doable.

As for Protect? If you really wanted to reintroduce it, you could probably rework the current PvP version of Protect to allow it to work with a PvE WHM kit. That would be really interesting.

[MirronTulaxia]

I like White Mages being more strictly Holy. As is it kind of ate up two different thematics (nature and divine) and because of that it wasn't a great fit. They're two distinct themes and they should be able to stand on their own. While I personally feel like they could have had a nature healer without issue (or a more divine one) others seemed to think that wasn't possible, so this change helps to make it possible.

As for the proposed idea, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Ignoring the elemental aspect which could just be changed, I would like Healers to focus more on healing as opposed to a soft rotation. Expanding the support a White Mage does would be fine, except that I'm not sure how they could do that in a meaningful way. As far as buffs/debuffs go I would want them to focus more on defensive things than offensive too, which isn't really popular but fits White Mage.

[Saefinn]

I like White Mages being more strictly Holy. As is it kind of ate up two different thematics (nature and divine) and because of that it wasn't a great fit. They're two distinct themes and they should be able to stand on their own. While I personally feel like they could have had a nature healer without issue (or a more divine one) others seemed to think that wasn't possible, so this change helps to make it possible.

As for the proposed idea, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Ignoring the elemental aspect which could just be changed, I would like Healers to focus more on healing as opposed to a soft rotation. Expanding the support a White Mage does would be fine, except that I'm not sure how they could do that in a meaningful way. As far as buffs/debuffs go I would want them to focus more on defensive things than offensive too, which isn't really popular but fits White Mage.

I think the two work together within the world of Final Fantasy XIV because it's not so much a nature healer (Conjurer I think was more nature) but how the elements exist along a spectrum and there being a split divide on the elements between Dark and Light. With White Mage taking the light and Black Mage taking the dark. This is then also carried on into Red Mage who seek to join the two sides of the spectrum together and why much of their mechanics are to two with balancing the dark and light through their respective elements until unleashing light (verholy) or dark magic (verflare). I think to have White Mage move away from that to have much more of a holy focus I think doesn't fit with the theme and feel of a White Mage here. And I miss big rocks, windy spells and the hope they one day bring a proper water-based spell.

I guess also how as a result it doesn't simply feel like it's a holy mage, which we see a lot of out there, it's more about the elements than any kind of divine power and I like that.

Whereas something more purely holy I think works great for Paladin in this game, just like something purely dark would great for Dark Knight.

[Edit]

Actually it might serve me more argument for why they could add Devout as a 4th healer. I suggested the idea of the 4th healer being a good way to move all of the healer design philosophy of 5.0 to a new job so all those who praise this direction have what they want, whilst reverting the existing healers to the design philosophies people already liked who're complaining. I suggest 5.0 WHM's design could be a good basis because it is the best designed of the 3 in ShB, and Devout would fit the position well. Devout would also leave more room for a pure holy class and could relate back more to Krile too. Though some might argue too close to White Mage in someways, but we also got people calling for Geomancer, which is already close to Conjurer and Astrologian and Time Mage, which is also close to Astrologian.

[MirronTulaxia]

I think the two work together within the world of Final Fantasy XIV because it's not so much a nature healer (Conjurer I think was more nature) but how the elements exist along a spectrum and there being a split divide on the elements between Dark and Light. With White Mage taking the light and Black Mage taking the dark. This is then also carried on into Red Mage who seek to join the two sides of the spectrum together and why much of their mechanics are to two with balancing the dark and light through their respective elements until unleashing light (verholy) or dark magic (verflare). I think to have White Mage move away from that to have much more of a holy focus I think doesn't fit with the theme and feel of a White Mage here. And I miss big rocks, windy spells and the hope they one day bring a proper water-based spell.

I guess also how as a result it doesn't simply feel like it's a holy mage, which we see a lot of out there, it's more about the elements than any kind of divine power and I like that.

Whereas something more purely holy I think works great for Paladin in this game, just like something purely dark would great for Dark Knight.

[Edit]

Actually it might serve me more argument for why they could add Devout as a 4th healer. I suggested the idea of the 4th healer being a good way to move all of the healer design philosophy of 5.0 to a new job so all those who praise this direction have what they want, whilst reverting the existing healers to the design philosophies people already liked who're complaining. I suggest 5.0 WHM's design could be a good basis because it is the best designed of the 3 in ShB, and Devout would fit the position well. Devout would also leave more room for a pure holy class and could relate back more to Krile too. Though some might argue too close to White Mage in someways, but we also got people calling for Geomancer, which is already close to Conjurer and Astrologian and Time Mage, which is also close to Astrologian.

1. White Mage is Conjurer. The two aren't desegregated just because of a name change.

2. If we're going with elements tied to Light then White Mage would have Ice. That's the element most strongly associated with Light/Umbral in the game, hence why Shiva in Eden turned out the way it did. So even going off of that reasoning it doesn't really line up.

3. Flare... isn't Dark Magic. It's Fire. The mastery of Black Magic (for a time) isn't Darkness, it's Fire. Lately Black Mages have picked up some Darkness-like spells (arguably the unaspected spells are those presumably), but the bulk of their theme isn't really Darkness stuff either. And they use the element most closely aligned with Light as well, Ice. So if you try and look at it from the XIV lens of six elements and two polarities it still doesn't quite line up to Black Mages being dark masters.

4. As far as White Mages not fitting the theme of... I'm not sure I quite understand the argument, I guess XIV's elemental balances? As far as that goes, the two jobs are not balanced around the elemental wheel. Black Mages use the three standard elemental spells they've always used, and White Mages got a nature theme added to them and used a couple elements they've used elsewhere with a third added (Earth (though thinking on it Mobius does use Earth I believe)). There isn't anything wrong with it, but it isn't about balancing the wheel of elements at all and astral/umbral polarities. Black Mage bounces between the two poles as is, it's literally in the name. More to that point Black Mage is if anything more light aligned as its Umbral element is the peak light one, while its Astral one is Fire not Lightning. So looking at that kind of angle shows a really weird system in place.

5. In short, the elements don't really flow that way. Since they don't, actually having White Mage move to a proper Light theme (which is the closest to a consistent theme with the job) is better. They can always take those three elements and flesh them out better in another job and make that more of a theme. We could even see a proper Dark themed spellcaster at some point too, though I don't really expect that. To me Black Mage and White Mage aren't really opposites so much as a hold over from FFI being inspired by DnD. At least in terms of elements they aren't or in terms of themes. That said White Mage has been focused on the divine/holy much more consistently than anything else.

6. Devout, Geomancer, and Time Mage all can stand independently of existing jobs. Especially when one need only look at Scholar to see how much a job can change from past incarnations. That said I don't really see any point in Devout when White Mage does what Devout presumably would do. Geomancer stands out as a solidly nature themed job and in terms of mechanics could have a zone based gimmick perhaps. Time Mage is magic that manipulates time and space (including Earth, which could be a thing for taking away it from White Mage), Astrologian manipulates fate and uses star themed magic. While they overlap with Gravity it's not too heavy of an overlap really. Really it's just makes a case that Earth is much better suited for Geomancer or Time Mage than White Mage as White Mage has a solid theme that works without Earth, while Geo/Time would have a much harder time pulling it off.

[Saefinn]

snip

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.