WHM 6.0 rework idea: Elemental Cycle

[Atmaweapon510]

White Mage has always been a little plain, and I feel like Shadowbringers pulls it way too far from its Druidesque Conjurer roots. As the beginner healing job, its questline might also be a little too subtle about trying to nudge you into dpsing in your spare time so I think a mechanic that starts early on that teaches the optimal way to play would be helpful. Introducing, the Elemental Cycle gauge to fix all of these problems.

Elemental Cycle

What it looks like:
Imagine a giant circle around the Lily gauge split into three colors, Green for Wind, Brown for Earth, Blue for Water with an arrow that moves around the circle as you cast spells. At the earliest levels, the circle is only Green for Wind, but gets split into more color segments as you level up.

How it works:
Whenever you cast a spell, you push the Elemental cycle forward. When you complete a segment, you gain Elemental overload for that segment's element. Elemental overload enhances a certain spell, making it deal more damage and healing nearby party members (basically a mini assize.) They are as follows:

Aero->Tornado, a instant highly damaging aoe with a DoT component around target. (stacks with aero)
Holy->Quake, an instant high damage aoe/stun centered around the caster.
Fluid Aura-> Flood, an instant high damage line aoe towards a target that binds enemies.


And that's basically it. Imagine a newbie scenario, you're casting spells and you see that your arrow moving around your circle while you're casting, making one of your buttons light up and do a lot of stuff, basically Assize at level 15. You're encouraged to always be casting to light up your button more often and (hopefully) realize that you're better off casting Stone at an enemy rather than Cure on your full hp tank.

As you level up, your situational/useless abilities are now globally applicable. At the high end, you then realize the versatility of these tools for movement and weaving, with fights becoming optimization puzzles where you leverage the value of each spell as an uptime/weave tool, aoe heal, or just plain damaging nuke to fit into a burst window while avoiding wasting stacks. A nice, simple mechanic that exponentially increases your skill expression depending entirely on how you want to use it.

[Recon1o6]

Certainly a good idea. Gives much needed weaving windows and something extra other than napping when chucking rocks/glaring

I would like to expand upon this idea- The order is earth, wind, water as per the questline (you do the trials in that order). Include a button to cycle it forward as a capstone

[Shurrikhan]

Not an implementation I'd particularly like, but I love the concept.

I just have no idea if Geomancer, if added or given allotments for future addition, will insist on stealing the remainder of WHM's Conjurer roots until we're left only with varying sizes of colorless explosions...