White-mage is doomed - and why

[Sebazy]

Ya, accuracy sucked. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if SE had have bothered to update healer gear with more built in acc each tier, but they didn't =/

As a system it probably could have been made to work with some time and tuning though. Ensuring that your next cast always hit after a miss would have done wonders for making it a less frustrating system for example. Back to back dot misses on Living Liquid were hugely irritating.

Perhaps even adding it as a combo stat alongside piety would have been an option to explore if it was still around today.

[Zhevons]

I find this thread funny in a sense. There are way too many assumptions going on here for any of it be able to be discussed in such a direct way. First, the topic of Lillies. Who says it will remain a Dps loss ? If healers, in general, will be forced to use more gcd heals, using Lillies becomes very optimal for Whm to do. Not only does it advance towards the Blood Lilly it also costs no mana. Helping to aid in the issue and resulting not in a DPS loss, but a DPS gain and MP gain. If fights are tuned to require healers to cast more GCD heals, then WHM's issues discussed in this thread disappear. And since we do not know if this will be a fact or not, it's a possibility on an equal level of what is being discussed here so far. So to say it's DOOMED is far too premature.

Beyond that, so what if this would force WHM to desire different gear pieces for its BiS than the other healers. I only see this as a good thing overall, so what if WHM needs to value Piety more? We have a similar situation with the tanks with WAR. Perhaps WHM does not want Spell Speed at all, I know other jobs do not want it. And if you put the Spell Speed that might benefit other healers, into Piety instead for WHM what does that do for material selection? I would guess very little in the end. With the change in Cast time for all healers to make them in line with Astro from weaving is now a breeze for all healers, this benefits WHM's lack of weaving options in the past making it a more solid pick compared to the past.

And Lillybell is an amazing spell, I do not understand at all the gripe against it. As an SCH main I would have loved to have that spell. Preemptive planning before unavoidable dmg, before raid aoe, or before specific mechanics makes it THE best AOE heal in the game by far. Trivializing the need for other spells to be used for you or your healing partner makes it a huge tool for someone who knows when to use it raising the sealing for the potential of WHM. Thin Air nerf certainly impacts the playstyle of WHM if compared today, but it does by no means make it so White Mages are doomed. Until we see the Raids, we have no way of telling. And in lower difficulties then that WHM shines so no problem there. So this thread is premature. Until we see how the Stat Squish impacts healers as a whole in content, until we see to what level of actual healing do we need to do to keep everyone alive is required, talking about DPS as the main focus is foolish. We optimize our DPS uptime based on predicted incoming damage. Let's see THAT before we can raise legit complaints about the viability of a healer in content.

[Silver-Strider]

And Lillybell is an amazing spell, I do not understand at all the gripe against it. As an SCH main I would have loved to have that spell. Preemptive planning before unavoidable dmg, before raid aoe, or before specific mechanics makes it THE best AOE heal in the game by far. Trivializing the need for other spells to be used for you or your healing partner makes it a huge tool for someone who knows when to use it raising the sealing for the potential of WHM. Thin Air nerf certainly impacts the playstyle of WHM if compared today, but it does by no means make it so White Mages are doomed. Until we see the Raids, we have no way of telling. And in lower difficulties then that WHM shines so no problem there.

400 potency is 1 Medica cast and that is far from enough to trivialize any oncoming Raid wide damage; either the WHM or their Cohealer is going to need to supplement it with some other heal in order to actually bring the party out of the danger zone of getting killed by the next Raid wide. As a result, Lilybell is just a slightly more potent PI. Ironically, if Thin Air wasn't nerfed, PI+Cure 3 would heal for the same potency as Medica+Lilybell but because WHM can't rely on Thin Air anymore, it's more MP efficient to use Medica+Lilybell now so we literally only replaced one combo of GCD+oGCD heals for another all because of the nerf to WHM's MP economy. Lilybell is also not available in low level content like any of the current Ultimates so WHM is just screwed there entirely.

But at least its pretty, right? I wonder if MCH can burn it with Flamethrower so people can see how crap it actually is instead of arguing that its some god tier spell when its literally only a 2nd charge of PI in terms of functionality.

[Sebazy]

First, the topic of Lillies. Who says it will remain a Dps loss ?

The past ~5 years of Savage content says it'll be a DPS loss.

I'm inclined to believe it, we've been here before getting whispers and hints of more healing requirements. Could we actually see it this time? Will it be enough to offset all the extra healing abilities that have been dished round the other roles in a worrying flashback to all the other utility we once had? We'll find out soon enough at least =(

And as mentioned below, Lilybell is going to be mighty against Timults and such. J kick, Titan stomps, that kind of stuff will be it's bread and butter. The problem is that it lacks the versatility of Macrocosmos. MC will work to it's full power in mechanics like Hello World, tank busters, lights rampant, lions rampant etc. It's practically akin to applying a persistent Earthly Star with a 20 yalm CU that can still be fired whenever you want within it's duration. The only question mark I have about it is if it's secondary trigger ability is also a GCD cast or if it becomes an instant oGCD.

Meanwhile Lilybell won't be anything like as effective on Hello World style mechanics where the healer might not be getting smacked in sync with the rest of the raid, nor does it have value as a tool to deal with tank busters. It's literally a dumbed down version of Earthly Star that trades control for raw potency and a whopping cooldown.

Except even it's potency isn't actually that great over the course of a fight, it just has the potential to front load a ton of potency in a short window against a very specific type of mechanic. Get hit once with Lilybell down, that's 1200 potency. Get hit twice? 1400 potency. That's typically what you're going to see outside of mini 'enrages' at the end of some fights. Meanwhile an AST has laid down 3 Earthly Stars for 2160 potency combined in the same time.

It's a neat addition but there's no way that it's cooldown is justified. It should be dropped down to 2 minutes IMHO. MC is the better ability for 90% of the fight.

[Liam_Harper]

I find this thread funny in a sense. There are way too many assumptions going on here for any of it be able to be discussed in such a direct way. First, the topic of Lillies. Who says it will remain a Dps loss ? If healers, in general, will be forced to use more gcd heals, using Lillies becomes very optimal for Whm to do. Not only does it advance towards the Blood Lilly it also costs no mana. Helping to aid in the issue and resulting not in a DPS loss, but a DPS gain and MP gain. If fights are tuned to require healers to cast more GCD heals, then WHM's issues discussed in this thread disappear. And since we do not know if this will be a fact or not, it's a possibility on an equal level of what is being discussed here so far. So to say it's DOOMED is far too premature.

Even if we need more GCD heals and a WHM has to use their entire lily stock to heal, AST will heal that same damage for free with oGCD's. Lilies will always be a dps loss because comparatively their competitor (AST) heals the same, or more, without any potency loss at all. If we need even more GCD heals, WHM will be worse off because it will have to exhaust all their lilies (each one a potency loss), then dip into Medica II's (310 loss). AST on the other hand will cover a larger bulk at 0 potency loss with their huge range of oGCD's, then if they have to dip into AspHelios, they're only losing 250 potency a cast.

Sadly, yet again WHM will only shine if there's barely anything to heal. Then they can lean on their co-heal to take care of the bulk of the damage and save their lilies for downtime where the boss can't be targeted, or blow their lilies between pulls in dungeons.

[ForteNightshade]

And Lillybell is an amazing spell, I do not understand at all the gripe against it. As an SCH main I would have loved to have that spell. Preemptive planning before unavoidable dmg, before raid aoe, or before specific mechanics makes it THE best AOE heal in the game by far. Trivializing the need for other spells to be used for you or your healing partner makes it a huge tool for someone who knows when to use it raising the sealing for the potential of WHM. Thin Air nerf certainly impacts the playstyle of WHM if compared today, but it does by no means make it so White Mages are doomed. Until we see the Raids, we have no way of telling. And in lower difficulties then that WHM shines so no problem there. So this thread is premature. Until we see how the Stat Squish impacts healers as a whole in content, until we see to what level of actual healing do we need to do to keep everyone alive is required, talking about DPS as the main focus is foolish. We optimize our DPS uptime based on predicted incoming damage. Let's see THAT before we can raise legit complaints about the viability of a healer in content.

I was going to use the current raid tier to highlight why Lilybell, while a decent ability, is nowhere near as hype as you're making it out to be. How fortunate for my example, Cloud of Darkness literally shows why.

The most practical use would be during Empty Plane at the 4:24 mark as Deluge immediately follows. Except Deluge is at 4:39, exactly fifteen seconds later. Therefore, Lilybell is rendered entirely worthless save for a single heal as its present duration will expire just before the actual hit. What if we use it at the beginning? You'll again run into the same issue, where Lilybell is held back by its short duration. Furthermore, it'll conflict with your co-healer's toolkit. Earthly Star, for example, handles the open set of mechanics, and will always be prioritized due to its damage component much in the same way Assize is. Granted, we may no longer see a WHM/AST pair but Sage handles it easily with Pneuma, Panhaima, Holos, Drouychloe or Ixochole, all of which are essentially free since enough time passes between damage for Sage to regain Addergall.

Throughout the entirety of Cloud, there is not a single point where Lilybell doesn't result in a massive overheal or simply isn't practical because the WHM won't be taking damage. For a 180s cooldown, that isn't exactly hype even if Lilybell has some worthwhile use. It's simply thoroughly outclassed by Macrocosmos, and even falls short of Pneuma and Protraction to some extent.

Lilybell isn't bad per se; it'll certainly find its niche. Not to mention, a free Medica is still free healing. What makes it underwhelm is the WHM having to take damage and it's duration both in CD length and how long it lasts. One could argue making the heal slightly less potent but removing all the aforementioned restrictions would make it significantly more worthwhile. As it stands, it'll mostly slot in as our Cure III replacement due to Thin Air's nerf.

[Valmaxian]

[QUOTE=Zhevons;5698492]Preemptive planning before unavoidable dmg, before raid aoe, or before specific mechanics makes it THE best AOE heal in the game by far.

Makrocosmos would beg to differ. Lily bell is useless for tankbusters, deals no damage, and lasts 15 seconds. Yes, it’s healing potency potential is strong, but it’s limitations make it, in my opinion, the weakest healer capstone skill.

[Semirhage]

Why would forcing more GCD heals magically turn lilies into a DPS gain? That's...not how math works.

And Piety is a dead stat that provides nothing other than a kit mana starvation tax. Which is why it sucks.

[QooEr]

Not only does it advance towards the Blood Lilly it also costs no mana. Helping to aid in the issue and resulting not in a DPS loss, but a DPS gain and MP gain. I If fights are tuned to require healers to cast more GCD heals, then WHM's issues discussed in this thread disappear.

having experienced firsthand what awful mp economy is like from playing astro since the beginning of shb, the worst part of bad mp economy is not the uptime till out of mana, but how incredibly strict and punishing it is. unplanned healing or raising (you only get one thin air every 60s!!! surely nobody messes up more than once per min during prog, right?), or even dying at all in a fight means youll run out of mp very soon. for a healer thats ostensibly"newbie friendly" and easy to prog with, the mp economy is going to make mistakes feel a lot worse


im not saying whm is going to be like, irredeemable. it really just needs a small buff to its mp economy. making assize restore 500 more mp would solve almost all the issues.

[Acece]

For being the healiest healer whm really doesn't want to heal the majority of the time and they're worse at it then ast which is funny. Whm has got to be the worst design job in the game. No identity, nothing they excel at except maybe stack healing, no movement tool, nothing in it's healing kit is actually unique, it's DPS abilities are just washed out balls of light, and no gameplay loop of any kind. It's sad to see one of the most iconic jobs in final fantasy not have anything from it's past games that made them unique or anything in FFXIV that is unique.