White-mage is doomed - and why

[QooEr]

ive said it in other threads but ill repeat it here because i think its relevant and victoria isnt completely midguided this time.

The nerf to thin air was a gigantic hit to whm's mp economy.
Whm will be the healer with the worst mp economy in endwalker. Aside from lucid dreaming, their only mp recovery is assize (500mp/45s). As for mp conservation tools they only get a single spell under thin air, and i guess lilies count as free gcds.

This leaves whm getting on average 666 mp + 1 free spell every minute.

For comparison, minus lucid dreaming:
-sch gets 2000 mp per min
-ast gets 1000 mp/min from cards + average 2000 mp/min from astrodyne
-sge gets 1500 mp per min from addersgall + average 333 mp/min from rizomata

Its pretty clear whm is completely outclassed in the mp restoration department. You might be compelled to say "well whm could use thin air on an expensive heal or a rez every minute! its akin to having 2400 extra mp per min!". To which i have two retorts.

1. Ast gets on average 3000 mp per min. Ast could raise once every minute too and still end up with 600 mp restored. Assize is 666 mp per minute btw...

2. thin air does not restore mp, only conserves it. If you are casting continuously in an encounter (which you should), no matter what spell you use under thin air, it wont stop you from running out of mp any sooner.

Im going to make another comparison.
First, let\\'s assume that lucid dreaming will still restore 3500 mp on endwalker. Lets also assume that in endwalker, base piety restores the same amount of mp as in Shb. This latter assumption is based on the fact that as of now, regardless of character level, at 0 extra piety you always restore 200 mp per server tick.

Taking the aforementioned into account, imagine a healer with 0 spell speed and 0 piety on their gear, only doing their damage rotation and using every recovery ability in their kit, until they run out of MP.
- ast is MP positive. (never runs out of mp)
- sch would last 125 mins until out of mp
- sge would last ~15.5 mins until oom
- whm would last ~7.5 mins until oom

For reference, BiS sets from the balance that are meant to be only used for speedkills and are not suited for regular play, usually last around 7 mins til oom.

its also worth noting that, if you use every lily you get as soon as possible merely to save the mp from that gcd, whm lasts 20 mins till oom. Ironically, these are 4 more free gcds every 2 minutes, which is exactly what old thin air used to bring over its endwalker iteration.

What does this mean for whm?
WHM is going to need to invest heavily into piety compared to the other healers.* Which will decrease its damage contribution considerably.

WHM is going to need to use lilies more frequently as an mp management tool, or just drop gcds. Neither of those are good options because whm as a class with no buffs needs to have good personal damage.

*edit: As explained in a comment below, assuming piety will work mostly the same in endwalker as it does now, WHM would need to invest in at least 13 max level materias worth of piety just to match sage's base mp economy. That's nearly half of a gearset's materia slots spent on just doing what every other healer will be able do with 0.

[ItMe]

Taking the aforementioned into account, imagine a healer with 0 spell speed and 0 piety on their gear,
[...]
What does this mean for whm?
WHM is going to need to invest heavily into piety compared to the other healers.

What is "invest heavily" in this context?
Your gear gives you a few thousand piety, right?
Assuming Endwalker gear gives the same,
and assuming 1 piety in Endwalker gives about what it does in Shadowbringers,
and assuming piety restores by the same / a similar formula...
How much piety should WHM be looking to have?

Most fights are around 8-12 minutes, so I wouldn't think it would need too much, especially with a co-healer to split the burden. But I also just don't know what 1 piety gives you regen wise.
I know you just did a bunch of math, but can you lay it out for me a bit clearer please? I don't know what "more" means.

[QooEr]

What is "invest heavily" in this context?

By invest heavily, i mean to even catch up on the other healers' mp restored per min. Let's put thin air as an effective +400 extra mp per min as a generous "case B".
For whm to match sage's mp economy of ~1833 extra mp per minute, it would need to restore 1167 more mp per min, or 767 for case B.
That translates to approx ~1287 piety for case A and ~843 for case B, for a lv 80 character in ShB.

Raw numbers are a bit confusing, so let me put this in terms of melds. 800 piety is about 13 grade viii melds. 1300 is 21 melds.
WHM would need to meld piety on half of its materia slots for it to barely match the base mp regen of sage, which has the second worst mp economy of the healers.

Most fights are around 8-12 minutes, so I wouldn't think it would need too much, especially with a co-healer to split the burden.

Fights do last 8-12 minutes, however you also need to consider the following:
- The time till oom was presented as full gcd uptime of only dps spells, which are our cheapest spells. Casting any healing spells whatsoever outside of thin air will only cost them more mp.
- ergo, The 7 mins is the optimal scenario because thats assuming whm never casted medica ii or anything of the sort.
- This is assuming 0 spell speed. having spell speed on gear only exacerbates the problem
- the very vast majority of players cast gcd heals that arent afflatus.
- if you die youre pretty much screwed

If you want a more comfortable gearset, if youre not very experienced, or if you just want to prog and want to have a cushion of mp, you would FIRST need to slot piety equivalent of 13 melds just to match what other jobs can do with zero piety melds. Any other healer with that much piety would be infinitely more comfortable regarding their mp.

[ItMe]

snip

I have a better understanding of the situation now.
Thanks for the additional information.

[Shurrikhan]

Let's put thin air as an effective +400 extra mp per min as a generous "case B".

Why would we assume, of all things, that Thin Air would be spent merely on Glare? Or is this assuming (perhaps rightly) that one would only be able to spend it on a rez or Medica II, etc., so infrequently?

[QooEr]

Why would we assume, of all things, that Thin Air would be spent merely on Glare?

read the original post to see my rationale. it doesnt matter what spell you cast under thin air, it wont stop you from running out of mp any faster if you dont cast heals outside of it.

If youre casting 100% of the time, every gcd has a baseline cost of 400 mp, because that is the cheapest spell we have in a gcd (lol esuna). if i casted medica ii, that gcd would cost 1300 mp, but its not 1300 more mp, its only 900 more mp than the baseline (1300-400).
Therefore a single free gcd from thin air refunds you the cost of a single baseline gcd. A glare and a Raise under thin air both cost 0 MP. You of course want to use thin air on your most expensive spells, but thats because doing otherwise is a loss of mp. This doesnt mean its an mp gain, however.

i hope im being clear. you would run out of mp after 7 mins in the scenario presented wether you used raise or glare on your thin air gcd.

[CrimsonGunner]

Why would we assume, of all things, that Thin Air would be spent merely on Glare? Or is this assuming (perhaps rightly) that one would only be able to spend it on a rez or Medica II, etc., so infrequently?

cause if you don't and hold on to it until you need to hard cast medica II or rez, your mp might run out or best case might reach below 40-50% just from using glare and dia while the occasional assize ,not taking to account PoM is now much more available so you will be spamming even more glares then before.

[Doragan]

snip

It's not directly related,but I would like SE to reinstate the individual job MP regen. This would solve the individual balancing issues it is about to cause -- to be fair, Aetherflow is back to 20% MP and AST got the 8(?)% MP per draw during ShB, so I wouldn't be surprised if they would go through that direction again.

It might not be a big issue if they buffed Piety/if it's still on every piece of equipement again, but I wouldn't count on it.

There's also the possibility that the Thin Air stack gets consumed even if you don't finish the full spell cast (i.e. get interrupted).

[Sunako]

ive said it in other threads but ill repeat it here because i think its relevant and victoria isnt completely midguided this time.

The nerf to thin air was a gigantic hit to whm's mp economy.
Whm will be the healer with the worst mp economy in endwalker. Aside from lucid dreaming, their only mp recovery is assize (500mp/45s). As for mp conservation tools they only get a single spell under thin air, and i guess lilies count as free gcds.

This leaves whm getting on average 666 mp + 1 free spell every minute.

For comparison, minus lucid dreaming:
-sch gets 2000 mp per min
-ast gets 1000 mp/min from cards + average 2000 mp/min from astrodyne
-sge gets 1500 mp per min from addersgall + average 333 mp/min from rizomata

Its pretty clear whm is completely outclassed in the mp restoration department. You might be compelled to say "well whm could use thin air on an expensive heal or a rez every minute! its akin to having 2400 extra mp per min!". To which i have two retorts.

1. Ast gets on average 3000 mp per min. Ast could raise once every minute too and still end up with 600 mp restored. Assize is 666 mp per minute btw...

2. thin air does not restore mp, only conserves it. If you are casting continuously in an encounter (which you should), no matter what spell you use under thin air, it wont stop you from running out of mp any sooner.

Im going to make another comparison.
First, let\\'s assume that lucid dreaming will still restore 3500 mp on endwalker. Lets also assume that in endwalker, base piety restores the same amount of mp as in Shb. This latter assumption is based on the fact that as of now, regardless of character level, at 0 extra piety you always restore 200 mp per server tick.

Taking the aforementioned into account, imagine a healer with 0 spell speed and 0 piety on their gear, only doing their damage rotation and using every recovery ability in their kit, until they run out of MP.
- ast is MP positive. (never runs out of mp)
- sch would last 125 mins until out of mp
- sge would last ~15.5 mins until oom
- whm would last ~7.5 mins until oom

For reference, BiS sets from the balance that are meant to be only used for speedkills and are not suited for regular play, usually last around 7 mins til oom.

its also worth noting that, if you use every lily you get as soon as possible merely to save the mp from that gcd, whm lasts 20 mins till oom. Ironically, these are 4 more free gcds every 2 minutes, which is exactly what old thin air used to bring over its endwalker iteration.

What does this mean for whm?
WHM is going to need to invest heavily into piety compared to the other healers.* Which will decrease its damage contribution considerably.

WHM is going to need to use lilies more frequently as an mp management tool, or just drop gcds. Neither of those are good options because whm as a class with no buffs needs to have good personal damage.

*edit: As explained in a comment below, assuming piety will work mostly the same in endwalker as it does now, WHM would need to invest in at least 13 max level materias worth of piety just to match sage's base mp economy. That's nearly half of a gearset's materia slots spent on just doing what every other healer will be able do with 0.

It also feels pretty unrealistic completing a fight with 0 lily uses. Every lily theoretically saves you 4 - 10% mana and you got 4 free globals after 90 seconds. On top of that, if you can hit misery on the second target, it is a DPS increase. Every long fight has downtime phases too. Like there is no single ultimate without downtime. If the mana regen would be par with other healers(without lilies), I think it would be kind of overpowered.

[QooEr]

It also feels pretty unrealistic completing a fight with 0 lily uses. Every lily theoretically saves you 4 - 10% mana and you got 4 free globals after 90 seconds.

Thats a fair point. I didnt want to just arbitrarily choose a number of lilies used per minute, so i did the math between using no lilies and all lilies. If you average both out (so using half your lilies, i guess?) Whm's mp economy is roughly on par with sage's but still the lowest of the four.

Every long fight has downtime phases too. Like there is no single ultimate without downtime.

True, but every other healer will also benefit from said downtime. Also worth noting that since misery is a dps loss without downtime, people wll want to spend their lilies during said downtime, which will also invalidate the mp conservation they would have otherwise had.

If the mana regen would be par with other healers(without lilies), I think it would be kind of overpowered.

Im not so sure about that. i pointed this out in my original post:

if you use every lily you get as soon as possible merely to save the mp from that gcd, whm lasts 20 mins till oom. Ironically, these are 4 more free gcds every 2 minutes, which is exactly what old thin air used to bring over its endwalker iteration.

what this implies is that, we are already in that hypothetical "kind of overpowered" state, and it doesnt seem to me like WHM is overpowered rn.