Endwalker White Mage has Issues

[Semirhage]

Well, that is generally why I started this thread lol. But regarding everything else you brought up, I think I have a reasonable grasp of where you're coming from now, even if I don't agree with everything you said, based on the way you worded it. I would be interested to hear what you think of the mini rework I proposed earlier in the thread. The goal of which was to address the biggest issues whm is facing without adding brand new abilities or fundamentally altering any of the jobs current systems. I would also obviously be interested in any other thoughts people have in regards to it or how they might go about changing the job themselves.

I think those fixes would help with a lot of the unnecessarily frustrating parts of WHM's kit that make WHM the weakest healer in the role, but fixing healer engagement as a whole is a much larger undertaking. If it makes sense, I'd almost rather those changes didn't get implemented, because it'd be easy for Square to just rebalance the math and leave the job still unrewarding and unfun to play, but wash their hands of it because it's "fixed". I'm approaching from a jaded vet healer perspective where I'm sick of the entire design. I get how infuriating it is that a lot of the frankly stupid design decisions Square makes have ridiculous clunk that's pretty trivial to avoid with just some number tweaks, and at the same time I wish they'd put some actual care and consideration into designing healers instead of just removing the "weak" part from "unfun *and* weak".

Though I'm complaining primarily about balance within the role, the reason I'm complaining about it is because I think actually designing the healers to be fun to play will also fix that imbalance as a side-effect. WHM is trapped as worst-in-role because its kit is just so incomplete. It's not a particularly outstanding burst healer, because the other healers do it better. It's not a strong damaging healer, because the other healers either have higher potencies (Sage) or have followed the design direction that actually complements this game's combat system, i.e. moving the healing power into oGCDs, which not only allows you to heal largely for free, but also frees up even more time to deal damage, further widening the gap between the healers.

WHM's core design is just so outdated. The absurd number of oGCDs the other healers bring, the fact that a lot of the other healers' spells and abilities are just straight superior to anything WHM has to offer, the list is just staggering. I'm looking at YOU, Tetra vs Essential Dignity. Why is Aquaveil just straight up worse than Exaltation? How about Zoe + Pneuma vs Temperance (or Plenary) and Cure 3? Wider radius, deals damage, higher potency, heals the tank extra? So much for the "pure burst healer" when Sage is just superior. Heck...Pneuma is a GCD heal that's on a long cooldown and heals for a large amount in an AOE...but is also not a DPS loss. Cool, so glad Sage can just casually accomplish in one ability what WHM spends its entire job gauge farting around with and doesn't even manage -that- much. Why the hell is every single thing in WHM's kit impressive on paper, except then you can just point at an equivalent ability in half the role that's just hilariously better for no reason?

Even if WHM's numbers made it competitive, it brings nothing unique to the table and never has. Not since Heavensward. It doesn't stand out in any way.

[Ryme]

I do get where you are coming form on the kind not wanting those types of changes, and the dissatisfaction of most of whm kit being inferior version to the other healers, makes sense. I've tended to propose changes that are not to far out from the current iteration because, let's be honest healers (whm) are in this state because SE doesn't seem to have the clearest idea of what their design philosophy for them should be (both as a role and with individual jobs, more some than other though obviously). So coming form a place where the current state of this is the reality, imo baby steps is the best we are going to get. So I've focused on making the best out of what whm is right now. Admittedly there were a few things that I think could be added to that I didn't bring up, like giving a second stack of tetra and raising its potency to like 1000 (or making it generate a lily, was such a good idea from that video that was posted on the forum) and honestly, most of the changes mentioned in that video. Figuring out the best version(s) of whm possible is a whole other can of worms that could be its own entire thread and then some. Certainly something that is worth the discussion but I think focusing on just achieving walking first is the best idea before we even consider running.

[Allegor]

Even if WHM's numbers made it competitive, it brings nothing unique to the table and never has. Not since Heavensward. It doesn't stand out in any way.

WHM is not meant to be on par with the other healers, it's just the training wheels for new players, that just happens to also be good for when you want to turn your brain off but still get fast queues, and that's the hill I'll die on. I'm not saying it as if it were a good thing either, more like in a defeated tone...

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

WHM is not meant to be on par with the other healers, it's just the training wheels for new players, that just happens to also be good for when you want to turn your brain off but still get fast queues, and that's the hill I'll die on. I'm not saying it as if it were a good thing either, more like in a defeated tone...

Still, I wish they could've just make CNJ alone as their 'training wheels'-healer.

[Liam_Harper]

WHM is not meant to be on par with the other healers, it's just the training wheels for new players, that just happens to also be good for when you want to turn your brain off but still get fast queues, and that's the hill I'll die on. I'm not saying it as if it were a good thing either, more like in a defeated tone...

It's not training wheels.

Training wheels isn't having only Cure II spam and no mana recovery at low levels, while the others have Cure II equivalents, Kardia/Embrace, decent oGCD's and access mana recovery much earlier. It just feels like it, because it's basic, but in reality the other healers aren't that hard to learn and ease you into the toolkit at a reasonable pace. WHM barely has a toolkit. You're sent into wall pulls with least capability to handle them. It leans on Holy as a clutch so badly it's about to snap.

If WHM was training wheels it would have some sort of passive heal, a few oGCD's, lots of free mana and really strong GCD's so that healing was easy. Maybe a button on a low cooldown that turned shiny if a player was low and instantly did a big heal on them. That sort of thing.
It would either lose effectiveness at higher levels or be banned from EX/Savage entirely, like a sort of limited class. Because it's just for training wheels. (Not saying I want that though)

What we have now is a straight up trap. A weak, ineffective class that's also the worst healer to start with. But players believe it's the beginner healer because you start from lv1 and it doesn't have gimmicks.

[RobynDaBank]

I found a JP Hippokampos log with a solo WHM healer who seems to have output some nice damage. https://www.fflogs.com/reports/JqBLX...pe=damage-done (hope I don't get in trouble for this, lol).

[Silver-Strider]

WHM is not meant to be on par with the other healers, it's just the training wheels for new players, that just happens to also be good for when you want to turn your brain off but still get fast queues, and that's the hill I'll die on. I'm not saying it as if it were a good thing either, more like in a defeated tone...

By this logic, every role should have a job that is just arbitrarily worse than its counterparts because training wheels. Since that isn't the case, I call BS.

[Semirhage]

What we have now is a straight up trap. A weak, ineffective class that's also the worst healer to start with. But players believe it's the beginner healer because you start from lv1 and it doesn't have gimmicks.

When I hear people say "I love WHM because it's just got so much raw healing power", I'm like...WHERE? Compared to Curing Waltz and Second Wind sure. Compared to its own role? The reliability and burst potential there is on par (or higher), and that's not even doing goofy math lady meme stuff, just read the frickin' potencies, it's not like healer kits are these complex labyrinths of abilities, they all have roughly equivalent healing skills you can tell with two minutes of glancing at the job guide pages. AST's GCD healing kit *alone* is stupidly better than WHM's for crying out loud, and that's all obtainable within ARR leveling.

[Hellebore_Ghrian]

In EW, we're at the point where you can even play an ast using only its healing gcd and randomly cast its cards only for mp regen and you'll almost have better performance than a whm.

[Phoen1x]

By this logic, every role should have a job that is just arbitrarily worse than its counterparts because training wheels. Since that isn't the case, I call BS.

I too said this on a post in the FF14 healers group on Facebook.
Someone said exactly the same thing. It’s a stupid mentality. Every Job has been simplified to cater to the casual player to reduce the skill gap. There Arn’t “training wheels” Jobs within the tanks or DPS roles.

WHM just happens to be the simplest of them all because SE doesn’t know what to do with it. Even when they brought the job gauges out, they didn’t know what to do for WHM, the original design was re-designed an expansion later. With the introduction of the blood lily, instead of giving us a raid wide damage buff - which they could have done to align us with AST and SCH for raid meta…. They just gave us damage.

I love being a WHM main and have been since ARR. I’ve never considered switching even though the job itself feels unloved each time there are potency changes or new skills introduced. I’ll still continue to play it, despite what people say with its performance or what I feel it is lacking. I just hope SE really do look at the WHMs position and make some adjustments at 6.1 for us.

There are some really good ideas on what could be done on this post. In terms of EW Skills, I really love lilybel. With a Perfectly timed placement, it really does the job. I think the cool down is too long though, it’s annoying I have to be the one to take damage for it to use a stack. It would be amazing if it did damage as well like earthly star, but being scaled to how many stacks there are left -the final heal feels wasted if the party is already at full health. As mentioned, it would be awesome to manually use the lilybel stacks, and to save on extra skills on the hotbar, just have maybe something like afflatus rapture change/proc when lilybel is up or something.