Thread: White Mage's 6.1 changes fail to address a core issue I have with the job.

The change is positive insofar as before you could *only* squeeze out a reward for playing stupidly, and minimize a loss for playing well. Now you're simply not penalized for playing well or stupidly, unless you play so stupidly that you don't have tools up when you actually need to heal something, which is pretty hard to do. The system is shallow and poorly designed because it elevates bad Sylphie Cure spamming gameplay to near "how you're supposed to play the class", which...ugh. Glad I swapped to DPS main. Healer design clearly supports the *important* parts of gameplay. Why not just give you job gauge for wearing a white flour sack or an aetherflow stack for using a /giggle emote or build blood lily for maintaining 100% Medica 2 uptime.

Even at ARR levels WHM suffers mid-way through due to a lack of power behind its GCD healing. Cure 2 feels like a major drain for it being 1000 MP and doesn't feel really justified compared to the 400 MP Cure costs. While I know Cure is a trap at anywhere around Lv 50, I've found myself using it and M2 more often on tanks due to the fact it's a 1.5s cast time. Faster cast, same GCD. The tank could take more damage before you could get your C2 off, meaning it's be more to deal with and they could potentially die. While I understand the view on "Cure is bad!" I do think they need to just make Cure 2 700 MP and leave it at that since it's too costly otherwise to spam, even with Lucid up.

2 things that bug me with WHM atm is that first we lack any water based attack spells even though water is a key element of CNJ early on. We got stone and aero but no water. Always bugged me that this wasnt utilised as a DPS burst ability.

2nd is that they removed Aero III in Shadowbringers and they shouldnt have. Should have kept it and had it work mehanically like Thunder as it's irritating our dot is single target only.

Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

This is one of my personal core issues with the job, and really all jobs that only have a skeleton of their rotation (some even less than that), at low levels. I firmly believe that jobs should have a solid foundation of their core skills long before level 80, or even level 60 tbph.

I understand that designing new skills and animations is a time consuming process but there is a plethora of old cut animations and skills that could be refurbished and reintroduced to several classes and jobs to not only make the leveling experience overall better but also give classes more than 10 skills by level 50 so they could realistically start learning their job more effectively.

There is no reason Solace and Rapture need to be level 52/76. They're copies of Medica and Cure 2, skills that we have since level 15/30. Same thing with Temperance, just return Divine Seal and upgrade it as 80.

You could do this with so many skills and jobs that it's staggering to see it hasn't happened yet and I will continue to advocate for reform.

This is an excellent point. Yes getting blood lily earlier would be nice. Even a weaker version of the aoe heal perhaps. I honest to god dont want to play WHM in any serious content sub 80. 6.1 changes were great but low lvl WHM still sucks XD. Def other jobs too, i know playing sub 70 warrior is akin to blasphemy.

Originally Posted by LiddyGhu

Hi QooEr, I read your post, and I have to say I disagree. I did not mention in my OP that the WHM would be blowing lilies during raid buffs, and the issue I was mostly trying to point out is that the design of white mage's misery mechanics are very skewed when it comes to downtime.

i understand your argument, i brought up raid buffs and other things to sort of indirectly reply to previous comments on the thread.

Originally Posted by LiddyGhu

The reason this is a problem is not because it gives the WHM something to optimize, the problem is that the way the WHM optimizes this way is often to force your other healer to GCD heal instead, since the Lily is worth more potency during downtime than their nuke. This is the problem I have playing with white mage, as a healer pair. I am saying that I do not want to play Scholar along with a White Mage because their Lily dumping during downtime is SO strong now, that it's more than Broilja, and thus asks the Scholar to use Succor in place of a white mage using that Lily for healing. It's a net potency gain of at least 15 potency, and a little more with raid buffs in mind, which isn't much, but it's still optimal. It actively discourages me from playing Scholar together with a White Mage, because I know that I am destined to be in this situation many times. It is not fun for me to play next to.

i understand this pain very well, i hate having whm cohealers too for the same reason especially in lv 70. however the change to neutral misery helps more on that front than what you think its harming you. using lilies when you cannot use glare had always been the case for white mage, except there is a key difference in that now using lilies during uptime is not dps-negative anymore. Since downtime itself is, well, time, that means that if you only use lilies during said downtime, then you will inevitably lose total lilies throughout the course of the fight. those lost lilies can then be distributed for the spots where a gcd heal from the cohealer might've been needed, without incurring a total net damage loss.

i know the problem of whm not wanting to use lilies out of downtime isnt fully solved, but at the very least lilies during uptime arent a detriment anymore, and that alone opens more possibilities for whm to help with healing.

Originally Posted by LiddyGhu

And, for the record, there is nothing to optimize between "maybe I needed that lily for healing instead of moving"-- if you can use it when you can't cast glare, it is ****ALWAYS**** stronger to use it when you cannot cast glare, as detailed in the second half of my OP.

i meant more that you could try to use that movement lily as efficiently as possible and move other healing around so that the movement lily covers previous damage. it wont always come up and sometimes you will have to overheal to move, but the possibility is still there.

The lilies changes have helped my mana so that’s a good change but lilybell still has issues with its timer.

During the Endsinger EX fight there is a mechanic that is perfect for lilybell. The problem is, when the mechanic happens again, lilybell still has 13 seconds before it’s available. This shows perfectly that the 3 minute CD is a problem and should be evaluated.

I can only effectively use bell once because of this and it’s frustrating that the very mechanic put in game for us to use bell, happens before it’s ready again.