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

Hello, I'm Renyci L'fay (Behemoth). I've been a hardcore raider for several years now, clearing some savage content in the first week, and if not, early second week since Sigmascape. I've cleared all three ultimates on healers, and my goal with contributing to the party is and has always been to produce as much combined damage from healers as possible. While I have never reached number 1 in this regard, I believe my perspective is still valuable.
With this in mind, what I am about to detail does not impact the gameplay of most players of this game. But I wanted to air some of my grievances about white mage anyway that have persisted since the launch of 5.0, and will be exacerbated by the changes in 6.1.

With the launch of Shadowbringers, White Mage was given the new lily system, designed around using three lilies to heal on the global cool-down, and then getting a damage refund with the use of Afflatus Misery. However, during all of 5.x, and continuing through 6.1, there is a flaw in the design with regards to phase downtime when it comes to playing as a pair with other healers. This flaw is that, when you cannot target the boss, you may expend lilies to store up your Afflatus Misery, and then use it to nuke the boss when it comes back. This does not have sweeping effects on the current tier of savage, as there are not many times where you may not target the boss or additional enemies. However, this has a major effect on the healer balance in Ultimate encounters, which leads to the White Mage almost never using lilies to heal, even when it is technically "damage neutral" to do so.

The reason for this is quite simple; the value of a white mage's lily is directly tied to the amount of Glares they could otherwise be casting, which is, I believe, the reason for the increase in potency to Afflatus Misery in 6.1. But what this also means is that you get the full damage value whenever you cannot cast another spell. With the new potency being 1240, each Lily you burn during downtime even if you do not need to heal is now worth one-third of 930 potency- or, 310. ((1,240 minus a glare for the cast of Misery itself), divided by 3) This value is above both Astrologian and Scholar's abilities Fall Malefic and Broil IV at endgame. The value of using Lilies during downtime rises even further if you can use Afflatus Misery for necessary movement, or under buffs received from other players and tinctures of mind. This leads to it being more worth it for the other healer, in my case a Scholar, to cast Succor over the white mage using lilies to heal, if and when there is downtime available in a fight.

Even when working alone, it is better for a white mage to burn lilies during downtime and use Medica II instead during uptime if absolutely required, since you lose the same GCD damage value but gain significantly in healing value. Illustration of this:
[Post 1/2...]

Situation 1: During uptime, you use a Lily to heal with Afflatus Rapture.
Result 1: You charge 1/3 of misery, losing a 310 potency Glare III, and healing for 400 potency.

Situation 2: During a time the boss is not targetable, you burn a lily which does not heal. When the boss comes back and uses a raidwide damage attack, you cast medica II.
Result 2 : You charge a lily for free, but lose a 310 potency Glare while casting Medica II, and heal for a total of 1,000 potency.

Even though the reasons for changing white mage's Afflatus Misery come from the right place- trying to make it neutral to use Lilies in full-uptime scenarios- the adjustment to getting one every 60 seconds instead of 90 seconds and heavily increasing the potency will likely have a major impact on the Ultimate content for healers of FFXIV, because that content often has short windows to deal damage to bosses and long periods of mechanics without anything to hit. I do believe that white mage deserves to have its power increased to feel on the level of the other healers currently, but the amount of damage that Afflatus Misery used in this way and could potentially deal in Ultimate is way too much to ignore, and is for now making me quit the idea of playing Scholar, since White Mage does not seem to be designed for working together with other healers, and more for being selfish about DPS at the expense of another healer player.

As an addendum to this post, I would like to thank anyone reading and request that everyone remain civil and understanding about my perspective as someone who tries very hard to contribute the most that I can.
I do believe that White Mage needed to get a boost right now, I just very much dislike the way it feels to play together with a White Mage while optimizing the usage of Afflatus Misery. You are all welcome to agree or disagree or even choose not to have an opinion on this matter. I have no idea how Afflatus Misery should be changed to avoid this detailed situation, but I just don't enjoy it being the way it is currently. And I cannot rightly tell my white mage main friends to stop playing their favourite job. The only thing I can do is deliver my personal feedback to the developers here on the official forum. [Post 2/2]

Originally Posted by LiddyGhu

[...] White Mage does not seem to be designed for working together with other healers, and more for being selfish about DPS at the expense of another healer player. [...]

You said it yourself. WHM can use Medica II if they want to save lilies for downtime. It's not 100% optimal all the time (like if your co-healer is an AST, or you're with SCH and only need 400-520 potency), but these situations are quite rare. If you want to be more selfish, that's for you and your co-healer to decide if it's worth it. WHM has already taken a large step away from being the "selfish healer" now that lilies contribute more damage and you get more of them for healing. It's not perfect, but I think fixing it would require WHM's design to be worse in other ways, for instance, by making lilies oGCD (homogenizing) or removing Misery entirely and making the lilies just do 310 damage themselves.

Thank you for being polite and specific about the feedback, though.
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As for everyone else complaining about WHM, when we just got huge buffs... I guess you really can't please everyone. This is why SQEX ignores the forums 90% of the time. No matter what they do, people will complain that their class is being destroyed.

I mean really, I had a ONE single change on my wishlist: 2 charges for Assize. I didn't even get that, but I'm still very happy with the changes we did get. After thinking about it, the extra lily every 60 seconds gives me what I wanted from Assize charges anyways: A little more healing and less cooldown drift on Assize. (At 2.45 GCD Assize would clip the GCD or drift, and now I can burn a lily more freely to decrease the drift).

I'm just astounded at some people's complete lack of gratitude. It's not healthy. And by gratitude I don't mean the social performance of thanks. I mean emotionally appreciating good things in your life.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Rilifane

Provided that you can get off Misery before the boss dies:
- Lilies are now dps neutral by nature
- they are dps gain over Glare spam if Misery is used under any raid buff and/ or pot while the Lilies were used outside those windows
- they are a signifcant dps gain if a boss has downtime
- they allow for lower (or even no) Piety builds as using them saves MP while being dps neutral
The 3rd one was already the case before but it's a bigger dps gain now while also being lower risk as you generate them faster.
It doesn't solve the lack of downtime options all healers suffer from but credit where credit is due. Overall the Lily & Misery change is a noticeable buff for WHM's free healing while also being a slight dps buff. It also makes WHM/ SCH comps more viable. Is it enough to be on par with the other 3 healers in terms of dps? No. But it brings it closer to them, at least.

Hopefully more changes are coming, they did listen to the feedback and made 2 major changes that affected dps neutral healing, dps itself and MP.

This is a better mindset. WHM gained a lot today. It might not be perfect, but it's 2 or 3 steps forward.

Originally Posted by Leonerdo

As for everyone else complaining about WHM, when we just got huge buffs... I guess you really can't please everyone. This is why SQEX ignores the forums 90% of the time. No matter what they do, people will complain that their class is being destroyed.

I mean really, I had a ONE single change on my wishlist: 2 charges for Assize. I didn't even get that, but I'm still very happy with the changes we did get. After thinking about it, the extra lily every 60 seconds gives me what I wanted from Assize charges anyways: A little more healing and less cooldown drift on Assize. (At 2.45 GCD Assize would clip the GCD or drift, and now I can burn a lily more freely to decrease the drift).

I'm just astounded at some people's complete lack of gratitude. It's not healthy. And by gratitude I don't mean the social performance of thanks. I mean emotionally appreciating good things in your life.

Edit:

This is a better mindset. WHM gained a lot today. It might not be perfect, but it's 2 or 3 steps forward.

"I pissed in your cereal but I fixed it for you, you should be grateful."

Fixing a mistake that you caused is not praiseworthy, it's merely meeting expectations. I'll give praise where it's due, like the PvP healer changes are absolutely phenomenal and I applaud whoever did it. The PvE side of thing however, are just fixing something that should've been dealt with at the onset and even then, they still screwed up with Dia now being a downgrade to Aero 2. Why would I be grateful that?