Feedback: White Mage (7.05) Needs Some Major Love

[Pyth]

After holding out hope that some adjustments would be made to bring the White Mage job more in-line with its fellow “Pure Healer” counterpart Astrologian and seeing barely any changes made with the release of the Savage fights, and hearing that there was an announcement that changes will be made to add more job individuality starting with patch 7.2, I’d like to type out my thoughts on the current state of the White Mage (WHM) job and more specifically:

The new additions to its kit in Dawntrail
Where WHM stands compared to its counterparts
A wish list of potential changes and fixes

Overall, with the addition of new tools gained in Dawntrail, the White Mage job feels comfortable to play; however, when comparing the job to its healer counterparts the current iteration of the WHM kit feels uninspired and a little sparse. As someone who has mained WHM, I can’t help but feel that White Mage in its current form could do with some serious love.

As there are a lot of ideas put to paper, I've compiled my thoughts on a published doc, which is linked here

[Shurrikhan]

Solid suggestions.

The oGCD EukFlatus (allowing for next Cure II, then later Medica, to be an instant and free cast and later generate a Blood Lily) is one I've been fond of since Shadowbringers launch, maybe or maybe not coupled with a 20s recharge Thin Air (consumption charges a Blood Lily no matter what, but just reduces next spell's cast time by 2.5s and 1k MP, therefore being usable on any casted spell, eventually holding up to 3 charges).

Not sure I agree that there's any advantage to pushing WHM further towards a pure healer, nor what a more "unique" means of mitigation would do for that, especially since every healer has a %DR and healing for a % of recent taken damage is already very much AST's thing via Macrocosmos.

[Pyth]

Yeah those are fair points! I think I was trying to think of ways of preserving more unique ways of preserve a WHM "identity" while still allowing for WHM to have its own tools, since it seems that the return of job individuality is on the horizon.

[flowerkatie]

I think I disagree with some points, for example you compare Cure 2 and Afflatus Solace and in general casted heals verses instant lilies — you make the point that you'd never use Cure 2 over Solace but I think that's the entire point. Cure 2 is a last resort and is essential because it will always be available unlike Solace which requires a lily. The point of Cure 2 isn't that you need to decide when to use it verses a lily but instead it is there in-case you have no other options.

You also say if a raidwide happens at the start of an encounter a White Mage "must" sacrifice a GCD when it's not entirely true. We have a plethora of oGCD options such as our bubble to choose from and not only that, it doesn't matter if the raidwide happens within 20 seconds, it matters if the next instance of damage happens within 20 seconds, otherwise we still have plenty of time to heal. Decent healers will know that the party being low is irrelevant if there is no incoming damage for a while. You argue against the homogenization of healers but most relevant content where damage hits hard will always have two healers, there's no reason White Mage specifically needs to be able to Lily heal the first raidwide if other jobs have the utility to do it.

A lot of this document seems to speak of the White Mage movement, but I don't see how it is an issue. Any decent White Mage who is doing content that they know is going to easily manage their resources to prepare for movement and keep uptime if required, White Mage already had plenty of movement capability and then they added Glare IV which gave us even more. Having to plan and think about how you use your kit for movement is part of the game, it doesn't need to be easier. Not to mention, no content in the entire game relies on this kind of movement optimization for White Mage so it only becomes relevant in parsing or really pushing for high optimization (typically for parsing) - but players who're at this level aren't going to have any issue with what movement we do have. Their main issue will be losing downtime if their allies make mistakes.

[Pyth]

That's okay to disagree! I really just wanted to open the floor to discussing the current state of WHM. I think generally, yes, a player would never use Cure 2 over Afflatus Solace. It's there as a healing option that can be used when you run out of lilies during prog or if you've had to expend your resources. That being said, I don't think the Lily heals necessarily warrant their own buttons. They are always the pick over their non-Lily counterparts, and I'd rather the hotbar real estate be utilized for the addition of newer tools.

You bring up a good point that your cohealer can heal through the opening raidwide damage, and for the most part, I agree that Aslyum and an adjusted Assize can easily top off the party. I think I'd still like to have the option however of using a Lily heal. It's true that being low is irrelevant if there's no incoming damage, but that is overly reliant on your team members having clean runs where they don't take extra instances of damage. Either way, I think you bring up valid points of why it's not necessary to neccesitate a change here, but I believe it could be a nice QoL change to have access to a Lily earlier in a pull.

And yeah! I brought up movement mostly to emphasize how it's a strength of WHM's, and why one would want to play WHM over AST. However, my main issue isn't that WHM doesn't have movement, but more so that AST's movement tools seem to completely make irrelevant required movement for mechanics. Part of the fun of playing WHM is understanding when you can move and what resources you can slot into the cadence of the fight to position yourself for heals and raid mechanics. That being said, if WHM's unique niche as a progging healer were its comfort due to instant cast heals and mobility, it seems to have had its own standout strengths diminshed in the most recent patch. As far as I know, many world first race groups didn't bring a WHM, even when progging. And having played AST recently, the class is more mobile than it's been in its EW iteration. So what niche does WHM continue to occupy in its current form? What reasons would a group looking at composition strategically would compel them to bring a WHM?

I would just like for WHM to have a horse in the race, rather than being relegated to "worst healer" status. Not that I'm saying that it is! Just saying that that seems to be the general perception of the job and I don't fault people for thinking so!

[flowerkatie]

Although you can see your edits, others cannot — so no need to delete and repost if you want to change things. People wont see what you changed anyway. Just a tip in-case that's why you did it, it'll save you from having to delete and repost in the future.

[Pyth]

Thank you! I am suffering a debuff from trying to figure out how the forum posts work LOL

[Sylvain]

I still havn't leveled my WHM as of yet but...

AST and WHM have barely changed healing wise.
Unless I missed something,

They both got a mitigation at lv 100. One being -10% for 15s and one being a big AoE shield both tied to their 2min CD. As a bonus AST is blinded for 2s upon using its skill.
Both got an extra ST ogcd charge, WHM being imp the clear winner here. Going from 1 ->2 charges has much more of an impact than 2 -> 3, all in all, AST gameplay didn't change much here while WHM can now roll its tetra.

AST got a few more goodies through the card system, most notably Bole+Ewer and garanteed the Lady which can be planned around. However, we've had well over 9000 post of people complaining those cards were and are still useless so unless we've gone full 180°, that can't be the sole reason why 7.0 compared to 6.0 WHM feels lacking.

So... what is it that makes WHM so "bad" atm compared to AST, considering both job healing wise didn't change when it comes to AoE healing which is 90% of our healing.

And when it comes to downtime, AST having card and not WHM sounds odd to me... That has always been the case and litterally the reason why so many WHM would play WHM instead of AST... If that wasn't a concern 3 month ago, why now? Nothing has changed for WHM and instead AST got less to do.

[Connor]

- I think the hilariously weird thing about Presence of Mind is that despite it exclusively being used as a DPS cool-down because of Glare IV, SE genuinely sees it as a ‘tool that can be used to increase healing’ too. Hence why it still hasn’t fallen in line with other ‘120-cycle damage buffs’. Which makes locking Glare IV behind it make very little sense lol.

- Isn’t that how skills like Divine Caress are supposed to work though? As far as I’m aware every skill in the game that’s ’available after using another skill’ has the exact same 30-second window in which it can be used. Like Lux Solaris or Star Prism. People seem mostly happy with the idea of ‘find the best time to use it yourself or lose the value by your own fault’. As for having the shield itself break, isn’t it kind of on the player to know when best to apply it so it does break? Shields are fast enough to apply that you can usually throw it up while the enemy is casting their AoE, so you can essentially use it reactively if you don’t know what’s coming next.


- For Lilies I don’t see why they could do something like Astrologian/Pictomancer where either you start with 3 when combat begins like cards, or you get an instant button that grants 1-3
Lilies when used outside of combat? That way you wouldn’t have the situation where an AoE is coming but you have no lilies (though as mentioned above I’ve never had a problem with this situation thanks to Asylum+Assize)

- Seraphism being an overtly ‘White Mage’ aesthetic ability and effect is definitely something I agree with. Isn’t it hilarious that they’re not satisfied with homogenising gameplay anymore; now they want to homogenise literal Job identity

- I think they take issue with Protraction-type skills as an AoE because of how it scales with job/gear. Bard used to have this capability (Stormblood’s Troubadour while Ballad was up I think) but it was swiftly removed and replaced with the generic ‘10% damage down’

- Astrologian does definitely have more options for oGCD mitigation/regen, but I think that’s been compounded this expansion by Bole/Spire/Ewer. Which, many Astrologians have lots of issues with, particularly the fact they’re (mostly) clones of pre-existing skill effects. I feel like in an ideal world they’d do something unique anyway, rather than just ‘what it already does but now even more’ lol, and then it wouldn’t take away from White Mage as much’.

Those are just my thoughts anyway