Evolved White Mage Is Not Okay

[ty_taurus]

To Mr. Tamaki, let me first say that I love the work you’ve done in the past with the PVP revamp. I love your work on Crystalline Conflict, and on most of your past job design endeavors. You are clearly a talented designer, and I think you’re showing immense creativity with your approach to Evolved Dragoon and Evolved Bard especially; however, I do not understand what about the Evolved White Mage is supposed to evoke the identity and spirit of the White Mage fantasy. Respectfully, I do not think you or anyone else on the development team really understand the feedback healers have been giving for nearly 10 years. I can see how certain conclusions were made, but the execution of the solution fails to address the core problem that’s been at the heart of healer criticism. Let me be more specific.

First, I want to emphasize that I do agree with the concept at the heart of your design: make White Mage a healer that wants to use their GCD heals and has a healing playstyle that revolves around them. It's what the current lilies already provide, and by having a damage refund as the reward, you have ways of breaking up the infamous "glare spam" that currently plagues healer design. But making all Cure and Medica spells naturally DPS neutral through Holy Sanctuary is the wrong way to go about this. If every Cure and Medica is special this way, then none of them are. How am I meant to express my skills as a healer if no matter what I do, the result is the same? How does that empower me as a player to be a better healer? And why change what has become an iconic part of White Mage's identity since Shadowbringers, the blood lily and Afflatus Misery?

Where the current lily system fails is that your access to them is limited, and we have no agency to germinate more lilies. Where the Evolved White Mage can fix this is by keeping the core mechanic of blossoming lilies to spend on healing that nourishes the blood lily, but to provide us with more agency over our ability to nurture and grow more of them, and to provide more ways to utilize them. I'm a huge fan of allowing Cure and Medica to become DPS neutral under the right circumstances, but we need more unique tools to use that can further contribute to this. Why not make Aquaveil into a GCD that can utilize this instead of as an OGCD? What new ideas could give White Mage new ways to support the party beyond healing? What if White Mage gained a Float spell that made the party able to walk over pitfalls, floor damage, and puddles safely? And what if White Mage could heal the party above their Max HP to better show off the White Mage's identity of being a power healer and allow the party to soak up more damage without mitigation?

One of the other ongoing criticisms of modern healing design is the lack of DPS variety. The last thing we wanted to address this was a combo. Pressing the same button to perform High Glare will not stop the continued criticism of Glare spam design, and the removal of Dia, Assize, and Glare IV will only make that worse. What we have wanted for nearly a decade is a soft, but meaningful selection of DPS spells that keeps offensive gameplay enjoyable even when doing things like FATEs or the MSQ. Tell me, would you rather face off against Zenos at the finale of Endwalker with the Evolved Dragoon or the Evolved White Mage? Do you feel that Glare III into High Glare and nothing else for the entire fight is going to satisfy you? Because if not, then you understand our issue. But here's the thing... Designing a soft and modest rotation can work for you rather than against you. Remember the point about needing more agency over blooming lilies? What about making White Mage's soft rotation a system of generating more lilies so you can continue using the GCD for healing? You create a satisfying feedback loop where the offensive aspect of your job's playstyle feeds into the healing aspect. And you have resources to pull from... Dia, Assize, Glare IV, Seraphic Strike... You were willing to give Dragoon its iconic PVP limit break, why not White Mage? Who would complain about getting to blast enemies with the mighty Afflatus Purgation once in a while? Fun, variable offense does not have to be the enemy of rewarding healer gameplay. A dependency on simplicity, though, is.

Here’s an example… Currently, White Mage gains Sacred Sight when using Presence of Mind which then enables Glare IV. What if instead of a DoT, Dia was a short cooldown that dealt some damage and granted 1 Sacred Sight, and then each time you use a Sacred Sight, you blossom a lily? Maybe you could add another spell as a second option for Sacred Sight usage, such as Afflatus Purgation. Perhaps Purgation has a higher MP cost, but grants the party increased max HP. It’s not a very complex rotation at all, but gives White Mage something a little more exciting to do while solo, and makes the DPS side of White Mage feel like it rewards you with more healing. There’s so much more potential to create something that is easy to play, but still exciting and rewarding, and I know you have the talent to pull that off.

I want to take a step back for a moment and say that I do like the idea of slimming down job hotbars. A lot of the ideas about making hybrid actions, actions that change based on proximity to the target, and merging certain niche actions are good ideas. I think you can very easily have more gameplay even with less actions, and your Endwalker PVP rework proves that. But I also think there’s such a thing as taking things too far. Despite Mr. Koji Fox promise that Evolved Mode was not a simplified mode, being even easier than White Mage already is seems to be the "selling point" of the design, and I don't understand this.

For years, many of us have eagerly given our feedback that healer simplicity had already been taken too far, yet now it seems that White Mage is taking simplicity even farther than it has ever been before to an astonishing degree. I understand not every FFXIV player feels the same way about simplicity and complexity, but is there no way we can try to find a healthy middle ground? With Reborn Mode being a feature moving forward, I would've thought Evolved Mode would've finally been the moment where White Mage could explore what it might mean to have more complex elements introduced into its design. Yet here we are with lower, fewer MP costs than ever before, vanishing resource management aspects, no cast time on Glare III, and less DPS variety than a White Mage has right now at level 4. Is this really where we want to be?

Multiple times across the keynote, it's been stated that a core theme of Evolved Mode is identity and individuality. With Paladin, Dragoon, and Bard, I see that, but with White Mage, I see the opposite. I don't see what the long-time White Mage players have been asking for, I see what a DPS or tank player wants out a White Mage: a personal HP battery. Where Dragoon gets its iconic jump, Bard gets to rapidly cycle through different combos and leap around the battlefield, and Paladin gets rewarded by timing its mitigation with powerful counterattacks, what does White Mage get? Less agency than it's ever had before and the most aggressive job simplification we've ever seen in FFXIV. If this really is the White Mage we are getting in 2027, then dear god, I hope it's not foreshadowing of what's to come for Scholar, Astrologian, and Sage, because if it is, then The Fourth is not the only realm in need of saving.

[ty_taurus]

In addition to my post above, I'd like to add a little bit about me, because I'm aware that I'm only level 90 and someone will inevitably accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about.

I am a long-time player of FFXIV. I've played all types of content including higher difficulty content as a healer from as early as 2.0 all the way through Endwalker, but I chose to skip Dawntrail because I could not stomach another three years of gameplay defined by spamming Dosis ad nauseum. But I've returned a few times exclusively for the purpose of sharing my feedback here in the microscopic chance that it has any effect on the future of this game. I loved FFXIV, and I sincerely want to love it again. I am well aware that we've yet to see the full details of White Mage, or any details of the remaining healers. It's entirely possible I might be pleasantly surprised when more information is revealed, and I would greatly welcome news that does so. But until that time, I've been burned by design changes too many times to simply trust the process.

[Supersnow845]

Ty has renewed his sub just to laugh at new WHM

Nature is healing