Annoyed and Confused WHM post updateFollow

Does SE relish the opportunity to annoy and confuse people? Hey we're making White Mage better, here's stuff <crapload of confusing things> we added to your favorite job. Aren't you just sooooo happy now???

When they gave White Mage the spell Repose, that was very straight forward. It made sense to me, it was useful and I really like it. I added a Repose macro and use it as needed. It wasn't even that terribly expensive and I was happy.

Fast forward to last night post update. My White Mage now has 2 new job abilities with strange names. There are 4 new spells that have cool names but I have no clue how to use them effectively, nor which of my 2 new job abilities work with them. I'm annoyed I spent half my gil for new scrolls. I used to be happy with my White Mage macros but now I have these new spells, how am I going to redo my macros? Subbing Scholar was bad enough but now honestly WTF was SE thinking???

I guess for now until I figure out more about how to use the new job abilites and how they interact with the new spells, I'm just going to keep Afflatus Solace up as I haste, regen and cure, and eventually I'll try to figure out the other crap later.

Somewhat annoyed and confused with all the supposed cool new things SE gave to White Mage.

Margrin

P.S. yeah yeah they buffed whm, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Personally I think they try to confuse us on purpose. /fume

Dude, we can shoot Holy lasers now. HOLY LASERS. That alone makes this update awesome.

I've actually considered throwing a "CHARGIN MAH LAZOR" line into my Bene macro.

(Just do not forget to add Solace prior to using Bene if you guys do the same)

Edited, Apr 9th 2009 3:08pm by Fynlar

I doubt sqaure will make an update in which a job becomes easier to play for the sake of becoming better/more usefull/etc.

I simply wont see them doing it.

They started with SAM in their stances and then SCH is probably the poster job of the bunch in this category.

Sure there's more balls to juggle as WHM now, but it's just up to you to decide which one's to pick up and juggle.

Did Einherjar last night with a WHM healer in the PT as MNK. That SS after Cures helped out a lot. Plus this was the first event RIGHT after the update that I was able to do, the WHM seemed to get the hang of it almost immediately and kept commenting on how nice it was to do different things and help out the run more than just cure,haste,rinse,lather,repeat.

Repose was just one thing they added without overcomplicating things. Aside from a liht based sleep, I didn't see a HUGE improvement on the WHM job as a WHOLE there. Now this update for WHM, is big, and it's up to you to find it and see it for yourself. I think that's what square wants.

We play this game with the availability to search online and ease things up for us. This is probably their way of making some aspects of the game still left decided to the player and see what route they choose in playing their WHM's.

Haven't tried it myself, but based on what I've been reading the boost is significant. It might also be that way for Misery+Banish 3, but Misery is generally going to be more difficult to enhance than Solace is so it's more difficult to test. Cactuar's 1000 Needles might be a good way to get yourself hit with high damage, just take care not to get killed.

I must admitt I was really frustrated and confused today. It was just to much information to take in, in one go. I think Im getting there now though O.o

What sort of hate does this give you?

I left the game for 3 months and when I came back my linkshell had promoted the whitemage who cures 20s after the fact and always stand within roar range of byakko to "the whm in charge". *cringe*

I don't know about others, but Auspice is one of my new favorite spells O.o

With Misery we get Enlight and Acc + on a Miss. We also give the party Subtle Blow all in 1 neat rather cheap spell!

Put it this way (and try this too)You are swigning away at a mob with auspice on, you get 100 TP, then you miss your Next attack. Due to the Acc Boost after a Miss you now do a Much more Accurate Hexa Strike! Which in tunr leads to the Mob glareing at you with hatred causing you to take a 300+ damage hit, which allows you to activate a 200+ Hp Cura for only 30 Mp!(this puts Cura more efficient than Cure 3!!)

Then you can Switch to Solice and get your Stoneskin cures for when Skin does fall down, rinse and repeat, followes by the Light Arts/Dark Arts aspir/drain/stoneskin cycle if the Mob has Mp and if neccessary.

Yes, this gave us more to do, but it also lets us do so much more, be more a part of the party, be Much more Mp efficient.

This kind of comment is way out of line. You can be a good solid career whitemage do all the right things and still be confused by new abilities when they've only been out a few days. Get over yourself.

As a main WHM since I began playing 3 years ago, I have to say my feelings towards this change are, at best, lukewarm.

- Afflatus Solace benefits the Curebot playing style.

Yeah, really. Imagine you're new to the WHM scene and you discover the bonuses that Afflatus Solace gives you. Awesome! A mini Stoneskin effect everytime you Cure! And it charges your Holy battery! Well, the more damage you soak up with Cure, the better, right? So, why use Regen at all? it will only prevent you from using those oh-so-wonderful Cure spells.
Oh, by the way, why use Protectra again? What, reduce damage taken? What is the point of reducing damage taken when you can just Cure people?
Yuck.

A "pure healer" stance, as Afflatus Solace is supposed to be, should take into account any kind of damage reduction the healer gives to the party. I can understand Protect and Barspells would be hard to take into account, but I expect at least Regen spells to be buffed. If SE want to make WHM the premier healer again, they have to give bonuses to what makes WHM unique. And actually, Curebot style is more RDM than WHM. What makes WHM unique is not the Cure spells.


- Afflatus Misery does not encourage WHM to melee.

Afflatus Misery is the alternative to Afflatus Solace, the "pure healer" stance . What do you do when you're not "purely healing" ? Well, duh, you melee. It only makes sense that Afflatus Misery should give bonuses to meleeing WHMs, right?
Well, it really doesn't. Afflatus Misery gives you bonuses when you're taking damage, not when you're dealing damage. That means you just have to get in range of a big-ass AoE move, and voila, you have the bonus. Oh, and it doesn't stack, so once you've taken your 500 damage, make sure not to stay in range any longer! Cura fast and go back to the backline, fast, or you'll be hit for 20 and lose all the benefits.
It's not so bad as favouring the Curebot playstyle, but still, I think it's bad design. Afflatus Misery should give you cumulative bonuses according to the damage you deal! To fully benefit from it, a white mage would have to break out the hammer and join the fray. Isn't it what it's about?

Okay, I'm pushing it a bit far. We have Auspice, which really benefits the melee-whm style. Auspice is very, very cool.
As someone who loves meleeing as WHM while duoing and trioing, the update has given me a few new toys and I'm very happy to have them. I'm usually fulltiming Afflatus Misery and Auspice, hammer in hand, meleeing, and occasionally using Cura after AoE damage and Esuna after an AoE debuff (trolls' Enervation comes to mind). It's fun, it's more efficient than before, it's useful.

But the frustration comes from the fact that it could have been so much better, with so little change. I usually don't take any damage to charge my Afflatus Misery - but boy, the damage I deal with my trusty mace, why doesn't that count? And when meriting and fighting hard stuff, backlining in Afflatus Solace, it irks me to be so much better at MP conservation than the next curebot lolwhm but still the lolwhm gets the Holy lasers e-peen and I don't.

So, I can understand people not being as happy as they're supposed to. It's very nice to have new toys, but having well-designed new toys would be much nicer.

I see these stances as a way of giving us options mainly.

AoE damage or AoE status enfeebles a non-issue? Stick to Solace and enjoy a nice little bonus to the way you've been playing Whm the whole time (now with added lasers).

The mob you're currently fighting like to spam that AoE slow? Goblin bombs got you down? Stick to Misery and take advantage of Cura and Esuna. Whip out the club too, if you can manage it. For smaller groups this has been extremely useful to me.

Not to mention you can switch between them rather quickly to boot. Solace -> Sacrifice -> Misery -> Esuna is a sweet little combo.

The cherry on top of all this is Auspice, which serves its main purpose in either stance. Throw that somewhere into your haste cycle and you're good to go.

Everything else is the same. I still use Regen just as much as I did before, because all this update did was give us a few more choices as to how we want our battles to flow. How you choose to play your Whm now is entirely up to you.

I agree, in part, but I also disagree. SE did give a big bonus to one of the things that makes us unique, that is status removal. Sure, RDM gets limited access with /whm (and other jobs have limited native capabilities also), but RDM also gets Regen. We have better regen, which makes us unique, and now we have better status removal, which also makes is unique.

But now, in addition to the things that already make us unique, SE gave us a way to further differentiate our Cure spells. We already had a distinct advantage, but now we have a bigger one. Now I understand your argument about cure v. regen, and I do think that many whms don't use regen to its full advantage. I also would have liked to have seen a buff to regen, perhaps in the form of cast time reduction. But regen and cure both have their place, and we already have the best regen capabilities by far. Now cures are closer to that.

And lets not forget about -bar spells. Yeah, rdm/whm can do quite nicely, and sure BRD carol is similar. But nobody else has -bars as strong, and nobody can add significant MDB like we can.

Ok, so we didn't get a regen buff. But we got buffed on just about everything else, including melee. There's really no downside that I can see to any of this. We are more unique now, more efficient now, and got some new toys to play with just for fun. We won. Big.



Edited, Apr 22nd 2009 12:24pm by VxSote

If you have a PLD tank, you can still use your Regens, if you have a NIN tank, you should be curing them anyway. If you have a DD taking heavy damage repeatedly, you should be curing, if they take a little bit and then lose hate, you can Regen. Honestly, not a single thing has changed with respect to Regen.
Also, stop telling people to get in range of heavy damage AoEs to activate the Misery bonus on Cura. It's for small AoEs and cures for a very small amount of HP. My max is 191 HP cured off of like, 500 damage taken. I'm pretty sure you don't need to take that much damage to cure that much either. It's for low to mid-level AoEs so you can cure it extra cheaply.
You can't be serious lol. So, your plan after looking at the updates is to Cure as much as possible so you can Holy a bunch of sh*t? The Holy thing is a small bonus, that's it. No playstyle should ever be designed around the bonus on Holy. Most of the time I'm constantly switching between stances anyway.
You can't use Regens and cure 2,000 HP in 2 hours? It caps around 2,000 HP cured, that's like, 2 Cure Vs, I hope you're not using Regen when someone is down 800+ HP. It's insanely easy to charge it up.

And as far as Misery not actually encouraging melee, I'm sure that is something that every WHM is beyond grateful for. Misery certainly makes it easier, but you can still completely enjoy the benefits of it while not meleeing, which is the best decision SE ever made.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2009 1:18pm by JingWoo

I would be inclined to agree with your general sentiment, in fact I even had a bit of anger when I first saw Misery's description for the very same reasons: A WHM who is doing their job right should not be taking any damage at all in most situations! Obviously there are exceptions when WHM taking damage is better than the alternative, and I've slowly come to realize that this is the exception Misery was created for. It wasn't meant to encourage WHMs to take damage or neglect Stoneskin. In my view, it was meant as a way for WHMs to counteract AOEs. At least, this is how I've been utilizing the damage bonus from Misery. I don't notice its enhancement to Banish potency because I don't use Banish, nor do I notice its enhancement to Esuna because it removes 2 effects already without any damage taken. Where the damage taken really comes into play is Cura, meaning that I believe Misery+Cura was intended as a direct counter-action to a moderate-damage AOE. Hurricane Wing, for example, can now be countered by Esuna > Cura. The damage taken from Wing will boost Cura to a potency that allows it to heal pretty much any damage that the Wing initially dealt.

This does not resolve the problem of the fact that the implications of the ability are still to encourage WHMs to do something that goes against the very nature of WHM: take damage. However, it does show us that when applied as it was likely intended to be applied, it does not involve taking excess amounts of damage; but merely placing yourself in harm's way if the AOEs are weak enough that a single Cura will counter a single AOE. When you start looking at 500+ damage AOE, I think a WHM has no business standing in range of it.

After I knew the cap on Cura and how little it heals (for little MP), it was obvious that it wasn't a "Stand in harms ways" kind of deal.

As others have said, it's for light wide-range AoE damage. Random gob tosses, random Cursed spheres, random Wyrm Wing attacks, etc. All this things could be fixed with a Curaga I or II and is very likely Misery+Cura will be at top efficiency if used.

On a completely irrelevant note, sacrifice is awesome. It is quickly becoming my favorite spell of the new 4. Nothing like doing what would take 1-3 erases in a single cast. Omega's Chemical bomb, and Splitting Heir's Tornado Edge are some of the things I've found it useful.

Also, using Cure V' cureskin before a Citadel buster improved our tanks survivability tenfold.

I'm not a WHM myself (well, not anymore anyway, my whm account got hacked and SE never gave it back to me) but I did help a friend do some tests, so I pretty much just geared up my MNK, popped counterstance and let her cure me for a while, not sure how long since I just engaged a mob, provoked and meleed taking damage.
Aaaanyway, the mob we tried were Decent Challenge angel thingies in sea, I can never remember their name, but i'm fairly certain they're light based enemies, and her highest holy (no HQ light staff) was around 1200 damage.

So yeah, I'd say that's a pretty large boost.

I tried to keep it simple for myself. Just realize that one of the new jA is mainly for solo, the other for pts. So, I added solace to my light arts macro, and made a misery + esuna new macro, thats it, 1 new macro and 1 modified, thats all I use, now I just stand close to fights with weak aoe if it means I can erasega the whole pt.

http://eldelphia.googlepages.com/20090422Holy.jpg

Holy in Nyzul Isle :)

Edited, Apr 24th 2009 8:04am by eldelphia

Anyone willing to summarise all this for a sticky?

Edited, Apr 24th 2009 8:04am by eldelphia

Misery is one of my favourite modes to be in because of how much more powerful Esuna becomes, last night in Einherjar I was removing Demoralizing Roar several times in a row, all thanks to Esuna. That significantly sped up kill times for every wivre mob. Then I switched to Solace and cast barthundra for the KB boss, then used Cureskin to help stave off the damage from Meteors. I could have remained in Misery mode and cast a ton of Curas.. but I needed the power of Curaga III and Cura isn't as powerful.

Enhancing 230 - Both 3 minutes.

Enhancing 276 - Both 3 minutes.

Also, I saw someone on BG cast Auspice in Enhancing gear and claim to get like, 2 damage more on the Enspells.
What does your Holy setup look like?

Edited, Apr 24th 2009 3:09pm by JingWoo

and there are waaaay too many people like you who are all talk and no math, but I don't bitch about it like I'm out to destroy the world through 15 tragically spent merits :O

what's with the attitude? debate don't berate, c'mon what are you 12? you want people to agree with you? THEN GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO AGREE WITH INSTEAD OF FLAME

Esuna's been a godsend for Psychflayer things. That bio + blind move they do, boom, gone. Just stand behind the thing and get hit with it in Misery and its bye-bye aoe status every time.

However, I also think that the whole Sacrifice thing is a little situational because heaven help you if you take a strong para with it and suddenly can't do anything right.

I think the new stances are nice options, but as far as deeply and significantly changing the way whitemage is played, probably not for this whitemage.