Do White Mages Dream of Being Astrologians?
In my previous article I detailed the various ways that the White Mage (WHM) job in FFXIV struggles to compete with its main competitor, the Astrologian. The crux of the issue came down to a few things: the White Mage has fewer mitigations, less impactful tools, and a job resource system that pales in comparison to what the Astrologian (AST) brings. In this follow up, I would like to note some immediate changes that could be made to the White Mage’s existing kit to keep it from floundering too far behind the Astrologian. Afterwards, I'd like to open a discussion on deeper changes that could assist the White Mage with the development of a true niche, one that would give it a real competitive edge against its main rival, while also detailing the deeper issues with the systems in place that have engendered this disparity in the first place and how White Mage could benefit from addressing them.
What Could Help White Mage Overnight? Mitigation. Period.
White Mage needs team wide mitigation, especially in high-end content. In the name of having it be the "pure healer" and to prevent "role homogenization", the White Mage has been given one fewer mitigation button compared to its peers. Now in theory, it's wonderful to ponder on how White Mage is the final bastion in the fight against job identity loss. Ideally, each healing job should be able to heal in unique and various methods that accentuate their identities and play styles. In practice, however, this notion falls flat on its face as the healer kits have already become very similar to one another and often times to a point where even slight differences can cause noticeable gaps in performance and power. This leads to one of the main problems facing the White Mage as it is the only healer that is down a team wide mitigation. And when the three other healers have one tool with the fourth one seemingly lacking it, that leaves the odd one out in a unfavorable position. And as discussed in my previous article, most healing checks in the game require a certain amount of damage mitigation to survive. Without a quick application of team-wide mitigations, the party will find itself dead in the blink of an eye with no opportunity to heal the party following the strike. And even though the White Mage brings with it powerful healing tools that can restore the entire party's health, lacking coverage of mitigation means their strong healing becomes moot in the face of a full party wipe. After all, dead teammates cannot be healed from the grave. And being that the White Mage is the ONLY healer that is down a team wide mitigation, it naturally falls to the wayside when being picked as a party's pure healer as it lacks that same level of reliability that an Astrologian could bring. It's time to give the White Mage an additional team wide mitigation.
Now having laid that out, this leads naturally to a change the developers could make overnight to address this issue quickly. All they would need to do is to grant the White Mage a second reliable means of applying a team wide damage mitigation by working with what's already there. I see this pivotal change coming in the form of adjusting Temperance and more specifically, Divine Caress. For those not in the know, Temperance is the WHM's main mitigation tool as it provides damage reduction to the entire party while also increasing the potency of healing spells for a long period of time. The addition of Divine Caress, which provides shielding and healing, appeared to be the perfect solution to WHM's lack of a second tool. That notion, however, was dispelled once the ability was put into practice. Due to the short window of time where it can be used and the fact that the shields it applies only last a third of the length of a standard shield provided by other healers, the mitigation element of this ability is uncomfortable and inflexible to use. And because of t+his, most WHM players have favored its usage in conjunction with Temperance, allowing for one instance of powerful mitigation and an automatic regenerative heal that requires little expenditure of resources following its usage. Rather than having two powerful team wide mitigations that White Mage players have been begging for, they've instead gained yet another tool that seems intentionally hampered by design and doesn't cover the needs of the job.
Therefore, I'd like to propose that this adjustment to Divine Caress be made expeditiously to get the job up to speed and to have it be a proper powerful tool that doesn't feel weaker by design. By simply making the window of the Divine Caress cast longer, the White Mage would be able to have a true second team wide mitigation, allowing for healers to plan properly around its utilization and to help bridge the gap between WHM and its co-healers a bit more. White Mage would no longer feel so much more behind the other healers while alleviating some of the pressure placed on their co-healers.
Yoshi-P, Please Let White Mage Live.
Dawntrail (7.0) was announced as the expansion where the dev team would be looking at encounter design closely, hoping to freshen things up and to find new ways to challenge players after having received a great deal of player feedback. And many who have played the new Dawntrail raids would agree that these changes have become evident in the fights released within this expansion. Dungeon content is a lot more impactful and memorable (at least in terms of the boss fights), and the Arcadion raid series and the FF11 Alliance raids have also been challenging and engaging. Following these positive changes to encounter design, it's been heavily hinted at that the next expansion that follows is one that would focus on addressing job design and more specifically on making each job's play style more unique.
I will admit, as a person who plays White Mage most frequently, I am greatly looking forward to this upcoming expansion as WHM has been in major need of a face lift for some time. Dare I say, sometimes as a White Mage player I envy those who play Astrologian as not only has it been the meta pick for two expansions straight bringing with it a host of unique tools that sets it above the rest, but also has received a new coat of paint almost every expansion since its release. With the continual love shown its way, it has grown to completely eclipse any and all reasons to want a White Mage in one's party, especially at higher levels of play. This is despite the fact that WHM is perfectly capable of being able to clear any and all content in the game. However, the difference in the quality of tools and the power that comes with those tools is made very evident. And when under consideration, the Astrologian is the clear and definite winner for almost any team composition. It is a bit jarring that the dev team seems perfectly okay with maintaining this gap and also a bit incensing that White Mage players are expected to accept so little. Tools given to the Astrologian seem to be built with the intent on being powerful and flexible, while White Mage tools are weirdly constrained and intentionally hampered making them less than exciting to use. And while other healers have been given level 100 capstone abilities that are splashy, impactful, and cover up any prior weaknesses those jobs may have had in the past, the White Mage was instead given a dud that fails to address its own shortcomings in a meaningful way. With this simple fact, it's not difficult to acknowledge that some healers are given the beloved star treatment, while others serve as the unloved and unwanted red headed stepchild of the healing family.
Despite all this hand wringing and a call for action, I don't believe the solution lies in granting ridiculously larger and larger power budgets to the non-meta healers in order to help them keep up with their meta colleagues, as that would only exacerbate issues in the long term and fail to address the root of the problem. In fact, rather than just showering the White Mage with buttons that are obscenely powerful, the real rework that WHM players would benefit from would be to grant the job a proper niche and identity, offering an authentic purpose for their inclusion on a team. In short, White Mage players would simply seek to have the same treatment that the Astrologian has been given by the developers, rather than feeling like an afterthought. Yoshi-P, it's time to give White Mage genuine power that isn't hamstrung simply for having been assigned to the "easier" healer. This job in its current design feels more like training wheels in order to play the "real" powerful utility healer, Astrologian. Despite having a lower and more approachable floor, White Mage lacks in the number of tools it can apply to a situation, and what tools it does have pale in comparison to what exists for other healers. In casual content, that's fine as you don't need much to pull through with a clear. However, in difficult content, the difference in quality and quantity is made rather stark. Rather than solely existing as the beginner-friendly healer, the White Mage job itself should have complexity that grows over time, creating depth for those who wish to master the job and are attracted to the job for its own appeal.
However, there are some issues with the healing in encounter design that need to be addressed before focusing on any nuanced changes to White Mage's kit. In many cases, healing is not complex enough to warrant the addition of varied and unique tools. Everything is built around having access to two types of tools: damage and mitigation. Any other tools are either too niche to have any real impact on performance or so uniquely powerful that they become broken and difficult to balance. And when it comes to the MVP of all healers, the Astrologian, not only does it reign as champion in mitigations, but it also has sole access to tools that allow for it to buff the damage output of its teammates. The developers need to take a real hard and close look at the systems of the game that encourages the state of healing into being so one-dimensional. Without that, many of the tools that could possibly be given to the White Mage would only be along the same axes as damage and mitigation, which would equalize performance but come at the cost of homogenizing the role even further. Now, I understand that some may point out that this contrasts with my initial statement that White Mage needs another mitigation tool. However, that's because challenging encounters are designed to force healers to mitigate, which serves as a central part of healing in the current raiding scene. It's beyond a doubt a necessity in order to stabilize performance. You wouldn't deprive a shield healer of the ability to pump out powerful heals when needed, and yet the White Mage is somehow the only healer that falls short on mitigations.
Now, the inclusion of an exclusive unique tool could be what grants the White Mage a proper seat at the table. However, we've seen how overwhelmingly powerful uniqueness can be, tilting the scales too heavily in favor of one healer over another, such as is the case with the Astrologian or even the Pictomancer in its debut. I have no answers to provide with any surety as I am simply but a player of White Mage. But in my opinion, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle. All healers should have access to the instruments they need to do their job well, be it damage or mitigation. It's the way those jobs access that higher power that should differ from one another. But at the end of the day, this is a task for the developers to figure out. They'll have to ponder upon some big questions to find their own answers such as: what aspects of each healer's kit can the developers preserve?; how can they accentuate what identity already exists while still introducing new elements?; and most importantly, do they still want to split healers between what appears to be a rather arbitrary divide between "pure" and "shield" healers? The challenge leading up to the much anticipated 8.0 job reworks will be to balance giving the appropriate tools to all healers, letting them both heal and mitigate in spades while leaning further into unique identities for play style and any other additional tools. And this will mean evolving beyond the strict and shallow guidelines that have forced such an environment to prosper. Only by doing so will they create an opportunity for the healers to grow in new ways, creating unique niches that give them specific advantages and disadvantages based on what each fight demands from them rather than forcing the four healers into direct competition with each other that will only incentivize an arms race.
White Mage: The Black Mage of Healers
Assuming that 8.0 brings about the deeper level of job reworks as promised by the developers of FFXIV, White Mage has a real opportunity to become a job that is played for its own unique strengths. It's been made fairly evident that the White Mage is a job that the dev team wants to commit to the idea of pure healing while also giving them means of achieving personal damage. This is reflected in how most of its current kit is reactive, seeking to amplify its ability to pump out larger and larger heals while refunding the damage in a big nuke. The lack of off-global-cooldown (OGCD) heals, keeps the difficulty floor lower and more approachable, while also helping White Mages commit to their healing. And the job's main resource system, the Lily system, allows for a White Mage to heal with no regrets, as the damage lost while healing can be refunded into a large strike of damage through Afflatus Misery. Having said all this, there are a few aspects of White Mage's current kit that I feel could be built upon to craft an identity for itself.
Following the line of thinking of keeping the White Mage as a powerful healer, the developers should commit to the bit and simply remove all buttons that apply damage reduction or shields in White Mage's kit. Rather than having shielding and mitigation on demand to mirror its main competition, the White Mage should focus on keeping the party full of life and be rewarded for doing so. To follow suit, it should have access to the biggest instant heals or regenerative effects in the game, making healing easy and accessible. Now, White Mage would still need a means of providing defensive tools for the party as that is just a core part of encounter design in FFXIV. Not having them would mean having to adjust every single fight that has ever been released in the game's life cycle. But despite needing the ability to provide defensive tools, it can do so in a new and unique fashion. The White Mage could convert any and all excess healing that is performed on its allies into a shield or extra temporary health for your allies (in the line of Scholar's Protraction). This would allow for WHM's healing to be utilized as both a reactive tool and a proactive one. Reactive healing would help top off the party while proactive healing could then be be utilized to weather hard-hitting instances of damage that would normally kill the party in a single blow. The root of White Mage's power would lie in its powerful healing, but could bear fruit in the flexibility of its various applications.
Having addressed White Mage's mitigation problem, another look at WHM's mobility feels warranted. At one point in XIV's history, the White Mage was considered the most mobile healer. It may no longer definitely hold that crown, but the job has instant-cast spells in its core kit that create pockets of movement and leaning further into this already existing facet could help reinforce the job's inherent mobility and thus identity. The White Mage would be the healer of choice for someone who wants to focus on ease of movement and the ability to react faster than any other healing job when things begin to go awry. And the very first thing that would need an update is the Lily system itself. The Lily-based healing spells refund damage for the White Mage and because they are cast at instant-speed, they are the main bread and butter for how White Mage accesses mobility in the middle of fights. However, a key healing tool is excluded from this tool set: regenerative healing (also known as healing over time). It's time to dot our I's and cross our T's by giving White Mage an "Afflatus Medicus", a Lily version of its main team wide regenerative heal, Medica III. Medica III is used constantly in content and is a great tool when addressing damage-over-time effects. However, a White Mage player loses damage for simply applying a heal over time to its allies due to lacking a Lily version, thus effectively punishing their damage output for keeping the party alive. Let's let White Mage do its job without punishing it for doing so by adding a regenerative Lily heal.
Being quick to stabilize the party would require the White Mage to revisit its ability to resurrect party members. In the current iteration of the game, resurrecting a party member takes a whopping eight seconds and a huge chunk of mana to successfully perform. Now, this is a problem shared by all healers, not the White Mage. However, that means that resurrection is an area that the White Mage could excel at compared to its peers. The White Mage, being the epitome of life itself could be given the ability to resurrect party members more swiftly than its peers. If looking at buttons that already exist, Thin Air would be a great candidate to give a boost to. Thin Air, in its current iteration grants a cast of an ability without expending mana leading to its natural use when resurrecting party members after death as it can be quite mana intensive. Now imagine if Thin Air also allowed for the next cast to be at instant speed. The White Mage would become the ideal progression healer, being able to resurrect multiple allies at the speed of light, stabilizing raid pulls and allowing for groups to gain consistency in fights at a rate that the other healers could not follow while still keeping its own mana economy intact. The White Mage could also just have a shorter cast time built into its resurrection spell, Raise. Having it be an inherent part of its resurrection spell would also reinforce the job's ability and identity to bring back fallen party members and get them up to speed quickly. Astrologians would reward the party with extra damage for playing perfectly, while a White Mage would be able to save a party's ability to clear a fight with exceptional speed.
Now in terms of damage, we've already seen this quick casting angle be applied to White Mage's main filler spell as Glare IV was added in the most recent expansion. However, as always for White Mage, it didn't come without strings attached. Glare IV is only made available during the two-minute buff window, Presence of Mind, and only comes with three uses, which does hamper the job's ability to utilize Glare IV as a proper movement tool. Additionally, due to Glare IV dealing extra damage, the use of it is limited to the two-minute buff window, meaning that the mobility offered by the ability is rendered null if Glare IV doesn't align with a fight mechanic that forces movement. Fortunately, this is an easy fix. Simply by increasing the number of Glare IV casts that the White Mage can access throughout a fight, the White Mage is able to buy back some of the advantages granted to it by the inclusion of this ability. Sacred Sight, the resource that allows for a Glare IV cast, should last the entire duration of the Presence of Mind buff, adjusting damage numbers to compensate. Additionally, White Mage should be able to gain Sacred Sight from various sources, such as being granted a stack after every three successful casts of Glare or after the use of White Mage's dash. This would allow players to plan around the mobility that exists readily within their kit and also be rewarded for playing the job well and doing damage with additional movement.
And to round out all these changes, the White Mage should be given the ability to access higher levels of burst and damage to compensate for the fact that it does not have a team wide buff. As it currently stands, the White Mage does not have access to a traditional damage buff, as its two-minute "buff" provides a casting speed boost and access to three uses of Glare IV. And while this does technically count as additional damage, it falls short of what a true buff would grant. With a few minute adjustments to Presence of Mind to make it an actual buff, adjusting the way that White Mage gains Sacred Sight stacks in order to access the more powerful and mobile Glare IV, and by changing existing damage buttons or even creating additional ones, the White Mage could be on its merry way to becoming the formidable rival of the Black Mage, aligning with its in-lore reputation of raining devastation down on its enemies while providing unparalleled succor for its allies. With this transformation, a well skilled White Mage player could ensure their party's continual progress while also providing a noticeable amount of personal damage, allowing for it to be even more self reliant rather than team dependent, and rewarding good play for the player that can be felt by the rest of the team as well.
Concluding Thoughts:
There are a lot of problems that currently plague White Mage and keep it from being a part of the meta, most of which probably wouldn't be fixed by a superficial rework. There are fundamental issues with the game's very systems that limit job design, namely how significant unique tools are in current encounter design and how healers are only really made competitive by being able to grant teams more damage or by preventing damage taken. Unique and interesting tools that are added to jobs can warp the game due to being so powerful and are often not given out equally, making jobs with unique tools particular standouts due to a lack of healthy competition. And with developers not doing much to address this gap, the non-meta healers unfortunately just feel like cheap discount versions of meta ones, as they do what the other healers can do perhaps more comfortably, but with worse results and without any real substituting tools that offset this imbalance. So to answer the ultimate question: "do White Mage players wish they played Astrologian instead?", the answer is a mixed and reluctant "yes". White Mage players wish their job was more like Astrologian, but only in the sense that Astrologian has received a level of care and attention that reflects the developers' willingness to see it become unique, powerful, and popular. If White Mage were given the same treatment, perhaps it could stand proud as the most iconic healing job of the Final Fantasy franchise rather than be a poor imitation of its legacy. Yoshi-P, show White Mage some love. It needs it.