White Mages vs Other Jobs

[(XBOX)PompousNinja156]

Ever since the Trinity changes (I'm waiting until everything is wrapped up before I comment fully on it), I keep noticing a certain point that keeps getting brought up. Trinity, supposedly, is pushing out the other healers in the game, as their heals simply cannot compete with Blessing. It's causing a split between two camps; Some want Trinity's heals weakened so the other healers get a shot, while the others feel that the other healers should get buffs and reworks to make them viable alternatives.

Where this whole argument falls apart, however, is that it's implying that any class with a heal is a healer, and this is where the title comes in, as I'll be using Final Fantasy's Job system to help paint you guys a better picture and hopefully put this to rest already.

Starting with Trinity, we come to the quintessential "Healer" class, Final Fantasy's White Mages and their counterparrts. White Mages specialize entirely on team suppport and are hard pressed to do anything else, as their entire spell list is comprised of stuff like Cure, a basic heal, Barrier, a damage reduction skill, Esuna, a cleansing skill, Libra, which tells you your enemies' stats and weaknesses, and so on. At the higher end, they get revivals, stronger heals and better utility. Saying a White Mage does no damage though, is a lie. They can kill basic Slimes easily, maybe, by casting Aero/Geo/Holy, their basic and only damage skills....... 5-6 times. Sometimes. They can also kill undead enemies easy too......by healing them.

Wouldn't you know it, Trinity has only ONE SKILL in her entire kit that allows her to proactively damage her opponent, and it can maybe kill something, after 10 or so casts about 20 seconds apart outside of Negative duration EV Spam builds. The rest of her kit exists to reduce damage to herself and heal everyone. Now, I don't disagree that Trinity needs a rework, but let's be real, asking to nerf her healing is like asking to nerf Esuna from a general cleanse of all status to only curing Poisoning. It's bad enough White Mages have the defensive stats of rice paper before all their buffs and do no damage, let's leave their heals and utility alone until 4 White Mages become the meta.

The first of these other healers that get brought up is Oberon, and frankly speaking, Oberon is currently suffering from identity issues. He has no idea if he wants to be a paladin (doesn't have the stats or skills for it), or a Druid [FF Equivalet being a White Mage counterpart; Shaman](Doesn't have the stats or skills for it anyway). When Oberon has his issues worked out in therapy, especially now that Titania exists in his life, we'll get back to him and see where he stands then.

Moving on, Equinox is the next biggest contender, and frankly, she's the textbook Red Mage. The centerpoint job that does alright at everything, they have decent stats for weapon usage without gimping it the way the other Mages do, they can cast up to mid-tier black magic, allowing access to damage & CC, and up to mid-tier white magic, allowing heals and buffs. Their only issue is that, each aspect individually is directly inferior to their specialized counterparts. Warriors are more durable and can use heavier, stronger gear. Black mages get stronger black magic, meaning better damage, debuffs, and CC. (Firaga & Meteor > Fira) and White Mages get better buffs, utility, and heals (Esuna & Curaga > Cura).

While I don't disagree that Mend (as well as a few other skills) need looking at due to how awkward it is to use when you need it, unless you're gimping Day Form as a whole to get the max benefit from Mend, Equinox should be glad she has twice as many skills as every other warframe. I mean, jeez, after her heals are as good as Trinity, are you gonna complain Day Form doesn't do enough damage to compete with the likes of Ash & Saryn next?

Nezha (and to a lesser extent, Inaros) is the last one, and honestly speaking, is the same as saying that just because Final Fantasy's Knight Class had access to low level White Magic, thus could cast Cure, means they're in the same league. No, Knights are just Warriors that could use what little mana pool they got for something other than decoration, and mainly used it to heal themselves with the added benefit of said heals workihg on allies. Nezha should be in whatever discussion Rhino is in, not the regarding healers.

TL; DR

Trinity is a white mage and heals is all she got. Rework it to be less braindead, sure, but leave her alone already.

Oberon needs an intervention; This Druid/Paladin thing has to stop, it's not healthy for him.

Equinox can be as good as Trinity at healing when Day Form as a whole gets deleted; QoL changes are the best you get

>Nezha >In any discussion about healers; One of these things is not like the others.

 

Edited June 1, 2016 by (XB1)PompousNinja156

[SeaUrchins]

Let's be real: Trinity has never been considered a healer and duration Trinity has never been recruited for healing. The sole purpose of duration Trinity was self damage and consecutive over 99% (if you count digits after the comma) damage resistance. It has nothing to do with healing. Trinity was not a healer, she was IDDQD for the team: god mode on, your squad is invincible now.

[Wolfwaffe]

Esuna? White mage? Red mage? Knight?..

 

Who the Hek are all those people?!

As for Oberon, it feels that Trin was nerfed just so he seemed somewhat of use.

[YasaiTsume]

Trinity's role was never a healer.

Trinity's role is to make sure no one even loses a drop of health LITERALLY with the constant 99% Damage Reduction. 

I have no problem with keeping everyone healthy, I would actually have prefered it if Trinity sacrificed herself to keep her allies scratch free, alibeit being a super tank to help her fill that role. 

Spoiler

(Wakfu and Dofus have a class called Sacrier which sacrifices himself to take damage for allies and sustains through lifestealing, which is a balanced combination of Team Protection and Tanking) 

 

[(XBOX)PompousNinja156]

Just now, SeaUrchins said:

Let's be real: Trinity has never been considered a healer and duration Trinity has never been recruited for healing. The sole purpose of duration Trinity was self damage and consecutive over 99% (if you count digits after the comma) damage resistance. It has nothing to do with healing. Trinity was not a healer, she was IDDQD for the team: god mode on, your squad is invincible now.

Thing is, even if you did remove the Damage Reduction entirely, Blessing is still the best heal in the game, and Trinity will push out the "other healers" by virtue of not only restoring shields and health to full, but having a Heal over time attached to a CC, Enegy recovery over time attached to CC and a way to reduce damage to herself in a pinch (thus saving you the effort of having to babysit her). The fact that all this is in one kit makes her the best healer. Adding the damage reduction to the party (thus giving her heals sticking power, something the rest don't have) is just icing.

[Cryostasisprotoss]

I believe is a good comparison. Personally I still play final fantasy x in the ps3 and if you know there is character that can be anything you want make a warrior or a black mage or whatever. One thing that I do is make a red mage because in a team of 4 you can make a lot of combinations. For example you can have a dedicated damage dealer a warrior, a defeInsive charater that protect your team a tank(i don't remember how it was called in final fantasy I am just waking up sorry). A white mage for healing and damage reduction as protect and shield, work nicely in the team and a black mage for high damage but if there is a boss or mission in case of warframe that do not need for example much healing or protection you can change the white mage or the other way arround if you need more healing and have enough damage with the warrior you can change the black mage. Or even take out the warrior for the red mage and you have a more defensive team that last a lot of time. Or take out the tank for more damage with the red mage. Equinox is very versatile so it can match every team composition making for example a equinox trinity  one of the best defensive combos with frost with them too.

Oh I forgot in final fantasy protect and shield ir shell was it? Does protect for a good amount of damage but is not like 99% of the damage like trinity before nerf. Also DE is changing it to a cap 75% damage reduction so I believe it work better that after nerf even though it is a nerf that everyone saw it coming.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Cryostasisprotoss

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

22 minutes ago, SeaUrchins said:

Let's be real: Trinity has never been considered a healer and duration Trinity has never been recruited for healing. The sole purpose of duration Trinity was self damage and consecutive over 99% (if you count digits after the comma) damage resistance. It has nothing to do with healing. Trinity was not a healer, she was IDDQD for the team: god mode on, your squad is invincible now.

Uh....never used as a healer? Iv been trinity a lot. A lot. I go on teams and pugs, I don't use blessing trin, never did, I go in with what mods I want and whatever melee weapon I wish to use, and no one could complain me to death about. I don't know about you and your trin.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

33 minutes ago, YasaiTsume said:

Trinity's role was never a healer.

Trinity's role is to make sure no one even loses a drop of health LITERALLY with the constant 99% Damage Reduction. 

I have no problem with keeping everyone healthy, I would actually have prefered it if Trinity sacrificed herself to keep her allies scratch free, alibeit being a super tank to help her fill that role. 

  Reveal hidden contents

(Wakfu and Dofus have a class called Sacrier which sacrifices himself to take damage for allies and sustains through lifestealing, which is a balanced combination of Team Protection and Tanking) 

 

The 99 % damage reduction is an unintended gimmick, trinity was supposed to be a healer, it's a cheese tactic, the same way greedy pull on Egate was...DE didn't touch it, for whatever reason, but it was not meant to be kept up an entire mission. Its purpose was to keep trinity from wasting energy when casting blessing on an ally that would die 1 second later after the health they got dissapeared as well.

It is an abused mechanic, not being used as intended

[Chroia]

3 hours ago, (XB1)PompousNinja156 said:

TL; DR

Trinity is a white mage and heals is all she got. Rework it to be less braindead, sure, but leave her alone already.

Oberon needs an intervention; This Druid/Paladin thing has to stop, it's not healthy for him.

Equinox can be as good as Trinity at healing when Day Form as a whole gets deleted; QoL changes are the best you get

>Nezha >In any discussion about healers; One of these things is not like the others.

Excellent post.

My only issue with it is this - and correct me if I'm wrong here:

Most of a White Mage's job is buffing and then reactive healing.

With Barrier (it's a %DR buff, right?) letting you 'heal' proactively, and 'Cure' etc. healing reactively (and if FF has damage absorption buffs, that counts as well), this only works because - while still subject to Health/Damage asymmetry - FF doesn't scale enemy damage anywhere near as much is it does enemy HP, meaning that high level enemies aren't primarily oneshotting you if you take damage.

Even assuming split-second reaction time, there's a very distinct upper-limit beyond which reactionary healing will save anyone in Warframe.

[(XBOX)PompousNinja156]

55 minutes ago, Chroia said:

Excellent post.

My only issue with it is this - and correct me if I'm wrong here:

Most of a White Mage's job is buffing and then reactive healing.

With Barrier (it's a %DR buff, right?) letting you 'heal' proactively, and 'Cure' etc. healing reactively (and if FF has damage absorption buffs, that counts as well), this only works because - while still subject to Health/Damage asymmetry - FF doesn't scale enemy damage anywhere near as much is it does enemy HP, meaning that high level enemies aren't primarily oneshotting you if you take damage.

Even assuming split-second reaction time, there's a very distinct upper-limit beyond which reactionary healing will save anyone in Warframe.

The Protection/Shell spells are just damage mitigation buffs for specific damage types (Physical & Magical). Their heals are entirely reactive Since FF is turn based; FFXIV gives them a way to place a heal that "pops" when it's needed (ally falls below a certain health point and gets a burst heal), I think, giving them Proactive healing as it's an MMO; Don't quote me on that though since I main Dragoon, which is the "Hard Mode" DPS Class, ask someone who mains the healer classes.

Even then, they have a Ressurection skill that lets them instantly revive fallen allies for when the heals don't keep up.

If they do fix enemy scaling, thus entirely removing the need for Blessing's Damage reductioh cheese, I'd actually be in favor of removing the DR buff altogether, and replacing it to instead allow Blessing to pick up Allies that are bleeding out (and reverting the range nerf while we're at it)