What Are WHM's Expectations In Endgame Content.

Yep.

If you are or have a WHM that wants to try and solo heal, that's one thing. If you're demanding that they do it, then they should rightly tell you to chug sand.

DRK's in dynamis was the WHM killer for me. Great that you can max a parse, but i'm not going to hate my job (whm) because you cant figure out how to stay in a hybrid set. Ratri was a whm killer.

In order to answer the question of what makes a White Mage ready for end game, we have to answer the question of "What makes a good White Mage?" And what started as a rant from me kind of spiraled out into something bigger.

White Mage is in an interesting spot, because it is a job with a high skill requirement combined with a low gear requirement.
The low gear requirement makes it appealing to newer players looking to get their start in endgame, but endgame shells are looking for experienced, skilled White Mages. This is part of the reason "bad" Whms are so prevalent.
Endgame groups of all sizes and durations gatekeep when looking for members, and for good reason. "You must have at least this many REMA to ride the Ambuscade" is (generally) less about the functionality of those pieces of gear than it is about indicating how dedicated that player is to the job they are bringing to the group. While that does exist for Whms in demands for Yagrush, groups are much more ready to try a non-Yag Whm than some Denouements Monk, for instance. The result we consistently see is Whms getting into endgame situations that they are not ready for as players.

To the average player, this results in the perception that "95% of Whms suck."
I posit that it's less about a specific portion of the playerbase being bad than it is about Whm's being harder to screen from the general population.

So what DOES make a good Whm?
In my opinion, "Skill" for a Whm is defined as the confluence of perspective, interface, and responsiveness.

Perspective in this case, is knowing by experience what the group needs at any given time. This may sound simple, but its really not. Knowledge of fights and monsters is part of this, but I would argue that general game experience is every bit as important.
In my experience, the best Whms also play DDs and tanks. This is not a coincidence. When you play a job that is taking damage and status ailments you get a much more tactile idea of what a Whm needs to be doing, and then can turn around and use that experience to be a better Whm. This kind of perspective is also something that a trust or CurePlease bot cannot ever obtain. Perspective is the hallmark of a good Whm.

Interface I need immediate access to more keys on Whm than I do on any other job, and I still cast many spells out of the command line through aliases. I may have more things mapped out for other jobs (Sch is a big one) but in terms of spells/JAs/switches, Whm is easily the most demanding.
And then there's the ability to see what your party needs. /focustarget was a good introduction from SE, but we can go further. While focus is good for keeping track of tanks, you can't rely on it when taking care of multiple DDs, for instance. Being able to quickly highlight individual players for diagnosis is good, but I recommend taking things a step further.
Get Partybuffs and configure it to your own needs.
I first heard about this addon from Sechs who used it to keep track of who had what songs, and thought "I can use this on Whm!"
Partybuffs is a windower addon that displays status effects present on all members of your party. Its like /focustarget for 5 people at once. Obviously this would be FAR too much information by default, but fortunately, you can whitelist/blacklist different status to prevent information overflow. This means that you can cut out all the irrelevant crap and only see what you need to see, so that you can immediately respond to stuff that matters, like Doom.
As a Whm this is a gigantic quality of life improvement! Now, I know that configuring Partybuffs is tricky because it refers to status by number, which makes configuring your whitelist pretty arcane. To solve that, I went over every buff in Windower4/res/buffs.lua, and have labelelled the list in a way that anyone should be able to easily set up partybuffs for themselves!

Here is my buff list for partybuffs/filters.lua. I have this whole buff list in my whitelist, and comment buffs in and out by putting -- in front of the status effect.Long story short, make sure that your interface lets you see what you need to see, and cast what you need to cast. We've all seen those Whms fumbling around trying to figure out how to cast stona while the party desperately yells at them.

Finally, responsiveness.
Seeing the threat, understanding the threat, and having the tools to respond to the threat have all been covered, finally it comes down to execution. Not gonna lie, you gotta be on your toes to play Whm well. You gotta act fast. Having a fast cast set that actually works plays into this part in no small way. Know by experience long your spells take to cast, have in mind the things that can go wrong while you are casting, and that casting one spell is going to lock you out of casting another for a while. Gotta go fast. I'm sure you all have had plenty of experiences with Whm's that were too slow. Part of that is Whm's being locked into casting something else when something critical happens. That tank may need an Arise, but if casting arise locks you out of curing the player who took over the role, you may have more important things to be doing.

All that said, if you are going to be and endgame White Mage, you need to prove that you are better than a Trust or a CurePlease bot.
That may seem like a low bar, but Trusts and Bots compensate for their comparative idiocy by being inhumanly responsive, and largely ignoring the interface challenges faced by humans.

So, if you want a good White Mage, focus on Perspective. As a White Mage, play other jobs! As a party/LS leader, ask about their other jobs!
A good White Mage knows what it means to be a good White Mage!

This post started as a rant and turned into a sort of guide? I'm not really sure. But I've been typing too long and should probably stop, so as to get some perspective on where this thread has gond while I've been writing this.

/Edit:
Post should be done now!
/Edit2: Cleaned up the partybuffs filter list, the code formatting put some extraneous crap in there. Also a little more formatting for readability, sorry for the wall of text!

My LS has a rule specifically for DRKs.

I couldn't have said this better myself. Me and my fellow leaders talk about this kind of stuff amongst each other all the time. This needs all the upvotes

Thanks Luckycharmss.

This thread kind of started around the question of a particular Aeonic run, and whether or not the Whm acted appropriately during it.

The important thing to remember is that there is no hard and fast rule about what a Whm should be doing. Every spell Whm casts is locking them out of casting the next spell for a duration, and its always a balancing act of judging what to cast now versus what casting now may lock you out of casting in the next second or two. What is best at any time is rarely clear, and never stays the same.

Adaptability is the name of the game on White Mages, and incidentally why Diva Whms are so horrible.
In my experience Diva Whms lack the perspective of actually playing other jobs, and expect the group and the fight to adapt to them, rather than the other way around. That is not how White Maging works, guys.

Our Yagrush WHM was able to do (Esuna/Misery) or (Viruna/Erase) to counter Miasma, but I had instructed the group to watch for the elemental wheel thresholds beforehand and for all DD's to stop damage then. WHM did not have the Su 3/4/5 club. Full-timed Indi-Wilt on boss to weaken AoE damage, and our BLU or RDM would recast Haste II once Slow was removed. If your group is relying on a sole DD to self-SC, you could get by without the Yagrush if you do not mind slower clears.


Pretty much this for alliances and most endgame groups; however, it also possible to adapt to your WHM as well. Our WHM is rather casual and plays with slow (<5 Mbps down) cable internet, so we are usually sacrificing DPS to neuter enemy offense (redundant healing sources, full-time hybrid sets, defensive buff/debuff emphasis). Good WHM's are usually good tanks/supports/DD's and/or experienced with researching game mechanics prior to fights.

I did this on a Dyna D run years ago because I needed the clear, it was disgustingly stressful. Especially when people were asking for hastes.

You can do it, depending on how much refresh gear you have, the power of the players (when stuff dies fast it's not so bad) and the job setup but it's still awful to put someone in that position.

Bare minimum should be 2 healers.

Fixed.

And BTW, a wipe on Schah on a SMN burn is a wipe, even if you recover and he stays at 5% the adds will most likely prevent you from killing it as your blood pacts damage goes from 40-50k to 5k.
Just reset and try again

Just wanted to echo what Lucky said. This really should be something that is more openly talked about in the community so thank you for bringing it up. We (internally) talk about this exact thing almost none stop. We also expand it beyond WHMs but for sake of staying on topic will stick to WHM.

The biggest problem we run into is just a miss-match of expectations from both people playing WHM and other members of the group. Fortunately, for us, this is pretty rare these days as everyone in the Linkshell takes a turn healing, and those that don't are exceptionally good at not "blaming the healer". One final point before moving on is our leadership as a whole is very good about supporting our WHMs, and beyond that our healers, we do not let them get dogpiled when a bad night happens. While we typically only run one WHM regardless of the content we are doing, there are always others that can help heal and remove status ailments so we don't let everything get dumped on to the WHM.

In my experience the biggest thing that leads to WHM burnout is not that the job is demanding, it's that they get no support from the group leader(ship) for doing it day in and day out. Obviously, WHMs should be held accountably, but no more so than anyone else. A good example if people would like, is in events mostly (but not always, Omen is antithetical to this) if the party is getting buried in aliments it is because mechanics are not being done correctly. Rather than pop off at the WHM for not clearing aliments, consider how mechanics could be done correctly. We started having our RDM silence dangerous casters in Wave 3 as the tank pulls and the number of ailments we deal with is almost non-existent. That one simple change made our wave 3 runs so much smoother it's like doing an entirely different event.

However, to the OPs original question, what should and should not be expected of a WHM is largely going to be group dependent. Additionally, the leadership should be making it exceedingly clear what is and is not expected of each member of the group and being clear and transparent with their membership. What one WHM can do is not going to be the same as what another WHM can do. As others have pointed out WHM is an exceedingly difficult job that involves more than just "hitting ***with a stick". A person's knowledge, experience, and decision-making skills all factor into the final outcome. Having said that, if you are clear with your expectations from the start, you can find people that are willing to rise to those expectations and you can avoid the drama that comes with people suddenly being forced to do things they don't want to do. At the end of the day if people are not meeting expectations that is a failure of leadership as much as it is a failure of individuals.

OP, you mentioned you were giving unsolicited advice, and while this is largly frowned upon I have two things to suggest that may help. First, if you are a leader in your linkshell (and the appropriate leader, I understand there are many different leadership structures), there is no such thing as unsolicited advice, be constructive and fair, and if they still resist, call for backup from the other leaders. Secondly, which may be more likely, you are not a leader within the linkshell then it's time to lead by example. It's cliche as all hell but be the WHM other WHMs want to be like. Offer to talk shop, help with luas and addons, and generally be positive. The way you approach people, especially in online games, can have a huge impact on your raport. Rather than sending PMs like "Hey, you are not doing x correctly, do y to make it work". Phrase it like you had the same problem (which you would have before you found the trick) "This fight sucks, I found when I changed to doing y it made the fight a lot better for me". You will be surprised just how much that can help when you are dealing with peers. Suddenly you are not better than they are but a teammate that has the same struggles. If it is as simple as a disagreement over raises, bring it up with leadership, say your bit, and leave it like that. You won't win every one, nor should you expect to. Belabouring the point just makes you the bad guy.

However, if with mentoring and support the player does not rise to the occasion, then it is time to part ways. After all, while it is a game, and we all play for fun, the constant struggle of mixed match goals and expectations is not, nor will it ever be, fun.

Sorry, this got really long. With any luck, this might help someone. If you have any questions or comments please let me know, I am always happy to talk about this sort of thing. OP, I hope you are able to find a common ground with your other WHM and things work out.

Neishabliss

EDIT: Holy smokes, the time it took me to quote this, a load of people responded here into well over page two. I'll have to read this. But these quotes below pretty much sum everything up otherwise with my initial inquiry. Rest of the other posts were greatly appreciated.


I actually find enjoyment in being the caretaker of the alliance. I never feel like I am being overburdened. But, I digress, I do play this game a bit more hardcore than others, so maybe I am in the wrong to expect others to play to the efficiency I can, or play outside their comfort zone. After all, this is a game, and I doubt anyone really wants to come on here and make it feel like its a job.

You are incorrect about a couple things however, as the topic for discussion is no longer being spoken of. I had been mentioned by a good friend of mine that I should reconsider giving unsolicited advice, and be more open to other's gameplay. And, while I trust their judgement, I still wanted to see what the community thinks WHMs should and shouldn't do. Its more of a self-satisfaction, and maybe I shouldn't be seeking it. At the end of the day, people should play the way they want or feel they should play without someone else asking them to play in a manner that they do not enjoy.

I have no intention to bringing this back up to LS mates and opening up old wounds. Its more so of a "Was I being a dooche, and if so where can I improve."

I feel I've learned from this, and feel I am not so ignorant to not be able to own up to a mistake. This post was a means to a end for closure, for more things than one.

This helps a lot more than you think it does. I do realize I do talk sometime as if I am patronizing others due to the way I word things. Which might be the very core of the reasons I have these conflicts.

It's totally OK to provide guidance in a polite, professional way. You just want to be careful not to cross the line over to virtue signaling/showboating.

And also... be humble enough to realize that there will always be somebody out there who's even better than you, and you wouldn't exactly like the feel of them dancing all over your ego either.

Lol, so “wtf do you mean you don’t carry echo drops? you’re a damn whm?” is probably one of those lines? Asking for a friend ;)

Yeah, WHM is a bit special in that it's one of the only jobs that actually faces constant reaction checks. Most other jobs have a pretty straightforward policy they can rely on that will carry them through content... It's not like stuns are really a thing anymore. The only real consistent "reaction test" that a DPS faces is like, putting on hybrid/DT gear on in time for an enemy AoE. Even then, it's a pretty brainless gearswap, you don't need to actually make any decisions for that.

WHM has it rough because they are uniquely responsible for dealing with all sorts of ***outside of their control (namely, the mistakes of their party members). You clean up after everyone else's messes. In the old days tanks at least had to manage hate, and some dumb Ranger or Dragoon's DPS random DPS spike could suddenly become YOUR problem. Not anymore!

The only other "reaction test"-y role that comes to mind only really applies in the context of lowmans or abnormal party setups. As an example, on Dancer you can tank, main heal, and DPS at the same time, but to pull it off you really need ample foresight and flexibility. (Which makes it really fun! But not relevant for endgame progression)

I feel like this has always kinda been a part of FFXI's battle design though. As far back as I can remember at least, the majority of the "fight" happens before you even enter the arena: do your people all understand the party's strategy? Are they geared well? Are they competent?

To quote Sun Tzu: “Every battle is won before it's ever fought. Unless you're a White Mage, then you could irredeemably *** up at any moment.”

depends on how good your bot is.

I think it would matter more how bad the people the bot needs to heal are. Even a flawless bot fails to heal people in zero dt.

And quality of tank(s) and level of buffs... there's a lot of moving parts.

Since I can actually see what you're trying to do with this post, and I don't have the mind to try to attack you for your listed expectations, allow me to just do what you're requesting:

I expect WHMs at a bare minimum:

to have Echo Drops.

(all players) to have gear macros.

to have Empy Legs. I can't count how many times I've seen a WHM try to cure a capacity points party without them. And then the WHM makes demands for Ballads or Refresh when all the cures should practically be free of MP cost if they'd just go get their Empy Legs.

to keep Barspells up if they are worth keeping up.
-I don't care if you don't keep barwater up on a fish/crab merit party if you can just cure through it, anyway.


From there you can get into more advanced concerns like:

Don't use Auspice when you have a kick-butt DD RDM in the group on trivial content and at least try to make the best use of your understanding that Auspice overwrites T1 Enspell on any other content.

After a wipe, and after you've reraised, cast Haste on yourself before you start trying to raise other people.
-This goes for BRDs and RDMs, too. And in the context of BRDs, you should be throwing up that Victory March close to your WHM straight away after you reraise from a wipe.

That's all from me on this for now.

False. I mean having an uber-fast hard-wired internet connection can't hurt, but this game was optimized back in the day when dial-up was still a thing. I use my cell phone as a mobile hotspot to connect to my PC and main WHM. Think 15 KB/s. I never run into problems main-healing on WHM due to having a slow connection. It's always my user error (being within stun range or getting parahaxed by bad RNG on getting paralyze off of myself for example). These kinds of things that make me fume when I can't, then, cure/fix the party.

I thought only bots played whm?

Whms are like bots. Fabulous, always useful, dedicated and it's always your fault if you die because you have ***skill, the bot doesn't care.

Why? Why, when you are bringing 18 people, can you not manage to have more than 1 healer? Who is setting up the alliance?

I would never set up an alliance without at least 2 healers for 18 people, ideally 3. That's a failure of the LS leadership to not have adequate healing. Having one WHM for multiple parties takes away some of the job's best tools (Curaga, Erase-ga, high potency Barspells, etc.) You can solo heal an alliance, maybe, but there's no reason you should have to.


Yeah, I mean, this right here. The whole premise of the thread is silly. If you do not kill Schah before he gets two adds out with a SMN burn then that is generally a wipe. You reset and re-do the fight. You don't even need a WHM to AFAC any aeonic NM anyway.

I feel one problem seems to be a lot of shells have poor leadership skills and setting the whm healers up for failure. This is why a lot of people play DD, and I totally understand it. Forget playing healer when if anything goes wrong its automatically the healers fault and yelled at. Not that its entirely leaderships fault at times but it does play a huge role in the linkshell as a community.

Front-line people without -DT hybrid sets that don't understand the flow of a particular battle (if it has different phases) and just try to hit their damage ASAP even through their debuffs (while not bringing meds for them) or while the enemy absorbs or negates their damage attempts make the baby jesus cry.

Delicious tears.

not sure you want it, but here's a non-WHM opinion-

Why is it perfectly acceptable to say to a PLD, "you can't tank until you finish Aegis/Ochain", or to a BRD "you really need Relic, Empy and Aeonic to even be taken seriously", or to a COR, "No DP, no Dyna"...but we have to treat every person who plays WHM with total kid gloves when it comes to truly gearing their job for endgame content?

I'll throw out an idea- when the vast majority of shells can find someone truly interested in playing WHM on a regular basis, they're so scared of chasing them off they'll tolerate damn near anything when it comes to gear.

This might seem helpful at first- you're bringing someone who actually isn't ready for the content they're engaged in, able to succeed, and as a result they now have gear, gil, unlocks, etc. In reality, they're struggling against a gearing wall and having to work way too hard to succeed. And at times, success is honestly impossible.

BUT...they're at the event. They're getting the wins. And everyone is SO THRILLED they're playing WHM- where's the motivation to improve?

I think its time we as a player community start to expect our WHMs to gear at the same level as support and DD. No more "well, you can heal just fine without a Yagrush" and the like. Its time to say "sure, you can probably survive without it, but you're hurting the DPS of the alliance by not having one, expecting your DDs to pop meds and stop DPS or worse yet- not being fast enough cycling through an entire party of -na spells and erases when you run out of strats."

Sure, you can one-shot statues without a DP, but we still expect our CORs to have one.

Sure, you can tank on RUN without an Epeo, but we're never gonna allow that to happen IF we have an Epeo RUN at our disposal.

I mean, we can get by without Honor March, but who's going to tolerate that these days?

These types of community enforced gear-gating has been acceptable on ALL jobs except WHM for years. You do content A to get gear that allows you to do content B and its rewards, which then allows you to succeed in content C.


unrelated to gear, as there probably isn't a job where gear doesn't just "fix" you more than WHM-all jobs need to understand the mechanics of the fight, not just a tank. A WHM needs to know what a named TP move inflicts on a party status wise rather than wait for their DDs to say "hey, I'm paralyzed". They also need ot be aware of elemental resist needs to put up proper(and potent) barspells. A DD needs to know if a mob has a horrific AoE they should be turtled up for. A BRD needs to know about dispelling moves and getting buffs back up. A RDM needs to know about self-erase moves of a mob to re-apply debuffs. I'm so sick of people showing up with killer gear and zero understanding of what they're about to do.

Assuming you're still on Leviathan server, there's one person listed on AH as having a Yagrush i119iii. The same person also has a Gambanteinn and Mjollnir, both i119iii.

There's four additional with Gambanteinn and six more with Mjollnir. To compare, there's 42 people on Leviathan server that AH shows has a Ragnarock i119iii.

If you're going to require a REMA, that at best is situational, before a healer can join you, you could be waiting a hot minute.

I'm now on Asura, have been for about a year or so, and there's considerably more healers with REMA, but as I've also seen, gear =/= skill.

Only thing REMA shows is that the person has put in the requisite time and gil into building a weapon, but there's nothing showing as to if the person knows the job. Any other gear could have been obtained while on another job.

I never meant to equate gear with skill- in fact, went out of my way to make sure I pointed out that WHM above almost all other jobs does not benefit from gear over skill. Some jobs you can force that square peg into a round hole with overwhelming gear advantage. WHM is certainly not one of those.

It does often show commitment, however. If you're willing to invest in a job, you're more likely to try and play it well. I don't think that's an unfair statement.

In addition, looking at those who have a Yagrush at 119iii is foolish. Many great WHMs I know haven't even done trials on their yagrush simply due to having a high macc option for when they need it, and Yagrush does what they need it to from day one.

Lastly- I don't expect a healer to have a RMEA or not get invited. I do, however, like to hear that someone who wants to take WHM seriously is working towards one.

most pick up WHM to get a foot in the door, not cause they like the job. if you aren't dedicated to a job you are less likely to build a REMA for it and if there are barely any players with WHM REMAs you'll have a hard time to up the standards, especially when most content requires main heal and there is only one job that can fill the role. supply and demand.

btw. ppl upgrading REMA past the point of usefullness like afterglowing yagrush, idris or nirvana is a tell tale sign that this person didn't have to work for it and/or they have little clue about the job.
afterglowing ochain, aegis or gjallarhorn should be rewarded with a auto ban, really no need to look further into it.