The White Identity

I have often spoke about changed related to what makes a White Mage a White Mage and while I still do believe they need to change the Healer Robe (Why the healer robe NEEDS to change) I’m instead going to discuss about changing the spells that White Mages have and future spells they may add that will spilt White Mage away from Astrologian which White Mages really need.

Now the first set of changes are simple ones that I imagine can be done in-game very easily and it surprises me this does not happen to other jobs as well and that is changing the class skills to different names and animations to better suit the job. So with this in mind the first change I would make is to re-brand both Aero and Stone into more traditional spells that changes the names and the animations and these should be:

• Stone becomes Banish.
• Aero becomes Dia.

As you can see these are just simple changes and it is known that by equipping a soul crystal you are able to change what happens (Scholar and Summoner is a good example) and doing these alone would make White Mage feel a bit more like a White Mage compared to a Conjurer with fancy robes.

With the basic stuff now out-of-the-way the last set of changes I would like to see and these changes would help spilt White Mages away from Astrologian (for those that do not know Scholars are currently wanted in every content and Astrologians’s stance does not equal a Scholar while they are able to match up to White Mage’s healing and bring in equal DPS) is bringing in Bar spells.

For those that do not know in older Final Fantasy’s White Mages normally get access to spells like Barwater that allows to lower the amount of damage done by these elements and normally needs refreshing within a very short amount of time. Bringing in these bar spells would give White Mages a more interactive game-play while they are also healing as White Mages using their damaging spells is not really ideal when all of them can miss when you compare them to Scholar and Astrologian that both have spells that can never miss.

And with bar spells being able to defend and as I already shown above White Mages does not really have a way to increase party damage without massive overmelding (remember that Astrologian has their cards and some spells that do not miss and Scholar’s Selene can increase spell speed and has spells that can’t miss) it would also be ideal to bring in en spells.

These spells increase the amount of damage done by elemental attacks. So you could cast enfire on a Black Mage to increase their damage, enthunder on a Ninja to increase one of their attacks and the list can go on (they may need to bring out an en-spell for physical attacks and what not). The idea behind this is White Mages can then buff their party directly and increase overall raid DPS without attacking their targets with spells that often miss.

Now I know some people are thinking they should just add a buffer job into the game for this – NO. White Mages are already left in the dark when it comes to end game content when you compare them to the other healers. You got Scholars which can have quite high DPS due to a few spells that can not miss, Lily that can heal regardless of Cleric Stance and spells that quite a few in the community believe to be over-powered.

You then have Astrologian which comes close to White Mage’s raw healing skills in their diurnal stance, some spells that can not miss and cards which while some RNG involved can increase the overall raid DPS.

And what does White Mage have? Raw healing power that is NEVER needed and that Astrologian’s Diurnal Stance can come close too, spells that CAN MISS …. and that is it. I know they expect White Mages to be the power healer but due to the nature of the game you simply can not do that as you would remove the slot for Astrologian.

In the name of balance White Mages NEEDS something to set us apart from the other two and while they could just make our dots not miss like the other two – we simply end with it all being the same. Bar-spells and En-spells would be an increase way to increase raid DPS (and the added fun of MP management) and still feel different to the other two jobs and more importantly we feel like White Mages again.