WHM As A Support Job

I'm concerned primarily with WHM's use as a support job in the post 75 world hitting us this summer. Obviously anything that we can discuss now is largely speculation, but it's something I was discussing with some friends last night, and I was wondering if anyone else might have a different take on it.

My initial thought was that, aside from the convenience of teleports, past level 77, /WHM isn't going to be offering an awful lot to RDM. At level 78, you can get erase from /SCH while also getting the obvious benefits from Light Arts and associated strategems. Sure, WHM gives bar-ra spells, but I don't find myself having to use these with much frequency (more often than not, if it's a situation that actually calls for bar-ra spells, there's already a WHM doing it anyway).

From 38-49, the only new toys offered from /WHM are Afflatus Solace and Misery and Repose. Afflatus Misery is relatively useless for what I feel are obvious reasons. Afflatus Solace offers the interesting aspect of the stoneskin equal to 25% of the cure, but I don't foresee that alone justifying the support job over such wonderful abilities as Accession.

Repose was initially the more compelling reason to use RDM/WHM once we get it at level 96. Further consideration, however, made me doubt its utility. Certainly having access to both light and dark-based sleeps is useful in certain circumstances, but given our E rank divine magic skill, I imagine it will be relatively unreliable against enemies from the new content even if you're very well geared. I imagine that the skill growth patterns will be adjusted past level 75 (just as they make changes at 51-60 and 61-75), but even when I'm making conservative guesses, I'm imaging that E rank will be at least 100 points below our A+ ranked enfeebling magic. Beyond that, if we're really in a situation where sleeping is a concern, /BLM is probably preferable for sleepga or even /SCH for Accession Sleep and Sleep II. If light-based sleeps are truly a concern, I don't really see RDM/WHM becoming the go-to job anyway.

In situations where the level 99 E rank skill isn't as much of an issue, I still don't foresee much usefulness. At level 99, even E-rank will likely be somewhere close to current A+ rank, but given all the other tools we'll have available, I sincerely doubt that any of the existing content is going to be so meddlesome as to warrant the use of both light and dark based sleeps.

tl;dr version: I can't think of any good reasons I'm going to need RDM/WHM past level 77 and do not plan on leveling the job any further as a result. Note any pros that might make me reconsider the usefulness of the sub beyond convenience.

Flash!!

The implication is that job abilities and spells will change level. For example, you won't be able to sub RDM and have refresh and haste, as that would just be silly.

Accession + barX = Bar-ra

For starters... your divine skill would not be E+ but B+ like any skill under the effect of their respective Arts


nyways... im not subbing whm except i need the erase @lvl 75... now why would i sub whm if it doesnt offer anything up to lvl 49...

well you might get solace and misery, but thats it... no esuna no auspice no sacrifice, all you get is cura (lol cura)

you dont even get divine Veil since thats 50 too

As silly as giving @80/40 convert and still -> official Screenshot with WHM using convert... yeah... /brd gives you ballad too, why shouldnt you get haste and fresh with /rdm @99/49? (maybe weaker versions tho)

rdm/sch > rdm/whm ourdays, except where you need Curagas/Erase - rdm/sch > rdm/whm @99/49 period - every 2 Min Accession for Refresh and Haste, if you dont need one of those Stoneskinga or anything you can think of - Cure IVga


so yeah, see that a seconding - cant see a usefull use for /whm for rdm ><

Greetz ('-')/

Convert -> DS + CureIV is about all I can think of aside from the teleports. There's also Curaga/II without the hassle of using up a charge.

Btw, Esuna with misery up will only take 2 status aliments off your party, and it can not remove statuses that erase can not. Moreso, it can not remove some status aliments that erase can, such as enfeebling songs. What's really underrated and underused is cura. Used correctly, it is the most mp efficient cure spell in the game. It's amazing to spam against mobs that do weak aoe spells(gears in salvage, for example)

You do get Stona at 39 WHM, where /SCH won't get it as it's level 50 for that job. That could be situationally useful.

IMO, there are enough little things here and there that /WHM will remain a viable, occasionally preferred subjob.

While in no way a slam against /SCH, I do think that the usefulness is being slightly overblown. Or, rather, mechanics of SCH are being overlooked. Quite a bit of what's mentioned about SCH here is reliant on Stratagems, which as /SCH we will have at most two of at a given time, and be waiting two minutes to regain.

If you're, say, AoE'ing Refresh and Haste on your party, then that's eating your Stratagems, which you now won't just have sitting there if you want to, say, AoE Sleep II. If you wind up swapping to Dark Arts, and swap back, you'd need an Addendum: White just to get status cures back, which, again, means you need a Stratagem. If you elect to just ride Light Arts, then you're hit with a 20% cost/cast/recast penalty on black magic, which may become troublesome in a dynamic environment.

Point is not that /SCH won't be the de-facto subjob, as I do think it will be, and that it'll be quite effective. However, there is a reality check to make with it, which is that it really can't just do everything all at once. Because of that, there's room for other subjobs to still have their niches.

Afflatus Misery is one of the best JA's WHM has.. Tag that with Cura if your getting hit with alot of AoE's and use sacrifice if you see a party member get hit with a status effect that doesn't hit the WHM and use Esuna..Pretty powerful stuff >_>;

I certainly understand the downsides of /SCH as far as strategem charges go, but when I stop and consider that the only time I currently use /WHM is when I'm main healing in either a merit party or a Nyzul run, I can't imagine that full-timing light arts will be that much of a problem. About the only spells I'd have to worry about would be the penalties on dispel and sleeps. Who knows if the current merit party set-up will be sustainable for leveling from 76-99, but I don't foresee the full-timing light arts becoming a problem.

And Magistrella, divine skill would be a B+ as /SCH, but I was talking about the value of divine magic in relation to repose, which I'd receive as /WHM, so I'm stuck with an E rank there.

In response to Oyuyu, I'm also of the belief that we will be getting most spells. The worst I see is perhaps some sort of nerfing similar to the way that Sneak Attack and Trick Attack don't receive DEX or AGI modifiers as a support job. I can imagine Convert having a 2:1 HP to MP ratio or Refresh giving only 2MP/tick being a possibility, but I doubt it. I remember reading an interview shortly after VanaFest suggesting that instead of nerfing existing abilities, jobs will just get new ones to compensate. For example, they discussed the possibility of Refresh II for RDM to offset other mages getting refresh from /RDM.

Josiahkf, I wasn't knocking on Afflatus Misery for WHM. It most certainly has its uses. Given that with 99RDM/49WHM we won't have access to auspice or esuna, it's useless as far as RDM support jobs are concerned.

/whm will generally still offer the better healing for rdm. But past 75 /sch will be far better than /whm ever could. I noticed that people mentioned accession for bar spells but think of accession + refresh or enspell II.

I /sch all the time now unless I need erase curaga. Frankly it is rediculously more efficient even forgetting to use strats most the time. As a good backline job though you should be somewhat aware of your strats and what you guys are doing. Ie don't blow your last strat refreshgaing just to be lazy when you know there are status affects that will be hitting pt where you are and Addendum: white isn't up. If played right it will be much better than /whm unless you need said erase curaga or barspells and no one else can provide them

As far as it's usefullness with strats etc. Well you might say you have to wait and such but, the only other way to AOE sleep would be /blm. The only other way to remove status or give resistga is /whm. There is no other way to give stoneskin, enspell(2) gogo lowering mobs resistance without having a rdm melee, aquaveil, spikes, regeng II. The only other way to give phalanx is with phalanx II. (Well smn could I guess.) Which lets face it at 99 even a fully meritted phalanx II (what a waste of merits) will lag behind phalanx I by like a good 6+ dmg reduction easy.

However there will still be situations you use other subs. As already mentioned cure +stoneskin is pretty pimp. Stona might be really important in your fight. Hell repose might matter. Really overcoming E skill isn't that bad and is at least better than nothing when using a sleep that you know is gunna be immune or min cap of 5% hitrate. And flash for helping the tank out.


/blm will still rock for rapid fire sleepgaing. Not to mention ES debuffs and now stun yays. And D2 I guess lol.

/drk. Despit the loss of being the only subjob that gets stun I still see a use. You can stun and steal tp. And since you can gear up for it probably hit better than most drks. At least on mobs that it will work on.

/nin /blu obviously still nice for solo and tanking.

/cor might be interesting if you get to use QD with arrows or they give rdm a gun.

/brd gets min III now and alot of carols incase you don't have a brd or don't want to waste it's better songs. And pianissimo so you can actually keep ballad on yourself

/smn gets interesting... warcry, hastega, phalanxga, stoneskinga, etc. Also maybe start a skillchain meh.

Hell I can even see a use for /mnk. Can randomly just boost thru out the fight then throw out some chi blast... sure the loss of efficiency from other subs will generally make that lame but still.

Hell might even see some melee /dncs. Lower the mobs magic evasion, evasion, def. Use that to land more hits and dmg. Get your tp back and death blossom to lower it more. Land some debuffs that normally would have required elemental seal bam.



I could go on but in the end rdm is alot different then other jobs as far as sub choices. It can already do a little or sometimes alot of everything. So instead of being locked into a sub(s) that helps it do that 1 or 2 things it's good at, it has pretty much ever job to chose from depending on what a situation requires, since the job itself requires no subs to function effectively. Will some be more useful more of the time? Hell yes but still. Also who knows what new abilities we will get. Or what else they might mess with. Maybe like getting /sam sekki we will get acess to /whm esuna or something?

Enspell II would more than likely suck unless they changed the mechanics of it. Right now, it's based on current Enhancing skill, which many melee wouldn't have any of. 'course, tier 1 Enspells were tweaked to allow for better Accession'ing, so perhaps tier 2 shall be as well.

The secondary thing there though is that, as mentioned, AoE'ing those spells will use both of your Stratagems, which will then limit your options for a couple minutes. Unless, of course, they make Composure work for Accession'ed spells >_>;

People mentioned using Accession for Barspells as a counter to /WHM's AoE Barspells, not because it was the best/only thing they could think to use it for.

They specifically mentioned that they realize they were kicking rdm in the groin for giving everyone access to there job defining spells and abilities and mentioned that they were going to make refresh better somehow. Indeed they even mentioned something about spending mp like water at higher lvls so that it would be needed anyways. Which makes since.

I mean 3mp/tic is kinda godly at 41. Later on you are like bah needs more if you are using it. At 99 when you are blowing 100-400 mp per spell yeah you better have more refresh

That's weird. Sure wiki says that but there is definitely a difference when I cast in enhancing gear and take it off then using none.

Anyways enspell 1 dmg will be just as good or better for any DWing or multi hit melees anyways. I think the real advantage is the -magic evasion. Being able to take a mob that can only be slowed/elegied with ES and making it so that a well geared person can land those without it all the time is priceless

Stoneskin cures. Stoneskin. Cures.

Well, what I mean is that Enspell I are based on gear at time of cast, Enspell II are based on gear at time of each hit. At least, that's the latest I've seen on them, both in use and information/tests.

They did change Enspell Is to be based entirely off of caster's stats, at time of cast, even if AoE'ed...but the mechanics of En IIs are different, which is what I was sayin'. AoE'ing -those- may not give the desired results because of that.

We may see other differences too, IE, Phalanx may cap and Phalanx II not.

Oh I know what you are saying. I just mean the last time I used it it followed what it was when you cast. Granted I didn't go out and test it but it's kinda obvious when you are doing a few more dmg. Either way even if they do change it resist rate will still likely be determined by the hitter. Which means not much dmg outside of mobs that are the lower end of xp range.

I just like it more as a defensive tool for actually landing slow on something without having to rely on a ja that is only up once every 10 min when slow only last a couple unless you get a partial resist then even less. I mean sure you could melee as a rdm but yeah the effect only last a few seconds and lets face it you aint hitting alot anyways and would require alot more gearing and standing in range and feeding more tp etc.


Hell it might even allow some mobs that are really really resistant to stun to be stunned consistentlyish.

Generally dmg prevention>> curing.

Could be useful for that, but the general magic evasion down mentioned on the wiki wouldn't indicate something on par with ES or whatever. Maybe the difference between NQ and HQ staves, at best.

The property of Enspell's I'm mentioning is from the March 2008 update:

I doubt that they'd dynamically scale a buff on other players based on what the RDM is currently wearing though.

Ouch said: Beyond that, if we're really in a situation where sleeping is a concern, /BLM is probably preferable for sleepga or even /SCH for Accession Sleep and Sleep II.

I've only leveled SCH to 37 for WHM/SCH but I'm pretty sure Accession only works for buffs.

Josiahkf said: Afflatus Misery Auspice and Esuna are severely underrated. The ability to remove 5+ statuses from every person in your party including many statuses erase can't remove, plus accuracy bonus and en-lightga with a strong subtle blow make it worthwhile enough to fulltime.

I have to agree that Misery, Auspice, and Cura are useful under certain situations. I fulltime Misery in einherjar and I use it on certain NMs and quite often in Dynamis. Multiple AoE status removals is very nice, although I'm pretty sure Esuna doesn't remove any statuses that you can't otherwise remove with a single target spell that a WHM already has. Auspice is also misunderstood in regards to the accuracy bonus and en-light. Auspice will only grant subtle blow to party members while the accuracy bonus and the en-light are granted to the WHM ONLY while Misery is active. Does not grant those effects to the party.

Josiahkf said: Yeah Esuna will remove a few statuses erase wont and vise versa. If my whole party was blind and paralyzed, esuna would remove both on everyone but erase wouldnt do anything.

Talking about what I said previously, Erase won't remove those effects but Paralyna and Blindna will.


My overall opinion tho is... /whm will still be useful in certain situations. RDM and SCH will probably be the go-to subjobs for mages the majority of the time. Even now for SMNs they're going /sch for sublimation and will probably go /rdm after the level increase, and even blue mages are going /sch for multiple reasons now. WHM will still always shine as a main job tho so I'm not worried about it.

Accession (Light Arts) works for every WHM/RDM spell up to 37 except Raise and Reraise. It also works for SCH storm spells.

Of course this whole auspice and esuna talk right now doesn't matter since as of right now neither are usable as /whm.



Anyways about enspell II. No it isn't as good as ES. However it can be better or worse then staffs. Not enough testing has really been done on it but it has definitely been used to land spells that are next to impossible without luck or ES. So against the really hard stuff yeah -magic evasion better than +macc. And not just cause it helps more people. (though klimaforming and storming some people might be nice) Against normal stuff taht you can land fairly regularly no it's probably only equivalent to like 10macc.

Sorry, that would be Manifestation for Sleep and Sleep II; it doesn't stack with elemental magic, but it does stack with enfeebling magic. Manifestation being the dark arts counterpart to Accession.

And Poindexter is right. I'm not trying to knock on WHM as a main job. That will still have it's (very) obvious uses, and it likely stands to gain more from the level cap increase than RDM does, but as a support job, I'm just concerned about its utility.

As of now, my WHM is level 41. I believe SE announced that the update in June would raise the cap to 80, so I'm still good for that. Afflatus Solace's addition of the stoneskin effect to cures is potentially useful, especially assuming RDM eventually learns Cure V (I find it hard to imagine that we'll go another 24 levels without getting it, especially as HP pools continue to bloat). Stona is something I hadn't considered, but I don't find myself in many situations where petrify is an issue and there's no WHM on hand.

Despite Dasva's point that an E rank skill can be overcome, I'm still not convinced that it's going to be useful enough in new content. E rank skill is already 66 points behind A+ rank. Certainly you can bring it up with gear, but there aren't significant options for divine magic skill for RDM, so I don't foresee a way to effectively close that gap (which is likely to get larger as the skill caps expand with the level cap). It'll get to the point where I can probably manage to land repose on mobs in the level 75-80 range reliably, but at level 99, those are going to be a joke to RDM regardless.

yeah blew my head off there... you couldnt even repose as /sch if you wanted to ^^

regardless of the Freshga and stuff....

for endgame situations where rdm is there for refresh and haste...

anyone sees the /cor? @80/40+ you have access to evokers roll and hell @99/49 even to Fighters Roll for DA...

i mean... refreshga is nice but... i rather refresh 5 people and give them cor mana roll then beeing lazy and use Accession+Refresh...

Of course this would leave out all options for Status-curing and only leave you as simple curer but hey... as example, what could a blm pt in dynamis want more then a rdm/cor handing 4+mp/tick (depending on roll) to everyone or some magic acc with warlocks roll?


Greetz ('-')/

P.s: sry for beein offtopic - or am i? o.o

As per FFxiclopedia-

Afflatus Misery + Auspice: adds light damage to initial attacks and an accuracy bonus when target is missed. These effects are applied to the WHM only, and only when Afflatus Misery is active. It is possible to cast Auspice while under Afflatus Solace, switch to Afflatus Misery afterward, and start receiving these effects without needing to recast Auspice.

I'm sorry to say it but giving WHM a party-wide accuracy bonus would be much too generous of SE, and if it was true then people would actually give a crap about WHMs keeping Auspice up all the time, which they don't. Sorry :(

Whms should keep auspice up all the time anyways. Free Subtle blow is alot more awesome then is obvious

I agree, although the duration is extremely annoying to keep up with and can be an MP sink at times.