Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

[Kitsune]

I'm through taking my rather long hiatus of nearly half a year and am finally getting back into the game. I am, however, running into a problem with my main job, white mage.

I have a deep love for my white mage and I currently rest at level 41, but after nearly six months of no use, I have forgotten certain things about how to play.

First of all is my macro bar. I decided to set it up when I was suddenly struck with what spells are usefull at my level. Will I be using Cure I at this level anymore? What order do I cast spells? Who gets regen? Etc.

I'm reading through as many guides as I can find, but if someone else has taken a break and had to relearn white mage, could you please give me some pointers on what exactly I should do to relearn my favorite job?

Thank you.

[Icemage]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

There's a bunch of useful stuff in the WHM Hints and Tips thread here.

Specifically at your listed level (WHM 42), you'll probably want the following spells macrod if available:

Cure I (for waking people up from Sleep effects, basically)
Cure III (this is your best Cure at this level)
Cure IV (avoid using this if possible, since at your current level it is inefficient and garners huge enmity - but sometimes you just have to).
Regen I (best bang for the buck, but not good for tanks that take a lot of damage)
Regen II (less efficient than Regen I, but still better than all Cures for tanks)
Erase
Silena
1 Barelement spell of your choice (based on what you're fighting)
Slow
Paralyze
Silence
Dia II
Haste
Plus a resting macro and an autotargetting macro ("/target <bt>")

If a Red Mage is in the party, you can probably leave off casting anything except Dia II at the start. For a non-Ninja tank, I'd open with Regen II on the tank, then go with Slow, Paralyze, then Dia/Dia II.

Don't forget to Haste your Ninjas!


Icemage

[Kitsune]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Amazing bit of information for me and I appreciate it. I've been through all of the threads and I am gathering up what I can. I don't want to earn a bad name for myself by being poor at my job of which I was so good at before I left.

[Necropolis]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Personally I didn't use Cure1 much at 41, 30 hp just doesn't do much for me to find it's worth anymore other than to wake someone up from sleep.

As for spells, of course Haste, Regen, Pro/Shell, Cures and statis removers are the arsenal.

I always Haste tanks first and then melees. There are times I won't haste a mnk or sam if they are pulling too much hate with it.

I usually start a battle this way and proceed to keep a cycle through out the party:

1. Haste tank
2. Regen II tank >> Regen DD
3. Haste 1st DD
4. Regen 2 other DD
5. Top off cures
6. Haste 2nd DD
7. Rest
8. Haste (reapply regen if needed)
9. Rest
10. Pretty much start over the list depending on how many DDs or curing you have to do.

I find between Haste recast I can get two spells like regen or stoneskin before it's up again. Also you could get 2 or 3 ticks of MP if you haste are still on the party members.

Hard to convey in words exactly how it works, but thats the jist of it. Work with it and make it work for you. Of course don't forget your barspells if appropriate and keep an eye out for blindness, slow, paralyze and the such. If there is no rdm or blm, you may need to enfeeble as well.

Pld tank I keep at the 80% health line so they can cure themselves for hate, and DD I just use Regen on them unless they are indanger of getting killed. Or I'll use a smaller cure to bring them to a saftly zone and throw a regen on them.

Of course once you get flash you want to either alternate flash with a pld or flash when a nin tank is casting shadows. Becareful though, when you get that spell as it draws a lot of hate, so it's usefulness can't fully be used till you get -enmity from AF or blessed gear and tanks have more hate tools.


I think thats about all I can think of at the moment. Have fun. ^^

[Kitsune]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Thanks again for the assistance. I really appreciate the help and I am pretty sure I will get the hang of it once again, though I may do a mock party and mess with the keys a bit.

[lionx]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Personally i also macroed in Flash. Its about the same hate as Stun and if BLMs can use it, so can you with a competent tank. It will allow the tank to take less hits about 2-3 less. Use it wisely of course dont just use it at the start and expect nothing to happen. If time it right with a PLD it will mean saving lots of MP.

I forget when you get Crow Gear(didnt have it at the time) but when you do, you have even more reason to use Flash.

[Icemage]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Personally i also macroed in Flash. Its about the same hate as Stun and if BLMs can use it, so can you with a competent tank. It will allow the tank to take less hits about 2-3 less. Use it wisely of course dont just use it at the start and expect nothing to happen. If time it right with a PLD it will mean saving lots of MP.

I forget when you get Crow Gear(didnt have it at the time) but when you do, you have even more reason to use Flash.

He's not high enough level for Flash (45) or Crow gear (50), which is why I didn't mention them.


Icemage

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Probably the hardest skill to get back is MP conservation. Luckily, WHM has plenty of tools to optimize MP usage.

Depending on what the party is fighting, don't forget that Curaga can be more efficient (HP cured per MP spent) than any other spell in your current arsenal. You can save MP by letting front line jobs get beat up a little more, then fill most of them back to white or yellow HP all at once with a single Curaga.

Against most monsters, filling HP bar to full just isn't necessary, not even for tanks. (Spider is a very big exception.) With pullers who come in with low HP but are not likely to die (no AoE, good tanks, etc.), you can defer curing until it's convenient, and can use one or more Regen to fill up HP bar over the course of the battle. Toss out an extra Regen before battle ends, because the puller may run without waiting for the monster to die. BTW, It's perfectly fine to leave the melee folks in yellow if they are not in danger.

Strive to control your curing schedule so you can get in an extra tick of /heal on after battle starts and start /heal on before the battle ends when safe to do so. Any extra rest you can squeeze in between battles and during battles will go a long way toward preserving your MP pool.

Enfeebling the monster can save huge amount of curing MP--a lousy 1 proc Paralyze already saves nearly two Cure I's at your level. Make sure somebody in the party land good enfeebs, and land them fast. That means you have to forgo the extra tick of MP rest at the start of the battle if you are the main enfeebler as well as the healer, and get those Paralyze/Slow/Blind's in ASAP.

If fighting crawler type monster, use Haste to override the Slow status effect on party members instead of Erase. (Haste does not override spider type monsters' slow.) This will keep them from getting slowed again while Haste is in effect, and has the benefit of helping melee DD's do more damage.

* * *

One of the niftier thing I do on WHM and RDM/WHM is to intentionally move the monster off a (dying) tank and battered front line. When I sense the party may soon be in trouble (puller didn't check low HP and MP before shooting, or bringing links to a party with weak crowd control, usually), I make sure Stoneskin and Blink go up.

If things does go south, I toss out a Divine Seal + Curaga (II), and drop a Cure IV on the nearly dead tank. (If out of MP, use Benediction.) That's usually more than enough to take the monster from the tank--while the monster takes 3-4 hits to dismantle Blink and Stoneskin (and another 2-3 hits to kill me), there's usually enough time for the DD's to kill it or for the tank (who now has plenty of HP) to pry it off of me.

So, massive cure bomb, stall the monster with Blink and Stoneskin, and then hope for the best.

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

There's a bunch of useful stuff in the WHM Hints and Tips thread here.
Specifically at your listed level (WHM 42), you'll probably want the following spells macrod if available:
Cure I (for waking people up from Sleep effects, basically)
Cure III (this is your best Cure at this level)
Cure IV (avoid using this if possible, since at your current level it is inefficient and garners huge enmity - but sometimes you just have to).
Regen I (best bang for the buck, but not good for tanks that take a lot of damage)
Regen II (less efficient than Regen I, but still better than all Cures for tanks)
Erase
Silena
1 Barelement spell of your choice (based on what you're fighting)
Slow
Paralyze
Silence
Dia II
Haste
Plus a resting macro and an autotargetting macro ("/target <bt>")
If a Red Mage is in the party, you can probably leave off casting anything except Dia II at the start. For a non-Ninja tank, I'd open with Regen II on the tank, then go with Slow, Paralyze, then Dia/Dia II.
Don't forget to Haste your Ninjas!
Icemage

Ice basically nailed my macro set, with the exceptions:

I don't macro Cure I, it's so easy to get to from the magic menu I use that.

I only have my highest strength regen macroed, since Regen is a low priority spell anyway, I have time to type out /ma "Regen" <st> while casting something else or even just standing around.

Since my barspells change so much, I use the 'mobile macro' found through self-targeting and opening the magic palette, where I simply keep the highlighted spell as my barspell of choice.

Note that you can keep two different spells on this 'mobile macro' idea through the selftarget-open magic menu-highlighted spell and the control-M-highlighted spell method. I wouldn't reccomend this for any high-priority spells, but it's a nice way to keep two spells handy without wasting macro space.

On the other hand, I DO have protectra/shellra macroed, which is also not exactly OMG IMMEDIATE (but is in my book more important than barspells).

My advice on conserving MP:

1. Crank your hMP. Don't worry so much about raw MP+10 or 20 bonuses as hMP+1 or 2. They add up. My total gear/food hMP boost right now is in the twenties somewhere, then again, I have a Dark Staff to help that out, which you don't get till 51.

2. Invest in some MND+ gear, within moderation. I have never seen an advantage of having my mind cranked past, oh, about plus twenty or thirty...and for myself, personally, as a hume, I really did not begin bothering with mind bonuses until I got cure V and saw the amazing difference mind made to it (Cure V has a very different formula than the other cure spells though). Mind will help your enfeebles (I have almost always had a rdm doing those for me, which is why I never focussed on mind in the past) and Stoneskin the most, at this point. I'm not sure if it will in any way help Regen or Haste.

3. Regen (higher tiers of regen) all PLDs and DRKs. I'm not entirely sure what DRK does with their HP, but it just seems to leave, somehow, often in relation to souleater+weaponskill. Regen (one) all pullers. Regen melee as appropriate. There is a reason my enhancing magic caps long before my healing magic, every level. I Regen everything in sight, sometimes twice if I forget for sure if I have or have not regened a particular person who needs it. If I am putting my MP into super-stretch mode, I will not CURE cure melee unless they are in serious danger of eating dirt sandwiches, and then it is with cure 4, to pull hate and stoneskin tank while things straighten out.

4. Haste with discrimination. Haste is a requirement for nin. Haste is a good idea for PLD. Haste is NICE for a drk to have, but that is all. Haste is almost superfluous on a sam. Haste does not help a RNG with their ranged attacks (To my knowledge; if this is wrong someone correct me!) at all. If your PT is in the shitter and the NIN's haste wears off, RECAST! Unless it is seriously the choice between that 40 MP going into, say, an emergency teleport or something else of that kind of DIRE need, your nin WILL need utsuemi recast timers dropped as much as possible.
Another note, Haste is NOT utterly useless on a BLM. I never see people haste BLM's, but if you're, say, bursting skillchains with Ancient Magic, which has a hellacious recast timer, it can be a good idea to haste the BLM simply to cut that timer down. This most of all is a controversial move, especially when melee are NOT being hasted, so give this some thought before blindly hasting your blm.

5. Flash for your NIN when his HP goes down. If the NIN's HP is dropping, that means his shadows are down. Even with full HP, no NIN can recast if he is being hit and interrupted (and the argument about "nin should naturally evade most attacks anyway" is for another forum, not this one). Flash for your PLD when his flash wears off (that's when I do, anyway, it seems to last the longest then) or if he is casting/about to cast Cure 4 on himself.

5.1, special note about curing with PLD tanks: You should only cure your PLD to FULL when his MP is below 25% (Of course, if he keeps getting interrupted, by all means save his ass from being grease-splatted). Cures are a staple means for PLD's to hold hate, and by keeping your PLD on full HP, you are not only pulling his hate onto yourself, but depriving him of a way to regain that hate when the monster turns around to attack you. Also, if a random melee-ist pulls hate, often the PLD would prefer to cure that melee themselves, and take hate back that way. Bear in mind with PLD tanks that that PLD is your backup cure person, and more than that, he needs to be able to use that cure ability to maintain control of the monster.

6. Curaga IS a very efficient spell, IF it goes for full or nearly full effect on at least three people. It pulls a great deal of hate, so it is best to use at the absolute end of a fight, when people are grouped together tightly, not moving around and getting out of range, and hate has been solidly settled on people that are not yourself.

7. Stoneskin yourself. Good basic advice. I take it a very controversial step farther. I use my stoneskin to eat monster TP. I figured this one out in Cape Terrigan when my tanks kept getting owned my Screwdriver. Watching player TP reports generally gives a good gauge for how the TP is flowing, and I got fairly good at estimating when the terror pugils were about to weaponskill. I let the tank HP drop, ppiled on a cure 4 and a flash, BOOM. I have hate. The fish would blow it's weaponskill on me, of which the greater 90% of the damage was absorbed by stoneskin, and because the weaponskill connected, I lost the hate I had gained and the pugil returned to the designated 'tank' with great docility. If you learn to do this as well as I did, you can save a LOAD of curing MP as well as several heart attacks. On the other hand, I traded in a lot of EXP when this technique was still in the testing phase. I'm pretty sure Icemage is going to tell you this is a bad idea, but it worked for ME, so I'm gonna toss it out there for you to take or discard.

Coming up on basic advice,

Reraise should be up at all times, and I do mean ALL, whitemages move around a great deal, and in 10 minutes you can go from sitting safe and sound in your mo house crafting to out in the godforsaken wilderness being eaten alive by something big, ugly, and bad-smelling that you probably shouldn't have taken on without at least three level 75's helping out. Don't say "I'll cast reraise when and if I leave the city." Just...have it up. Macro it, maybe, I've been tempted.

Carry at LEAST half a stack of echo drops at all times. ALL times. ALWAYS. Add another stack if you are going to be in an area where monsters have known silence effects, like altepa desert, bibiki bay, caedevera mire, etc...

Carry silent oils. Yes, I know, whitemages have a sneak spell. I also know arcana aggro casting. Carrying silent oils has saved me, probably, 40k EXP over the course of my game. Prism powders, while also nice, are not quite so vitally important as sneak.

Stoneskin is a good thing to have up when travelling in aggro areas and anywhere where you might randomly decide to fight something. It doesn't cost much MP and while stoneskin is in effect, your chance of an emergency "oh god I aggroed, warp out now!" being interrupted is much diminished. For all that matter, protect and shell of your highest tier is same deal.

Urm...

I've probably already made a post so big the servers will choke on it, and I'm sure at least one thing I've said is wrong and someone is going to have to correct me on it, so I'll stop before I get my foot any farther into my mouth.

[Wander360]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Dear god my eyes are bleeding.

[Feenicks]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Great post with lots of good tips, but there are a few things I would challenge:

On the other hand, I DO have protectra/shellra macroed, which is also not exactly OMG IMMEDIATE (but is in my book more important than barspells).

I would disagree with this statement based on a few points. Barspells are brilliant at what they do, especially with merits and AF2 legs, and there are quite a few fights where the difference between having it up or not can mean many hundred points of damage. Also due to the almost non-existant casting time, having a Barspell macro means you can run in, cast it and be ready to cure again with minimal effort. The difference between having Protect on or off isn't really that noticable in my opinion ... Shell is brilliant but since both Protect and Shell have a 30 min duration they're hardly worth having a macro for in my opinion. If you can use Ctrl-M to get the barspell you want quickly, you can do the same for Prot/Shell every 30 mins.

3. Regen (higher tiers of regen) all PLDs and DRKs. I'm not entirely sure what DRK does with their HP, but it just seems to leave, somehow, often in relation to souleater+weaponskill. Regen (one) all pullers. Regen melee as appropriate. There is a reason my enhancing magic caps long before my healing magic, every level. I Regen everything in sight, sometimes twice if I forget for sure if I have or have not regened a particular person who needs it.

I agree absolutely here but do not underestimate the power of Regen I. A melee that took an AoE and still has white HP can do with a Regen I to just top them up, and it is for this reason that I have a Regen I and Regen II macro. Regen I is also the most efficient Regen spell in the game (especially with merits ... I have 4xRegen merits and my Regen I does 9HP/tic for 15MP ...), and if a tank requires Regen III to keep them afloat chances are the other /WHMs will be curing him as well so it's just a waste of MP unless you're telling people what to do.

If I am putting my MP into super-stretch mode, I will not CURE cure melee unless they are in serious danger of eating dirt sandwiches, and then it is with cure 4, to pull hate and stoneskin tank while things straighten out.

No, no, no. I'm sorry but this must be challenged. It is never, ever the role of the WHM to get hate when the tank gets dekked into orange/red HP. This is why someone else is /WAR or has an ability which can get the mobs attention while the tank gets him/herself together. Cure IV has its uses but no WHM should actively try to gain hate when the tank has a moment of trouble. If you really want to do something, use Flash instead. And again, if you're really in super-stretch MP mode and everyone is in trouble heal the ones which are most likely to get hate or who are on the brink of death.

Another note, Haste is NOT utterly useless on a BLM. I never see people haste BLM's, but if you're, say, bursting skillchains with Ancient Magic, which has a hellacious recast timer, it can be a good idea to haste the BLM simply to cut that timer down. This most of all is a controversial move, especially when melee are NOT being hasted, so give this some thought before blindly hasting your blm.

Very controversial advice - I can see the logic behind it but really, after two AMs the BLM will hardly have any MP left and if they really want to chain-nuke with AM then they can just use different elements - there's no call to use Flare or Freeze every single time. Save that 40MP for someone who really needs it.

6. Curaga IS a very efficient spell, IF it goes for full or nearly full effect on at least three people. It pulls a great deal of hate, so it is best to use at the absolute end of a fight, when people are grouped together tightly, not moving around and getting out of range, and hate has been solidly settled on people that are not yourself.

Yes and no - Curaga is very efficient but even if it appears your tank has a firm grip on hate, you have to remember that hate accumulates and you don't want to contribute unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Most situations which require Curaga are caused by AoEs which are preventable, either with a Barspell or Stun/Diamondhide/clever positioning/whatever, so the best method for dealing with situations which require Curaga is avoiding them in the first place, if possible. If not then try to split the healing with other WHMs or /WHMs rather than Curaga and take all the hate yourself.

7. Stoneskin yourself. Good basic advice. I take it a very controversial step farther. I use my stoneskin to eat monster TP. I figured this one out in Cape Terrigan when my tanks kept getting owned my Screwdriver. Watching player TP reports generally gives a good gauge for how the TP is flowing, and I got fairly good at estimating when the terror pugils were about to weaponskill. I let the tank HP drop, ppiled on a cure 4 and a flash, BOOM. I have hate. The fish would blow it's weaponskill on me, of which the greater 90% of the damage was absorbed by stoneskin, and because the weaponskill connected, I lost the hate I had gained and the pugil returned to the designated 'tank' with great docility. If you learn to do this as well as I did, you can save a LOAD of curing MP as well as several heart attacks. On the other hand, I traded in a lot of EXP when this technique was still in the testing phase. I'm pretty sure Icemage is going to tell you this is a bad idea, but it worked for ME, so I'm gonna toss it out there for you to take or discard.

Controversial should be in bold there. Again, WHM should never, ever take hate. If you can get handle it ok, go for it, but taking hate and having a TP move eaten by Stoneskin, then having the main take voke it back off you still leaves you at the threshold of gaining hate again. If you do anything slightly out of line then you're going to get the crap knocked out of you with Stoneskin down and have to waste MP curing yourself.

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

~~Snipped for size~~

A few rebuttal points, because this could be an interesting debate;

Re: Prot/shell macro VS barspell macro, at level 41, which the OP stated themselves to be at, things like AF, relic, Blessed Briault (Which does fantabulous things to barspells) and most ESPECIALLY merits, are still a distant dream. From what I remember of leveling in the forties, there really was not a lot of mob weaponskills with serious elemental attributes that barspells could help. On the other hand, the difference between having protect up and not having protect up is something I seem to remember being rather marked. I would agree, at level 70+, especially in sky fighting gods with extreme elemental attributes, barspells are very arguably as important or more important than protect. But midgame is a rather different story.


Re: Regen, I agree completely with what was said, with the one qualifying point...
"...unless you're telling people what to do..."
Communication in party is also something that should not be underestimated, especially between support classes. When in doubt, say something, make a request (Do not demand, it doesn't work very well, take my word for it!), ask a question. Regen 1 is definitely the (second) most efficent MP-to-HP spell in the game, with the possible trump of stoneskin...which segues into a later point I will make.


Re: Never the role of the WHM to pull hate. No, not really, on the other hand, if I can sacrifice a few and preferably not ALL of my HP to give a NIN some time to put up utsuemi or a PLD to get off a high-powered cure spell without interruption, I am not afraid to step up and do so. My theory here is, of all the members of the party, I am the one with re-raise up, and I am the one that can function most efficently while weakened. I am also superbly confident in my own ability to control hate...which again segues into a later point.

Of course, I also am not really bothered by the thought of losing a few k exp here and there. I don't see the occasional buffer-shortening as a bad thing, just an annoying one.


Re: Hasting the BLM. I couldn't agree more, this is not a move for EVERY party. On the other hand, I have been in one or two parties where this sped up skillchains more than hasting one more melee had done. It is an idea to be kept in mind for parties with unusual builds.


Re: Curaga, I agree, also, this could be used as an argument for macroing barspells in the place of prot and shell (I have never macroed curaga of any strength, personally)


Re: Stoneskin/taking hate, and generally the whole source of my controversial playing;
Stoneskin is the most efficient spell I have for conserving MP. I can eat upwards of two hundred points of damage with stoneskin, infact, I believe my stoneskin started at two hundred odd damage and has since grown to nearly three hundred. It's been awhile since I did the calculation to figure out exactly how much dmg it absorbs, but it easily surpasses even regen 1 in efficiency IF I use it. On the other hand, regen 1, and 2-3 as well, draw very minimal amounts of hate. With my strategy of regen-curing and stoneskin-tanking, I can control how much hate I collect to an incredibly fine-tuned degree. For me, it is actually more MP efficent to pull hate now and again and use stoneskin to negate the damage than to cure OR regen a 'backup tank.'
Of course, this is very dependent on what kind of mobs you fight and what weaponskills they use. It's been a long time since I've used this technique, primarily because of the new expansion areas and everyone being convinced colibris and imps are the way to go...neither one of which I want anywhere near me with any amount of TP. Echo drops are expensive on Midgard, yo.

[Feenicks]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

Can't really agree with you on Prot/Shell making a marked change at mid-range levels. At 40 you'll be using Prot II and at 47 you get Prot III which increase Defence by 25 and 40 respectively. I'm not exactly sure how much Defence your average tank at Lv40-50 has so I'm not really in any position to say whether the difference is negligible or not but I don't remember it making a significant difference back when I leveled WHM (which was a long time ago, granted). Either way, I still think that having a macro for a spell which you use once every 30 mins is a waste of a macro slot. But to be honest, it's not like you need to conserve your macro slots that badly in the 40s anyway, so whatever you feel is best.

Regarding WHM taking hate and Stoneskin I still think Flash is the better option rather than getting the monster to actually turn on you. It's also slightly more MP efficient at 25MP vs 29MP for Stoneskin (and 88MP for Cure IV to get hate) and has a near-instant casting time.

Let's look at it a little closer though - according to my calculations (and the formula at ffxiclopedia.org) a WHM at Lv41 will cast a Stoneskin that can absorb about 100 damage with capped Enhancing Magic (117@Lv41) and assuming about 45 base MND. Which is probably about two non-critical hits from your average IT monster at that level. If you only need to keep it on you for those two hits, then this will work wonderfully but once that Stoneskin goes down you're in trouble. Based on that I would be more comfortable casting Flash but as we all know experience is different to theory.

Whether or not you're bothered by losing XP is entirely up to you but my personal preference is for no deaths as opposed to players sacrificing themselves because they don't mind XP loss ... this is purely based on the downtime associated with a death in the party. Again, I'm talking mid-levels here ... it's true that at Lv75 WHM is one of the best jobs which can retain their function even when weakened so death isn't that crippling but I still hold the opinion that no death is better than death. And if we're talking Lv75, let's keep Martyr in mind as well.

Although, your talk of Stoneskin tanking got me thinking - it's something I'd much rather see an RDM do since they have Fast Cast, Gravity etc.

I applaud you for making this work for yourself and I'm glad that you recognise it as controversial and that you're not trying to preach it as gospel. Different methods work for different people and there have been times where my methods have been criticised so to the OP and anyone else reading, try anything you hear of and go with what you think works best.

[Irisjir Callard]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

At the level I first got Flash, alas I can't remember which level that was because midrange WHM was a long time ago for me as well, I didn't know how to use it properly. Infact, I don't think I began seriously using flash on a minute-ly basis until my sixties, where it was honestly one of my favorite hate control tools, and I wasn't really using it for the blind effect at all. If I had a complete understanding of Flash at the level I got it, I"m sure I would have taken a very different path through my levels.

And yes, a RDM would be IDEAL for this kind of 'momentary tank' since they can stank not only stoneskin, but phalanx, and their mind bonuses as well as their enhancing magic skill is usually at the same level as WHM's, if not a little higher.

However, I've never seen a redmage actually step up and DO IT.

And here is what it all boils down to, if someone else isn't doing something, I will step up and do it. I have had parties where everyone rolled their eyes and said "Well the only way /I/ can pull is with voke, lol!" and there was so much huffing and hawing about pulling that I finally started pulling with Dia II. This was another relatively efficent use of stoneskin, although here as well I think a redmage would have done better. It also shot to hell my rest time, which sucked immensely badly. I had to completely rework my strategy for that party around the fact that I had to pull or nobody else would do it.

The point of the anecdote being, there are a lot of times where a whitemage can do something that COULD INDEED be done better by someone else (magicbursting is another shining example) but no-one is stepping up to do it.


As far as prot-shell making a difference, 40 defense is a nice boost even at 75, I would definitely not see party members voluntarily saying "Nah, don't bother with that" at half that level. Alternately, prot-shell is something useful in all situations, I don't have to stop what I'm doing to re-write a macro or rummage through my spell list. Yes, I might only use prot/shell every 30 minutes in party, but how often do I use, oh, Regen III out of party? Or any tier of regen, for that matter. I drop cures on people as I run past, but I almost never ever regen myself.

But fishing on the ferry? Oh it's getting dark. Maybe pirates will pop. Control-4 and my two mainstay buffs take care of themselves so, incase Blackbeard should appear, all I need is stoneskin up and everything else I can take care of midbattle. Or perhaps I'm running around in arrapagio reef for some reason, like temporary insanity. Oh! I might aggro! A happy little defense boost might make the difference between a safe warp out and an interrupt that leads to death. And of course, when I'm leveling my NPC, who has def - 873 and I have to tank or else he gets raped, it's again convenient to have prot and shell take care of themselves.

It's simply convenient to have it macroed, and if I ever move into having multiple pallettes of macros for whitemage, I'll probably demote it off the main macro (As well as warp, which is also currently in my main macro set, let me tell you having THAT in a macro is pretty posh). But for now, even at my level, I don't desperately need that macro slot enough to replace it with something else.

And you've just given me a marvelous idea, which I am going to go make a thread about.

[Jethreal]

Re: Back into the game - WHM Boot Camp

I remember going back to a job I'd left for 6 months,

My only tip, when getting that first pt, advise the leader/group that you've been away a while and ask them to take it slow for the first few mobs. Everyone will be much happier adjusting their tempo and slowly bringing you up to speed than if someone dies shooting for chain 5.