White Mage Guide by Zero

About this Guide Originaly writen back when I was in the 40s (I'm 75 now), this guide was originaly writen because there was no guide for White Mage on the site it was originaly on. As it stands now, I write it because it feels good to share my thoughts and experiences with others. If you find this helpful in any way possible, that's enough for me. For the new White Mage A basic primer. Skip this if you've played plenty already. Cures A White Mage is a medic. This is what the job does best. With access to unique spells such as Cure V and Regen III, cures for status ailments and even the ability to recover others and yourself from K.O./Death, this job is rarely outclassed in a defensively supportive sense. Enhancements. Area of Effect protection spells enhance the defense of party members from straight damage and helps when dealing with status effects. Something as simple as Shellra V can reduce magic damage taken by roughly 25% and a haste spell can increase attack speed by 15%. Enfeebles. A subskill that is rarely counted on from White Mages. Spells such as Paralyze, Slow, Dia and Silence fall under this category. (Stub, Expand later) Banishment. The Banish line of spells are very effective on the undead. They increase the ammount of damage players do to the undead because of damage type resistance. (More later)

General Tips on Playing

• Work Quickly & Efficently

(Rewrite somehow) Speed is part of the escense of a White Mage. If you don't work fast enough, Player Characters will die under your feet. MP is never in infinite supply, so you must make the most of what you have. That being said, it's a good idea to keep track of caps on the cure spells and when they become more efficent than the previous spell. The Regen line of spells is much more MP-efficient than Cures. As soon as you get it at level 21, Regen cures up to 120 HP for 15 MP, and generates much less hate than a Cure II. As a reference, here are the caps when a cure becomes more efficent than the previous/soft cap of the actual spell before MND modifiers:
Cure: 0/30
Cure II: 90/90
Cure III: 173/180
Cure IV: 345/360
Cure V: 583/720

• Skilling up

When you're waiting for a boat, party, ship or anything, then would be a good time to fire off redundant spell casting on yourself or the people around you. Enhancing magic is really tough for a White Mage to level, so using any opportunity that you have while standing around to put some buffer into this will increase your effectiveness in any situation. For Divine and Enfeebling Magic throw in Flash once a fight if it's safe and always throw in a Dia varrient, while casting Paralyze, Slow (and Silence if it's called for) will help but only if it sticks. Another problem I run into is Healing Magic skill, but with Besieged, this has become easy. Paticularly in Level 4s and beyond, generals get heavily attacked and keeping them alive can be your priority. This will give you massive healing magic skill ups as well as bonus EXP and Imperial Standing. Nothing like a win/win situation right?

Magic Spells and Abilities

• Cures

• Barelement

• Barstatus

There's a lot of confusion as to what this is supposed to do. What it does is not enhance resist rates against a paticular status, but rather it reduces the effective duration of said status. Say Mandragoras in the Jungles are really happy with you and like to spam Dream Flower (AoE sleep). Using Barsleepra beforehand can effectively reduce how long the party stays asleep. While this isn't the best example (you should be out of range of dream flower anyway), in heavier events where things are harder to avoid, such as Dynamis where Scorpion pets have a Petrifyga spell. The range on this is massive anyway and you're unlikely to avoid it, so using barpetra on your party members as they are being pulled can help prevent a long idle period.

• Regen

Often do this before you cure someone. It restores more HP for the MP and generates way less Emnity towards you. This isn't always fast enough though and when someone takes a hit and still has enmity control due to overdamage or whatever and curespam may be more required. It's really hard to describe excactly when to use this, but it's usualy a good idea to perpetualy have this up on a tank if you are in his party.

• Haste:

What it does is reduce attack delay and spell recast timers by 15%. For tanks, this is a wonderful addition by allowing their main enmity building abilities and/or main damage midigation tools to be used more often. For DDs, this allows them to hit faster, but since it's not an actual delay reduction in the truest sense of the word, the TP gained per hit does not go down or up at all, though overall TP gained over time does marginaly increase. You can also use this on yourself to reduce the recast timers of your spells. On a similar note, there's a great deal of gear that a White Mage can wear that provides "Haste +%". Any piece of armor that gives this effect acts just like the spell with a couple differences, one being that it's always on and the other being that it stacks with the spell and other pieces of haste armor. With regular blessed gear, a walahara turban and the spell, it's a 30% haste in total.

• Divine Seal and Veil

Divine Seal's help text is a little vague. What it does is double the potency of your next cure spell which can take a Cure IV at 380 HP restored to 760HP. A slightly more common use for this in terms of straight curing is with curaga spells since it has the largest noticable effect. At level 50 when Divine Veil (it's a job trait) becomes available, seal adds a bonus to status cures (erase included) as well by making them area of effect to ten meters around your target (it does not have to be you as the caster to take effect). This becomes the most common use of divine seal after 50. The effect itself lasts one minute and is expended after the first spell is cast.

• Benediction

At the early levels this is a hate monger. When enmity down (for you) and up (for the tanks) gear becomes available as well as a general increase in skill, this becomes more useful and less of a deathwish. It instantly recovers all HP for anyone around you plus removes all negitive status effects at once. Against NMs that like to use multiple effects in one attack, like Bad Breath, this can save you from having to cast 20 or so spells to fix everybody and everything. Highly effective towards endgame.

Your First Levels 1-10

Now depending on your cash flow, this will be either really easy or really difficult. My first recomendation is you lose the Onion Rod and get yourself a Maple Wand. It's slightly faster, more painful and gives you an extra point in Mind. Your starting RSE will last you a good while, so don't worry about changing that for something else right away. Obtaining the wand can be done in the weapons shop of your nation. You may also want to pick up a Lauan Shield to give yourself a slight defensive edge by buying it or doing the quest if you're in San d'Oria. Next you should be thinking spells. If you start the game as a White Mage, you should have Cure in your inventory, if not, go pick it up at the local magic shop. You should also pick up a list of spells before your first fights. Dia, Poisona and Protect/Protectra should be on the list of things to get, while Banish should be picked up if you have the money and the rest aren't as important at this point in the game but good to have.

Go out and kill off little weak things just a tad outside the entrance to your nation. Do not rely on cure to win you a fight for it is not as good as you may think when you start out (recovers about 10HP without a skill buff, also you will be interrupted easily.). At level 3 you can throw up Dia for youself which will make taking out mobs slightly easier but again, don't rely on your spells to win you a fight.

When you hit level 5, it's time to change your weapon. You can sell the Maple Wand you have for you will get a slightly better one later. If you're in Bastok there's an NPC in Bastok Markets that will sell a Bronze Hammer, otherwise you'll have to go for it in the auction house. Needless to say this isn't the only option because it may be rather expensive or you're in the wrong nation to begin with. If you choose not to go with the hammer, you should pick up an Ash Pole (not Ash Staff) to make getting to level 10 easier. The extra damage is useful when soloing but when partying you'll probably never see the light of auto-attacking, so don't worry too much about it. Get back out and slowly make your way away from your nation, wiping out anything in your way to get to level 10. From there you should be in good shape for your next challange.

Your First Party 10-20

Great. Now the fun begins. If you're a new guy, as in this is the first job you've taken past 10, do not be the party leader. At this point you should carry a set of regular Doublet gear and a Willow Wand; you don't need to replace your Lauan Shield just yet. Also you should have Barwatera, Barfira and a Yew Wand for later. Put your party flag up and wait in Valkurm Dunes for now. When you get into a party just follow the leader around for now and hope he knows what he or she is doing.

When you finaly get settled into a camp you'll probably be taking on lizards. Since you don't get Barfira untill level 17, there's nothing to worry about yet. Sit (not literaly) in the back and watch the rest of the party get settled and ready. Your job is very straightforward, but I never like to call the job easy and don't let anyone ever tell you that it is. At this point about all you're going to be doing is casting Cure over and over. Cure II will not be at full potency for a while, (unless you played Red Mage for a good while before this) so using it isn't excactly a great idea. Eventualy you will be lead around to fighting goblins, clippers then finaly pugils. The last two will present you against opponents that use water type TP attacks so this is when you get the chance to use Barwatera to reduce damage, but if you fight goblins past 17 you can use Barfira to reduce the damage of Bomb Toss. At 20 I recomend you get your sub job and level that up before moving on to Qufim Island.

The Break Point 1-20

Now it's time to go with sub jobs. Personaly, I did Red Mage as my sub first and brought that to about 17. Red or Black are the ideal choices as a sub and if you have it available you can use Summoner.

Where to from here?

There are a million and one things to do from here. I'd like to leave most of it to find out yourself. Be sure to get as many magic scrolls as you need if you can aford them or better yet quest them.

Merits

Ok. I'm going to get into some White Mage specific merits now and express a few opinions on.
Group 1:

• Divine Seal Recast -20 Seconds: I don't use the seal very much. I don't find this very useful.
• Cure Cast Time -4%: This is one of the staples of your job and having it about 20% faster when fully loaded is really awesome. When you're soloing you have a somewhat larger margin for error coupling this with Fast Cast III or whatever bonuses you have. Max this out.
• Bar Spell Effect +2: To explain barelement spells, they increase resistance rates against a paticular element. That is, if you have 120 fire resist and something casts Fire IV on you, you have a strong chance of flat out resisting the spell which will minorly or drasticly reduce the damage of the spell. In contrast, Magic Defense (such as bonus from your job trait or Shell) flat out reduces damage weather you resist it or not. When this is fully merited it provides a bonus to barspells by giving them a 10% (2%/modlevel) shell-like effect, which reduces the damage dealt by that paticular element. When spells are doing upwards of 1000 damage a strike, 10% can make a large difference. I don't know if or how this affects Barstatus spells.
• Banish Effect +2 Damage and Defense Down: Banish is best reserved for fighting the undead. Granted, not every party will be doing so. I'd steer away from this.
• Regen Effect +1/tick: Grants a bonus 1HP for every tick that regen is active that you have casted. When maxxed out with merits and a Cleric's Briault Regen (the original one) recovers about 480HP. Personaly, I have this maxxed out. I like to use Regen a lot. In endgame this could loose a lot of it's usefulness if you're not actualy in the party with those taking the heat. A lot of times you may find yourself not even in the alliance who's really fighting the big enemy, assigned to maybe one or two people.

Group 2:

• Martyr: I'm not too sure about this one. Galka and Elvaan could probably give this some consideration, but I have yet to come across an ideal situation where it was useful. I suggest skipping this for Shellra V.
• Devotion: Pour the twelve merits you need to max this out. This is a really useful job ability. I can recover almost 300MP of anyone in about a second. In a pinch or even if you just want to keep chugging away with less downtime you can seriously use this new ability. I actualy thought this was going to suck when they introduced the concept, but it's grown on me and I've been able to use it quite effectively.
• Protectra V: Protect IV is +55 Def, Protect V is +60 Def. It looks flashy and 3D. Five Defense is not a whole lot of a bonus between IV and V, so you may want to avoid this for another merit into Shellra V.
• Shellra V: Signifigantly better than Shell IV, this will be probably the first or second merit II you get. It provides I belive an 8% increase to Magic Defense over Shell IV and a .2% bonus for each additional modlevel past the first one. Combined with a boosted Barelement spell (with merits) it can provide at least a 35% damage reduction.

Other Party Roles

Melee

By popular demand! Just kidding. This is the section dedicated to how I play the job.
A word of warning: This may get you kicked from parties. According to many this is not the "right" way to play the job.
There are a few questions I ask the party before I get into it and melee. First one, is there a Red Mage? If not, skip this. Is there a major Damage Dealer that's also pulling? If so, you may want to consider pulling yourself instaid. Are mobs going to spank you with Area of Effect things? If so, you will become an incredible hinderance instaid. Are you/is the party comfortable with it? If so, do it.
Your gear might have to change a bit, so swap some Mind Gear for Strength (Rings, Earrings, Belt, Back) Accuracy (Neck, Head, Belt, Body) and maybe some attack if you can aford it (Shield). You will want to bring food too, depending on what you're fighting. If you're hitting well, go for something in the attack and strength sector. If you're not, sushi for accuracy will do better for you. Knowing Black Halo is good too. While it's not as powerful as Hexa Strike, finishing a Light Skillchain with it typicaly outdamages Hexa Strike by itself. (Same with some Monks, if you see them do a Dragon Kick after a Hexa Strike of your own, that's why.)
Make sure other things are in order before the club comes off your waist (Protect, Shell, Haste, Stoneskin, Etc.) and jump in the fray. You may have equipment swaps in your macros, so "locking" (set an item in your Bazzar for a bizzare ammount of money, will prevent it from being used in your macros and nobody will buy it.) your gear is advisable. Hexa Strike is your ideal weapon skill. It's six hits of damage plus modifiers and critical hits. Stasticaly, this is even better than Rampage (in terms of modifiers and hits). Blessed gear is handy for the haste while your Healer's Mitts can provide a punch to your Hexas. I personaly haste myself when I'm in the mode, but I typicaly have to split the job with the Red Mage so we can get everyone. (3 players each). I'd say try this out and find your groove. It may take a few parties to find it, but you shouldn't do too bad if your head is in the game.

Puller

In some parties, paticular "TP Burn parties" as they are called and you have a Red Mage, you might be a puller in addition to a healer. It's really simple to start, but you should get a Level 70 Anti-Beastman Chakram (Mamoolbane, Trollbane or Lamiabane) so you don't have to waste MP on it (Throwing skill is not required, you don't actualy have to hit the mob to get it to follow you). Try to perpetualy have stoneskin up and use your Chakram to do the dirty work. When the current mob has only, oh, eyeballed 10% of it's life left, go find another one and bring that back. As long as your party is in good shape when you leave them for the next mob, you shouldn't have too much of an issue.

Gear

Moved to a subpage.

Statistics

This a list of stats and how it affects you.

Primary

Mind: Makes all of your healing spells more potent and even exceed their soft cap. This should be one of your largest concerns, but you may want to rule this out in favor of more MP. This also helps with White Magic type Enfeebling Magic and can make your Banish spells very potent.
MP: Gives you access to more spells before you're forced to rest and in a heated battle can make all the difference. You may want to boost this item more than Mind. However, if you go below your max MP you should switch to Mind to get the most out of what remains.
Enmity: Healing generates high Enmity and can cause huge stress on a tank if you don't have the proper equipment to constrict it. You should focus on Enmity down gear towards the end of your time on Qufim Island, for it will help keep hate where it needs to be on the tank.
MP Recovered While Healing: When you're in a party you'll run into the problem of not getting enough MP back when you rest. Clear Mind only can help so much and you don't excactly have the greatest MP pool. Using equipment to beef up the amount of MP you get while healing (such as the Pilgrim's Wand, Seer's Tunic and later the Dark Staff) will help keep the party from having too much downtime because of you, no matter the level. Having a great and beefy set of armor explicitly for this purpose is a great help.

Melee

Statistics for the melee White Mage.
Accuracy: A B+ in club only goes so far. Make sure you have plenty of this.
Haste: Since you're probably wearing blessed gear anyway, you will get a lot of milage from it from a melee perspective as well. You hit faster.
Strength: Fueling this statistic will increase your damage potential per strike. It is unfortunately one of the only ways to pump up our damage because of our clear lack of Attack Gear. Swap some of this, accuracy and Mind in for Weapon skills in place of haste gear.
Attack: Not much of this exsists unfortunately. Get what you can though.
Dexterity: If you're using a staff, pour into this instaid of accuracy since it adds one accuracy per dexterity for two handed weapons only.

Unneccessary

HP: Not really a concern, but nice to have. Commonly sacrificed for much more MP. When you get to 75 and get the merit ability Devotion, having a few pieces of HP gear would be nice. Even something as simple as the Walahara Turban can give a bonus 7 MP and with enough, devotion can break 400 in some cases.
Intelligence: Affects Black Magic to an extent, so you don't need this.
Vitality: This statistic will help keep you alive. Boost it if it's available, but don't go out of your way for it.
Agility: Again, nice to have to avoid hits, but you're not likely to be the threat attacked primarily.
Charisma: As far as I know, it doesn't affect a White Mage at all. There is some debate going around that this affects magic accuracy, but hasn't been signifigantly tested.

Food

One of the best is Roast Mushroom which offers +3 MND, +10 MP and +2 HMP at the cost of 1 STR and doesn't seem to be too drasticly expensive. Something that's good for MP alone is Marron Glace which provides up to 85 Extra MP and 1 HMP and lasts a whooping three hours. Since the ingredients are cheap, this item is usualy found between only 5 and 10K, even on Fairy. An easy and inexpensive choice at any level is Ginger Cookie which gives +5 MP Recovered While Healing and when bought from the traveling band usualy keeps the cost down low. The best food for a White Mage is also the most expensive. Mushroom Stew provides an impressive 40 MP, 4 MND, 4HMP and -4 Emnity and lasts for a good three hours.

Sub-Jobs for all ocassions

Here are the big three.

Black Mage

The standard. Provides a good amount of extra MP and extra Enfeebling Magic spells. Average choice for new adventurers and high levels alike. Gives the spells Warp and Escape, the job ability Elemental Seal and the traits Conserve MP and Magic Attack Bonus round out the best parts of this sub job choice. Elemental Magic is generaly useless when only the sub job has it, so avoid using it.

Red Mage

Provides less of an MP boost than Black Mage, but provides slightly more Mind and the skill Fast Cast to help the White Mage in curing after a rough TP attack. Also gives access to one Red Mage only spells Gravity, Dispel and the En- line of spells. Uncommon choice, but a great choice all the same. As with Black Mage, avoid Elemental Magic.

Summoner

Provides a massive MP pool to work with as well as the largest boost in MND. This, coupled with Area of Effect buffs such as Aerial Armor and Frost Spikes, as well as Auto Refresh makes this a more than ideal choice for a sub job. Most enfeebles will rarely work and using the avatars to do damage will only compare to a level 37 attacking a level 90. It doesn't work that well.
Information on other subjobs may be found here.

Related Links

• White Mage Guide by Zero/Other Subjobs
• White Mage Guide by Zero/Equipment