I have a quote I use on FFXI forums from Karinya of Carbuncle server:

WHM are overspecialized in defense. Like PLD, they do better in a place where mobs actually fight back.

When The Treasures of Aht Urghan started getting heavily utilized, the fortunes of Paladins and White Mages went down.  Aht Urghan areas (land of Utsusemispam) changed XP/Merit parties by introducing areas where dedicated tanks and healers are more of a detriment than an asset.   In these areas, the wimpy monsters are killed faster and do less damage than their counterparts outside of ToAU zones; so the likes of Summoners, Red Mages, Scholars, and even Corsairs and Bards subbing White Mage are able to handle all the healing duties as well as their own traditional role.

This, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing.  Both Paladins and White Mages can change their play style in order fit into the new dynamic.  The bad side to this is that I’ve seen many a player come to the conclusion that Red Mages, Scholars, and Corsairs/Bards subbing White Mage are the best healers — period.  I’ve seen it expressed in many linkshells (including lolCats).

This is fucking moronic.

When you need to move a medium cardboard box of stuff across town, you don’t need a diesel-electric locomotive.  If you really wanna go overboard, you can use a diesel tractor-trailer.  A car or pick-up will do just fine, and are probably the better tools for the job.  However, if someone wanted to make the argument that a car [or pick-up] is the best cargo transporter, period, they’d be labeled a ‘tard.

White Mages’s are to healers what the locomotive is to cargo transport.

Through job-specific equipment and access to Cure V, Curaga IV, and Regen III, a White Mage is unequivocally the most MP efficient healer in the game, with the best enmity control of any other healing capable job.  That means, in a nutshell, White Mages continue to be the top dog.

Back when I first started playing FFXI, the game was hard.  Not just a little, but really hard.  Old school, grind you into mush, hard.  SE softened it up a bit, and the game suddenly turned into a fun challenge.  Combat was interesting because monsters were hard, and the skill-chain & magic burst system provided a deeper interactive feel.

Then World of Warcraft (WoW) came along.

Don’t get me wrong, I played WoW and enjoyed it.  What WoW did was provide players a MMO didn’t need to be a grindfest, or a LFP time suck.  Every day Joes could play WoW and make it to level cap solo, or in group.  People flocked to it as a game and social point — every other MMO suffered with a population dip because of WoW.

SE reacted, in part, by engineering to the Treasures of Aht Urghan (ToAU) expansion so that FFXI could offer some of the same softer gameplay features that WoW offered it’s audience.  That was shame, because FFXI’s strength was in the deep, more complex game play.   Beyond that,  ToAU completely unbalance the game.

While reading the Dream’s in Vana’diel forums I came a thread which starts:

I’ve been playing for almost 2 months and in my entire time I’ve only seen one skillchain, and I often hear posts saying things like “I haven’t seen a skillchain in months.”

I’m curious why? It seems like it’d be a fun and tactical part of battle, but I don’t see them used, are they only used at higher levels, or is there a reason why people aren’t doing them? Maybe it’s because I usually play backline jobs?

Here are some of the best replies:

Y’see, before that expansion was released, Skillchain/Magic Burst parties were common at all levels of play, while the “TP Burn” play style and mentality were limited to King Ranperre’s Tomb, behind the Moongates in Ro’Maeve, or in the deepest reaches of Tu’Lia. Everyone built parties around finding the proper jobs that wielded the correct weapons that made the right Skillchains that the Black Mages in the parties (yes, BLMs got parties back then) could properly Magic Burst off of, for maximum damage on pre-determined camps.

Then ToAU came along, and more specifically, Colibri and Imps.

Today’s generation of DD, a lot of the old school stuff is lost, like back-up tanking, link handling, line up of SATA, Skillchain, several capped weapon skill for SC, alternative tanking gear, pulling without killing the party, etc.

For a DD, the first step of SC is report TP consistently:

/p TP @ <tp>

Sigh… it used to be very fun when exp. as DD, instead seeing those who draw the weapon out and then watch TV.

I really wish S.E. would step back, look at ToAU and see it for the mistake it was.  I feel badly for all the new players that I see in FFXI, they’ll never know the deeper aspects of the game that make it so much better than many other MMO’s.

Fortunately, I have my static.  We Skill chain still, and it’s a valuable asset.  If we had a Black Mage, we’d certainly Magic Burst too.  But we’re a mutant group of players;  we actually fight things that are hard, use subjobs that compliment our main job, and gear ourselves for our role.

So I just came a cross sort-kinda-recent’ish set of experiments done on enmity generation.

It would seem that my notion of enhancing my damage as a Paladin is both on target, and not as critical as I originally thought.  I’ve come to this decision based on the simplification that curing myself allows for constant hate, and provoke is an ablative hate.

The above discussions also explain why it’s so bloody hard for me to control hate — particularly with Ardra and Darrian.  The act of pulling grants the puller constant hate advantage — roughly one-half the amount Provoke provides.  Since Ardra or Darrian are often the pullers in our parties (because they’re highly competent), they’ve started out with a huge amount of constant enmity, and just build it up with their spike damage.

Now that I have access to Cure III, if I can convince Red magi, Scholars, and Dancers to not heal me until after I’ve used Cure III, things should get a little easier. It would seem my pre-Flash opening strategy to keep hate off the big DD’ers is Banish, Provoke, Attack, Cure III.

I just need to work on my timing with Banish, and up my Divine skill.  I’ll also need to keep my swords at minimum delay to offset the big damage spikes Samurai and Thief players can cause.