Present in the series since A Realm Reborn, White Mage is the traditional healer fans could expect to see in Final Fantasy XIV. There are four healer jobs available, each with very different kits, and even though White Mage has problems that other jobs don’t, this is still a solid pick. It's good job to start with if you’re just learning the ways of end-game healing in FFXIV.
When compared to other games, healers in FFXIV might take new players by surprise considering how dealing damage during a fight is as important as healing. The design of many end-game encounters in FFXIV forces players to maximize their damage output as a party and healers need to carry their weight when it comes to depleting the boss’s HP. To assist you in the mission of being a healer in FFXIV, we’ve prepared this rundown covering the FFXIV White Mage rotation, openers, and more. Be sure to check our other rotation guides for Dancer and Monk in case you want to try different roles in a party.
For a full explanation of the job, check out the full White Mage job guide.
The basics of the White Mage job
As a healer, White Mage has a distinct identity when compared to other jobs because of how this job’s healing skills work. Most abilities in the White Mage’s kit focus on performing direct healing, recovering considerable chunks of HP individually or for the whole group. This design constitutes the White Mage as a responsive type of healer, which means that, in most scenarios, you need to wait for the enemies’ attacks to hit to heal the party. You can’t prevent damage from happening like Scholar or Sage with their shields. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t play White Mage focusing on being less responsive. As you learn a fight, you’ll know all the incoming damage situations will unfold. By timing a cast of a skill to finish a little bit after the damage came in, you keep the whole party topped up.
In its most basic form, a White Mage's job is to keep the party healed up. In content with eight players, the White Mage is charged with healing whatever the shield healer couldn't prevent.
White Mage Rotation
In general, healers in FFXIV don’t have long sequences of skills to use as their damage rotation. Even so, it’s your job to cause as much damage as possible while trying to keep your group alive.
When playing White Mage, against a single target, you should use Glare III and Dia, which leaves a DoT on the enemy. Assize is a healing oGCD that not only recovers MP but also deals damage to enemies around you. Focus on weaving it between Glare III casts and use it as soon as it's off cooldown. Afflatus Misery is the other oGCD you have to weave between the sequences of Glare III. Lastly, you should always use Presence of Mind on cooldown which reduces spell cast time, recast time, and auto-attack delay by 20 percent for 15 seconds. When dealing with groups of three or more enemies, you should focus on using Holy, Assize, and Afflatus Misery.
White Mage burst window
In FFXIV, burst windows – also called two-minute windows – are moments in a fight where the party can align cooldowns and use all the strong skills they have. Just like the general damage rotation, the White Mage burst window is pretty straightforward. You will cast Glare III and keep refreshing Dia. Pop Presence of Mind which should be coming off cooldown the time the burst window begins. It's important to have Assize and Afflatus Misery ready to use for your burst window as well.
White Mage Opener
As a White Mage, you can find more than one option of openers to run in an encounter. The one listed is better for beginners and periods of progression in end-game fights because it doesn’t require using Swiftcast. This skill is helpful to quickly raise allies when learning mechanics.
- Tincture of Mind (-3 seconds)
- Glare III (-1.5 seconds)
- Dia
- Glare III
- Glare III
- Presence of Mind
- Glare III
- Assize
- Glare III
White Mage Healing skills priority and Healing Gauge
As a healer, you have at your disposal a variety of skills to keep your group members alive. Knowing which one to prioritize in an encounter makes all the difference. This reasoning is relevant regardless of the healer job you’re playing. There are, however, particularities in the White Mage’s kit that make understanding the priority of skills fundamental to avoid overhealing and burning your MP too fast.
Take this list as a guide to good practices, not as an unquestionable truth.
oGCD skills
As the general rule for healers, the oGCD healing skills are the top priority in any situation. You should focus on using them before any of the GCD skills because they won’t cost you DPS. In other words, you won’t have to spend a GCD casting a healing skill that could have been a Glare III. The oGCDs available in the White Mage’s kit are Tetragrammaton, Rengen, Assize, Benediction, Asylum, Aquaveil, Divine Benison, Temperance, and Liturgy of the Bell. While Aquaveil, Divine Benison and Temperance aren’t healing skills, they are used to mitigate damage which is extremely useful.
Even though White Mage doesn’t have plenty of readily available oGCDs to use, you shouldn’t try to save the ones you have for emergencies. Even if you’re going to need Benediction to save one of your tanks from a mechanic, this is a three-minute cooldown skill. You can plan and use it early enough to have it out of cooldown when the mechanic is resolving.
Lily skills
The two Lily healing skills you have are Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture. These two skills can only be used by spending one Lily for each cast, and you get one of these every 20 seconds in battle. While these skills don’t cost MP, which can sound like an upside of using them, both Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Rapture are GCDs, meaning you can’t heal without losing damage output. But, because every time you cast these skills you gain a Blood Lily, which allows you to use Afflatus Misery, the White Mage’s kit compensates the damage lost when using the Solace or Rapture.
Even though these skills are a GCD, they are instant cast, meaning you don't need to stand still to cast it, and they heal instantly. These two skills will be what you use for direct healing most of the time, saving your oGCDs for more dire situations.
GCD skills
In the White Mage’s kit, the healing GCD skills are Cure, Cure II, Cure III, Medica, and Medica II. Using these skills in sequence will cost you a lot of MP and prevent you from casting Glare III. GCD healing skills should always be a last resort, but this doesn’t mean they aren’t useful. Cure II is a strong single-target healing and Cure III as well as Medica II are extremely useful to recover the whole party after raidwide attacks from a boss. In case the oGCDs aren’t available and you have no lilies to spend, you shouldn’t hesitate to use a GCD skill.
White Mage Tips
Regardless of the positive aspects of this job, there are some issues which you need to work around to perform well when playing White Mage. First, this job lacks a good number of oGCDs to use. As a rule of thumb regarding healers, you should always focus on casting oGCDs to heal allies and/or yourself, because these abilities don’t prevent you from dealing damage. White Mage has very few of these and some have long cooldowns, preventing you from relying on them too much. Another known issue that affects White Mage – and most of all the other healers – is running out of MP. Situations where you have no MP to cast Raise or a major defensive cooldown are fairly common. When playing White Mage, to avoid finding yourself in these circumstances, you should pop Lucid Dreaming whenever you’re lower than 7000 MP.
If you’re a new player who just got White Mage at level 90, there are a couple of good practices as a healer that you need to learn and apply in all fights. Progressing through a Savage or EX Trial is messy and requires quick decisions from you to keep as many people alive as you can to see a little bit more of the fight. Inexperienced players will tend to use important cooldowns to heal the DPS players in the party. However, they are low in priority in most situations. You want to first heal yourself and the other healer in a full party, followed by the tanks, and the other members. Only healers – and a couple of jobs, such as Summoner and Red Mage – have the capacity to raise dead allies, making them top priority. As you learn the fight, you should also get in the habit of paying attention to mechanics. By moving less, you are able to keep healing and dealing damage.
