White Mage DPS Rotation for Healers — Endwalker 6.4
On this page, you will learn how to optimise your DPS opener and rotation in both single-target and multi-target situations. We also cover the use of your cooldowns, to ensure you can achieve the best use of them every time as a White Mage in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (Patch 6.4).
Rotation While Leveling
This guide is designed for level 90. If you want to see how the rotation changes as you level, then check out the leveling guide below!
Dealing Damage
Like all other healers, White Mage has a very simple damage toolkit,
consisting of only a handful of spells and abilities. It has one DoT Dia, one single target filler
Glare III, one AoE filler
Holy III, one AoE ability
Assize,
a haste buff
Presence of Mind, and an AoE resource-gated nuke
Afflatus Misery.
The cast majority of your rotation will consist of maintaining
Dia on the boss and otherwise spamming
Glare III.
Openers
The White Mage opener is fairly straightforward. Glare III is always precast
2s before the boss is pulled for some free extra damage.
Dia is applied as soon as possible,
while
Assize and
Presence of Mind are used during raid buffs to maximize damage
in the raid buff window. There are two opener variations that share these same basic principles.
Standard or Non-Swift Opener
This is the basic opener that is always reliable and does not risk an early
use of Swiftcast. The only downside is that weaving
Assize under
Presence of Mind can risk clipping in pings above ~100ms, though usually the effect is
extremely minimal. A higher-ping friendly opener can be found farther down this page.
Swift Opener
As mentioned above, weaving under Presence of Mind can cause clipping at higher pings.
This opener uses
Swiftcast to weave
Assize and
Presence of Mind
in a single GCD for a slightly more high-ping friendly opener. Keep in mind that if you need
Swiftcast
early in the fight for movement during a mechanic, then you should use the standard opener above instead.
Single-Target Rotation Priority
- Use
Presence of Mind on cooldown or with the rest of your raid buffs after the opener.
- Use
Assize on cooldown after the opener.
- Maintain
Dia on the boss as long as the boss will be active for at least 15s.
- Use
Afflatus Misery in raid buffs, for movement, or before using additional Lily heals to prevent overcapping red lilies (see note below).
- Use
Afflatus Rapture or
Afflatus Solace to prevent overcapping blue lilies, or for healing or movement.
- Use
Lucid Dreaming on cooldown below 8000 MP to maintain MP.
- Use
Glare III whenever you have time to cast it and do not need to GCD heal.
- Use
Afflatus Rapture or
Afflatus Solace for movement if you do not have time to cast
Glare III and do not have
Swiftcast or are holding it for additional movement.
- Use
Dia for movement outside its natural refresh if you do not have Lilies or
Swiftcast.
Note: As of 6.1 using Afflatus Rapture or
Afflatus Solace to build
Afflatus Misery is now equal damage to spamming
Glare III on
single target, although using Misery in buffs makes it a damage gain to use lilies isntead. Lily heals can now be used fairly freely and overcapping lilies should typically be avoided.
Multi-Target Damage
Sustained multi-target fights are very rare in FFXIV, and most of your multi-target damage will be dungeon mob pulls or the odd add phase in a high level encounter.
Presence of Mind should still be used on cooldown.
Assize can be held to hit additional targets; eg. using
Assize on three targets vs one target is worth losing a one-target
Assize.
- Use
Afflatus Misery when available.
Holy III is a damage gain over
Glare III at three or more targets.
- Using
Afflatus Rapture or
Afflatus Solace to build
Afflatus Misery is worthwhile in uptime on two or more targets, but Lilies are still better spent for movement or healing than raw damage when possible. Avoid overcapping Lilies.
- At two to four targets, maintain
Dia on all targets assuming they will live the full duration.
- At five or more targets, avoid using
Dia and instead spam
Holy III.
Maintaining Uptime
A large majority of the damage you do is simply based on GCD uptime, maximizing the amount of time you spend using
Glare III on the boss. Extended movement is the enemy of uptime, but you have several tools to deal with these.
- Slidecasting
- "Slidecasting" involves moving before a cast has completed without interrupting the cast. The slidecast window in FFXIV is quite large compared to other MMOs.
The exact timing depends on your ping, but it generally starts about 0.5s before the cast bar is finished. Between the slidecast window and the ~1s
between
Glare III casts, you can be quite mobile all the time and easily preposition for most mechanics.
- "Slidecasting" involves moving before a cast has completed without interrupting the cast. The slidecast window in FFXIV is quite large compared to other MMOs.
The exact timing depends on your ping, but it generally starts about 0.5s before the cast bar is finished. Between the slidecast window and the ~1s
between
Dia
Dia is instant cast, so you can use your natural DoT refreshes to freely move during mechanics or to preposition yourself. Do not force early DoT refreshes to move though.
Afflatus Rapture or
Afflatus Solace
- Lily heals can be used for movement outside natural
Dia refreshes, but should be prioritized for healing when necessary.
- Afflatus spells are all instant cast and either deal damage directly or heal and contribute towards charging an
Afflatus Misery.
Afflatus Misery deals 1240p damage and takes three Lily heals to generate, meaning over four GCD's it deals a total of 1240p, exactly equal to four
Glare III's 1240p.
- Lily spells should always be considered in sets of four GCDs. Once you use one Lily, you are instantly down 310p, but using the next three gains 1240p back, equal to all the lost GCDs.
- Lily heals can be used for movement outside natural
Swiftcast
Swiftcast makes your next spell instant cast and can be used on
Glare III to give a GCD of free movement. This is not advisable in progression and can be dangerous when playing in other unoptimized situations when you may need
Swiftcast for use with
Raise.
Afflatus Misery
- If you already have a
Afflatus Misery available and none of the above tools to deal with a movement,
Afflatus Misery is a great movement tool.
- If you already have a
Changelog
- 27 May 2023: Updated for Patch 6.4, openers fixed.
- 10 Jan. 2023: Updated for Patch 6.3
- 28 Aug. 2022: Updated for Patch 6.2
- 20 Apr. 2022: Updated for Patch 6.1
- 03 Apr. 2022: Guide added.
Guides from Other Classes
Pyre is a healer theorycrafter and White Mage mentor for The Balance Discord. He joined FFXIV in late Stormblood and has mained healer throughout his career. Although not a super competetive or world first player by any means, Pyre enjoys helping players of all levels understand the nuanaces of healing in FFXIV.
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