Pray

[Bubeeky]

I just had a thought for a whm JA...how about a JA that acts kind of like the sanctuary spells in DnD? 30 sec duration, 5-10 min recast, for the duration of the JA, we couldn't attack, but we couldn't be attacked in any way...we could take damage from aoes cast on others, but we couldn't be the target of attacks, JAs, WSs, spells, etc, so we'd basically be protected from all harm for like 30 secs where we could unload heals without regard for enmity or danger or w/e....anyway, just a quick thought, opinions please

PS yes, I am a DnD nerd

[SpankWustler]

I just had a thought for a whm JA...how about a JA that acts kind of like the sanctuary spells in DnD? 30 sec duration, 5-10 min recast, for the duration of the JA, we couldn't attack, but we couldn't be attacked in any way...we could take damage from aoes cast on others, but we couldn't be the target of attacks, JAs, WSs, spells, etc, so we'd basically be protected from all harm for like 30 secs where we could unload heals without regard for enmity or danger or w/e....anyway, just a quick thought, opinions please

I loved the Sanctuary spells in the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games. "Oh, these things attack me when I take this Pointy Pole of the Profane Protuberance +2? I know how to deal with that..."

I think this sort of ability would be good for White Mage, in fact, far better than something to just lower enmity. If something untoward were to happen, we could activate Sanctuary and continue to cure people as required while things were being sorted out. Definitely a ten minute recast to mirror Enmity Douse, since it would be an "emergencies only!" kind of thing.

[Ahrana]

Then you should probably learn how to play whm better, because not everything will do "huge spike damage" and more often then not somone is shadow tanking or nin is main tanking, if they take aoe damage sometimes, regen will give them the hp back without you over curing.

There are probably people out there that can teach me how to play white mage, but by reading your argument I know that you're not one of them. Even if something doesn't do "huge spike damage," you simply don't gain much by casting regen and waiting the 75 seconds it takes to have full effect. A much better option, at least in my opinion, is curing the damage directly with a cure spell. Even if they are nin or /nin, as you suggest most people are now adays, then this is generally preferable because the stoneskin effect can help them get shadows back up, as opposed to just hoping that they don't get hit again. And if something is wiping shadows once, chances are they're going to wipe them again before regen runs its course.

barspells are indeed useful, but like most things in this game they are also situational, not everything attacks you with elemental attacks, nothing wrong with regen merits if someone chooses to do them. Not a very valid point.

They are situational, just like regen. The difference is that barspells tend to be a useful in fights where incoming damage is considerable, and regen is useful in fights that are trivial. I won't naysay someone that gets regen merits because a lot of people enjoy playing content where they are useful, but the regen spell just isn't useful for end game content. Blah blah maybe salvage, or you could use phallanx instead and take no damage.

yes, because the obvious awnser is to over cure at all times, instead of being intellegent. clear reason why so many whms suck at the job.

If you're over curing with cure then you're over curing with regen. "Being intelligent" in this case is using a inferior tool in situations where you could use a superior tool, just because you're trying to make the inferior tool useful.

The real use of the regen spells way back when was so you could get an extra tick or two of mp when healing. You cure a tank back up to full, throw your highest tier regen spell on them, and you were hoping that bought you enough time so that you could kneel down for 10 or 20 extra seconds. People tended to fight monsters that didn't require a lot of status cures, or else you had a backup healer to cover them while the whm was healing.

Regen was never a tool that replaced curing when fighting non-trivial content.

[Bubeeky]

Very well said Ahrana I totally agree about the barspell merits...when I was meriting whm, I thought about meriting regen, but someone basically pointed out to me what you said...barspell merits will help to negate more damage than regen could ever cure, even with maxed merits...and that's even more true today with the added help of the AF3+2 set bonus.

[Economizer]

If something untoward were to happen, we could activate Sanctuary and continue to cure people as required while things were being sorted out.

More like the MPK button. Diaga + Sanctuary. Watch for twenty seconds then decide whether or not you want to warp out. Or sub BLM, d2 the tank, Diaga the mob for good measure, then pop Sanctuary and sit laughing for a good fifteen seconds before Warping out.

[Vortex]

There are probably people out there that can teach me how to play white mage, but by reading your argument I know that you're not one of them. Even if something doesn't do "huge spike damage," you simply don't gain much by casting regen and waiting the 75 seconds it takes to have full effect. A much better option, at least in my opinion, is curing the damage directly with a cure spell. Even if they are nin or /nin, as you suggest most people are now adays, then this is generally preferable because the stoneskin effect can help them get shadows back up, as opposed to just hoping that they don't get hit again. And if something is wiping shadows once, chances are they're going to wipe them again before regen runs its course.

Yea you are right, because you are obviously unteachable. if i have to sit here and explain to you how to use regen then all hope for you is lost. i never said "use it all the time" perhaps you should try supporting outside abyssea where things are actually challanging. since you aren't pamperd with mp and you can just spam any cure to top off hp.

While regen is restoring there hp you have time to do other things like haste the dds, tanks cure other members, etc. while the hp is filling up the person with regen, not stand there and wait for there hp to drop so you can cast a cure and pat your self on the back.

They are situational, just like regen. The difference is that barspells tend to be a useful in fights where incoming damage is considerable, and regen is useful in fights that are trivial. I won't naysay someone that gets regen merits because a lot of people enjoy playing content where they are useful, but the regen spell just isn't useful for end game content. Blah blah maybe salvage, or you could use phallanx instead and take no damage.

WHM does not get phalanx, unless of course the dumb asses who choose /rdm over /sch. as i said above, try content outside abyssea, regen will overtime save you mp, but you need to not be stupid. learn when to use it correctly, during periods where somone is not taking MANY hits. obvisouly useing regen on something that is using hundred fist or constant triple/double attack is not going to help, but you aren't reading between the lines. regen is never nor will ever be useless to a whm who knows what they are doing

If you're over curing with cure then you're over curing with regen. "Being intelligent" in this case is using a inferior tool in situations where you could use a superior tool, just because you're trying to make the inferior tool useful.

Yes, regen is "over curing" gradual Hp recovery is over curing, are you stupid? or just in denial. again, i can explain to you how gradual hp recovery is diffrent but if you lack the intellect to tell the diffrence i can't help you, tank takes 400 aoe damage once every 1 minute but not taking any more damage in between them, regen will give them the hp back, or you can just sit there and over cure him wasting mp. You need to learn the diffrence between "inferior" and "superior" because it would only be inferior to people who only know how to press a cure macro and call it a day, that is not playing whm that is just being a mindless, cure bot.

The real use of the regen spells way back when was so you could get an extra tick or two of mp when healing. You cure a tank back up to full, throw your highest tier regen spell on them, and you were hoping that bought you enough time so that you could kneel down for 10 or 20 extra seconds. People tended to fight monsters that didn't require a lot of status cures, or else you had a backup healer to cover them while the whm was healing.

Because abyssea has spoiled many players, people are used to near limitless mp so they can just cure 5 - cure 6 - cure v - cure 6 no matter how much HP the person is missing and not worry about it, outside you cannot do that or get a swift dry mp pool. i don't recall ever needing a back up healer, in my entire whm carrer, sure it helps but very few situations i couldnt handle, the ONLY exception was probably odin back in the 75 days since most mp went to rebuffing due his constant dispeliing.

Regen was never a tool that replaced curing when fighting non-trivial content.

I never said it replaced curing, i am stating it is always useful when used correctly, but you have to be good at whm to know these things, WHM has been my main for the past 6 years, i have done enough on it during HNM ls days to know what works and what dosn't no i don't regen everything, everywhere, i know when to use it and not to use it. so don't sit here trying to explain to whm fundamentals when i clearly seem to know them better then you do.

PS i actually have cure cast time and barspell merits, i simply stated there is nothing wrong with somone meriting regen, barspells will still serve there porpuse with or without merits. merits just makes them stronger obviously.

again, these are things with whm you actually need to be smart. when you can do more then spam cure macros only you may see it. Sure i can teach you whm, but you have to be willing to learn, no one has ever complaind about how i play whm, with the exception of few retards who had the mentaility of a 8 year old. nor would ever shell i'v been in constatnly asked me to be whm all the time if i didn't. if you don't agree with how regen work then that is you, but do not insult me just because i clearly know something you havn't figured out yet.

again so you can help figure it out on your own let me tell you the diffrence

barspells reduce the damage from elemental attacks

Regen gradually restores Hp over time

why you are comparing the 2 are beyond me they do 2 diffrent things, and like i just explain they are used in diffrent situations, if you are fighting a blm mob spaming spells then barspells will shine, if you are fighting a mob that does no elemental attacks but physcial damage and sometimes aoes barspells will not help you, regen will in the hopes that it's not constatly spaming aoe moves. do you see the diffrence? if you can learn the diffrence you may actually become better at whm.

Try to respond in a better way then "i spam cure only so regen is useless" responses. i take whm seriously enough.

[Mirage]

Well, this thread has made me seriously consider dropping my regen merits in favor of barspell potency. Maybe not right now, but definitely when I get my af3+2 pants.

[Vortex]

Well, this thread has made me seriously consider dropping my regen merits in favor of barspell potency. Maybe not right now, but definitely when I get my af3+2 pants.

you should, but it's actually a better idea to use relic pants not af3 legs, the +20 to barspells will help more often then a very low set proc chance, i use +1 relic legs while the rest of the slots are af3 debatable with af3 hands vs augur.

[Gael]

Motenten did some maths about it (topic here : http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/24734/barspell-test)

And his conclusions are :

Augur's Gloves are +5 Enhancing Magic skill, which *might* give you +2 barspell resistance, which might reduce damage in the long term by maybe 1%.

Given that you are using relic pants (per my post above), you'd have the option for 4/5 AF3 set otherwise. If you use Augur's instead, that means 3/5 AF3 set.

3/5 should give a 4% proc rate, while 4/5 should give a 7% proc rate. That reduces average damage from 96% baseline to 93% baseline, or an average of a 3.1% damage reduction. There's basically no way possible that Augur's Gloves would beat the set bonus.

The only reason to use Augur's Gloves for barspells is because you only have the AF3+1 hands.

And ya, he also confirm the fact that af 2 legs > af 3 for bar spell

[Ahrana]

You made the assumption that I'm only talking about abyssea, yet I never mentioned inside abyssea specifically. Additionally, the point about being pampered with mp in abyssea is moot; I've stated multiple times that the difference in mp costs between comparable regens and cures is negligible assuming the caster has access to both af3+2 pants and af2 body. The comment about sitting there waiting to spam cure really doesn't make any sense either, since you should be doing that regardless. Fact is that if you use cure you will have additional time to do these tasks because of all the -cure casting time equipment/merits available.

The question about regen is what is the benefit for using it over a equivalent mp cure that casts quicker?

WHM does not get phalanx, unless of course the dumb asses who choose /rdm over /sch. as i said above, try content outside abyssea, regen will overtime save you mp, but you need to not be stupid. learn when to use it correctly, during periods where somone is not taking MANY hits. obvisouly useing regen on something that is using hundred fist or constant triple/double attack is not going to help, but you aren't reading between the lines. regen is never nor will ever be useless to a whm who knows what they are doing.

Regardless of sub white mage will never be able to use phalanx on someone else, that was more of a comment of "take a redmage for your healing if you're fighting trivial stuff." As far as /rdm vs /sch, they're both good subs depending on personal play style. Using /rdm as a sub gives a white mage more raw mp and gives full time access to dispel (mab, fast cast, blah blah), while /sch gives more utility with light arts + stratagems and more timely bursts of mp with sublimation. Both are excellent subs for white mage, and while I do tend to use /sch most of the time I find that /rdm (and occasionally /blm) is equally useful.

But your comment about using regen for occasional hits from light to moderate AoE damage makes me wonder what content your talking about. The problem I have with this, outside of you saying again that I'm a whm noob, is that you don't know when a person is going to be taking a lot of hits, AoE or otherwise.

Yes, regen is "over curing" gradual Hp recovery is over curing, are you stupid? or just in denial. again, i can explain to you how gradual hp recovery is diffrent but if you lack the intellect to tell the diffrence i can't help you, tank takes 400 aoe damage once every 1 minute but not taking any more damage in between them, regen will give them the hp back, or you can just sit there and over cure him wasting mp. You need to learn the diffrence between "inferior" and "superior" because it would only be inferior to people who only know how to press a cure macro and call it a day, that is not playing whm that is just being a mindless, cure bot.

"Over curing" is using healing in excess of what the target needs to get back to full hp's, which can happen just as easilly with regen as with cures. Once again the mp difference between curing and using regen is negligible if the caster has af3+2 pants. If the person that I just cured gets hit again before the Solace stoneskin effect wears off then I just blew your regen mp efficiency numbers out of the water. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to understand.

Because abyssea has spoiled many players, people are used to near limitless mp so they can just cure 5 - cure 6 - cure v - cure 6 no matter how much HP the person is missing and not worry about it, outside you cannot do that or get a swift dry mp pool. i don't recall ever needing a back up healer, in my entire whm carrer, sure it helps but very few situations i couldnt handle, the ONLY exception was probably odin back in the 75 days since most mp went to rebuffing due his constant dispeliing.

I never said it replaced curing, i am stating it is always useful when used correctly, but you have to be good at whm to know these things, WHM has been my main for the past 6 years, i have done enough on it during HNM ls days to know what works and what dosn't no i don't regen everything, everywhere, i know when to use it and not to use it. so don't sit here trying to explain to whm fundamentals when i clearly seem to know them better then you do.

I'm an old G white mage, so don't try to pull that card on me. I'm talking being able to tell the difference between blaster and chaotic eye based on sound because you leveled up on toramas old school. While I don't play white mage at every event I do I have played every event as white mage, and I play white mage more then any two of my other jobs combined. With that in mind, we can put the entire "noob abyssea white mage" argument to rest now.

But since we're on the topic of HNM's, let me ask you what end game content you would actually use regen on? I'm not going to hope that regen heals enough hp's before the person gets hit again for sky NM's, sea NM's, most limbus runs, ground kings, ToAU kings, T2+ VMN's, most ZNM's, salvage NM's, Dynamsis, Einherjar, or Voidwatch NM's.

So out of anything that could be considered "end game," the only situations where regen would be useful is...sky/sea regular hall trash, weak limbus monsters and early salvage? What am I missing that catapults regen into a position where it can be compared to cure without it getting laughed off the table?

I'd also like to take this time to say that if a white mage is healing light/medium AoE damage that misery + cura + esuna can often blow any other mp efficiency out of the water, and that curaga can often be near a free spell with af3+2 pants.

PS i actually have cure cast time and barspell merits, i simply stated there is nothing wrong with somone meriting regen, barspells will still serve there porpuse with or without merits. merits just makes them stronger obviously.

The reason that the merits are important to the conversation is that without them regen doesn't get anywhere close to cure V's potency, and without that efficiency number to hang your hat on the regen argument becomes laughable. So besides just arguing the efficiency numbers it also becomes a question of opportunity cost of getting regen merits vs barspell merits.

And just for sake of completeness, once you start comparing mp cost of regen with a hp healed value of only 850 it gets blown out of the water by cure spells.

again, these are things with whm you actually need to be smart. when you can do more then spam cure macros only you may see it. Sure i can teach you whm, but you have to be willing to learn, no one has ever complaind about how i play whm, with the exception of few retards who had the mentaility of a 8 year old. nor would ever shell i'v been in constatnly asked me to be whm all the time if i didn't. if you don't agree with how regen work then that is you, but do not insult me just because i clearly know something you havn't figured out yet.

If your shell asks you to come white mage then it's probably because they know you'll come white mage without crying about it, just like my linkshell often asks me to come white mage. That in itself isn't validating your stance on regen.

again so you can help figure it out on your own let me tell you the diffrence

barspells reduce the damage from elemental attacks

Regen gradually restores Hp over time

why you are comparing the 2 are beyond me they do 2 diffrent things, and like i just explain they are used in diffrent situations, if you are fighting a blm mob spaming spells then barspells will shine, if you are fighting a mob that does no elemental attacks but physcial damage and sometimes aoes barspells will not help you, regen will in the hopes that it's not constatly spaming aoe moves. do you see the diffrence? if you can learn the diffrence you may actually become better at whm.

I'm comparing the two because you get to pick one (assuming you pick -cure casting time first). Without the regen merits the topic of regen mp efficiency becomes laughable, and I still consider it to be laughable even with them. But this is the question of opportunity cost: you only get to pick one, so which one with you get more or better use out of? That's why you can compare the two, because they form a character customization choice where you can only maximize one.

Try to respond in a better way then "i spam cure only so regen is useless" responses. i take whm seriously enough.

Ok, to sum up:
AF3+2 pants makes the mp efficiency negligible between the two. If the solace stoneskin is on when the person is next hit then it pushes the mp efficiency argument in favor of curing.
The mp efficiency argument can only be made if the person takes regen merits over barspell merits. Otherwise cure blows regen out.
Cure heals all the hp's instantly, and it casts much faster then regen.

While this may be harder to quantify, another issue with regen is more support classes outside of abyssea. If someone is missing a ~cure 3 worth of hp's, many redmages and bards that I do things with will top them off, which makes throwing the regen in the first place a waste of mp.

So with that concise set of reasons that cure is better than regen, I'm asking you what you are specifically fighting that makes regen such a useful tool. Educate me.