[dev1024] Healing Magic skill importence.

[Vortex]

As it stands healing magic skill has almost NO use outside of the standerd chance of being interrupted and very MINOR increase to cure potency, but let's be honest, unless it is a significant amount added you won't notice it, and obviously no one would ever THINK of meriting healing magic skill, my suggestion is maybe give this skill some updates to make it worth using, or rather, notice that it is actually there, because someone with say 105 healing magic skill isn't going to see a huge difference from someone with caped healing skill (which is actually hard to cap)

At 1st i thought this affected the chance of doom being removed, but i have seen no substantial evidence that it helped it in anyway.

my suggestion? raise the amount of cure potency healing magic skill has on cure spells. since it is apperent that you will not raise that 50% cure potency cap at LEAST help WHM raise it in other ways, MND helps but since it is already added along with potency in most gear it isn't that big a deal.

If not healing then as i said above, maybe the chance at removing the "chance to fail" spells like cursna for doom and later on amenisa that i read about before. SOMETHING to not make this skill a waste of time to skill up (tho it will naturally anyway with enough curing]

or maybe even effect the cure stoneskin effect from solace raise based on healing magic skill.

If you can fix summoning magic skill for SMN that used to be useless i'm sure something can be done about healing magic skill.

[MDenham]

Have healing skill grant a Regen effect to all cures (whether it's Cure, Cura, or Curaga), with duration and potency both based on healing skill. Allow this to stack with Regen spells.

As far as where tiers would land on this, I'd go with:

Cure - 1%/3 skill, 1 tick/4 skill, caps at 10%/10, starts at 1%/3
Cure II - 1%/4 skill over 20, 1 tick/5 skill over 30, caps at 10%/12, starts at 2%/6
Cure III - 1%/5 skill over 50, 1 tick/6 skill over 70, caps at 12%/15, starts at 3%/9
Cure IV - 1%/6 skill over 90, 1 tick/8 skill over 120, caps at 12%/20, starts at 4%/12
Cure V - 1%/8 skill over 160, 1 tick/10 skill over 200, caps at 15%/30, starts at 5%/18
Cure VI - 1%/10 skill over 240, 1 tick/12 skill over 300, caps at 15%/45, starts at 6%/24

Curagas cap at the same point as their equivalent Cure (Curaga = Cure II, etc.).

Cura - 1%/7 skill over 120, 1 tick/9 skill over 150, caps at 5%/30, starts at 1%/5
Cura II - 1%/12 skill over 270, 1 tick/5 skill over 330, caps at 5%/60, starts at 1%/25
Cura III* - 1%/18 skill over 350, 1 tick/3 skill over 400, caps at 5%/90, starts at 1%/45
(* This is obviously assuming that we get Cura III, which isn't a done deal by any means.)

The cap, including gear, at 99 is going to be somewhere just north of 500 skill, so the only spell that isn't capping on duration would be Cura III (based only on existing gear and assuming that 96-99 is 7 skill/level, which gives 511 skill fully geared and merited, it'd be 5% for 82 ticks).

[Mirage]

Yep, WHM is definitely not a strong enough healer yet.

[Vortex]

Yep, WHM is definitely not a strong enough healer yet.

Of course, in fact, let's tell the dev team to halt all future updates for whm, and to never, ever be improved. because it is perfect in all shapes and forms. yes indeed.

[MDenham]

Yep, WHM is definitely not a strong enough healer yet.

It's kind of hard to make healing magic skill matter without either (1) making WHM better or (2) making /WHM, /RDM, and /SCH extremely pointless.

To be honest, I'd have no problem with combining the above idea with handing out Cure V to both RDM and SCH. RDM and SCH both end up being adequate healers in pretty much all situations, but a WHM is still going to be head and shoulders above either one. And SMN gets removed from the healer pile entirely.

[Economizer]

As it stands healing magic skill has almost NO use outside of the standerd chance of being interrupted and very MINOR increase to cure potency, but let's be honest, unless it is a significant amount added you won't notice it, and obviously no one would ever THINK of meriting healing magic skill, my suggestion is maybe give this skill some updates to make it worth using, or rather, notice that it is actually there, because someone with say 105 healing magic skill isn't going to see a huge difference from someone with caped healing skill (which is actually hard to cap)

I actually have capped Healing Magic skill, and while I did nuke undead while trying to get it capped, most of it came from a long period of cure spamming people in Abyssea for NMs. I wouldn't say it is hard to cap, but it is a skill that takes time to cap if you don't want to put the effort into it.

Luckily for anyone who has ever burned a dual box mule to 90 overnight, having a decent amount of mind and capped cure potency - not hard things to do by any measure - will only lose you around 80 points of HP cured from a Cure V, even if you have zero skill.

The effects of Healing Magic skill are more apparent if you have low mind actually, or if you happen to be using spells that actually are affected by the spell, like Blue Magic healing spells. If you really want to see the pain of having low healing magic skill, try dropping 40 points of Mind with capped Healing Magic, and without. Losses in Mind are magnified about three fold if you don't have any Healing Magic skill.

Of course, anyone with capped Healing Magic skill isn't going to be ditching Mind for anything, because they are either a White Mage, a Red Mage, or have access to instant skillups.

Also, while it does help to floor interrupts, it does not do it enough, considering how useless the skill is outside of looking pretty when it is capped.

At 1st i thought this affected the chance of doom being removed, but i have seen no substantial evidence that it helped it in anyway.

Unless I didn't make sense of the translation work SE released, SE said in the White Mage manifesto that not only does Healing Magic skill not affect the chance, they won't make it improve the chance, as they think it is fine. Considering few people on the forums actually play White Mages, and Scholars were too busy complaining about not being able to replace White Mages, we didn't get the level of rage that you saw on the Thief forums when SE said something that wasn't true (the chance to remove is not fine).

If you can fix summoning magic skill for SMN that used to be useless i'm sure something can be done about healing magic skill.

Since any job can get C+ skill +1 in Healing Magic by subbing Scholar, or B+ if they have native skill in Healing Magic, I doubt SE will actually make Healing Magic skill that much more useful.

Still, having over 300 skill (basically any job with Healing Magic natively, or anyone subbing Scholar) should drastically improve Healing Magic for every point above 300. This would make native healers more powerful, but more importantly, make gear and merits actually useful.

Yep, WHM is definitely not a strong enough healer yet.

Ignoring the obvious QQ, this change would help non-White Mage healers out too. The only reason it is even posted here is because White Mage is supposed to be the strongest healer, by far.

-

Now here is the question - at what point does Healing Magic skill become useful?

If every point of Healing Magic skill above 300 made cures cure +X much more, on top of the current cure formula, where X = (Healing Magic Skill -300)/4 * (Tier of Cure), would this be a big enough leap? Or would it have to divide the skill by 3? 2? 1?

Or do we have to give a straight boost to potency, such as (Healing Magic Skill)/25 = X, where X is +X% Cure Potency that ignores the cap? Would this be a big enough leap? Or would we have to divide the skill by 20? 15? 10?

Or what if cures and status removals had cast/recast time affected by Healing Magic skill, such as (Healing Magic Skill)/10 = X, where X =% Fast Cast added, ignoring cap?

What's our goal in getting Healing Magic improved, what would be a good number?

[Mirage]

Whm is the only healer job I've got leveled. Believe it or not, it's actually possible to disagree with a job being buffed even if you play it yourself.

My point is just that the other jobs should be allowed to catch up a bit before whm got even better at healing. I'm sure there could be other improvements whm could get that didn't involve making our cures even stronger.

[Bubeeky]

ok, what exactly should whm complain about? it seems like whm is getting a tiny bit of glory these days when we spent so long underfoot at lvl 75, and as a result everyone is getting pissed when whm just wants a little love...we're supposed to be the best healers, but ppl are complaining that others aren't good enough...so? they aren't supposed to be good healers! they are supposed to be decent at everything, not good at a specialty! Healing is all we have...let us have it!

[Mirage]

What exactly should whm complain about? Idk, I'm actually not complaining about anything at the moment. Do we *have* to complain about something?

[Merton9999]

I wouldn't mind if healing magic were made more useful, as long as no existing potency was gimped because of it. I don't want the backup cures I often toss out in Dark Arts on SCH to be suddenly gimped. So the extra regen, extra cureskin, higher chance of removing doom and amnesia all sound fine.