Question in regards to end game gear (Healers)

[JCT]

Hi,
I had a few questions in regards to end game gear. As a healer I have researched / been told that the stat break down in terms of tier is Critical Hit > Determination > Piety > Spell Speed.
Basically I would want to stack as much Critical Hit as possible and get as little Spell Speed as possible. I have looked through some of the end game gear and I noticed that many of the Lost Allegan (and others) pieces have spell speed as one of the stats and no crit.

For example:
Ala Mhigan Body is 310 iLvl with 240 Critical Hit and 168 Spell Speed
Genta Body is 320 iLvl with 244 Critical Hit and 171 Spell Speed
Augmented Lost Allegan Body is 340 iLvl with 253 Piety and 177 Spell Speed

Does this mean to maximize my stats I should go with Genta rather than Lost Allegan? Does the 244 Critical Hit make up for the 20 iLvls?

I also wanted to ask what is the minimum iLvl average I need to be able to do anything and everything for endgame?

[Ghishlain]

Generally speaking, the higher the ilvl the better. The amount of MND you gain from jumping those ilvl tiers don't make up for the difference of changes from a weak secondary stat to a strong secondary stat. There are a few exceptions but they tend to be few and far in between and only in jumps of 10 ilvls - never 20 ilvls.

In terms of secondary stat optimization, that's generally up to preference of each healer too and not as set in stone as it is for DPS and tanks. Crit will be the "most bang for your buck" stat come the next tier, but I do believe the current tier Determination is better up to a certain a point which we have difficulties reach with the current gear scores.

Also stats are very synergistic in nature and thus you kind of want at least a bit of everything for optimal effect. Faster casts from Spell Speed means you get to use the increased benefit of Determination more often while still having more opportunities to Critical too.

Overall you could probably just focus on ilvl and still be incredibly successful. It's when you're trying to optimize for that last 5-10% that you might want to really start digging into secondary stat builds.

[edit] Just to add, Piety is a stat that's also mostly about personal preference. You want enough Piety to make you feel comfortable with the content you're participating in. Once you continue to grow even more comfortable, you will most likely start to peel Piety away from Materia and/or gear and focus on more directly impacting secondaries.

[MoroMurasaki]

I also think, to a certain extent at least, secondaries vary with each healing class.

Like SpS for instance. On SCH it isn't huge, the biggest part of their healing comes from abilities. On WHM? It can be handy, they use more spells. Peity on WHM is essentially useless because of their insane MP regen but you might see benefit from some of it on the other two healers because they aren't as MP efficient overall.

I don't think there will ever be an end-all set of stat weights for "healers" sadly. Even if someome can crunch the numbers for them individually I don't think they'll match up saying universally x is the best stat y is the worst, the ways they heal are too varied.

[Estelle9lives]

Healer substat optimization is a bit tricky.

If you're looking at damage output and ONLY damage it goes like Direct Hit > Det >= Crit > Spell Speed. The thing with DH is, you need a fairly huge investment to make it worth it (full Heaven's Eye VI melds, all slots) and it doesn't affect your healing output, unlike Crit and Det. Crit/Det are more or less equal - I think Det slighly outweights Crit as of now, but that's because healers can't get a good amount of Crit in this patch - Crit will very likely be the best stat when ilvl goes beyond 340. I'm personally not a fan of Spell Speed at all, the returns are too weak and most pieces that are Spell Speed centered aren't bis.

I believe the goal of every healer shoul be to minimize Piety melds as much as possible - and also shoot for gear that have no/low Piety, reason being that it only acts as a MP cushion, bringing no benefit to either your damage or healing.

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

Also stats are very synergistic in nature and thus you kind of want at least a bit of everything for optimal effect. Faster casts from Spell Speed means you get to use the increased benefit of Determination more often while still having more opportunities to Critical too.


[.

That's not how it works in this game. For ss to even be marginally effective you need tons of it. and its still not going to do much for damage or healing so you should just just avoid that all together when possible and stack crit, because unlike what ppl are saying here crit does surpass det at this tier when you have a high enough amount.

Op doesn't have options if they don't have access to genji so basically just get as much 340 as you can with augmented lost allagan. You had the right idea op but u don't sacrifice mind for substats generally, (rare exceptions that dont apply to you currently)

[JCT]

I believe the goal of every healer shoul be to minimize Piety melds as much as possible - and also shoot for gear that have no/low Piety, reason being that it only acts as a MP cushion, bringing no benefit to either your damage or healing.

So I looked through of the higher iLvl pieces of gear i.e. Genji and Lost Allegan and there seems to be a lot of piety. Should I forego some of these pieces for lower ilvl pieces that do not have piety?

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

No absolutely not

[Fernosaur]

So I looked through of the higher iLvl pieces of gear i.e. Genji and Lost Allegan and there seems to be a lot of piety. Should I forego some of these pieces for lower ilvl pieces that do not have piety?

Never! You'll get so much more out of the Mind increase than from not having Piety. Also, how much Piety you need largely depends on your group, and also on your other healer. The more raising you need to do, the more MP you'll need, specially if you don't have a RDM. The more shielding or AoE healing you do to help out your co-healer, the more MP you'll use too. The more healing you do with AF, the less MP returns you'll see from Energy Drain, etc, etc.

Piety is a stat for which you need to find an appropriate, personal comfort level. My personal MP milestone on SCH is 18k ish, but Halone knows that when I play AST I need a little bit more than that, particularly because the group I play AST with is much less experienced, co-healer included, so I need to do a lot more raising, shielding and active healing.

That said, even though Spell Speed is the worst stat right now, it's not necessarily bad either. Something that I personally like about SpS is that it allows for quicker stutter-stepping (moving before the spell cast ends without interrupting it), and it gives you a subjectively larger window to move without interruption.

For example, for this tier I stacked Crit as much as I could, but in lieu of keeping my three healers and tank geared up, I ended up taking a couple pieces from Omega Savage with SpS+Pie in them even if they're not theoretical BiS. In that case, the MND increase was worth more, tbh.

[Tridus]

So I looked through of the higher iLvl pieces of gear i.e. Genji and Lost Allegan and there seems to be a lot of piety. Should I forego some of these pieces for lower ilvl pieces that do not have piety?

Generally speaking you'll see more of everything as your gear goes up in iLvl because the higher budget means more stats in general. You'll also see different pieces in a given set of gear have Piety than in other sets.

Mind is your most important stat. If it has more Mind, you probably want it. If it has a lot more mind, you almost certainly want it. As you get more pieces, the Piety will tend to level out. Unless you're trying to min/max for progression content, that simple rule will always work. For materia, you likely never need to use Piety.

You can use a site like this to help compare: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/WHM

[Ghishlain]

So I looked through of the higher iLvl pieces of gear i.e. Genji and Lost Allegan and there seems to be a lot of piety. Should I forego some of these pieces for lower ilvl pieces that do not have piety?

There is one niche case I'd consider dropping ilvls in the current healer gear list and that would be taking an Allagan Ring and Augmented Allagan Ring over Genji Ring and Augmented Allagan Ring.

Genji Ring is Piety > Spell Speed secondaries while Allagan Ring is Determination > Critical secondaries.

Spell Speed would be the lowest of the three secondaries for total boosts and Piety means nothing if you're comfortable with your MP pool. Determination and Critical would give you more overall benefit in this case despite the loss of Mind.