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?

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Vortex View Post
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.