Essential moments to use Sacred Soil?

I'm wondering if there are any specific situations where sacred soil is very beneficial to use. I feel like I'm using it in situations where it's not really a necessity like just soiling the tank by himself. If it's just the tank, wouldn't it be better to save the aether flow for lustrate?

Large AoE events - Such as Titan stomps.

Large pulls - Grabbing the whole corridor between second and last boss in WP.

Aether flow off cooldown - When you have one Aetherflow left and you want to top up your MP, waste it on Sacred Soil and top back your 3 stacks + MP.

Special assistance - Warrior.

Trolling - Just because it looks like a force field from star trek, makes it a cool way to spam around.

It really depends on whether you want to use personally. If your heal target is surrounded by 10-20 hostile targets, it is often wise to use Sacred Soil. However, if your heal target is being hammered on an inconsistant basis, Lustrate would be useful since Sacred Soil can't be up forever.

Ignore what other people are telling you on which is more effective, just throw those thoughts away. It is very much a personal choice. if you ask me, I would pick Sacred Soil.

P.S. However, whatever you do, ALWAYS keep one aether flow as backup. That stack is used for your oh-shit moments. Only use/waste it when you have Aether flow off cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Pharmacies

I'm wondering if there are any specific situations where sacred soil is very beneficial to use. I feel like I'm using it in situations where it's not really a necessity like just soiling the tank by himself. If it's just the tank, wouldn't it be better to save the aether flow for lustrate?

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If Aetherflow is up and you want to refresh, it's usually better to drop Sacred Soil f you don't have any need to lustrate because the damage mitigation will last well into your next set of stacks.

Any fight where people stack for damage is a great place to use it. Garuda's transitional AOE's, Titan's post-heart AOE, Ifrits post-nail aoe, Twintania's Fireball...etc.

I use it when there's massive spike damage incoming or when big AoEs are about to hit (e.g. Titan's Tumult/Geocrush, Ultima's Tank Purge, etc.) - so in other words, all the time.

Any time you've got attacks hitting the entire party, it's a good idea.

I'll drop it on just the tank if they're taking heavy damage, such as on Caduceus when stacks start to get high, or in Garuda-X when sisters are up.

There's also a lot of predictable attacks you can use it for, like stomps on Titan, Garuda's transitions, Ifrit's Hellfire, Mog's Momento, popping orbs on Ultima, and so on.

Its quite good in solo targeting healing as well.
I tend to rotate it with virus and E4E.

I love paying way more attention to Acheron than I strictly have to and tossing down a SS after Megiddo Flame and... the small conal AoE he uses. Moonfall Slash or something? He always uses the mapwide AoE whose name I forget but hits for a fair chunk of damage after Megiddo Flame, and then he always uses Quake III after Moonfall Slash. I always feel awesome when I can head off the really nasty mapwides, even though it's really not necessary by any stretch of the imagination, it's pretty good practise for catching bosses' tells and getting SS down in time.

I have found it useful in T4 when tank has both Dreadknoughts on him and I have aetherflow off cooldown. I tend to go 1 ald:2 phys for the tank during p5 and p6, and like to have a large mp pool for it.

There really aren't any situations where Sacred Soil beats Lustrate for utility and mana efficiency.

However, as mentioned above, it does save the WHM (who is usually in charge of party-wide healing) some effort and possibly prevent the need for Ballad. However, it takes quite a bit of coordination for the WHM to know when to break from routine and use a more MP-efficient cure when Sacred Soil is in effect.