advice needed. MP shortage

Stoneskin should only be used in a handful of situations:
1) prepull on everyone
2) mitigating a large damage mechanic that is unavoidable
3) if you have nothing else to do and your MP is full

Stoneskin is not MP efficient. Nor is stoneskin efficient because of the time cost (3 seconds vs a 2.5 gcd of regen or cure I). The only benefit of stoneskin is, like others mentioned, it effectively raises the max HP of a player. Regen is MP efficient and Cure I is MP efficient. The proc you get from Cure I costs no mana. Sure that proc is hard to time, but if you're really blasting the tank with heals (spamming Cure I) you'll eventually get 1 that is well timed and it does help with MP. So for generic healing, just keep regen on tank and only cast Cure I if he drops to ~80% or below.

Another issue that hurts whms, is they often try to heal through curses/diseases. Ensuna those b****es and save yourself MP that way.

I'm coming at this from the tank's point of view and I would like to know just how much more efficient Cure I and Regen are compared to Cure II and Stoneskin. Does anyone have the level 50 MP costs of each spell available?

The reason I'm curious about this is that I would like to know to what extent a tank smoothing out their overall damage intake can help a healer. If I could somehow make it so that I take the same damage overall but eliminate the need for Cure II in order to prevent a death, how much mana could I save you?

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Originally Posted by Mariwanna

Please help! I am also having a horrendous MP shortage problem. I was barely able to make it through Brayflox ...

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I never had any issues until Titan. Tried it last night for the first time and I suspect that it was our DPS that was the primary issue, because after they died, the tank and I seemed to do OK for a while.

Haven't seen it suggested, but maybe eat some food with +piety? Not sure how much this really helps. Really though, sometimes it is just bad players or inexperienced players that can't get out of stuff, causing you to heal a bunch. I've been lucky in this regard, rarely having to group with people I don't know.

PS - I'm dumping all my points into Mind right now.

I think it goes without saying that the biggest factor in MP usage is your group. Is the tank holding aggro? Is the dps taking avoidable damage/debuffs? Are you taking avoidable damage/debuffs? are you using CC or breaking CC early? Some boss fights seem like it's unavoidable to burn through mp quick, but if you are running out on trash pulls, there is most likely a problem with your group not performing properly. If you find yourself spamming Cure II or Medica or Esuna(all of which burn mp pretty quickly when spammed) try suggesting a different strategy to your group(which I know can be tough in a PUG) but that is most likely the problem, the fights are not being mechanically handled properly for your group make up(classes/jobs) or for what your tank is able to handle. The most frequent time I run out of mp is when the tank has no idea what they are doing, it makes all the difference to have a competent tank.

Thank you for the suggestions. I am now lv 41 with my WHM and after getting that Saint's Shroud ability at lv 38 it has been a lot better. I personally only use regen on the dps when I don't have a chance to heal them because I am focusing on the tank. I also think my problems were resulting from my gear and/or the tank's gear being too weak. Once you have a geared group, healing is a breeze and I will always like it better than tanking.

If anything, you've got it the wrong way round: Regen on the tank helps to keep them healed up without burning through your MP (Regen+Cure on recharge is roughly comparable to Cure II on recharge but a lot cheaper), whereas Regen on DPS will quite often end up overhealing them (unless they're still being targeted) when a Cure would have done the job. Regen on the tank also makes it safer to divert your attention to the other party members for a few seconds.

I usually have no problems with MP except on Garuda, but I usually steal the limit break and that effectively solves that problem and gives me some lee way. I keep everyone buffed with stoneskin after every pull and ESPECIALLY before a boss fight. DPS should be smart enough to avoid all avoidable dmg, same with tank. But if there is a situation where I know it's about to get hairy, I usually keep a regen/cure1 on the tank, and cure 1 on most dps when they get low. BUT if there is a situation where they have to chase adds, I usually just toss em a regen and move back to the tank.

I think MP shortages could come quicker with the following: (referencing pre-Coil content)

* Tank is undergeared.
* Healer is undergeared, emphasis on weapon's spell damage.
* Allies get hit with avoidables and you assist in their recovery.
* Mid-combat Raise.
* AoE healing used when single target could have been more potent.
* Chain curing in Cleric's Stance.
* Not using Divine Seal more liberally for chain curing.
* Warrior is not using self-healing abilities and/or is conservative with offensive cooldowns.
* If the Warrior is doing the above, then keeping the Warrior topped off would rob him of his self-healing abilities and may require more MP than letting him help save you some MP.

I think in the OP scenario, one or both of the last scenarios are happening.