Surecast Enhancements, Please!

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Originally Posted by Gamer3427

I honestly never use Surecast. I can see it having it's merits for skills such as having to hard cast raise/resurrection when Swiftcast is on cooldown, but most of the time you're not going to need that interruption resistance unless your spell has a more than three second cast time. The only other thing I could really see it being used for is countering paralysis's interruption for a healer casting leeches/esuna, and I'm honestly not certain that that would even work as I haven't tried it. If you're not a healer and your healer is up and half way decent then they should be taking care of paralysis for you anyhow so I wouldn't see it being as much of a benefit on DPS....

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sadly it doesnt help with paralysis or stun

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Originally Posted by ElieDavion

sadly it doesnt help with paralysis or stun

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Ah, well there goes my theory about it being useful for anything but reviving really......

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Originally Posted by kyuven

Except all those interrupts can be prevented by just timing it so you're not casting when the attacks go off. It's not like they're rapidly going out in a short period of time, no single big huge interrupting ability goes out more than once a minute or so.
Most of those abilities have a 10 second wind-up time, while your own have around 2 seconds or so.
Add to that surecast only affects one spell, which means you need to tack on another second or so to your cast times just to use it then start casting. Swiftcast works a lot better for this.
And as mentioned if you're a healer, you should be setting your buffs and damage mitigation abilities BEFORE the big attack goes out. Which again, you have about 10 seconds to prepare for.
Surecast, when looked at in a vaccuum, isn't a bad ability on paper, it's just useless when looked at side-by-side with Swiftcast.

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I try to save swiftcast as a whm if I can since raise is such a long cast. If SC is down when somebody dies, well that just sucks.
Also, besides single target casting stoneskin on everyone (waste of time and mp mid battle) there is nothing else I can do to get ready for a big attack that interrupts casting. But I can time it with surecast to heal just after the damage is received. It may not be totally necessary, but it sure is rewarding when you time it right. This is not to say that I don't partially agree with you about surecast in general, but it is helpful on white mage in most fights for healing up as fast as possible when an interrupt is inevitable.

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Originally Posted by Mendalas

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See, in my mind this seems...off.
For 4 man parties...let's not kid ourselves it's completely and utterly useless if everyone's doing their jobs right.
But in 8 man parties, you have a scholar most of the time. Before those big AOEs, I always see Stoneskin thrown out if possible and maybe a medica 2. Most WHMs i see take that gap of time to ensure they have enough MP for the next phase that's coming (since these attacks almost always coincide with phase changes)
But the important aspect is relying on the scholar for the set-up, while the WHM handles the "denouement" of the attack. And if speed is an issue as WHM you also have presence of mind to make use of.
And the interesting thing is there are just as many situations where these attacks are followed up with an add spawning (t13 gigaflares/rage of bahamut, weird timing in Leviathan) so having your heal go off in time with the attack could be a BAD thing, something i've seen happen in t13 more than I'd like.

surecast only prevents interruption of the cast caused via takeing a certain ammount of dmg and only works on 1 spell it doesnt help with stun paralyze or anything else like that wich makes it a useless ability in my eyes cuz as mentioned before by timing your casts right you can prevent those interruptions altogether

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Originally Posted by kyuven

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It sure does feel good though to not get interrupted when generally you would. Feels like I'm cheating or something haha. But in all reality, I would definitely agree to an effect change for the ability overall. It was meant for PVP. But who knows maybe in HW there will be a lot more situations where it is useful.

In a year and a half of playing BLM the only three times I've used surecast were when I was trying to improve and make use of less common spells like surecast. I purposely cast it and was confused when it didn't let my spell continue when I moved. Second time was figuring out what happened the first time. Third and last time was when I thought "Surely they didn't actually cripple this ability like this?" and saw that it really did still interrupt my spell when I moved.

Surecast is useless for most anything but pvp and perhaps a few healing situations.

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Originally Posted by NozomiKei

Surecast is useless for most anything but pvp and perhaps a few healing situations.

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it is completly useless outside pvp and even in pvp its use is very very limited to the long recast the duration and that it only works on 1 spell

A good way to improve surecast and make it not suck.

Instead of making it timed, turn it into a self-cast buff with a longer recast time. This buff gives 3 stacks, and each stack will prevent one spell from being interrupted and will vanish whenever you would normally be interrupted. In short, it doesn't vanish unless the spell you're casting would be otherwise interrupted. Still shouldn't allow you to move and cast, but it'll give you options.

There we go, we have a skill which has a use and is now a buff you actually want to keep up at all times. Set the recast on par with big skills (5 mins) and it remains balanced.

Would love if it helped through paralysis & stun, at minimum.