WHM - Cure III vs. Medica

I PvP mostly but I am starting to learn and become more interested in Primals and dungeons. Sorry for anyone grouped up with me against Titan HM this weekend, haha.

As far as group heals go, I thought Cure III over Medica would be a given (higher potency). But I read that most people rely on Medica to cover group burst healing. What am I missing here? Is it a mana cost issue? What situations do you use one over the other?

Cure III has incredibly short range. If you have a group of melees on a decent sized target (say Shiva), if you stand beside the melees who are on the rear, and use Cure III, you won't be able to clip the tank with Cure III. You actually need to be inside the monster model to clip all the melee and tanks with Cure III, usually.

This is in contrast to Medica which has a 15y range, which can pretty much hit the entire arena when standing in the middle of a normal primal arena.

Pick the right cure for the situation. :) Medica should be your go to button, but Cure III in the right scenarios is the best, and being able to recognize those scenarios on the fly leads to great usage of the spell.

Another main difference between the two is where they are cast. For example Medica 1 & 2 always emanate from your character. Even if you have some one else targeted, it always spreads out from your character in a giant circle. However, Cure 3 can be cast on some one instead, and will emanate around that person in a very small range as was described by Ghishlain. Typically you can cast it on melee dps and it will hit each of them (but depends how far spread they are from each other). However it will not effect you, or anyone else that isn't in very close proximity with the target of Cure 3.

Cure 3 is more situational in a sense, but extremely useful. Its really good to use on a stacked group (think teams in T5, T6, as mentioned above melee). You can target one person and the cure 3 hits everyone arounds them (but not a very long range). Medica has a wider range and isn't cast on a specific person.

Cure 3 a more potent cure for stacked instances i.e T6,T8,T9 Spit,In General,Flare all respectively as a healer I've played T10-T13 as both SCH and WHM.

Everyone here has the right concept though I like to use Cure III sometimes from a distance when I'm not necessarily taking damage but the melee/tanks are ...just my preference spamming a medica at that point would be unnecessary while strategically a cure III works better

Most of the time if I use Cure III it's because i either have an overcure proc or the party happens to be stacked for big incoming damage (like others have mentioned). Usually the prior comes in the form of healing a speedrun when there's a melee dps involved. If dps is at a level where I'm chain-casting cures after my 3 holy stuns, i generally end up getting 1 or two overcure procs that i can use to heal both the tank and the melee dps in the middle of everything. It has other situational uses though, most of which i've found in final coil (healing up the wild charge group in T10, healing both tanks at once after a double resonance in T11, similarly during brand's/bennus/etc... in T12). Even in those situations tho, i'm generally hesitant to use it without a proc because of it's massive mp cost. Unless i know there are going to be consecutive damage spikes incoming or i need big potency to deal with after-damage effects (like healing wildcharge targets enough that they can comfortably survive the ground dot on T10 as they get back into position), i usually just use a med II.

General WHM AoE heal priority:

- Your SCH's fairy healing people up is best if you can get away with it. It's free, take advantage of it if you know a boss's pattern.
- M2 is the all around best tool if you can use it and most of the ticks will happen before the party will take much damage (after most forced raid damages it's safe to M2 rather than C3/M1). Sometimes there will be adds that spawn while it's ticking but generally any competent tank will out-aggro HoT ticks in their first GCD.
- M1 is if you need a general party heal in a semi-timely manner, usually within 5s of incoming raid damage and multiple people who aren't stacked need HP, often while M2 is already up. Not very strong or MP efficient, often times Medica isn't even worth using unless people messed up or there's chain raid damage pounding at the group - I'd say when I see poor MP management or wasted GCDs, inappropriate Medica use is one of the biggest offenders.
- C3 is for when there's heavy raid damage incoming, or heavy raid damage just came out and there's more on the way within 15s or so (otherwise M2 + Succor + fairy is enough). Mostly meant for the entire party (or the whole party minus main tank) as a heal bomb, much less commonly used as an actual ranged heal specifically meant for a cluster of members, though it used to be pretty good in Ifrit Extreme Mode for this purpose.

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Originally Posted by Red_Wolf

I PvP mostly but I am starting to learn and become more interested in Primals and dungeons. Sorry for anyone grouped up with me against Titan HM this weekend, haha.

As far as group heals go, I thought Cure III over Medica would be a given (higher potency). But I read that most people rely on Medica to cover group burst healing. What am I missing here? Is it a mana cost issue? What situations do you use one over the other?

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I will give an example using Titan EX, since I use Cure III, M2, and plain old medica all in that fight.

When titan jumps and the party stacks on the edge, I use Cure III.

For stomps, I start precasting medica II (It's a slow spell...) so it lands right as the first stomp hits. Then I use medica I... usually twice but as needed during the stomps. This has the benefit of keeping lower geared (= lower HP) party members, or those with res weakness, alive through the stomps. And as an added bonus it hits the tank too.

Cure III is also, given its potency and AoE, a massive massive hate generator if there's overhealing.

As others have said... pretty much, use as appropriate for the situation. All tools have their niche.

edit: Also, while medica II is a great spell, be careful with it. You've got a regen ticking on up to 8 people and if adds spawn, the tank isn't all that well geared, or if the boss has teleported out for a phase or something...

Using Cure III whether party is stacked or not isn't as black and white like that. While having the party stacked does allow you to hit everyone with Cure III, it may or may not lead to a lot of overhealing. If Medica can top everyone off from an AoE hit, party stacked or not, you're better off using Medica over Cure III. Enmity generation aside, it's 133 MP difference between Medica and Cure III. Rather than looking when you can use Cure III, you should look for opportunities where you should use Cure III.

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Using Cure III whether party is stacked or not isn't as black and white like that. While having the party stacked does allow you to hit everyone with Cure III, it may or may not lead to a lot of overhealing. If Medica can top everyone off from an AoE hit, party stacked or not, you're better off using Medica over Cure III. Enmity generation aside, it's 133 MP difference between Medica and Cure III. Rather than looking when you can use Cure III, you should look for opportunities where you should use Cure III.

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Also, this ^