White Mage Efficiency

A efficiency guide for WHM. A lot of theorycrafting! Please give feedback and your own advice/findings on how to play this class better.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8W...ew?usp=sharing

(Below is my old SCH efficiency guide!)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8W...ew?usp=sharing

Edits:
- Slight typo sorry, the 'basic' divine seal allows for 6 GCDs but it is still true that the 6th Cure will not apply divine seal (without spell speed) because Divine Seal itself has a delay to it.
- Awareness damage mitigation is 9.1% for 20% critical chance and 16.7% for 40% critical chance (so slightly less than half of the critical chance)

There are some vague technicalities in there that could use some elaboration. Namely:

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Rage of Halone -10% physical damage (STR down)
Dragon Kick -10% magic damage
Virus -15% physical damage (and -15% magic damage if SMN/SCH)

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Does the -10% strength/intelligence reduction really translate into a flat -10% physical/magical damage reduction? (same with Virus)

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Foresight -6% physical damage
Protect -5% all damage, lost when party member dies
Fey covenant -6% magic damage

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Does increased defense really translate into a -5% or -6% regardless of amount of defensive stats?

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Prevents critical hits; reduces damage on average more than half of the critical chance (20% critical chance  16.7% reduction | 40% critical chance  28.6% reduction)

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How did you conclude it's a 16,7% damage reduction with a critical hit prevent (with a 20% critical hit chance)?

On the topic of player efficiency it might be worth mentioning that an efficient healer isn't a healer that has the highest HPS output. As for the rest, after a quick read I've noticed:

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MP Management...

...Shroud of Saints restores 1060 MP.

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Feels nitpicky, but I wonder if this should deal with potency or mana-pool percentage rather than MP-values. I believe that it was mentioned somewhere that SoS is a 50-potency tick.

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Holmgang - HP cannot fall below 1, heal them just before buff falls off

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As with HG, Holmgang will fail to protect against certain tank-killer moves, but I'm not sure if that's relevant information for a healer guide.

That aside, I would personally appreciate if you cited sources in the document so it's easier for your peers to double-check and validate your findings. Continuing along the vein of personal preference, I find a strange mix of factual statements and conjecture in the text that's probably attributed to writing style. It might however seem more academic if these were cleaned up and separated.

For CureIII I would add that it already pays off to use it if you are standing next to only 1 other player, and both of you need more than a cure I. It' a little cheaper than 2 cure IIs and you save one GCD. Heavily underused spell.

A small gripe that may just come from my interpretation of what you wrote:
I don't agree with your sentiment of cure II vs. cure I playstyle, as if there were no middle ground (thats how it sounds imo).
You state using cures instead of cure II could force the SCH to heal. Thats way too generally spoken, as cure I + fairy could do the job (of course depending on situation), saving mana, same profit, eventually freecure.


Also, I can't think of situations out of dungeon Speedruns where it matters how many GCDs you fit into DS - can only heal as much as damage is beeing taken - but am still on T9 so... :)

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

Also, I can't think of situations out of dungeon Speedruns where it matters how many GCDs you fit into DS - can only heal as much as damage is beeing taken - but am still on T9 so... :)

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Being on T9 or T13, doesn't matter. This is actually correct. Whether you squeeze in 5 cures with a single Divine Seal or 2 cures, if both situations heal just as much they're both just as efficient healing wise. MP-efficiency is another thing, however.

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

For CureIII I would add that it already pays off to use it if you are standing next to only 1 other player, and both of you need more than a cure I. It' a little cheaper than 2 cure IIs and you save one GCD. Heavily underused spell.

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Agreed. I use CIII in a macro that gives a chime, a chat window note and a target mark (triangle) that briefly flashes over the target's head. I'll always cast it when MP cost is reduced by 50%, and after the first few, like Pavlov's dogs, melee DPSers will run towards the mark when they hear the chime. Once people are "conditioned", even at full cost I'm saving MP and time. Very effective and efficient.

/micon "Cure III"
/p Run to <t>, Cure III incoming! <se.7>
/mk triangle
/ac "Cure III"
/wait 2.5
/mk off

Stellar work as usual. Well done.

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

There are some vague technicalities in there that could use some elaboration. Namely:


Does the -10% strength/intelligence reduction really translate into a flat -10% physical/magical damage reduction? (same with Virus)


Does increased defense really translate into a -5% or -6% regardless of amount of defensive stats?



How did you conclude it's a 16,7% damage reduction with a critical hit prevent (with a 20% critical hit chance)?

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Sorry about that! Once I learn more about how damage mitigation works I can start getting detailed. But in general Virus/Dragon Kick/Halone seem to reduce damage to the exact % equal to the primary stat decrease.

As for foresight/fey covenant, I don't think changing base defense will alter % mitigation, but if it does, the the difference will be minor in general. I tested foresight for tanks and monk as well as fey covenant for tanks and healers and the mitigation % was pretty much the same.

I miscalculated awareness by using a 2X multiplier rather than 1.5X! Actual mitigation for 20% critical chance is 9.1% reduction. Calculation:
1-1/[1.5x(%critical)+1x(%non-critical)]
So 1-1/[1.5(0.2)+1(0.8)] = 0.0909

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Originally Posted by Lovemonster

As for foresight/fey covenant, I don't think changing base defense will alter % mitigation, but if it does, the the difference will be minor in general. I tested foresight for tanks and monk as well as fey covenant for tanks and healers and the mitigation % was pretty much the same.

I miscalculated awareness by using a 2X multiplier rather than 1.5X! Actual mitigation for 20% critical chance is 9.1% reduction. Calculation:
1-1/[1.5x(%critical)+1x(%non-critical)]
So 1-1/[1.5(0.2)+1(0.8)] = 0.0909

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If you got the results for that, I'd be interested to see the results of that. I am rather fond of number crunching myself :P

That aside, the examples in that document aren't all that realistic. Maximum potential, perhaps, but effectiveness is a different story.

Concerning the weaving part:
You're using Cure III as example. Is there a specific reason why you're using Cure III here? Cure I and Cure II have the same casting time as Cure III and are used far more frequently than Cure III - inb4 some green white mage reads the guide and copies your example word-by-word. There's also the thing about cleric's stance that prevents you from casting any spell till the animation of it ends, which is somewhere between 0,6-0,9s depending on your latency towards the server. There's still a bit of GCD loss. Regen or Esuna are probably the more "ideal" examples concerning timing to switch Cleric's Stance for "efficiency" purposes - Which the guide is supposedly be about

Concerning Divine Seal "efficiency":
Fully utilising Divine Seal does not translate into an effective Divine Seal. You could use Divine Seal for a Medica II/Cure III and a regen and it's still more effective than squeezing in as many spells as you can. Simply because of overhealing. There are generally three cases where one would pick to use Divine Seal:
First and most common would be using it when big hits are coming. So divine seal, big hit comes and you cast two or three Cures or one Cure II to top off the tank. What about the remaining time of Divine Seal? Spamming Cure for the sake of making full use of Divine Seal is mp waste in most cases.
Secondly it would be to conserve mp. Divine Seal does increase your healing output afterall, thus more HP recovered for every MP spend. It also generates more idle time - Which can be used to save MP or to pop into cleric's stance.
Thirdly would be wasting Divine Seal by using it and have no idea what they're doing - I've seen plenty of this.

Concerning MP management:
It's a bit contradicting the part before that concerning Divine Seal usage. How you described the use of Divine Seal would lead to a lot of MP waste if one would decide to make the most out of the healing output with Divine Seal. It doesn't weave well from one part of your guide to this part. In fact, it clashes.

There's also the thing where you mentioned about piety being the more important stat. But thing about piety is that you can have too much of it. If you'd finish an encounter with 3500 MP in your pocket, even with offDPSing and whatnot, that's 3500 MP not spend. And unspend MP is useless MP. It's fine to bank MP for emergencies, however. There's no guideline for this either. So in a sense; ending an encounter with 3500 MP isn't necessarily wrong. Waste? Yes. Wrong? no
I've actually played around with it a bit. I almost hit 6k MP as a white mage and I'm missing like 5 points of piety due to my race. With 6k MP I finished T13 with nearly 3k MP in my pocket. This is a typical case of overkill - In my book anyway.


So tldr; Efficiency isn't everything, effectiveness plays a role here as well

The first GCD optimisation part is a very interesting information.

But I also don't agree with the Cure 2 > Cure 1 use part. This is not the lazy way to play it but actually the MP efficient way. If your sch feel stressed because you take your time (2 GCD instead of 1) to heal the tank, he certainly doesn't know the fight. Knowing the fight tells you when you have time to heal and when you should hurry. Cure 1 + Regen (+ the potential Embrassement spam) is around 50% of HP. I see too much WHM always using Cure 2 as soon as the tank hits the 50-60% HP whereas nothing is going to kill him in the next 5-10s.

If you plan to solo heal the most part (letting dps the sch) you absolutely want this Cure 1 "playstyle" because it's MP efficient. Otherwise, using too much Cure 2 because you're afraid the sch will heal, will make you loose MP. This will result in the sch healing anyway because you're using too much MP.

On the GCD part, I still agree Cure 2 is more efficient. But if you know the fight correctly you will never have GCD issues like "Oh I used too much spells and now I can't throw up my dps rotation / I can't stoneskin the tank before the big attack / I can't precast my heal!"

To continue, this is nice you pointed out the Regen thing with Convalescence & Divine seal.

About the AOE spells, you're again focusing too much on the GCD side, not on the MP side and the overheal risk. Why so much healers just don't care about overheal ? That's not killing anyone for sure but landing heals in the wind for no reasons and at the full MP cost should be something any healer-minded hate or try to avoid x). You rarely need to overheal to be safer about some mechanics. When you are it's ok, but for the 98% rest of the fight, you should stick to the basic "X% HP losed, use the spell that gives back the approximatively same %" and always pay attention if you can single target heal or if you absolutely must AOE heal.

Using Cure 3 just because some ppl/all the team is stacked isn't enough. Unless you need this 2s cast time, you have to look to the values you will heal for. Why would you heal for 550 potency 3 ppl if they got only 20% HP damages ? If you got time, cure them individually otherwise Cure 3 is overhealing them so much, even more if all the team is stacked and only 3-4 ppl got hit.

As for Medica 2 ticking while you're in Cleric stance, you're overhealing from the direct heal (200 potency) + the HOT for no reasons. I get it though, like in CT1/2/3 you want to be lazy and dps all the fight, so I guess it's ok. But I hope you never do the same in Fcob and you should indicate that.