WHM Role Skills?

These are the skills I've been using, although Lucid Dreaming looks pretty tempting. Is there anything I should change on my list? Thanks.

https://i.imgur.com/wp69wX8.png

I always use:

• Largesse
• Swiftcast
• Lucid Dreaming

Protect is only used once at the beginn of a duty and goes off my list if I know I probably have noone to res and reapply during a fight, like in dungeons.
Medica only goes in, if I know I have to cure status allignements.

If I don't need those 2 skills during a duty I exchange them at the start with Cleric Stance and/or Eye for an Eye.

For explenation:

• Largesse is a must have, it's the only buff you can take to empower your healing power and your empowered HoTs are able to keep tanks alive on their own most of the time. Also it makes your life easier if you struggle with healing power in specific phases or situations.
• Swiftcast is my second must have. It is a simple tool to make Res'ing instant, but can also be used as Swiftcast-Holy to apply a AoE stun, which is a huge possibility to mitigate damage, so makes healing easier if the mobs aren't immune against stuns.
• Lucid Dreaming is your only enmity dump and a MP regen. I use it primarly for its enmity dump to give my tanks breathing room so they can shift their focus more into more damage, aka faster runs, and don't have to worry so much about enmity. The MP regen is also a nice bonus.
• Protect is a fire and forget skill. Its baseline to apply and (almmost) noone wants to go without. Apply and take it off your list, you wont need it within the next 30 minutes unless you restart the duty or start a new one and then you have enough time to take it in, apply and take it off again.
• Cleric Stance is a good tool to boost your DPS. A good way to help speed up a dungeon when used at the right time. Take it if you have a free slot and don't need any other skill or any other skill doesn't have a useful situation in this duty.
• Eye for an Eye is an situational skill, only really useful in trashpulls. So your not in a dungeon and have no takn for big pulls, take it off your list. In the best case it gives an even damage mitigation to Protect in overall during its application but it is to short to be really usefull, especially in boss fights or with low enemy count.
• Esuna is to situational nowadays. In most duties status allignments are avoidable and if not they are mostly not cleanseable. If you know you will need it, take it, else take something else.
• Surecast is a good skill for fights where the boss will push you around. Also your spells can't be disrupted during its effect.
• Rescue is like surecast, good for fights where you or the party get pushed around or simply someone gets pushed around but it is crucial to keep him by the party and he can't or didn't slot his antiknockback skill.
• Break is useless in groupplay. Maybe it has its pros in soloplay with its heavy but that's it. Don't use this in any duty you don't have to heavy anything, if you can't handle it without heavy, use the other method and never use Break, its just a wasted slot in 99,9%.

Always keep Lucid Dreaming! Otherwise your only MP regenerating skill will be Assize (which you have to use like clockwork and during some fights, won't be very helpful by itself). It with Lucid Dreaming, I rarely run out of MP. I use it, Protect, Esuna (I think is one? I can't remember atm), Swiftcast (a must have for Raise), and Thin Air -useful when used with Presence of Mind. You'll be able to quickly heal or attack WITHOUT using any MP! I like to use it to blast Holy for mobs. I quit using Cleric Stance around the SB change since it only lasts a few seconds anyways, I just use Intelligence Materia to up my attack. Which seems to work better anyways. Hope this helps! ^^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KokonoeAiyoko

These are the skills I've been using, although Lucid Dreaming looks pretty tempting. Is there anything I should change on my list? Thanks.

https://i.imgur.com/wp69wX8.png

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Lucid Dreaming is a non-negotiable unless you literally never DPS (in other words, you should need it) and are not running any level of raid content.

My must-haves are the same as Legion88: Largesse, Swiftcast, Lucid Dreaming.

Eye for an Eye I've mostly given up on. It was fairly niche and unreliable when it was an ACN skill, and now that it's a role skill and on a long recast I'm even less impressed. It's worth tossing in there for big trash pulls after you've thrown up Protect, but no one is likely to notice a difference.

Cleric Stance is another "better-than-nothing" replacement for Protect, but it's probably the first thing to go if you find yourself wanting to use a different role skill. Damage is important for all roles, but you'll never be dropping, say, Swiftcast for that occasional 5% boost.

Surecast is a very niche ability but wonderful when A) you need it and B) it actually works against that mechanic. Sadly I don't get much use out of it right now except to ignore Vacuum Wave in O4S part 1.

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Originally Posted by Mitsuri

Always keep Lucid Dreaming! Otherwise your only MP regenerating skill will be Assize (which you have to use like clockwork and during some fights, won't be very helpful by itself). It with Lucid Dreaming, I rarely run out of MP. I use it, Protect, Esuna (I think is one? I can't remember atm), Swiftcast (a must have for Raise), and Thin Air -useful when used with Presence of Mind. You'll be able to quickly heal or attack WITHOUT using any MP! I like to use it to blast Holy for mobs. I quit using Cleric Stance around the SB change since it only lasts a few seconds anyways, I just use Intelligence Materia to up my attack. Which seems to work better anyways. Hope this helps! ^^

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2 issues with this post. The first is that Thin Air is not a role ability. It's a WHM exclusive one. But you're correct in that it's amazing to use with PoM. The second issue is that intelligence materia does absolutely nothing for healer dps, you'd do just as well with no materia slotted. Healer damage is based solely off of mind now.

Cleric Stance is eh. Largesse is more useful.

Also, please cast Protect and switch it out. It's a wasted slot and put LD in it instead.

My personal list:

Must Haves

• Swiftcast - The ability to instant cast allows you to handle Raises fast or deal with movement mechanics without missing a beat and is too good to pass up.
• Lucid Dreaming - For the MP restore mostly, but the enmity dump has applications too. The WHM DPS kit can output tons of AoE damage at the cost of massive resources and Lucid will help mitigate that.

Common Choices

• Protect - You can apply this at the beginning and then swap it to something else. I would recommend doing this in a group you trust and where you won't expect any death. I keep this on my bar for the 24-mans because there is always a death and you'll want to be able to reapply mid combat in this case.
• Cleric Stance - 5% Damage up CD. Nothing much to say, when you get to a certain point in gearing and skill you don't need too many other things in your Cross Role list and thus "MOAR DAMAGE" starts to be come optimal. This is one of the roles I will quickly change out though, if I need to free up slots for more situational and fight-dependent cross roles.

Situational

• Eye for an Eye - Decent choice for AoE pulls and those bosses that have heavy physical tank busters and auto attacks since you can use this preemptively on the tank to reduce the oncoming tank buster damage. Just remember that the ability needs time to proc on the monster so give it enough lead time if you can.
• Esuna - Not many hard fights have dispellable debuffs. In fact I don't use this at all in Omega Savage. The selection of Esuna will be fight dependent and I always recommend to have this on for any fight you do blind until you discover you won't need it. Better to be safe than sorry.
• Surecast - It grants Knockback protection. Like Esuna, you will want to select this depending on the fight ( O4S ExDeath and Shinryu, for example). Just know which knockback effects Surecast can and cannot mitigate. Some experimentation may be required :)

Low Priority

• Rescue - From a DPS standpoint, Rescue has applications in getting melee back into attack range quickly after a knock back mechanic. It's difficult to gauge how useful this will be in actually "rescuing" someone unless you have huge situational awareness and even then saving someone once just to see them go splat in the next mechanic makes you question why your brought this cross role in the first place.
• Break - The only benefit Break has is that it costs 0MP. I could see use of this as a GCD filler in situations where you have to expend high amounts of MP to heal ( O4S solo healing ) but you normally aren't in these situations.
• Largesse - The goal of any healer is to spend as little GCDs healing and organize their CD usage to optimize healing. Since Largesse only affects spells, it does little for the White Mage kit outside of the GCD heals that you're trying to minimize. Once you get to a certain gear and skill level, you'll find the bonuses Largesse can provide will be minimal at best. Until you reach that comfort level though, Largesse does provide a oops factor correction benefit that many can find useful, so take this cross role if you're still getting used to the White Mage kit and/or the content you're participating in.

I pretty much always use Lucid Dreaming, Swiftcast, Esuna, and Largesse. For the content I'm doing (ie: not savage) those are always handy. Sometimes Esuna isn't useful, but leaving it on means I don't have to remember to put it back on for the cases that do need it and thus doesn't result in unnecessary deaths when Doom comes out. Swapping out is something that is more useful in harder content where the extra bit matters, below that it's simpler to keep your favorites on all the time.

I had Rescue for a while but I find it's activation is just too slow, by time it grabs someone and moves them the odds are the effect I was trying to rescue them from has already gone off. So I got very few saves with it. I have Surecast there now instead.

I use the protect swap macro below to effectively have both Protect and Surecast at the same time. It also tells the party I'm casting Protect, which has proven extremely effective at stopping people from running away from it. (Doesn't work in combat.)

/macroicon Protect
/macroerror off
/aaction Surecast off
/aaction Protect on
/p Casting Protect, please stay close! :)
/ac "Protect" <me>
/wait 3
/aaction Protect off
/aaction Surecast on

I really disagree that Lagresse is low priority.

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Originally Posted by Cold_Sand

I really disagree that Lagresse is low priority.

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Largesse's priority depends on how much you are able to leverage abilities vs. spells.

If a large portion of your healing is coming from abilities (as it should if the healer is playing efficiently and if the party is not making life difficult), Largesse's value is diminished.

On the other hand, if you are having to use GCD heals frequently, or if you anticipate the need for significant burst healing, Largesse pays for its slot.