WHM questions please help~

So I have two questions.

1. Should I constantly be casting stoneskin? A tank I played with said I should use it often on everyone. But it kills my mana during boss fights! I usually prefer to use it on myself or if someone is about to take a big hit ( if I can cast it in time...) To give some background of where I was asked to do this was during Wanderers Palace... But the runs I performed before went smooth without spamming it..

2. Should I take time for a bit and work on getting an eye for an eye?

Stoneskin is very inefficient on your MP if it's not cast on a tank. It's worth casting if you anticipate a big hit or you have a surpluse of MP, but otherwise stick to Cure/Regen and patch people up. Of course, you should always cast Stoneskin on the entire party pre-fight.

I've cleared up to and including Titan Hard mode without Eye for an Eye and haven't had any problems. It might be useful in Coil but I doubt it.

I hardly ever use it. I never use it on sch unless I am solo healing.

I keep my party members with it up in case they accidentally pull hate or enemies. There are times when I will use it. When I feel the tank won't be able to keep enmity. Say there ends up being 4-6 mobs. Instead of spamming cure 2 I'll hit a stoneskin and regen and then follow up with stoneskin over and over until enemies go down to a comfortable amount. This keeps your tank alive while putting very little enmity on yourself, but I am hardly in a situation where this happens.

I will also swiftcast after every fight and throw a stoneskin on tank up if I can, but for the most part I don't worry about it during trash and very situational during bosses. War tanks benefit from stoneskin the most.

I actually cast Stoneskin more on healer than on tanks - note that does NOT mean I cast it often though.
Usually during fight I just use it before any big un-avoidable AOE (e.g, Ifrit's AOE after summon nails).
Anyway should you constantly cast it? NO.

And for an eye for an eye, it can certainly do some positive effect, but I doubt anyone will notice the difference. And I think most time people will just either feel no need to cast it, or too busy healing and forget about it.

1) Stoneskin costs a little more then a cure and is a slower cast. Your cure has a lot of help to scale and as result restores A LOT of HP, but Stoneskin will only do a flat % of a target's total HPs. Stoneskin draws very little aggro to cast and gives a decent buffer before healing from fight to fight, but casting on targets during a fight is entirely situational. The WHM will have to "get a feel" for what drains on MP they can tolerate and how often it seems worth it. Good to cast on pre-pulls and as you get good, you can refresh it just as a fights ending, any more then that though is what you feel is worth the time and energy.

2) Don't have it myself, but it only has a chance to actually do anything when its cast on something. Anything you cannot count on time and time again IMO is not worth stopping a career path for. That said I may eventually get it as options are always nice, but I won't be halting development just to get it.

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Originally Posted by TeaTimeBear

So I have two questions.

1. Should I constantly be casting stoneskin? A tank I played with said I should use it often on everyone. But it kills my mana during boss fights! I usually prefer to use it on myself or if someone is about to take a big hit ( if I can cast it in time...) To give some background of where I was asked to do this was during Wanderers Palace... But the runs I performed before went smooth without spamming it..

2. Should I take time for a bit and work on getting an eye for an eye?

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1. As it was said before, Stoneskin is more a situationall skill, not a spam-skill. Don't let some random tank mess with you)
2. Why not? It's not too great, but can make a situation less stressful in a crucial moment.

When you first get Graniteskin and Regen together, in dungeons like Cutter's you can probably "heal" with stoneskin, and tanks will notice this and like it. However, that doesn't last. Eventually the mobs will be hitting hard enough to destroy the stoneskin in one to two hits. It is an excellent way to mitigate damage when you know it's coming, but generally speaking a cure will perform better. It may benefit you to cast it on the tank at the end of every fight to give the tank a little breathing room while pulling and establishing hate on the next fight.

Don't underestimate Eye for an Eye. Mitigation is always nice. The less damage you have to heal, the more MP you keep.

in 5 man's I keep stoneskin up more then anything its the same price as cure 2 but until boss fights mp is never an issue .. regen creates tons of hate as with any cure but at higher lvl it doesn't really matter if ur tank has high hps stoneskin and regen keep him full. I keep stoneskin on tank always but its all how u wanna do it if u wanna cast cure all the time don't reapply it but if u wanna Cadillac 5 man's reapply it all how u wanna roll

first, don't let what he says affect you too severely.

Secondly, stoneskin is situational - there are some fights thar make it vety useful (slow hitting or light hitting bosses) but not some others. i rrmember stoneskin being very useful when fighting Garuda SM, Idgebind, and the Darkhold bosses etc. but if the mobs just hit too damn hard at times, it may not be worth it to use stoneskin because you dont want yhe tank to hover at around 25% hp.

I pretty much only use SS at the beginning of most single target type fights and never again. Speed runs though I use SS all the time. A round of SS on everyone and regen the tank allows me to stay in DPS mode for 90% of CM/AK/Praet runs.

i always use stone skin on warrior tanks. since its 18% of total health, a tank with 7300 health is 1314 damage mitigation. couple that with regen then you can heal him to full without him taking damage, and allowing you to regen mana fast. reminds me of disc priest on WoW.

I use Stoneskin only pre-fight on tank and on all party members pre-boss.
In combat Stoneskin is not nearly as effective as Regen unless you can definitely predict which party member will get a near-oneshot hit soon.
In combat Stoneskin is 1) too slow and 2) very mana-hungry. It comes near in effectiveness to Cure II only on tank but yet again there are no fights pre-coil that will threat your tank with a fast death if he has at least AK gear.

P.S. And don't listen too much to others which are not healers. WHM is all about maximizing your effectiveness and not pleasing everyone with overheals making you look awesome. Know the fights and you'll see Regen is the most awesome heal at your disposal. Keeping everyone at 100% is not needed in most of fights.

I like to use stoneskin on trash, casting it on the tank when the last mob is about to go down and we move on to the next group. It gives a nice little buffer for the tank to gain enmity and you to not have to cure right from the start which will cause quite a bit of aggro. Make sure you don't cast stoneskin DURING the pull since it does generate normal enmity.

I tend to keep stoneskin up on the other party members just in case they draw aggro but I don't cast it during fights. I casually keep it up if I have time on the other party members and me.
Before a boss fight I cast it but unless there are super big hits incoming that might one shot the tank (ie. Final Sting) I don't cast it during fights.

I think Eye for an Eye is a really nice skill to have. Probably one of the most useful ones next to Swiftcast and Surecast.

I usually cast it when ever I can. Why? Because you can't let your tank or your party members die. Especially the tank if they have stack on stack of crap on their party bar. So what will it be? Esuna the crap out of it until its gone and keep casting cure 1? Or stoneskin and then a bunch of cure 1?

I don't know your combo pattern but usually when I start to run out of mana almost half way, I use Shroud of Saints just in case crap is about to hit the fan you know? You can stone skin at the beginning before the boss fight and then just at the beginning when the tank taggs the boss a few seconds later. But as you keep fighting, the last thing you wanna think about is buffing in crisis times. You know when you have to run to get rid of your doom stack for example. Help to get rid of the temple bees etc etc.... But if everyone is in perfect health and your mana isnt stupid low then yes stoneskin.

Thank you all for taking the time to enlighten me on how you use stoneskin I really appreciate it! Guess I'll buckle down and grab eye for an eye :) much obliged senpais!

Stoneskin costs as many MP as Cure II (266 at lv50).
I personally use it only at the beginning of a dungeon and at the beginning/end of a boss fight.
With Ifrit and Garuda HM I always keep myself under Stoneskin for the whole fight, with Titan it's really useless because of his feet stomps.
Using Stoneskin on the tank is useless, even a trash mob gets the barrier down in a matter of 2-3 blows.
The only exception is the "All-seeing Eye", the first boss in Dzemael Darkhold: it's the only battle where I suggest to use Stoneskin on the tank every time he loses its effect, I don't know why but it takes forever to the boss to take it down, I just used Stoneskin and then sat down, watching the fight XD

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Originally Posted by Kobolt

i always use stone skin on warrior tanks. couple that with regen then you can heal him to full without him taking damage, and allowing you to regen mana fast.

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Sorry, but this is one of the worst tactiques ever for a lv50 WHM, and here I explain why:
Stoneskin takes 266 MP out of, like 4000-4500, and using it repeatedly is waste of MP;
Stoneskin lasts something like 2 or 3 trash mob blows, only 1 from a boss, so you would have to cast SS-Cure-SS-Cure during the whole fight;
Regen takes lots of aggro from every enemy in the battle, causing the tank to lose control of the fight.

I never use Regen, it's never needed (not even against Titan HM), and I use SS on everyone at the start, on the tank at the end of every boss and on me always.
Then cast Cure repeatedly (without overhealing!), being careful not to waste Freecures, and everything will be easy.

The white mages in this thread got the right idea.
Listen to them and dont let some random tank put you down.

How much does Shoud recover? I was under the impression you have infinite mana with that.

eye for an eye is great go get

Stoneskin is garbage

use it pre-fight and on downtime, get caught casting this in between a big swing and your tank will die before it goes off go go stupid animation bs SE has going

SS is a huge waste imo in a fight cost ratio and long cast time makes it a worthless spell in-combat

I cure for ~935 +/- 3% that costs 133 mana for a 1.94s cast and results in a HPS of ~498 and HPM of 7.27. You can adjust this with an overhealing coefficient of around 15-20% to yield 420/6.15 respectively.

SS costs 266 Mana for a 3s cast, 18% on Tanks HP. It is 100% Efficient (Due to being a shield) and you are likely to NOT override your previous stoneskin. For the same HPS, the tank would have to have 20440 hit points. For the same HPM, the tank would have to require 9132 HP.

However, due to the fact that as tank % injury decreases, the amount of healing efficiency decreases, thus stoneskin IS a superior choice for instances when during the next "2" seconds, HP will not drop below the threshold...

From my other post

Also, Shroud of Saints is 1080 MP every 90s.

You also get 2% of your mana per 3 seconds. (ALL the time, not Shroud related)