Life vs Speed?

Rather simply, which do you find yourself using more often? I cycle between the two depending on my mood, but since I perform as acting tank a lot I stick with Life for the added drain on Weapon Skills.

On a related side note, what effect does Speed Surge II have over the vanilla version? Increased HP drain, + stamina regen, or both?

I always use Speed Surge, simply because I like the taste of "haste" XD
And the hp drain is not really noticeable or issue in both of the skills, at least for me.

About your question, i'll be able to answer it in like 5 minutes XD.

Generally I'll heal ~100 per WS with Life, not a huge amount by any means (Bloodbath will do 3-4x more, but less often and with a chance of wasting it by missing). Speed's drain only occurs on regular hits, but everyone gets the benefit of it and the stamina regen is also good. But yes, HP drain is pretty negligible on both.

Speed seems like the clear winner; I just want to see thoughts :x

Well, from what I saw, there's an improvement in both Leech and Stamina Regen.
Tested on Cellar Puk:
Surge I: 70~HP Leech
Surge II: 100+ HP Leech
(Hit damage ranging from 265 to 325)

The stamina regen is better, but is not a huge boost, you can notice if you pay attention though.

I basically start with speed surge 2 and if i feel like the party is missing hits on the mob i will switch to Life surge to add the evasion down affect.. Speed surge is the bread and butter pre-buff of a lancer.. you basically get a haste stamina boost as well as hp drain per hit for the whole party.. As you fight harder mobs you will notice that the party absorbs less hp per hit.. this is unavoidable but if you think about it.. its the healers job to heal.. so i normally think of the hp drain as a reduction of damage taken from hits by the mob.. but thats basically just to convince myself that im doing something with speed surge besides just boosting my stamina regen.. Lancers are meant to make quick in battle decisions that can alter the outcome of a battle.. we are able to incap, battle regiment, as well as condition mobs in the favor of any battle strat. Lancers are an essential to every party :)

Personally I feel Life surge is better at least on NM's.

The evasion down will help more than a small haste since your helping jobs like Archer who stack multiple shots massively increasing dmg on BR WS's not to mention helps our own WS's from missing.

Personally i use both if u open with life surge then hit it once so debuff sticks then u can switch to life and hit it and then have both debuffs active at once. on really long fights i will juggle them some if we dont have a 2nd lancer

Problem with that is that the use of the Surge abilities themselves is almost a mini-Provoke, as with most buff abilities/spells.

Ill use Life when soloing or if there is another Lancer in the group already using speed, other then that ill use speed in groups. They also make pretty decent AoE taunts as well, not nearly as good as they used to be but still can sometimes help get the tank/healer out of a jam.

Soloing very weak mobs: Speed Surge (Gonna steamroll 'em anyway, might as well do it faster)

Soloing medium to hard mobs: Life Surge (Helps accuracy, and better life leech help survivability)

Partying against weak mobs: Either one

Partying against hard mobs: Life Surge (life leech on speed surge is minimal, the evade down on life surge is more helpful)

I don't really see my party miss at all at NM, so I rarely use Life Surge. Speed Surge II + Full Thrust + Twisting Vice + BR = ensuring the NM has much close to zero TP all the time to use any special attack. And I also want to spam my incap move whenever they become available, so more stamina is always good.

Also there are two type of miss: Miss (YOUR accuracy based) and Evade (TARGET evasion base). Life Surge does not help with Miss, only Evade.

In my experience, fighting NM most of the time is the incap game more than dps game. You kill it too fast without any incap, and it becomes a meaningless fight.

If you have a healer, which every Lancer should, Speed Surge II is definitely the way to go. Same thing can be said for Pierce > Full Thrust I'm sure (Damage is too noticeable different)

Pierce =/= Full Thrust

One is linear AOE one has a TP buff. Both have their specific uses.

Pierce is only better than Full Thrust if you're able to hit more than one mob at a time.

I always use Speed Surge. Faster TP gain is what I'm interested in on NM fights....

Between Invigorate II and Speed Surge, I usually can use a WS to help incap. and then have enough TP gained, and enough stamina to pop all my BR and damage buffs (Cadence+ Keen Flurry) for a BR to incap even more~

Going fast is better!!

Very informative.

Speed.

speed just cuz stamina > all

Mostly, I use Speed Surge for solo/party grind purpose and Life Surge for big NM fights

Both are good. Life is better for soloing, without a doubt, but Speed is better for DPS and group heal. If you are having a hard time hitting things in a party that you need Life's EVA down, then you might want to rework your stats.

Weaker mobs/solo, speed for sure. No harm in popping life for evasion debuff and swapping back to speed if the mob has particularly high evasion.

As far as NMs|high lvl mobs; given the low cool down on both, there's really no reason not to keep evasion debuff on as much as possible while still riding speed for tp generation. It's a good idea to snag some hate management abilities from ARC and keep some defensive abilities on the bar as well since you might snag hate here and there doing this. Hate is still pretty wonky sometimes, so the tank might have trouble grabbing it back.

tl;dr - Don't be a lazy LNC. Use both.

10 > 20 Speed Surge, 20 > 40 Life Surge, 40+ Speed Surge II

Speed Surge I isnt really noticible, so i would stick with Life Surge untill 40. If there is more than 1 LNC in party, find if he is using Life Surge, if so u can use Speed Surge I.

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Originally Posted by Synapse

10 > 20 Speed Surge, 20 > 40 Life Surge, 40+ Speed Surge II

Speed Surge I isnt really noticible

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I don't even...

Disturbing coming from a 50LNC.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

I don't even...

Disturbing coming from a 50LNC.

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and we have threads about LNC having ACC problems at early levels. lol.

I...I'm not even sure what you're implying in the above post.

I meant that your post about speed surge not being "really noticeable," and suggesting using life surge rather than speed surge for 20 ranks is ridiculous. Particularly coming from a r50 LNC. That was just the most polite way I knew how to express it.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

I...I'm not even sure what you're implying in the above post.

I meant that your post about speed surge not being "really noticeable," and suggesting using life surge rather than speed surge for 20 ranks is ridiculous. Particularly coming from a r50 LNC. That was just the most polite way I knew how to express it.

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I meant the use of Life Surge in party play(solo, it varies with mob difficulty), i rather have a noticable evasion down on mob and have the party kill it faster than gain a very small boost to my stamina bar.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

tl;dr - Don't be a lazy LNC. Use both.

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That "very small boost," to your stamina bar is huge. It = more TP which = more WS/abilities = more damage/debuffs etc.

You're gimping yourself (and the party) if you just ride LS. Pop LS before engaging/between mobs, let eva proc, pop SS, rinse and repeat. The cooldown is 30s for these. Worst case scenario is you get stuck on one or the other a little longer than you wanted.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

That "very small boost," to your stamina bar is huge. It = more TP which = more WS/abilities = more damage/debuffs etc.

You're gimping yourself (and the party) if you just ride LS. Pop LS before engaging/between mobs, let eva proc, pop SS, rinse and repeat. The cooldown is 30s for these. Worst case scenario is you get stuck on one or the other a little longer than you wanted.

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an avg fight lasts about 15-25 sec? That little boost of stamina you get from Speed Surge would probably get wasted on switching around skills, not to mention the animation further slowing you down. That strategic might be good for longer fight but there is no such thing in FFXIV yet. Some things are easy to say in words but barely applied in game. I can guess many players sometimes forget to even reactivate any type of surges because the fights are too damn fast. i would assume you probably need to burn 7-8x 100% stamina in order to get a 1 extra stamina bar from the use of Speed Surge.

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Originally Posted by Synapse

That strategic might be good for longer fight but there is no such thing in FFXIV yet.

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Really? What in the world have I been fighting then? :confused:

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Originally Posted by Synapse

i would assume you probably need to burn 7-8x 100% stamina in order to get a 1 extra stamina bar from the use of Speed Surge.

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Your credibility just hit 0.

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Originally Posted by Airlea

Really? What in the world have I been fighting then? :confused:



Your credibility just hit 0.

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Oh no! My credibility is 0, /quit game.

Now, now. No sense in ya'll trying to out-LNC each other. Pretty much everything boils down to opinion vs opinion. How each person utilizes their abilities is up to them. Not taking sides or anything, but denouncing one's credibility based on conjecture is just as bad as saying "My opinion is better than yours". The fact of the matter is, SS2 and LS are both great abilities that define the LNC role. Neither suck for any situation, but one might bring an edge to a particular battle compared to the other. Myself, as a firm follower of Life Surge, will admit that Speed Surge is probably better for a DD role. But who knows? Evasion Down helps the entire party. Again, it all boils down to conjecture.

One thing i haven't seen mentioned here : Life Surge heals on WS attacks whereas Speed Surge doesn't. Which makes Life Surge great for soloing strong enemies.

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Originally Posted by Totobi

One thing i haven't seen mentioned here : Life Surge heals on WS attacks whereas Speed Surge doesn't. Which makes Life Surge great for soloing strong enemies.

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Or large groups. My god, the HP yields I get from AoE WS in leves.

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Originally Posted by Issachar

Or large groups. My god, the HP yields I get from AoE WS in leves.

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yeah i do have some outdated(during my mid 30's) screen shot i too of the effect of Life Surge/LoS WS/Bloodbath.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...entry?e=119331

that move alone healed like 75% of my HP, its a very good survival tactic.

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Originally Posted by Issachar

The fact of the matter is, SS2 and LS are both great abilities that define the LNC role. Neither suck for any situation, but one might bring an edge to a particular battle compared to the other.

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Cheers. That's pretty much the tl;dr version of what what I've been saying, lol.