Stat Priority as a WHM.

Is it Pie>Det>Crit or Pie>Crit<Det? Or is it just preferences? I've been a WHM for only about a month and Don't have much crit on my gear mainly SS because I'm not perfect at timing boss auto-attacks. Any comments will help. Thanks!

Enough PIE > Max DET > all the others. Just my opinion, though.

CRT is not too bad, but a WHM doesn't really synergize with it that well. This game's fights are really scripted so in my opinion SPSP is not really a good stat, because you will not be spamming enough heals to notice any noteworthy differences, except in very exceptional situations (or if your co-healer is terribad).

It's all in the pre-casting and pre-mapping of an encounter and trying to minmax your resource usage. This is why you should always aim to have enough PIE, then go for DET for stable gains.

A "wild card" 2ndary for a WHM is accuracy, but this mainly applies for crafted gear only and the "bonus" points on your Nexus once PIE+DET are capped. Can make a small difference with that Aero accuracy and Fluid Aura DPS over time in veeeery tight DPS check fights. (FCOB).

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Originally Posted by Tranquil

Enough PIE > Max DET > all the others.

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This is true. And note that you shouldn't aim for max PIE, but enough of it to be comfortable in the content you're doing.

Max DET for me everything else just falls into place. Though sometimes I'll favor CAKE(Crit :P) over PIE

PIE is more valuable than many give it credit for imo, the safety net that extra MP gives you is more noticeable than the marginal gains we get from crit and ss especially whilst learning new content. Det come a little closer in my eyes, but it's impact is still pretty insignificant.

Personally: PIE >> DET >>> SS > CRIT.

It's worth noting that this tier pretty much pushes WHM down the PIE/SS route. There's a measly two PIE/DET pieces at ilvl 130, getting DET Elsewhere will cost significant amounts of PIE. Ho hum.

Accuracy>all.

I'm not joking, either. If I could trade the amount of secondaries needed to accuracy cap in coil I'd do it in a heartbeat. I can keep up a tank with 150 less hp on a cure 2, but missing DoTs makes me so angry I could kill a man. Except I can't. Because I keep MISSING HIM.

This all depends on your preference.

Piety - Increases your maximum amount of mana, and in doing so also increases the amount of mana you regenerate per tick while in combat. At 5,000 mana you will be gaining 100 mana back per tick. I personally try to keep my mana at around 5,000 total for end-game content (Coil Raiding), however I also use food buffs to reach this amount as well. This is just my personal preference though, everyone has their own amount of mana they are comfortable with.

Determination - Increases the damage and healing amounts of your spells. Most WHM's will go this route as it gives you the most bang for your buck. Your healing spells will increase in potency allowing you to heal more per spell thus increasing your mana to healing ratio. That being said though, you need a significant amount on your gear to notice any real difference to your heals. I also try to gain as much determination as I can.

Spell Speed - Reduces the cast time of your spells. Some WHM's feel that getting your spells off a little faster can help during fights, or while learning new content. People are bound to make mistakes, and spell speed can in fact help out during these "oops" moments. However, much like determination, you won't notice a difference unless you have a fair amount on your gear. Most fights just take practice and learning the mechanics so you can anticipate the heavy damage coming in, so you may opt to trade spell speed for another stat once you are more familiar with a fight.

Critical Hit Rating - Increases the % chance to critical hit with your spells. Most WHM's will stay away from this stat for obvious reasons, we don't want to over heal, and more often then not you will find that your spells crit on a target who just needed a simple cure 1 or regen to be topped off. Crits just aren't reliable enough to count on. At least with the other 3 stats you actually see the benefit to them upfront, crit can happen anytime anywhere and you have no control over it.

So it's really up to you how you want to play your WHM, there is no "wrong" way in my opinion, just a matter of what you feel comfortable with.

Like I say often, most important as WHM, is maximum mind, the secondary stats are not that important.

Myself, I prefer Piety, and spell-speed, with a little determination.

I may reconsider piety on ilvl 130 gear, and maybe put a little more spell-speed and determination instead, as my piety gonna be really high with this gear (I imagine we can be around 6000+ mana with full piety gear, that's maybe too much and not needed, but still can be useful in a few fights)

I heaard that WHM doing saage mode using critical rate (I dont like that stats coz, even with low crit rate, once in T9, I took aggro at phase 3, too many crits, and a cure3 full crit, died instant), also depend on the fights maybe.

Since spellspeed came to the topic again:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-Nexus-weapon
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...28WHM%29/page3

And for some actual numbers:
Piety
A white mage gets 7,9 mp for every piety they have and receive 6% mp regeneration over time out of combat and 2% mp regeneration over time during combat. Piety would provide you more starting MP and a healthy natural mp recovery during combat. The amount you need highly depends on the encounter. For example: BCOB Turn 1 requires far less MP than FCOB Turn 2 (Turn 11). Having more MP to spend allows you to play more aggressively, however.

Keep this in mind, however: Shroud of Saint does not benefit from a larger MP pool

Determination
With previous i110 gear, 25 determination equaled to 10 HP recovery* on a 400 potency spell. This would mean your spells recover more HP for every MP spend and every damage spell you cast will also deal for more. There's no real downside by going for determination.

Critical Hit Rate
Critical Hit Rate has the potential to, much like determination, increase the amount of HP recovered for each MP spend. This situation is quite rare, however. Unless the tank took enough damage that a crit heal won't overheal a significant amount, it won't conserve you any MP at all. On average, having 10% crit rate would increase your healing average by 5%. Stacking crit has some diminishing returns, however. For example: Having a 1% increase on 10% is far more valuable than if you already had 20%. An increase from 10% to 11% would mean 10% more crits over time**. While an increase from 20% to 21% would mean 5% more crits over time.

Spell speed
I'm not gonna bother with this. Read the previously linked topics

* Not exact number, but easier to calculate with
** For easier understanding: 1000 heals, 10% crit would mean 100 crit heals. 11% crit would mean 110 crit heals. 1000 heals with 20% crit would mean 200 crit heals and 21% would equal 210 crit heals. This is respectively a 10% and 5% increase of crit heals.

Det is the bread and butter secondary for WHM. Reliable and straightforward potency increase. Crit is similar in HPS increase, but less reliable and thus not as good as det. Piety is always welcome, hard to judge it's value against crit, depends on content. Spell speed is absolute garbage unless you are really bad and start casting your heals after seeing people take damage.

Generally speaking, when comparing two equal ilvl peices, if one of them has spell speed and the other doesn't then the one without spell speed is BiS. If both have spell speed, then the one with less spell speed is BiS. There are probably some small exceptions to this rule.

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Originally Posted by Kirana

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While I agree that spell speed is garbage, it's not entirely true that the piece without spell speed is BiS. It highly depends on what kind of stat is on it and the value of it. Interestingly enough, this happens to be the case with i130 gear, but previous patch (i110 gear) some piety pieces came in paired with spell speed. (High Allagan Circlet, Gloves and ring for example)

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

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That's why I said there may be exceptions. Thank you for clarifying though.

Breaking down what I said earlier:

If both pieces have spell speed and one has a lower amount, that means you are choosing between a high amount of det/crit/pie or a low amount of det/crit/pie. If the high amount is det, then the choice is obvious. If the high is crit and the low is pie, you should get the crit. If the low is det, then I would still go with crit here, but it's a bit of a wash. If the high is pie then you need to make a decision based on how much mana you think you need.

http://i.imgur.com/dBRqqga.png

Left is going Full Det, Right is going Full Pie. Make your own conclusion, whether 88 points of Det outweight 113 points (around 900 MP) of Pie. Crit only differs by 31 points and SS by 56 which is both neglectable for WHM.

I'm going for pie, I gain more from being able to cast more spells without worrying about mp too much (affects dmg spells as well) than from slightly higher heals which are already very high.

The biggest impact is the choice of the trousers, which is either 34 det or 36 pie.

I will never put ss on my gear after I did tests before novus. I had a set of gear that had a good amount of spell speed on it, and when removing the set to be naked basically, it was about a 100 point difference in ss. With about a 100 points difference in spell speed, the speed it increased my cures was exactly .08
That is atrociously low for 100 points.
Btw incase you didn't know, the exact cast time can be checked by looking at the actions and traits menu and it does update with stats, that's how I knew it was exactly .08

Though ss does make a bigger difference to blms. I don't know why, maybe it's because it's offensive magic? But for healers spells and buffs it's garbage

This is my current BiS:

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/O58C

You'll notice that I did in fact choose every single piece of gear that adds Determination, but for the pieces that don't offer a determination choice, I chose the most amount of piety given between the two choices. I also added Mulled Tea HQ at the bottom only because I'm cheap, and don't feel that the determination food adds enough of a benefit for your heals to even bother making/buying.

Although keep in mind this takes into consideration my race of a Dunesfolk Lalafell, and I consider the Food Buff as well as the SCH Pie buff in a party when I choose my gear. Total this will give me roughly 5,000 mana total, with 324 determination. If I actually chose to use the Black Truffle Risotto HQ instead, this would boost my Det to 340, and reduce my mana below 5K. In my opinion, it's not worth it for a possible 6-8 increase of total healing on Cure 1.

Your mileage may vary depending on your preferences, this is just my own personal choice.

Ask twenty white mages and you'll get twenty opinions.

"Piety is great because it gives me flexibility to cast more proactively"
"Piety is garbage because any good whm can manage their mp without it"
"Crit is great because it affects all my heals, and a timely crit can save both time and mp"
"Crit is garbage because it's unreliable and overheals wastefully"
"Det is great because it improves all my heals and dps"
"Det is garbage because the improvements are tiny per point"
"Speed is great because it improves PoM and allows me to react faster to unexpected situations"
"Speed is garbage because a decent whm can time their spells without it, and it doesn't help regen"

Personally I'm leaning more towards PIE/SS as time goes on. WHM are limited to one action at a time, and the feel of casts being "snappy" counts for a lot, along with some freedom to throw out some damage, rez, or overhealing without worrying about my mp.

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Originally Posted by Viviza

Ask twenty white mages and you'll get twenty opinions.

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Well people think they have a real manifold choice and discuss forever. However, it boils down to how much Pie you want to stack and put the rest into Det, taking whatever SS or Crit is given to you by your Pie/Det choice.

You need to see it in action to believe what I'm about to say. Just to put a little info out there first:

My WHM stats with current gear (without food, group buff, etc):
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/3089119/

Of the secondary stats, I love me some Determination followed by Spell Speed. I have been using Triple Cream Coffee lately, though.

I spam Divine Seal (go ahead and bash me) which allows me to only need to use Regen and Cure. In dungeons, it's easy; rarely need Cure II or higher. On Primals and Coil, though, I use Divine Seal situationally. PIETY hasn't been much concern for me. My MP usually get low if I need to spam Raise (Coil T5) or if someone killed me with ice (Shiva Ex). I love BRDs, but I had to learn MP management as I been in many groups where two BRDs competed on who ISN'T going to use Ballad lol...

I refuse to dps on my WHM, no matter how much uptime I have (this is probably why I keep lots of MP). I MAY do Swiftcast + Holy if tank has 4+ mobs and mobs are dying slow.

Back on topic, my preference is Determination > Spell Speed > Critical Hit Rate > Piety > Accuracy

I place Accuracy last because I'm using Regen and Cure 1 dominantly, and have NEVER seen them miss or heal lower than it's potency.

Using a lvl 100 instead of ilvl 110, is a complete lose, you lose too much mind to make secondary stats worth-it, even if you like those secondary stats.
We can consider using ilvl 100 items when it's small things, like an accessory, or a belt, not a robe, never.

Most important as WHM first, whetever the secondary stats are : MIND

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

I spam Divine Seal (go ahead and bash me)

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Actually I'm going to bash you because of...

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

I refuse to dps on my WHM.

Back on topic, my preference is Determination > Spell Speed > Critical Hit Rate > Piety > Accuracy

I place Accuracy last because I'm using Regen and Cure 1 dominantly, and have NEVER seen them miss or heal lower than it's potency.

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Outside of the current coil, you can gear up pretty much however you want and be absolutely fine. It's not that your setup is the best, it's that it simply doesn't matter. Gear full parry if you really want, it'll be NP, you'll still be able to waltz through any 4 man + CT + previous coil as long as you are doing a reasonable job of playing your class.

But please, your 'No DPS ever' stance... Consider that rather than a pure healer, we are support, here to help the group in whatever way we can. DPS is an indisputable part of our toolkit and can help immensely at times.

Oh and also, accuracy has zero affect on heals whatsoever. It's only really relevant for certain safe DPS phases.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Actually I'm going to bash you because of...



Outside of the current coil, you can gear up pretty much however you want and be absolutely fine. It's not that your setup is the best, it's that it simply doesn't matter. Gear full parry if you really want, it'll be NP, you'll still be able to waltz through any 4 man + CT + previous coil as long as you are doing a reasonable job of playing your class.

But please, your 'No DPS ever' stance... Consider that rather than a pure healer, we are support, here to help the group in whatever way we can. DPS is an indisputable part of our toolkit and can help immensely at times.

Oh and also, accuracy has zero affect on heals whatsoever. It's only really relevant for certain safe DPS phases.

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Healers who adamantly refuse to help DPS even when it's obvious that they have nothing better to do baffle me.

my WHM is max piety build. I logged out on my SMN cant give the exact stat calculations, but my max piety gives me around 5200-5300 MANA and i sit around ~274 ish DET. With my Det gear on i reach somewhere around ~338 DET. After spamming Cure I on myself with both different builds i only noticed a ~50 HP difference in the potency on my cures. The only thing is that instead of 5k plus mana I was sitting around 4500-4600.

I'd rather have the extra MANA than 50+ more hp on heals.
I think the max piety build is better. Especially for progression since ppl will be dying and taking avoidable damage when learning new mechanics.

Dont quote me on this following sentence, but a while back i was discussing healers with one of the officers of my old FC. He mains WHM. He really loves parsing his HPS and overhealing and all that advance healer stuff. (Lets call it FFXIV Sabermetrics lol). He told me that after doing the math (2.3 build) a max piety WHM would be able to cast 200 more cure 1's over the course of the fight than a max det. The reason being they have more natural mp regen per tick because of the larger mana pull.

the more cure 1s u can cast, the more free cure procs u get, further helping with mana conservation. So whille the lower DET means i have to cast more spells through out the fight, it also means i will be asking for ballad less often

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Originally Posted by DarkLordCthulhu

my WHM is max piety build. I logged out on my SMN cant give the exact stat calculations, but my max piety gives me around 5200-5300 MANA and i sit around ~274 ish DET. With my Det gear on i reach somewhere around ~338 DET. After spamming Cure I on myself with both different builds i only noticed a ~50 HP difference in the potency on my cures. The only thing is that instead of 5k plus mana I was sitting around 4500-4600.

I'd rather have the extra MANA than 50+ more hp on heals.
I think the max piety build is better. Especially for progression since ppl will be dying and taking avoidable damage when learning new mechanics.

Dont quote me on this following sentence, but a while back i was discussing healers with one of the officers of my old FC. He mains WHM. He really loves parsing his HPS and overhealing and all that advance healer stuff. (Lets call it FFXIV Sabermetrics lol). He told me that after doing the math (2.3 build) a max piety WHM would be able to cast 200 more cure 1's over the course of the fight than a max det. The reason being they have more natural mp regen per tick because of the larger mana pull.

the more cure 1s u can cast, the more free cure procs u get, further helping with mana conservation. So whille the lower DET means i have to cast more spells through out the fight, it also means i will be asking for ballad less often

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Each piety gives you a little less than 8 mp; we'll call it 8 even for ease of mathing. Assuming you cast something right on the pull, never cap on MP, and thus never miss on regen, you will regain 400% of your MP over the course of a ten minute fight (2% per tick, times 20 ticks per minute, times 10 minutes), thus under ideal circumstances each point of piety grants you 40 MP (8 base plus 32 regen) over a ten minute fight. Cure costs 133 MP at level 50; 200 of them costs 26,600 MP. That's 665 piety worth of MP If it's a TWENTY minute fight, it's still 369 piety worth of mp.

I believe that the most piety you can get from gear in 2.4 is 278; it requires a mash up of Coil and Poetics gear (with both Poetics 130 and 120 rings). The reason I say believe is that I don't know whether you can meld more piety onto the crafted gear than the i130 stuff has; I doubt it, but I'm not sure. Using 278 piety as the mark, you can add to that 278 piety with food and party buff, but it still won't bring you to 369 piety. Even if it did, you'd have to compete against a gear set with near-zero piety to make the gap wide enough.

I have some strong reservations about your friend's math, is what I'm saying.

when it comes to SS please dont forget that it does not only increase casting speed of all skills but also decrease GCD. not by much (see here) but it does
it may not be enough to go full SS but it sure is nice to get as much SS as you can get withour sacrifying anything else
im still quite new to this game but for now i priorize piety and SS over the other stats

More than likely going a full SS build just like last two patches. It makes the most sense to me considering how much spell speed is available and how little determination there is at BiS. The endgame weapon tossing spell speed at us every new coil is a clear indicator, that they want us stacking as much speed as possible. I'm not a huge fan of spell speed but I love what it does when Presence of Mind and Fey Glow are up simultaneously. Insta-cast Stone II? Yes please!

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Originally Posted by IveraIvalice

Though ss does make a bigger difference to blms. I don't know why, maybe it's because it's offensive magic? But for healers spells and buffs it's garbage

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Becoz it's the only class that doesn't have the secondary effect of the spell-speed : Mana problems (or TP for physical classes with skill speed)
But still, I like my build Max Piety + as much spell-speed as possible on my WHM.

End-game fights in this game are like this usually : You heave almost nothing to heal for some times, and then, burst of dmg for 10-15sec, then relativly calm again for 30-50sec, and that's usually where the wipes are, more spell-speed you have, easyer those burst of dmg will be, and slighty more determinations, or crit rate, wont help me in those cases.

The other problem, was also asking for ballad (witch reduce the dmg of the bard, that's not a good thing), if I can do without, even if ppl take avoidable dmg, or if I raise, this is a good thing, and that's why I play full Piety.

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Originally Posted by deos

when it comes to SS please dont forget that it does not only increase casting speed of all skills but also decrease GCD. not by much (see here) but it does
it may not be enough to go full SS but it sure is nice to get as much SS as you can get withour sacrifying anything else
im still quite new to this game but for now i priorize piety and SS over the other stats

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This has been discussed at length in other threads, but I'll summarize the argument against spell speed stacking on healers (or any caster but BLM, really):

- Healers generally do not spam their skills as soon as they become available, unlike BLMs. This largely eliminates the benefit of the slightly reduced GCD. Unless you sit there spamming your Cures (building massive threat from overhealing) or spamming Stones until you run out of MP, you are not seeing an advantage to the marginally decreased GCD.

- The decrease in casting time is also a marginalized benefit because good healers learn their fights quickly and are ready to queue up their heals moments before significant spike damage actually occurs. We call this "precasting." You account for the cast time on your spells and anticipate the occurrence and severity of damage to the tank and to the party to time your heals appropriately. Bad healers wait until damage has occurred, take a beat to process that they should hit a heal button, and then execute; skilled healers expect scripted damage and time their casts so that the heal comes into effect as or immediately after the damage is incurred. Spell speed does not help much if you are already healing correctly.

- The actual decrease in casting time is so puny that you can barely notice it. Only spells with a base casting time of 2.5 or greater start to see a noticeable benefit with massive SS stacking. Main single-target heals for both classes have base casting times of 2.0, and you spend the majority of your time casting them. Even then, you're precasting them for anything that matters.

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Originally Posted by Artiste

Becoz it's the only class that doesn't have the secondary effect of the spell-speed : Mana problems (or TP for physical classes with skill speed).

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No, it's because BLMs perpetually chain hard casts for damage, with occasional proc usage woven between said hard casts. Hence why the GCD and cast time reduction actually make a difference for them.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Actually I'm going to bash you because of...



Outside of the current coil, you can gear up pretty much however you want and be absolutely fine. It's not that your setup is the best, it's that it simply doesn't matter. Gear full parry if you really want, it'll be NP, you'll still be able to waltz through any 4 man + CT + previous coil as long as you are doing a reasonable job of playing your class.

But please, your 'No DPS ever' stance... Consider that rather than a pure healer, we are support, here to help the group in whatever way we can. DPS is an indisputable part of our toolkit and can help immensely at times.

Oh and also, accuracy has zero affect on heals whatsoever. It's only really relevant for certain safe DPS phases.

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You got me. Last night, I was asked to Holy spam the adds in Shiva Ex because we failed twice due to low dps. Surprisingly, I made a difference.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Healers who adamantly refuse to help DPS even when it's obvious that they have nothing better to do baffle me.

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Yep, just like BRDs who refuse to use Ballad because he don't want a dip in his deeps.

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Originally Posted by Jim_Berry

You got me. Last night, I was asked to Holy spam the adds in Shiva Ex because we failed twice due to low dps. Surprisingly, I made a difference.

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WHM DPS is pretty decent when we aren't hamstrung by accuracy, good stuff though, it always pays to keep an open mind about options in a group =)

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Originally Posted by IveraIvalice

I will never put ss on my gear after I did tests before novus. I had a set of gear that had a good amount of spell speed on it, and when removing the set to be naked basically, it was about a 100 point difference in ss. With about a 100 points difference in spell speed, the speed it increased my cures was exactly .08
That is atrociously low for 100 points.
Btw incase you didn't know, the exact cast time can be checked by looking at the actions and traits menu and it does update with stats, that's how I knew it was exactly .08

Though ss does make a bigger difference to blms. I don't know why, maybe it's because it's offensive magic? But for healers spells and buffs it's garbage

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Its better for BLMs because they never run out of MP. So being able to cast spells .08 faster will let them get out an extra spell that much quicker.

The actual increase in speed could be different just like the increase from piety is different for each class.

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Originally Posted by Artiste

Becoz it's the only class that doesn't have the secondary effect of the spell-speed : Mana problems (or TP for physical classes with skill speed)
But still, I like my build Max Piety + as much spell-speed as possible on my WHM.

End-game fights in this game are like this usually : You heave almost nothing to heal for some times, and then, burst of dmg for 10-15sec, then relativly calm again for 30-50sec, and that's usually where the wipes are, more spell-speed you have, easyer those burst of dmg will be, and slighty more determinations, or crit rate, wont help me in those cases.

The other problem, was also asking for ballad (witch reduce the dmg of the bard, that's not a good thing), if I can do without, even if ppl take avoidable dmg, or if I raise, this is a good thing, and that's why I play full Piety.

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If you want SS for a burst of 10-15 seconds use PoM will increase your SS more than any gear can.

Higher your mana the more you regen per tick. So Pie is always usefull. Skillspeed is debateable, but as Gear stat budget increases and each piece of gear gives more and more, then Skillspeed may become even more useful. At the moment numbers are still pretty low giving, overall low benefits.

I wouldnt be surprised if stat "weights" shift as numbers get higher. Especially crit hit rate.

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Originally Posted by Menae

Accuracy>all.

I'm not joking, either. If I could trade the amount of secondaries needed to accuracy cap in coil I'd do it in a heartbeat. I can keep up a tank with 150 less hp on a cure 2, but missing DoTs makes me so angry I could kill a man. Except I can't. Because I keep MISSING HIM.

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accuracy can go to hell! lol

I would trade all my accuracy for equal shares in pie/det/crit and a bit of ss

Though crit sounds nice I know how much I need to heal and when. So it is usually a waste.

SS is becoming useful as it not only makes spells faster but also reduces GCD. In my case if i was able to get SS without sacrificing Piety and Det such that Stoneskin was a 2.5s or less I'd be delighted.

PoM though is a great skill I feel it cooldown is too long and I only ever use it when I need to do a lot of buffs in a short space of time.
eg: prey in t10 during adds or Stoneskin then entire party in t11 before nerve gas.

Despite the overwhelming support for det, i find myself preferring pie+ss.

While it is true that huge stacks of ss only really become noticeable on spells with longer cast times, i find myself in situations where i'm using those spells often. Final coil in particular, where i'm being expected to do extensive solo-healing so our sch can dps, I've found that reduced medica/medica II cast time invaluable. (i'm looking at you T11 add phase) That fraction of a second can definitely make the difference when i'm being targeted with three laser cannons, or i have to interrupt a cast to get out of a gravity puddle. Also solo healing definitely has me casting enough during certain points in each fight that i notice the benefit, and i almost never need a ballad.

Honestly tho, just having a healthy mix of all of them is fine. If you want to min/max or find it enjoyable, that's great, but 20-30 extra points on a cure isn't going to save anyone (i say 20-30 because you're bound to have some det anyway) All this isn't to mention how absurdly expensive det materia is when discussing novus builds or crafted accessories. Can i make the gil to buy it? Sure. Do i have the time to SB it myself? Probably. But that opportunity cost is just way too high, at least for me.

TL;DR - You're going to be able to heal all content just fine with the mixture of secondaries that comes from any given gear set of max ilv.

There are so many contradictions in Laesha's post...

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Originally Posted by Laesha

While it is true that huge stacks of ss only really become noticeable on spells with longer cast times, i find myself in situations where i'm using those spells often. Final coil in particular, where i'm being expected to do extensive solo-healing so our sch can dps

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A full SS build against a Piety/det build has 100 spell speed difference at most. That's... 0,08-0,09s difference at most. It takes somewhere between 19 and 21 spells to get that 1 casting bonus out of it with said difference. It's not as significant as implied. Not game making or breaking, the very least. If you're building a piety/SS build that does not primarily focus on spell speed, the difference is even less.

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Originally Posted by Laesha

I've found that reduced medica/medica II cast time invaluable. (i'm looking at you T11 add phase)

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It's a Medica II every 30s and a Medica every 30s with 15 seconds between each. Unless your tanks are eating every auto-cannon or you're casting raise all the time, I don't see how having spell speed helps contribute here as there is no need to heal constantly, even when solo healing.

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Originally Posted by Laesha

That fraction of a second can definitely make the difference when i'm being targeted with three laser cannons, or i have to interrupt a cast to get out of a gravity puddle.

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Why would anyone be low enough prior to auto-cannons going out and die from an auto-attack if you have to cancel your cast?

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Originally Posted by Laesha

Also solo healing definitely has me casting enough during certain points in each fight that i notice the benefit, and i almost never need a ballad.

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Spell speed does not benefit you at all concerning MP conservation. If anything, it helps you burn MP more. I mentioned that it takes 19-21 casts to get that 1 cast bonus in, that also means you're spending 1 cast extra on healing which may or may not be overhealing. If not making use of that extra cast bonus you're just idling for that one cast worth in time. Where's the benefit from that?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laesha

Honestly tho, just having a healthy mix of all of them is fine. If you want to min/max or find it enjoyable, that's great, but 20-30 extra points on a cure isn't going to save anyone (i say 20-30 because you're bound to have some det anyway)

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On the contrary, you could say that 20-30 extra healing could save someone from whatever next hit comes in. But you can't squeeze in another spell within a 2-spell timeframe no matter how much spell speed you stack.

I posted this in another topic, so I'll just leave a part of it here:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Spell speed
This is simply garbage and here's a list why:
1) When pre-casting, having spell speed won't matter. Whether you pre-cast with 2,00 casting time or 1,80 casting time, it doesn't matter. It's called pre-casting for a reason.
2) Even when you're late with pre-casting, a 0,02 to 0,05s casting time won't make a difference. For whoever wants to prove it's uses by giving examples: It simply means you failed in the first place and having a bit of spell speed just happened to patch up for your mistake in a really, really rare occasion.
3) It takes somewhere between 20 and 22 spells before you benefit from a single spell worth of time. A white mage rarely chains that many spells in succession or is rarely needed.
4) It contributes nothing concerning MP spend vs HPS (hp recovery per second) requirement. Each encounter has a certain amount of HPS. Let's say you cast 100 cures in one encounter to meet the requirement and having spell speed allows you to cast 110 cures for the same encounter. This means 10 cures worth of pure overheal or 10 cures worth of idle time.
5) Idle time was mentioned in 4), any form of idle time destroys the whole purpose to have spell speed in the first place.
6) White Mages will always have some idle time here and there. It's to either conserve MP, simply because there's nothing to heal at that moment or it's a phase transition where nothing can be done.
7) Unlike determination and crit, it contributes nothing on a single healing spell. Although crit may or may not be complete overheal. Spike hits - or more commonly known as tank killers - are very frequent in endgame content. Odds are that crit contributes more than spell speed.

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Yeah, sufficient to say, I couldn't disagree more with Lyrica ^_^

especially the idea that 20-30 extra hp on a cure would save anyone. lol. Not a chance.

secondaries matter <-> that much for healing. That's just how the game is designed. I know theory crafters want it to be more complex. It just isn't.

Well, here's a question guys.

For example. Is it worth ever going for the High Allagan gear, over the augmented Ironworks gear for the secondary stats?

Like, main culprit, Ironworks Belt VS High Allagan Belt. Piety + Crit VS Piety + Det.

Main thing I do, is never go for crit. I hate the mechanic on it and it provides little to nothing to a WHM at all. Apart from RNG.

Yet, is the MND lost from goign for the high allagan belt that big of a loss?