Sacred Soil

Forgive me if this sounds impudent, but does it trouble anyone else that no matter how high MND gets, Sacred Soil percentage reduction doesn't get higher?

Heals and DoTs get stronger, but Sacred Soil, Eye for an Eye, and Stoneskin remain fixed percentages. It makes job abilities feel very stagnant despite increasing gear values.

Well, stoneskin for example is always 18% HP (WHM trait) but the HP of the target increases as the game evoluates... Meaning stoneskin potency increases (more HP absorbed before/after) through a constant percentage. That's the same process when your mind increases and your spells heal better because the attacks deal more damages on a higher HP bar. This is actually normal x)

On a PLD, your Cure 1 will approximatively heal for the same % HP when you do T5 in old gear and when you do T9 with a recent gear. Only the values of the 2 Cure 1 are different but in the end, the %HP you gave back is similar. Your mind increases, your heal increases but don't forget HP of tank increases too. Same for all spells. When you outgear content though, you heal more %HP than before with the same spell, but it's a special situation.

Sacred soil and eye for eye are more valuable depending on the amount of damage incoming, unlike other skills that are more dependent on the healing or damage that your party is exerting. When the group is getting plowed for thousands of damage, down goes a soil. If we're getting tickled for a couple hundred, then soil is not most efficient. Eye for eye, similarly, pulls more weight when more damage is behind it. It's no different than a tank using a mitigation cooldown, though you can't dictate exactly when it will proc. outside of raids, sacred soil doesn't see as much action simply because lustrate on your tank usually restores more hp than sacred soil prevents, especially in light parties. In raids, it's a valuable tool to soak up damage, saving both you and your white mage mp.

In other words, as content gets harder, these abilities scale to the content rather than you.

As Seryl stated

Sacred Soil definitely scales with content the more damage incoming the more damage reduced. Post T10 it becomes pretty vocal. Head, Revelation , Ak Morn, Giga Flare ,Mega Flare , Tera....I mean the list goes on....

Eye for an Eye sees it's value go up when either the tank or target is taking on multiple mobs or the tank is getting ready to receive multiple blows in session i.e Ak Morn, Flatten followed by flare breath

Would be nice if scaled better, as currently, Soil is just an HP-check helper in the early weeks of new Coil, that's it.

Otherwise, save that charge that an energy drain or lustrate, which odds are the lustrate will heal more than the soil will mitigate.

That's kind of the purpose of mitigation ... it's like saying Virus needs to be buffed because it's useless once you're geared enough to survive and heal through everything.

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

Would be nice if scaled better, as currently, Soil is just an HP-check helper in the early weeks of new Coil, that's it.

Otherwise, save that charge that an energy drain or lustrate, which odds are the lustrate will heal more than the soil will mitigate.

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I agree to disagree

Speaking on coil, I'm assuming you've progressed through it all.

Lustrate is a single target heal, while Sacred Soil is a party wide mitigation, the two are incomparable. Also yeah the mitigation doesn't scale but you have to look at the domino effect of it


Big Aoe damage coming group stacks

Sacred Soil ----> This inturn helps WHM where as they would use a Cure III , you can pop whispering dawn to help patch heals, WHM could simply cast a medica due to the damge you just took not being as high without a sacred soil---> Using medica instead of Cure III helps with the bard not having to use ballad down the road etc etc its just a domino effect if you aren't doing your best to negate the unnecessary healing then you're defeating the purpose of being a Mitigation first healer....it's like saying I won't use my aldo , because I can just patch up with a lustrate.

I think you're using the wrong examples there :P

Soil can prevent a death
Lustrate can't heal anyone who's dead

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Originally Posted by ZhycranaDranix

Speaking on coil, I'm assuming you've progressed through it all.

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Farm status for awhile now.

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Big Aoe damage coming group stacks

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With current gear, outside of LB2'd Tera there's nothing that'll outright kill someone in FCoB if mechanics are handled properly, and that Medica 2 won't top off over time since none of these fights have successive raid AoEs. Well, outside of slow DPS making for Mega>Giga in T13 Ph1/2, in which case ok, pop the soil to make that transition less frustrating to mass heal.

It's still primarily a progression/learning/early-weeks tool in the grand scheme of things.

But wouldn't ''handling it properly'' mean mitigating it properly ? You're farming T13 now and have been so in no means am I telling you how to play the job because you have it down apparently. I don't like the views you have of Sacred Soil and I just say anything in your power of mitigation to help the next person (in all cases is the WHM) is to help make their job easier regardless the circumstance lol I mean I still mitigate on T9 farm parties , granted I only use Sacred Soil on Mega Flare (T9) but still its the job. I dunno to each his own, I respect your views and we both could be right in different situations my friend.

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Originally Posted by ZhycranaDranix

But wouldn't ''handling it properly'' mean mitigating it properly ? You're farming T13 now and have been so in no means am I telling you how to play the job because you have it down apparently. I don't like the views you have of Sacred Soil and I just say anything in your power of mitigation to help the next person (in all cases is the WHM) is to help make their job easier regardless the circumstance lol I mean I still mitigate on T9 farm parties , granted I only use Sacred Soil on Mega Flare (T9) but still its the job. I dunno to each his own, I respect your views and we both could be right in different situations my friend.

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I kind of agree with you. Even if something will not kill you outright, why would you avoid using Sacred Soil if the opportunity came up to use it? It would make healing everyone a lot easier, which can help to cause less stress. I see maybe if you have an issue with using the stack of AF, but still...

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Originally Posted by ZhycranaDranix

But wouldn't ''handling it properly'' mean mitigating it properly ?

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Handled properly is not getting one-shotted beyond mitigation, not overhealing/buffing for every possible thing.

The incoming damage is predictable when everyone's doing the mechanics dance, and WHM can deal with the bulk of the raid damage and keeping tanks alive with SCH pet for 90% of the encounters, which leaves the SCH free to heavily focus on DPSing while popping the odd lustrate/adlo.

I just rarely see use for Soil. Outside of LB2-Tera and Mega>Giga, only other spot in T13 I'd use one is the Giga+Akh#3 combo.

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I only use Sacred Soil on Mega Flare (T9)

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Back when you needed full stoneskin for mega flare, yeah, soil and covenant were a necessity to survive it, but not these days. With echo, if you overbuff for mega you miss out on a ton of free LB bar build-up from critical damage, which a WHM can heal up solo with DS-Med+Med2.

They are % based mitigation therefore they are always scaling with the exception of stoneskin since it's effectiveness is tied to target hp it's semi-scaling. Raid damage both (single and AoE) isn't staying the same is also increasing with newer endgame content.

edit:There's no logic in the argument you are making ost. On one hand you point out that heals are getting stronger and then say that mitigation should also get stronger...um...hello balance. It's like a tank saying "My HPs are getting super high nao, but my CD %s are not increasing".

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

Forgive me if this sounds impudent, but does it trouble anyone else that no matter how high MND gets, Sacred Soil percentage reduction doesn't get higher?

Heals and DoTs get stronger, but Sacred Soil, Eye for an Eye, and Stoneskin remain fixed percentages. It makes job abilities feel very stagnant despite increasing gear values.

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They scale automatically because they are percentages.

The potency values of heals and dots are based on percentages too. They're just hidden a bit better.

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

I just rarely see use for Soil. Outside of LB2-Tera and Mega>Giga, only other spot in T13 I'd use one is the Giga+Akh#3 combo.

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Rarely sew Use ?
You just named using it in at least 2 out of the 4 phases that's pretty consistent. Neither here nor there at the end of the day opinions are opinions. I applied not using Sacred Soil as much in 13 in my statics raid last night and the survivability was quite the same other than my WHM having to heal up a bit more but it was good to have some free stacks for dps healing, so I can def agree with your argument on some points but others eh not so much maybe once my group is as good as yours I may not have to mitigate so much. I still think its the bread and butter of the job.

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Originally Posted by ZhycranaDranix

I still think its the bread and butter of the job.

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It's hard to consider Soil a bread and butter move when it's almost never useful outside of FCOB and even then is discretionary depending on your raid's max HP.

The fact that it can't coexist with Shadowflare from the same caster makes it even more of a niche move for content where you could use it for fun and convenience but do better not to.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

It's hard to consider Soil a bread and butter move when it's almost never useful outside of FCOB and even then is discretionary depending on your raid's max HP.

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I stated mitigation is our bread and butter which is the use of Sacred Soil not solely just that action. Guess I could have clarified it better.

Your sole purpose as a SCH is to mitigate damage period point blank and heal it back up. Bread and butter.
No matter the minimal gain it might be its the job,Just because it saves across the board maybe 150-200hp per player
That's probably a mega flare +2 tower that you just survived or any situation for that matter.

Its almost never useful outside of FCOB?
You can say that about any progressing content


In First Coil it was good but not needed now
2nd Coil it was good but not needed now
FcOB it's needed (As per Kaisha it isn't a necessary move , unless you're starting out.) to each's own
But you see where I'm going with this ?

Pretty soon in Alexander people will be calling for it until they're geared and feel survivability doesn't require it, but that could be the said the same about succor or any move for that matter you do it just to make a QoL and easier on yourself. A i130 Tank can go into a dungeon and say hey I have a i120+ healer I won't use any of my CDs because my HP doesn't require it, yeah you will survive but its a nack in the healers day. Just a point im trying to get across

My point is that Sacred Soil has been niche for a very long time. Only in most cutting edge of progression content is it deemed very useful, and even then only for specific mechanics.

Also, no matter your role, the job is to complete the content. To that end Sacred Soil is not often the optimal choice. It's hardly useless, but there are usually better options.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Also, no matter your role, the job is to complete the content. To that end Sacred Soil is not often the optimal choice. It's hardly useless, but there are usually better options.

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Well said [insert clapping in agreement gif]

May we have fun in future content GL ALL !

Sacred Soil is like the WHM job :

Pretty much essential during progression, but once you start out-gearing content, both are thrown away in favor of MOAR DPS (Energy Drain and solo healing respectively), and then people complain why Sacred Soil and WHMs are so useless.

Well to me Sacred soil is of course for damage reduction but also to say "pack here" to the team
I think it is still super relevant, especially in Turn 13

I like to use it in Shiva EX a lot seeing as shes got a lot of AoE attacks plus Succor it can reduce quite a bit of damage. I make sure to use it when she goes to Sword to reduce the AoE damage even farther and since everyones already stacked for that move it makes it worth while. So it's got some good uses maybe not every fight mostly primals and coil.

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Originally Posted by IceSpear

I like to use it in Shiva EX a lot seeing as shes got a lot of AoE attacks plus Succor it can reduce quite a bit of damage. I make sure to use it when she goes to Sword to reduce the AoE damage even farther and since everyones already stacked for that move it makes it worth while. So it's got some good uses maybe not every fight mostly primals and coil.

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Yeah, I always liked using a soil for those up to four Absolute Zero AoEs in Shiva EX, and Sword switch if you can. That is the perfect situation for one outside of coil. Or even an overloaded orb situation for breaking chaos in Ramuh EX. It's really playing the job to it's fullest potential and using it's tool chest for damage mitigation.

making sure, that your party takes 10% less damage means, that your heal are about 10% more effective in term of keeping ppl alive. And your heals do scale with your mind. you could put it that way, that sacred soil raises the scaling of your heals by ~10%

And in addition, it scales with the HP the party member have. on a tank, that have 10k life, it prevents without heal 1k damage until the tank dies, while on a 5k-hp-fresh-lvl-50-pala its about 500 HP.

And if that is not enough to you: It is a Tank-LB1 without using the LB gauge

I'm not a big fan of sacred soil. I know I've often regretted using it and losing a lustrate.

I'm often left with the choice of either getting sacred soil up of landing a succor Preemptively when everybody is getting together.

It may not be as mana efficient but I can still use energy drain afterwards or use a lustrate on somebody who may have dipped too low. I can't count the amount of times I've seen a tank die from a tank buster a short while after group wide damage and we all know how this game likes to make you dodge stuff afterwards.

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Originally Posted by CycLee

making sure, that your party takes 10% less damage means, that your heal are about 10% more effective in term of keeping ppl alive. And your heals do scale with your mind. you could put it that way, that sacred soil raises the scaling of your heals by ~10%

And in addition, it scales with the HP the party member have. on a tank, that have 10k life, it prevents without heal 1k damage until the tank dies, while on a 5k-hp-fresh-lvl-50-pala its about 500 HP.

And if that is not enough to you: It is a Tank-LB1 without using the LB gauge

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I find it more helpful to think of it in terms like these:

If the incoming damage were 1000, the target(s) would receive 900; if 5000, then 4500. If 7000, then 6300. And so on.

This is why I find Sacred Soil to be highly situational in that it only shines when NOT having that extra little bit of mitigation increases the likelihood that someone will die before they can be recovered by healing spells. Throwing it up just because it's yet more mitigation is on par with throwing out unnecessary heals on nearly-full targets just to give the appearance of being busy (rather than doing something useful like assisting with DPS). Any damage that can be effortlessly (over)healed wasn't really in need of that extra mitigation.

Again, it's a good spell for what it does, but it's just not very helpful outside of protecting against huge, scripted raid damage. About the most mundane thing I regularly use it for is to cover Wild Charge in T10 to slightly decrease the probability that someone will die outright or to a subsequent floor tick if a party member derps or lags and fails to line up correctly.

When an ability uses a percentage it naturally scales in reference to the damage or healing being done. Think of it like saving or spending money, sales and tax, the higher the cost the more you will save or spend. 10% of 100 is only 10, but 10% of 1000 is 100?

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Originally Posted by Kaisha

Farm status for awhile now.


With current gear, outside of LB2'd Tera there's nothing that'll outright kill someone in FCoB if mechanics are handled properly, and that Medica 2 won't top off over time since none of these fights have successive raid AoEs. Well, outside of slow DPS making for Mega>Giga in T13 Ph1/2, in which case ok, pop the soil to make that transition less frustrating to mass heal.

It's still primarily a progression/learning/early-weeks tool in the grand scheme of things.

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Nerve cloud without sacred soil sounds downright horrible.

Also it helps for things like t10 charge and any time where everyone in your group is getting hit. 10% reduction on everybody? No way lustrate will outdo that.

I don't normally speak up on the forums, but trying to learn SCH a bit better since I switch between healing and bard so I figured I would research more about how to use the spells more effectively.

I normally use Sacred Soil during large trash mob pulls (from Old WP to WoD). I have experimented with it during the big AoEs like the ol' Titan Jump or Garuda's 2 hour I found it didn't help too much with and the damage was still about the same (getting a succor off before and right after a large damage attack was more effective to me). Other than that I normally stay with Lustrate. I still find it funny watching people use it at the first Glasya Labolas big AoE damage because if you had a whm medica or medica II you didn't need to much except a possible Succor then switch to Cleric Stance and start DPSing again.

Like most healing in the game, its entirely situational and how each person prefers to play.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Nerve cloud without sacred soil sounds downright horrible.

Also it helps for things like t10 charge and any time where everyone in your group is getting hit. 10% reduction on everybody? No way lustrate will outdo that.

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T11's auto-crit Nerve Cloud is quite survivable without Soil but you would really want both DK and SP up. Basically just a precaution, although we still use it.

T10 charges it's really unneeded and is a waste of a stack IMO, unless you're running without a MNK. We haven't used Soil in T10 since we were in full i110 gear and it was mainly only so we could survive the floor tick afterwards if we got it.

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Originally Posted by Sleigh

...only so we could survive the floor tick afterwards if we got it.

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Very much this, especially if you have someone who derps on occasion and hugs someone else too tightly for Wild Charge.

Was helping a friend complete dungeons for his Zodiac last night and playing mostly BLM for variety. The SCHs we got tended to cast Soil on CD and either spam Stoneskin or do nothing when no heals were needed. While I didn't complain and threw them commendations for at least doing the minimum required, I can't say that I didn't want to reach through the screen and shake them for being so wasteful and inefficient lol.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

do nothing when no heals were needed

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I notice this a lot when ever I queue for content on a different class as well, or when I jump into raids. Being idle is kind of a giant middle finger to the rest of the party. The DPS don't stop attacking until things are dead, and the tank has to hold aggro so they never stop attacking either. Why do healers feel they should be allowed rest? The way they play their class makes it seem like it's so much easier to use than anything else. Heal, stand around, heal, stand around...

(part 1)

Here's an example hit from Wild Charge with a Sacred Soil, while I adlo'ed the marked target:

(Damage 6690+8104+4944+1455) + (Adlo 1040) = 22233 damage total

Without the soil it would have hit at around 24700 damage, which is a savings of around 2.4k which makes it equivalent to a lustrate on a tank with 9.6k HP so I consider it a fair use. For Electric Burst it will DEFINITELY be 100% better than a lustrate. I would rather save the mark'ed schmuck the 10% of his HP however because of the floor tick.

15s of resonance/autos/main head from T11 did 31675 damage

If I would have used sacred soil, I would have prevented ~3.1k, which is better than a lustrate. Not using it for this purpose also allows me to get the WAR who is taking the main-head-hit topped off better, so the usage of both is a little sketch. I have managed to used it for Seed of the Sea(?) and reached the tanks with it but I think just succor would be fine for that.

(part 2, 1000 character limit is just silly)

For any old pull to require a soil, typically they would have had to have died around FOUR times in 15 seconds. I did this in the two big Brayflox HM pulls because the damage coming in was just nutty.

Speaking of Succor, it's just as powerful as Medica, although the payoff is later (150x2). It just sucks when you're trying to get everyone back to full. A good example is in Odin, where during Einharharharhar/Gungir succor spam actually gets to do it's full potency every cast and it's fantastic.

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Originally Posted by HoratioTeakettle

(part 1)

Here's an example hit from Wild Charge with a Sacred Soil, while I adlo'ed the marked target:

(Damage 6690+8104+4944+1455) + (Adlo 1040) = 22233 damage total

Without the soil it would have hit at around 24700 damage, which is a savings of around 2.4k which makes it equivalent to a lustrate on a tank with 9.6k HP so I consider it a fair use. For Electric Burst it will DEFINITELY be 100% better than a lustrate. I would rather save the mark'ed schmuck the 10% of his HP however because of the floor tick.

15s of resonance/autos/main head from T11 did 31675 damage

If I would have used sacred soil, I would have prevented ~3.1k, which is better than a lustrate. Not using it for this purpose also allows me to get the WAR who is taking the main-head-hit topped off better, so the usage of both is a little sketch. I have managed to used it for Seed of the Sea(?) and reached the tanks with it but I think just succor would be fine for that.

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You can't look at it as total damage of an attack and what soil mitigated; there's an extremely large difference between a single target's total damage getting mitigated and raid damage getting mitigated. Raid damage is typically extremely periodic and has large breaks before and after, and healing the raid back up from a total of say 25K damage is easy with M2/Succor and fairy heals. A tank taking X amount and measuring the mitigation is a bit more applicable since they are going to continue to get bopped on, but the situations where Soil > Lustrate are very rare.

That 2.4K you mitigated on the Wild Charge is a couple extra ticks of M2 via hitting every target involved, which will happen anyway. It's just a wasted stack unless they were going to die from the hit or the hit + a floor tick they may or may not take depending on your strategy.

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Originally Posted by HoratioTeakettle

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As Sleigh noted, this is one of those cases where the math is largely irrelevant. You don't win the duty as SCH by mitigating as much damage as you possibly can at the expense of all other goals, and there is no magic number at which your Sacred Soil cast is deemed "worth it."

Your Soil was worth it if there was a fair possibility that someone would otherwise have died from the initial burst or from a mechanic immediately following (e.g. electrocuted floor ticks after a P3 Wild Charge in T10). If the damage can be just as easily healed through/recovered from without it, then it was an unnecessary stack expenditure.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

You don't win the duty as SCH by mitigating as much damage as you possibly can at the expense of all other goals, and there is no magic number at which your Sacred Soil cast is deemed "worth it."

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Of course there are many factors that determine if it was "worth it".

I may have been misguiding when trying to explain that Sacred Soil is often at least equal (very loosely) to a Lustrate in terms of "healing done" in AoE situations.

It's not the work of the devil that the thread is making it out to be, but another tool in general.

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Originally Posted by HoratioTeakettle

Of course there are many factors that determine if it was "worth it".

I may have been misguiding when trying to explain that Sacred Soil is often at least equal (very loosely) to a Lustrate in terms of "healing done" in AoE situations.

It's not the work of the devil that the thread is making it out to be, but another tool in general.

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The sad truth in this thread is that Soil just isn't very useful outside of progression content, and even then it's sometimes a "can take-it-or-leave-it" thing depending on your group composition.

There's nothing wrong with it...except for all the SCHs who throw it up on CD during 4-man dungeons and probably should learn that Soil isn't really all that.

Fights like T13 is where SCH shine. everyone is literally on the brink of death on that fight and Sacred soil will give you that extra mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

There's nothing wrong with it...except for all the SCHs who throw it up on CD during 4-man dungeons and probably should learn that Soil isn't really all that.

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Funny enough, I find Sacred Soil to be quite invaluable of a skill in an opening pull in Aurum Vale, but the dichotomy of tanks you can get in that dungeon is so massive. Sometimes it feels like a nice bonus and other times it feels like it's the only way to keep the tank alive during some pulls X.X

Also because it's a level 49 dungeon and there isn't much else to spend Aetherflow on since your ability to DPS will be dependent on how good/bad your tank is.