Viability of a Spell Speed WHM set up?

White Mage is my secondary class, but I am NOT going to be playing it in Final Coil (BLM).

Thinking about doing either a Piety/Spell Speed or Spell Speed/Determination build just for funs.

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/PLA5

WHM secondary stats are literally personal preference.

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Originally Posted by Estellios

WHM secondary stats are literally personal preference.

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Exactly. Secondaries on a healer are literally meaningless. I'm sure you've heard before that skill trumps gear, and this is most evident on a healer. You could have zero of every Secondary and do just fine at everything. You wanna Spell Speed? Go for it!

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Exactly. Secondaries on a healer are literally meaningless.

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Except, y'know, having enough Piety to comfortably heal for many minutes of constant fighting, or a Scholar's unchallenged need for Crit rate...

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Secondaries on a healer are literally meaningless.

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They are not.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

I'm sure you've heard before that skill trumps gear, and this is most evident on a healer.

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Now, this I do agree with.

OP, you could go for SPSP for fun but it's not a good stat. If you intend to chain cast DPS-spells, go ahead. However, for your healing game SPSP has very little effect as healing in this game is very timing-based with little to no chain casting necessary. When you are not chain casting, you are not really getting anything out of SPSP. That marginally faster Cure II won't be helpful because, y'know, you could have timed it perfectly anyway via precasting with some thought. :')

There're tons of SPSP-related topics on this forum and the efficacy or lack thereof has been exhausted in previous topics, whilst some still advocate SPSP.

TL;DR: WHM is your offspec, have fun with it and do as you please.

:D Yea. BLM SP rubbed off on me haha. Everything must be fast XD

Thanks for your insight guys!

In my opinion, you should go full DET with enough PIE. What constitutes of "enough" depends on yourself, but if you are not doing FCoB, having a comfortably big MP-pool won't be a big issue. So that being said, if you intend to do content casually on your WHM and are working on upgrades simply to pass time, you don't really need much if at all PIE, meaning you could go DET+SPSP like you planned to.

If you intend to do some (semi-)serious content on WHM, I'd say: enough PIE + full-on DET if possible. 5k to 5.4k MP (with food and party buffs) seem about right, with some going for even more.

I'm looking forward to SE hopefully reworking spell speed to make it less useless for jobs that aren't BLM. Whenever a healer's Coil or Tome piece has tons of SPSD instead of more useful stats, it just makes me wonder what's wrong with the dev team.

The only caster who benefits less from SPSD as it currently functions is SMN.

I find spell speed waste mana, in a sense where you cast can be too fast over healing a target. I find DET more useful because you can actually see the heal increase and also increases your fps output.

If I use scholar gear on whm I heal for 200hp less than using all DET gear, you don't think that little bit matters until your tank has 1hp and you think " if I was using crit/spell speed he might hav been dead from lack of healing".

Realizing I'm heading into coil in a second, I feel there is one case that can be made for Spell Speed. It's your emergency "Oh shit I have to interrupt my cast to avoid dying to an aoe" stat that makes easier to recast that life-saving spell BEFORE it's too late. Not the best case, but not one I'd scoff at.

Right, you're pretty much known for being a big fan of spell speed as a black mage. Of course, as a black mage the more spells you cast in a single encounter, the better. It means more damage of course. Likewise, if you cast more spells as a white mage, it also means more healing done in a single encounter.

Now here's the problem: Each encounter only has a certain range of HPS to meet. Any HPS that goes over it will most likely be overhealing and any gear the tank/party gets, the less HPS you need in general. So with progression and gear, spell speed becomes less and less viable and even completely useless at one point. This is simply due to the following:
-You never chain spells as a healer like you do as a black mage
-Pre-casting completely voids the purpose of spell speed - You should be familiar with this as a black mage too (pre-cast thunder pre-pull)
-White Mages have a considerable amount of idle time, whether you like it or not. This also destroys the usefulness of spell speed
-It contributes nothing for the healing vs cost ratio

But there's a problem with gear: A lot of piety equipment comes with either Critical Hit Rate or Spell speed. Only exception being the ironworks robe and ring. So onward to your gear:

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Originally Posted by Skeith-Adeline

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/PLA5

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Your final stats with this gear are:
Mind 643
Accuracy 411
Critical Hit Rate 375
Determination 317
Spell speed 698
Vitality 505
Piety 339

In your gear your piety is really low. I can't be assed to do the exact maths on this, but I'm guessing you're under 4300 MP. The popular meta is for the White Mage to have 5000 mp or a bit more. You'll have more starting MP then and your natural MP recovery will increase significantly over time. It also reduces the need for ballad as a White Mage. Naturally avoiding ballad as a bard not only increases their own DPS, but also the casters if the MP is spend on requiem.

Secondly I noticed you have a crafted ring in there. The i120 ironworks ring is actually the second best thing a White Mage can get. The crafted ring you have in mind over the i120 ironworks ring would give you: +19 crit, +2 determination, +18 spell speed, +8 vitality, -3 mind and -15 piety.
3 mind equals roughly 6 determination. Average healing-wise, the crafted ring would reduce your average healing for each spell slightly. For the remaining stats, 19 crit, 18 spell speed and 8 vitality, you're sacrificing 15 piety for it. Even if you meld piety over spell speed, you're still losing out on at least 3 piety. If anything, the crit isn't worth the piety difference. It would be a good ring to use for T13 if you need the HP, however. I would recommend getting the scarf and/or bangles over the rings/earrings. Those are more suitable for White Mages as the rings and earrings are more suitable for Scholars.
Lastly, depending whether you want to offdps during available windows in FCOB, you might want to consider putting accuracy on your nirvana or not. This highly depends on you and the scholar if this is possible, however. But it might be something to consider.

Edit: I just noticed someone sneaked in a comment about spell speed being the "OH SHIT" stat. If you're in a situation you realise you're already too late, no amount of spell speed is going to save anyone here.

You might also find this an interesting topic if you're looking for general White Mage 101s: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ls-at-level-50

TBH, if your tank is on 1 HP, you have already f'ed up, and no amount of secondary stats will make up for that. SpSp is not a great stat, but if you like slightly faster heals then feel free to use it, it isn't going to gimp your ability to heal.

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

TBH, if your tank is on 1 HP, you have already f'ed up, and no amount of secondary stats will make up for that. SpSp is not a great stat, but if you like slightly faster heals then feel free to use it, it isn't going to gimp your ability to heal.

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I knew someone would say that and obviously you don't deal with the massive aoe damage of final coil

Obviously, learning content is an exception, and no I don't because I only started doing coil a month ago, but I look forward to FCOB.

Actually, Spellspeed is still garbage even in FCOB. Unless you can get so much spell speed that your recast time is 2,00s or less, it's won't do anything. For both White Mage and Scholar

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Originally Posted by DarkerOrange

TBH, if your tank is on 1 HP, you have already f'ed up.

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Thats why we have benediction :)

I used to go DET/SS and changed recently to:

DET>PIE>SS If my MP is more than 5k
PIE>DET>SS If my MP is less than 5k

This is reflected on my nirvana which is 31 DET 33 PIE 11 SS

5k MP is enough for ANYTHING in current content and you will never have an MP problem unless your spamming cure 2, medica 2 e.g.


The arguement of crit vs ss is choose one and stick with it.
Never touch crit as WHM, save that gear for a SCH, as you will find ss/det or ss/pie which make up most of the BIS augemented ironworks accessories are pretty easy to get with the new WoD weekly carboncoat and the bracelet is turn 11.

Yes more crit is nice, but it is luck based, I have very low crit and got 3 crits in a row once.
At least with ss its always there for you, preys in T10 for example only have 6 seconds for you to get that 2.5 second casting stoneskin on, I'd take the extra mill-second any day over a luck based stat for peace of mind.

A little Spell Speed makes no noticeable difference, while tons of it not only do little for your primary heal CDs but are completely unnecessary given the way combat works in this game.

No amount of spell speed is going to fix poor life choices (whether by the healer or the party). At best high SPSD will give reactive players more room for error, but healers who know their fights don't benefit much at all.

E.g. You know when Prey is about to go out if you pay attention to the fight in T10. The only thing more SPSD gives you is a fraction of a second longer to dislodge your thumb from your ass and attend to the mechanic that shouldn't have been any surprise to begin with.

Just throwing this out there, but Spell Speed builds are very viable under 2 different scenarios.
If you are solo-healing content, you are also chaining heals more often. Spell speed has the unique property that it decreases cast time and recast time, so it has double the effect of skill speed. Spell Speed + Piety is the best build for this.
If you weave DPS spells in between heals (meaning you are constantly casting something) spell speed also makes a noticeable difference.

That being said, if 99% of the content you do is with a healing partner or you prefer not to DPS a lot, Spell Speed is almost worthless. Determination +Piety would be a better choice.

On a side note, Presence of Mind doubles your existing Spell Speed during the effect. I've noticed that, with enough Spell Speed, I was able to get Medica II to cast in .97 seconds. At some point in the future Spell Speed builds will be amazing as the levels on gear continue to grow.

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Originally Posted by Talia_Hailwind

I used to go DET/SS and changed recently to:

DET>PIE>SS If my MP is more than 5k
PIE>DET>SS If my MP is less than 5k

This is reflected on my nirvana which is 31 DET 33 PIE 11 SS

5k MP is enough for ANYTHING in current content and you will never have an MP problem unless your spamming cure 2, medica 2 e.g.


The arguement of crit vs ss is choose one and stick with it.
Never touch crit as WHM, save that gear for a SCH, as you will find ss/det or ss/pie which make up most of the BIS augemented ironworks accessories are pretty easy to get with the new WoD weekly carboncoat and the bracelet is turn 11.

Yes more crit is nice, but it is luck based, I have very low crit and got 3 crits in a row once.
At least with ss its always there for you, preys in T10 for example only have 6 seconds for you to get that 2.5 second casting stoneskin on, I'd take the extra mill-second any day over a luck based stat for peace of mind.

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Crit is luck based, but any form of ability will void spell speed of any potential benefit it gains. A white mage who plans properly and actually knows what he/she is doing has no use for Spell speed. Crit may or may not help. But at least it -has- a chance to create beneficial effects. Even if not for healing, it can still up the dps a bit if you're off DPSing.

Spell speed has no benefit when off-dpsing unless you're tossing out somewhere around 20 spells in success. Which is an extremely rare occasion.

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Originally Posted by Velox

Just throwing this out there, but Spell Speed builds are very viable under 2 different scenarios.
If you are solo-healing content, you are also chaining heals more often. Spell speed has the unique property that it decreases cast time and recast time, so it has double the effect of skill speed. Spell Speed + Piety is the best build for this.
If you weave DPS spells in between heals (meaning you are constantly casting something) spell speed also makes a noticeable difference.

That being said, if 99% of the content you do is with a healing partner or you prefer not to DPS a lot, Spell Speed is almost worthless. Determination +Piety would be a better choice.

On a side note, Presence of Mind doubles your existing Spell Speed during the effect. I've noticed that, with enough Spell Speed, I was able to get Medica II to cast in .97 seconds. At some point in the future Spell Speed builds will be amazing as the levels on gear continue to grow.

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Assuming spell speed stays the same, yeah. I don't think it's completely unreasonable to think that they're going to change Spell Speed. I believe they mentioned somewhere in a live letter that they're changing skill speed for 3.0*. So it's not too far fetched to think spell speed's on the topic as well

* can anyone verify that?

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Rawr.

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It's a bit old, but I can't find anything else. Skill Speed (And I'll assume Spell Speed by extension) isn't outright planned to be changed, but Yoshida claims that Skill/Spell Speed will become more relevant once the level cap is increased. (Scroll down roughly halfway if you have a fear of the beloved CTRL+F Buttons. :p)

That said, no mechanical changes implied in the quote, at least.

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Originally Posted by Raminax

snip

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If anything they should remove DoT and HoT ticks off the server and allow spell/skill speed to increase the number of ticks that occur in the skill's duration. This would greatly benefit DoT and HoT based jobs like SMN and WHM.

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Originally Posted by Raminax

It's a bit old, but I can't find anything else. Skill Speed (And I'll assume Spell Speed by extension) isn't outright planned to be changed, but Yoshida claims that Skill/Spell Speed will become more relevant once the level cap is increased. (Scroll down roughly halfway if you have a fear of the beloved CTRL+F Buttons. :p)

That said, no mechanical changes implied in the quote, at least.

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In the Live Letter XVIII translation document:
"F: Spell speed and skill speed are junk at the moment. Do you plan to improve it?
Y: Fundamentally looking at the game’s design, there will always be some gear that is more desirable than others, and some stats that are more desirable than others. If we made SS as good as det or crit then there would be less of a sense of needing to choose between pieces of gear… But we do have plans for SS so please wait and see."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...eview?sle=true

In a way, it doesn't make sense not to change how skill/spell speed works, especially when level cap is raised. Imagine Black Mages tossing spells out with a 1,5s cast time

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Originally Posted by Velox

Rawr.

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Sure would! Though I have this suspicion Skill/Spell Speed would shoot right to the top if this kind of change ever happened. Especially considering how Spell/Skill Speed currently are flat reductions in cast times/general cooldowns, rather than increasing the rate at which you cast. I wonder what Regen and Medica II would look like with 100% Spell Speed... :p

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Rawr.

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That much is true. It definitely needs some level scaling in place, at the very least. Otherwise we'll be reaching 100% critical strike rates and instant casts by the time we have a second expansion or something, unless Squeenix curbs the ilvl upgrades between tiers (or hardcaps several secondaries).

I like Spell Speed; the standard GCD is a bit too slow for my tastes and presence of mind is really fun to use. If it gets to the point that my heals are not enough I may reconsider, but so far it hasn't been the case and I doubt it ever will be. If you're having fun with it, that's the most important thing.

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Originally Posted by KikoriL

Except, y'know, having enough Piety to comfortably heal for many minutes of constant fighting, or a Scholar's unchallenged need for Crit rate...

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Piety's not a Secondary. I would argue that it is a full on Primary Stat. I didn't factor it into that statement.

When I said "meaningless", I meant this for the reason I stated in a further sentence: if you had zero of every secondary, content wouldn't be any more difficult. Healers have such high potency skills that main stats alone get their heals well above what they need to be. The only thing Secondaries can be observed to do on a healer is help to save someone from death with pure, dumb luck. Any skilled healer stops needing them very quickly.

Spell Speed: You might save someone with a split second heal, but it's rare. It's more effective to pre-cast anyway.
Crit: You might save someone with a clutch critical, but it's rare. You should fight battles assuming that you will never crit in the first place because it's bad to rely on RNG. Thus, most crits end up being overheals anyway.
Det: You might save someone because that Cure healed for 50 more than usual, but it's rare.

All of these situations should be avoided entirely in the first place.

Now, Piety. I consider a stat to be "Primary" if it is evident that not having enough of it will cause you to be physically unable to complete content. Thus, I consider the following stats to be Primary, in whatever capacity the various jobs use them: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, Mind, Piety, and Accuracy.

Sure, you could complete content without secondaries, but why would anyone want to? Just because you could do it doesn't mean that it would be advisable or equally efficient.

People who don't care about min/maxing can continue not to care about secondaries; however, there are actually moments in progression content where a little more DET or CRT sprinkled amongst the party, including the healers, could have turned an oh-so-close wipe into a clear.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

People who don't care about min/maxing can continue not to care about secondaries; however, there are actually moments in progression content where a little more DET or CRT sprinkled amongst the party, including the healers, could have turned an oh-so-close wipe into a clear.

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Well, min-maxing is usually something "real" endgame players care about, tbh. There will always be players around who leisurely wait for the echo and nerf and clear it the easy way. Just let them stay in their bubble.

Probs devs have something in store for SS overall.
Perhaps it'll scale higher once we get to higher levels with more diverse gear/ stat customization?
Hopefully in 3.0 ?
Cuz another year of this cookie cutter building and i might call it quits cuz
There's really no fun in doing everything the meta way unless ur in a static that knows what they r doing and r over geared etc which will compensate ur/ ppl's different ways off building.
I.e man mode extreme primals and coils lol.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Sure, you could complete content without secondaries, but why would anyone want to? Just because you could do it doesn't mean that it would be advisable or equally efficient.

People who don't care about min/maxing can continue not to care about secondaries; however, there are actually moments in progression content where a little more DET or CRT sprinkled amongst the party, including the healers, could have turned an oh-so-close wipe into a clear.

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That's not quite what I was saying. I'm not saying that people should run around without Secondaries. I was using that phrasing to illustrate why the most common answer to the question of healer secondaries is "personal preference". It's because it doesn't matter one iota what combination of secondaries you chose; everything's going to be just fine. Or, rather, it'll be a player mistake that causes a wipe, not a few stat points.

Some people will want to make their cures hit for as high as possible. Some people will want to be crit machines. Some people want the comfort of the lowest possible cast times. Some people will want a balance. It's all just personal preference, maxing out the element of the class that they deem most important, if they choose one at all.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Exactly. Secondaries on a healer are literally meaningless.

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Please don't ever play a scholar.

A scholar without crit is super meh.

Oh, I kinda said in the OP that "NOT going to be playing it in Final Coil (BLM)." ^^;

My WHM is purely for Dungeons and Primals haha. I figured the Spell Speed would help me chain cast to keep the Tanks up during them e-peen pulls haha

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Originally Posted by Skeith-Adeline

Oh, I kinda said in the OP that "NOT going to be playing it in Final Coil (BLM)." ^^;

My WHM is purely for Dungeons and Primals haha. I figured the Spell Speed would help me chain cast to keep the Tanks up during them e-peen pulls haha

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Oh, it absolutely will. It'll also make Holy less of a hassle to cast, and everyone likes Holy!

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Please don't ever play a scholar.

A scholar without crit is super meh.

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Oh, I'm sorry. Scholar is the healer class I prefer.

You see, stacking Crit on a Scholar is like stacking Parry on a Tank. I speak here solely in reference to Adloquium. While a crit does make the Succor shield better, it's not likely to make any significant difference in anything. If an Adlo crits, you'll get a nice fuzzy feeling, just like if you clench everything and then Parry the tank buster.

However, it's RNG. No matter how much you stack that stat, it's still RNG. Remember o'l Murphy. You're gonna be throwing Adlo Crits left and right and everywhere... except when you actually need one. In that situation, Murphy will smile at you, wink, and then moon you. Immediately followed by the Tank dying.

Because it's impossible to guarantee that the next Adlo will crit, it's necessary to plan your next few moves as if it won't. You're free to change the plan if it does crit, but you're still going to succeed if it doesn't by planning around the worst case.

Now, a case can be made for the Scholar's other heals. Because their heals are, on average, less potent than a WHM, crits are relatively happy things in general for them. A Crit Physick is Cure II. A Crit Embrace gives you Spell Speed for a while, but not really enough to make a huge difference and it'll never come at a time when it would actually turn the tides. It all helps. Even still, RNG. It can't be relied upon.

Now, this doesn't change the fact that Crit is by and far the best stat for a Scholar to stack. It's just that crits will always be unreliable and sufficient skill and primary stats will eventually render it unnecessary. Just like with Det and SS, proper play circumvents any need for the stat at all. It's just a bonus. Even so, giant Adlo shields will never get old.

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Originally Posted by Donjo

Piety's not a Secondary. I would argue that it is a full on Primary Stat. I didn't factor it into that statement.

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Until they add Piety to every single piece of casting gear in the game (of level to have it) and consequently remove it as an option in relic customization, it's a secondary stat. Just an odd one that you can dump a free +30 into as you level up.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

E.g. You know when Prey is about to go out if you pay attention to the fight in T10. The only thing more SPSD gives you is a fraction of a second longer to dislodge your thumb from your ass and attend to the mechanic that shouldn't have been any surprise to begin with.

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Oh i'm sorry we aren't all self-centered elitists like you, Go back to shouting at people in dungeons for soulbinding.

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/2d/2d41...233b9fdd68.jpg

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Originally Posted by Talia_Hailwind

Oh i'm sorry we aren't all self-centered elitists like you, Go back to shouting at people in dungeons for soulbinding.

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/2d/2d41...233b9fdd68.jpg

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It's called planning, which scrubby healers don't do

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Originally Posted by Donjo

It's because it doesn't matter one iota what combination of secondaries you chose; everything's going to be just fine. Or, rather, it'll be a player mistake that causes a wipe, not a few stat points.

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Perfectly said. If you are relying on those 100 more HP per heals of Det, or 0.04 seconds less of cast time from Spell Speed you're doing it wrong anyway. The difference is so minimal that most (if not all) talk is just circle jerking theorycraft.

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

It's called planning, which scrubby healers don't do

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Good job I ain't one then eh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReLGCvFWv5o

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Originally Posted by Talia_Hailwind

Oh i'm sorry we aren't all self-centered elitists like you, Go back to shouting at people in dungeons for soulbinding.

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/2d/2d41...233b9fdd68.jpg

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I would comment more, but that reaction is so absurd and disproportionately outraged that it kind of speaks for itself without any highlights or embellishment on my part.