White Mage Efficiency

A efficiency guide for WHM. A lot of theorycrafting! Please give feedback and your own advice/findings on how to play this class better.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8W...ew?usp=sharing

(Below is my old SCH efficiency guide!)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8W...ew?usp=sharing

Edits:
- Slight typo sorry, the 'basic' divine seal allows for 6 GCDs but it is still true that the 6th Cure will not apply divine seal (without spell speed) because Divine Seal itself has a delay to it.
- Awareness damage mitigation is 9.1% for 20% critical chance and 16.7% for 40% critical chance (so slightly less than half of the critical chance)

There are some vague technicalities in there that could use some elaboration. Namely:

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Rage of Halone -10% physical damage (STR down)
Dragon Kick -10% magic damage
Virus -15% physical damage (and -15% magic damage if SMN/SCH)

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Does the -10% strength/intelligence reduction really translate into a flat -10% physical/magical damage reduction? (same with Virus)

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Foresight -6% physical damage
Protect -5% all damage, lost when party member dies
Fey covenant -6% magic damage

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Does increased defense really translate into a -5% or -6% regardless of amount of defensive stats?

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Prevents critical hits; reduces damage on average more than half of the critical chance (20% critical chance  16.7% reduction | 40% critical chance  28.6% reduction)

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How did you conclude it's a 16,7% damage reduction with a critical hit prevent (with a 20% critical hit chance)?

On the topic of player efficiency it might be worth mentioning that an efficient healer isn't a healer that has the highest HPS output. As for the rest, after a quick read I've noticed:

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MP Management...

...Shroud of Saints restores 1060 MP.

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Feels nitpicky, but I wonder if this should deal with potency or mana-pool percentage rather than MP-values. I believe that it was mentioned somewhere that SoS is a 50-potency tick.

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Holmgang - HP cannot fall below 1, heal them just before buff falls off

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As with HG, Holmgang will fail to protect against certain tank-killer moves, but I'm not sure if that's relevant information for a healer guide.

That aside, I would personally appreciate if you cited sources in the document so it's easier for your peers to double-check and validate your findings. Continuing along the vein of personal preference, I find a strange mix of factual statements and conjecture in the text that's probably attributed to writing style. It might however seem more academic if these were cleaned up and separated.

For CureIII I would add that it already pays off to use it if you are standing next to only 1 other player, and both of you need more than a cure I. It' a little cheaper than 2 cure IIs and you save one GCD. Heavily underused spell.

A small gripe that may just come from my interpretation of what you wrote:
I don't agree with your sentiment of cure II vs. cure I playstyle, as if there were no middle ground (thats how it sounds imo).
You state using cures instead of cure II could force the SCH to heal. Thats way too generally spoken, as cure I + fairy could do the job (of course depending on situation), saving mana, same profit, eventually freecure.


Also, I can't think of situations out of dungeon Speedruns where it matters how many GCDs you fit into DS - can only heal as much as damage is beeing taken - but am still on T9 so... :)

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

Also, I can't think of situations out of dungeon Speedruns where it matters how many GCDs you fit into DS - can only heal as much as damage is beeing taken - but am still on T9 so... :)

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Being on T9 or T13, doesn't matter. This is actually correct. Whether you squeeze in 5 cures with a single Divine Seal or 2 cures, if both situations heal just as much they're both just as efficient healing wise. MP-efficiency is another thing, however.

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Originally Posted by Spoekes

For CureIII I would add that it already pays off to use it if you are standing next to only 1 other player, and both of you need more than a cure I. It' a little cheaper than 2 cure IIs and you save one GCD. Heavily underused spell.

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Agreed. I use CIII in a macro that gives a chime, a chat window note and a target mark (triangle) that briefly flashes over the target's head. I'll always cast it when MP cost is reduced by 50%, and after the first few, like Pavlov's dogs, melee DPSers will run towards the mark when they hear the chime. Once people are "conditioned", even at full cost I'm saving MP and time. Very effective and efficient.

/micon "Cure III"
/p Run to <t>, Cure III incoming! <se.7>
/mk triangle
/ac "Cure III"
/wait 2.5
/mk off

Stellar work as usual. Well done.

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

There are some vague technicalities in there that could use some elaboration. Namely:


Does the -10% strength/intelligence reduction really translate into a flat -10% physical/magical damage reduction? (same with Virus)


Does increased defense really translate into a -5% or -6% regardless of amount of defensive stats?



How did you conclude it's a 16,7% damage reduction with a critical hit prevent (with a 20% critical hit chance)?

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Sorry about that! Once I learn more about how damage mitigation works I can start getting detailed. But in general Virus/Dragon Kick/Halone seem to reduce damage to the exact % equal to the primary stat decrease.

As for foresight/fey covenant, I don't think changing base defense will alter % mitigation, but if it does, the the difference will be minor in general. I tested foresight for tanks and monk as well as fey covenant for tanks and healers and the mitigation % was pretty much the same.

I miscalculated awareness by using a 2X multiplier rather than 1.5X! Actual mitigation for 20% critical chance is 9.1% reduction. Calculation:
1-1/[1.5x(%critical)+1x(%non-critical)]
So 1-1/[1.5(0.2)+1(0.8)] = 0.0909

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Originally Posted by Lovemonster

As for foresight/fey covenant, I don't think changing base defense will alter % mitigation, but if it does, the the difference will be minor in general. I tested foresight for tanks and monk as well as fey covenant for tanks and healers and the mitigation % was pretty much the same.

I miscalculated awareness by using a 2X multiplier rather than 1.5X! Actual mitigation for 20% critical chance is 9.1% reduction. Calculation:
1-1/[1.5x(%critical)+1x(%non-critical)]
So 1-1/[1.5(0.2)+1(0.8)] = 0.0909

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If you got the results for that, I'd be interested to see the results of that. I am rather fond of number crunching myself :P

That aside, the examples in that document aren't all that realistic. Maximum potential, perhaps, but effectiveness is a different story.

Concerning the weaving part:
You're using Cure III as example. Is there a specific reason why you're using Cure III here? Cure I and Cure II have the same casting time as Cure III and are used far more frequently than Cure III - inb4 some green white mage reads the guide and copies your example word-by-word. There's also the thing about cleric's stance that prevents you from casting any spell till the animation of it ends, which is somewhere between 0,6-0,9s depending on your latency towards the server. There's still a bit of GCD loss. Regen or Esuna are probably the more "ideal" examples concerning timing to switch Cleric's Stance for "efficiency" purposes - Which the guide is supposedly be about

Concerning Divine Seal "efficiency":
Fully utilising Divine Seal does not translate into an effective Divine Seal. You could use Divine Seal for a Medica II/Cure III and a regen and it's still more effective than squeezing in as many spells as you can. Simply because of overhealing. There are generally three cases where one would pick to use Divine Seal:
First and most common would be using it when big hits are coming. So divine seal, big hit comes and you cast two or three Cures or one Cure II to top off the tank. What about the remaining time of Divine Seal? Spamming Cure for the sake of making full use of Divine Seal is mp waste in most cases.
Secondly it would be to conserve mp. Divine Seal does increase your healing output afterall, thus more HP recovered for every MP spend. It also generates more idle time - Which can be used to save MP or to pop into cleric's stance.
Thirdly would be wasting Divine Seal by using it and have no idea what they're doing - I've seen plenty of this.

Concerning MP management:
It's a bit contradicting the part before that concerning Divine Seal usage. How you described the use of Divine Seal would lead to a lot of MP waste if one would decide to make the most out of the healing output with Divine Seal. It doesn't weave well from one part of your guide to this part. In fact, it clashes.

There's also the thing where you mentioned about piety being the more important stat. But thing about piety is that you can have too much of it. If you'd finish an encounter with 3500 MP in your pocket, even with offDPSing and whatnot, that's 3500 MP not spend. And unspend MP is useless MP. It's fine to bank MP for emergencies, however. There's no guideline for this either. So in a sense; ending an encounter with 3500 MP isn't necessarily wrong. Waste? Yes. Wrong? no
I've actually played around with it a bit. I almost hit 6k MP as a white mage and I'm missing like 5 points of piety due to my race. With 6k MP I finished T13 with nearly 3k MP in my pocket. This is a typical case of overkill - In my book anyway.


So tldr; Efficiency isn't everything, effectiveness plays a role here as well

The first GCD optimisation part is a very interesting information.

But I also don't agree with the Cure 2 > Cure 1 use part. This is not the lazy way to play it but actually the MP efficient way. If your sch feel stressed because you take your time (2 GCD instead of 1) to heal the tank, he certainly doesn't know the fight. Knowing the fight tells you when you have time to heal and when you should hurry. Cure 1 + Regen (+ the potential Embrassement spam) is around 50% of HP. I see too much WHM always using Cure 2 as soon as the tank hits the 50-60% HP whereas nothing is going to kill him in the next 5-10s.

If you plan to solo heal the most part (letting dps the sch) you absolutely want this Cure 1 "playstyle" because it's MP efficient. Otherwise, using too much Cure 2 because you're afraid the sch will heal, will make you loose MP. This will result in the sch healing anyway because you're using too much MP.

On the GCD part, I still agree Cure 2 is more efficient. But if you know the fight correctly you will never have GCD issues like "Oh I used too much spells and now I can't throw up my dps rotation / I can't stoneskin the tank before the big attack / I can't precast my heal!"

To continue, this is nice you pointed out the Regen thing with Convalescence & Divine seal.

About the AOE spells, you're again focusing too much on the GCD side, not on the MP side and the overheal risk. Why so much healers just don't care about overheal ? That's not killing anyone for sure but landing heals in the wind for no reasons and at the full MP cost should be something any healer-minded hate or try to avoid x). You rarely need to overheal to be safer about some mechanics. When you are it's ok, but for the 98% rest of the fight, you should stick to the basic "X% HP losed, use the spell that gives back the approximatively same %" and always pay attention if you can single target heal or if you absolutely must AOE heal.

Using Cure 3 just because some ppl/all the team is stacked isn't enough. Unless you need this 2s cast time, you have to look to the values you will heal for. Why would you heal for 550 potency 3 ppl if they got only 20% HP damages ? If you got time, cure them individually otherwise Cure 3 is overhealing them so much, even more if all the team is stacked and only 3-4 ppl got hit.

As for Medica 2 ticking while you're in Cleric stance, you're overhealing from the direct heal (200 potency) + the HOT for no reasons. I get it though, like in CT1/2/3 you want to be lazy and dps all the fight, so I guess it's ok. But I hope you never do the same in Fcob and you should indicate that.

My view on the MP efficiency and GCD efficiency is that by taking advantage of buffs as much as possible you can minimize the healing that you have to do to DPS. I don't use 8 healing spells with Divine Seal either, and usually do the same Medica II/Regen and maybe 1 Cure II and then switch to cleric stance, but the idea is that by using SC->PoM->DS->M2->Cleric Stance and then end with regen, you still get the same amount of GCDs because medica 2 will be instant and cleric stance will not affect the next GCD. The many cures in the example are just placeholders for any GCD really.

The actual rotation: SC/PoM/DS/M2/Cleric Stance/AeroII/Aero/Fluid Aura/Stone II/StoneII/Stone II/Cleric Stance off/ Regen (with some more spell speed you can fit in one more stone II).

Also the point of maxing piety is to basically eliminate any use of Cure I and replace it with Cure II so that you can maximize DPS as much as possible by saving GCDs, even using multiple (10+) Holys in a long fight because of your very high MP regeneration. With max piety build you can obtain 6k MP, and really Cure II just completely replaces Cure I. So here we just use the most potent healing to save as many GCDs as possible for Aero/AeroII/Stone II.

My principle is that ending a fight with something like 3K MP isn't that wasteful. Remember that in a long fight like T13 you will have regenerated a lot of MP passively so 3k MP isn't actually that much at all (At least 20k MP to burn through). Ideally we'll have 0 MP by the time we finish, so possible more Holy during add phase/ using only 1 Cure II for earthshakers, healing the MT for flare breath and going straight to cleric stance in the last phase before the next mechanic. But if we have say a 1000 more max MP, that will translate into possibly 5k MP+ (1K + 4K refreshed) in total MP that we could have used for DPS instead.

To put it simply:

The ordinary WHM approach to a tank taking damage worth 2 cures would be to cure twice, but I really don't like tanks being topped off because eos/selene/regen will top off the tank for me, so one cure II is sufficient for me and will buy me 1 GCD. This really adds up I think, so even though Cure II is MP inefficient, it's not that bad and we get to use a lot of DPS spells in the long run and even healing spells too if things get intense.

In terms of overall damage dealt AND healing output, the longer the fight duration goes the better piety scales than any other secondary (det/crit/spellspeed) by using only the most GCD-efficient abilities due to greatly increased MP regen.

But some spell speed (around 470) is really nice because it fits in 1 GCD for Divine Seal/PoM.

Oh and for the damage reduction on defense scaling abilities, open-world monsters are a good way to test this (with/without protect) (with/without foresight on tank/monk or drg or changing gear sets), etc. You can test virus/Str Down/DK as well and will see similar results. The % difference between the averages should be equal to the % reduction in STR/INT.

Here are some videos:

SC/PoM/DS/M2/CS/A2/A1/FA/S2/S2/S2/S2/CS/Regen

http://youtu.be/f9lY_uvPFak

DPS Rotation:

http://youtu.be/SHjkWogxFRg

I miss a DoT tick here at 1:15, but with slightly more spell speed ~500 you will rarely miss ticks (depends on server time).

Remember guys this is all theory crafting. Can't play a perfect rotation in a fight, but changing the general order of skills that you use can help improve efficiency a bit:
- Using SC before Divine Seal, not after
- Using off-GCDs after instant/1.0/2.0s cast GCDs and not 2.5 cast GCDs.
- Squeezing out more HoTs and GCDs in general when buffs are up

This doesn't really apply to completely new fights, but when you've done the first phase in progression raiding a couple dozen times you might want to start building a 'rotation' into your play. This includes movement too! Change around the order of your GCDs and off-GCDS to maximize your output.

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Originally Posted by Eisenhower

Feels nitpicky, but I wonder if this should deal with potency or mana-pool percentage rather than MP-values. I believe that it was mentioned somewhere that SoS is a 50-potency tick.

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Shroud of Saints claims to have a potency, implying that the MP restoration is based on your magic damage, but it misleads. At level 50, Shroud of Saints restores a flat 1060 MP regardless of anything. You could be naked and wielding a Weathered Cane or wearing full Dreadwyrm; either way, it'll restore 1060 MP. This has been tested extensively.

That said, your PIE will determine how much your passive mana regeneration restores, which continues ticking during Shroud of Saints. So, while you are technically getting more MP back during Shroud with higher PIE, that extra MP is coming from your higher passive regen and not from Shroud.

As a suggestion for your guide, and to further elaborate on mana management, shroud should be used as early as possible into a fight. I found it most mana efficient to use shroud after my first aoe heal, or once I had spent 800-1000 mana. This will allow you to shroud more times and greatly help with mana management throughout the fight's duration.

I really think I focused too much on DPS on this guide. When you are overgeared you tend to focus on numbers a lot more and also I have a scholar playstyle background. I've been trying out different WHM playstyles and found out more things so I want to remake this guide sometime soon. It'll be a lot more tidy, comprehensive and organised!

Considering your number of HP, and unless a special VIT meld, I would think that you are ilvl 120+. I find the damages you make on the dummy quite low... From experience, just wih virus/aero/earthII, i'll usually strike at 800 / 1100+ in crit, and far more often that what I see on the video. That said, i'm "only" ilvl 116. It's curious that you don't do more damage. For the record, my gear isn't exactly crit/det emphasized, more PIE and SS.

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Originally Posted by cgbspender

...just wih virus/aero/earthII...

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For the record, Virus doesn't increase damage to the target; it decreases the target's outgoing damage by debuffing its attack stats.

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Originally Posted by Lovemonster

SC/PoM/DS/M2/CS/A2/A1/FA/S2/S2/S2/S2/CS/Regen

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You lose a few seconds hitting straight CDs in the first vid, it was 6s from SC -> CS. Why not move PoM inside CS?

SC/DS/M2/CS/PoM/A2/A1/FA/S2/S2/S2/S2/CS/Regen

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Originally Posted by cgbspender

Rawr.

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Do you remember when you saw those numbers? Merely being in a group will increase your damage ever so slightly. Then there's lots of things like Foe Requiem, Trick Attack and Vulnerability Up from the vines in Amdapor Keep (Hard) that could further boost your numbers while in a duty.

Forgive my skepticism, but regular 800 Dmg Stone IIs while solo sounds quite unlikely without outside assistance. :p

Using CS and PoM after M2 will delay A2 enough that you can't Regen with DS active.
Can't fit 2 off-gcds in one "instant" spell because the spell itself (even with SC) will take 1 second and so it delays A2 by around 0.5 seconds.

Also I think in general using Regen after Medica 2 and removing 1 stone 2 is more realistic since you want Regen up at all times. Still want to end with Regen though since no other GCD can benefit from that 0.5 seconds of DS left so you'll end up clipping Regen but that's okay.