Healers and Spell Speed/Piety

Hello all! I don't play much WHM so I don't know enough about this to say its good or bad but I do play a lot of Scholar and a little bit of Astro. For Sch and Astro crit is probably the most important and reliable stat to have. Right next to Determination. I also know Schs and Astros (mostly astros) sometimes meld a fair bit of piety.

But Spell Speed. I don't fully understand a WHM melding spell speed over crit or det.
Can some of the WHM mains or Healer mains in general have some thoughts/examples on how and why they should meld more spell speed on a WHM? Is it REALLY that good for dps/uptime? Is it REALLY worth the lost in potencies.

Any and all feedback would be appreciated

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Originally Posted by Raylazer11

Hello all! I don't play much WHM so I don't know enough about this to say its good or bad but I do play a lot of Scholar and a little bit of Astro. For Sch and Astro crit is probably the most important and reliable stat to have. Right next to Determination. I also know Schs and Astros (mostly astros) sometimes meld a fair bit of piety.

But Spell Speed. I don't fully understand a WHM melding spell speed over crit or det.
Can some of the WHM mains or Healer mains in general have some thoughts/examples on how and why they should meld more spell speed on a WHM? Is it REALLY that good for dps/uptime? Is it REALLY worth the lost in potencies.

Any and all feedback would be appreciated

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It has the potential to give you more DPS, but it's very specific and hard to generalize. Spell speed has the additional disadvantage of making you use more MP.

Why would a WHM meld spell speed?
Picture this scenario: You're optimizing Leviathan and playing perfectly, with no GCD delay. You reach Maelstrom and your Glare is interrupted at 1/2 of its cast time. Melding some spell speed here can give you an extra Glare.

Or maybe they just like to go fast.

In short, no, it's not worth it. We're talking sub 1% differences here.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

Spell speed has the additional disadvantage of making you use more MP.

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And this is the one reason WHM might even consider using spell speed, WHMs dont care about MP as much as the other two.

When I see healers with speed melds, I just assume the gear in question could not be melded with anything better (especially those crit/det pieces). However, I try to meld to speed tiers so if I'm close to the next one, I will meld to get there (or unmeld back down to bottom of one). If crit and det aren't options and the healer already has enough piety, then speed is the only next thing.

White mage especially I see the value in pushing speed. So much of their power is on the global so a fast global is doing more stuff.

I wish Spell Speed was viable as an option when melding materia. It makes double weaving abilities difficult tho and you don't see hardly any return with the one weak DoT all healing classes get. Does it even make your HoTs stronger. The math I've seen says it isn't worth it and it just feels like an oversight like most things healing related.

When you use Malefic than glare, you'll feel like Astro is casting faster. I don't use Spell speed on Astro but it does help WHM. If I can't meld crit or det, I use direct hit on my astro.

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Originally Posted by NobleWinter

I wish Spell Speed was viable as an option when melding materia. It makes double weaving abilities difficult tho and you don't see hardly any return with the one weak DoT all healing classes get. Does it even make your HoTs stronger. The math I've seen says it isn't worth it and it just feels like an oversight like most things healing related.

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SS makes both DoTs and HoTs stronger (not ticking faster, just each tick stronger).

This makes it usefull to WHM, since you have 1 DoT and 2 HoTs (Regen and Medica II), spamm Glare faster and WHMs don't need piety.

SS is most useless for AST, since your nuke is already shorter cast than other healers, and it will not help you with card-handling at all.
Also, AST have biggest mana issuest atm, so its Piety (after Det/Crit).

With SCH I'm not sure. Does SS affect strength of HoT from fairy AoE heal and/or ticks of Fey Union?

Spell speedis generally more viable when the incoming damage is like totally ludicrous or in expac progression to cap or early dungeons just for squishy tanks and non-mains Post expac is just super bad sometimes and it's like watching a rythm game playing it

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Originally Posted by RylaBee

SS makes both DoTs and HoTs stronger (not ticking faster, just each tick stronger).

This makes it usefull to WHM, since you have 1 DoT and 2 HoTs (Regen and Medica II), spamm Glare faster and WHMs don't need piety.

SS is most useless for AST, since your nuke is already shorter cast than other healers, and it will not help you with card-handling at all.
Also, AST have biggest mana issuest atm, so its Piety (after Det/Crit).

With SCH I'm not sure. Does SS affect strength of HoT from fairy AoE heal and/or ticks of Fey Union?

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I honestly don't have mana issues anymore, not with Lucid + Lightspeed. Interesting how you say it's useful for the healing aspect of WHM but you call it useless for the damage aspect of AST, like geez what about its regens as well?..:/

I plan to get the cast to at least 1.39/1.87, I've been that high before and still been able to weave just fine, but I wont go any higher . Currently Aspected Benefit is doing 7.6k for me.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

I honestly don't have mana issues anymore, not with Lucid + Lightspeed. Interesting how you say it's useful for the healing aspect of WHM but you call it useless for the damage aspect of AST, like geez what about its regens as well?..:/

I plan to get the cast to at least 1.39/1.87, I've been that high before and still been able to weave just fine, but I wont go any higher . Currently Aspected Benefit is doing 7.6k for me.

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That's because WHM relies a lot more on GCDs than AST does (for both damage and heals), so WHM gets more out of sps than AST does.
And AST does have the least MP management tools out of all healers. It's manageable, but it's easier to run out of MP as AST than the other healers.

Had a minor epiphany on another use for using spell speed. Summed up, faster casting means a better chance of getting off a spell before being forced to move out of an aoe instead of stopping a cast early. Can give the possibility of getting off that one extra heal if it is needed.

I remember having this discussion in the balance at some point. I don't know if things have changed since but what came from it was that, in a vacuum, Spell speed was one of the (the?) better stats you could pile up as healer for DPS. The catch being MP usage and also translating this to real world situations where dps downtime due to mechanics may be inevitable and really harm your spell speed build (imagine your extra spell speed getting you 90% of a gcd ahead and then the boss goes untargetable, you lost most of your advantage). Spell speed also comes with caveats in that not every point is equal and there are certain caps that need to be met.
Also spell speed doesn't do much for your healing, unlike crit.

Generally speaking if you're going for a green dps build you're more likely to go crit/DH because it's more flexible and works well regardless of the encounter.

For WHM, with their good MP management tools and higher potencies it does become more viable to go spell speed than it is for other healers.

My healer isn't 80 yet, but I've been seeing lvl 80 healer stack piety materia. Why is that? I don't think mp regen is really an issue.

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

My healer isn't 80 yet, but I've been seeing lvl 80 healer stack piety materia. Why is that? I don't think mp regen is really an issue.

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For Whm and Sch mp isn't an issue unless you or your party start messing things up a fair amount, Ast however lost its secondary mp restore and solely relies around Lucid dreaming and ethers for mp, so a death in the group is more costly to Ast than whm or sch is, Piety helps mitigate this slightly for Ast so it is beneficial to stack it if you need to.

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Originally Posted by Magnedeus

My healer isn't 80 yet, but I've been seeing lvl 80 healer stack piety materia. Why is that? I don't think mp regen is really an issue.

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Piety is great to have for progression. Currently a fair amount of groups are running TEA and have relatively high piety builds for that (2k-ish piety give or take some depending on your class).