Quote Originally Posted by Sapphidia View Post
Anyone doing anything similar, or come to similar conclusions?
Would've replied to this yesterday but had used all my daily posts (darn SE's silly limits!)

I came to much the same conclusions a few days ago in this thread - the last ability in each tree just seems like a waste of 10 SP, so it's looking better and better to go Hybrid.

Regarding your suggested build above, I can understand the reasoning behind going 28 points into the Healing tree, but I'm unconvinced that the chocobo will be smart enough to use short-uptime buffs (such as the +Healing Potency, or the +Damage Reduction buffs) effectively. So If I was going to go 28-deep it'd probably be in the Attacker tree. (As you noted above, the Stun attack's debuff may indeed interfere via Diminishing Returns if you have your own stun, but even if DR kicks in, you will still be able to interrupt enemy abilities and casting via using your own stun ability.)

That said, to me there really doesn't appear to be any benefit gained by going 28/21/6 instead of 21/21/10 (aside from using up the last few spare SP). The Healing Stance appears to perform perfectly well at 10 SP, and the +Slow attack from Defender Stance helps both you and your Chicken's survivability (and given the AI, it's likely going to be far more reliable for that purpose than the 28 SP Attacker Stance's Stun).

The only real reason I can see to go higher in the Attacker tree would be to take it all the way up to Rank #9 for the Attack Speed buff. (and indeed going 45 Attacker/10 Healer looks to be a reasonable setup as a companion for "Tank" classes - it remains to be seen how an extra 5% STR + 10% Attack Speed would stack up against an extra 5% Acc + 15% Crit rate for damage output)

I'm currently aiming at 21 SP Defender/21 SP Attacker/10 SP Healer. It seems the most versatile setup, can work well in any stance, doesn't rely on Chocobo AI making timely use of abilities, and doesn't really lose much (if anything) in terms of Single Target damage output