WHM Eye for an Eye poll

[Deroth]

E4E is even really nice for lower level dungeons too. After getting WHM and SCH both to 34 I took my WHM back to Brayflox with it...for tanks that struggled with the last boss' mechanic using E4E and Virus made it possible for them (E4E+Stoneskin and Virus+Stoneskin meant column attack hitting them only ~50% health loss vs ~80%.)

[Taerra]

Answer : All the time ... get it, love it, breath it, it's worth it.

[Dale]

It's a free 10% damage reduction for 20s (which nearly always procs) with no MP cost and no GCD usage. There's really zero reason not to use it or have it in the first place. When Twintania is hitting your tank for anything up to 6k damage (with shield oath), you need all the damage mitigation you can get. Be glad you have it already before you do any difficult content.

WHM isn't the only job that should have it either. If BLMs are serious about doing Turn 5 they should that and Virus both set as cross class abilities aswell.

I admitted it might be useful in extreme circumstances. I don't know. I haven't fought Twintania.

But thus far, I just haven't been impressed with it and could have easily done without it. I am just being honest.

[CalvatE]

No, I just find it absolutely hilarious how you're acting as if everyone in Coil is living in their parents basements and plays this game 24/7

Hey, hey, hey, hey now. Hey.

Hey.

Not all of us no-lifers live with parents. I don't and basements don't exist here. I'll have you know living in a shipping container is fine too!

I admitted it might be useful in extreme circumstances. I don't know. I haven't fought Twintania.

But thus far, I just haven't been impressed with it and could have easily done without it. I am just being honest.

I think it's one of those things where you don't notice how much it helps with small numbers but see it actually doing something with big numbers. Kind of like with SCH shields. Just 'cause they don't heal 100% per heal doesn't mean they aren't in effect!
We know they're there, we just don't notice them.

[Hulan]

But thus far, I just haven't been impressed with it and could have easily done without it. I am just being honest.

It's not really about Eye for an Eye being necessary. Healing in FFXIV is enjoyable in part because there are a lot of ways to successfully keep your party alive. Eye for an Eye isn't going to suddenly make you a competent healer - hopefully you are already that - but it will make you a more exceptional healer. Beyond that, it gives you more options. The better tailored your toolbelt is for your job, the more likely you are to succeed. To stretch the metaphor: you can certainly hammer that nail into place with your saw if you hit it enough, but it's just going to be so much easier to use a real hammer.

I am not a very good "on my toes" healer. I know that, so I think about each encounter before hand, whether it's Titan, or just a large pull in a dungeon, and I come up with the best way to give myself as much breathing room as possible. Eye for an Eye is a great tool for those situations. It will slow down damage just enough to keep things at a reasonable pace.

[YanDere]

Answer : All the time ... get it, love it, breath it, it's worth it.

Work it, make it, do it, makes us...

[Melithea]

I'm another one who has E4E on my hotbar but just is not in the habit of using it. An overall evaluation of the numbers is just not impressive. It's a spell with 16% uptime (30 seconds every 180) and a 20% chance of reducing 10% damage... which pans out to something like an overall effectiveness of 0.3%. I've never been in AK and thought to myself, "Gosh, this would be a good pack of trash mobs to burn a 3 minute cooldown to maybe get 250 less damage on, possibly!"

During high damage phases of Coil and Titan HM I'm sure it's fine, but I'm not in a Coil group and have no desire to farm Titan.

[Mhaeric]

I'm another one who has E4E on my hotbar but just is not in the habit of using it. An overall evaluation of the numbers is just not impressive. It's a spell with 16% uptime (30 seconds every 180) and a 20% chance of reducing 10% damage... which pans out to something like an overall effectiveness of 0.3%. I've never been in AK and thought to myself, "Gosh, this would be a good pack of trash mobs to burn a 3 minute cooldown to maybe get 250 less damage on, possibly!"

During high damage phases of Coil and Titan HM I'm sure it's fine, but I'm not in a Coil group and have no desire to farm Titan.

Your math is wrong. It does not have a 20% chance of reducing damage 10%, but rather a 20% chance of applying the debuff every time a monster hits you. Over the course of 30 seconds, a monster has multiple chances of getting the debuff averaging out to around an 89% chance to obtain it depending on their attack speed. Once the debuff happens, that monster does 10% less damage for 20 seconds. This means that every mob has a 9 in 10 chance of doing 10% less damage for 20 seconds which is around 9% overall damage reduction.

Over the course of the 180s cool down for a White Mage that is about 1%, and for over the 120s for a Scholar/Summoner that is about 1.5%. Its slightly disingenuous to talk about its damage reduction potential over the length of its cool down, however, since most fights don't last that long and no one is taking damage for a good portion of the cool down.

[Hulan]

Over the course of the 180s cool down for a White Mage that is about 1%, and for over the 120s for a Scholar/Summoner that is about 1.5%. Its slightly disingenuous to talk about its damage reduction potential over the length of its cool down, however, since most fights don't last that long and no one is taking damage for a good portion of the cool down.

I think this is an important point too. I cannot speak for WHMs, but I would make an educated guess that on SCH, I can keep up Eye for an Eye about 25% of combat time in dungeons if I need to (though generally I save it for 4+ enemies). The pertinent calculation is a little different for trials, but it is also a lot more common in trials to have a specific target ability in mind for your debuffs, such as Mountain Buster, or Garuda clones.

[Melithea]

Over the course of 30 seconds, a monster has multiple chances of getting the debuff averaging out to around an 89% chance to obtain it depending on their attack speed. Once the debuff happens, that monster does 10% less damage for 20 seconds. This means that every mob has a 9 in 10 chance of doing 10% less damage for 20 seconds which is around 9% overall damage reduction.

Your math is wrong. You don't account for many mobs living less than 20 seconds after receiving the debuff, in fact you seem to assume that every mob will live for exactly 48-50 seconds, delivering exactly 16 attacks and start attacking exactly when E4E is applied. The only way to reach your 9% number is if every mob lives for 20 seconds after the debuff is applied, and then you're counting ALL damage as 10% reduced, not just damage dealt after the debuff is applied.

So the truth is somewhere far less than your numbers suggest. I'm aware the damage reduced isn't as low as 0.3% either, but that isn't what my number was trying to show.

If we assume that the average mob lives for 30 seconds and gets 10 attacks, which is not ideal for E4E but probably not far from the truth, the actual amount of damage reduced by E4E on average is 3.9%, because the debuff doesn't run it's full effect on any application after the 4th hit. This number becomes even lower when you account for mobs than live less than 30 seconds.

So yes, if you can get this stuck to Titan HM before a Mountain Buster or something, wonderful! But in the average dungeon run this is less a skill where I'm thinking "Man I'm really excited about this crazy damage mitigation!" and more like "Well, I guess this thing is finally off cooldown. Whatever." The only time it's going to save me more than a single Cure I, if that, is during 8+ mob pack pulls in WP, so maybe that's where I'll try to remember it exists.