A few ideas to improve the WHM from a SCH player

[Aeser]

wait, are you referring to WHM stoneskin? with 18% damage mitigation which equals 1280 damage mitigated on a 7k HP tank., or the untraited SCH version. with only supports 10%.

[Sebazy]

Not unless I had plenty of mana to burn and knew I wasn't going to run out, no. Unless those big attacks are guaranteed to kill someone, it's always going to save you MP to heal them after the attack rather than before. Also, pre-loading Regen is more MP-efficient and will serve much of the same goal. Stoneskin just doesn't give much health back for how much MP it costs. If you've got plenty of MP, then go crazy. If you're using it before the fight, then great.

Sorry but from a cnj/whm perspective you are wrong. Please level the job to 50 and get some groundwork on turn 5 as whm done first before you post really strong opinions like that. Stoneskinning big hits is NOT going to have any whm worth their salt running pom, it is a central part of our class against powerful hitting but predictable bosses such as Twintania and Titan.

[nocks]

The cast time is quite long on stoneskin, with questionable returns over Cure II. More damage prevented/healed over 2.5 seconds on a good tank in certain situations, but less over 5.0 seconds, as you will get two Cure II's in that time and only one Stoneskin. Stoneskin doesn't overheal, though, so I see where it could be useful if you have time and mana. You don't need to be a 50 WHM to understand math. I said there were times when it might be useful - fights where you have a lot of time and MP - but it should not be part of your rotation. Here's what the guy who's skills I was questioning says about it on another thread, for instance:

"Yes the problem with stoneskin for tank healing is its cast time. 3 seconds too long to be used as a tank migitation tool. You don't have time to pre stoneskin and time a cure 2 .Normally the boss breaks the stoneskin before using its tank killer ability. - Shabazisspecial"

[Sebazy]

Cure 1 is king as far as day to day healing goes, nothing beyond regen comes close for us.

Stoneskin's worth in combat is mitigating big predictable hits, for example death sentence without any debuffs, stoneskin or adloq will take a 7k PLD down to the point that the next melee hit or plummet (that generally follows less than a second behind) will kill them. It's not possible to have virus up for every death sentence now and not everyone runs with a warrior in T5 so that's a big chunk of damage reduction gone right there. Big stoneskin/adloq shields are absolutely paramount to stop comedy tank deaths against this ability. It's entirely possible to time a pre stoneskin and cure 2 for said big hit as I do it week in week out like clockwork for loot as does likely any other whm that's cleared Turn 5.

Even if the ability isn't a near enough insta kill, it still proves it's worth against similar attacks such as Titan's Mountain Buster helping tanks with soso gear survive that big hit safely allowing both tanks to carry on as normal rather than blowing mp/aetherflow charges panic healing them back up.

[sharazisspecial]

Stoneskin is very useful mid fight . Its 30 minutes of extra effective hp.
Effective hp is useful at migitating boss attacks for
People who have res sickness,
People with low total hp such as mages or gimps
People who struggle to avoid attacks.

The cast time is quite long on stoneskin

"Yes the problem with stoneskin for tank healing is its cast time. 3 seconds too long to be used as a tank mitigation tool. You don't have time to pre stoneskin and time a cure 2 .Normally the boss breaks the stoneskin before using its tank killer ability. - Shabazisspecial"

My tanks are now at 7k+ making my ss alot more respectable.
I went for a speed build making my ss 2.8 sec cast.
I got better at predicting boss pattern,especially twintania and I can rely on my other healer to top them up before attack . In a pug I won't able to rely as much on them.
Its nearly always better to pre mitigate with stoneskin then it is to just time cure 2 . It reduces the chance of RNG instant double hit ko.
Full hp+stoneskin+adlo then timed cure2/physick/embrace is the ideal situation for boss tank killer attack.
If you it leave it too late, then stoneskin is a bad idea due to how the mitigation effect is very delayed and weaker "healing" then cure2

Very often you won't be able to do both stoneskin and cure2 . Or even a stoneskin. Garuda seems to vary her attacks and forces you to move before whirls so it is much harder to pre stoneskin the double whirl without swiftcast. Adloquium is much easier to put up. For Titan ex its much easier to pre stoneskin.

Since stone skin has a long cast time, You need to use it around 2 seconds before boss start to cast its tank killer move. If you then start cure 2 at 50-60% it should be well timed. You can only really use stoneskin effectively if you have memorized boss pattern. If you try to stoneskin as soon as boss starts using his tank killer move, you will either have no time to do a cure 2 or your stoneskin won't mitigate anything due to its ridiculous delayed effect.

[Vrmillion]

I heal, dps, and res as WHM all the time. As I said in my first post, throwing out Raises is the only time I go oom because I don't have the mana regeneration that Scholars do. Healing and DPSing at the same time barely moves my MP bar, and hasn't in a very long time. Oh, and I also have SCH at 50.

You are only using single target heals in your mp usage . Mp3 in combat would be enough to let you cure/cure2/regen/freecure for it seems only 3minutes in your video? But cure/regen is not enough to heal fights and isn't why you bring a whm.

^First of all, no, it was 4 and a half minutes of constant healing for WHM, and I used several Medica 2s and kept Regen up near 100%. Scholar ran oom in 3 minutes.

Moving on from your most recent falsity among many, I never said I dps in fights where I need to constantly AoE heal and burn mana. That would be literally retarded, so I'm not sure why you're implying that any healer would decide to DPS in a heavily damage intensive fight instead of stay on point for healing. I only used heals that I would be using in a situation where I deemed it safe to DPS. Please stop adding new things to the rules every time you post something.

Also, why *do* you bring a whm if not for cure/regen? Last I checked, no one ever thought it was a good idea to bring 2 SCH, but 2 WHM is done all the time. As someone pointed out, maybe you just don't know how to play WHM. And that's fine, I consider myself a pretty bad SCH. But all of this makes sense if you just don't know how to play one effectively, considering you use stoneskin in battle and think regen isn't good.

To prove the point about stoneskin, let's do some math. A warrior in my FC has 9,000 HP exactly in party, which is basically the highest amount an individual character can have unbuffed. An enhanced stoneskin is 1620 HP worth of shield. My cure 1 heals about 1050 on average, and about 1200+ on that particular warrior. Cure 1 also costs exactly half. So for the price of that 1620 stoneskin, I could have healed him for 2400-2500 instead. So, even in the absolute BEST case scenario for stoneskin, it still falls about 800hp or more short of being anywhere close to efficient. Casting stoneskin on anyone else will be even less effective in comparison. The only uses mid-combat for healers prolific enough to matter is helping people with Weakness or so people who will die to a big hit have some extra mitigation. And even then, the Stoneskin cast is better done by a paladin to save *himself* from death sentence. Or the other tank. Healers have better things to do and won't always be able to drop everything 3 seconds before a death sentence, especially if a fireball just landed or if they're trapped in a Conflag. Oh, and Cure 2 also heals more than 1620 on that warrior for the exact same MP/GCD, but in less time. But since healers always have time to idle, GCDs don't really matter that much.

TLDR; Stoneskin is a better skill in general on Paladins than it is on WHM, even though WHM has the trait, because Paladins don't have to worry about keeping everyone else alive AND shielding, and WHMs have far more efficient options. PLD can just shield themselves. If a WHM can know death sentence is coming, a paladin can Stoneskin himself just as easily. Our paladin does it all the time on Twintania, for both himself and the offtank, so inb4 someone saying it's impossible.

Bottom line: You clearly don't like WHM, and no one is making you play one. I love WHM. I prefer it over SCH. I still play SCH. I don't have a vendetta against SCH because I like WHM. Why do you have a vendetta against WHM? Better yet, why do you feel the need to attack the WHM and all who play the job on the forums?

[Dyssyd]

2 things I want for WHM are..

AoE Stoneskin with a radius like protect, only available while out of combat, to make buffing less time consuming and less of a chore, especially after a wipe.
A 2-3 minute cooldown ability to make the next regen you cast on yourself also give you refresh so we can have another way to get mana back.

Neither are really needed per se, but they would be absolutely amazing to have. Quality of life changes, since all the top end currently available content can already be cleared with WHM's as they are.

[Velox]

A 2-3 minute cooldown ability to make the next regen you cast on yourself also give you refresh so we can have another way to get mana back.

I think altering the Over cure proc would be better suited for this. Let's face it, overcure is useless because the odds that it procs at the same time I need to use cure III is astronomically low. Instead I think a complete change to the buff is needed so that I would WANT to cast cure III when I get it.

For instance, what if Cure III gave back a portion of HP healed as MP for each target hit? This way, even if I can only hit a single player with it, I have more incentive to utilize Over cure when it procs.

[Viviza]

I like that ideas are being raised here, but I'm mildly against the overall theme of making everything easier. Free spells, more spells off the GCD, and better mp management all serve to reduce the thought that goes into using a given spell or not.

For example, putting regen off the GCD. Right now I often have to choose between (pre)casting cure or setting up a regen. If I put down a regen, that's a window of ~4.5 seconds before I can land a direct heal. Sometimes the tank gets smashed in those seconds and I really wish I had readied a cure 1 or cure 2 instead. But that's the decision I opted to make. Also... regen is cheap, but not free, and it's easy to waste mp putting it on people that don't need it.

If too many classes can manage their tp/mp too well, support spells become less useful, and costly spells become trivial. It sounds nice but it degenerates the whole teamwork aspect. If anything I would argue that WHM are in a good place and SCH/SMN are perhaps too well off.

[Thunderz]

lolwat

Twin hits your tank with Death Sentence 6800~dmg, swipe and then plummet for several thousands more

Pre-Stoneskin + virus will keep him alive and give you the breathing room to top him back up

please go learn to play whm to its fullest before trying to tell others how to play

I've been trying to incorporate Stoneskin as much as I can before big hits to mitigate BIG DMG to a tank because mitigating DMG can save your tanks live or simply make your job that much easier

pro whm