After healing T8, I feel that critical isn't very helpful even for scholar?

[rhemi1]

snip.

That, of course, depends on if you're using that MP. It's a tricky balancing act.

imo Piety is a stat that's relatively decent during progression and gets weaker as gear levels get higher and fight familiarity increases, during any given tier. The more gear and familiarity you have, the less MP you'll 'waste', and therefore the less MP you'll use overall.

[Kitru]

The more gear and familiarity you have, the less MP you'll 'waste', and therefore the less MP you'll use overall.

The advantage of PIE, though, isn't in MP consumption over the course of the fight but in allowing you to behave less efficiently over that same period of time. Fights aren't going to continually get longer as content progresses (10-15 minutes is about as long as you can ever practically have a fight last) but mp pools will get larger which means that, as gear/content progresses, the value of PIE comes in replacing Physicks you would have used because of their efficiency with Adloqs you want to use because of their increased effect (and pre-healing capability).

All 4 of the secondary stats are fundamentally useful because they increase your throughput. Speed is the worst because it increases throughput at the cost of efficiency. Crit and Det are good because they increase throughput without influencing your efficiency. PIE is good because it increases your throughput by letting you get away with being less efficient actions without affecting your resource management.

[Menae]

Piety also allows you to fit in more DoT spells without running out of MP for healing.

[rhemi1]

When referring to MP wasted, I wasn't specifically referring to just you, but as a whole. I mean, having to res someone in battle obviously costs more MP than you're probably used to, and as time goes on fewer people will die, thus less MP wasted. Same goes for wanting to keep Adlo up on random raid members who may be slow to grasp mechanics, or having to heal people who screw up mechanics.

Otherwise, I agree. Though in a perfect world, we wouldn't need PIE at all, since we should strive to be as efficient as possible.

[Menae]

Though in a perfect world, we wouldn't need PIE at all, since we should strive to be as efficient as possible.

I dunno, in a perfect world, you might very well want more PIE to throw out more damage spells and shorten fights, since you should be efficient with time as well as MP.

[rhemi1]

I dunno, in a perfect world, you might very well want more PIE to throw out more damage spells and shorten fights, since you should be efficient with time as well as MP.

In a perfect world, Eos/Selene could solo heal T9 and all content before that :P But I digress, we have the same opinion on Piety regardless and I agree with your assessments.

[Coldea]

To be honest, I don't think that PIE is that important, even as WHM... I play WHM as my main class, and I occasionnaly switch to SCH when the PF requires one, or when I don't feel like healing and let Eos/Selene do the work for me (only for low-gear dungeons).
I have to say that the more I play SCH, the better I play WHM, and vice-versa. Playing WHM teaches me to be very careful with my MP, my aggro (regen + medicaII when adds pop, and I'm dead) and when I switch to SCH, I always have 85-90% of my MP pool, because I am very conservative.

PIE is great, but not necessary, really. If you 'waste' your MP casting Raise ONCE, it's fine, and you should never run out of mana because of this. If you have to raise more than that, this is NOT your problem (unless you let someone die, which is another story... Sometimes, a player is better dead than consuming his healers's MP...)

[Kitru]

To be honest, I don't think that PIE is that important, even as WHM...

It *isn't* important as a WHM because it doesn't really add to your healing effectiveness appreciably. Because Shroud is static regeneration, PIE is basically a static contribution per fight rather than a tangible increase to your regeneration as a whole. As such, the best way to increase both your throughput and efficiency is by using crit and det (and some speed to get more FreeCure procs).

For SCH, on the other hand, PIE actually increases your regeneration thanks to Aetherflow. Because it tangibly increases your regeneration, it actually allows you to consume more mp/GCD while remaining resource stable.

That's the difference. PIE on a WHM just means that you can consume the same mp and last slightly longer; PIE on a SCH means that you can consume more mp and last the exact same amount of time.

[Menae]

It *isn't* important as a WHM because it doesn't really add to your healing effectiveness appreciably. Because Shroud is static regeneration, PIE is basically a static contribution per fight rather than a tangible increase to your regeneration as a whole. As such, the best way to increase both your throughput and efficiency is by using crit and det (and some speed to get more FreeCure procs).

For SCH, on the other hand, PIE actually increases your regeneration thanks to Aetherflow. Because it tangibly increases your regeneration, it actually allows you to consume more mp/GCD while remaining resource stable.

That's the difference. PIE on a WHM just means that you can consume the same mp and last slightly longer; PIE on a SCH means that you can consume more mp and last the exact same amount of time.

Piety increases your regen rate for WHM as well. Base MP regen is 2% of maximum mana per tick; it works out to 40% per minute for both classes. SCH get that plus Aetherflow, so 60% per minute. It's still a boost in regen for WHM, just not as much as it is for a scholar; similarly, it allows WHM to slightly up their mana consumption over the same amount of time, though not by as much as a scholar could. Over a ten minute fight, a WHM gets 5/7 the amount of mana from piety that a scholar would, assuming the scholar uses Aetherflow 10 times; given an infinite fight length, the whm would get 2/3 the mana from piety that a scholar would. Not as powerful, but still worth using.

[subteraneanbird]

Except what Kitru said still applies. Because fights will usually be lasting nearly the exact same time each time regardless of your own throughput, you can calculate exactly how much more MP you have for that period of time by getting more PIE. And usually it is highly unimpressive and requires fights to already be hitting their upper limit in terms of time to get anything appreciable.