Quote Originally Posted by Taika View Post
I disagree. In many if not most cases, crit will only overheal if the WHM is already overhealing. Crits can help with keeping tank up with only Cure 1s and regens and they're a blessing with rare AoE heals and Medica 2 regen ticks.
If crit isn't overhealing, then you're reactively healing or you're late with healing. If you Cure 1 for 1300, a crit will heal for 1950. That's nearly 2000 hp worth of damage on the tank. Unless that's from some big spike damage (T6 swarm, T8 lasers), you're reactively healing. If the tank took that much damage, the fairy will be throwing an Embrace at the tank as well for 700-800 recovery. Then there's only 1200-1300 recovery remaining, perfect for one Cure 1. A crit would mean overheal for you or the fairy, which is equally useless. Even more overhealing (and mp/gcd waste) if the scholar throws in an adloquium or physick as well. Even with full crit build you'll have roughly 25% crit ratio with average healing of 1299 (1461 crit corrected). In a determination-piety hybrid build (roughly 15% crit rate) you'll have an average healing of 1329 (1428 crit corrected). Full crit has a -slightly- better crit corrected average healing for each mp spend, but is unreliable and doesn't even occure that much more frequent than a det-piety hyrbrid build (source). Det-crit hybrid build? Possible. But with less crit and more det, your crit becomes less reliable. There's no obvious benefit from crit as a white mage either, unlike scholar. (it's not like stoneskin crits for double effect or medica crits for double duration).

tl;dr: Control and plan your heals. Crits are cool to see, but not something you should plan or rely on. Piety, however, gives you a reliable mp sustain (which also means happy bards that don't have to ballad)