Viability of a Spell Speed WHM set up?

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Just throwing this out there, but Spell Speed builds are very viable under 2 different scenarios.
If you are solo-healing content, you are also chaining heals more often. Spell speed has the unique property that it decreases cast time and recast time, so it has double the effect of skill speed. Spell Speed + Piety is the best build for this.
If you weave DPS spells in between heals (meaning you are constantly casting something) spell speed also makes a noticeable difference.

That being said, if 99% of the content you do is with a healing partner or you prefer not to DPS a lot, Spell Speed is almost worthless. Determination +Piety would be a better choice.

On a side note, Presence of Mind doubles your existing Spell Speed during the effect. I've noticed that, with enough Spell Speed, I was able to get Medica II to cast in .97 seconds. At some point in the future Spell Speed builds will be amazing as the levels on gear continue to grow.

Assuming spell speed stays the same, yeah. I don't think it's completely unreasonable to think that they're going to change Spell Speed. I believe they mentioned somewhere in a live letter that they're changing skill speed for 3.0*. So it's not too far fetched to think spell speed's on the topic as well

* can anyone verify that?

[Raminax]

Rawr.

It's a bit old, but I can't find anything else. Skill Speed (And I'll assume Spell Speed by extension) isn't outright planned to be changed, but Yoshida claims that Skill/Spell Speed will become more relevant once the level cap is increased. (Scroll down roughly halfway if you have a fear of the beloved CTRL+F Buttons. )

That said, no mechanical changes implied in the quote, at least.

[Velox]

snip

If anything they should remove DoT and HoT ticks off the server and allow spell/skill speed to increase the number of ticks that occur in the skill's duration. This would greatly benefit DoT and HoT based jobs like SMN and WHM.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

It's a bit old, but I can't find anything else. Skill Speed (And I'll assume Spell Speed by extension) isn't outright planned to be changed, but Yoshida claims that Skill/Spell Speed will become more relevant once the level cap is increased. (Scroll down roughly halfway if you have a fear of the beloved CTRL+F Buttons. )

That said, no mechanical changes implied in the quote, at least.

In the Live Letter XVIII translation document:
"F: Spell speed and skill speed are junk at the moment. Do you plan to improve it?
Y: Fundamentally looking at the game’s design, there will always be some gear that is more desirable than others, and some stats that are more desirable than others. If we made SS as good as det or crit then there would be less of a sense of needing to choose between pieces of gear… But we do have plans for SS so please wait and see."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...eview?sle=true

In a way, it doesn't make sense not to change how skill/spell speed works, especially when level cap is raised. Imagine Black Mages tossing spells out with a 1,5s cast time

[Raminax]

Rawr.

Sure would! Though I have this suspicion Skill/Spell Speed would shoot right to the top if this kind of change ever happened. Especially considering how Spell/Skill Speed currently are flat reductions in cast times/general cooldowns, rather than increasing the rate at which you cast. I wonder what Regen and Medica II would look like with 100% Spell Speed...

Rawr.

That much is true. It definitely needs some level scaling in place, at the very least. Otherwise we'll be reaching 100% critical strike rates and instant casts by the time we have a second expansion or something, unless Squeenix curbs the ilvl upgrades between tiers (or hardcaps several secondaries).

[Moqi]

I like Spell Speed; the standard GCD is a bit too slow for my tastes and presence of mind is really fun to use. If it gets to the point that my heals are not enough I may reconsider, but so far it hasn't been the case and I doubt it ever will be. If you're having fun with it, that's the most important thing.

[Donjo]

Except, y'know, having enough Piety to comfortably heal for many minutes of constant fighting, or a Scholar's unchallenged need for Crit rate...

Piety's not a Secondary. I would argue that it is a full on Primary Stat. I didn't factor it into that statement.

When I said "meaningless", I meant this for the reason I stated in a further sentence: if you had zero of every secondary, content wouldn't be any more difficult. Healers have such high potency skills that main stats alone get their heals well above what they need to be. The only thing Secondaries can be observed to do on a healer is help to save someone from death with pure, dumb luck. Any skilled healer stops needing them very quickly.

Spell Speed: You might save someone with a split second heal, but it's rare. It's more effective to pre-cast anyway.
Crit: You might save someone with a clutch critical, but it's rare. You should fight battles assuming that you will never crit in the first place because it's bad to rely on RNG. Thus, most crits end up being overheals anyway.
Det: You might save someone because that Cure healed for 50 more than usual, but it's rare.

All of these situations should be avoided entirely in the first place.

Now, Piety. I consider a stat to be "Primary" if it is evident that not having enough of it will cause you to be physically unable to complete content. Thus, I consider the following stats to be Primary, in whatever capacity the various jobs use them: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence, Mind, Piety, and Accuracy.

[Cynfael]

Sure, you could complete content without secondaries, but why would anyone want to? Just because you could do it doesn't mean that it would be advisable or equally efficient.

People who don't care about min/maxing can continue not to care about secondaries; however, there are actually moments in progression content where a little more DET or CRT sprinkled amongst the party, including the healers, could have turned an oh-so-close wipe into a clear.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

People who don't care about min/maxing can continue not to care about secondaries; however, there are actually moments in progression content where a little more DET or CRT sprinkled amongst the party, including the healers, could have turned an oh-so-close wipe into a clear.

Well, min-maxing is usually something "real" endgame players care about, tbh. There will always be players around who leisurely wait for the echo and nerf and clear it the easy way. Just let them stay in their bubble.

[Yumi_umi]

Probs devs have something in store for SS overall.
Perhaps it'll scale higher once we get to higher levels with more diverse gear/ stat customization?
Hopefully in 3.0 ?
Cuz another year of this cookie cutter building and i might call it quits cuz
There's really no fun in doing everything the meta way unless ur in a static that knows what they r doing and r over geared etc which will compensate ur/ ppl's different ways off building.
I.e man mode extreme primals and coils lol.