White Mage Efficiency

[Lovemonster]

My view on the MP efficiency and GCD efficiency is that by taking advantage of buffs as much as possible you can minimize the healing that you have to do to DPS. I don't use 8 healing spells with Divine Seal either, and usually do the same Medica II/Regen and maybe 1 Cure II and then switch to cleric stance, but the idea is that by using SC->PoM->DS->M2->Cleric Stance and then end with regen, you still get the same amount of GCDs because medica 2 will be instant and cleric stance will not affect the next GCD. The many cures in the example are just placeholders for any GCD really.

The actual rotation: SC/PoM/DS/M2/Cleric Stance/AeroII/Aero/Fluid Aura/Stone II/StoneII/Stone II/Cleric Stance off/ Regen (with some more spell speed you can fit in one more stone II).

Also the point of maxing piety is to basically eliminate any use of Cure I and replace it with Cure II so that you can maximize DPS as much as possible by saving GCDs, even using multiple (10+) Holys in a long fight because of your very high MP regeneration. With max piety build you can obtain 6k MP, and really Cure II just completely replaces Cure I. So here we just use the most potent healing to save as many GCDs as possible for Aero/AeroII/Stone II.

My principle is that ending a fight with something like 3K MP isn't that wasteful. Remember that in a long fight like T13 you will have regenerated a lot of MP passively so 3k MP isn't actually that much at all (At least 20k MP to burn through). Ideally we'll have 0 MP by the time we finish, so possible more Holy during add phase/ using only 1 Cure II for earthshakers, healing the MT for flare breath and going straight to cleric stance in the last phase before the next mechanic. But if we have say a 1000 more max MP, that will translate into possibly 5k MP+ (1K + 4K refreshed) in total MP that we could have used for DPS instead.

To put it simply:

The ordinary WHM approach to a tank taking damage worth 2 cures would be to cure twice, but I really don't like tanks being topped off because eos/selene/regen will top off the tank for me, so one cure II is sufficient for me and will buy me 1 GCD. This really adds up I think, so even though Cure II is MP inefficient, it's not that bad and we get to use a lot of DPS spells in the long run and even healing spells too if things get intense.

In terms of overall damage dealt AND healing output, the longer the fight duration goes the better piety scales than any other secondary (det/crit/spellspeed) by using only the most GCD-efficient abilities due to greatly increased MP regen.

But some spell speed (around 470) is really nice because it fits in 1 GCD for Divine Seal/PoM.

Oh and for the damage reduction on defense scaling abilities, open-world monsters are a good way to test this (with/without protect) (with/without foresight on tank/monk or drg or changing gear sets), etc. You can test virus/Str Down/DK as well and will see similar results. The % difference between the averages should be equal to the % reduction in STR/INT.

[Lovemonster]

Here are some videos:

SC/PoM/DS/M2/CS/A2/A1/FA/S2/S2/S2/S2/CS/Regen

http://youtu.be/f9lY_uvPFak

DPS Rotation:

http://youtu.be/SHjkWogxFRg

I miss a DoT tick here at 1:15, but with slightly more spell speed ~500 you will rarely miss ticks (depends on server time).

Remember guys this is all theory crafting. Can't play a perfect rotation in a fight, but changing the general order of skills that you use can help improve efficiency a bit:
- Using SC before Divine Seal, not after
- Using off-GCDs after instant/1.0/2.0s cast GCDs and not 2.5 cast GCDs.
- Squeezing out more HoTs and GCDs in general when buffs are up

This doesn't really apply to completely new fights, but when you've done the first phase in progression raiding a couple dozen times you might want to start building a 'rotation' into your play. This includes movement too! Change around the order of your GCDs and off-GCDS to maximize your output.

[Nyalia]

Feels nitpicky, but I wonder if this should deal with potency or mana-pool percentage rather than MP-values. I believe that it was mentioned somewhere that SoS is a 50-potency tick.

Shroud of Saints claims to have a potency, implying that the MP restoration is based on your magic damage, but it misleads. At level 50, Shroud of Saints restores a flat 1060 MP regardless of anything. You could be naked and wielding a Weathered Cane or wearing full Dreadwyrm; either way, it'll restore 1060 MP. This has been tested extensively.

That said, your PIE will determine how much your passive mana regeneration restores, which continues ticking during Shroud of Saints. So, while you are technically getting more MP back during Shroud with higher PIE, that extra MP is coming from your higher passive regen and not from Shroud.

[PetiteMalFleur]

As a suggestion for your guide, and to further elaborate on mana management, shroud should be used as early as possible into a fight. I found it most mana efficient to use shroud after my first aoe heal, or once I had spent 800-1000 mana. This will allow you to shroud more times and greatly help with mana management throughout the fight's duration.

[Lovemonster]

I really think I focused too much on DPS on this guide. When you are overgeared you tend to focus on numbers a lot more and also I have a scholar playstyle background. I've been trying out different WHM playstyles and found out more things so I want to remake this guide sometime soon. It'll be a lot more tidy, comprehensive and organised!

[cgbspender]

Considering your number of HP, and unless a special VIT meld, I would think that you are ilvl 120+. I find the damages you make on the dummy quite low... From experience, just wih virus/aero/earthII, i'll usually strike at 800 / 1100+ in crit, and far more often that what I see on the video. That said, i'm "only" ilvl 116. It's curious that you don't do more damage. For the record, my gear isn't exactly crit/det emphasized, more PIE and SS.

[Cynfael]

...just wih virus/aero/earthII...

For the record, Virus doesn't increase damage to the target; it decreases the target's outgoing damage by debuffing its attack stats.

[Aurelinaus]

SC/PoM/DS/M2/CS/A2/A1/FA/S2/S2/S2/S2/CS/Regen

You lose a few seconds hitting straight CDs in the first vid, it was 6s from SC -> CS. Why not move PoM inside CS?

SC/DS/M2/CS/PoM/A2/A1/FA/S2/S2/S2/S2/CS/Regen

[Raminax]

Rawr.

Do you remember when you saw those numbers? Merely being in a group will increase your damage ever so slightly. Then there's lots of things like Foe Requiem, Trick Attack and Vulnerability Up from the vines in Amdapor Keep (Hard) that could further boost your numbers while in a duty.

Forgive my skepticism, but regular 800 Dmg Stone IIs while solo sounds quite unlikely without outside assistance.

[Lovemonster]

Using CS and PoM after M2 will delay A2 enough that you can't Regen with DS active.
Can't fit 2 off-gcds in one "instant" spell because the spell itself (even with SC) will take 1 second and so it delays A2 by around 0.5 seconds.

Also I think in general using Regen after Medica 2 and removing 1 stone 2 is more realistic since you want Regen up at all times. Still want to end with Regen though since no other GCD can benefit from that 0.5 seconds of DS left so you'll end up clipping Regen but that's okay.