Astrologian Speculations! How will it fit in?

[Ghishlain]

Your example seems flawed it purely relys on the tank, if you holys are going to shave off an entire 25 seconds of TTK, the pack will be dealing a whole lot more than 760dps, so for the sake of simplicity lets say that is after mitigation by the tank and falloff. To net you 6 holys you need 18s(15s w/ PoM), that translates to 13680 (11400) minus the 5320 from stun mitigation that's 8360 (6080) damage to the tank in that timeframe.

It's flawed in the sense that I've intentionally skewed that scenario where it shows about equivalent HP/MP balance comparing DPS mitigation versus raw healing output and omitted a few more assumptions. For the majority of the time, the HP/MP efficiency should favour outright healing versus DPSing as a healer - though it is kinda hard to beat 0 MP consumed on SCH when Fairy and Lustrate can heal an entire instance.

Additional, to maintain that kind of damage output in the above scenario from a WHM, you will most likely need a Divine Seal'd Medica II and Regen. This HoTs would partially counter balance the oncoming damage since you would get something in the realm of 700hp/tick with my above scenario, so around 4,200 HP back in the 18 seconds. Then you'd have Benediction to fall back on as well if that was up, so you would build your chain-Holy around that scenario.

Shaving 25 seconds off total kill time isn't unreasonable, though might be a high end estimate depending on the group tier. For example, here's the final two packs of trash in Keeper of the Lake.

Total DPS is 1,382.22 over 90 seconds is 124,399.8 damage. If you remove the WHM from the equation, the total DPS is 909.1. To meet the same damage, your group would need about 137 seconds, which is 47 more seconds (23.5 second per pack).

Overall, healing will net a higher HP/MP efficiency. However, if you're sitting on so much MP anyway, why not go burn some to help the group along? Just know how not to overextend.

That's the beauty of healing - adapting to the scenarios given to you and building yourself around them.

-Snip-

Man, if you are CONSTANTLY (which I highly doubt) running into these kinds of healers, I'm glad I'm not on your data cluster.

These are bad healers:
- The healer that switches to cleric stance and never switches out of it*
* It's easier for the SCH to pull this off without being a detriment, but a WHM who does it, is playing inefficiently on purpose.

Agreed after one adds a bit that "the Healer is only DPSing." It's possible to maintain high Cleric's Stance up time at little detriment to the party, but that's both dependent on the skill of the healer and tank.

- The healer that constantly casts healbombs (eg Medica II) and then Holy's**
** I've yet to see anyone do this and not immediately attract all the aggro. Any healer that opens with Medica II without there being party-wide damage, is playing poorly on purpose.

There are a few variables to attest to this. I can personally do this with little repercussion to this with my party or myself and not get any hate as the tanks tend to know "OVERPOWER/FLASH SPAM TO HOLD HATE". Of course if you're doing this for single targets... well, yes, you are terrible.

- The healer that stands around doing nothing, jumping, dancing, or otherwise being obnoxious when there are healable targets.

Agreed.

By all accounts if a healer has enough time to be a clown, they should be doing something more productive.

Such as DPSing when no one is immediately in need of healing arts.

From what I'm reading the AST's stances will alternate between something similar to WHM and something similar to SCH, and speculation suggests it will be "healer mode" where the cards will cast spells that work like Cure I/Cure II/Cure III, and "support healer mode" which would be like casting Protect/Shell/Stoneskin/Regen/Medica II and other Heal-over-Time, and perhaps other time-based support magic that hasn't been shown yet. We don't know enough yet, so let's speculate back on what would make the AST preferable to WHM/SCH

I feel the cards will provide a buff will be independent from the restorative spells. These restorative spells, I feel, should be affected by the stances that Yoshi-P seems to be touting. I expect spells to be similar to Cure, Cure II, Medica, Succor, Adlo, Esuna, and Raise and the buffs to be more unique. It would be interesting if the card buffs themselves would be affected by stance, but I get the feeling they won't. Would like to be proven wrong in this regard, however.