Healers forever gimped

[Cynfael]

If you get off 4 Shrouds in a 10 minute fight, you're screwing up. Shroud is a 2 minute CD, and it restores 1060 mana per cast, assuming you aren't capping. If you are capping, stop it, you are making me sad. You should use it as soon as possible in order to get more uses out of it. If you cast it at minute 1, you should also cast it at minutes 3, 5, 7, and 9 unless you need it for threat dropping, in which case, sucks for your mp regen. Basically if a fight lasts x minutes, you should get x/2 Shrouds off per fight if at all possible.

Similarly, you should try to get off an Aetherflow every minute in a fight. Use one at 30 seconds, and you can use it at every x:30 second interval going forward. We will assume no Energy Drains, because really, you have Lustrate and Lustrate makes me happy, while Energy Drain makes me sad.

That means over an x minute fight, a 5k mp WHM gets 5k initial mp + 2k mp per minute from natural regen + ~ 530 mp per minute from Shroud, depending on the exact fight length. So about 5000 + 2530 per minute.
Over an x minute fight, a 4.3k mp SCH gets 4.3k initial mp + 1720 mp per minute from natural regen + ~ 860 mp per minute from Aetherflow, again depending on the exact fight length. So about 4300 + 2580 per minute.

So over a ten minute fight, a WHM gets about 30,300 mp. A SCH gets about 30,100 mp. Seems pretty close, right? Pretty fair, right?

Wrong.

The natural difference between a WHM and SCH at 50 isn't 700 mp. It's 208 or so mp. Go ahead and test it - find a weapon with zero piety for both classes and swap back and forth without changing any other gear. Running those same numbers with the WHM at 4.5k and the SCH at 4.3k and you'll find the WHM gets only 27,800 to the SCH's 30,100. If the SCH goes piety crazy and has 4.8k mp to the WHM's 5k, the WHM gets 30,300 and the SCH gets 33,600.

Basically, the reason WHM's mp numbers are competitive in the "MP pool meta" isn't because our regen is similar - it's because WHM have to stack Piety to reach similar regen numbers. SCH don't have to do that, which means they get more points to put into Crit or Det or Spellspeed or freaking Parry or whatever. This doesn't necessarily mean the classes are unbalanced, either, but it does mean that your argument is misleading.

Small notes:

- Energy Drain should not make you sad; it's fantastic and is the go-to Aetherflow-related ability for SCH when Lustrates are not needed.

- The reason WHMs can afford to put more into PIE is that secondaries other than DET (which they already stack) are largely undesirable for them; CRT tends to promote overheal with no unique benefit (unlike SCH's Adlo), and Spell Speed will remain a garbage stat for both healers until possibly 3.0. Still, WHMs only stack as much PIE as they feel that they need to function comfortably, since unused MP offers no benefit.

- Freecure saves a ridiculous amount of MP, as does intelligent application of Regen. Flat-out Cure II bombing or AoE spamming is draining, but the same is true of SCH if they are forced to use their higher-consumption abilities excessively. SCH is also expected to be taking advantage of comparative freedom from the GCD to be spending MP on DPS as well.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Those numbers are to reflect on more "realistic" practices. 4 shrouds would mean 6 minutes downtime between each, assuming the first shroud is the zero point reference: 0m-2m-4m-6m. Even if you subtract the time required to spend 1060 MP it's a maximum of 2 minutes into the fight, effectively the shroud timing into the fight would be: 2m-4m-6m-8m. Obviously, the 5th shroud used at the 10th minute into an encounter has no uses or purposes. Scholar, on the other hand, is under assumption of dumping their stacks as soon as the fight starts so they can use Aetherflow again - Which has been mentioned in that post as well. It's also incorrect to assume Shroud recovers 530 mp per minute, while it's 1060mp/2minutes. You can't use 2 shrouds in a 3 minute encounter, but you can in a 4 minute encounter. On average, it is correct, but not practical for representation.

Popular gearing meta is also included in the argument, which has been mentioned. The meta would involve White Mages packing piety till they're comfortable and Scholars stacking Crit mainly. Natural MP difference it's not much, correct. But it was never a case of natural MP differences, it's gear choice by meta. Scholars generally don't pack as much piety as a White Mage does. Not like there's a lot of additional piety to get up as a Scholar. Quite a number of crit equipment already has piety on it.

Most of that post is based on meta. If you think it's wrong or misleading to make arguments based on meta, that's up to you. The popular meta is also the whole reason why the MP pools are based on i110 gear, rather than i130 gear. Simply because no new MP pool meta has been established yet for White Mages and FCOB content. Meanwhile Scholars are getting roughly 200 more MP by stacking crit again per usual compared to their i110 gear. I could had used my own White Mage's MP pool as reference, but that's hardly represents anything - Unless the player base somehow accepts it as a new meta.

[Menae]

Small notes:

- Energy Drain should not make you sad; it's fantastic and is the go-to Aetherflow-related ability for SCH when Lustrates are not needed.

- The reason WHMs can afford to put more into PIE is that secondaries other than DET (which they already stack) are largely undesirable for them; CRT tends to promote overheal with no unique benefit (unlike SCH's Adlo), and Spell Speed will remain a garbage stat for both healers until possibly 3.0. Still, WHMs only stack as much PIE as they feel that they need to function comfortably, since unused MP offers no benefit.

- Freecure saves a ridiculous amount of MP, as does intelligent application of Regen. Flat-out Cure II bombing or AoE spamming is draining, but the same is true of SCH if they are forced to use their higher-consumption abilities excessively. SCH is also expected to be taking advantage of comparative freedom from the GCD to be spending MP on DPS as well.

- Energy Drain doesn't make me sad because it's bad; it makes me sad because it's not Lustrate and Lustrate is awesome and I wish I had it on my WHM. That said, that line was more a "let's ignore Energy Drain mana returns" than any sort of advice on how to play SCH.

- My argument is only that saying that WHM mp regen is fine because they generate as much mp in a ten minute fight as a SCH is misleading. They don't unless they stack Piety. If the best reason to do that is because their other secondaries suck, (and oh boy do they), then I'd assert that to be a bad thing, not a good one, but either way it's beyond the scope of my original argument.

- Freecure is wonderful and I love it, but I'm uncertain how to math it out, since I don't keep track of how many Cures I cast per minute, or how likely I am to WANT a Cure 2 in the next fifteen seconds. That's tricky on a fight by fight basis; if you'd care to model it out, by all means, but I don't feel I could do a good job of it, so I won't. Regen is also great, but my argument has nothing to do with how you spend your 30k mp. I don't really care if you use it optimally or blow it all on zero-target Holy spam; the idea is to figure out how much you GET.

Basically, Lyrica offered an argument which implied that SCH and WHM have similar MP regen. They CAN, but don't unless a WHM devotes significant secondaries to Piety. Every point of Piety does more for a SCH than it does for a WHM. Again, that's the only point of my argument - that WHM can only keep up with SCH regen if they have more than a weapon slot's worth more Piety - and consequently a similar amount less of OTHER secondary stats. Whether that is in itself a problem is, again, beyond the scope of my argument.

And Lyrica, if a WHM isn't Shrouding until 2 minutes into a serious fight, they are playing badly. I can blow enough MP in 30 seconds to warrant a Shroud. You absolutely can - and SHOULD - use Shroud twice in a 3 minute encounter, three times in a five minute encounter, etc. If you don't need to heal enough to be down 800 mana or so 30 seconds in, pop Presence of Mind and toss some damage in. You want to get Shroud on CD because while it's not as good as Aetherflow, it's all we have.

And finally, no, it's not misleading to make arguments based on the meta of the game. It is, however, misleading to state the meta as if it is just how the game works rather than a decision made by players. An example: say a Paladin takes one quarter the damage of a Dragoon from physical attacks, and the meta is for Dragoons to stack Vitality for some reason. Your argument is similar to arguing Dragoons are as survivable as Paladins because a Dragoon with 20,000 hp has the same physical survivability as a Paladin with 5,000 EHP. It's technically correct (<insert the best kind of correct.jpg here>), but ignores the reason WHY a Dragoon might have that much hp - because they stacked and stacked and stacked Vitality until they made up for their inherent lack of survivability. Similarly, WHM and SCH don't have a similar level of regen because they are balanced that way - they do because most WHM players made a decision to stack Piety until they made up for their inherent lack of regen. This is a perfectly valid decision, but item budgets are limited and that Piety has an opportunity cost, and mentioning the benefits of that Piety without mentioning the drawbacks is misleading.

[Spoekes]

1: Stack Piety is a pseudo meta
True, PIE has good value for WHM. But you don't buy craftables and go crazy with PIE materia; the itemization is just fine to support the current "meta" in easily achievable gear. You get to, or close to, 4.8-5k, without really aiming for that value.

2: MP-in vs. MP-out
How much MP you have and regenerate has no value at all if you ignore how much you spend.


I'd agree with the shroud usage.

The Dragoon example is silly at best.
A meta is of course a decision made by the players, but its not like a dicision of colors or taste, its a dicision based on numbers and experiences and directly translates to how the game works.

You keep repeating drawbacks WHM has from "stacking" PIE. With exception of the Relic materia, where do you actively stack PIE, I'm seriously wondering.

[Menae]

1: Stack Piety is a pseudo meta
True, PIE has good value for WHM. But you don't buy craftables and go crazy with PIE materia; the itemization is just fine to support the current "meta" in easily achievable gear. You get to, or close to, 4.8-5k, without really aiming for that value.

2: MP-in vs. MP-out
How much MP you have and regenerate has no value at all if you ignore how much you spend.


I'd agree with the shroud usage.

The Dragoon example is silly at best.
A meta is of course a decision made by the players, but its not like a dicision of colors or taste, its a dicision based on numbers and experiences and directly translates to how the game works.

You keep repeating drawbacks WHM has from "stacking" PIE. With exception of the Relic materia, where do you actively stack PIE, I'm seriously wondering.

1. Piety doesn't have good value for WHM. At least not compared to SCH. With zero Aetherflow/Shroud usage, each point of Piety gives a WHM and a SCH ~48 MP over a ten minute fight. With optimal Aetherflow/Shroud uses, it gives WHM 48 MP over a ten minute fight, and a SCH 68 MP.

2. MP out is important for both the results of individual fights and healing theory as a whole, but my posts and arguments have all been in response to Lyrica's "Let me drop these numbers here that show WHM and SCH have similar MP regen" post. What you do with your MP is important, but it'd be just as important if you get 15k over a fight as it would if you get 30k.

And the Dragoon argument is silly but intentionally so. It's designed to show that raw numbers can be misleading if you don't look at why those numbers are what they are, like a Dragoon stacking VIT to reach tank levels of physical EHP.

And I don't mean to imply that WHM drop everything for more and more and more Piety, nor that there is difficulty finding enough. Lyrica said he/she found a gearset that gave 5900 MP, which I have no doubt exists and no doubt provides more MP than you are likely to be able to effectively use. But given a certain ilvl of gear, there are only so many secondary stats available. If ilvl 130 gear/food gives 1000 Piety worth of secondaries (Obviously they won't all be Piety, and 1000 probably isn't the correct number either, but it's big and round and we'll work with it), and an i130 SCH feels comfortable with x points worth of Piety from gear/food/stat allocation (INCLUDED FOR COMPLETENESS, PLEASE DON'T ALLOCATE PIETY FROM YOUR 30 STATS), then that SCH has 1000-x worth of stats available for non-Piety secondaries. If an i130 WHM needs x+50 points to feel comfortable, then they have 50 points fewer to allocate to other stats. This is the drawback I am referring to. It's not that it's an impossible burden or life is just so unfair for WHM. It's just a decision WHM have to make and SCH don't, and to say both classes have equivalent regen without acknowledging that WHM have to spend more of the limited secondary pool to reach that equivalency is to mislead.


I'd like to point out that I don't think either class is "gimp," by the way. I know both are perfectly capable of completing all the content in the game, seeing as how they obviously have, and they work very well together. I do think for the most part that SCH is a better designed class (more stuff to do, secondary stats that actually do something interesting, NOT HAVING THE SLOWEST INSTANT CAST SPELL EVER CONCEIVED), but I think that's more an issue of WHM being boring rather than SCH being overpowered. I'm just worried that Heavensward is going to come and WHM are going to get nothing but dumb boring traits like "Shroud potency now 120," "Fluid Aura bind duration increased," etc.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

You're totally missing the point of that post.

For starters it was never about style or preference. Not mine, not yours. I never indicated any should/could/would/must have or any rules anyone should follow. It's also not about natural difference or whatnot. It's about how the argument about white mages having issues conflicts with the meta recommended a gearset back. If it wasn't 100% clear to you yet: I mentioned it takes a maximum of 2 minutes to spend 1060 MP before using Shroud. One could run in there with swiftcast ready and throw a Holy at the boss's face 2 seconds into the fight and use Shroud straight away and hard cast another 2 right after so they don't waste that MP. Or one could simply be the kind that has a more conservative preference. But again: The whole post was never about style or preference. You may or may not squeeze in 5 shrouds in a 10 minute timeframe, but the 5th is more likely to be waste/excess than useful; much like a Scholar's first Aetherflow after dumping their starting 3 stacks 12 seconds into the fight.

The comparison you make of dragoons and tanks aren't even relevant or reasonable. None of the numbers you mentioned to make a dragoon an effective tank can be reached or are readily available soon. Even if it can be obtained, the gear and level of the dragoon and tank versus content aren't even relevant to each other. A dragoon with 20,000 HP isn't even comparable with a 5,000 HP tank in terms of gear and content that requires so much HP to tank. If there was a scenario where a dragoon has 4 times the HP a tank has; then yes, a dragoon would function better as a tank than said tank with 5,000 HP. But that wasn't even the case of that post, because it was about gearing meta for i110 gear - Which, for your information, was comparable.

You also seem to misunderstand about a few things: I'm not advocating anything, choosing sides or advising anything. I'm presenting numbers based on meta that would solve the contradiction against facts. The natural differences aren't that much different, I never stated it was. But gearing meta is different. White Mages gear up on Piety to function well enough according to their needs for specific content. They don't pile up on Piety just for the sake of it. You mentioned before you read that I obtained 5900 MP - Which was without status point redistribution. This would be the reason why Scholars decide not to take as much piety as White Mages do. In that same post I mentioned I had 3000 MP left at the end of the encounter. That is 3000 MP unused, thus waste and having so much piety is pointless. In case it's not obvious enough for you yet: Too much MP is pointless. But again: it's not about style or preferences, not mine and not yours. It's about how the meta was for i110 gear reflecting on "mp issues".

[Ghishlain]

2: MP-in vs. MP-out
How much MP you have and regenerate has no value at all if you ignore how much you spend.

This is an important point when discussing MP efficiency between the two healer jobs. While I find Lyrica's post very constructive in terms of MP regeneration, we also have to take into account MP consumption as well and how they effect both.

White Mages have one resource to manage - MP
Scholars have three resources to manage - MP, Aetherflow Stacks, and Eos Cooldowns (I'm going to assume most Scholars know which fairy they prefer for any particular fight and only use Eos in this particular instance for the sake of comparing similar healing abilities.)

By design, the impact to Scholar's MP pool is less due to the benefits provided by the Atherflow-consuming abilities and the cooldowns by Eos.

For the sake of simplification, I'm going to assume that the fairy potency is about 15% less effective than a "normal player" as they are slightly weaker by design.

To compare similar abilities:

Regen vs Embrace - Normalizing HP Loss
150 Potency/tick @ 186MP VS 300 Potency*0.85 = 255 Potency/tick @ 0 MP
Clear Winner SCH in both HP healed and MP consumed

Cure II vs Embrace + Physick - Burst Heal
650 Potency @ 266MP VS (255 Potency*2.5/3) = 212.50 Potency @ 0MP + 400 Potency @ 133 MP = 612.50 Potency @ 133 MP
WHM provides a slight edge in terms of Potency / GCD though at the cost of higher MP. While Freecure will provide a 0MP Cure II, having a Freecure proc on demand isn't always feasible. However, having Freeproc available about 50% of the time will push the argument towards WHMs favour.

Cure II vs Lustrate - Burst Heal (I'll be using my own heals + tank in hyrid STR/VIT set for this metric)
PLD @ 9,391 HP: 2,500 HP @ 266MP VS 2,347.75 HP @ 0MP
WAR @ 11,102 HP: 3,000 HP @ 266MP VS 2,775.5 HP @ 0MP
WHM provides higher HP/GCD but Lustrate is MP-less and instant cast, providing better utility burst in a pinch

Medica II vs Whispering Dawn - Raid Healing over time
700 Potency/30 sec @ 500+MP (can't recall ATM how much it is) VS 700 Potency* 0.85 = 595 Potency/21 sec @ 0MP
WHM provides a higher Pot though Whispering Dawn would have healed slightly more at the 21 second mark due to how Medica II works.

These comparisons are more designed about the fact that SCH by nature is a less MP intensive class by design. While White Mages have on demand raw potency that is directly tied to their MP, SCHs have their potency tied to either their Fairy at slower cast times or their limited Cooldowns/Aetherflow stacks and therefore can potentially not output as much healing when resources are running on empty.

Therefore, by design, SCH has a much higher MP efficiency when you compare WHM (MP Regeneration - MP Consumed) versus SCH (MP Regeneration - MP Consumed).

With that being said, I feel it's important to note that MP consumed is different between every player AND every fight (even the same fight, depending on how well each player in the party plays). For example, Succor is slightly less MP-efficient compared to Medica, but if you need to patch people up in a hurry, WHM would be the much better choice versus SCH in this regards.

Additionally, as SCH is less stringent on the MP efficiency department, it almost feels like Aetherflow and Shroud of Saints should be reversed - WHM's Shroud of Saints SHOULD scale with their MP and SCHs Aetherflow SHOULD provide a set amount of MP returned (like, say 700 MP). This would provide more emphasis on each job's resource management and probably align a bit better with the overall job meta.

Of course there's no point to make a change like this with the expansion right around the corner, but it's there as a "food for thought" point.

[Menae]

You're totally missing the point of that post.

For starters it was never about style or preference. Not mine, not yours. I never indicated any should/could/would/must have or any rules anyone should follow. It's also not about natural difference or whatnot. It's about how the argument about white mages having issues conflicts with the meta recommended a gearset back. If it wasn't 100% clear to you yet: I mentioned it takes a maximum of 2 minutes to spend 1060 MP before using Shroud. One could run in there with swiftcast ready and throw a Holy at the boss's face 2 seconds into the fight and use Shroud straight away and hard cast another 2 right after so they don't waste that MP. Or one could simply be the kind that has a more conservative preference. But again: The whole post was never about style or preference. You may or may not squeeze in 5 shrouds in a 10 minute timeframe, but the 5th is more likely to be waste/excess than useful; much like a Scholar's first Aetherflow after dumping their starting 3 stacks 12 seconds into the fight.

The comparison you make of dragoons and tanks aren't even relevant or reasonable. None of the numbers you mentioned to make a dragoon an effective tank can be reached or are readily available soon. Even if it can be obtained, the gear and level of the dragoon and tank versus content aren't even relevant to each other. A dragoon with 20,000 HP isn't even comparable with a 5,000 HP tank in terms of gear and content that requires so much HP to tank. If there was a scenario where a dragoon has 4 times the HP a tank has; then yes, a dragoon would function better as a tank than said tank with 5,000 HP. But that wasn't even the case of that post, because it was about gearing meta for i110 gear - Which, for your information, was comparable.

You also seem to misunderstand about a few things: I'm not advocating anything, choosing sides or advising anything. I'm presenting numbers based on meta that would solve the contradiction against facts. The natural differences aren't that much different, I never stated it was. But gearing meta is different. White Mages gear up on Piety to function well enough according to their needs for specific content. They don't pile up on Piety just for the sake of it. You mentioned before you read that I obtained 5900 MP - Which was without status point redistribution. This would be the reason why Scholars decide not to take as much piety as White Mages do. In that same post I mentioned I had 3000 MP left at the end of the encounter. That is 3000 MP unused, thus waste and having so much piety is pointless. In case it's not obvious enough for you yet: Too much MP is pointless. But again: it's not about style or preferences, not mine and not yours. It's about how the meta was for i110 gear reflecting on "mp issues".

- You argue that saying WHM have mana issues is false because WHM could gear to have similar mp numbers. I argue that saying WHM have mana issues is true because WHM have to gear in order to get similar mp numbers.

- The Dragoon comparison is designed to show numbers without context can be misleading. Not to represent a realistic scenario.

- I'm not claiming or believing you are choosing sides. The only things I claim and believe are: 1) that you asserted WHM and SCH have similar MP over a ten minute fight given a 5k MP pool and 4 Shrouds for the WHM and a 4.3k MP pool and 8 Aetherflows for the SCH, and 2) the only way a WHM has 700 more MP than a SCH is if the WHM has a lot more Piety on their gear. I claimed your argument was misleading because if WHM have similar MP pools to SCH over long fights at similar ilvl, it's only because they have elected to gear for MP at the expense of other stats.

Let me be crystal clear on one point, Lyrica. I'm not attacking you at all. I don't think you are a bad person. I don't think you are choosing sides. I don't even CARE if you are choosing sides, because what side of the argument you argue for doesn't actually affect the numbers. Your post happened to be the one containing numbers, and I feel that it didn't contain enough context to make those numbers meaningful.

This is an important point when discussing MP efficiency between the two healer jobs. While I find Lyrica's post very constructive in terms of MP regeneration, we also have to take into account MP consumption as well and how they effect both.

White Mages have one resource to manage - MP
Scholars have three resources to manage - MP, Aetherflow Stacks, and Eos Cooldowns (I'm going to assume most Scholars know which fairy they prefer for any particular fight and only use Eos in this particular instance for the sake of comparing similar healing abilities.)

By design, the impact to Scholar's MP pool is less due to the benefits provided by the Atherflow-consuming abilities and the cooldowns by Eos.

For the sake of simplification, I'm going to assume that the fairy potency is about 15% less effective than a "normal player" as they are slightly weaker by design.

To compare similar abilities:

Regen vs Embrace - Normalizing HP Loss
150 Potency/tick @ 186MP VS 300 Potency*0.85 = 255 Potency/tick @ 0 MP
Clear Winner SCH in both HP healed and MP consumed

Cure II vs Embrace + Physick - Burst Heal
650 Potency @ 266MP VS (255 Potency*2.5/3) = 212.50 Potency @ 0MP + 400 Potency @ 133 MP = 612.50 Potency @ 133 MP
WHM provides a slight edge in terms of Potency / GCD though at the cost of higher MP. While Freecure will provide a 0MP Cure II, having a Freecure proc on demand isn't always feasible. However, having Freeproc available about 50% of the time will push the argument towards WHMs favour.

Cure II vs Lustrate - Burst Heal (I'll be using my own heals + tank in hyrid STR/VIT set for this metric)
PLD @ 9,391 HP: 2,500 HP @ 266MP VS 2,347.75 HP @ 0MP
WAR @ 11,102 HP: 3,000 HP @ 266MP VS 2,775.5 HP @ 0MP
WHM provides higher HP/GCD but Lustrate is MP-less and instant cast, providing better utility burst in a pinch

Medica II vs Whispering Dawn - Raid Healing over time
700 Potency/30 sec @ 500+MP (can't recall ATM how much it is) VS 700 Potency* 0.85 = 595 Potency/21 sec @ 0MP
WHM provides a higher Pot though Whispering Dawn would have healed slightly more at the 21 second mark due to how Medica II works.

These comparisons are more designed about the fact that SCH by nature is a less MP intensive class by design. While White Mages have on demand raw potency that is directly tied to their MP, SCHs have their potency tied to either their Fairy at slower cast times or their limited Cooldowns/Aetherflow stacks and therefore can potentially not output as much healing when resources are running on empty.

Therefore, by design, SCH has a much higher MP efficiency when you compare WHM (MP Regeneration - MP Consumed) versus SCH (MP Regeneration - MP Consumed).

With that being said, I feel it's important to note that MP consumed is different between every player AND every fight (even the same fight, depending on how well each player in the party plays). For example, Succor is slightly less MP-efficient compared to Medica, but if you need to patch people up in a hurry, WHM would be the much better choice versus SCH in this regards.

Additionally, as SCH is less stringent on the MP efficiency department, it almost feels like Aetherflow and Shroud of Saints should be reversed - WHM's Shroud of Saints SHOULD scale with their MP and SCHs Aetherflow SHOULD provide a set amount of MP returned (like, say 700 MP). This would provide more emphasis on each job's resource management and probably align a bit better with the overall job meta.

Of course there's no point to make a change like this with the expansion right around the corner, but it's there as a "food for thought" point.

I'd argue both classes have three additional resources to manage - GCDs, cooldowns (like Divine Seal, Rouse, etc.), and threat. I find that if I let somebody die as a WHM, it's often not because I'm OOM, but because I have two or more things I'd like to do at once, and I can't. You can spend cooldowns to save/gain GCDS by healing more or more often, at the cost of not having access to those cooldowns for, well, their cooldowns. Finally threat is a resource as well, albeit one that isn't commonly dealt with. If the tank only has enough hate for me to heal 1000 hp, I might want to delay my heal or use an ability like stoneskin which is less MP and time efficient, but won't get me savaged by the boss.

[Risvertasashi]

How did this happen to a thread asking people to stop the whole healer vs healer deathmatch thing?

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Right, I'll just toss this term in again: Popular meta.

Everything in that post is based on popular meta. It wasn't explicitly mentioned, but it does not extend to only gear and preferences. White Mages gear up piety to perform because of how the player base has adopted the healing tandem meta - Which is where the 5k MP comes from and not from 4 or 24 player content. This meta would involve that the White Mage takes the greater chunk of healing while the scholar off-DPSes and mainly aids to mitigate tank-killing moves. This is the general outline, exact execution and/or synergy between each healer may vary with each pair. The roles are distributed like this because White Mages generally spend less MP for healing purposes and the Scholar spend less MP for damage purposes. This is a well established meta, in my opinion.

So what if this meta never existed and both healers simply healed and neither did damage? This would result to a really high healing output that overshadows the healing requirement for an encounter. If some of the healing from the White Mage would be shifted towards the Scholar, they'd have less MP expenses and thus require less MP to use. If this was the case, White Mages would have no need to stack up on piety. But this kind of healing game is far from efficient. Not wrong, simply not as efficient as it can be. Depending on the pair, the White mage may need 5k MP to perform without Ballad. While another White Mage may need 5,7k MP to do the same. It depends on the amount of healing output the scholar gives up on.

Additionally, it's not like Scholars don't need piety at all. They're getting it on the side while stacking crit on the gear on multiple pieces. A scholar that's completely deprived of Piety simply couldn't function as it does now. They could if it was a matter of simply filling HP bars and nothing less together with the healer. But this isn't the case. So I'll just drop this again as that's what the post about MP numbers was about: Based on popular meta.