Healers forever gimped

[Menae]

I'm going to reply to the thread but honestly I don't care about the nitpicky details.

Aetherflow and Shroud of Saints recover roughly the same amount of MP, the difference is that punching Shroud of Saints requires you to wait to recover enough MP to use it, which means you can't use it once you're out, and thus it's best used before you hit 20%. Aetherflow on the other hand is essentially free, instant 20% MP recovery. You get to pull some additional MP/HP from enemies (If you use all 3 Aetherflows, you recover a little over the same 20% the initial Aetherflow did.) Obviously PIE would factor in more with SCH (since it's 20%) but not WHM's Shroud of Saints (which just increases the MP regeneration tick speed.)

Regardless of which you play, you're going to run out of mana if either you overheal, or the party (or just the tank) is playing horribly. Speedrunners, Tanks/DPS who stand in every AOE , and fail to interrupt/stun the raid-wide attacks are going to be what causes you to run out of mana.

There are also pots, remember those? Hi-Elixir has a 7-minute 30 second cooldown, and recovers a maximum of 460 points/20% of MP (and 24%/560 points of HP.) X-Ether is 460 points/20% of MP. Exactly the same 20%.

The fact is, the game's battles are designed around playing cooperatively and playing the role you queued as. You aren't supposed to need to revive/resurrect players if everyone is paying attention. Revives are the most expensive use of MP, Revive = 6 Cure I's. They wouldn't make the game impossible, and clearly the margin of error is 20% (eg you could waste 20% of your Mana and still win, that's why Shroud/Aetherflow/Elixir/Ether are at that and have long enough cooldowns to avoid spamming them.) But hey, some people still seem to think that healers are supposed to take up the slack of every player who is playing poorly on purpose.

If there's anything misleading it would be this post: numbers aren't even right

What are you talking about, Lyrica? Those numbers are perfectly accurate! For a Scholar with 2500 MP! NOT MISLEADING AT ALL NOSIRREE BOB.

I mean, Kisai, I know you don't care about the nitpicky details, but at least come CLOSE to the mark. At the MP levels most people are running 8 mans with, Aetherflow restores at least 800 MP. Shroud restores 1060, but has double the cooldown.

Also, pots are capped at the lower of the two numbers. This means that Hi-Elixirs (NQ 20%/460 HQ 25%/580 for MP) don't give a 5k MP WHM or SCH 1k mana. They give 460 for NQ or 580 for HQ. X-Ethers are 20%/420 for NQ and 25%/530 for HQ. They also have a much lower CD - NQ is 5 minutes, HQ is 4:30.

If you ARE looking at pots to sustain your MP pool, X-Ethers are more efficient, particularly HQ ones. Using 3 in a fight (the most you can likely get off as I believe all bosses enrage before 13:30, the earliest you could conceivably use a 4th) gives you up to 1590 MP. That's less than two Aetherflows or about a Shroud and a half, but you likely aren't using your potion cooldown for anything else. I highly recommend players consider using mp pots on progression - when you are most likely to be spending MP like you just won the Cactpot - but it's certainly not 20% of an MP pool every 5 minutes.

(If you are DPSing significantly in a fight and not worried about MP or Gil, then consider using Mind pots, ESPECIALLY as a Scholar if you can get a good Bane off, or as a WHM if you can get lots of Holies off and have lots of accuracy and don't care about flushing your MP down the toilet. I don't personally recommend them for healing though)