Quote Originally Posted by Mutemutt View Post
Well, I'd say there is a very big difference in opportunity cost here. Every ewer or spear you actually use on yourself to deal with your own mp issues comes at the cost of the expand/extend buffs from royal road or just possibly another buff (most preferably one to increase the parties dps) through the use of shuffle. Whereas the only drawback to freecure, and the other cost reducing traits, is perhaps extra enmity. That enmity, by the way, will be continuously cut in half by shroud of saints so over the course of a long encounter it is negligible.
This is the beauty of AST class design. You can pull back party support for MP and vice versa.

Compare this with Assize: spam on gcd and lose healing efficiency, dont spam and lose MP restore efficiency. No tradeoff, just varying degrees of loss.

Compared with WHM RNG: WHM has little to no control when the proc hits. If what you're healing calls for cure I, using the cure II proc is a waste of potency, but while the its proc'd subsequent cure I's wont proc, you could wait a bit for your healing target, but if you cant wait at least a cleric stance cycle you're just idling. again, varying degrees of loss.