Its april 2016 yet no healer stat weights???

[Katlyna]

Astrologer priority is as follows from the folks I've been talking with on our server:

Spellspeed (until 700-800) > Determination > Piety | Crit

Simply put Astros when played correctly have huge mana pools and greatly benefit from faster casts while doing hard raid content. As you approach 2.2 casting speed you can start doing super slick sliding casts for small mechanic shifts, and otherwise cut corners that you would otherwise be hard pressed to manage. Determination after should be obvious as you want your overall heals more effective. Crit is just terrible on Astros IMO. I could MAYBE see shield based astros putting a different priority on critical stats... but Whitemage/Astro is MEH in raid content (I've run it a notable amount). Personally I'd rather pick up the the extra Piety over crit as mana does get tight if you have to resurrect a person here or there. Or if you have to bounce someone back from a sloppy mechanic.

[StouterTaru]

One also has to note that the Crit damage+ means nothing to a healer from a healing standpoint (Healer DPS is another matter), so Lyrica's analysis for straight healing is on point.

For overhealing, yeah all that you'll do is overheal more. My understanding of adloquim is that a crit heal gives a shield double to the crit heal, so crit is even more potent for SCH.

[Kaurie]

Crit is surely awesome if you play NoctAST / Scholar because shields do not generate overheal, but as WHM I don't like crit.
A critical heal often creates overheal because I don't cast heals wile relying on crits.

This only would make sense if our heals were already near the amount of peoples hitpoints. However, we heal for 3k and they have 15-25k HP. That could mean the difference in needing to cast another heal / cd or not.

For example, maybe there is a tank buster coming up that hits for 20k sending your tank down to 5k. You line up a Cure II and crit it for 8k, you're still no where near overheal. Personally, the largest heals I've done on both WHM and SCH are 12k and 13k respectively, and even that wouldn't result in overheal. If overheal is a common issue, it may be that you are healing to soon (i.e. they are at 80% and you are healing, rather than DPSing and letting them drop more).

One also has to note that the Crit damage+ means nothing to a healer from a healing standpoint (Healer DPS is another matter), so Lyrica's analysis for straight healing is on point.

The added bonus is applied to healing as well

You're going from a 5% chance at 1.5x, to a 15% chance at 1.6x to a 25% chance at 1.7x.

Astrologer priority is as follows from the folks I've been talking with on our server:

Spellspeed (until 700-800) > Determination > Piety | Crit

While I strongly disagree on the order, I mostly wanted to point out that you may want to reconsider DET placement. Determination scales very poorly for healers (approximately 200 DET = +30 average per 400 potency cure), conversely 200 CRIT would equal 5% more crit chance and a 0.1 added to the modifier (i.e. going from 5% at 1.5x to 10% at 1.6x). The average heals you are going to put out with the added CRIT floors the added with DET.

Item #2 has no bearing on healing because your heals aren't doing damage (unless there's research somewhere that indicates critted spells also get a bonus in their potency in a similar magnitude to damage spells/abilities/WS).

They indeed do.

[Ghishlain]

For overhealing, yeah all that you'll do is overheal more. My understanding of adloquim is that a crit heal gives a shield double to the crit heal, so crit is even more potent for SCH.

No, what I meant in my post is CRIT is split into two components

1. Crit % Change
2. Increase % in Damage when you Crit

Item #2 has no bearing on healing because your heals aren't doing damage (unless there's research somewhere that indicates critted spells also get a bonus in their potency in a similar magnitude to damage spells/abilities/WS).

With that in mind, the only aspect you have to consider from a healing-only standpoint is the increased % chance you'll have to Crit your spells. Hence my comment that Lyrica's comment to the crit discussion is on point when you consider healing and healing only.

[EDIT]

The added bonus is applied to healing as well

You're going from a 5% chance at 1.5x, to a 15% chance at 1.6x to a 25% chance at 1.7x.

Can you quote me a source to show that the bonus applies to healing too? If you look at the 3.0 patch notes, it says:

Critical hit rate now affects damage dealt with a critical strike.

...under the "[2.0] Player attributes have been adjusted as follows:" category. As it specifically states "affects damage dealt", I do not believe this bonus would apply to healing as well but would like to see if anyone has proof speaking contrary to the patch notes.

[Kaurie]

Can you quote me a source to show that the bonus applies to healing too? If you look at the 3.0 patch notes, it says:

...under the "[2.0] Player attributes have been adjusted as follows:" category. As it specifically states "affects damage dealt", I do not believe this bonus would apply to healing as well but would like to see if anyone has proof speaking contrary to the patch notes.

I do not have a source, I just know from experience with 700ish crit that I often hit for 1.6x modifier rather than 1.5x. Though there is a fluctuation in healing (a standard deviation of 55hp/heal on my last tests of physick), so that may have skewed my experience and it's possible I am wrong.

I just looked up one of my logs and looked at Embrace (made up the most of my healing in the fight). There were a total of 43 casts and a 14% crit rate. My average crit hit = 2850 and my average regular hit = 1792 which equals 1.6. Granted there are a lot of factors which may also skew this data, so this test should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, I have no idea how much each are affected by fey illumination, convalescence and defiance.

[Katlyna]

The problem with Crit though is, Crit = random overheals. Likewise unless you are shielding as an astro... random overheals are NOT useful. While clearing raid content your goal is to cover survival and recover damage as quickly as possible while minimizing overheal. Crit is useful when shielding or when hit point pools are so large that a random crit = one less heal. FFXIV isn't really designed like this... its EXTREMELY spam happy. Consequently I strongly disagree with padding crit unless you are shielding.

Likewise current raiding content, the most important thing is that you reach your position and your next heal hits in time. That is spell speed hands down. Once you learn fights and tighten up to where you know the heartbeat of a fight and its exact rotation, then you can let up off spell speed. But by then you're learning a new fight where you benefit greatly from said spell speed.

If Determination carried more weight I might put it before spell speed but it does not. So I strongly encourage (whitemage slot) Astrologers to go Spellspeed > Det > Piety/Crit.

[Kaurie]

Crit is useful when shielding or when hit point pools are so large that a random crit = one less heal. FFXIV isn't really designed like this....

This is precisely how FFXIV is designed. No one takes damage and then all of a sudden everyone takes 10k. That crit Medica means you cast it once instead of twice.

Just to add:

EDIT, thanks for pointing out the calculation issues and I have adjusted below

Determination It takes 400 Determination to exceed the standard deviation of your heals. That is to say, 200 DET = 30 HP more per Physick, 400 DET = 60 HP more per Physick on average. Where the standard deviation of a physick, of my last testing, is 55HP. That is to say about ~70% of the heals fall within that +/-55HP window. For my calculation, 100 DET = +30 hp. Physick does near 3.5k (actually a bit more), so added DET = 30/3500 = 0.4%.

Added Healing Power (200 DET): 0.8%

Spell Speed It takes a lot of this to become useful to really be noticeable. 26.5 SpS = 0.01 reduction. Therefore, 100 spell speed reduces by 0.037 seconds. Spell Speed does however affect your potency on your HoT. I think the effect of this is similar to DET, but as it also lowers you recast time this is more desirable. For my calculation, 100 SS = 0.037 shaved off a 2.5 GCD which means your added healing power for 200 ss is 2*(0.037/2.5) + HoT potency bonus.

Added Healing Power (200 SS): 2.96% without HoTs, ~3.00% with HoTs

Critical Rate and Severity For every 200 Crit, you have a 5% chance to crit more and a 0.1x modifier. As the modifier is in question, I'll leave this out of the calculations.. The added healing power is then (Chance x Added Value) = (5% x 0.5) = 0.05 x 1.5 = 2.5% added to your healing power.

Added Healing Power (200 CRIT): 2.5%

Now, yes, crit is unpredictable, but the added healing power is 6.25x greater for CRIT than DET, and is 1.69x greater for CRIT than SS

Of course these are simple calculations out of a much more complex situation, but the general idea is still there.

[Granyala]

I can't speak for every other MMO, but in this one secondary stats are not a straight line (except DET more or less).

Adding your 800th Spell Speed gives you about 15% more of a proportional increase than you got from adding the 1st one in terms of casts, but has a proportional decrease in DoT/HoT ticks. Crit hit rate has an even sharper proportional increase than SS. DET is a fairly straight line on damage increase, which means a proportional decrease.

Yes stats scale exponentially.
Which is why simulations and all subsequent calculations are done for specific gear points.
Basic math. It is called "Linearisation".

Obviously stat weights are only valid for your character if you are near the point where they have been derived.
And yes again: every Everquest clone MMO works that way.

The very first response made perfect sense, though. There's no real purpose to have healer specified statweights.

I never disputed that.
Still many answers were quite rude.

This is precisely how FFXIV is designed. No one takes damage and then all of a sudden everyone takes 10k. That crit Medica means you cast it once instead of twice.

No matter how you slice it: crit WILL generate unintended overheal.
Also the crit might not happen when you need it and might happen when you don't need it.

Though this has been a religious debate amongst healers in various MMOs for as long as I can remember. Some like it, some don't, ultimately both setups get the job done.
It's ultimately up to personal prefs.

[Kaurie]

No matter how you slice it: crit WILL generate unintended overheal.
Also the crit might not happen when you need it and might happen when you don't need it.

Though this has been a religious debate amongst healers in various MMOs for as long as I can remember. Some like it, some don't, ultimately both setups get the job done.
It's ultimately up to personal prefs.

Yes, the issue is more that CRIT is substantially better than the alternatives for overall improvement. If they were closer, then I'd get behind SS/DET - but see my last post for the vast difference

[Katlyna]

Right but adjusting for a critical Medica isn't overly useful IMO. It literally means once in a blue moon I have a free GCD that just poofs. Its not efficient to randomly flip to cleric stance there for one GCD drop a dot and then flip back to AE healing mode. While you do save a slight bit of mana (assuming you catch that you crit and can skip the next AE... ASSUMING that you crit enough to properly skip it). Again rather than going through all of that for a few spastic extra criticals I would MUCH MUCH rather have a a tenth or two tenths of a second faster cast speed allowing me to better side cast, hit heals during tricky mechanics, and otherwise top people off early rather than latter.

All of those advantages FAR outweigh a few spastic critical. This thought process assumes one is considering spell speed vs critical.

Now if one were debating Det vs Crit... I would go back to the overheal issue... most crits = overheals which aren't useful. Now... one could ague how often does the X small percent matter for additional Det mechanically speaking. And that is a very healthy argument. None the less it would be brutally difficult to prove out how useful (or unuseful) extra det is, in which fights, at what HP thresholds under what conditions. Reguardless none of the fights are designed assuming that you get critical heals on any specific mechanic. They assume you hit some minimal healing threshhold to correct the damage taken, and everything past that is gravy. Personally since you don't control if and when people get randomly nipped, nibbled on or take other tid bits of damage they shouldn't, I prefer extra raw Det (even if its weighed less) over random criticals which sometimes are there when you need them, and sometimes aren't.

But any which way I readily admit stat weighting, preference, and personal playstyle can vary. Likewise ones exact raid composition, mechanics and expected damage can vary as well. So mileage for folks is most certainly going to vary some.