Cure 3 Blues

[Braven]

Regarding holy/gravity/miasma, i agree that holy is a better spell and might be worth the extra mana cost. However, the fact remains that if you endlessly spam both at the same rate, you will run out of mana faster with Holy. And as a percentage of total party damage, there will not be a significant difference in battle length between scholar spamming miasma 2 and WHM spamming Holy. I mean, warrior can now spam Decimate every 90 seconds for free for over 500 potency with the new beserk. The difference between holy and mausma 2 is peanuts compared to that. Not to even mention what DPS characters are capable of.

Comparing thin air to aetherpact is apples to oranges. The direct comparison is aetherpact to assize since they do the exact same thing (10% mp) but have different possible cooldowns. I have shown that even in the best case, aetherpact will always be better, even if only marginally so. If you want, I will call it a tie.

I also have not mentioned energy drain yet, but whm has no equilivent and it can be used for mana at the cost of healing when that is the best course of action.

The proper comparison for Thin Air is the Fairy since it also provides a bunch of free spell casts that have a direct equilivent in white mage’s toolkit. If we add up all the free embraces (regen) and whispering dawns (medica 2, I’ll consider total potency to account for the 200 upfront heal) that could happen over a 120 second period (Thin Air cooldown), i come up with these numbers:

Regen lasts 21 seconds and has a cost of 840. For 100% uptime, like embrace, you need to cast it 5.71 times. I’ll round down to 5 in this example. That means you are spending an extra 4,200 mp just to refresh regen on the tank. That alone is more than “Raise” costs. Now for Holy, using holy’s cost is not really fair since SCH has no spells anywhere near that expensive so they don’t “need” to recover as much. If we say swift cast is used and you can squeeze in 6 spells of the most expensive spells scholar has, it would be six miasma 2. In reality, spamming an AOE will not be the best spell all the time (usually poor against bosses when mp actually matters, but I will humor you)

1640 x 6 = 9,840 mp

Seems pretty good, but lets now consider the “free” medica 2 version scholar gets with whispering dawn. Medica 2 lasts 30 seconds while whispering dawn has a lower duration, but the overall potency, even including the initial 200 hp of medica 2, is actually a little higher with optimal uses of buffs (rouse with SCH, Larg with Whm).

I will assume a 75% uptime for medica 2 (3 casts). It costs:

2040 x 3 casts = 6,120 mp

4,200 (regens) + 6,120 (medica 2) = 10,320 mp

The free spells of scholar, as you see, can be considered to either be better or worse than Thin Air depending on how often you cast regen and medica 2. In a hard fight where mp might actually matter, they are probably up most of the time on the tank to save you global heals.

The truth is they are roughly the same with mp efficiency and depending how you play and how much healing is needed, either one could end up with better mp management. I think it is pretty clear from the math that white mage is not the often touted “undisputed king of mp management”. That is just hyperbole.

Overall, either one could be the best given the dungeon or trial’s requirements, an based on individual spell choices. Both have the tools in thier kit in order to have no isues with mp if played well. Thin air fits the white mage reactive playstyle and the free fairy regeneration fits the Scholars “plan ahead” playstyle resulting in a very steady mana stream that stays consistent from start to finish, but is a little harder to come back from if you over extend your mp pool or didn’t plan on possible, multiple raises.

Maybe it used to be true before scholors more recent mp cost buffs and the regen mp costs were increased a couple patches ago.

The reason I mentioned Divine Benison not being helped by the Larg. buff is because all of Scholar and AST “shields” are improved by it even if they heal zero actual HP, because of how the shield formula works. So it can benefit non-healing actions too. I often use it that way before pulling since that is also when I am more likely to use Adlo since I have a full mp bar and the start of a battle is when the most damage occurs in dungeons (for bosses, it tends to happen the most near the end). After that buff ends I just coast with oGLDs that don’t benefit, as needed.