WHM questions please help~

[TeaTimeBear]

So I have two questions.

1. Should I constantly be casting stoneskin? A tank I played with said I should use it often on everyone. But it kills my mana during boss fights! I usually prefer to use it on myself or if someone is about to take a big hit ( if I can cast it in time...) To give some background of where I was asked to do this was during Wanderers Palace... But the runs I performed before went smooth without spamming it..

2. Should I take time for a bit and work on getting an eye for an eye?

[Estellios]

Stoneskin is very inefficient on your MP if it's not cast on a tank. It's worth casting if you anticipate a big hit or you have a surpluse of MP, but otherwise stick to Cure/Regen and patch people up. Of course, you should always cast Stoneskin on the entire party pre-fight.

I've cleared up to and including Titan Hard mode without Eye for an Eye and haven't had any problems. It might be useful in Coil but I doubt it.

[Nullie]

I hardly ever use it. I never use it on sch unless I am solo healing.

I keep my party members with it up in case they accidentally pull hate or enemies. There are times when I will use it. When I feel the tank won't be able to keep enmity. Say there ends up being 4-6 mobs. Instead of spamming cure 2 I'll hit a stoneskin and regen and then follow up with stoneskin over and over until enemies go down to a comfortable amount. This keeps your tank alive while putting very little enmity on yourself, but I am hardly in a situation where this happens.

I will also swiftcast after every fight and throw a stoneskin on tank up if I can, but for the most part I don't worry about it during trash and very situational during bosses. War tanks benefit from stoneskin the most.

[Arcaloid]

I actually cast Stoneskin more on healer than on tanks - note that does NOT mean I cast it often though.
Usually during fight I just use it before any big un-avoidable AOE (e.g, Ifrit's AOE after summon nails).
Anyway should you constantly cast it? NO.

And for an eye for an eye, it can certainly do some positive effect, but I doubt anyone will notice the difference. And I think most time people will just either feel no need to cast it, or too busy healing and forget about it.

[Imakles]

1) Stoneskin costs a little more then a cure and is a slower cast. Your cure has a lot of help to scale and as result restores A LOT of HP, but Stoneskin will only do a flat % of a target's total HPs. Stoneskin draws very little aggro to cast and gives a decent buffer before healing from fight to fight, but casting on targets during a fight is entirely situational. The WHM will have to "get a feel" for what drains on MP they can tolerate and how often it seems worth it. Good to cast on pre-pulls and as you get good, you can refresh it just as a fights ending, any more then that though is what you feel is worth the time and energy.

2) Don't have it myself, but it only has a chance to actually do anything when its cast on something. Anything you cannot count on time and time again IMO is not worth stopping a career path for. That said I may eventually get it as options are always nice, but I won't be halting development just to get it.

[Kraftstyle]

So I have two questions.

1. Should I constantly be casting stoneskin? A tank I played with said I should use it often on everyone. But it kills my mana during boss fights! I usually prefer to use it on myself or if someone is about to take a big hit ( if I can cast it in time...) To give some background of where I was asked to do this was during Wanderers Palace... But the runs I performed before went smooth without spamming it..

2. Should I take time for a bit and work on getting an eye for an eye?

1. As it was said before, Stoneskin is more a situationall skill, not a spam-skill. Don't let some random tank mess with you)
2. Why not? It's not too great, but can make a situation less stressful in a crucial moment.

[Rhindas]

When you first get Graniteskin and Regen together, in dungeons like Cutter's you can probably "heal" with stoneskin, and tanks will notice this and like it. However, that doesn't last. Eventually the mobs will be hitting hard enough to destroy the stoneskin in one to two hits. It is an excellent way to mitigate damage when you know it's coming, but generally speaking a cure will perform better. It may benefit you to cast it on the tank at the end of every fight to give the tank a little breathing room while pulling and establishing hate on the next fight.

Don't underestimate Eye for an Eye. Mitigation is always nice. The less damage you have to heal, the more MP you keep.

[TwoEggs]

in 5 man's I keep stoneskin up more then anything its the same price as cure 2 but until boss fights mp is never an issue .. regen creates tons of hate as with any cure but at higher lvl it doesn't really matter if ur tank has high hps stoneskin and regen keep him full. I keep stoneskin on tank always but its all how u wanna do it if u wanna cast cure all the time don't reapply it but if u wanna Cadillac 5 man's reapply it all how u wanna roll

[Shuon]

first, don't let what he says affect you too severely.

Secondly, stoneskin is situational - there are some fights thar make it vety useful (slow hitting or light hitting bosses) but not some others. i rrmember stoneskin being very useful when fighting Garuda SM, Idgebind, and the Darkhold bosses etc. but if the mobs just hit too damn hard at times, it may not be worth it to use stoneskin because you dont want yhe tank to hover at around 25% hp.

[Al_Harrington]

I pretty much only use SS at the beginning of most single target type fights and never again. Speed runs though I use SS all the time. A round of SS on everyone and regen the tank allows me to stay in DPS mode for 90% of CM/AK/Praet runs.