Holy Spam in Wanderer's Palace Speed Runs

[Kaethra]

Holy has a 4 sec stun. It will actually lessen the amount of healing you will need to do. You don't need to (nor can you really) spam it over healing. Let the tank get them grouped up, swiftcast holy, pop on another for good measure (another two seconds), and then commence your normal healing rotation. During lulls in spike damage feel free to throw out another Holy if you think you can.

Getting under 15 minutes for a speedrun is a science. Once you've got it, you can do it with your eyes closed, you'll literally be casting the same spells at the same time, in the same location each run once everyone in the group is synched. Its like playing a NES mario game at that point.

[Menae]

The most important point is being able to get the first one off without your tank getting murdered. Options for doing this include Swiftcast, Presence of Mind, having a full health tank, or having a tank blow a few cooldowns.

Once the first one hits, everything is stunned until the second one hits, so landing the first means you are free to cast the second (though if your tank is at 50 hp, feel free to abort and throw out some healing).

[Cerick]

The route I take is to keep stoneskin on tank in between pulls.

While you are running to next group, cast stoneskin and sprint to catch up. wait a second for tank to get agro, then regen and

holy - stuns
holy - removes stun
holy- stuns w/ less time stunned
holy- removes stun
swiftcast holy - stuns

It works best as long as you go in odd numbers, 2 holys is going to prematurely end your stun and leave tank to more dmg inc. Holy animation is very slow so you can easily get the 3rd casted and swap out of cleric stance and start healing before it actually goes "off" 3 stuns them again for 2 seconds and lets you catch up on healing if you need.

If you can go past 3, then you should definitely go to 5 and swiftcast the 5th, if you can go past that depending on tank health then go to 7 and swiftcast the 7th.

Use benediction early in the dungeon if needed and it will be back up at the end.

Boss #2, take the time to stoneskin tank, pop a regen then NUKE NUKE NUKE and run in to Holy the addds 2-3 holy's will decimate the adds, the DPS shoudl never touch the adds and the tank should not really need much healing. If done right, you should never have to deal with the second set of adds.

also, keep in mind you are / should be in cleric stance for holy spams, make a hotkey to easily swap out / in cleric stance.

[Ebon_Drake]

I'm not dropping 20% DPS the entire run so you can spam Holy on every fight through out the dungeon.

Sorry.

[Garnatian]

I'm not dropping 20% DPS the entire run so you can spam Holy on every fight through out the dungeon.

Sorry.

Why? WHMs have the best AoE in the game and even then you don't need to keep it up the entire time.

You should realise that the main reason people want you for Speedruns is for Holy, otherwise you're not worth taking over another BLM.

[Ebon_Drake]

Why? WHMs have the best AoE in the game and even then you don't need to keep it up the entire time.

You should realise that the main reason people want you for Speedruns is for Holy, otherwise you're not worth taking over another BLM.

You misunderstood what I said.

I don't mind running mages ballad on occasion.

That being said, The last WP run I ran the AF2, relic+1 Whm that joined my 3 party group from the duty finder certainly had a macro that spammed Holy the entire run. That or his finger was bleeding from jamming the key for so long. The first set of trash tonberrys he started spamming holy and didn't stop the entire run. He cried for mages ballad before we got to the second set of trash. I turned it on. He continued to spam Holy until he and I were both out of mana. He could barely keep the tank alive the entire run because he had no mana to heal. We actually wiped on some trash towards the end because he was so busy spamming Holy the tank dropped due to lack of heals (from the WHM having no mana). sure we beat WP, the tank (sitting next to me) was complaining the entire time that he had to fight really hard the entire time to keep agro. Also, like I said, this was a DF group and no where did we imply that we would be speed running.

If Holy is such an amazing AOE that it outputs more damage than the 20% of the DPS I'm losing the entire run requiring me to be nothing more than a mana battery for the WHM I feel it's too powerful and needs to be nerfed. White Mage is not a DPS class and shouldn't be used as such. If they are used as a DPS class then adjustments need to be made in my opinion to tone them down so they can be used for healing and not feel they are required to DPS everything to the point of hurting the group.

[Kinseykinz]

If Holy is such an amazing AOE that it outputs more damage than the 20% of the DPS I'm losing the entire run requiring me to be nothing more than a mana battery for the WHM I feel it's too powerful and needs to be nerfed. White Mage is not a DPS class and shouldn't be used as such. If they are used as a DPS class then adjustments need to be made in my opinion to tone them down so they can be used for healing and not feel they are required to DPS everything to the point of hurting the group.

Except this 'high' DPS comes at a high cost, both in Mana and in Risk. The spell is semi-slow and has a long animation lock. It eats a fair amount of mana on a party role that while able to regen Mana, can only do so on an ability CD timer. Lastly, since the role is a Main Healing role, switching from Healer to DD takes time and is risky...so it's a spell that can only be used in situations where the party can sustain the damage from mobs while the WHM is DDing. Lastly, the spell is really only 'worth' its cost/risk on multiple mobs. WHM isn't known for it's single-target DPS.

So are there situations like solo AoE farming, 'Trash Mob AoE's', Flans, and Garuda's Plumes where Holy is sexy? Yup.
Is Holy OP overall? Nope. Not when you factor in what it costs/risks each and every time it is used.

[Garnatian]

If Holy is such an amazing AOE that it outputs more damage than the 20% of the DPS I'm losing the entire run requiring me to be nothing more than a mana battery for the WHM I feel it's too powerful and needs to be nerfed. White Mage is not a DPS class and shouldn't be used as such. If they are used as a DPS class then adjustments need to be made in my opinion to tone them down so they can be used for healing and not feel they are required to DPS everything to the point of hurting the group.

You're right, it is over-powered, I made a thread about it weeks ago asking for it to be nerfed. There is something fundementally wrong with a Healer having the best AoE DPS ability in the game. It should be made akin to Shadow Flare, damage over time or simply remove the stun.

There's nothing wrong with a Healer DPSing for trivial content. The main reason I play my WHM is because WP Speedruns are fun because they take some effort compared to Tanking it.

[Kinseykinz]

You're right, it is over-powered, I made a thread about it weeks ago asking for it to be nerfed. There is something fundementally wrong with a Healer having the best AoE DPS ability in the game. It should be made akin to Shadow Flare, damage over time or simply remove the stun.

There's nothing wrong with a Healer DPSing for trivial content. The main reason I play my WHM is because WP Speedruns are fun because they take some effort compared to Tanking it.

Except, a SCH can shadowflare at little to no cost to their healing ability as the Fairy will continue to heal during their casting of it, not only that it's not near as long a cast timer, nor is it a spell you'd 'spam'...nor does SCH suffer the same 'MP usage' penality as they have better MP regen tools PLUS Shadowflare costs half as much as Holy to cast. Furthermore, Shadowflare is far more useful overall than Holy.

People need to stop basing a skill's 'Over-powered-ness' on the 3-4 handfuls of times it might actually be the 'most desired' ability to use, and instead look at it overall uses, practicality, and costs.

Now, if people were purposefully stacking WHM's to dps most content, or even key parts of some content...or taking WHM's over DD roles into content as DD's, then you'd maybe have something.

This is NOT however what is happening.

Holy is fine within the context of the game.

[hamsteak]

I'm not dropping 20% DPS the entire run so you can spam Holy on every fight through out the dungeon.

Sorry.

mage's ballad isn't used for the healer, it's used so that the tank can keep spamming flash