rank cross class abilities

[Brannigan]

Awareness is realllllly bad and the fact that it takes up a trait is worse. Bosses in 2nd Coil can crit and Awareness is still bad. If they want to add crit reduction to tanks it should be on gear through a stat. Call it Awareness or something.

Also for paladin cross-class in level sync I'd probably go Foresight > Fracture > Stoneskin > Whatever. If you go low enough (like Sastasha) you can slot Cure in if you feel like it as well.

[Instrumentality]

I, personally, don't mind being crit as a tank because it leads to a level of unpredictability in incoming damage rate which makes it more interesting to heal. The problem is less so in being crit and moreso in the fact that crits are so rare that you can go entire fights without ever being crit. If crits actually occurred more often, they would actually have to be accounted for by both the players and the devs (which also means decreasing planned spike hits so that you don't have RNG gibs).

Underlined is why I said as a tank. As a tank I want the smoothest possible damage income minimized as much as possible by mitigating abilities. RNG damage is the opposite of that, so I don't want it.

[Kitru]

Kitru would you mind sharing some of the sources that you have gained info on.

My sources are basically in game numbers. If I'm not sure on something, I go in game and check it.

As to numbers/math (outside of groups), Second Wind heals me for ~530. Mantra has the same CD, which means that it takes 10.5k healing (530 / .05) over the 6 GCDs it's active in order for the two to break even. Even though that's never really going to happen to you personally without a pair of healers spamming their big heals into you (does happen on some fights though), you still get partial returns pretty easily and, because it's a low number, it's got a lower chance of being eaten by overhealing. For every additional target you get with it though, the returns get much higher.

It's most apt to say that Second Wind contributes more to the tank from a raw hp/sec standpoint, but from an effective contribution standpoint (total benefit to the raid, with overhealing accounted for), I would still say that Mantra is going to win out in a vast majority of cases (overhealing is going to be the biggest factor most often; all it takes is your healer/s overhealing you by ~500, which can be as little as a Regen tick, soon after you use it to basically render that Second Wind wasted; because it's distributed over 15 seconds, your healers basically have to continually overheal you for Mantra to be wasted; also Mantra buffs Adloq, which means that contribution is never wasted) but that's mostly based upon personal preference/use (if you only wait til you're low enough that SW won't turn heals into overheal, you're dramatically reducing its contribution over time) and your healers. In any fight where you're going to get by significant predictable AoEs (all of the EX primals, t2, t5), though, Mantra wins outright.

Neither is a particularly impressive ability, so the argument is largely pointless because the decision is made upon preference more than performance. I take Mantra mainly because I consider that 530 heal (less that I get out of an IB and only marginally more than a couple SPs) to not be worth the slot when I could get a similar level of value for myself (reliably, that is) as well as my group.

[bokchoykn]

snip

(530 / .05) is 10.6k.

It's not difficult for the extra healing from Mantra to exceed the amount healed by Second Wind, but a real comparison between the two needs to be more than mathematical. Actual applications of each skill need to be considered.

Personally, I don't really see Second Wind and Mantra as "a skill that heals X damage" and "a skill that increases healing". I see it more as "a skill that increases your effective HP during a burst sequence" and "a skill that helps healers stabilize in intense healing situations". Because they serve totally different purposes, their value can't simply be compared to each other using the same metric (total HP was gained).

Mantra is good vs Rafflesia, but pretty lousy vs Melusine.
Second Wind is good vs NDD, but pretty lousy vs Rafflesia.

[Citizen_Thom]

For my Paladin I use the following cross class abilities. I have them in this order of availability.
Fracture (for bleeds to maintain aggro on off targets)
Bloodbath (paired with Fight or Flight for self heals)
Foresight (for an extra 20% def cooldown. i can stack with rampart if need be)
Mercy Stroke (for finishing off mobs/boss burndowns)
Stoneskin (just in case i need to use it. usually dont need it in groups)

Any change in availability (due to level sync). Any alternate ability suggestions?

What lvl to I need to get Marauder to for Mercy Stroke?

I use:
Stoneskin
Foresight
Bloodbath

I have Raise, Protect, but they're just extras because I didn't know of any other cross skills to replace them with.

[Marxam]

My sources are basically in game numbers. If I'm not sure on something, I go in game and check it.

Damn I was afraid you would say that. I do that too if I feel the need to compare gears I just hit the dummies in coerthas. Oh well I'll just have to wait for some japanese guy with a lot of time to to test skills 1000 times and post it on reddit or some other forum. Thanks anyways.

[Rextab]

What lvl to I need to get Marauder to for Mercy Stroke?

I use:
Stoneskin
Foresight
Bloodbath

I have Raise, Protect, but they're just extras because I didn't know of any other cross skills to replace them with.

marauder gets mercy stroke at 26.
it's a good ability but not a necessity. the cooldown of 90s, in my opinion, is really too long to make it super useful. marauders can get it down to 40 seconds i believe. it does do a lot of damage though. it makes me feel i did something in the burndown of a boss lol.

here is the ability description.
Cast: Recast: Range: Radius:
Instant 90s 3y 0y
Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Can only be executed when target's HP is below 20%. If delivered as the killing blow, up to 20% of your maximum HP will be restored.


raise and protect are also good in their own right. i have come across white mages lately that don't like to refesh protect so i have to do it. also it is useful while adventuring alone.

[Vaala]

I skipped after page 1, but my personal defense for Flash still being on my bar is that for times when you need to buy an extra second or two to line up/gather adds for overpower to do the real work. The 360 degree aspect is what I use it for more than anything. Yes I know Steel Cyclone does the same, but I can hit flash once or twice as I'm moving to position, where Steel Cyclone I want to be 99% sure to hit everyone.

More applicable to speed runs, and when I do content that doesn't require that sort of gathering of mobs I do remove it, but even without being as strong as SC/Overpower and not something to rely on for hate, it still has it's uses.

[Citizen_Thom]

marauder gets mercy stroke at 26.
it's a good ability but not a necessity. the cooldown of 90s, in my opinion, is really too long to make it super useful. marauders can get it down to 40 seconds i believe. it does do a lot of damage though. it makes me feel i did something in the burndown of a boss lol.

here is the ability description.
Cast: Recast: Range: Radius:
Instant 90s 3y 0y
Delivers an attack with a potency of 200. Can only be executed when target's HP is below 20%. If delivered as the killing blow, up to 20% of your maximum HP will be restored.


raise and protect are also good in their own right. i have come across white mages lately that don't like to refesh protect so i have to do it. also it is useful while adventuring alone.

I leveled MRD from 16 to 26 over the last three nights, only to find out that, yeah, that cooldown is a little long for Mercy Stroke. If it guaranteed a 20% heal, I could see that long a cool down, but being that it's conditional on the enemy's health, and that there's only a slim chance of a heal, it should probably be a 30s cooldown instead of a 90s one.

[Kitru]

I leveled MRD from 16 to 26 over the last three nights, only to find out that, yeah, that cooldown is a little long for Mercy Stroke. If it guaranteed a 20% heal, I could see that long a cool down, but being that it's conditional on the enemy's health, and that there's only a slim chance of a heal, it should probably be a 30s cooldown instead of a 90s one.

It would be too large of a DPS increase at that point; if it were a guaranteed heal, it would also be too large of a heal. It's a 200 potency attack that WARs get every 40 seconds (16 GCDs), which is a 12.5 potency/GCD increase for the final burn. It might not seem like much, but it's a ~4.2% increase to your DPS for that period (WARs manage ~300 pot/GCD without factoring in damage multipliers like Maim and SE). Reducing it to 30 seconds as an additional would bring it up to 16.67 pot/GCD ~5.5% increase as an additional ability while also necessitating some significant buff for it to WARs, which means that it would provide a similar offensive benefit as the pure genertic DPS additionals (IR provides a ~1.2% increase in damage for everyone but PLD; it's slightly more for PLD) while simultaneously providing greater burst when you need it (since it's loaded on the final kill portion when you most often need the big deeps to deal with final phase mechanics) on top of healing utility.

The problem with Mercy Stroke isn't that it isn't up often enough, doesn't heal for enough, or doesn't do enough damage. The problem is that it requires such precision timing on its use to get the heal from it that the heal might as well not exist. The "fix" for this would be having it throw a debuff on the target that lasts for a tiny period (~2-3 seconds) that heals you if the target dies while it's affected. That way you'd still have to be precise in its use to get the heal but you'd actually stand a real chance of getting the heal. If the devs wanted to reward precision especially, they could reduce the debuff heal to 10% such that you get more with the kill but at least get *something* if you use it right before it dies.