Quote Originally Posted by kyuven View Post
Except all those interrupts can be prevented by just timing it so you're not casting when the attacks go off. It's not like they're rapidly going out in a short period of time, no single big huge interrupting ability goes out more than once a minute or so.
Most of those abilities have a 10 second wind-up time, while your own have around 2 seconds or so.
Add to that surecast only affects one spell, which means you need to tack on another second or so to your cast times just to use it then start casting. Swiftcast works a lot better for this.
And as mentioned if you're a healer, you should be setting your buffs and damage mitigation abilities BEFORE the big attack goes out. Which again, you have about 10 seconds to prepare for.
Surecast, when looked at in a vaccuum, isn't a bad ability on paper, it's just useless when looked at side-by-side with Swiftcast.
I try to save swiftcast as a whm if I can since raise is such a long cast. If SC is down when somebody dies, well that just sucks.
Also, besides single target casting stoneskin on everyone (waste of time and mp mid battle) there is nothing else I can do to get ready for a big attack that interrupts casting. But I can time it with surecast to heal just after the damage is received. It may not be totally necessary, but it sure is rewarding when you time it right. This is not to say that I don't partially agree with you about surecast in general, but it is helpful on white mage in most fights for healing up as fast as possible when an interrupt is inevitable.