Materia Question

[Oohlalaheals]

This is probably a pretty noob question, but this is my first time getting to end game in ffxiv. I play AST/SCH (soon to add WHM as well) ilvl 220 (yay for shared gear!). Now that I'm getting some pieces of gear that I will be keeping longer than a couple of weeks I'm willing to spend the money to meld materia. I just assumed the best thing to meld would be Mind, come to find out when I went to meld it that all of my gear is capped on Mind, didn't realize this was possible. What should I be melding instead? Also, as an unrelated question, is there an ilvl recommended for beginning to run Midas Savage? I believe I read that it doesn't have an ilvl requirement to enter, but what is realistically necessary to be successful?

Thanks guys!

[DarkmoonVael]

SCH/Nocturnal AST will want accuracy if doing midas savage. Their roll in raid groups is dps+heals so you always want to get to accuracy cap. Crit is also the other main stat these two meld. Spellspeed is useless on SCH, and Det has been nerfed making it not that worthwhile. Neither of these two really need piety melds at all, as in the offhealer slot these two rarely have major mana issues.

WHM/Diurnal AST, well this kind of come down more to personal preference. Piety if you want a big saftey blanket in your mp pool. Spellspeed is popular, letting you cast faster and powering up your HoTs slightly. Det is all round + to healing. Crit is devisive for the main healer, some swear by it, some swear at people who have melded it for WHM especially.

[Oohlalaheals]

This sounds like I'm going to have to actually make decisions on what class I'm playing lol. I don't have a static just yet so I pop in and out of Diurnal/Nocturnal, switch to my SCH, just kind of whatever is needed or whatever I feel like at the moment. I've been a bit of a chameleon healer through all the normal mode stuff.

[Nekotee]

Darkmoon as much as i love you a lot ! (I mean hello sexy hyur !)
I will disagree a bit !

Accuracy if you want but not a force stat, i mean it is frustrating to miss but our DPS is secondary
Crit is a go to since it boost shield.
And the hell is this holy nerf on deter, there is no such thing (except on auto attack but it's not the 80 dmg we do that will change a lot)
The deter did not change for skill.

Piety is good for a whm because they are mana burner, but running out of MP as diurnal AST ? Never XD
Spellspeed is good on whm but again on diurnal it's less and less powerful (except HoT)
I agree for deter and crit
Deter might be the best for a constant high heal, while crit help sometime to save up mana

...

While I choose not to take the accuracy path
It's a legit way
Because wiping at 1% because you missed some spell could be frustrating (and i did)

[Ghishlain]

If you're looking for "largest contribution to party dynamic" Accuracy Materia wins hands down in terms of melds regardless of the job you're playing. Being able to increase your hit rate is a substantial gain on your DPS and thus increases one's marketability immensely even though DPS isn't suppose to be under the healer umbrella. If you're looking at healer DPS primarily from a raid perspective, you're pretty much going to need to meld every single slot you get with Accuracy with some concessions made to overmelds in i220 crafted (if you went that route). You're goal for this raid tier is 605 Accuracy to hit A8S cap if you're going to be pushing content that hard. Make sure you include food in your final calculation for Accuracy too.

For the less DPS minded and more healing minded, I find it doesn't matter which secondaries you pick as long as it suitable for you and your playstyle. Get enough PIE melded to give yourself a comfortable MP pool then go nuts in any other secondary to desire (I'm personally partial to Crit regardless of the Job). Due note that SCHs tend to favour Crit due to the immense bonus Adlo gets on a Crit. Overall the secondaries won't have an immense impact on your healing. It'll be a bit noticeable, but not "game breaking powerful" noticeable.

To answer the other part of the OP, there is no recommended ilvl listed but it's safe to say that A5S is tuned for i220 and you'll probably want to boost that ilvl by 5 for each tier you travel down (A6S = i225, A7S = i230, A8S = i235). Of course the more ilvl past that, the better, and if you're in a skilled enough group you'll be able to clear the content under these ilvl recommendations.

[Nekotee]

Thisnis the kind of argument that sometime make me wonder if I shouldn't make a new set of accessories acc oriented...
And belt too...

Ghislain i doooo haaate you ! <3

[Ghishlain]

Thisnis the kind of argument that sometime make me wonder if I shouldn't make a new set of accessories acc oriented...
And belt too...

Ghislain i doooo haaate you ! <3

xD Well, do also take into account that a healer's DPS uptime is also dependent on both (1) the comfort level of their healing partner and (2) which healing strategies and/or responsibilities the two want.

While the common strategy at this time is one healer primarily focus on healing and the other focus on DPS and add back up healing, you can also have the two healers split the DPS and healing responsibilities evenly. If you're running AST + SCH composition, this means SCH applies all their 100% accurate DoTs then take over healing duties for a bit while the AST does the same for their 100% accurate DoTs. This in turn can potentially reduce the amount of accuracy both healers need as they'll be focusing on their more reliable DPS spells (though the AST will probably need some accuracy due to using more Malefic II versus Broil if you're planning to swap DPS <-> Healer roles every 6-8 GCDs using a strategy like this).

Just some food for thought. I still encourage 100% hit rate but there are things groups can try to do to help ease that requirement if they feel its necessary to their success (such as having BRDs use Rain of Death, pop better Accuracy food on healers, etc)

[DarkmoonVael]

Darkmoon as much as i love you a lot ! (I mean hello sexy hyur !)
I will disagree a bit !

Accuracy if you want but not a force stat, i mean it is frustrating to miss but our DPS is secondary
Crit is a go to since it boost shield.
And the hell is this holy nerf on deter, there is no such thing (except on auto attack but it's not the 80 dmg we do that will change a lot)
The deter did not change for skill.

Piety is good for a whm because they are mana burner, but running out of MP as diurnal AST ? Never XD
Spellspeed is good on whm but again on diurnal it's less and less powerful (except HoT)
I agree for deter and crit
Deter might be the best for a constant high heal, while crit help sometime to save up mana

...

While I choose not to take the accuracy path
It's a legit way
Because wiping at 1% because you missed some spell could be frustrating (and i did)

Strange you should call me sexy hyur whilst i seem to be sporting a picture of Lady Ysayle (brb off to fight ravana one on one then blow up the garleans). (This is going to be the april fools thing isnt it?).

Anyway as for Det i am under the impression that it got nerfed on 2 fronts: direct nerf on auto attacks, and scaling made worse for spells and abilities? Maybe....

As for SCH and accuracy, yep i am dogmatic when it comes to this and raiding. Its accuracy accuracy accuracy. My SCH and N.AST set is currently at A8S accuracy cap. Also i put ACC=CRIT>>>>>>>>>>>>anything else on SCH.

Piety on WHM also scales with assize which make it an attractive stat to go for. But, with Diurnal AST, as main healer in raids, the MP recovery is enough, but it is no where near SCH levels of comfort. You can find yourself lower than you want to be in MP on D.AST in savage whilst learning. A6S can be taxing on the main healers MP pool. Bit this also depends on wether you combine LA with CO to extend it by 5 secs.

[Ghishlain]

Strange you should call me sexy hyur whilst i seem to be sporting a picture of Lady Ysayle (brb off to fight ravana one on one then blow up the garleans). (This is going to be the april fools thing isnt it?).

Anyway as for Det i am under the impression that it got nerfed on 2 fronts: direct nerf on auto attacks, and scaling made worse for spells and abilities? Maybe....

As for SCH and accuracy, yep i am dogmatic when it comes to this and raiding. Its accuracy accuracy accuracy. My SCH and N.AST set is currently at A8S accuracy cap. Also i put ACC=CRIT>>>>>>>>>>>>anything else on SCH.

Piety on WHM also scales with assize which make it an attractive stat to go for. But, with Diurnal AST, as main healer in raids, the MP recovery is enough, but it is no where near SCH levels of comfort. You can find yourself lower than you want to be in MP on D.AST in savage whilst learning. A6S can be taxing on the main healers MP pool. Bit this also depends on wether you combine LA with CO to extend it by 5 secs.

They did nerf DET scaling but to compensate for that they made the Determination T5 have a higher number than if they did the scale from T3 to T4 to T5 based on AAR.

T1 DET = +1
T2 DET = +3
T3 DET = +4
T4 DET = +6
T5 DET = +12 (which matches Crit, Accuracy, SkS, and SpS)

To put that into perspective:

T1 Crit = +2
T2 Crit = +4
T3 Crit = +6
T4 Crit = +9
T5 DET = +12

You can verify this one Ariyala's gear calculator if you're curious

P.S.

Need more Crit to crush Garlean battleships faster.

[DarkmoonVael]

They did nerf DET scaling but to compensate for that they made the Determination T5 have a higher number than if they did the scale from T3 to T4 to T5 based on AAR.

T1 DET = +1
T2 DET = +3
T3 DET = +4
T4 DET = +6
T5 DET = +12 (which matches Crit, Accuracy, SkS, and SpS)

To put that into perspective:

T1 Crit = +2
T2 Crit = +4
T3 Crit = +6
T4 Crit = +9
T5 DET = +12

You can verify this one Ariyala's gear calculator if you're curious

P.S.

Need more Crit to crush Garlean battleships faster.

I get the impression that it means you really need to meld Det V, as any other would really have sub optimal returns .

They could have at least fixed the tier I-IV materia to reflect the current usage. Sigh.