Its april 2016 yet no healer stat weights???

[Sabeta]

It's quite funny that it's taken all of this math for a lot of you to agree that doing what you want with secondaries is perfectly valid. Healing has never been about HPS, so trying to min-max your secondaries is somewhat frivolous. We care more about preparedness, pre-casting, and snappy responses than we do about HPS.

This is why I personally think that White Mage's should build Spell Speed. Yes, Crit is in fact "optimal" from an HPS perspective, but as others have said most of that increased HPS is going to end up dumped into the overheal percentages. If you try to top your tank off at 80% and score a Critical Heal then all you've achieved is overheal. That doesn't really help anyone. There is something to be said about the benefits healing after a tank-buster, but I can't imagine that you would get entirely too many criticals at that exact moment compared to all of the other random times you might instead. A lot of what I'm saying probably applies to Diurnal Astrologian too, but I'm no expert on the class and won't try to speak for them.

Spell Speed on the other hand has one extremely significant advantage over Crit. See, White Mage as well know by now is a "reactive" Healer. That label is somewhat misleading because you should always try to precast, but with White Mage you need your cast to land AFTER the tank buster goes off. Although large amounts of spell speed will make the timing window a bit tighter, it also means that you're less likely to be in the middle of a cast when the tank buster starts, and it also means you'll be able to react faster once the damage goes off. Couple this feat with that fact that SpS still increases your HoT and DoT ticks and I say we've got a winner. The Synergy here is good, even if it might not be the best for HPS.

Scholar on the other hand has no business trying to play with Spell Speed. We synergize entirely too well with Criticals. Adloquium alone makes stacking Crit permanently worthwhile for Scholars, but the fact that shields can never be "overhealed" means that Crit is still worthwhile for moves like Succor. Doubly so since Succor's low potency can be kind of disappointing unless it crits. As if it all wasn't enough already, Fairy Crits gives us a Spell Speed buff anyway, and Selene grants everyone Haste.

As for armor Melds. Accuracy all the way. Scholar's aren't Healer's anymore, and we don't get free accuracy on our gear. We need every point we can get. Maybe Vitality while you're still gearing up, and maybe Piety if you're a White Mage.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Spell Speed on the other hand has one extremely significant advantage over Crit.

Does it now? Before I start:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3294007

Healers are limited by two things: First being time. In each encounter there are only so many GCDs a healer can squeeze out. Second being resource restriction. You need to throttle your MP expenses through the fight or risk running out.
Only considering GCD restrictions now, just assume there's infinite MP or something, you can get a few more GCDs out in theory. I repeat: in theory. If healers were like black mages where they can chain spells all over the place without pauses, then yes, spell speed would be good. But two things: For starters, healers aren't spamming their healing spells around the clock. This simply leads to unnecessary overhealing for at least half of the GCDs spend (if not more). Secondly, healers have a certain pacing on their actions due scripted damage. Which prevents healers from chaining spells or you'll be up to nearly a full GCD "late" with your heal.
Now if we consider resources in, this leads to a certain issue. Healers only have so much MP to use for each encounter. If you have enough resources for 500 GCDs in a specific encounter and you can get 5 more GCDs out with spell speed, you won't have the resources for the 5 extra GCDs any way. Yes, you can ask for a bard/machinist to fix you up some MP. But considering how DPS driven this game is, this would be a terrible choice/action.

In the topic linked before, secondary stats have very comparable effects for healers in general. The main differences would be:
Spell speed does not affect entire kits
Spell speed does not increase efficiency for each MP spend. In fact, it costs more MP for the same efficiency compared to other stats

It's not limited to Scholars who "have no business with spell speed", none of the healers have business with spell speed.

[Llynd]

Det only goes on overheal anyway. Spell speed helps us to cast faster and by that, being more reactive on heals. Also, it increases our dots tics, so SS is the way to go. We won't have many secondary stats anyway, since we're maximazing crit.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Det only goes on overheal anyway. Spell speed helps us to cast faster and by that, being more reactive on heals. Also, it increases our dots tics, so SS is the way to go. We won't have many secondary stats anyway, since we're maximazing crit.

Spell Speed is a terrible stat, if you've read my previous post at all.

The fact it increases your DoTs and HoTs means nothing as crit and det has similar gains on average while also affecting the rest of your kit. Which spell speed does not. It doesn't even affect abilities such as Assize, Lustrate, Collective Unconsciousness and every other tool listed as an ability.

[Katlyna]

Spell Speed is a terrible stat, if you've read my previous post at all.

Spell speed is a terrible HPS increase yes. But Spellspeed decreasing casting time, which increases the speed your target gets your heals (reducing risk), allowing for more human error, movement etc. In raiding where the primary issue is defeating human mistakes, this makes Spellspeed an exceptionally good stat. Quite a bit better than the other stats. I think the only other stat which can trigger true behavior change is crit, which can save you mana (if you recognize when you can skip a cast) or save a tank (or someone else) after mistakes were made. But crit being random is more likely to result in overhealing (unless you have shields). I think its very difficult to argue that Spellspeed is a poor stat in comparison to the other options, unless you operate like a perfect robot and have already completed AS8 and know all the content like clockwork.

[Katlyna]

Oh I should mention this again as my note above is weighted by current Midas content. If healing wasn't so binary, and content was more like AS2 was then yes some of the other stats could pull their weight better. But right now in Midas content the fights are VERY heavily scripted and healing is super binary. Either you meet the threshold for healing something, or you need to raise your iLevel. Extra Crit/Det are largely lost to overhealing in current Midas content due to the current design. Until raid design changes, the usefulness of extra crit/det for main healers (Whitemage/AstroDiurnal) will be less useful than spellspeed which provides higher movement/mobility/responsiveness.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Until raid design changes, the usefulness of extra crit/det for main healers (Whitemage/AstroDiurnal) will be less useful than spellspeed which provides higher movement/mobility/responsiveness.

Well this is an interesting take. So for one: You're reliant on like 0.03s casting time difference to "prevent human error"? If anything, it's closer to a miracle or a one-time event that a minor casting time reduction actually made it in time. Secondly, "higher movement" or "mobility"? If you're referring to stutterstepping, this hardly matters until you reach a point where you'd have 0.5s casting time. Stutter stepping is dependent on your personal latency to the server and how much casting time there's left on the cast bar; you can't stutterstep Raise at 80% cast progress like you'd do with Cure. Responsiveness is hardly a thing either as healing latency is always there regardless of your casting speed.

Not is only Spell speed a terrible HPS increase, it's also a terrible because it doesn't increase the effectiveness for each MP spend, unlike det and crit, and it doesn't affect your entire kit, abilities specifically. If healers weren't restricted to scripted events and resources, then yes, spell speed may have been good. But as it's still the case, spell speed is simply garbage and it's gains are void the moment you can't get those extra GCDs out or when you pre-cast your spells so it has effect right after the damage happens. Because events are so scripted, you can pre-cast nearly everything. This isn't midas exclusive. It's a repeated element ever since from Binding Coil of Bahamut

[Llynd]

Spell Speed is a terrible stat, if you've read my previous post at all.

The fact it increases your DoTs and HoTs means nothing as crit and det has similar gains on average while also affecting the rest of your kit. Which spell speed does not. It doesn't even affect abilities such as Assize, Lustrate, Collective Unconsciousness and every other tool listed as an ability.

I know right. Im not saying we should go full spellspeed. Of course as a sch i'll go crit, but there are some gear ( like the 240 boots/necklace) which do not give any crit. Between det and SS, i still think Ss must be the Best choice

[Highwilds]

I meld spell speed and determination to my gear because I like tossing regen and medica II. They are a nice cushion to keep on steady heals on people and prepare for tank busters and help topping hp after unavoidable aoes. 2k regen tick surely helps. Rest is up to how quick my own or other healer's reactions are to situations outside of expected incoming damage. Naturally this will cause overhealing in the form of HoT but on those who need still the little bit of heals and nothing's coming in their way, or shouldn't, makes me avoid casting another medica or cure, and possible give me more time to dps instead.

[Katlyna]

Well this is an interesting take. So for one: You're reliant on like 0.03s casting time difference to "prevent human error"? If anything, it's closer to a miracle or a one-time event that a minor casting time reduction actually made it in time.

Personally I have a 2.19 recast which is around 0.07-0.08 seconds less than someone stacking something else. Which is approaching a 3-5% improvement in throughput and cast speed, which is not negligible. The problem is that people don't do the math on spell speed to figure out how much time you actually gain stacking it. I've already posted the numbers once but you can see them here http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...83#post3658783

And again everyone playing this game has human error, delay to reaction, delay to reaching the correct movement location. This has nothing to do with stutter step casting or slide casting (though faster casts can be combined with slide casting). Spell speed fundamentally speeds up your casting this is completely independent of latency, server ticks or any of that. Regardless of how you choose to play your heals get to your targets faster.

You can certainly disagree that you don't feel the need to cast faster. But personally I don't see the other stats giving better gains right now. The gains on everything but Crit is terrible. And crit mostly just bloats overhealing unless you have shields.