Pros and Cons of each Healer Role

[Ghishlain]

As a small FYI, Diurnal Aspected Benefic gives more potency in a shorter duration.

Diurnal Aspected Benefic = 1,030 potency in 18 seconds ( 57.22 potency / second )
Regen = 1,050 potency in 21 seconds ( 50 potency / second )

Alternatively, If you're looking for an equal duration comparison:

Diurnal Aspected Benefic = 1,030 potency in 18 seconds
Regen = 900 potency in 18 seconds

Regen gives you both the higher MP efficiency and higher potency / GCD where as Diurnal Aspected Benefic gives you a higher healing amount in the same duration (assuming 100% uptime on both Regen and Aspected Benefic)

I leave it up to each individual player to determine which one they like better since they both have their pros and cons.

[HPDelron]

As a small FYI, Diurnal Aspected Benefic gives more potency in a shorter duration.


I leave it up to each individual player to determine which one they like better since they both have their pros and cons.

I'd argue that A.Bene is the more powerful tool in more situations. 1050 vs 1030 is a difference of just under 2%, which I think is fair to call pretty negligible. In other words when both the HoTs have run out your their entire course 21 seconds later the difference between the two amounts of healing done is too small to be of any real use in shaking out their practical contributions. The same number of GCDs has been used so that's also a wash. So where the difference between the two really comes in is the value of spreading out the heal longer to an additional tick vs the value of front loading healing and getting it done sooner. I'd argue there are relatively few situations possible where an additional tick is going to make or break things with the overall healing contribution is so similar. However there are at least a handful of situations where a small instant heal really is going to make a big difference.

A.Bene really gives up a marginal amount of total healing for greater hps, frontloading & no CD instant component. For those reasons I'd say that it really is just the flat out better between the two. That said they're part of larger kits.

[Ghishlain]

I'd argue that A.Bene is the more powerful tool in more situations. 1050 vs 1030 is a difference of just under 2%, which I think is fair to call pretty negligible. In other words when both the HoTs have run out your their entire course 21 seconds later the difference between the two amounts of healing done is too small to be of any real use in shaking out their practical contributions. The same number of GCDs has been used so that's also a wash. So where the difference between the two really comes in is the value of spreading out the heal longer to an additional tick vs the value of front loading healing and getting it done sooner. I'd argue there are relatively few situations possible where an additional tick is going to make or break things with the overall healing contribution is so similar. However there are at least a handful of situations where a small instant heal really is going to make a big difference.

A.Bene really gives up a marginal amount of total healing for greater hps, frontloading & no CD instant component. For those reasons I'd say that it really is just the flat out better between the two. That said they're part of larger kits.

This is exactly how I see A.Benefic as well compared to Regen. The only thing I'd add is that MP consumption may be a concern (more expensive / more liberal reapplication required) but that's counter balanced by the AST's glorious MP restoration and lower MP cost on the remainder of their healing kit.

[winsock]

For 0 interruption: that means if you reach an interruption then it is no longer sustained. Therefore, hitting 0 MP halts the sustained status.

I completely agree with this. Just take it 1 step further.

If 0MP "halts the sustained status", factoring in 0MP scenarios means you are no longer comparing sustained DPS.

[Kaurie]

I completely agree with this. Just take it 1 step further.

If 0MP "halts the sustained status", factoring in 0MP scenarios means you are no longer comparing sustained DPS.

No, it means that it is no longer sustained DPS.

[winsock]

No, it means that it is no longer sustained DPS.

You are sooooo close to seeing this. 1 more baby step and you're there.
You're correct when you say that "it is no longer sustained DPS"

With that in mind, when comparing sustained DPS of classes, do you compare:
sustained DPS vs sustained DPS

Or:
sustained DPS vs "no longer sustained DPS"

[Kaurie]

You are sooooo close to seeing this. 1 more baby step and you're there.
You're correct when you say that "it is no longer sustained DPS"

With that in mind, when comparing sustained DPS of classes, do you compare:
sustained DPS vs sustained DPS

Or:
sustained DPS vs "no longer sustained DPS"

I really cannot tell if you are trolling, but maybe an analogy will help.

Let's say a WHM and SCH walk up and say I can build a taller stable tower out of jenga blocks than you! They proceed to start building and the WHM is definitely higher than the SCH"s. However once it reached 3 feet it fell over and the SCH just kept going and hit up to 4.5 feet. The WHM at the end says, 'well we aren't comparing stable tower anymore because mine fell over, so I had the taller stable tower."

The fact that the SCH can sustain high DPS for longer than the WHM due to MP constraints is why the SCH has higher sustained DPS.

[JackFross]

i'm confused?

Eos and Selene are both incredibly powerful and are not affected by Cleric. They out-class Regen in effectiveness in most situations, primarily because they cost me 0 GCDs and require me to spend exactly 0 time out of Cleric Stance.
Eos also offers Fey Illumination every 2 minutes - a 20% boost to heals given by itself and any party members who get hit. WHM gets that, it's an extra Divine Seal.
Eye for an Eye and Virus are also very important. You basically brush off the fact that ACN Virus is the only Virus that is actually useful in 90% of situations where you want a skill like that. It's very - very - rare that you are using Virus for the physical effect of it.

That said, I did not contradict myself. Allow me to explain.
I can say in one post the following two statements and not have it be a contradiction:
"White Mage burns more Mana while DPSing than Scholar does, which causes them to OOM faster in that situation."
"The main reason White Mage does not DPS as much as Scholar in raids has nothing to do with the Mana cost of their DPS skills."

These two things are not mutually exclusive. The second implies that the first is an issue, just not the primary concern. And it is not the primary concern, as I explained in my post with discussions about SCH having 3-4 GCDs out of Cleric which eclipse what WHM can do with those same 3-4 GCDs, because SCH has more burst damage in the first few hits while WHM eclipses SCH when the damage window extends longer than that, because WHM has higher and more potent sustained DPS.

Like. These are facts. I'll show you numbers at the end of this post.

I just assumed we were ignoring accuracy all together

This is another factor that would play into "reasons WHM is not DPSing as often as SCH which do not relate to the WHM's Mana efficiency" argument. I didn't state it, because, honestly, it slipped my mind at the time. It's absolutely valid, though. Bio II and Bio having 0% miss rate does matter in terms of DPS in a raid scenario.

The fact that the SCH can sustain high DPS for longer than the WHM due to MP constraints is why the SCH has higher sustained DPS.

You're completely off-base, but let me try to explain this to you in a more concrete manner under a cut so as not to overly clutter this thread.

Let's assume the healer has 4 GCDs in which they can turn Cleric Stance on in order to drop some DPS. Pretty sweet! What do the two Healers do with this time?

SCH:
Bio II > Miasma > Bio > Energy Drain > Aero > Energy Drain
WHM:
Aero III > Aero II > Aero > Fluid Aura > Stone III

Let's compare these, shall we?
SCH:
35x10 + 20+35x8 + 40x6 + 50+25x6 +150x2
350 + 300 + 240 + 200 + 300
1390

WHM:
50+40x8 + 50+50x4 + 50+25x6 + 210 + 150
370 + 250 + 200 + 210 + 150
1180

Flat out, the SCH just started /way/ higher than the WHM just did. Easily eclipsing what the WHM can do in that short burst period. You could even turn that Aero into a Swift Shadowflare for an additional +50 if you don't need to save it for anything else down the road. You could argue squeezing Assize in here, sure, which would bump WHM up above SCH! the problem with this becomes that you're then taking a significantly valuable heal spell away from the party for DPS in single-target. So... I dunno about that!

Either way, we'll continue to ignore Assize for this purpose and discuss the extended DPS rotations of WHM and SCH.
Lots of numbers down there v

WHM is nice and simple.

A3>A2>S3>S3>S3>S3>A2>S3>S3>S3>repeat.
The total potency of this is
9 gcds (2.45s each) + 1 A3 (2.95s) = 25s = 8.33 dot ticks
50x3+210x7+90x8.33 = 2370
2340/24s = 94.8 pot per second
Presence of Mind!
Every 150s, we get +20% attack speed for 15s. 10% of the time +20% speed. This translates into an average of +2% speed, meaning we move 2% faster, so complete 2% more actions in the same amount of time.
97.5 x 1.02 = 96.7

In addition, we have every 30s where we'll replace 1 S3 with 1 A1+Fluid Aura
S3 = 210
A1+FA = 200 + 150 = 350 = +140 pot every 30s = 140/30 = +4.67 pps

Total: 96.7 + 4.67 = 101.37 pps.


SCH is more complex...
Works out something like:
SF>B2>M>B>A>Broilx4>A>B>M>SF>B2>Broilx2>A>B>Broilx2>M>Broil>A>B>SF>B2>Broilx2>A>M>B>Broilx5>repeat.
Adding it up:
SF x3
B2 x3
M x4
B x5
A x5
Broil x16
33 GCDs + 3 Shadowflare = 33x2.45 + 3x2.95 = ~90s = 30 ticks.
DoT potency:
25+35+35+40+25 = 160
Skill potency:
Broil: 170x16 = 2720
Miasma: 20x4 = 80
Aero: 50x5 = 250

Rotational potency:
2720+80+250+160x30 = 7850
7850/90 = 87.2 pps.

But, wait! You also get 3 Energy Drains every minute!
150x3 = 450
450/60 = 7.5 pps

But, what about Dissipation? If I'm going full dps...
That adds an additional +3 Energy Drains in 3 minutes (180s)
450/180 = 2.5 pps

Total overall potency:
87.2 + 7.5 + 2.5 = 97.2

In summary, if you don't feel like reading how I arrived at these numbers...
WHM potency per second = 101.37 pps (Cleric: 111.50)
SCH potency per second = 97.2 pps (Cleric: 106.92)
Difference: 4.17 (Cleric: 4.58)

This isn't taking into account:
1. Assize. (300/90 = +3.3 pps)
2. WHM have naturally more MND than SCH.
3. Foe Requiem - which only expands the disparity.
4. The fact that, each rotation for SCH I listed will miss out on ~4 ticks of Aero and 1 tick of Bio (a loss of ~1.5 pps)

So, yeah. White Mage runs out of Mana faster than Scholar, so they can't go as long doing straight up DPS.
A White Mage doing everything completely right will still hit zero around 3 minutes. This is absolutely accurate.

The issue with this line of thinking when using it to argue that SCH has more sustained DPS is that you're ignoring the fact that in literally any situation where this might be a thing you're concerned about, it's not a thing you're concerned about. Even IF you're going 100% DPS healer 100% of the time in literally any relevant content, there is never a stretch of time where you will be allowed to dps with 100% uptime for a stretch of 3 minutes or longer as a healer OR as a DPS. There's always times for your Mana to regenerate (Boost, between A6 bosses, in the healer Jail/during Searing Wind in heart phase), or periods where you need to be healing, not DPSing (healer Jail A7/A7S, for instance).

Always. So it's a silly argument, basically.

And this isn't the place for this argument.

[winsock]

Let's say a WHM and SCH walk up and say I can build a taller stable tower out of jenga blocks than you! They proceed to start building and the WHM is definitely higher than the SCH"s. However once it reached 3 feet it fell over and the SCH just kept going and hit up to 4.5 feet. The WHM at the end says, 'well we aren't comparing stable tower anymore because mine fell over, so I had the taller stable tower."

The fact that the SCH can sustain high DPS for longer than the WHM due to MP constraints is why the SCH has higher sustained DPS.

I appreciate the analogy as it helps me understand your line of thinking. You've missed something critical in your analogy however. "DPS" = "Damage per second" i.e. a "rate". It's not about how much tower you've built, it's about the "rate" at which you've built.

Root of the problem in this example is the same that it has been in previous ones: time.

When comparing "sustained DPS" in the tower example, we're comparing the rates at which the SCH and WHM can build a tower. WHM can build more tower per second than the SCH, which is why it has the highest "sustained DPS". This metric is important in selecting the right job for the task/use case. For example, if the WHM can only build towers up to 3 feet tall, but can build them faster than SCH, it is preferred over SCH for any job requiring a 3 foot tower or smaller.

Directly addressing the topic: you are combining the categories of "MP management" and "sustained DPS". While "MP management" and even "mobility" can negatively impact a WHM's DPS, you cant know in advance if, or the degree to which, the use case will cause MP or mobility problems that negatively impact the WHM's DPS. The term "sustained DPS", at least in part, exists a measure to see where you stand before taking penalties.