AST Anima stat allocation

[technole]

I have PIE/ACC/SS on my Sphere of the Last Heir. Mainly for the same reasons most described here.

I don't prefer Crit on a main healer. You can't depend on it, many times it ends up an overheal. Your DPS side may benefit sometimes, and in theory it could save you MP in some instances but it's not a reliable method to go with, as you are managing your MP for what the instance requires. Raid healing is also scripted and you need to cast appropriate heals at the correct times. Some of us would even argue you could end up having to heal "more" long-term with same ilvl Crit subset weapon over one with better substats like SS or DET. Whereas you would be consistently getting more HP on every heal skill and/or HoT potency for each tick. Instead of sometimes a crit, when it's not needed.


If Noct shields would get Crit benefits like Scholar does someday, my opinion might change on optimal AST substats. There is just too much upside with SS or DET. Although DET is to a lesser extent since HW, you kind of need to go all-in like it's about 200 DET for 30 HP.

I don't mean to sound rude, but another healer once told me this simple truth: if you don't need extra PIE on AST or WHM, you simply do not DPS enough, and it's generally true. That extra PIE is also about sometimes being able to choose GCD efficiency over MP efficiency (such as using Cure II instead of spamming Cure I to get back into Cleric earlier), making room for fuck-ups during progression, and other more fuzzy benefits. Also, specifically for the relic, if you find you don't need any of the extra PIE, you can always reallocate it to a substat of your choice until you are at a comfortable level.

Agreed, and I find that to be the case most of the time. Malefic II/Stone III isn't cheap for one. I tell everyone PIE is good, PIE is life. Not only does it give you breathing room for more DPS GCDs, you also have a larger ability to correct raid progression mistakes. Whereas with a minimal PIE pool you would likely be taken out of DPS potential because of the latter. It's all about giving yourself options at all times. I also look at having your desired PIE on the relic gives more optimal options for gearing. Like whether you want to use to A7S PIE/Crit pants or Lore DET/SS for-example.

[Taika]

Based on this discussion and without knowing the actual stat weights, I think the stat choices for AST and WHM are the same. I would avoid spellspeed since it's so difficult to gain any actual benefit from it (for the reasons Hirmu explained in depth above: its benefits seem to remain theoretical and can't be used in actual fights most of the time). For a raid healer AST or WHM who does DPS the most useful stats are probably ACC and PIE. After that I'd go for CRIT (since it seems to scale better than DET in HW and provides a concrete boost to spells) and then finally DET (since it boosts your spells concretely but doesn't scale as well as crit).

So for a raid healer AST or WHM: ACC > PIE > CRIT > DET to get most value out of your stats in my opinion.

[MariaNyan]

...But all that is beside the point and the fact that you're arguing about it just proves further that you in fact are missing the entire point how to gauge if the stat is worthwile or not.The point is, neither the fight used as an example nor the length of the fight matter at all when the question is if SpS is more valuable compared to crit or det for healers in general. ...

This is where you are completely wrong. Someone who is not playing healer and only looking on theory stuff on paper cannot begin to even comprehend what you are trying to prove. What you basically saying is everyone who takes SpS is an idiot because the numbers on the paper show better hps/dps results. But healing is not about the raw numbers. It's about keeping your team alive on top of dps if theres no need to heal. And i can tell you that SpS makes it easier to keep your team up compared to DET, especially when you are not used to savage content nor do optimized fights. Take it with a grain of salt when i say SpS is the superior Heal/Dps mixed strat because of the safety it provides.

In fact go around ask some of the WHM/AST, not offhealers, on your server how they think about SpS and you will be positively suprised what stats they would pick between DET and SpS, the answer is not as clear as you seem to make it, theres more than only 1 correct answer when it comes to picking stats on the anima weapon.


And regarding crit, its by far the worst stat, ever did a cure III and ripped the agro off the MT in a8s? Crit can also backfire, so pls don't, you jsut kill the tanks dps if they aren't killing it already themselves.

[Hirmu]

So basically what you're saying is you've made up your mind and no matter how logical my arguments are you won't change your mind even if I'm right in theory. If for whatever reason you feel that SpS helps you keep the party alive better, you're free to feel so. My gripe is that you're in this thread claiming that people are wrong when the fact is that you for whatever reason disagree but can't even prove your point beyond saying you just think you're right. Just for the record I do play healers quite often, though not in savage at the moment where I'm MCH.

Any way good luck with that attitude, I think I'm done with this discussion unless someone actually wants to discuss about facts and not about true sensitive feelings of the heart

[MariaNyan]

So basically what you're saying is you've made up your mind and no matter how logical my arguments are you won't change your mind even if I'm right in theory. If for whatever reason you feel that SpS helps you keep the party alive better, you're free to feel so. My gripe is that you're in this thread claiming that people are wrong when the fact is that you for whatever reason disagree but can't even prove your point beyond saying you just think you're right. Just for the record I do play healers quite often, though not in savage at the moment where I'm MCH.

Any way good luck with that attitude, I think I'm done with this discussion unless someone actually wants to discuss about facts and not about true sensitive feelings of the heart

because i dont want to derail the thread and keep discussing stuff that is basically statweight, which hasn't been updated forever. To prove you wrong, i discussed with dervy whether on a theoretical standpoint in terms of pure numbers crit/det is better than SpS, and its simply not. If you take a dummy for dps/heal, skillspeed beats out both stats no matter what, @ 1200 SpS+ it even curves out better than Crit. It is mainly my personal feeling, which alot of ppl share, that its better for someone who mains healer for ages. But thats ignoring reality, piety or mechanics and whatever, which basically brings me back to the point - Statweights.
Unless someone is making statweight with all the theory and whistles around it, no point will be proven right or wrong, and take it with a grain of salt again, it is not always better to have crit/det over SpS or the other way around.

And i stop here now because i dont want to discuss this even further(see http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Stat-Weights/), feel free to do your own research on AST statweight, but short calculations and my gut tells me that SpS is not always worse than crit/det, but also not always better but for sure better for progression without question.

[Elijahshane]

Obviously a little late to the party and all but shouldn't it be more of a concern of how the spell speed affects dots and hots? Doing a6s at least most of the time I get my dots up and maybe some malefics before having to go back to healing, so my question is what will be more affective for dps stats between the determination and spell speed considering that

[Taika]

Obviously a little late to the party and all but shouldn't it be more of a concern of how the spell speed affects dots and hots? Doing a6s at least most of the time I get my dots up and maybe some malefics before having to go back to healing, so my question is what will be more affective for dps stats between the determination and spell speed considering that

According to Dervy (in this discussion) it's something like

DET: 0.000137
SS: 0.000125

I would assume CRIT is the strongest DoT / HoT boost.

[technole]

MariaNyan has the right idea about Spell Speed, many distractors from the stat just assume things by the numbers and don't even know the first-hand benefits it can provide even in end-game progression.

It's totally a good heal and dps stat. Like being able to squeeze another skill out that maybe you were not planning to in the middle of tight mechanics. You might have to react on-the-fly to a raise and getting that protect/heal top-off before moving for mechanics again, maybe you have to hard cast it. I have credited knowing how much SS I have of being able to get away with saving someone without an instant and dodging mechanics at the same time. Additional HoT potency with the stat is no slouch since that is the bread-and-butter of the main healer jobs, and helping your DPS when you are in cleric stance (Combust II is the highest potency single DoT of all the healers), and our DoTs are no joke when it comes to damage. The best healers are always be casting something practically each GCD, whether its DPS or healing so you will be getting SS benefit each cast. Don't let anyone tell you it's a horrible stat for a main healer.

DET is a flat boost on every healing skill, but you need to almost twice as more as you did in ARR to get the same benefit. For a main healer, it's SS and/or DET.

[Taika]

It's totally a good heal and dps stat. Like being able to squeeze another skill out that maybe you were not planning to in the middle of tight mechanics. You might have to react on-the-fly to a raise and getting that protect/heal top-off before moving for mechanics again, maybe you have to hard cast it. I have credited knowing how much SS I have of being able to get away with saving someone without an instant and dodging mechanics at the same time.

Is the gear you're using the same than you have on AST on Lodestone? Because your spellspeed (662) is only 51 points more than what I have (611) with having actively avoided the stat. So I could claim to have the (almost) exact same benefits of saving people and dodging while not having invested in the stat at all.

Imagine people trying to use these same arguments in any stat discussion on the DD forums. "But I feel like I'm doing more DPS if I'm using DET instead of CRIT and in my experience it has worked." (Un)fortunately the healing or DPS power in this game aren't based on feelings but numbers. But not having the actual stat weights allows the discussion to move away from facts and makes it confusing for everyone involved (although people seem to be perfectly capable of ignoring the actually known stat formulas as well).

[technole]

Might have been wearing what I have for crit build with A5S bracelet, lore belt/hands, it's for science when I use Noct sometimes. Near max ideal SS you can get this tier's gear without going ham with stat melds is around 762. With 240 augmented or Anima, A6S hands, A5S neck/earring, lore legs, feet, and bracelet.

It does't matter. Just like the crit argument on main healer vs scholar, one arguably benefits way more even if the stat weight math is the same. and I'm going to leave it exactly like MariaNyan and my previous posts about this topic. It's not always better one side or the other.