AST Anima stat allocation

[Bebekurenai]

Oh I see where you're coming from then >_>

[_slowpoke_]

You're a healer first and foremost, so stat your gear to reflect that.

Yes, and Accuracy to cap is the most appropriate way to stat your gear as a healer in FFXIV, because, again, it's the most gain per stat point in your overall performance, of which DPS is an integral part. The other stat points barely increase your healing throughput, and I generally go by the simple rule that if you cannot heal an encounter without the minuscule gains from melded substats and your weapon, you will not be able to heal it with those substats either (and vice versa). Accuracy is the objectively better stat to prioritize on, no matter which healer you play.

Only when shit hits the fan do I run low on MP, and that's from spamming heals. Yes, I do help push DPS whenever I'm able to. Standing around and doing nothing is unproductive otherwise. If you pop your LA on CD and maybe supplement with a Ewer if you feel you may need it, you shouldn't have to worry all that much about MP.

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.

Also, as I've said before, AST MP solvency is only marginally better than WHM in theory, and really only pulls ahead if you consistently use the 10th LA tick. This comparison even ignores a lot of the other aspects of the two healer's toolkits, and I'm pretty positive Freecure procs alone level the field if you properly utilize them, but I'm not a theorycrafter. I can search for the appropriate reddit thread if you want to.

I claim you can't really even tell a difference if your cast / recast (I think there's a difference between cast and recast but I'm not sure?) is 0.25 seconds shorter than it would otherwise be and that it won't change your casting behaviour in any way (you can't start evading stuff 0.25 seconds earlier - unless you maybe have some kind of super eSports player reflexes).

And your claim is wrong. Spellspeed can have very noticeable effects on your timings on boss fights. For instance, on Nidex with 800-ish SpS (2.33s recast), I can pretty consistently fit in two Stone IIIs plus an Aero before Eggnogg takes off for the first dive, with less SpS, I can only fit in one Stone III plus an Aero. With even less SpS, I would not be able to fit in a Stone III after my opener before I need to switch out of Cleric for a bit to heal the tank and group without messing up all my timings. And yes, more SpS can easily allow you to better dodge things or heal between movement mechanics, you don't need to be a "super eSports player" for this. I agree that SpS can be fuzzy, non-obvious, and subjective in its benefits, but it's false to claim you can't tell any differences. In my opinion, you should have, at the very least, enough SpS to consistently fit in another spell into your buffs, such as Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, or Synastry (which is the case at around 500-600, depending on latency).

[lulunami]

For Diurnal AST and WHM, get close to cap on Accuracy and then prioritize Piety and Spell Speed. Healing is basically balancing two resources: MP and GCD. Sometimes you have to prioritize GCD efficiency over MP efficiency, and vice versa, depending upon the situation. More Spell Speed lets you get in more Stone III's/Malefic II's and make stance dancing with Cleric Stance more easily manageable.

If you wanted to do the most damage, you would choose to max out Spell Speed and Critical Hit Rate. However AST and WHM need more Piety in order to main heal and damage-deal in long encounters so Piety is required. Spell Speed is better to pick over Critical Hit Rate in my humble opinion.

[_slowpoke_]

Spell Speed is better to pick over Critical Hit Rate in my humble opinion.

While I do agree with this, because I prefer consistent stats over RNG-based ones for healing, Crit actually is the slightly better stat in pure theory. Not only does it scale in a non-linear way (the more Crit you have, the more you will gain from additional Crit, which is not the case for SpS and Det, which scale in a linear fashion), it's also - again theoretically - the best stat for throughput in both DPS and healing.

However, Crit is only better if you look at averages, which is why it's a no-brainer for DPS jobs to focus on Crit after meeting all necessary caps/plateaus. Healing, however, is very rarely about averages (which is why no one will seriously look at HPS to judge healer performance), but about timely performance with the correct tools, and being consistent in this performance. Crits very rarely actually help, because you can never expect them and thus not plan around them.

That's why Crit as a healing stat falls apart in practice unless you are a SCH, both because the job is actually built around crits as a meaningful mechanic as well as the fact that SCH, as the off-healer, is very DPS-focused in a competent group, giving Crit additional value as a DPS stat.

Removing RNG is also yet another reason why you should hitcap as a healer. It makes your minimum DPS contribution for a given part of a fight a lot more predictable, allowing you to better plan around it. Not having this consistent minimum DPS contribution means not knowing whether or not you are able to push phases early or skip mechanics/damage, which in turn affects how aggressive you can be with stance dancing, your MP solvency, and it can also fuck up your timings and CD planning.

You should obviously be able to adjust to these problems on the fly, because mistakes happen, but reducing the impact mistakes have is important during progression. That is why you should hitcap, that is why extra PIE is important, that is why Vit melds are important (even outside of being required for A8s).

[Taika]

Spellspeed can have very noticeable effects on your timings on boss fights. For instance, on Nidex with 800-ish SpS (2.33s recast), I can pretty consistently fit in two Stone IIIs plus an Aero before Eggnogg takes off for the first dive, with less SpS, I can only fit in one Stone III plus an Aero. With even less SpS, I would not be able to fit in a Stone III after my opener before I need to switch out of Cleric for a bit to heal the tank and group without messing up all my timings.

This is a good point in support of spellspeed, but if each cast is 0.15 seconds faster than they would be without spellspeed build (so let's say you have 1000 spellspeed and your recast is 2.25 while mine without spellspeed is 2.40), you would need to cast 15 spells in a row without any breaks in between to get one additional cast, right? Meanwhile with another stat those 15 casts might be more powerful, making up for that 1 cast and perhaps even resulting in more DPS/HPS.

And yes, more SpS can easily allow you to better dodge things or heal between movement mechanics, you don't need to be a "super eSports player" for this.

I don't know, to me the thought of trying to start moving 0.15 seconds earlier feels far-fetched.

In my opinion, you should have, at the very least, enough SpS to consistently fit in another spell into your buffs, such as Divine Seal, Presence of Mind, or Synastry (which is the case at around 500-600, depending on latency).

My spellspeed with having actively avoided any spellspeed gear is already at over 600 though. But I agree considering if you'd be able to fit another spell within buffs with spellspeed is a good point. But since Divine Seal only lasts for 15 seconds and Synastry last 20, it's not possible for those (if my recast is 2.4 seconds I can do 8.3 casts in 20 seconds, if it's 2.25 I can do 8.8, so both are more than 8 but less than 9). I don't dare to make any claims for PoM with my math though (and please point out if you see any problems with my other calculations here).

[MariaNyan]

First of all if you dont do savage, you won't need the accuracy. If you do, it's a nobrainer to put in Acc. As an Astro you will prob always replace the WHM, therebefore making you the mainhealer, this means your best friend is piety.
In order to dps you need to overheal, in order to overheal you need more mana, and to get more mana you either get piety or get the bard/mch to become you slave. The more you can overheal, the more time to dps you have, the more mana you burn though. Which comes to the second point, where spellspeed kicks in, if you cannot widen your timeframe with overheal, you can fit one or two gcd more in before you have to heal, which makes spellspeed imo the second-best choice, it will burn your mana quicker but allows you to do additional actions. Determination kicks in if you have neither of these options, and crit is the worst stat, because of several reaons ppl posted above, agro, unreliability, overheal, mp effiency etc. Scholar cannot overheal with shields, since it basically scales unlimited, crit or not, on top of being mostly dps-oriented. To be short:

(ACC)>PIE>SS>DET>CRIT

That's my opinion.

@Taika
you seem to underestimate Spellspeed simply because you don't seem to understand what those 0.1s or 0.15s difference means. In a 10 minute fight you roughly cast 300 Spells. Those translates into 30 or even 45s saved time, which results into way more gcds than you think, not counting in breakpoints like additional dot when boss flies up or the leeway for additional emergency heal.

[DeadRiser]

Do whatever you want. The only way to go is to put your stats fully into two things if you can.

But even then, you will BARELY notice a difference. Unless you are crunching little numbers. It really doesn't matter. If you are a good healer, it doesn't matter what secondary stats you put in.

[Hirmu]

And your claim is wrong. Spellspeed can have very noticeable effects on your timings on boss fights. For instance, on Nidex with 800-ish SpS (2.33s recast), I can pretty consistently fit in two Stone IIIs plus an Aero before Eggnogg takes off for the first dive, with less SpS, I can only fit in one Stone III plus an Aero. With even less SpS, I would not be able to fit in a Stone III after my opener before I need to switch out of Cleric for a bit to heal the tank and group without messing up all my timings. And yes, more SpS can easily allow you to better dodge things or heal between movement mechanics, you don't need to be a "super eSports player" for this.

That's a very spesific case though. Nidhogg jumps at excatly 30 seconds into the fight. And as it turns out, 30 seconds is the sweet spot where with 824 SpS you get 12.96 casts in and with 850 you get 13.01. With 500 SpS you would get in 12.3 casts and that's pretty much as low as you can ever go with SpS. So at minimum you can do 12 casts and at maximum 13 before Nidhogg jumps if you're casting the entire time non-stop and start at exactly the right millisecond when the tank pulls.

Pre-casting before the pull affects this a bit in a difficult way. If you start to precast so that your first cast lands exactly at the same time when the tank pulls, then your second spell starts casting basically at 0 seconds into the fight, so while that gains you an extra cast, it doesn't change the amount of casts you can do in 30 seconds. With maximum SpS and a perfect pre-cast, you get in 14 casts total.

Now if you have a 1000 SpS, it takes you 29.29 seconds to cast 13 times. So with that you can afford to land your precast 0.7 seconds into the fight and still get the 14 casts in, but any later than that and you only get 13. So you need to time it with 0.7 seconds of precision to get that 14 with 1000 SpS, if you fail that 0.7 second window, you're either pulling early or getting only 13 casts in.

With 500 SpS, it takes you 29.25 seconds to cast 12 times so you need to work with almost the same precision if you want to get 13 casts in instead of 14. With more SpS you can widen the window and at 850 SpS you don't even need to precast at all the get 13 casts in.

So what you're saying is generally speaking technically a possible scenario and there are gaps like that in the game where spellspeed or skillspeed can give you an extra GCD usage, especially when you have a nicely contained scenario like fitting certain amount of GCDs inside a buff timer.

However your claim that it's SpS which gives you the edge to cast an extra spell before the jump is not plausible.

With 2.33s cast time you use 30.29 seconds to get in 13 casts, so that means there's no way you can do 14 casts and as long as you start precasting 0.3 seconds before the pull you can get 13 casts in, something you could easily do with a lot less SpS, technically even with 500 if you're very precise.

Instead what Taika claims that you can't notice the difference seems to be more believable. A more likely scenario is that you're actually losing some time in between those casts to something (healing and swapping targets, not precasting, latency, stacking instant abilities in between GCDs too slowly, potion lag or something else) and missing at least one possible cast entirely.

In any case you're talking about a 100 ms difference in cast time, which is probably a lot less than your latency. During those 13 casts that amounts up to 1.3 seconds spread over 13 tiny increments. What Taika said about the e-sports level precision is very accurate, I'm certain that some players are able to exploit that 100 ms difference, but any messy tab-targeting or lag or imperfect pre-cast and you've introduced a far greater noise to your rotation so I'm sorry for doubting your player abilities, but I'm fairly sure it's not the SpS which causes you to get that extra spell in sometimes. It's possible, but out of reach for the majority of players.

@Taika
you seem to underestimate Spellspeed simply because you don't seem to understand what those 0.1s or 0.15s difference means. In a 10 minute fight you roughly cast 300 Spells. Those translates into 30 or even 45s saved time, which results into way more gcds than you think, not counting in breakpoints like additional dot when boss flies up or the leeway for additional emergency heal.

You're missing the point yourself.

Even if it is possible in certain scenarios to get extra casts in and certainly it's true for longer fights, it doesn't prove any point for or against. To gauge which stat is better you must understand that those points don't just go to waste, they go to CRIT, ACC and DET. It doesn't matter if you get 12 casts in instead of 13 but if those 12 are in total more powerful than the 13 weaker ones, then they're objectively better because of lower total MP cost. Especially regarding dps situations for healers, if your acc is below 100%, that means some of your precious casts are completely wasted time and MP. The sheer number of casts means nothing.

Also as to your other claim, in a 10 minute fight you can with 1000 SpS cast 266 spells if you do it nonstop, which never happens. For example in Nidhogg Ex, the very best (HPS) WHM according to fflogs has 188 ability usages during the fight which lasts 10 min 3 seconds. And that includes everything, including non-GCD abilities like swiftcast, virus and such. That's over a hundred casts less than you're claiming and that's an exceptional player.

Also with 500 SpS you get 246 casts and with 1000 SpS you get 266 casts in 10 minutes, non-stop. So that's 20 casts more if there are no pauses at all. So what you need to do is to gauge if you can gain more by investing crit, acc and DET for those 246 casts or is it better to cast more and weaker spells using more MP. Just saying there's more casts is ignorant. Also the benefit from SpS comes only if you cast a lot of spells with no stops in between at all due to movement or boss disappearing.

The only valid argument for SpS is that yes, it gives you that 100-150 ms faster GCDs which in theory give you a better reaction time but it's very difficult to exploit that and anyone claiming to be fast enough to do that is probably overestimating their abilities. Especially because almost everything can be anticipated so that if you actally need to rely on that reaction time and it's cutting that close, you're already doing something horribly wrong and should learn the fight a bit better.

In short, SpS is only better if the number of extra casts you can get with it (and you only get one of those extra casts if you are able to cast about 30 seconds straight with no breaks whatsoever) during a fight are in total more powerful than the fewer but more powerful casts you can get by investing the same number of points in other stats.

[MariaNyan]

You're missing the point yourself.

Even if it is possible in certain scenarios to get extra casts in and certainly it's true for longer fights, it doesn't prove any point for or against. To gauge which stat is better you must understand that those points don't just go to waste, they go to CRIT, ACC and DET. It doesn't matter if you get 12 casts in instead of 13 but if those 12 are in total more powerful than the 13 weaker ones, then they're objectively better because of lower total MP cost. Especially regarding dps situations for healers, if your acc is below 100%, that means some of your precious casts are completely wasted time and MP. The sheer number of casts means nothing.


Also as to your other claim, in a 10 minute fight you can with 1000 SpS cast 266 spells if you do it nonstop, which never happens. For example in Nidhogg Ex, the very best (HPS) WHM according to fflogs has 188 ability usages during the fight which lasts 10 min 3 seconds. And that includes everything, including non-GCD abilities like swiftcast, virus and such. That's over a hundred casts less than you're claiming and that's an exceptional player.

Also with 500 SpS you get 246 casts and with 1000 SpS you get 266 casts in 10 minutes, non-stop. So that's 20 casts more if there are no pauses at all. So what you need to do is to gauge if you can gain more by investing crit, acc and DET for those 246 casts or is it better to cast more and weaker spells using more MP. Just saying there's more casts is ignorant. Also the benefit from SpS comes only if you cast a lot of spells with no stops in between at all due to movement or boss disappearing.

The only valid argument for SpS is that yes, it gives you that 100-150 ms faster GCDs which in theory give you a better reaction time but it's very difficult to exploit that and anyone claiming to be fast enough to do that is probably overestimating their abilities. Especially because almost everything can be anticipated so that if you actally need to rely on that reaction time and it's cutting that close, you're already doing something horribly wrong and should learn the fight a bit better.

In short, SpS is only better if the number of extra casts you can get with it (and you only get one of those extra casts if you are able to cast about 30 seconds straight with no breaks whatsoever) during a fight are in total more powerful than the fewer but more powerful casts you can get by investing the same number of points in other stats.

Wait wat, you compare a WHM with HPS in a Astro Anima Thread? sorry you are totally off then. And Nidhogg which is known for NOT continuosly casting with alot of downtime? Seems like we're not on the same page then.
First of all during Burstphases an extra spell eg. in the opener is a lot stronger than a minimal buffed one, especially if you allocate your skills not purely into dps but as well as into healing. The potency of an extra malefic II or stone III in the opener beats the potency gain of det or crit, simply because you don't calculate partybuffs in, but that is niche.

In a 10minute fight where you continuously fighting like A7S you can cast 300 spells, its just that ppl dont stack 1000 SpS. or prob a higher number would be even possible, just check the dps page for ast in a7s. I cannot comprehend why you even check the HPS-side since it doesnt make you a skilled player for overhealing like crazy. But yes it adds non-GCDs, but the extra time needed to think which card is right for the correct person also gives you some extra time, alot of AST don't seem to understand that preassigning cards beforehand makes you think alot less.

In the end my points prove nothing but that it nearly never matters which point you take, both stats have their pro and cons and to understand them to decide for yourself which playstyle is better for you.

[Hirmu]

Wait wat, you compare a WHM with HPS in a Astro Anima Thread? sorry you are totally off then. And Nidhogg which is known for NOT continuosly casting with alot of downtime? Seems like we're not on the same page then.
First of all during Burstphases an extra spell eg. in the opener is a lot stronger than a minimal buffed one, especially if you allocate your skills not purely into dps but as well as into healing. The potency of an extra malefic II or stone III in the opener beats the potency gain of det or crit, simply because you don't calculate partybuffs in, but that is niche.

In a 10minute fight where you continuously fighting like A7S you can cast 300 spells, its just that ppl dont stack 1000 SpS. or prob a higher number would be even possible, just check the dps page for ast in a7s. I cannot comprehend why you even check the HPS-side since it doesnt make you a skilled player for overhealing like crazy. But yes it adds non-GCDs, but the extra time needed to think which card is right for the correct person also gives you some extra time, alot of AST don't seem to understand that preassigning cards beforehand makes you think alot less.

In the end my points prove nothing but that it nearly never matters which point you take, both stats have their pro and cons and to understand them to decide for yourself which playstyle is better for you.

You're arguing over points which have nothing to do with the subject at hand. First of all the stat works for WHM and AST in the same way when they cast something that's on GCD. AST has a native small haste in Diurnal, but it doesn't affect the question of SpS in any way, since you get that whether you boost SpS or something else, so when talking about what effect the stat has in general it doesn't matter which job you're looking at. But just to humour you, the top DPS astro in Nidhogg has 238 ability usages (in a bit shorter win though) and one that's from a fight lasting over 10 minutes, they have 234 ability usages. And again I want to stress that this is all abilities, not just the ones on GCD. And funny enough, they're about the same number that WHMs have. Because all healer jobs cast roughly at the same speed. And yeah, Nidhogg is maybe one with a bit more downtime than usual, but the fact is that even with 1000 SpS you can only cast about 266 times if there's zero downtime, no mechanics to dodge and you have MP to do that constantly. Not that it matters concerning the actual subject though, but your claim that 10 minute fights have 300 casts for healers is just pulled out of thin air and about 100 casts higher than reality.

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 because, as explained in the previous post, the value of spellspeed is based on if the additional casts gained with it are worth more than the fewer casts would be boosted by crit and / or det. You will have more casts in a 15 minute fight than a 10 minute fight, but at the same time the boost from crit and det would also be bigger.

The burst phase you're using as an argument works for some DDs (and at least WAR) where damage buffs are applied. Healers don't have damage buffs and I'm at least not aware of any healer opener like this. Can you give me an example and math of a healer opener or burst which is actually better with SpS than crit or det? Because I can't think of any.

But your main argument was that the number of casts matter, and that's completely and utterly wrong. It means absolutely nothing.

I'm just gonna illustrate to you why you're wrong. Let's assume a 1 minute fight with an imaginary spell. Case 1: lots of SpS and low potency. You get 26 casts, each with potency of 100. Total potency 2600. Case 2: low SpS, high potency. You get 24 casts, each with potency of 110. Total potency 2640 and less MP used -> better.

Now obviously I pulled the numbers out of my hat and they're rigged to make crit/det better. They don't prove that SpS is factually worse, but they prove that the sheer number of casts doesn't matter in any way, which was your argument and seems to be the argument that many other people have also said previously.

The real problem at hand is that there's no good way to estimate how much crit and det actually boost the potency and this is especially hard for healers who also need to count for the healing and can't just compare raw dps numbers. SpS is only better if crit and det cannot boost the overall potency enough to overcome the smaller amount of casts but it's hard to prove this. At least before Heavensward SpS was inferior.

However for DPS classes it's pretty much a given that it's crit and det all the way unless you have a spesific need for a certain skillspeed level to get that extra ability inside some buffs, so anecdotically I'd be willing to bet that the same works for healers as well, especially because this used to be the case earlier, too. But if you have math to prove otherwise, I'll happily accept that.