
Originally Posted by
Hirmu
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.