So, I've been looking over the role actions for healers for the past few days now, and there is something I really must protest over, and that is the state of Eye for an Eye in the game currently. There are only 5 role action slots, and healers got hit really hard by the changes thereof. Things like swiftcast for instant revives in boss fights, and Esuna for removing the MANY debuffs of this game are absolutely necessary and you are a worse healer for not having them. (For the life of me, I don't know why Esuna was not just GIVEN to every healer class by default. Have you ever seen a healer in any RPG unable to remove status ailments?)

This has led to some amount of debate in my FC, and my current leader has eschewed protect in favor of eye for an eye. She's always loved scholar and feels that EFAY is part of their identity, and in that, she is not wrong. Deployment tactics even references it by name! For that alone, EFAY should have remained a skill exclusive to SCH. However, I've been doing some math that shows that protect is significantly more useful and less situational than EFAY, reducing the latter skill to an unreliable damage mitigation skill that is dubious at best.

Currently, the formula to compute defense, unless it has been updated since last year, is 1- (0.0001725 x magic defense/physical defense). This formula means that for every 600 points of defense in either category, you receive another 10% damage mitigation bonus at a flat rate. Now, protect on healers and DPS is negligible at best. My initial tests on my own SCH showed an increase from 903 to 1038, the damage mitigation going from 16% to 18%, protect increasing the defense values by roughly 15%. However, my much better geared paladin showed an increase of 4459 to 5127, damage mitigation going from 77% to 88%, and again, it shows the same consistent 15% increase. I had another healer in Kugane apply the buff to me, showing that the figure does not vary when cast by yourself or by another healer.

Now, let's compare this to the RNG that is EFAY. Let's say, for argument's sake, that the tank has 6 enemies attacking them in a single pull, the fight will take 10 seconds (very short, but we're just doing maths), and all the adds together will have a combined damage output of 12,000 total for the whole fight, 2,000 per enemy. The healer cast's EFAY on the tank, who is going to be receiving all the damage with no loss of threat for this pull, and, if EVERY enemy is afflicted right at the start of the fight on their first attack, the damage is reduced to 10,800. If only one enemy is effected, damage is reduced to 11,800. That's....not very much. Now, we compare this to the defense buff granted by protect, which will always apply to every single strike regardless of whether or not it is magical, physical, projectile or melee. Just using the 11% damage mitigation values I computed on my paladin from before, damage is reduced to 10,680. Even in this hypothetical scenario, tailored to make EFAY as effective as possible, it still loses HARD to protect. In any live action situation, the fights will draw on much longer and that will involve % to proc on hit, and expiring durations that I'm not smart enough to compute on the fly.

Bottom line, when EFAY was a scholar only exclusive and not competing against any other skill, it was an interesting addition to the Scholar's repertoire. It worked well IN COMBINATION with other healer skills, but when it has to compete against the likes of lucid dreaming, largesse, or protect, it just isn't viable enough to warrant losing one of those other skills.

Scholar's note: all of this is based on my own calculations, and I have been wrong before. If you see any mistakes, please point them out to me.