Direct Hit for Healers

[Starflake]

With Omega Savage tier coming out soon. I do wonder what kind of value Direct Hit has for healers. I know it does not affect healing, but I feel that it's still a useful stat. I don't value Spell Speed or Piety that much (until a certain amount is reached) and we don't know if DET is worth it. Any other healers out there who are going to try out Critical Hit as the first secondary stat and Direct Hit as the second one? Bad idea or good idea?

[KDSilver]

I'd say bad idea for now.
For progression, it's better to have piety, critical or determination.

But once we'll be well geared, it might be a good option, but only if the stat is higher than 700 (from what i've heard).

Survival first because we learn mecanics and we don't know yet how hard bosses will hit.

[Starflake]

That's the thing. I feel that the PIE you get from gear is already more than enough to sustain MP I don't want to meld more PIE in it. From a Scholar perspective, I don't really want to meld Spell speed either as we only haave two dots now and it just isn't valuable. If DET isn't that great, I think Direct Hit will be of more value. Especially as a Scholar who likes to DPS. Hopefully the secondary stat values for healers are here soon.

[KDSilver]

Depends what your healing class is.
WHM definitly doesn't need anymore piety than the one on the gear.

Astrologian need some since he only has one mp regen (even though he can extend it's duration).

And for scholar, since mp cost of adlo and succor is high, it could be interessting to have some as well, but scholar piety really depends on his co-healer, more than the others cause Aetherflow stacks that aren't spend on healing goes on energy drain so...
It's up to you, but personnaly, when I don't know a fight, I still prefer to have some piety and I'll adjust later depending on my co-healer, what i'll have to heal, how are mecanics design....

I agree that Spell Speed doesn't look like as appealing as in HW because less dot.
That's why I prefer Determination. Since we still don't know, it's seems like having a reliable stat cause it both increase healing and damage.

And as I said, I'll see later for direct hit.

[Furious]

I'd say bad idea for now.
For progression, it's better to have piety, critical or determination.

But once we'll be well geared, it might be a good option, but only if the stat is higher than 700 (from what i've heard).

Survival first because we learn mecanics and we don't know yet how hard bosses will hit.

The average dps impact of direct hit is a linear progression, there is no specific number where its value increases (except relative to another stat). More of the stat reduces the variance on your damage, but not the average impact it has overall on your performance. It might have dimishing returns at some point, but its unlikely you'd realistically get there as a healer who can't get it on gear.

By the time you start reaching around 3k rating on a given stat, crit will be invariably better than DH in any event (before even considering that DH doesn't affect healing). Crit essentially scales quadratically because the rating affects both the chance to crit and the damage bonus of crits. It starts off lower than everything else, but by ~3k rating depending on buff states, it will universally be the strongest stat for dps.

Even if your main concern is dps I would never be aiming for direct hit as a healer. Its value in the early stages is insignificantly more than det which also affects your healing, and it will very quickly be outclassed by crit anyway. Of course, all of this is in a vaccuum, and ignores the fact that you might want piety for longevity or spell speed for safety.

[Ceasaria]

Full Direct Hit materias for me.
Full Critical Hit on gear (excepted maybe if I can choose SS/Deter over Crit/Piety).
I will avoid Piety as always.

[Shurrikhan]

As long as Direct Hit is barely outpacing Critical Strike even for classes with zero Crit-based mechanics, wasting the effect of materia on a good 25%+ of your casts (all your healing GCDs) and all of your abilities would be a bad idea indeed. Spell Speed's zero effect on healing abilities and Piety's modest mana cap and regen increase is bad enough as is.

If SCH, Critical Strike. Otherwise, your pick of Determination and Critical Strike, with Piety/Direct Hit used if facing stat caps on the particular piece.

...So I'd guess.

[Sebazy]

I'm suspecting that DH will end up being the best overall DPS stat for healers in the long term and as mentioned elsewhere, it's a good idea to throw at least one DH materia in regardless just to unlock the ability.

My personal preference has always been towards max piety first and foremost (after ensuring I have comfortably enough VIT for the encounter ofc) followed by whatever the flavour is for that tier. Currently I'm leaning towards crit even with it's nerfs due to the numerous different ways it benefits me right now.

As far as my leanings towards Pie stacking go, my reasoning is as such: In a perfect run it's just not needed I completely agree, you'll see actual gains elsewhere in this situation. However, I've been in statics with some of the best EU players out there over the years and if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that runs during progression with top level players are rarely ever smooth Boundries are always being pushed and tested, people will be greedy and if they think they can get away with it, they most certainly will. Having that extra MP regen gives me a much better buffer with which to handle the group ignoring/failing mechanics whilst also significantly increasing the odds of keeping my own personal DPS going.

Stacking DH is going to do nothing for me if I have to stop throwing rocks because my BLM didn't want to move.

[Furious]

I'm suspecting that DH will end up being the best overall DPS stat for healers in the long term and as mentioned elsewhere, it's a good idea to throw at least one DH materia in regardless just to unlock the ability.

It won't. The ratings are already known. Crit will be stronger from around 3000 rating (can be much earlier than that, especially if you have a bard) and will only get comparatively stronger thanks to quadratic vs linear growth.

After this point, crit will always be better than any other stat for throughput. Usually, increasing one stat increases the relative value of every other stat, but because of the way that crit scales, crit increases its OWN value more quickly than it increases the relative value of other stats.

At some point it's likely that it will gain diminishing returns, but that wont be any time soon.

TLR; it's always going to be an extremely tenuous decision to use DH as a healer. For the first ~1000 or so rating determination scales better, for the next ~1500 DH is EXTREMELY MARGINALLY better and doesn't effect healing at all, and after that crit is better and gains more and more relative value the higher it goes.

Here's a spreadsheet I made based on the currently known ratings. It's probably got some mistakes in it but by and large the shape of stat growth will be right. Make a copy, put in your own numbers.. You can see that once crit overtakes DH in terms of "% per 100", it never reverses again no matter how high you go. This is also represented in the graph on the second sheet.

[amihavingfunyet]

Personally going for Det/Crit this tier.
Piety is not really worth it, you get tons of it on our gear already (more than I want) and from the little testing I did 1 PIE only equals 3.4 MP (think it was somewhere around 6-7 MP per PIE in HW?).