Question in regards to end game gear (Healers)

[JCT]

Hi,
I had a few questions in regards to end game gear. As a healer I have researched / been told that the stat break down in terms of tier is Critical Hit > Determination > Piety > Spell Speed.
Basically I would want to stack as much Critical Hit as possible and get as little Spell Speed as possible. I have looked through some of the end game gear and I noticed that many of the Lost Allegan (and others) pieces have spell speed as one of the stats and no crit.

For example:
Ala Mhigan Body is 310 iLvl with 240 Critical Hit and 168 Spell Speed
Genta Body is 320 iLvl with 244 Critical Hit and 171 Spell Speed
Augmented Lost Allegan Body is 340 iLvl with 253 Piety and 177 Spell Speed

Does this mean to maximize my stats I should go with Genta rather than Lost Allegan? Does the 244 Critical Hit make up for the 20 iLvls?

I also wanted to ask what is the minimum iLvl average I need to be able to do anything and everything for endgame?

[Ghishlain]

Generally speaking, the higher the ilvl the better. The amount of MND you gain from jumping those ilvl tiers don't make up for the difference of changes from a weak secondary stat to a strong secondary stat. There are a few exceptions but they tend to be few and far in between and only in jumps of 10 ilvls - never 20 ilvls.

In terms of secondary stat optimization, that's generally up to preference of each healer too and not as set in stone as it is for DPS and tanks. Crit will be the "most bang for your buck" stat come the next tier, but I do believe the current tier Determination is better up to a certain a point which we have difficulties reach with the current gear scores.

Also stats are very synergistic in nature and thus you kind of want at least a bit of everything for optimal effect. Faster casts from Spell Speed means you get to use the increased benefit of Determination more often while still having more opportunities to Critical too.

Overall you could probably just focus on ilvl and still be incredibly successful. It's when you're trying to optimize for that last 5-10% that you might want to really start digging into secondary stat builds.

[edit] Just to add, Piety is a stat that's also mostly about personal preference. You want enough Piety to make you feel comfortable with the content you're participating in. Once you continue to grow even more comfortable, you will most likely start to peel Piety away from Materia and/or gear and focus on more directly impacting secondaries.

[ChiiSoSeriouz]

Also stats are very synergistic in nature and thus you kind of want at least a bit of everything for optimal effect. Faster casts from Spell Speed means you get to use the increased benefit of Determination more often while still having more opportunities to Critical too.


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That's not how it works in this game. For ss to even be marginally effective you need tons of it. and its still not going to do much for damage or healing so you should just just avoid that all together when possible and stack crit, because unlike what ppl are saying here crit does surpass det at this tier when you have a high enough amount.

Op doesn't have options if they don't have access to genji so basically just get as much 340 as you can with augmented lost allagan. You had the right idea op but u don't sacrifice mind for substats generally, (rare exceptions that dont apply to you currently)

[Ghishlain]

That's not how it works in this game. For ss to even be marginally effective you need tons of it. and its still not going to do much for damage or healing so you should just just avoid that all together when possible and stack crit, because unlike what ppl are saying here crit does surpass det at this tier when you have a high enough amount.

I don't want to debate the semantics of SpS ATM since SpS itself is a fairly large topic of contention due to gains in GCD being difficult to calculate because of the difficulty in simulating fights effectively to understand exactly just what SpS will do for a character. It is certainly something I'd like to revisit later when I get some more time to go through the math.

In terms of stacking Crit, I was curious so here I go. Make any corrections to any errors you find in my logic because I want to be sure I'm accurate for my own curiosity.

This is the absolute highest Crit value a WHM can gain in the current gear tier - a bonus 2,020 Crit for a total of 2,384 critical.

This is table of how stacking a singular stat affects a player's overall effective damage.

+2,020 Crit leads to an effective damage multiplier of 1.138296. Since +0 Crit has a base of 1.02, this leads to an effective increase of 1.138296/1.02 = 11.588%

+2,020 Det leads to an effective damage multiplier of 1.121. Since +0 Det has a base of 1.00, this leads to an effective increase of 12.1%.

Based on the above Crit doesn't actually exceed Determination when super stacking a singular stack. Again, correct me if I'm wrong in my math and/or logic because I want to be sure I'm reading those tables accurately and understand what they represent.

So Augmented Lost Allagan and just Lost Allagan can both be used at once?

Just to add to Cynfael's comment and ensuring that the information is explicitly clear, this is specific to the Ring slots since you can have two Rings equipped. You can't equip an Augmented Allagan and non-Augmented Allagan piece of equipment in any other slot.

Last thing I want is someone spending their weekly items on slots that can't have both types equipped. ^^;

[Lunali]

+2,020 Crit leads to an effective damage multiplier of 1.138296. Since +0 Crit has a base of 1.02, this leads to an effective increase of 1.138296/1.02 = 11.588%

+2,020 Det leads to an effective damage multiplier of 1.121. Since +0 Det has a base of 1.00, this leads to an effective increase of 12.1%.

Based on the above Crit doesn't actually exceed Determination when super stacking a singular stack. Again, correct me if I'm wrong in my math and/or logic because I want to be sure I'm reading those tables accurately and understand what they represent.

IMO the more important factor is that even if crit were better for damage, crit is far more likely to result in overhealing to no benefit. That said, for SCH crit is far more useful than for the other two and a crit on Adloquium is both less likely to result in overhealing than on the others and will give significant benefit even if it does.

[technole]

IMO the more important factor is that even if crit were better for damage, crit is far more likely to result in overhealing to no benefit. That said, for SCH crit is far more useful than for the other two and a crit on Adloquium is both less likely to result in overhealing than on the others and will give significant benefit even if it does.

Crit regens or overheal because of crit isn't always a bad thing. GCDs saved on healing is really the end-goal. Crit is a way better benefit than SpS on all healer jobs.

Not only the crit damage factor, it can save MP, maybe even save Plantary stacks like on ExDeath Savage where every ounce of your healing you put out kind of matters.

You never depend on crits but there will be instances where you usually on stacks for follow-up healing or the SCH using Indom to help something and you'll notice and just return to doing damage.

[MoroMurasaki]

I also think, to a certain extent at least, secondaries vary with each healing class.

Like SpS for instance. On SCH it isn't huge, the biggest part of their healing comes from abilities. On WHM? It can be handy, they use more spells. Peity on WHM is essentially useless because of their insane MP regen but you might see benefit from some of it on the other two healers because they aren't as MP efficient overall.

I don't think there will ever be an end-all set of stat weights for "healers" sadly. Even if someome can crunch the numbers for them individually I don't think they'll match up saying universally x is the best stat y is the worst, the ways they heal are too varied.

[Estelle9lives]

Healer substat optimization is a bit tricky.

If you're looking at damage output and ONLY damage it goes like Direct Hit > Det >= Crit > Spell Speed. The thing with DH is, you need a fairly huge investment to make it worth it (full Heaven's Eye VI melds, all slots) and it doesn't affect your healing output, unlike Crit and Det. Crit/Det are more or less equal - I think Det slighly outweights Crit as of now, but that's because healers can't get a good amount of Crit in this patch - Crit will very likely be the best stat when ilvl goes beyond 340. I'm personally not a fan of Spell Speed at all, the returns are too weak and most pieces that are Spell Speed centered aren't bis.

I believe the goal of every healer shoul be to minimize Piety melds as much as possible - and also shoot for gear that have no/low Piety, reason being that it only acts as a MP cushion, bringing no benefit to either your damage or healing.

[JCT]

I believe the goal of every healer shoul be to minimize Piety melds as much as possible - and also shoot for gear that have no/low Piety, reason being that it only acts as a MP cushion, bringing no benefit to either your damage or healing.

So I looked through of the higher iLvl pieces of gear i.e. Genji and Lost Allegan and there seems to be a lot of piety. Should I forego some of these pieces for lower ilvl pieces that do not have piety?

[Fernosaur]

So I looked through of the higher iLvl pieces of gear i.e. Genji and Lost Allegan and there seems to be a lot of piety. Should I forego some of these pieces for lower ilvl pieces that do not have piety?

Never! You'll get so much more out of the Mind increase than from not having Piety. Also, how much Piety you need largely depends on your group, and also on your other healer. The more raising you need to do, the more MP you'll need, specially if you don't have a RDM. The more shielding or AoE healing you do to help out your co-healer, the more MP you'll use too. The more healing you do with AF, the less MP returns you'll see from Energy Drain, etc, etc.

Piety is a stat for which you need to find an appropriate, personal comfort level. My personal MP milestone on SCH is 18k ish, but Halone knows that when I play AST I need a little bit more than that, particularly because the group I play AST with is much less experienced, co-healer included, so I need to do a lot more raising, shielding and active healing.

That said, even though Spell Speed is the worst stat right now, it's not necessarily bad either. Something that I personally like about SpS is that it allows for quicker stutter-stepping (moving before the spell cast ends without interrupting it), and it gives you a subjectively larger window to move without interruption.

For example, for this tier I stacked Crit as much as I could, but in lieu of keeping my three healers and tank geared up, I ended up taking a couple pieces from Omega Savage with SpS+Pie in them even if they're not theoretical BiS. In that case, the MND increase was worth more, tbh.