Question in regards to end game gear (Healers)

[EaMett]

I'll willingly plead guilty to not being all that into min maxing my gear to the extent that my DPS peers do, but some quick math has me thinking that dropping 20 ilvl on your chest piece is going to cost you pretty much 100HP per cure cast no? If I was in that situation, I'd likely be shuffling melds or pieces elsewhere to make it work, as that's not a trade I'd be able to stomach.

No in my case the chest piece is a reduction of ~.20% on both healing/hots and damage/dots compared to the Genta 320 chest. I decided to humor the idea and check if remelding entirely would help make the 340 piece better than the 320 and couldn't make it work (there's no place on my gear to make up for the loss of 244 crit since all my pieces are more or less capped in crit already).
Now I'm not claiming a 320 item of gear is better than all 340, in this case the Genji 340 chest is superior. It's just that the 340 Allagan chest isn't.
And I've had similar experiences with quite a few other pieces as well.

PS: you do get added VIT and PIE so it's up to the player's discretion whether or not that outweighs the slight hit in performance + the 825 creation + twine. But for me it doesn't.

[era1Ne]

I'll willingly plead guilty to not being all that into min maxing my gear to the extent that my DPS peers do, but some quick math has me thinking that dropping 20 ilvl on your chest piece is going to cost you pretty much 100HP per cure cast no? If I was in that situation, I'd likely be shuffling melds or pieces elsewhere to make it work, as that's not a trade I'd be able to stomach.

I agree with this, because in 95% of the cases ilvl wins on the left side. That said, he isn't wrong that in theory (!) according to the sheet the 320 genta is better than the tomes 340 chest gear.

With my current whm gear upgrading my 320 genta chest piece to a 340 augmented lost Allagan chest piece yields a net loss in both healing and dps output. And that is hardly the only case. You can use the aforementioned spreadsheet to find quite a few other scenarios.

The calculator completely ignores piety as far as i know and this is an issue, because as an healer you also have to watch out for piety.

Again that doesn't mean that it won't be a good chest piece for someone geared differently. But with my current stats it's a loss and the 320 item is better than the 340.

I used your set and the sheet to calculate different sets and while your set is in theory better than the same version with an chest swap to the 340 tomes gear, i'd recommend to still switching the chest. You will lose dmg in the chest, but overall gain piety and with that you can switch out the genji 340 ring and go with the 2x tomes (one 340, one 330) combo. This will then be superior healing and dmg wise to your set according to the sheet and you have more piety to boot. Aditionally you have an easier time doing progress, since you have more vitality aswell.

[EaMett]

Yeah I did mention piety and vit as things to take into account.

you can switch out the genji 340 ring and go with the 2x tomes (one 340, one 330) combo.

Actually that's a good catch. The 330 Allagan ring is better than the 340 genji. Slight oversight on my part.
The chest is still inferior though. I also have absolutely no use for piety at this stage which makes the chest piece unattractive to say the least. Even the HP bump is pretty insignificant.
If I need more HP and/or piety for whatever reason I would swap my pentameld 320 bracelet for a 340 one rather than fool around with my chest piece.

It's worth noting that optimization is also very subjective. You might want to optimize for dps, or for healing while disregarding dps, or for your party comp etc. These will all yield different results. But my original point was that regardless of what you decide to do, it is absolutely possible that a 320 item could be better than a 340 one. That the extra MND does not always outweigh the secondary stats.
It's then up to the player's discretion to decide whether or not Vit/Pie are worth the hit to their stats.