Cure 3 Blues

[Braven]

Also one of the biggest reasons why Scholar’s heal potencies seems higher is because abilities such as Lustrate, Indomitability, Excogitation, and Fey Union are NOT spells and do not benefit from the following buffs:


Dissipation
Fey Illumination from your fairy
Largesse as a healer role action
Convalescence as a tank role action
Defiance Warrior’s tank stance
Mantra from Monk
Nature’s Minne from Bard
Devotion from Summoner

This limitation does not only affect scholar. All of white mage’s instant casts are also abilities I believe. Tetra, assize, asylum, divine benison, plantary indugence don’t benefit either. Also remember there is rouse and another fairy ability that regularly boosts potency of the fairy regens so Largesse is not really needed to match whm’s medica 2 and regen combos. Rouse has a shorter cooldown, double the potency, and same duration as Largesse and scholar can still use Largesse in addition for global cooldown heals, just like white mage, when they are needed.

Fey union is so potent already that it doesn’t need addutional buffing to easily outclass other regens.

Assize’s cooldown can be reduced to 45 seconds pretty easily with the Lillies. If you know a big hit is coming up you can use Assize for it instead of using it as soon as it’s off cooldown. Also for what it's worth, the questionable Secret of the Lily 2 can lower the cooldown even further.

First of all the maximum possible reduction of assize from lilies is 20%, which is 48 seconds, not 45. Second, that is really hard to do. You basically need to be spamming Cure 2 since all your other cooldowns will eat up all the lillies like divine benison, tetra, and asylum. With DB on a 30 second cooldown and tetra on a 60, you would need to be very careful with the order you cast spells to avoid accidentally losing all the lilies before assize is used. Since most people claim they can completely hide the gauge and will play no differently as a result, I highly doubt anyone actually gets the three lily assize in a consistent basis in the real world.

LOL secret of the Lily 2. Good luck with that 20% chance when you crit RNG! Assuming a crit rate of 20%, it would have a net 5% chance of a 5 second cooldown.... per lily, that averages out to a 0.25 second cooldown reduction... Quicken Aetherflow is always 45 seconds with zero requirements and will still be slightly faster even if you consistently micro lillies to death so there is always 3 every time.

It’s 10% MP back from Aetherflow if that's what you meant from "Aetherpacks"

I adjusted abilities to a 60 second window for easier comparison since everything has different cooldown durations.

*5."Also gets fey covenent that kind off offsets divine benisons for free mitigation."

Fey Covenant reduces only magic damage. Divine Benison reduces any kind of damage. Plus they're both 2 very different things.

True, comparing them is a stretch. Most big damage is magical, particularly roomwide AOE damage. The mitigation is higher than divine benison and lasts longer, but doesn’t always work all the time. Fey covers whole party while benison is single target. DB has a shorter cooldown. In my opinion the overall power level of the two is roughly the same and used in a similiar way (prevent tank busters or lessen the blow of AOEs). I decided I liked them both equally well, but you are free to disagree.

Thin Air can get off more than 2-3 spells... Not to mention with Presence of Mind you can get off 5 free Holies (12000+MP saved) or 2 Raises with a Swift Cast+hard cast.

Again, I was adjusting for cooldown duration differences. Half a thin air is around 2-3 spells. The long cooldown duration is what limits the value of Thin Air relative to completing toolkit’s mp savers. While you could do a couple raises or holy spam, how often will that need line up perfectly with the long Thin Air cooldown? Not often unless you hold off using Thin Air which effectively makes the cooldown duration even longer, lowering the efficency and kind if self-defeating the purpose of saving mana because you are using it less often.

Raises are not at all predictable or consistent in their timing so you can’t plan for that. Holy is overpriced in mp cost. Miasma 2 and gravity both cost less mp to cast. My whole point is that Thin Air is because WHM needs to cast more spells (medica 2 and regens) that scholar gets for free and holy costs significantly more miasma 2. They need to use Thin Air wisely with Holy spells just to match scholar’s efficiency since scholars can regen and spam AOE damage normally for a fraction of shat whm depends. It simply compensates for a weakness, not grants a unique strength. You can argue that scholar also has relatively expensive spells, like Adlo is more expensive than Cure 2, but that difference is much smaller and that spell is not normally spammed like Holy and maisma 2 are.

This is assuming that the shield afterwards blocks an attack unless you mean with Emergency Tactics which has a cooldown. At worse it's an 150 aoe heal. Medica1 is 300. Also Medica1+Plenary Indulgence=450 potency at least.

With ET on a 20 sec cooldown and Indom at 30, do you ever really need to spam multiple succors ever? In theory whm has the advantage when spamming endlessly with no incoming damage at all to destroy shields, but pretty much no content requires that. Keep in mind PI is also a cooldown and can’t be used forever. Indom, succor, and Deployed emergency tactics adlo is a total of 1450 potency using two global cooldowns. For white mage, it would be 1200 with two medicas and two confessions and assize. Eventually whm will surpass scholar by spamming, assuming nothing is ever hitting the shields. However, if regular incoming damage takes out the shield portion, whm will never outpace scholar because plantary indulgence have max 3 confessions. Regardless, white mage will be slower regaining because thry must wait for 3 global to pass before optimally using indulegence where-as scholars has instant, immedaite burst healing with indom.

It's a good practice for White Mages focus target the boss to see when an attack is about to go out and precasting their heals anyway. Plus Swift Cast/Prescence of Mind is a thing. Also Medica2 has an initial heal of 200 and a regen while Whispering Dawn just applies the regen. If Largesse is used beforehand then the heal AND the regens get boost as well. Also you have to micromanage your fairy so it doesn't blow all of it's

Where to start... all healers can focus on the boss and precast heals to go off right after. Whm has no particular advantage here that I sm aware of.. Managing the fairy is stupid easy. You just hit a button to have them cast a spell just like every other ability; you don’t even need to target them. EVERYONE should have EOS on Obey so they will never waste your cooldowns. No good player leaves her on SIC. Medica 2 has the 200 immediate heal, but still has about 40% lower potency regen, even after factoring the pet penalty to potencies. Whispering dawn gets a 40% increase from rouse every time and sometimes a 10% buff from the other fairy ability with a linger cooldown. That is way more than Largesse provides. Presence if mind is nice, but but embrace/dawn take no actions. 100% cooldown reduction beats a 20% reduction.

What? First of all you contradicted yourself in the same paragraph.

By spammable AOE, I then meant DPS AOE, not healing AOE. Miasma 2 (1680 MP) costs significantly less than Holy (2400 MP).

*8."However emergency tactics allows about 3 to be spammed in a row"
Emergency Tactics gets used up for ONE Adloquium or Succor; it's not continuous.

The situation I was referring to is one if the more common AOE healing mechanics: A few small bursts of damage spaced a few seconds apart. One normal succor, followed by one ET succor, followed by one normal succor again covers this. Typically, the shield is used up over the course of two global cooldowns so you can apply it again on the third cooldown without loss potency. The other type of enemy heal check mechanic is two very strong AOEs back to back. Again, scholar is strong here because of the powerful, instant healing indom provides, along with a ET succor and normal succor to heal up the rest of the way. If it is a big AOE, no damage at all for a long time, and another big AOE, it is best to just use medica 2 or whispering dawn.

If there is some fringe case not covered above that manages to slightly benefit white mage, there are always other scholar only situational tools like the 20% magic mitigation ability and the sacred soil damage mitigation that can be instantly deployed to further reduce the amount of damage that needs to be healed.

[Roll]

*1.“I don’t really want Cure 3 changed. I just want players in general to be aware that spreading out for no reason makes things harder on us healers; particularly white mage.”


You have other spells besides Cure3 that are more reliable. Everytime I see someone use Cure3 it’s a usually a big overheal anyway that your other heals can take care of for less MP.



*2.“Please help us out so we don’t have to use the whimpy medica 1!”



It’s not that big a deal. Nothing requires Cure3. Yes there are times when it’s helpful but right now it’s a niche spell that occasionally gets used just like how some Scholar’s argue that Dissipation is a niche ability that occasionally gets used.



*3.“All of white mage’s instant casts are also abilities I believe. Tetra, assize, asylum, divine benison, plantary indugence don’t benefit either”



Divine Benison isn’t a heal so it doesn’t benefit from the healing magic buffs that I mentioned. Fun fact is that it does benefit from Warrior’s Thrill of Battle and Defiance since they increase their maximum HP and the shield from Divine Benison becomes equal to 15% of the targets maximum HP.



*4.“Fey union is so potent already that it doesn’t need addutional buffing to easily outclass other regens.”



It’s also situational in that you need fairy gauge and the target has to be in range of the tether. Regen is at the push of a button anytime which is the power/availability tradeoff. Fey Union is strong but gets used less often and stops your fairy from performing another action until you sever the link. Regen is weaker than Fey Union but can be used more often. All healers are balanced with constant tradeoffs like this so there’s really no “outclassing”.



*5.“First of all the maximum possible reduction of assize from lilies is 20%, which is 48 seconds, not 45”



My mistake on the math but 3 seconds isn’t a huge difference… And like I said even if Assize is used every 60 seconds it still doesn’t hinder its usability. Assize is already an extremely powerful skill with 3 effects in one. Instead of spending 1680 MP on a Medica, this is a free instant Medica, does 300 potency damage and recovers 10% MP.



*6.“that is really hard to do(3 lillies)”



It… Really isn’t. Good White Mage’s can use the lilies to their advantage instead of ignoring them. Take the fairy for example; good Scholar’s can micromanage and use them the best that they can or ignore the fairy by putting it on Sic the whole time and letting it blow all it's cooldowns lol



*7.“LOL secret of the Lily 2”



I mentioned this because you kept suggesting that Assize’s cooldown is always 60 seconds while conveniently assuming Aetherflow’s cooldown is always at 45 seconds. Aetherflow’s 60 second cooldown can be lowered to 45 seconds; Assize’s 60 second cooldown can be lowered to 48. Secret of the Lily2 is just an unreliable mention that rarely procs that can honestly be ignored for what it offers to be honest.



*8.“I was adjusting for cooldown duration differences. Half a thin air is around 2-3 spells.”



According to your theoretical bubble even one cast of a free Holy or Raise is more than 10%MP saved

Here’s an example:



I have 19776 MP on WHM at 70

10% of that is 1977.6



Holy costs 2400, Raise is 3600



So if you’re allowing 2-3 free casts of a spell in your example it still blows this situation out of the water.





*9.“The long cooldown duration is what limits the value of Thin Air”



It can be used every other pull and saves a ton of MP. 4 casts of Holy is 9600 MP saved that’s nearly half my MP.

WHM: 48.5%% MP saved every 120 seconds not to mention two Assize’s for an extra 20% MP recovered within those 120 seconds.

vs.

SCH: 30% MP recovered every 135 seconds if lowered with Quickened Aetherflow or 20% MP recovered every 120 seconds without it

Both have access to Lucid Dreaming as well for more MP recovery but there's a reason why people are saying that White Mage has near-infinite MP now.


*10.“While you could do a couple raises or holy spam, how often will that need line up perfectly with the long Thin Air cooldown? Not often unless you hold off using Thin Air which effectively makes the cooldown duration even longer, lowering the efficency and kind if self-defeating the purpose of saving mana because you are using it less often.”



You save it for when you need to use expensive spells like Holy, Raise, and even Medica2 obviously. You're not going to run out of MP if you're using much else. If you use it as soon as the cooldown is available for spells like Stone it’s pretty much wasted.



*11.“They need to use Thin Air wisely with Holy spells just to match scholar’s efficiency since scholars can regen and spam AOE damage normally for a fraction of shat whm depends.”



If you spam Miasma2 after all your dots are up you’re still going to run low on MP pretty quickly as well. WHM is perfectly capable at DPSing while alternating between Largesse+Regen and Asylum+Regen as a substitute for the fairy. Even if you take Thin Air out of the picture they’re still perfectly fine at being able to do what they do.



*12.“With ET on a 20 sec cooldown and Indom at 30, do you ever really need to spam multiple succors ever?”



Happens more often than you think with 2 Scholar’s in a raid in Duty Finder. Especially when coordination goes out the window.



*13.“all healers can focus on the boss and precast heals to go off right after. Whm has no particular advantage here that I sm aware of”



I mentioned this because you complained that WHM heals are “Too slow” when in actuality precasting heals is a thing that’s recommended to do anyway. It’s not an exclusive thing for WHM but I used it as an example because Scholar’s have shields that they can use before big hits.



*14.“Miasma 2 (1680 MP) costs significantly less than Holy (2400 MP).”



You’ll still get low on MP if you spam Miasma2…


Let’s look at the reasoning for the MP cost for the 3 aoe’s closely then:

*Holy is 2400 MP (200 Potency+Stun) because it can stun everything for up to 7 seconds which is less time and MP spent on healing



*Gravity is 1920 MP (200 Potency). It doesn’t have the stun effect like Holy so it makes sense for it to be cheaper



*Miasma2 is 1680 MP (100 Potency + 25 Potency over 12 seconds for a total of 200) because after you’re done applying all your dots to everything you spam this but when you do, the dot from this keeps clipping so it makes sense for it to be cheaper since it's not doing it's full potency upfront.



See the balance and tradeoffs yet?



*15.“there are always other scholar only situational tools like the 20% magic mitigation ability and the sacred soil damage mitigation that can be instantly deployed to further reduce the amount of damage that needs to be healed.”



I’m not disagreeing with you here but I wanted to point out to people that don’t know that instant isn’t always instant since it takes about 2-3 seconds for shields/mitigation to register as being active. It’s noticeable when you apply Galvanize/Nocturnal field right before a big attack lands but end up taking the full hit and the shields are still up afterwards so it's important to shield up early.







I’m not bashing Scholar at all. It’s an amazing job if played correctly; just like White Mage. It sounds like you’re a great Scholar but still trying to grasp at how White Mage works and struggling to see the balance between the two and their tradeoffs.

[Sebazy]

I didn't really want to chime in on this one but eh =/

It’s not that big a deal. Nothing requires Cure3.

Yes there are times when it’s helpful but right now it’s a niche spell that occasionally gets used just like how some Scholar’s argue that Dissipation is a niche ability that occasionally gets used.

Not a fair comparison at all. Cure III is a powerful ability when you're raiding with a well disciplined static and it's very possible to build entire strats around it (Which has been the case since ARR, E.G. my early Titan EX solo heals required it). By comparison, Dissipation is a quirky cooldown with an identity crisis.

It… Really isn’t. Good White Mage’s can use the lilies to their advantage instead of ignoring them. Take the fairy for example; good Scholar’s can micromanage and use them the best that they can or ignore the fairy by putting it on Sic the whole time and letting it blow all it's cooldowns lol

This depends on the content, but as far as raids go, it really is. Can't comment on Sigma Savage yet as I'm not entering till tomorrow, I'd see 2 lilies in O3S on a couple of occasions and that's about it. Pretty much everywhere else and it's 1 lily max. The only place I get to generate 3 lilies is either in dungeons or in a pug trial where stuff is going badly. Sitting on Assize etc in a bid to try and build up Lilies is self defeating and poor play.

I mentioned this because you kept suggesting that Assize’s cooldown is always 60 seconds while conveniently assuming Aetherflow’s cooldown is always at 45 seconds. Aetherflow’s 60 second cooldown can be lowered to 45 seconds; Assize’s 60 second cooldown can be lowered to 48. Secret of the Lily2 is just an unreliable mention that rarely procs that can honestly be ignored for what it offers to be honest.

The difference here is that optimal play will see a SCH maintain that 45 second Aetherflow for the majority of an encounter. On the flipside, as the standard of play goes up, the WHM will be 'lucky' to see anything less than a 57.6 second Assize.

According to your theoretical bubble even one cast of a free Holy or Raise is more than 10%MP saved

Agreed here, Thin Air is an incredible ability and easily the best new toy that WHM has received in SB. I'm nudging 3.8k in Fractal HM and around 3.3k in Hell's. I'd credit close to 20% of that on Thin Air alone.

[Braven]

Regarding holy/gravity/miasma, i agree that holy is a better spell and might be worth the extra mana cost. However, the fact remains that if you endlessly spam both at the same rate, you will run out of mana faster with Holy. And as a percentage of total party damage, there will not be a significant difference in battle length between scholar spamming miasma 2 and WHM spamming Holy. I mean, warrior can now spam Decimate every 90 seconds for free for over 500 potency with the new beserk. The difference between holy and mausma 2 is peanuts compared to that. Not to even mention what DPS characters are capable of.

Comparing thin air to aetherpact is apples to oranges. The direct comparison is aetherpact to assize since they do the exact same thing (10% mp) but have different possible cooldowns. I have shown that even in the best case, aetherpact will always be better, even if only marginally so. If you want, I will call it a tie.

I also have not mentioned energy drain yet, but whm has no equilivent and it can be used for mana at the cost of healing when that is the best course of action.

The proper comparison for Thin Air is the Fairy since it also provides a bunch of free spell casts that have a direct equilivent in white mage’s toolkit. If we add up all the free embraces (regen) and whispering dawns (medica 2, I’ll consider total potency to account for the 200 upfront heal) that could happen over a 120 second period (Thin Air cooldown), i come up with these numbers:

Regen lasts 21 seconds and has a cost of 840. For 100% uptime, like embrace, you need to cast it 5.71 times. I’ll round down to 5 in this example. That means you are spending an extra 4,200 mp just to refresh regen on the tank. That alone is more than “Raise” costs. Now for Holy, using holy’s cost is not really fair since SCH has no spells anywhere near that expensive so they don’t “need” to recover as much. If we say swift cast is used and you can squeeze in 6 spells of the most expensive spells scholar has, it would be six miasma 2. In reality, spamming an AOE will not be the best spell all the time (usually poor against bosses when mp actually matters, but I will humor you)

1640 x 6 = 9,840 mp

Seems pretty good, but lets now consider the “free” medica 2 version scholar gets with whispering dawn. Medica 2 lasts 30 seconds while whispering dawn has a lower duration, but the overall potency, even including the initial 200 hp of medica 2, is actually a little higher with optimal uses of buffs (rouse with SCH, Larg with Whm).

I will assume a 75% uptime for medica 2 (3 casts). It costs:

2040 x 3 casts = 6,120 mp

4,200 (regens) + 6,120 (medica 2) = 10,320 mp

The free spells of scholar, as you see, can be considered to either be better or worse than Thin Air depending on how often you cast regen and medica 2. In a hard fight where mp might actually matter, they are probably up most of the time on the tank to save you global heals.

The truth is they are roughly the same with mp efficiency and depending how you play and how much healing is needed, either one could end up with better mp management. I think it is pretty clear from the math that white mage is not the often touted “undisputed king of mp management”. That is just hyperbole.

Overall, either one could be the best given the dungeon or trial’s requirements, an based on individual spell choices. Both have the tools in thier kit in order to have no isues with mp if played well. Thin air fits the white mage reactive playstyle and the free fairy regeneration fits the Scholars “plan ahead” playstyle resulting in a very steady mana stream that stays consistent from start to finish, but is a little harder to come back from if you over extend your mp pool or didn’t plan on possible, multiple raises.

Maybe it used to be true before scholors more recent mp cost buffs and the regen mp costs were increased a couple patches ago.

The reason I mentioned Divine Benison not being helped by the Larg. buff is because all of Scholar and AST “shields” are improved by it even if they heal zero actual HP, because of how the shield formula works. So it can benefit non-healing actions too. I often use it that way before pulling since that is also when I am more likely to use Adlo since I have a full mp bar and the start of a battle is when the most damage occurs in dungeons (for bosses, it tends to happen the most near the end). After that buff ends I just coast with oGLDs that don’t benefit, as needed.

[Sebazy]

The proper comparison for Thin Air is the Fairy since it also provides a bunch of free spell casts that have a direct equilivent in white mage’s toolkit.

You're missing a trick here.

The thing that makes Thin Air so mighty is that it's 12 seconds where I literally don't care about MP whatsoever. Thinking of it's sustained value over 2 minutes is completely missing the point, it's an ability that really allows you to unleash as much DPS/HPS as you can squeeze out during that 12 second window. In dungeons I typically align it with PoM and put myself in a situation where I can do nothing but hammer my holy button until everything's dead. For raids, I use it for burst phases to allow me to heal 'inefficiently' (Aka cure III or such) as to allow me and my co healer to get back to DPSing sooner.

Doing double WHM on O4S was a great example of what Thin Air can bring even in a raid. Even with the huge huge damage Almagest would do to us, we pretty much deleted everything it did with 0 mp cost due to how that encounter aligns.

I don't think SCH and WHM are that evenly matched in terms of MP efficiency, rather SCH are better when it comes to the long gradual game whereas if the WHM can get good value out of Thin Air, they can cope with larger (Aka once you can't just Indom and forget about it) bursts of throughput much easier than SCH.

[Braven]

Good points. Thin Air does fit well with the white mage burst/reactive identity and fairy efficiency matches well with Scholars identity as a class that rewards a well paced, planned out “slow and steady” play style.

“Burst” power in general has hidden benefits not shown in simple math comparisons. This is because gradual effects often don’t get full value. For example, an enemy often dies before a damage dot completes. “Regen” isn’t needed between battles, so that “value” is wasted, however you would never use a “burst” ability during down time so that is not wasted. I like how many are now saying warrior was buffed when a day ago they predicted a slight nerf. This is because people are seeing the power of burst opportunity at work. A lot of DPS when you really need it, at the start of battle, is better than a steady DPS that is more spread out and wasted during down time. Same goes with healing and mana usage, I guess.

[VanilleFang]

I dont know... having played through ARR and seeing how useless Cure III was then... Cure III could be a lot worse off than it is now.

Pertaining to people spreading out? You shouldn't be using Cure III outside specific stack mechanics anyway so... just use Medica(II).

[Trunks]

Everytime I see someone use Cure3 it’s a usually a big overheal anyway that your other heals can take care of for less MP.

What is this MP thing you're talking about?

Cure III has a sub-GCD cast time, meaning you don't lose time to latency between casts and have elbow room to reposition or weave abilities. So generally if I need to use a cast time heal, people are going to stack for Cure III or they're going to die. As far as I'm concerned there are only a few conditions under which I'll use Medica over Cure III: (1) when threat is a concern, e.g. Neo, (2) when people are forced to spread for some mechanic or another, (3) I'm a derpturtle and died so I'm low on MP. Besides, it's way better to overheal than to have someone die to 3 points of overkill because they weren't quite topped off, or to risk having to cast something else because Medica's potency wasn't quite enough to get the job done.

This thread is sort of mind-blowing. Cure III is so good that it's a meme to my static.

It… Really isn’t. Good White Mage’s can use the lilies to their advantage instead of ignoring them.

Good WHMs don't get Lilies because they don't proc off of Stone IV, which is what they'll be casting as they use their single-target Abilities to support the meta tank healer: Eos.

[Roll]

I'm not saying that Cure3 is bad, it's just situational. In normal content it doesn't see much use but in savage/extreme it's easier to coordinate with your group for big hits that can make it shine. I remember back in Titan Extreme it was pretty much required but there were only 2 healers back then as well. If content was built around Cure3 then AST/SCH groups would be screwed.

[Roll]

We need a public service announcement telling all DPS to stick together when a white mage is in the party.

Ranged DPS like BLM tend to spread out and not stand by anyone so they can get more casts in. If they stood next to the melee DPS they would constantly have to move for AOE's. And then there's always that one BLM who stands at max distance outside of your AOE heals lol