Cure 3 Blues

[Braven]

I am not saying whm is bad at mp management; just that it is not any better.

Basically, free fairy spells make up for Thin Air, and quicken aetherpact make up for lily potential and assize. More expensive holy make up for more expensive adlo. It all balances out to roughly the same in the end so calling white mage much better at mp management just doesn’t line up with the facts and is hardly the defining feature of whm.

The only class I have ever ran out of mp with is AST, and that was due to being greedy royal roading Ewers and then bad RNG finding one when needed. With balanced play and proper use of the duration extension ability, they also have roughly the same mp economy as WHM and SCH.

The true strength of white mage, that others don’t have too, is powerful, sustained AOE heal spamming with indugence and cure 3 (though not much actually requires it) and the strongest AOE attacks (Aero 2+Holy Spam)

[Ilyrian]

Cure 3 is amazing.
There are numerous times when it is unparalleled in its greatness. If that random ranged doesn't want to get in on the love that's their fault, not the spells.
Leave Cure 3 alone!

[Braven]

Cure 3 is amazing.
There are numerous times when it is unparalleled in its greatness. If that random ranged doesn't want to get in on the love that's their fault, not the spells.
Leave Cure 3 alone!

We need a public service announcement telling all DPS to stick together when a white mage is in the party. If the meta moves even more toward melee dps, I guess this won’t be a problem hitting everyone with Cure 3. Given the monk buffs and summoner nerfs, it us looking more likely.

Note: 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. We want to use our best spell, even if it might be overkill. Please help us out so we don’t have to use the whimpy medica 1!

[Ilyrian]

We need a public service announcement telling all DPS to stat clumped when a white mage is in the party. If the meta moves even more toward melee dps, I guess this won’t be a problem. Given the monk buffs and summoner nerfs, maybe this will happen.

Note: I don’t really want Cure 3 changed. I just want players in general to be away that spreading out for no reason makes things harder on healers; particularly white mage. We want to use best spell. Please help us out so we don’t have to use the slower, weaker medica 1!

When you get your WHM into current end game content you'll see that people generally do (in PF groups anyway).
I don't think there's anything more satisfying as landing cure 3 just as Meteor hits in o4 for example.

[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).

[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