The Unofficial "Why is this still a thing" Thread

[Tridus]

Why would you bring Stoneskin back? Divine Benison is a superior version of it. Honestly, it sounds like you just want to be playing 2.x.

Protect was changed for a reason: if it actually matters and only WHM has it, WHM is now mandatory for progression. That's not a good thing.

[RiyahArp]

Why would you bring Stoneskin back? Divine Benison is a superior version of it. Honestly, it sounds like you just want to be playing 2.x..

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

[Tint]

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

it's true, you can't compare stoneskin and benison that easily. they are different skills with different purposes. however, if i had to choose i would always take benison.

it's not stoneskin - but it's by far the better skill (at least after they removed the lily requirement)

Protect was changed for a reason: if it actually matters and only WHM has it, WHM is now mandatory for progression. That's not a good thing.

i am not too sure if it was a good reason... SCH and AST would still had the physical protect and on top of that super virus, disable, fey covenant, sacred soil and collective unconscious (the bubbles do stack, don't they?). enough tools to cover the lack in magic defense for those raid busters...

[Miste]

i am not too sure if it was a good reason... SCH and AST would still had the physical protect and on top of that super virus, disable, fey covenant, sacred soil and collective unconscious (the bubbles do stack, don't they?). enough tools to cover the lack in magic defense for those raid busters...

Not denying those were all great abilities, but we no longer have some of those and even if we did some fights have a high amount of magic AoE raid damage.

Have you been in O6S or O8S? The amount of AoE magic damage going out is high so the tools right now wouldn't cover it all.

You also have to take into account SCH using all their stacks on Sacred Soil means they can't use it on Lustrate/Excog/Indom/Energy Drain. So yeah they can pop a Sacred Soil every 30s to try to make up for the fact they don't have Proshell, but they are losing other tools and/or MP/DPS.

Collective Unconscious has a 90s cooldown not nearly short enough to handle all the AoE damage in some of the savage turns. It also has a server tick issue to proc the mitigation/regen which can cause ASTs to loose up to 3 GCDs trying to proc it. So it is a clunky ability and has downsides of being forced to channel it and unable to cast or move and also losing GCDs for other healing and/or DPS.

Also none of these tools are a cast it and forget it type thing like Protect is (minus death and having to recast once in awhile). So other healers would have to use more resources and waste healing and DPS uptime to mitigate.

If AST and SCH no longer had Proshell (which we have right now) then likely any comp without a WHM would be at a pretty big disadvantage since the group as a whole would take a lot more overall AoE damage throughout the fight.

They could just make Protect a spell every healer gets instead of it taking up a role skill slot tho....but then again Esuna really needs that too.

[RiyahArp]

it's true, you can't compare stoneskin and benison that easily. they are different skills with different purposes. however, if i had to choose i would always take benison.

it's not stoneskin - but it's by far the better skill (at least after they removed the lily requirement)

I'd rather stoneskin, if just for Eureka. One of the worst things this game is doing is not allowing for many abilities to go beyond your party, and it really cramps the game up.

[VanilleFang]

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

Lmao. You're joking right?

The duration on SS was generally pointless since the shield was usually destroyed long before it would expire.

It being applied outside combat was more a nuisance than anything. I had never seen SS save someone at the start of a fight.

SS2 is not the same as SS so using that as a reason that SS was better is laughable.

What does DB bring instead? It's oGCD and costs 0 MP. SS had a cast time of 3s, meaning it had a longer cast time than the GCD. It was also fairly expensive to cast, in terms of MP. DB also has a stronger shield.

So yes DB is superior to SS.

[Ghishlain]

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

I was a proponent for Divine Benison being better than Stoneskin even before the Lily change and it's even better now that is has no Lily cost. A 0MP oGCD that provides more mitigation than non-traited Stoneskin meant it would be used significantly more often than Stoneskin. Stoneskin suffered from being inefficient when Cure II would cast faster and provide more HP than Stoneskin's eHP - especially if the target was a non-tank. Duration of Stoneskin means nothing when most of the buff wouldn't even last beyond 10 seconds on a tank.

Divine Benison fixed everything that made Stoneskin horribly inefficient and gave a very powerful tool to the WHM kit in the process. I believe that Divine Benison is miles ahead of the old Stoneskin iterations.

[Tridus]

Stoneskin has a much longer duration, can be applied out of combat, and had an aoe form that could be used prepull. It also can be used on someone outside your party. Benison is not superior, not by a longshot.

Benison is a more powerful shield with no cast time costing no MP.
Stoneskin was a slow cast, smaller shield, costing lots of MP.

Out of combat shielding was worth removing, because the first party wide AoE takes it off and taking 24 seconds in combat to reapply it to the entire party is silly. It doesn't matter how long it lasts when Benison lasts more than long enough to eat whatever mechanic is incoming anyway.

The idea that being forced to stand still for 3s to spend significant MP for a weaker shield is BETTER is... something.

It punishes death in battle.

It punishes the healer by making them take a role skill they'll never use unless someone else dies, on top of having to raise them? Yay?