WHM healing question: Use Cure II over Cure?

[Supersnow845]

Here: Cure II is 800 heal potency per GCD and Cure is 500, and Cure II is 0.8 heal potency per MP and Cure I is 1.25.

That means if MP isn't an issue, using Cure II is more optimal since it heals for more per GCD. This is the case most of the time.

The edge cases where Cure I is useful is when MP is an issue, e.g. right after resurrection. If you don't have an instant-cast for whatever reason and just need to top someone off for a raidwide, Cure I is also actually often more useful than Cure II. This happens when you die and lose all your lilies but need to get a DPS topped off before a raidwide so that they survive it. The reason is because they only need a few hundred potencies worth of heal to survive the raidwide, and any extra is wasted (because you have group heals to top everyone off from 1% hp afterwards for example).

When triaging, Cure I can be useful, for example if you just got raised and need to raise your cohealer while making sure the tank doesn't die, and don't have Thin Air for whatever reason. 2400 + 400 MP is plausible but 2400 + 1000 is absolutely not. On other healers, particularly sage and scholar, this is even more important since they don't have Thin Air.

Perfect I like that explanation, it actually provides useful info to the person asking

[Semirhage]

Here: Cure II is 800 heal potency per GCD and Cure is 500, and Cure II is 0.8 heal potency per MP and Cure I is 1.25.

That means if MP isn't an issue, using Cure II is more optimal since it heals for more per GCD. This is the case most of the time.

The edge cases where Cure I is useful is when MP is an issue, e.g. right after resurrection. If you don't have an instant-cast for whatever reason and just need to top someone off for a raidwide, Cure I is also actually often more useful than Cure II. This happens when you die and lose all your lilies but need to get a DPS topped off before a raidwide so that they survive it. The reason is because they only need a few hundred potencies worth of heal to survive the raidwide, and any extra is wasted (because you have group heals to top everyone off from 1% hp afterwards for example).

When triaging, Cure I can be useful, for example if you just got raised and need to raise your cohealer while making sure the tank doesn't die, and don't have Thin Air for whatever reason. 2400 + 400 MP is plausible but 2400 + 1000 is absolutely not. On other healers, particularly sage and scholar, this is even more important since they don't have Thin Air.

Adding to this with less newbie-friendly metaknowledge....

FFXIV has a combat system where your most valuable resource is time. Unless you're spamming expensive heals back to back (and if you need to do this, your party is actively running into the fire), your MP shouldn't be an issue after you get a few MP management tools. It also recovers pretty quickly outside combat. Cooldown timers also aren't usually a huge thing. Most of the healers have strong, free (or at least cheap) heals on cooldowns that let you use them nearly as often as unavoidable damage comes out.

I could go on, but the point is that FFXIV's combat is designed to diminish the importance of resources other than time. When time is your most valuable resource, the thing you're looking to minimize on healing is time spent. MP quickly becomes irrelevant. Cure 2 is head and shoulders better than Cure 1 because it 1. accomplishes the exact same goal, and 2. wastes less time doing so.

[SamSmoot]

Or don't remove it from your bar. I saw somebody take that advice once, and then they loaded into a pre-Cure 2 dungeon and have nothing to heal with without fumbling about with their bars.

This is where I wish we had bar setups that could be keyed to level and job. As healer, I want my party list just to the right of center where I can see and reach it easily, but as DPS, it just gets in the way there, so I move it off to the upper left.
This made for some frantic swapping when I queue as heals and realize it's in the wrong spot.
Solution: I saved the healer layout to slot 2, and put a hudlayout 2 macro on a bar for an instant switch when this happens.

[SamSmoot]

Also don't forget it also requires said tank to have appropriate gear. Though that seems to only come up in leveling duties. Most often the ones at the halfway point to that expansion's level cap. If they're wearing paper armor and using something like an accessory to barely meet the requirements they're going to 100% to dead on 1 pack of mobs faster than your cast bar will fill.

I had a run a few days ago with a super squishy tank, I constantly had to spam Cure II's on him, and he still died several times (On a level 50 run) I didn't even have time to look at his gear. I gave up on healing groups for a few days after that.

[LilimoLimomo]

There's a certain segment of players that are pretty die-hard about never using Cure and only using Cure 2. If you're on the cutting edge doing Extremes and Savages where you'd really like to min-max your DPS, maybe they're worth listening to.

But in all other content, do what you want. In my experience, the leading cause of White Mages with mana problems is overuse of Cure 2; the runner-up is not casting Regen. For the times when Regen alone isn't cutting it, Cure is great, as it's rate of healing-per-MP is more efficient than Cure 2. If you need to do a bigger heal in time crunch, then Cure 2 is great.

But all of that is just my subjective advice. Don't let others tell you how to play. If you kept your party up, then you're doing a great job, and the rest is icing.

[Supersnow845]

There's a certain segment of players that are pretty die-hard about never using Cure and only using Cure 2. If you're on the cutting edge doing Extremes and Savages where you'd really like to min-max your DPS, maybe they're worth listening to.

But in all other content, do what you want. In my experience, the leading cause of White Mages with mana problems is overuse of Cure 2; the runner-up is not casting Regen. For the times when Regen alone isn't cutting it, Cure is great, as it's rate of healing-per-MP is more efficient than Cure 2. If you need to do a bigger heal in time crunch, then Cure 2 is great.

But all of that is just my subjective advice. Don't let others tell you how to play. If you kept your party up, then you're doing a great job, and the rest is icing.

The biggest cause of mana issues on WHM is spamming GCD heals rather than using your wealth of oGCD’s and lilies while doing damage so the encounter is 20% shorter so you don’t have to heal as long

[LilimoLimomo]

The biggest cause of mana issues on WHM is spamming GCD heals rather than using your wealth of oGCD’s and lilies while doing damage so the encounter is 20% shorter so you don’t have to heal as long

I probably should have mentioned that I only ever see WHM mana issues in ARR content, before WHM's have the tools you're talking about. So that's the context in which I was offering advice in.

[Larirawiel]

The right answer is you use neither and spam holy cause stunned enemies that can't deal damage are literally also healing!

It works only if the mobs die fast enough. Because they will become immune to your stuns when you stun them too often with holy.


Cheers