Gear recommendationsFollow

Casting time:
As far as casting speed goes, Cure cast time merits and Cure Clogs will already have you near the cap when you couple it along with either Fast Cast from /RDM or Light Arts from /SCH. Cure Clogs have gotten rather expensive nowadays (at least on my server) but they are worth it, IMO.

To pad it, I would advise getting Orison Locket and Orison Pantaloons +1/2. The locket gives pure Fast Cast, not just Cure cast, so it helps all your spells rather than just Cures. (Aceso's Choker is harder/more expensive to obtain, and kinda overdoes it anyway nowadays; I wouldn't bother getting this if you have Cure Clogs.) Orison Pantaloons +2 in particular are one of the best all-around pieces of WHM gear around IMO, and I highly advise going after these as soon as you can. They also give a boost in cast speed to more than just Cures, and they become that much better if you've capped your Cure potency (see below)


Cure potency:
Thanks to the 22% Cure potency magian staff and a means to easily activate 10% Medicine Ring latent in Abyssea without requiring any extraneous gear, much less effort is needed to cap Cure potency. You're already at 32% with just these two items.

10% Noble's Tunic is essentially a standard. You can get slightly better here, but let's just assume 10% for a total of 42%.

7% Orison Cap +1 isn't too hard to get and puts you at 49%. If you bother to +2 it (10%), congrats; you're already at cap with just 4 pieces of gear.

Beyond that, the only real reason to pursue more Cure potency is if you're trying to get rid of the Cure potency body so that you can use Orison Briault Bliaud (goddamn your inconsistent naming of WHM bodies, SE) +1/2 instead for a stronger Cureskin. There's a few things you can get that conveniently add up to 10%:

3% Orison Cape
2% Orison Earring
5% Serpentes set

Edited, Mar 15th 2011 12:05am by Fynlar

Just click off your HP buff (this is assuming you're in Abyssea)

Your max HP will drop down but the buff will immediately get reapplied, bringing it back up and leaving you "injured"




I guess, yeah.




What cap?

+Cure potency caps at 50%, which probably requires a total of 51% on your gear (for the same reason why the 25% gear haste cap actually needs 26% to cap, and why achieving -100% spell interruption actually needs -102%)

Nope. All it would allow you to do is potentially take off some potency gear and stick MND in there or something instead.

However, that's not worth using an atma slot on, IMO. You would more than likely get better bang for your buck by simply using the atma slot for a MND atma instead (and I still would rather just use a Refresh atma instead of that)

To put things in some perspective:

- You can put on a Cure potency atma (+10%), or a +MND atma (+50 assuming you're not already using Atma of the Undying; +30 if you are, or don't have that atma)
- You can put on a Cure potency body (+10% at minimum, up to +14% if you're lucky/rich), or a +MND body (Augur's Jaseran has MND+13; I don't know if there's any that go higher than that, but probably not by much if there are)

Simply put, if you really wanted to have Cure potency in one of those and MND in the other, you'd be better off with getting MND from the atma.


Summary: +Cure potency atma is pretty much never worth using unless you can't reach the cap via your gear, which is something decent WHMs should never be guilty of nowadays.

Edited, Mar 15th 2011 12:07am by Fynlar

Forgive my ignorance, but don't you have to be <75% of your base HP to activate the rings? I know some have been tested (like sorc) and shown that simply clicking off your cruor buff will NOT proc the latent, as it will drop you down to "100%".

For instance, if you have 1000 HP normally, and HP cruor buff pushes you to 2000 HP, clicking off the buff and dropping you to 1000/2000 would still be seen as 100% by the rings.

Unless Medicine Ring is unique and does not work this way, which is pretty much my question to begin with.

Wow really? That's certainly good info to know. Sorc ring I know for sure, from testing it myself, as well as seeing tests done by Rog (screenshots included). Makes me wonder how the others work now, since I had always assumed they were all the same so I avoided using them (as well as advised others not to as well. Oops)

This is dangerously misleading by the way Fyn, I don't know if you're unaware of how cast speed works or if this was just poorly worded but Cure Cast merits, Cure Clogs, and /RDM won't put you anywhere near the casting speed cap (assuming there even is one).

Of course it's basically impossible to test for certain, but after years of experimenting with various cast speed pieces I've come to the conclusion that there are several different cast speed stats, not just one. "Fast Cast" is one, and "Cure Cast" and "Healing Cast" may also be separate stats as well. I think they compound. So for example, if you have 30% fast cast and 30% cure cast, you'd end up with 70% * 70% = 49% total cast speed.

I've heard rumors of a 50% cap on fast cast... this may be true, but if it is, then it only applies to the vanilla "fast cast" and not to the other types. For example you could get 50% fast cast plus 20% cure cast, and you would end up with significantly more than a 50% total reduction in cast time for cures.

I've done some simple testing that, while it doesn't reveal the finer mechanics, does at least prove that I'm not just pulling your leg. (A lot of this is reposted from my previous posts on various forums.)

I did some testing first with only Light Arts (10%), Cure Clogs (15%), Pantaloons+2 (12%), and my merits (20%). The total if you add them up is 57%. So if there is indeed an overall cap of 50%, I should be well past it. I did multiple casts of various long spells, and they tended to finish around the 53% mark on the spell cast gauge.

Next, I added more equipment:
Orison Locket (5%)
Loquacious Earring (2%)
Winged Wand (2%)
Veela Cape (2%)
Ebur Bliaut (Healing Cast Time -3%)
Incantor Stone (2%)

This adds another 16%, giving me 23% fast cast, 35% cure cast, and 15% healing cast (73% total if you add them up). After doing this, my casts now finish around the 42% mark on the spell cast gauge. I realize that eyeballing the spell cast gauge is not exactly scientific, but the reduction was over 10%... it's hard to chalk that up to latency and/or human error, it's a pretty huge difference.

If my theory of compounding is correct, then the above setup would give me 0.77 * 0.65 * 0.85 = 0.425425, or 42.5% cast time, which matches exactly with my observation. If you do the same for the first test, you get 0.9 * 0.65 * 0.88 = 0.5148, which also almost exactly matches my observation.

My pet theory is that each of the three stats are separate, each compounds with the others, each has a cap of 50%, and there is likely a cap on the total cast speed of 80%. That's just what I'm inclined to believe, but it makes sense if you think about it. Haste was done exactly in this manner. There's a cap for haste from equipment for example, which is 25%, but by combining different kinds of haste it's possible to reduce delay by as much as 80% at which point you hit the hard cap on delay reduction.

P.S. Adding fast cast atma makes my casts finish even faster, well within the 30% range on the spell cast gauge. Celerity takes it even further, finishing the cast at around 25%. Don't be afraid to stack cast speed stats until the cows come home, WHM can cast stuff incredibly fast with all the gear that's available now. I feel like if I was casting much faster, the spell would finish before I started it.

i would much rather keep the medicine ring on and click the buff than have to use up 2-3 other equip slots to get the same effect when i could be using them for MP/casting speed/MND.

also, very intersting information that casting time dosent cap at 50%

Yep, all that Cure 5/6 spam on the superpimped melee surely pulls gobs of hate.

In all honesty, even if you did pull hate (which generally only happens when there's just one melee on the mob and the mob does a hate reset), WHMs can probably take the hits better than most of those melee can. This is assuming, of course, that your WHM has a proper PDT set. It does, right?

Edited, Mar 15th 2011 4:21pm by Fynlar

Depending on what your healing needs actually are, I would just advise to be very careful in choosing when to have a DNC act as main healer.

Some things to consider:

1) Waltz recast timers. (The biggest factor) Unlike Cures, once you use any Waltz, it locks you out from ALL Waltzes for a certain period of time. As far as I am aware, there is only one piece of equipment that can lower Waltz recast time, and that is the appropriately augmented helm from A Moogle Kupo d'Etat (lowers recast by 2 seconds)

2) Enmity. DNC can dump a "Cure V" but it does not come with the same enmity reduction as Cure V does. Make sure the DNC can handle eventually pulling hate.

3) If you are having the DNC melee as well (instead of relying solely on Regain atmas), be aware of the possibly heightened rate of TP move usage by the enemy.

Edited, Mar 15th 2011 4:32pm by Fynlar

For PDT, I've only got Terra's Staff and Twilight Torque. I've not invested much into PDT/MDT sets yet, I'm slowly working on them.

For example, during a Grauberg caturae shout group, we had an alliance of people (no brews), I often pulled hate on him with just a PLD and MNK tank. Of the 3 or 4 WHMs there, I was curing about the same, if not more, than the others, and took hate the least.

Now, I agree this isn't an every-day occurrence for most people, but on Failfor, there are a lot of sub-par players. Capped -enmity has helped a tremendous amount in these groups.

Parser? >_>

It's not just for damage you know

how in the world do you get 22/tic?

1 for nobles
10 for MM
3 for refresh
wheres the other 8?

Sirona's isn't a 'crap' ring. Its almost a freebie MND ring. Medicine Ring is almost a worthless piece of junk these days as its easy to cap out your cure potency without it. And killing the unicorn Karkadann for the locket is more difficult than killing Marvin for your backpiece...

Orison Head +2 = 10%
Surya's Staff +2 = 22%
Orison cape = 3%

Then you have a ton of choices without even touching the body slot should you want to use Orison.... Orison earring/Serpentes set/roundel earring/augur's hands/scenario pants.... I use

Orison Head+2 = 10%
Surya's Staff +2 = 22%
Orison Cape = 3%
Roundel Earring = 5%
Facio Bliaud = 10% (I have an 11% one without refresh and working on a 13% to ditch the backpiece)

That's 50% right there. I could add in serpentes which is more achievable than a roundel these days. I don't use my cure pot pants for WHM anymore at all... The Orison earring and the +1 head... are both easy to get. Why on earth would you use a medicine ring? Augur's gloves just give you more flexibility.

Why anyone wants to voluntarily remove their HP inside Abyssea I don't know... As for refresh Atma, I use Minnikin only 90% of the time. Oh and /SCH.


Edited, Mar 16th 2011 11:16am by eldelphia

the whm mule will never be touched from melee, maybe only from the bosses AE elemental attacks, which will be nullified from carols 1, 2, barspell and +100 atma. id rather keep 75%hp to keep potency capped and speed very high than be forced to use back, ear, hands and feet for the same effect, just around 20% slower

now after i finish twashtar and my use for the WHM mule changes, i'll either consider changing, or just suck up the loss of potency and replace the ring with something else. the sirona's ring is a freebie because of skill, vit and mnd. obviously its a piece meant for pld macro, but this is great for a mule where i dont want to spend another 780k for 3 more mnd that will have a negligible effect on cures.

because using the serp. set and the orison cape/earring to make up for the potency makes me lose the cure clogs, veela cape a fast cast earring whose name i cant think of at the moment.

But thats exactly the situation, the mule is for 1 purpose, and thats to help me lowman glavoid, orthrus and iza...popparazi..wamoura guy. all 3 are pansies as long as you have high resistance, which both/all 2-4 people participating will be near or above 300 for earth or fire(depending on which we are spamming at the momemnt)

WHM is mainly for curebombing me on war when i am fel cleaving (with a highly defensive setup for safety)for key items for pops. other than that, during NMs it will be for emergency cures for me on DNC (high speed, high potency), and putting up barspells, thus very little risk of being attacked or harmed since these NMs dont have any strong attacks that arent elemental, or reset hate.

if somewhere down the line i use this WHM for a pt or a NM that dosent fit this scenario, a more practical set will be used.

dont get me wrong, i really, really appreciate all of you guys' input, but this whm has a very specific use


Edited, Mar 16th 2011 2:01pm by AsashinoTsuki

There's no reason you have to lose those items, they only need to be equipped for the start of the cast. Just put a <wait 1> at the end of your /ma "Cure" macro line and swap into Serp set or whatever mid-cast.


I think Med Ring is just fine for your purposes then. However, I feel very strongly that a dedicated WHM should never make heavy use of this ring. WHMs function just fine without capped cure potency, this is a shortcut best avoided. Capped potency is awesome but a dedicated WHM should not intentionally run around with 60% HP, that is moronic.

Ask yourself this, how badly are you hurting for MP that you need your cures to be 7% more efficient? The difference between +40% and +50% is 7%. 7% is a lot in this game, but again, are you running out of MP? Are you struggling to Cure fast enough because your Cures need to be bigger? If not, what is that last 10% really getting you? Answer: Nothing but a stroke of the ego.

I saw the logic for Med Ring pre-Abyssea, even though I haven't used one in years. Efficiency was a big deal back then. These days, not so much! Even outside Abyssea now you can get 9mp/tick solo on WHM/RDM. Efficiency just isn't as clutch as it used to be. It's more about general survivability and reaction times these days.

Ok, I'm done ranting on that for now. I'll stop.

I don't really agree with this. Having higher Cure potency is not really a matter of saving MP (although, saving MP *is* an effect of having higher potency); it's more about being able to heal back more HP with the same amount of time/casts.

I've had instances where I've struggled with keeping someone's HP up with constant Curespam (read: trying to fight NMs with just one WHM that would go a LOT smoother with two of them; most recent example I've had of this is the timed pop Goblin in Grauberg... I'm sure there are better examples). In these cases, my MP was not an issue at all. It was simply being able to churn out sufficient HP healed.

I would understand your viewpoint more if we were talking about outside Abyssea; max HP would be a lot lower, and most Cures would end up being "overcures" anyway. Inside Abyssea though, max HP is so much higher that you really want to max potency to keep up with it.



Well yeah, but it's not like clicking your HP buff off again is hard >_>

Edited, Mar 16th 2011 11:20pm by Fynlar

It's not that anything can generally kill you from the initial aoe it's the hate reset afterwards that can make a situation go sour in almost all cases. You should also be able to keep up all buffs if you time properly after TP moves. Almost no reason you can't keep everything up that doesn't en-dispel, or full dispel every other tp move.

Auspice kinda has a place when you have a 0-1 atma, no food, uncapped tank solo DDing the mob down... Gotta love hearing "I can't hit this @#%^ing thing!" xD

Also Fyn, are you actually sure that clicking off the HP boost while in curepot set is sufficient to proc Medic Ring, or is that just conjecturing? My experiences with Sorc Ring say that that's not nearly enough, and since the difference between Sorc Ring and Medic Ring have to do with how convert HP to MP factor in, Medic should be in the same boat.

That's just what concerned me lol. To me, the 'Wisdom of Crowds' theory doesn't really apply when said crowd generally can't be expected to wiki the map of the area they're in, much less fire up excel, a calculator, or spellcast.

On the topic at hand, I still don't like Medic because one can nearly-or-fully cap cure pot without it, and having a higher idle HP is advisable when there is likely no support system, and a dead WHM can be a fatal setback. I've never thought, "I wish I had more cure pot" during a strenuous situation. At least, not 10% more.

I guess I'll have to add another bullet point to the list of reasons SE should pull the stick out of their butt and patch the Sorc Ring. If it suddenly glitched and gave 100 MAB, they'd fix that in an SE heartbeat (3 irl days), but somehow the item performing worse than intended is A-O-K.

Edited, Mar 20th 2011 7:45am by tertoonetwothreefour

Well, like I've said, I haven't done exhaustive testing on the sorc ring because like I said, I don't use it in Abyssea. I can say though that regardless of whatever is buffing your HP, as long as you can type <hpp> and see something less than 76%, your medicine ring should be working.

Weird fact: If you're within the medicine ring proc threshold and you cast Cura/Curaga on yourself such that you get cured over the threshold, the HP restored to you will receive the 10% boost, but it will not for everyone else that it hits with the AoE. >_>



If I'm having zero trouble mopping up the damage anyway whether the move gets used 6 times or 7 times (this is about the difference having Auspice up will make, IF it even makes a difference at all), does it really matter?



Because it's not worth the risk of being caught in said Supermove 3000, medicine ring or not.

Also, because seeing more of the move is usually not that much of a problem. If you can deal with it once, you can usually deal with it multiple times.

When a spell, that is aoe, lasts 3-5 minutes there isn't enough reason that you couldn't have spent 5 seconds going in to reapply.

It really isn't hard to time yourself right after a tp move to run in and get buffs up. Your creating more work for yourself by actually doing less. You won't be caught in Supermove 3000 because they will not have the TP to use another. Unless of course your feeding them godly levels of TP. But I hear there are traits, gear, abilities, and spells for that issue...

Yeah, there is - the effect is too minimal to bother. It also takes a little more than 5 seconds to get in, cast the spell, and get out of range.



Disagree. Not having to move at all on WHM makes playing it about as easy as it gets, especially when I'm dual boxing it and can't give it my full attention (very common)



Except they often do. At least, the mobs I fight do. I don't know about what kind of piss ants you're fighting, but chances are they're not using anything threatening enough to bother with things like Auspice either.

I wouldn't say "surprisingly few" NMs have Regain, because I've been regularly "surprised" at how many NMs I've encountered that seemed too insignificant to have Regain actually DO have it. I guess that's a matter of perspective though.

As for the latter bit though, yes, absurdly high STP is more often the issue.

Apply whatever numbers you want; bottom line is, I very often notice the exact same number of TP moves used by the mob over the course of the entire fight whether or not I bother to cast Auspice. In many cases (on the mobs that matter), this is due to either Regain or massive amounts of STP or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, the effect is minimal (Subtle Blow is subtle, as the saying goes) on these kinds of mobs.

As for your perceived "challenge", I really don't give two sh*ts whether you're able to keep up all the silly buffs or not. If you have no problem with it, great. I find that people are generally in more danger of dying when I worry about keeping them up rather than when I do not, so I generally don't bother. Again, the whole reason I'm there on WHM in the first place is so those uber TP moves aren't a hassle to deal with.