A swell discussion of subjobs. [per OP: Rappa]

[Uzor]

I'd only see Seveneyes and Goliard Body useful for casting Raises and Hastes =/

 

[Caerloc]

what about protect, shell, -na spells, regen or basically anything that isnt a cure? (I'll admitt i still dont think seveneyes is a great piece simply because the average mp saved is like 2% for the piece but still, there is nothing better to use for pretty much anything that isnt a cure and you can get lucky and get a 8/16 procc)

 

[Uzor]

what about protect, shell, -na spells, regen or basically anything that isnt a cure? (I'll admitt i still dont think seveneyes is a great piece simply because the average mp saved is like 2% for the piece but still, there is nothing better to use for pretty much anything that isnt a cure and you can get lucky and get a 8/16 procc)

Well, I didn't think of Protect, Shell and -na, but for Regen relic body would be better. Although you could use Seveneyes.

 

[Vilurum]

Conserve MP gear is irrelevant to the discussion: it'll give you just as much extra MP savings with either sub, since it's simply a linear increase to proc rate. I can do the math out if anyone doesn't believe me.

I'd say it's safe to say that Conserve MP (the job trait), for a WHM regularly casting stuff (and resting/regenerating), but not going out of their way to be constantly burning MP, probably gives around 10-15 MP a minute on average. So no, it's not a *huge* difference, but it does add up, especially over longer periods of time.

In a nutshell, with /SMN you will almost always (not *quite* always, but almost always - it's harder to spend 2844 MP in 10 minutes with normal WHM MP conservation tactics, than you'd think) net more MP over time than with /BLM, and if you care about such things, you also have a slightly bigger MP pool to work with. Fairly safe to say that *in general*, /SMN wins as far as MP efficiency for doing WHM main stuff and not using your sub for anything but job traits. Not a win by a massive margin, but still a win.

However, for the sake of utility, aside from Aerial Armor (very limited) or carby pulling or something, /SMN loses hands-down: /BLM has several more utility spells for a variety of situations, endgame and otherwise. The only real question is, are those utilities actually going to get *used*? If not, go /SMN. If so, go /BLM.

 

[Courtney]

Well, the original thread was about an idiot whm who didn't understand what was a good subjob and thought that a sub with very very situational use was the best option when it clearly wasn't. The flame was about being kicked for telling the whm /brd wasn't a good option and the shittyness of the leader. The intelligent people were already subbing /smn or /blm, so it's really just about pointing out that /brd actually has some usefullness, albeit rarely. So as long as you're not in one of those very rare situations, as long as you're subbing /blm or /smn you're fine.

Actually, if you go back to the start, you'll see that it started because a WHM/BRD got told to change to WHM/BLM because Conserve MP gave more MP than ballad 1...

 

[Uzor]

With Gjallhorn, a RDM, Sanction, Refresh Ring and WHM AF body, you get close to 2844 MP every 10 min, so in this situation /BLM sub would win out over /SMN

 

[Courtney]

With Gjallhorn, a RDM, Sanction, Refresh Ring and WHM AF body, you get close to 2844 MP every 10 min, so in this situation /BLM sub would win out over /SMN

That would be the 1%

 

[Stouter]

Not entirely correct. Conserve MP procs 25% of the time with no +conserve MP gear or weapons. The amount conserved is also random, ranging from 1/16 to 8/16 of the total amount of MP of the spell used. That's to say, if you use Haste or refresh, it would save anywhere from a minimum of 2(or is it 3 because of rounding?) MP to a maximum of 20 MP.

The spell cost is rounded down, so it's basically the amount saved being rounded up.

40 MP - no CMP
37 MP - 1/16 CMP
35 MP - 2/16 CMP
32 MP - 3/16 CMP
30 MP - 4/16 CMP
27 MP - 5/16 CMP
25 MP - 6/16 CMP
22 MP - 7/16 CMP
20 MP - 8/16 CMP

Conserve MP gear is irrelevant to the discussion: it'll give you just as much extra MP savings with either sub, since it's simply a linear increase to proc rate. I can do the math out if anyone doesn't believe me.

While it is a linear increase, the proportional amount saved varies, although only slightly. It's like haste, while you end up only saving 2% of your base MP spent, with CMP that's a 2.2% savings of your actual MP spent, just like adding 2% haste to 7%.

The point where ballad and refresh come in is that they give you extra MP to use, so you're not relying on your resting to get it all back.

While you would need about 2800 base MP spent in 10 minutes to make up for the MP of /smn, you will get almost 200 of that back from CMP procs, meaning your actual MP spent will only be 2600.

With double ballad, refresh, and noble's/relic body you're getting back 1400 MP over 10 minutes, so you're down to 1200.

With Choco cake (hMP+6, 3 hours and cheap) and a good hMP set you'll be getting 57 MP first tick, then 59, 61, etc (the autorefresh on full yigit set is cancelled out by the loss of relic/nobles body to equip it). That means it would take about 4 ticks of healing every 2 minutes to make up the difference, which is 45 seconds of resting.

Recovering enough MP to make up the difference isn't that hard, especially if you have backup healing. The hard part is spending enough MP for it to actually reach that point.

As for whm casting sleep, they have about an equal skill level to blm when geared up and blm doesn't have trouble sleeping most MP mobs with merits and enfeebling gear.

 

[Hach]

ok typo <_< ignore i thought was talking abt /brd but read it is /smn <_<

 

[Vilurum]

I'll try to remember to do the math out for Conserve MP gear when I get home. (At work for most of the day.) I think it falls along the same lines of statistical presentation, and what you consider to be a baseline, as haste gear.

5% haste is 5% haste, so it decreases your delay by just as much of the original amount whether you're going from 0% to 5% as from 10% to 15%. However, 5% haste is more than 5% of the *already reduced* amount in the 10% to 15% case (since 5/90 > 5/100). But it's really just restatement of the same statistics in a way that makes it look better by presenting relative numbers. The absolute numbers are unchanged regardless.

As with any comparative scientific test, you want to have a controlled fixed baseline for a *meaningful* comparison, and not have the baseline itself keep changing.

 

[Stouter]

Yes, the actual number itself doesn't change, but when you get to the point that you're really piling it on (which doesn't ever happen with CMP so it's much more minor of an effect) you will see a considerable difference. aka with 20% haste, double march, and haste another 5% haste from gear will give you more than 10% more attacks than you would have had without it.

 

[Vilurum]

Indeed, you would in fact get 11.11% more with 60% haste than with 55% haste. I don't deny that relative effectiveness improves drastically the more you stack, but you still can't have a varying baseline for a valid comparison. However, going with a fixed baseline, you have (amount after change) - (amount before change) *absolute* change... which is to say 60%-55% = 5%.

(Basically to get absolute change it's a subtraction and to get relative change it's a division.)

 

[Ewok]

Well, the original thread was about an idiot whm who didn't understand what was a good subjob and thought that a sub with very very situational use was the best option when it clearly wasn't. The flame was about being kicked for telling the whm /brd wasn't a good option and the shittyness of the leader. The intelligent people were already subbing /smn or /blm, so it's really just about pointing out that /brd actually has some usefullness, albeit rarely. So as long as you're not in one of those very rare situations, as long as you're subbing /blm or /smn you're fine.

I'm still never going to sub /smn though unless I need a BP for something; auto-refresh seriously isn't that much better(and that's mostly comparitive, since you can spend enough mp to make conserve MP superior) unless you're standing aroudn doing nothing. Conserve MP can also be strengthened by gear(or just really good luck), but auto-refresh is completely static. I'd seriously love more conserve MP gear for white mage though, the only options are magnetic earring, goliard body, and seveneyes; of those only magnettic is really worth wearing, so I'd love something else that I could wear.

The only advantage to /smn is a very small boost to mp and mp gain rate over conserve MP. /blm still maintains much more utility because you'll actually be casting those spells on occasion as opposed to never as /smn. I have done ES + slow on Khimaira before, so while it's not something you're going to use all the time, it is still something worth having.

Actually the bolded statement is just about pointless, considering equipment with this trait still kicks in if you don't have it already (like getting fast cast from Homam legs). The person going /SMN would still get the bonus from these items. And technically in that case, there are boosts to the auto-refresh, from vermy, the WHM only body, and the ToUA ring (though situational when it kicks in), and of course sanction. Personally, I don't like relying too much on anything that "might" kick in if I don't have to. It's comparable to Haste vs Double Attack (though I do love my Brutal Earring on my BLU, lol)

 

[Bajaratt]

Actually the bolded statement is just about pointless, considering equipment with this trait still kicks in if you don't have it already (like getting fast cast from Homam legs). The person going /SMN would still get the bonus from these items. And technically in that case, there are boosts to the auto-refresh, from vermy, the WHM only body, and the ToUA ring (though situational when it kicks in), and of course sanction. Personally, I don't like relying too much on anything that "might" kick in if I don't have to. It's comparable to Haste vs Double Attack (though I do love my Brutal Earring on my BLU, lol)

No, those aren't enhancements to the auto-refresh trait, they're just additional effects. They don't improve the trait at all, they just give additional traits.