A WHM Debate

Me and Rappa never agreed on this sittuation, and I was always left to assume that he had a better conserve rate than me. :P He swore by /BLM I swore by /SMN. Truth is, BLM, SMN, SCH, and even RDM has its uses. Like Rappa said though, RDM is only if you're going to need to do a lot of dispelling and your the only option. Now that SCH can also Dispell, you can use that only if you're doing something that doesn't require a lot of dispelling. You'd seriously disadvantage yourself if you're playing WHM and using a lot of Dark Arts.

I've been out of the sky/end game scene for a while, but I'm sure a lot of things remain the same.. its really down to what you're doing. If you're farming in sky, escape is nessessary and more often your team will want you to sub blm. If you're popping gods or something of the equivilant and you've got a PLD tank.. Using your SMN buffs is nice and useful. Blinkga, I dont remember if you get stoneskin as sub.. its really been so long. I also use Warp if I'm doing stuff that requires a lot of traveling and what not for simplicity.

I have tested SCH and I'm going to say this ... If you are relying on a BRD refresh, SCH is the cream of the crop on sub choices for long duration activities like meriting, limbus, etc.

I'd say though, if You're relying on a RDM for your refresh.. You might as well put on /SMN (Or BLM if you're of that school of preference). /SCH just shines more with a BRD.

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I will say though, a bit off topic but ontopic... I disagree with you, Lucki. CV is not the best for emergency sittuation and there is nothing wrong with using it regularly. I can use a CV on someone and allow myself to rest a lil longer and continue with my haste cycle. It largely comes down to how comfortable you are with the group you are playing with. If i'm comfortable that they can take another hit i'm going to keep resting in order to keep the fight going longer in a merit sittuation. Now if you're in a sittuation with multiple whms then yes large cures are not the ideal choice as you're going to have a lot of over curing going on. Again, it comes down to what you're doing. Your style might work for you, but I dont think its something that should be put in stone for everyone.
 
Caerloc said:
SMN has never been an never will be better then BLM sub. While its possible for a smn sub to return more mp then blm sub, thats pretty much all it does. And really, whm mp is rarely an issue, there are so many ways to regain mp, 20 mp per minute mor or less is well... rubbish. Its all about the utility. For dynamis, limbus, einherjar and other massmember endgame events you have sleepga, tractor. For harder type HNM's including and pop NM's you have elemental seal, wich is gonna free up your rdm subs to /DRK and /WHM. A whm slow is extremely potent due to whms high mnd.

Now i can see some answers comming right away. "Why are your whms sleeping in dynamis?" "A rdm slow is much better zs0mgwtf" Generally these type of answers comes from lazy people and dumb people. Dont sit back and relax, and let other ppl do as much as possible.

Be as versatile as you possibly can be. Somone woke up a bunch of mobs? Sleep em, dont just stand there with your smn sub?

Your HNM needs elemental seal for slow to even land? Do it, so your rdms can paralyna your 6 melees on the frontlines. Or stun the next gate of hades.

Simply put SMN is the lazy mans out. Be as versatile as possible, not cause you need it, but because you can. Most shitty ls's are shitty cause they always expect other people to do everything.

This goes both ways ofcourse. The rdm is gonna use his need for blm sub as a way out of paralyna or erase duty to.

Trash your smn sub, and only take it out if you really really really have to carby pull something.
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I nearly missed this until another whm asked me to look up another statement on this thread. I find this whole statement pretty bold considering you don't have WHM75 listed into your sig. And I'm not going to state you're incompetant in end-game, because obviously you've got experience and what not... but your blanket statement is pretty much annoying me to no end because I certainly don't consider myself a 'lazy whm'. And pre-SCH, /SMN was very much the best all around end game sub for me. I do understand a lot of strats have possibly changed, but having that /smn allows the whm to cure more, erase more, paralyna more (more = longer).. and thus your rdm doesnt need to be doing that and can have their /blm up to do what you say the lazy whm should be doing.

Havent tested it myself, but whm is telling me right now he can land repose on tiamat without an ES, so I'm guessing your strats are just different than the ones I learned. I'm also going in a shot in the dark that your plds no longer sub War and thus dont have a need for blinkga. Either way, I'd rather a WHM be focused on healing, na spells, erase, etc than focusing on whether or not the RDM got his slow to stick.
 
When I was in sky I was always told to use /blm (I had used /smn up until then) and have been using it ever since. No, I don't have sch leveled so I guess some of you would consider me a gimp, but does 3 extra mp out of 100 really make that big of a difference? That's an honest question, I really don't know the answer.
 
where are you getting 3/100?
 
it comes from my mistake when I forgot that sch comes with conserve mp just like blm so sch sub saves a full 10% more mp than /blm from just using light arts and nothing else.
 
Sandria said:
I nearly missed this until another whm asked me to look up another statement on this thread. I find this whole statement pretty bold considering you don't have WHM75 listed into your sig. And I'm not going to state you're incompetant in end-game, because obviously you've got experience and what not... but your blanket statement is pretty much annoying me to no end because I certainly don't consider myself a 'lazy whm'.
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Beside the fact that i have, or had, till it was sold, a character with 75 whm, brd, rdm and smn, it doesnt take a genious to understand how any job in ffxi works. It's never rocket science. I also had a character with 75 thf, nin, rdm, blm and a character with 75 war, nin, rng and pld, all with top notch equipment including hauteclaires, dalmaticas and so on. And having built a bulk part of Integrals alliances for a very very long time i can tell you that never not once have i asked whm to come any other sub then blm.

Sandria said:
And pre-SCH, /SMN was very much the best all around end game sub for me. I do understand a lot of strats have possibly changed, but having that /smn allows the whm to cure more, erase more, paralyna more (more = longer).. and thus your rdm doesnt need to be doing that and can have their /blm up to do what you say the lazy whm should be doing.
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Im not sure how you claim smn is letting you cure all that much more. Is it the 20 mp a minute? You barely score a cureII extra a minute? Im not sure if you are suggesting that the whm cross-paralynas and erases (wich he cant) over the entire alliance, in wich case i question how you wanna call that being able to cure more and more efficiently, or if you wanna stick a whm into all 3 partys? In wich case i would still have to question the efficency.


Sandria said:
Havent tested it myself, but whm is telling me right now he can land repose on tiamat without an ES, so I'm guessing your strats are just different than the ones I learned. I'm also going in a shot in the dark that your plds no longer sub War and thus dont have a need for blinkga. Either way, I'd rather a WHM be focused on healing, na spells, erase, etc than focusing on whether or not the RDM got his slow to stick.
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Tiamat is a joke mob i can kill in my sleep with 8-9 members. That wasnt really what i was getting at. And if you ever find yourself in an alliance that still uses aerial armour rotations i suggest you tele out of there as fast as you can, but thats just me. But i would rather my whms are able to both handle their cures and stick a slow in, or sleep an add, or bind it, rather then to sit on his ass with his useless smn buffs should something unexpected happen. But thats just me.


Ps. I rather se drk sub then smn sub even.
 
Caerloc we all understand you want whms to /blm for sleepga in situations you need it. But to play their job fully WHMs need another SJ.
 
Any Whm can play well with any of the mage subs. Every Whm has their own preference. Some do an amazing jobs as /Blm, some as /Smn, and some as /Sch. It's just a matter of finding which you prefer/find more useful.

Nothing will come from Whms going back and forth about how which sub is better.


Spoiler:
All Whms who use /sch and /smn are wrong btw. /Blm ftw
 
To Caerloc: I'm not going to continue this debate with you on the grounds that I have possibly been gone too long; and thus a lot of stratagies/setups have changed. I still stand by /SMN being more mana efficent than /BLM, but I also believe a WHM should have multiple subs to be able to accomidate the sittuations they are in. I just have yet to be in a sittuation where the RDM wasn't landing slow, and the BLMs weren't landing the sleep. What you consider lazy, I consider efficiency. But, I can see your point on if you need a WHM to be able to do those said tasks having them able is efficient.


To Realia: I wouldn't say that makes you anymore gimp than a lot of other WHMs who haven't leveled SCH, and I know really good WHMs who haven't leveled it. Be it time, or whatever the case might be. If you have the time though, I would level it at. Hardest levels on it to me were the 1-10, but once you get beyond that you shouldn't have huge problems being able to party as you can fit a DD or a healing role.
 
Realia said:
When I was in sky I was always told to use /blm (I had used /smn up until then) and have been using it ever since. No, I don't have sch leveled so I guess some of you would consider me a gimp, but does 3 extra mp out of 100 really make that big of a difference? That's an honest question, I really don't know the answer.
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10 out of 100. And every 2 minutes, up to 50/100 (strategem). Tbh, if /sch had gravity, I would use it to solo puddings, since it's far more mp efficient then /rdm. I'm trying to test blm/sch in salvage, but have yet to have both SJ and JA active on any of those runs.

Back to the main point, light/dark arts both take your enfeebling magic from a C rating to a B rating, tack on some enfeebling magic gear, and you should be able to hit base A rating (I know blm can). This should help you land sleeps/slows/etc more often then every 10 mins (ES), excluding mobs that a rdm cant land them on w/o ES.
 
This topic again, eh? I never got WoTG, and thus never got the chance to test out SCH. However in regards to BLM vs SMN...

BLM sub is more flexible with duties, being able to sleep/bind as well as elemental seal if needed (of course enfeeb merits help a lot with this...) as well as gives Conserve MP which would help lower costs from time to time.

SMN sub gives more mp, more MND, and autorefresh. This will generally help keep your mp capped (or near capped), however serves little purpose otherwise and leaves you very close to useless beyond Repose, should you get a bad link and Bard timers are up. If this happens you typically burn a lot of mp - much more than you would had you subbed BLM - trying to keep the group alive.


In my opinion, /BLM is better if only because it allows more room for error. An extra sleep only costs a few MP, but keeping people alive during a bad link typically costs a few hundred. Keeping mp high as /BLM is rarely an issue in good parties anyways, so...
 
I honestly haven't seen a WHM sub /smn during endgame in a very, very, very long time. Sure it's just an observation, but most WHM I've seen at endgame have been subbing BLM until SCH has come along. Again this is just a observation, but when fighting things that are heavily MP costly, like Dark Ixion for example, I've seen a WHM/SCH have the upper hand.
 
mdkuser said:
Caerloc we all understand you want whms to /blm for sleepga in situations you need it. But to play their job fully WHMs need another SJ.
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Not really. SMN offers nothing in the way of versatility, BLM and SCH does. The ONLY thing it offers is a possibility to carby-pull in the extremely few situations you need it. And even then, you might as well ask a brd or something to sub smn. I will give you a point tho, i still think a whm should have blm, rdm, sch, and drk lvled to 37, so they need more subjobs to play their job fully.
 
Sandria said:
To Caerloc: I'm not going to continue this debate with you on the grounds that I have possibly been gone too long; and thus a lot of stratagies/setups have changed. I still stand by /SMN being more mana efficent than /BLM, but I also believe a WHM should have multiple subs to be able to accomidate the sittuations they are in. I just have yet to be in a sittuation where the RDM wasn't landing slow, and the BLMs weren't landing the sleep. What you consider lazy, I consider efficiency. But, I can see your point on if you need a WHM to be able to do those said tasks having them able is efficient.
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Its not as much that i really need it, as i've always wanted all of my players to be able to do everything its possible for them to do. Thats the only way to play top-tier.
 
Ewok said:
10 out of 100. And every 2 minutes, up to 50/100 (strategem). Tbh, if /sch had gravity, I would use it to solo puddings, since it's far more mp efficient then /rdm. I'm trying to test blm/sch in salvage, but have yet to have both SJ and JA active on any of those runs.

Back to the main point, light/dark arts both take your enfeebling magic from a C rating to a B rating, tack on some enfeebling magic gear, and you should be able to hit base A rating (I know blm can). This should help you land sleeps/slows/etc more often then every 10 mins (ES), excluding mobs that a rdm cant land them on w/o ES.
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Guess I misread that, thanks for the clarification. :)

And when I get the time (which should be this week actually) I'll try my best to level sch to 37 and at the very least test it out.
 
Just got home from a trip, its 7 AM, I'm tired, and thus I will keep it brief.

A WHM need all subs. Shit's situational.

For versatility, yes, BLM beats WHM. However, purely conserving MP, SMN > BLM big time. But now with the introduction of SCH, SCH beats them both. Light Arts gives a permanent 10% MP reduction and cast time reduction, as well as a Conserve MP (which can also kick in on Penury, btw). So not only does it have Conserve MP, thus giving the MP efficiency of BLM, it also has a permanent 10% MP reduction, which keeps up well with a SMN's Auto Refresh. To top it all off, it also have Penury (and that other ability which slips my mind due to me being tired), as well as Sublimation. While Sublimation is VERY situational, in that its full potential only really get used if you don't have a RDM, it is a very nice ability to have, especially when low-manning things where you might not have a RDM.

Personally, I prefer SCH over all other subs as a general sub. However, all subs do have their uses. /BLM is good if you have to help sleep stuff, warp, tractor etc. SMN is good if you don't get ability but might get SJ (only really applies to Salvage, hence SMN takes a back-seat). SCH is good in all other situations.

Good night
 
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