Hey SE

[Caestus]

And as far as standard merit parties at Colibri Camp go, if I'm asked to pick between a WHM (with nobles tunic and /SMN) and a RDM (without A.Body or AF2 Hat), I'd pick the WHM. [...]

To be honest, I think most WHM have problems out-lasting RDMs simply because they fail to grasp the concept of both how to be efficient on MP and to choose the right sub.

/cue "I like the Auto-Refresh and more max MP" WHM/SMN.

Yeah, those 20MP/minute are gonna make a difference.

i personally do like the sub SMN mostly for when i'm playing 2 characters tho. i toss out Regen3 and a few cure 3's maybe a 5 here and there. MP lasts for a while. Elvaan WHM with over 1k MP is nice.

[Rai]

And as far as standard merit parties at Colibri Camp go, if I'm asked to pick between a WHM (with nobles tunic and /SMN) and a RDM (without A.Body or AF2 Hat), I'd pick the WHM. [...]

To be honest, I think most WHM have problems out-lasting RDMs simply because they fail to grasp the concept of both how to be efficient on MP and to choose the right sub.

/cue "I like the Auto-Refresh and more max MP" WHM/SMN.

Yeah, those 20MP/minute are gonna make a difference.

i personally do like the sub SMN mostly for when i'm playing 2 characters tho. i toss out Regen3 and a few cure 3's maybe a 5 here and there. MP lasts for a while. Elvaan WHM with over 1k MP is nice.

Q.E.D

[Liselle]

Q.E.D

Not saying that I disagree with you, but you can't rest your case until you actually make one. Calling WHM/SMNs idiots is only half the battle, where's your alt sub? Are you talking about /BLU for HB or something? Please don't say /BLM.

[Seraph]

Q.E.D

Not saying that I disagree with you, but you can't rest your case until you actually make one. Calling WHM/SMNs idiots is only half the battle, where's your alt sub? Are you talking about /BLU for HB or something? Please don't say /BLM.

I need to chip in here, and say there are definately cases where WHM/SMN beats out any other sub. Main example is whenever a CarbyPull is needed, but there are other times too. Pulling one thing instead of a WHM trying to accomplish add control is quite nice. Just because someone goes WHM/SMN don't immediately try to swing the Idiot Stick at them. (Maybe mock them for not having tons of other support...)

[Ciaran]

Q.E.D

Not saying that I disagree with you, but you can't rest your case until you actually make one. Calling WHM/SMNs idiots is only half the battle, where's your alt sub? Are you talking about /BLU for HB or something? Please don't say /BLM.

I have to agree with Liselle. What subjob would you prefer? At Colibri camp, what will /BLM do for you? Woo! Warp! /RDM? pfft. /BLU? For what?

/SMN is a good and very viable subjob for WHM. And 20 free MP a minute is worthless? Over the course of an hour, that's 1200mp. Most merit parties I go to last 2 hours or so, if a good party. Hardly worthless.

[Stolin]

/BLU is an excellent sub for fights you take a lot of AoE damage in. 250point aoe heal for 55mp ftw.

[Caestus]

everyone is always saying DoT


and that MP over time helps. and I honestly have no idea what the hell Q E D means enlighten me? but seriously WHM/SMN is really good. and when you think about it, the other subs (other than maybe BLU) give no real advantages. and /BLM is for warp only imo.

[Amele]

at 7% average mp return over time (standard accepted value for conserve mp; which all of you are forgetting conveniently) whm/blm will recover more than 20mp/min if they maintain a cast rate of 285~mp/min.

with a magnetic earring, this goes to ~8.4% average mp return over time, so now you only need about 237~mp/min.

at many merit camps and most endgame events; this is retardedly easy to hit.

Blackmage is both more flexible (tractor, sleepga, blind, bind, ES, warp, escape) and a more powerful mp efficiency sub than summoner. (excludes dual-box characters like above: when you aren't casting fast enough then /smn will give more mp/time) so unless you need a carbuncle pull, shining ruby, or AA; there's precious few reasons to go whm/smn over whm/blm.

[Rai]

/BLM 99% of the time.

The only use for /SMN, imho, is Aerial Armor for when your PLDs are tanking though stuff as /WAR for whatever reason. Nowadays that applies to Fafhogg? ... if anything. Apart from that, SMN does not offer anything that would outweigh the awesomeness that is Conserve MP. Add in all the other stuff that has been mentioned on numerous occasions (Sleep, Warp, Escape, etc.)

I didn't call people idiots or stupid, I just said that most people who play WHM and can't manage to keep up with MP don't know how to use their MP efficiently and/or sub SMN. If you manage to keep up with MP as /SMN, more power to you. It all comes down to personal preference with the exception of certain things (e.g. me bitching at WHMs who do /SMN in sea), it's their monthly fee and they can play WHM the way they want. But complaining about fixing something that, unlike other things mentioned in this thread, doesn't need fixing other than players adjusting is kinda meh.

Q.E.D

Not saying that I disagree with you, but you can't rest your case until you actually make one. Calling WHM/SMNs idiots is only half the battle, where's your alt sub? Are you talking about /BLU for HB or something? Please don't say /BLM.

Why not /BLM? I rested my case regarding "tossing out a few Cure V". As soon as you cast spells, Max MP from SMN sub doesn't matter. As soon as you cast spells, Conserve MP >>>> 1mp/tic, especially if it's a Cure V.

[Amele]

not strictly true; if the alt mule whitemage isn't casting frequently, they won't be using enough mp to get enough conserve procs in to outdo 20mp/min autorefresh;

in fact, I'd probably go so far as to say that the 'default' combo for a 2box whitemage should be whm/smn -because- it doesn't cast as much *shrugs*.

(see my post above for why I think whm/smn is.. misguided if it's not 2boxed)

[Ciaran]

@Amele

Using Magnetic Earring to discredit /SMN is a poor argument, simply because WHM/SMN can also use Magnetic Earring and receive the same Conserve MP +5.

Also, for Colibri Camp, I don't buy the math with Conserve MP. I'd have a hard time accepting that a WHM will go through 285mp each minute in exp. (Keep in mind, they have to use more than 285 to make /BLM worthwhile over /SMN mp wise.) Assuming your 7% return, that cuts costs down to about 276.45mp per minute. A WHM would receive another about 100mp per minute from Refresh (3 - Bard, 1 - Nobles, 1 - Sanction, and that's being very generous with assuming Sanction will always be on.) That brings total MP expenditure down to 176.45mp per minute. A normal WHM would be completely bled dry after 10 minutes of exp at that grueling pace, and that too is very generous. A good WHM's mp pool should be around, say, 1500mp. It would take a total of 8.5 minutes to bleed them dry of mp and force them to rest.

You can add in your Magnetic Earring, it'll give you another 2.5 minutes before you're bled dry. But a WHM/SMN can also use Magnetic and receive the same 5% increase in Conserve MP, which will benefit them the exact same way.

When I merit with my WHM friend I see her rest once every half hour at most. Generally, she never rests. And even when she does, it's rarely for more than 3 tics because we're too active. Again, we're giving you the assumption that Ballad I and II will always be on the WHM/BLM, and Refresh Sanction will always be present. Both of which are not necessarily true. So, something is not adding up. Personally, I think it's your assumption that a WHM will use more than 285mp in spells in one minute, because our WHM/SMN performs excellently at Colibri camp without running out of MP every 10 minutes.

Your other arguments for "flexibility" are also not exactly valid with the Colibri Camp example, because the spells gained simply are not used. The only one that you listed that could be used is Warp.

Most HNM settings, Shining Ruby is also rather convenient to have. For like Dynamis, you are also not always casting. So, /BLM is only really useful for Conserve MP during very MP intensive sessions, like B2 or keeping DRKs as they Souleater. Otherwise, /SMN is the king daddy of MP conservation for WHM's.

[Lokim]

A good WHM's mp pool should be around, say, 1500mp.

I'm a pretty good white mage, and I don't have anywhere near 1500MP.

As for the rest of it, I remain unconvinced (at this point) that either sub is really preferred when it comes to MP efficiency. The MP/minute rate required by Conserve MP to break even with Auto-Refresh seems higher than what I typically expend, but honestly without "parsing" some events there's really no way for me to be sure. Actually, that's not a bad idea...since MP amounts are available in memory it might be interesting to do something like that...

Anyway, I typically choose my sub based on whether or not I think I'll need the utility of /BLM or the "I can stay standing without feeling guilty" capability of /SMN. If I'm particularly worried about magic damage, I use /SMN. If we're farming Sea or Sky I use /BLM.

[Stolin]

Having /blm only is just laziness imo. /DRK is the best sub against sky gods, and any stunnable HNMs that don't build resistance to it. /BLU is the best sub for AoE spammers like fafhogg, wyrm, w/e. /SMN is the best sub for zerg situations. /RDM for ballista.

[Saeriel]

And another thing if you're listening.

What genius on your dev team decided that skillchaining was worth shit all in ToAU.

Fire that retard, please. Make him a homeless bum.

Then fix that shit in WotG.

I mean for meripo etc, it still serves purpose elsewhere.. just tired of {Light} {Darkness} hitting mobs for 50 damage after a 1k WS.

[Liselle]

Why not /BLM?

Everyone else beat me to it. Conserve MP is just not really that good. You have to spend a retarded amount of MP to even match Auto-Refresh. Yeah sure, you can spend ~285MP a minute, but nobody in the world can sustain that kind of punishment in a merit party, not even an RDM. That's over 2800 MP in a convert cycle. Even with double Ballad (/snicker, yeah right) and Refresh, that's still a shortfall of 2200MP that the RDM has to come up with, if they don't have Convert merits. Even the most badassed RDMs around aren't looking at more than ~1100 or so MP returned from Convert because of HP:MP ratio issues. Sanction Refresh will strip the remaining 1100 down to 900. Are you going to be able to /heal almost 100 MP every minute? Seriously? With 20-second initial ticks? You'd be spending half the party on your ass, and then you'd need to figure out how to still stand long enough to spend 285+MP a minute. Apparently you are either chain-nuking the mob at this point or everyone forgot to get Utsusemi or Third Eye, because that's a shitload of MP to be spending on maybe two mobs.

Even if you have AF2 hat and a Dalm, and you manage to pull off all the crazy bullshit above, at best you just matched with Conserve MP that Auto-Refresh already does for you out of the box. somehow it just seems like a waste of time to me. Conserve MP needs to fire more often than 25% of the time, or the savings need to be bumped up more than 1/16-8/16.

Again, not advocating /SMN here, just pointing out that /SMN isn't that bad and /BLM isn't that great.

I rested my case regarding "tossing out a few Cure V". As soon as you cast spells, Max MP from SMN sub doesn't matter.

This is a fair point, max MP doesn't matter much after a certain point once you get the ball rolling in an endurance situation like a merit party. Well, as long as you're not an RDM anyway.

[Ciaran]

A good WHM's mp pool should be around, say, 1500mp.

I'm a pretty good white mage, and I don't have anywhere near 1500MP.

As for the rest of it, I remain unconvinced (at this point) that either sub is really preferred when it comes to MP efficiency. The MP/minute rate required by Conserve MP to break even with Auto-Refresh seems higher than what I typically expend, but honestly without "parsing" some events there's really no way for me to be sure. Actually, that's not a bad idea...since MP amounts are available in memory it might be interesting to do something like that...

Anyway, I typically choose my sub based on whether or not I think I'll need the utility of /BLM or the "I can stay standing without feeling guilty" capability of /SMN. If I'm particularly worried about magic damage, I use /SMN. If we're farming Sea or Sky I use /BLM.

I was being generous. Not trying to insult any WHM saying "If you don't have 1500mp pool, you suck!" or anything like that.

And, obviously, it's situational. However, in the specific instance of a Colibri Camp merit party, which is what sparked the whole discussion, I fail to see how /BLM excels over /SMN.

Anyhow, enough derailing. Back to semi-lurking.

[Charla]

Q.E.D.

[Dammerung]

WHM/SMN is lol... unless you need carbie pull or shining ruby.

Haven't tried /BLU yet but I don't really see the point if you never run out of MP anyway and healing breeze is self target where curaga is not.

/BLM 99% of the time, because it offers by far the most versatility in everything you do. /SMN is just naked, you don't have Bind or Sleep. Note I don't have /RDM or /DRK yet, and there are times that I've been wanting to use those subs instead.

And whoever said /SMN > /BLM for zerg.. last time I checked you're spamming your MP on zerg and conserve MP will blow the hell out of auto-refresh. Also ES Slow will do far more than auto-refresh on mobs that is required on.

[Fridell]

Anyways the "spend this and that amount of MP each battle" is inaccurate bs. Since stuff can happen and always will, a intreupted Utsusemi, a pop that had to be slept or anything. I dont even know why i say this...wtf.

[Khamsin]

And as far as standard merit parties at Colibri Camp go, if I'm asked to pick between a WHM (with nobles tunic and /SMN) and a RDM (without A.Body or AF2 Hat), I'd pick the WHM. [...]

To be honest, I think most WHM have problems out-lasting RDMs simply because they fail to grasp the concept of both how to be efficient on MP and to choose the right sub.

/cue "I like the Auto-Refresh and more max MP" WHM/SMN.

Yeah, those 20MP/minute are gonna make a difference.

Every little bit counts, and its not as if Conserve MP will save you nearly that much.