WHM/BLM or WHM/RDM? Please advise!

[Ryan0617]

My friend is planning to play at the start of the summer. I am already playing it being a WAR/MNK hopefully to a RNG/WAR when i get the advance job.
One thing i have noticed is no party is formed without a white mage. (Please do not do a flaming thread saying that you can, just my experience, ok)
I want him to be a WHM of some sort, as we can get parties started alot quicker. But i am unsure of the subjob he should get. Should it be BLM or RDM? I am looking ahead at the higher levels 40+. Would a RDM be more suited? I will be helping him level up so it won't be as hard for him.
Also i am unsure of the abilities that are important in both classes. Can anyone state along with their choice?
Can you please state your comments as what would be best. Thanks in advance.

[Brayden]

I personally went whm/rdm until lvl 50 when I switched over to /smn. However I think that /blm would be more beneficial over all if your friend wants to get more from his job. I went /rdm because for some reason I cant stand playing Blm in this game. By subbing blm your friend will get nice traits like 'conserve mp' for example, and useful spells later like 'escape' By subbing rdm he can have 'fast cast' and will have higher enfeebling stats etc. If you search Whm forum you should be able to find a few threads about subjobs for whms in general, and their advantages and disadvantages.

[Ryan0617]

After sifting through 7 pages trying to find something. I couldn't find one thing on WHM/BLM or WHM/RDM. Thats why i would like someone elses opinion.

[Tifa]

You'll definitely want to use /BLM sub for WHM. RDM subjob offers nothing that really benefits WHM, while /BLM sub has some very nice treats.

BLM sub will give you Conserve MP, which, over time, will save tons of MP. You'll also have access to Warp, which is handy for getting back to town, and later on at WHM58/BLM29, you'll also get Escape, for those nasty situations. BLM sub will also give you a larger MP pool than RDM sub would.

RDM sub offers none of those things, and nothing else helpful to a WHM at all.

[Miriamel]

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/sho...ight=whm%2Fblm

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/sho...ight=whm%2Fblm

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/sho...ight=whm%2Fblm

[Ryan0617]

Thanks for that. What level do you get warp by the way?

[sudo]

I completely agree with whm/blm being very good.

However, I am sensing that people have not looked at whm/rdm enough.

Being said, here's what rdm offers.

fast cast: You receive a casting time bonus as well as a recast bonus. Your recast timers will go down with more fast cast bonuses you manage to get.

This translates to being able to spam lower level cures to keep a pld alive easier. As a whm you get very pissed off when there's that 3 seconds to reuse cure III and you know it'd be better to spam that instead of waiting to use a cure IV and getting a lot more agro. Cuts down about 2 seconds for the casting of regen as well.

Dispel:

the best reason to sub rdm. if your pt lacks dispel, i.e. no rdm or brd, then this is an absolutely great reason to sub rdm. A whm will not have trouble dispeling things off an IT mob.

I've managed to dispel 3/5 times successfully as a bst/rdm with only half lv dispel off VT mobs before. It's not that bad.

Phalanx:
Yes you do get this spell /rdm and no it doesn't suck on whm compared to other jobs as whm has natrually good enhancing skill and it will allow you to survive better when getting hit (not great but at least it is a reason)

As to the MP issue for /blm vs /rdm. vs /smn

having a rdm sub, you have the option to equip a warlock earring and warlock cape.

The formor will give you heal mp +1. This is an awesome item and will stack with food as well as seer's cloak.

It is already known that an errant body is better than vermillion cloak if you need to sit down and get more than 200 mp back. The +5 hmp will do it faster than autorefresh.

Stacking +hmp items/food is always a good idea.

The cape will improve fast cast for a /rdm. The bonus is about the same as the rdm lv 60 hat or so I've been told so it is quite nice to have despite missing the higher lv job traits.

As to the mighty conserve MP argument. Yes it does work for cures. It will save you approximately 10% mp over time as done by many blm testing.

So say you are a lv 65 whm hume. You have about 800 mp. This translates to having an equivilant 880 mp. Quite nice to have.

the difference between a /blm and /rdm for max MP is only about 20 mp total and that's as a taru. As other races, the differences will be even less.

Now the question is: so 100 mp difference. How much more do I have to rest to get that back? since I'll only be getting a +1hmp as /rdm?

This is a much more complicated question. You have to factor in, "is the pt running me dry each time? or do they give me a lot of resting times?"

let's take a quick look:

with darkstaff, clear mind 3, earring, pants, body.

first tic is 10 mp + 10 staff +1 earring, +1 pants, +1 body + 3 clear mind = 26 mp back first tic. takes approx 15 seconds to tic.

2nd tic = 29 mp back due to clear mind, takes 12 seconds I think.

3rd tic = 34 mp/10 seconds and so on.

so if you look at this, does the warlock earring help much? No. It doesn't.

It is not superior to conserve MP as you would need quite a few tics to get that +1hmp to get you that 100 mp gap from /blm.

But then does your pt drain you completely dry or let you regen to max before they pull?

If pts run you dry, then I'd say a /blm is better since you will need all the mp you can get.

If your pt doesn't let you ever regen to max mp to pull then /rdm will be superior since I've realized that anything I can do to increase my healing mp rate the better. Pullers will always pull when I'm at a certain MP level. The faster I can get to that the better.

Sure with conserve Mp I will fall below that threshold much slower (10% slower.) but you know what? I will have regened to the max that the puller is letting me have which kind of renders max mp kind of worthless. As that magical mp number is already predetermined by where I will not be completely out of MP at the end of the fight either, then I might as well keep my hmp eq on.

As to warp, yes it's real handy to have. The only replacements are the crudgel and scrolls if you have lots of CP.

As to escape, it only works inside of dungeons but you will happen to exp inside dungeons alot so this is quite helpful.

Incidentially a teleport takes 25 less mp and casts in the same amount of time >.>

By all means a /blm is probably the best whm sub.

/smn has it's uses and the auto-refresh alone is worth it enough for alot of people. Theres 2 useful party buffs that are good to use as well.

/rdm is probably a 3rd or even 4th choice. /brd for a whm can prove to be as beneficial if not more.

[Ryan0617]

I was looking on gamefaqs and had a look at the whhite mage section. It was stated that summoner is the bext job to sub. Why? It said you get the most benefits from it, not from the actual summons but the traits and abilities. Is this true?

[Brayden]

By 'traits' they mean things such as "Max MP Boost" which raises your total max Mp by a certain increment, "Auto Refresh" which ticks your MP meter closer to full by 1 MP every few seconds, etc.