Subjobs for Healing

[SomeMithra]

Ok I know all the things you can sub for healing breath, thats not my question.

My question is this.

I have quit and come back (just today actually) and I originally had planned to level WAR, THF, SAM, and BLU as subs for my DRG. I came to terms with not have /BLM as warp scrolls, clubs, and outpost warps do exist.

However I still have not come to terms with if i should level /WHM or /RDM for soloing at all. I'm thinking no but something keeps me from making that a definite, so I wanted to ask everyone here what they thought. Is there really a point anymore with the introduction of /BLU?

[Murphie]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

Having at least /WHM for solo is probably a good idea. /WHM is still going to give you some status cures that you won't be able to get with /BLU. But I'll defer to the more veteran DRGs on the forum beyond that.

[Trinsie]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

I would say that /whm would be nice to have but not wholely needed. You can get away with /blu only for soloing. If you are fighting something with status effects like paralyze ect ect then just save TP for when those WSs are used. If you macro in you AF helm for the WS your wyvern will remove the status effect.

You would only need /whm for erase basically and the need for that is far and between.

/rdm is sorta important for some fights due to having dispel.

/blu offers 2 really fast casting cheap MP spells and cocoon and headbutt (psuedo stun)

I would say if you are going to level only 1 sub for soloing it should be /blu

*as a not you can get some neat traits form spell combos also like auto-regen and stuff*

[DakAttack]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

White Mage, because when the shit hits the fan you can toss yourself a cure that'll bring you up to less than 50% and still recieve a healing breath. Not only that but you can buff yourself with Protect, Shell, and you'll recieve a minute, but friendly, Auto Regen. You'll have access to Bar-spells which can come in handy, as well as -na's, and Teleports. If you're interested in coming prepared this would be the way to go.

[MrMageo]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

RDM is good later on in lvl's 5 mp cure 3 cant be wrong

[LilithAngel]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

/WHM gives Auto-Regen as well, as well as Magic Defense Bonus (helpful for a large number of special attacks you may see as a soloist), Clear Mind (faster healing of MP), Raise/Reraise (post 50), Erase, -na spells (for what extremely little Erase can't take care of; also cheaper at times too. Never underestimate the power and utility of a good -na spell to save your ass), and a 7-point trigger for cures (Dia) that's relatively fast, on top of the normal Defensive Wyvern benefits.

Also, the Wyvern will use Remove Breath upon your WS regardless of whether or not you have the AF helm equipped. Wearing it makes no difference for this situation. The AF helm is for triggering Healing Breath at 50% hp instead of 33%. The fact that you get all three Remove Breaths by 30 is proof that you don't need the AF hat to make them work. Furthermore, waiting for TP to build while Paralyzed could easily lead to your death. Use Paralyna, or keep trying to use it until it goes through, if you're too far from 100%. Jumps can and easily will be eaten by Paralyze to be any sort of useful for TP gain to remove Paralysis.

/RDM grants the ever so useful Fast Cast ability, and Magic Attack Bonus on top of MDB and CM, but it gets the latter two at a lower rate then /WHM, and MAB really doesn't help you any, considering how you plan on using the subjob. Resist Petrify is nifty, but more than likely, you won't be fighting enemies that can petrify (or, if you are, you'd better have a damn good reason for doing so). Poison is the trigger spell here, and it's cheaper than Dia by 2 points, and can be cast faster, but the off set here is you have a much smaller MP pool, and little to no status recovery. You get the same defensive spells as well (mainly Blink and Stoneskin), and also, you get access to the En- line of spells, but their utility is based on your half-leveled Enhancement skill, which won't net you too much of a boost.

/WHM and /RDM are always up for debate as to which is better, but for going up against /BLU, /WHM is your clear and solid contender. It is a sub built for defense and recovery, and that's exactly what you need as a Dragoon soloist. Both /BLU and /WHM have a lot to offer in both categories, it's just that /WHM gives more on the "recovery" aspect, while /BLU gives more on the "defense" aspect.

It's all a matter of this: do you want to say "It's gonna be a helluva fight to even scratch me!" (blu), or "I don't care what you throw at me, I'll always bounce back!" (whm)?

[Sabaron]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

/BLU's Cocoon is awesome. Post-60, you have Wild Carrot, but you can launch breath with Foot Kick or Power Attack for 5 mp. Beyond that, /BLU really doesn't have much else. DRG doesn't really need status cures off /WHM because of Remove Breath. Since you're shooting to keep your HP under a certain threshold depending on gear, you shouldn't be terribly reliant on cures either.

For those instances where you don't need Status or Party cures, you can use /BRD's Requiems & Threnodies to launch HB for free, at the expense of holding your HP at the rather low 25%/33% trigger level which can be dangerous unless your targets are weaker (i.e. for farming).

You can do this with /PLD too and get Auto-refresh and Sentinel, and a Defense bonus which is really sweet as well. You sacrifice the 5mp spell, Dia, and have to use Cure (8mp), but the Auto-Refresh makes up for it nicely.

/DRK is ok, but you can't Auto-refresh. Of course, having access to Aspir (and access to weaker mobs with MP), you can use Aspir to supplement your MP and trigger breath at the same time.

[Ryoii/Nonomii]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

RDM provides you an ability to reduce the TP your opponent gains, but I'd say that the extra TP you feed your enemy with direct damage spells is probably rarely a problem considering you also now do more damage (Dia, BLU spells) and potential take less (Cocoon). However, there may be the rare occasions where you need Barelement spells and magic defense bonus to help with magic attacks such as against prime avatars.

Enemy TP Gain
6.4TP per hit dealt with 240 typical delay
16TP per hit taken with 480 delay polearm (13TP + 3TP)
10TP per spell which deals direct damage (Dia, Foot Kick, Power Attack, Head Butt)

Roughly every 8 seconds your enemy will hit you twice, you will hit them once, and you will heal yourself once. This will feed your enemy 38.8TP. You could reduce this amount by over 25% by not using spells which deal direct damage (Poison and Barelements).

[Vyuru]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

To me, the main difference between /Whm and /Rdm or /Blu is whether or not you are in a party.

What everyone says about /whm is true, however how many times will you be fighting a monster solo that paralyzes you? It's not that often and alternative mobs are easily found. Secondly, the ~na spells and Erase are highly mp inefficient to use while soloing. Especially since /whm offers more expensive HB trigger spells than /rdm does. You already get fewer HB than /rdm does despite the bigger mp pool.

I like using /rdm for the bar~elemental spells to trigger my Healing Breaths. They're fast, mostly MP efficient, and they are cast on me, so I can cast them outside of fights in order to get a HB off and I don't give the mob any TP for them. The issue of whether or not you have Dispel is a moot point. Dispel costs 25mp to cast. That is 5 Poisons or 4 barspells, which at 230hp healing breaths, is around 920-1150 health. Now consider the fact that you are a mithra, with let's just say 140ish base mp, no refresh, and you have to ask is this wise to use 25 mp on?

In a party situation where you have Refresh, then yes, you can use Dispel and the ~na spells assuming you are not the main healer. At the least though you can handle the ~na spells for the tank with little to no problem assuming you are the healer. Otherwise, you will not really be able to handle Dispel duties while healing or ~na spells for the entire party while healing, you'll run out of mp too fast.

Using a staff for Spirit Taker might change that though, I haven't tried that yet.

Another issue I have with what other's say is a usefull thing to have for /whm is Divine Seal + Cure III/Curaga II while in a fight. Effective for getting back hp? DS+Cure III somehwat, DS+Curaga II in the middle of a fight though? Curaga II costs far too much mp for what it does. As a drg/whm, you will have what, about 150 mp? If the party is in trouble enough to need a DS+Curaga II, I have to ask why are you sitting on 120+ mp?

Being in trouble while soloing can easily be solved with spamming of barspells. Using DS+some spell only increases the chance that you will be interrupted while casting unless you SJ hate onto your wyvern. SJ + 2 or so bar spells works better than SJ + DS + cure III in terms of mp.

Again, all mp concerns I have tend to be invalidated with the use of a staff + Spirit Taker. With the exception of a DS+Curaga II in the middle of a fight.

/blu now, I think is invaluable. Having played with +def food vs +att food, I know that Cocoon will make a huge difference in the amount of damage you take. You will be feeding the mob more TP with /blu trigger spells, however this is offset by Foot Kick and Power Attack being the only trigger spells that you will ever need only costing 5 mp, gaining you more HB in comparison to /rdm and barspells. Since you only need 3 spells, Foot Kick, Power Attack, and Cocoon, you can spend the rest of your spell slots stocking up on spells that give you the job traits that you want. Some of which can be very usefull. Although while Beast Killer is absurdly powerfull, I have to ask how often will you be fighting Rabbits/Sheep/Gnoles/Buffalo? The same holds true for the Lizard killer effect.

If you are solo, then I would say /blu.

If you are in the party support role, I would say /whm.

If you are in the party main healer role, I would say /blu or /rdm.

If you are looking for a mixed type wyvern for little down time as Sabaron pointed out, I'd go /brd over the rest of the subs that grant that wyvern type.

[SomeMithra]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

Thanks for the insight everyone.

Really opened my eyes to things I was not thinking about during my first post.

I honestly don't want to level all three of these subjobs on top of the three I already have to, but I think it may end up happening. However I am first going to take /blu up and see what problems I run into before I decided to do /rdm or /whm second.

Or maybe I won't run into any problems, in which case I will level /whm as its functionality for certain duoing+ instances seems more useful (bar- spells on both of us and the ability to erase their status effects in addition to mine).

[Temagori]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

It's definitely a style issue imo. I prefer /BLU now that I have it accessible, but /WHM is very nice.

Something you really have to take into consideration with /BLU is that it's spells give status boosts so you can give yourself a healthy amount of DEX and STR boosts just from putting the spells in your list.

This, in essence, means having shorter fights from increased dmg and fewer misses. Being an Elvaan I can truly appreciate all the extra acc I can get, so /BLU helps make up for some of the gaps that are evident with my accuracy. Feather Storm adds 3STR Bomb Toss 2DEX Pinecone Bomb VIT and AGI +3 and with Sheep Song and Healing Breeze you get Auto-Regen as well as AGI +3 altogether.

Those stat boosts help. At 75 you also get access to a stunning spell, stoneskin, a Defense Increase spell, a slow spell, two poison spells, three sleep spells, silence, DEX Down, INT down, VIT down, ACC down, and two drain spells.

This leaves a lot of room for customization of spells for what you are fighting and you can't go wrong with being able to stun and then throw up Stoneskin.

It has Pollen, but the amount of hp restored from it isn't anything substantial. You will want to, obviously, be taking advantage of your wyvern. /WHM is nice, but more often than not a good selection of spells for what you are going against can outweigh the advantages.

Raise doesn't help you only Reraise does. Get a scroll. Silence hinders you, but that sucks no matter what sub. Get Echo Drops. Poison sucks, but if you HAVE to fight something that poisons you...Get Antidotes. If your needing to be Erased you should probably be soloing something else for better and easier exp lol. Hope this helps add some definition to your choice.

[Malacite]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

Why the hell has no one mentioned /SCH?

With /SCH at level 70+ You'll basically have unlimited MP thanks to Sublimation due to the fact that your HP will far out-reach your MP pool so each use of stored MP should fill you up to 100% and then some. Light Arts will also save you MP and casting time on your spells. The only crappy part is that you don't get reraise, erase, or any defensive spells other than protect and shell.

[Silent Howler]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

Why the hell has no one mentioned /SCH?

I was wondering the same thing.

[Vyuru]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

Possibly because Sublimation will stop charging if your health is under 50%.

Possibly because the effects of /Sch were not fully understood at the time of posting.

And possibly because it is not unreasonable to expect a Drg to have a staff and access to Spirit Taker.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Subjobs for Healing

Sublimation's effect automatically shuts off at 50% HP, incurring no further damage and only returning the MP Sublimation's DoT took off the HP.

Since DRG's Healing Wyvern requires you be 50%/33%/25% depending upon subjob or AF Armet, the use of Sublimation would be difficult unless you were just planning to store away some MP in advance while soloing at 70+.