The Art of Healing: Gearing for Cure V

Ghishlain, who knows his stuff about WHM, made an interesting point today regarding Cure V on the FFXIAH forums:

Last I checked, Cure V gets some pretty minimal increases once you exceed the 500 power threshold, which is not hard at all to do as a WHM.

In my previous post, I went over the cure formula in detail. Recall that cure power is calculated as follows:

Power = floor(MND÷2) + floor(VIT÷4) + Healing Magic Skill

Base Cure V

Let's calculate Cure V for a level 99 naked hume:

Healing Skill 424
MND 91
VIT 83

Power = floor(MND÷2) + floor(VIT÷4) + Healing Magic Skill
Power = floor(91÷2) + floor(83÷4) + 424
Power = 45 + 20 + 424
Power = 489

At 489 power, Cure V has the following stats:
Power Floor 300
HP Floor 640
Rate 2.5

Base = floor( (Power - Power Floor) ÷ Rate ) + HP Floor
Base = floor((489 - 300) ÷ 2.5) + 640
Base = floor(189 ÷ 2.5) + 640
Base = 75 + 640
Base = 715

So at power 489, a level 99 naked hume will do a Cure V of 715.

Cure V at 500 Power

Now let's calculate Cure V with 500 cure power.

At 500 power, Cure V has the following stats:
Power Floor 500
HP Floor 720
Rate 3.33

Base = floor( (Power - Power Floor) ÷ Rate ) + HP Floor
Base = floor ((500 - 500) ÷ 3.33) + 720
Base = floor(0) ÷ 3.33) + 720
Base = 720

So at 500 power, our Cure V does 720. Notice that this is only 5 HP more than at power 489! Therefore, there's not much point to adding extra cure power above 500 for Cure V.

What this means is that you can choose to gear for enmity-, conserve MP, or fast cast instead. As Cure V is our second least efficient cure, I'd probably go with a combo of Conserve MP and Enmity- gear. Here is a gear set I quickly threw together to give you some ideas.