So Uh... PLD Self-Heals...Follow

.... okay, now I feel a bit awkward.

I've always bashed PLD self-cures and I always thought they were weak as heck, ineffective, etc. Which... they are, usually. But I suppose after today, I'll have to look at them in a bit of a different light after a Stone Vigil run (my first on my PLD).

The group setup was a NIN, a BLM, Me (the PLD obviously) and a WHM.

After a mostly uneventful run (it was much smoother than expected, only one death (the NIN) on the 2nd boss due to very unlucky timing of AoE), we got to the last boss. The first 70% of its health goes pretty much as planned, everybody avoiding AoEs like a champ, nobody getting hit with anything, 'cept the WHM who got hit with one Frost Breath early in the fight because the dragon landed ontop of me and he happened to have been behind me and the dragon decided that'd be a great time to unleash ice puke in my general direction.

Well, at 30% left everything changed. The WHM had Paralysis and wouldn't you know it, it stunned him right in the middle of that big ice swath he does while he's in mid air. Said WHM promptly drops dead. He didn't really have time to Esuna himself in the middle of that "move move move move move" craziness, so I don't blame him for that.

Anyways, I found myself facing down an angry dragon with 30% of its health left, two full limit bars, and the three of us are at 100% health. I said to myself "OK let's see how long I can survive!" and I started spamming Cure between his attacks. Apparently the other two decided to fight instead of giving up as well. It didn't take long for the dragon to throw a Rime Wreath (the AoE that hits everybody in the room). Next thing I know, we're all half health despite me spamming cures. I pop Rampart and Convalescence and keep spamming cures, but I notice my MP is tanking fast so I did a FB+RB combo to get some back. I had just enough for two cures, and I glanced up at the group list, BLM has 100HP left. I dunno why he didn't go into full Physick mode (maybe he didn't have Physick equipped for whatever reason?), but I threw one Cure into him, then targeted myself, for another Cure, then hit the tab key and then hit one and I glanced up at the group window just in time to see the two people go to 0 just as my finger hit the 1 key (Fast Blade).

Then the screen goes blank and I get some dungeon-related achievement, I forget which. I was like "........wtf happened?"

I had not looked at the boss's health since before doing the FB+RB combo; last I saw he had at least 10% left on him.

I skipped the cutscene and I saw that I had ~300-400HP left and everybody but me was dead (I assume to a Rime Wreath).

So I clicked the Battle tab of my chat log, and...

Blah Blah NIN has died.
Blah Blah BLM has died.
Your Fast Blade hits (boss's name here) for 68 damage.
You defeat (boss's name here).

And I'm like "OMG! I killed the boss with a 68 damage fast blade!?" and we're all laughing.

Moral of the story: Without those cures, I woulda died long before we got the boss dead.

EDIT: I regret that I do not have a SS of this epic moment, and I understand if some peeps would find it hard to believe, but Catwho can verify if they want; said BLM is in our FC and we talked about it in FC chat right after it happened. BLM didn't realize we were in the same FC until after we left the dungeon.

Edited, Nov 1st 2014 11:49pm by Lyrailis

It always seemed like giving PLD conjurer cross-class skills made more sense thematically than it did mechanically. Especially if they do nothing to bump up a PLD's healing potency.

I'm glad it worked out for you this time and gave you a cool story to tell, but it always struck me as more of a handicap on the job than anything remotely useful.

Cure may be more efficient at lower levels. But when you're rocking your high iLvl gear at level 50, your cures still get you about 195 hp (there's not a lot of Mind in Paladin gear, and by not a lot I mean none) but getting a flat 10% of your high-thousands hp with Stoneskin is considerably more potent.

Edited, Nov 2nd 2014 2:38am by Xoie

Ahh, okay, that explains it. I woulda thought that Cures woulda stayed consistent (5-8%) but apparently not lol.

Really really need to get CNJ higher, Soon then.

As long as you're not fighting something too tough, you can easily cure yourself and keep your MP up with riot blade. I soloed the castrum white magitek cannon sequence back when 90 was the highest ilvl just to prove it could be done. It's not very useful in anything tough though, since your not generating a lot of hate, and allows other party members to catch up to you in hate which isn't a good thing. Stoneskin is much better during a fight since it essentially blocks 10% of your maximum HP in damage. Those instances where having cure would actually make a difference between a win or lose is just so rare that it doesn't justify having it on your bar. It does look hella cool though when you solo the end of a boss and everybody praises you.