On Healing Hands - A Comprehensive WHM Guide (V2)

That looks pretty good to me in all honesty. I’m a little lost at the MP>50% part though. IMO, you’d want to idle in as tough a set as possible regardless of circumstances; Plus, that set has +5 Refresh in it anyway. As long as you’re not being stupid with your cures, that should be just fine I would think.

That looks like the ideal idle set for a WHM unless you can guarantee somehow that you’d never be touched by an AOE. If that’s the case, you could opt for full Refresh (even then, I personally wouldn’t)

A set of that type seems to be a good idea, but obviously you're basing a lot of it around having Shamash Robe, which is nontrivial to even the best of players to acquire. That said, resist [status] seems to cap at 90 and is additive, no need for etiolation(unless it's there for the MDT).

Terra's Staff and Irenic Strap +1 is typically better than Mafic/Genmei, physical damage is relatively weak in today's FFXI and you're usually not in melee range to shield block. The defense does have value, but M.Evasion needs to be stacked to be most effective. Keeping in mind the set caps PDT regardless, there's little case for worrying about additional defense over additional m.evasion and MDT. Without Shamash, Mensch Strap+1 can be used to cap PDT.

Shrieker's Cuffs are a good piece in the absence of Shamash, and much easier to acquire than Volte. Which is better would depend on the situation, as obviously you'd want Volte if you were in a fight with large range threatening debuffs like paralyze or petrify. But, if you're in the typical situation of not having Volte or Shamash, they're a good piece to have in mind.

I like the idea of using a status resistance cape personally, even at the cost of a bit of DT.

With those changes in mind, I'm seeing something like:
ItemSet 357826
as an attainable and powerful option for the everyday WHM.
-51%(50%)Pdt
-46% Mdt
+3 Refresh
+615 Magic Evasion (difference is actually bigger than the 1 you'd see vs Alfy's set, should add 30 m.eva to the cape augs for his as well)
+42 Magic Defense Bonus
+66 Resist Silence
+26 Resistance to all Status Ailments

Obviously, if you do have a Shamash Robe, that's a great piece to integrate. I'm not quite as sold on Volte hands, but they at least deserve some consideration depending on the fight. If you have both, they do go great together as your resist silence is already capped.

I had something quite similar to that but i went with 2 sets 1 set (more refresh/magic resist) where i knew i wasn't going to be getting hit by any physical damage by standing back and another set where i put more PDT because i was expecting in taking physical damage also minus the shamash robe since that body is probably very unlikely to get for some and i don't have it or see me getting it any time soon.

ItemSet 357742
this cape augmented with 30 magic evasion and +10 status resists

with shellra merited it says it's a 27.34% damage reduction. so need 23% and this set provides 26%MDT

Also gives +50 to most elements thanks to the shield/neck/waist alot of magic evasion and status resistances with 8MP/tick

then i have this set for the more PDT side which is very similar to the set posted a few above.

ItemSet 357827
This cape +30 magic evasion + 10PDT
This set provides 50% PDT and MDT with 20% status ressist while still keeping quite a bit of magic evasion and most the refresh as before.

Pinga Mittens(+1) also an option. Magic evasion+91(101).

I think the Volte Bracers are pretty awesome but difficult to get and I'd probably feel bad taking it on whm/brd when it has good m.eva hand options already.

I think I'd dump slipor sash for Carrier's Sash(all ele resist+15) The set's already way overcapped on MDT with shellraV, and 3 MDB is going to have a pretty minimal effect on a job that's already loaded up with MDB. Besides, the ele resist also contributes to status resistance.

If "Resistance to all ailments +" is a fixed % chance to resist wouldn't it depreciate when you have a huge Meva wall towering over the enemy's Macc?

I was thinking the same thing myself hence i have carriers sash in my sets. same reason i have the Nms. shield +1 in my non PDT idle set for the ele resists.

I would probably go with HP on thread personally, but other that the others would look about what i have on my 2 idle capes

I would look at your max HP in precast, cure, and any other set you use frequently before deciding on thread. If it's all higher, HP's a good call. Otherwise, maybe INT to reduce magic damage. No point swapping into a higher HP cape if you're going to lose the HP whenever you cast.

M.eva+30 status resist+10 seem a given for Dust, Dye, Resin.

For a dedicated idle cape, the enmity- is the only stat with any sort of benefit from sap.

I would personally also consider adding DW/DA/Haste as my sap augment to dual purpose the cape.. most targets I'd melee on white mage are weak enough to not really miss the base stat or acc/att and prefer the extra m.eva and status resist. Probably not as worth consideration if you're someone who mains WHM and has a half dozen capes for it, though.

Source?

'seems to', I don't have a SE source or a huge sample. I can say confidently that it isn't much higher, and it would be silly to have the +90 if it capped lower.

What's something that spams slow and has good m.acc? I can take out my dagon plate and some wizard cookiesMiso+1 later and see what sort of sample I can get.

The +90 bodies seem to work differently than the general Resist Status items. People have reported Onca Suit not helping with Stun resistance very much at all, and there was a quick and dirty test recently on Sang Buaya that gave about a slightly less than 50% Resist rate over ~20 trials (super low number of trials, but getting a less than 50% rate if your actual rate is capped at 90% is pretty damn improbable).

What we need is someone to take a Staunch Tathlum, Hearty Earring, Status Resistance Ambu Cape, and maybe some Jeuno Volte, and do a long parsed session.

Hmmm. The issue there is good test methods. That can accumulate sample sizes large enough to be accurate. Ballista is out due to the resist changes made there.

Need a good mob(s) that spams the hell outta a status effect. Preferably something that's not an additional effect on a damaging attack, so it's easier to log.

I would suggest that Arke set could be a very useful test set for general resist+ testing, as it has 0 meva on the whole set. That said, some lines of thought for resist+ mechanics suggest that the procs check before meva, so the actual land rate may not be relevant as long as the Resist! message is visible.

For slow specifically... Tunga was suggested in another thread awhile back. It does spam slowga/breakga. If the Resist+ check is before meva check then it would still eb a good test. If not.. naked+dagon? earth resist- gear? <,<;;

Sometimes while I'm testing things I wish I could buff mobs and debuff players. lol

If resist status is checked before macc/meva, one option could be to lower your evasion as much as possible, and pull 20-30 abyssea mandragoras.

For dream flower? Do the resist! messages appear for status only TP moves? I can't actually recall. If not your sample would be off by whatever your meva check based resist rate is. But you coudl potentially do a control sample to account for that, but you'd have to maintain the same meva with and without resist+ gear.

If it is visible then this would be a fair test, with the main issue being how much these suckers are gonna miss. slows TP gain a lot. And again via dAGI.

Arke may once again be applicable. no eva+. Does have AGI though.

Might work best if you cleave several rounds of mandies to level them up first, improving their physical and magical acc.

I have some time I can invest in this. I will try Tunga and see if he spams it enough

Sang Buaya potentially. I believe it casts stunga whenever you cast on him.

Slightly late, but I just got around to getting resin on my alt and made a couple WHM capes yesterday. Thanks for the sets and good discussion, everyone. I really like what Comeatmebro posted and I'm using something very similar (minus the HQ ammo). My one personal alteration is that for my default I kinda prefer Inyanga Ring over Gel+1 despite losing some PDT. Net gain of Refresh+4/Meva+12/MDT-3% in exchange for 7 PDT-.

Sometimes I find myself BRD-less and do like the extra Refresh. Realistically, neither the mildly uncapped PDT nor the 4 less refresh should be dealbreakers (and of course you can tweak sets situationally as needed)... but I personally find it more likely that I might run lower than I'd like on MP versus running into situations where I am getting rocked with physical damage that would truly be a threat to my life (considering I'm still in 40-something PDT- and shouldn't really be taking many huge physical attacks anyway).

Where is the 4 refresh coming from? The only swap you mentioned is Inyanga ring, so it should only be 1 refresh and 12 m.eva and 3 MDT. MDT is capped without the extra 3 provided you have at least Shell1, so really it's only 12 m.eva and 1 refresh in most circumstances.

I've recently begun to suspect that resist works similar to mdb, where onca suit would be 100/190 = 52.63% chance to resist stun, which is near what Buuki said earlier

NVM you're right and I'm dumb, for some reason I thought you only got the Inyanga set bonus if the RING was one of the pieces. Yeah you're right then, Gelatinous +1 is the way to go. Appreciate the sets, I've been cleaning up my alt/mule WHM today.

Nah, I've tested Onca Suit against Sovereign Behemoth. For headpiece I was using Inyanga+1. In 3 fights I only resisted 3 stuns outright (out of about 40, can't remember) and the average duration seemed to be about 4-8 seconds.

I changed to a full Inyanga+1 build (no +2 back then) and tried the fights again. I went up to resisting about half of the stuns outright, and those that did land were rarely longer than 2 seconds.

The only thing I can figure is that the "Resist Stun"+90 on Onca Suit isn't the job trait kind of resist stun, it's literally just +90 magic evasion against stun effects. I suspect the same is true for the omen bodies, and who knows what else.

There are definitely items which have been tested and shown to give the job trait kind of resistance, but Onca Suit & Udug, which I've also tested, definitely do not.

TL;DR: Just use Inyanga, magic evasion is king. I've even started using a HP+60 MEva+30 DT-5 ambuscade cape over my Moonlight Cape.

Edit: Same for those Shrieker's Cuffs, I'd bet money they're the magic evasion variety of resist silence, which means they only give 5 more than Inyanga+2. Inyanga also has 12 more MND which means odds are it's better even for silence, let alone other magic.

Resist silence +25 never seemed unreasonable to me, and I have a great resist rate for silence. In retrospect, I would also have the /SCH traits and significant magic evasion so eyeballed results are probably not very useful.

Found a good mob to test with (Gargoyle-Mu and Gargoyle-Lambda from the Pso'xja bracelet quest) and currently accumulating data. Will try to log 2 hours with cuffs+etio and 2 hours with just etio.

So far, I'm at:
4 silenced
11 regular resist
4 resist!

for a procrate of 21%~ with both cuffs and etio. Seems likely you are correct and the cuffs aren't actually resist trait, but will report back once the data is significant enough to draw conclusions from.

Etio + Shriekers:
86 Casts
11 Silenced
13 Resist!
62 Resist

84.9% resist rate from m.eva on lv50~ mobs (looking at casts where resist! didn't proc)
15.1% resist rate from traits

Etio:
87 Casts
14 Silenced
5 Resist!
73 Resist

83.9% resist rate from m.eva (looking at casts where resist! didn't proc)
5.7% resist rate from traits

Will edit this post as the other tests go, didn't wait full 2 hours as it seemed to even out pretty quickly.

If anyone else looking to test on these, they run out of MP after about 70 minutes, so will have to restart. Still plan on at least testing Etio by itself for a baseline, and seeing how hearty/staunch stack with it(I am lazy and haven't farmed my WHM a status resist cape yet.. maybe I'll get around to it later though).