NEW POST redoing the format in a way that doesn't rely on actual stats or HP amounts that will eventually be badly outdated. I've also turned the heal calculation below into a link to the post explaining in more detail how it works.
((MATK * 0.69) + (MDEF * 0.46)) * (AP * .01) * Randomness
Let's talk about healing strength. This is something that bugs me to no end when i'm talking to my UL friends - that nobody seems to understand what heal AP anything is. I think part of it is confusion after ateam retooled the ability/passive balance a while back, and part of it is that most of my UL friends aren't dedicated clerics, so i'm seeing people talk about it from a perspective of either looking at the ability descriptions or playing around with cleric on the side. As a disclaimer, i don't presume to be the best or smartest cleric in the game, but i pay attention, and this post is going to lay out my opinions on how healing works, along with some math to illustrate.
Regardless, here are all of the current heal stats including passive bonuses assuming book or relic in your main slot. You better have a book or relic in your main slot. If you don't then you're not a cleric, and you shouldn't be carrying heals.
It's hard to have a discussion about heal strength without addressing the calculation bolded at the top. You use 69% of your MATK and 46% of your MDEF in AP-based heals. This means that if you need to increase your healing amount it is 50% more efficient to increase MATK than MDEF. Note the bolded portion. If your heals suck, you might consider moving more cost into weapon slots. However, if you aren't dissatisfied with the amount you're healing, you don't need to heal extra. I'm level 106 currently with 3 weapons and have no trouble in any pve content. In pvp my numbers are a bit short of where i'd like them due to HP multipliers. My point is that big heals don't make a good cleric. Not letting anybody die makes you a good cleric. That means you don't have to fill up everybody's HP any time they're missing some. You do need to always have a heal ready when somebody's low, and you will always need the cost to cast it. Efficiency saves the day.
For the following numbers i'm using an approximation of my stats as the basis. I have about 30k MATK and 80k MDEF. It doesn't really matter where your stats are for the purpose of this list - since all heals scale the same with stats, moving the numbers higher or lower won't alter efficiencies relative to each other. I've also calculated the numbers assuming multi-target heals are hitting the signified number of people and not overhealing anybody. Any time you overheal on any spell, you lose efficiency.
Looking at the info in both charts, a few things become clear.
1) Prayer is a really bad heal. It costs too much to get a lot of benefit from Cost Recovery, and it does too little to count on for any significant restoration. Least efficient heal on the chart, though obviously it heals better than a basic attack. (I still favor Basic Attack for party utility)
2) Aid is decent after the update! HP/Cost was the lowest of the proficiency heals by a strong margin, but after the update it's a nice strong, non-proc-reliant heal for pvp.
3) Gatorade is expensive to rely upon, but it is far and away the best way to pump out a lot of health over time.
4) Everybody already knew this, but multi-target heals are very cost-efficient. The worst multi target heal is more economical than the best single target.
5) Cure heals for 63250 without any procs. At my level, i have only 55824. You will almost never use Cure in pve without overhealing. Bring Recover instead. I would be bringing Heal if it removed status ailments.
6) The new Halloween weapon ability is slightly worse than Recover in HP/Cost and almost as bad as Prayer in HP/Sec. It's not as OP as people are making it out to be but at least it doesn't suck. Finally Ateam gives us some love in the Basic Attack replacement skill department.
How procs impact efficiencies:
Cost Recovery (process rate: 33% main, 18.5% sub) gives more efficiency to lower cost abilities. With a single proc of the Halloween skill, you're giving back a quarter of an HP bar for free and gaining 1% of your uni gauge. A single proc doubles Heal's cost efficiency and nearly doubles Area Heal's efficiency. Single proc turns Aid into a Heal with slightly better heal power than Cure (so 10ap stronger than the equivalent Heart proc on Heal). Lower cost skills also generally have lower cooldowns, so carrying Recover and Area Heal over Cure and Greater Healing both makes it more likely you'll always have a spell ready and likely saves you some cost in the process. As long as you're healing enough then don't bump up to a stronger spell.
Heart of Health increases healing power by 40ap on all heals in rings 1-4. It will proportionally affect lower-AP spells more strongly, kinda like how Cost Recovery affects lower-cost spells. So again, weaker spells will gain more efficiency, while stronger spells will run a greater risk of overhealing. However, this doesn't necessarily increase heal efficiency. Remain mindful of overhealing when stacking up procs.
Heart of Recovery increases AP of Heal, Recover, and Cure by 40. It's basically the same as HoH but only for those three skills. The main benefit here is the weapons are only 24 cost, so you may be able to fit more procs on a pvp set, increasing effectiveness with large HP pools. There may be a proc rate difference, but i haven't done large enough trials to confirm.
Healing Testament (process rate: 25.5% main, 10% sub) increases heals by a percentage of their HP value (XL seems to be at or just above 40%), so this shouldn't affect efficiencies at all. A benefit to this is it will proc on any AP-based heal, which means a) it's power-creep-proof and b) it will proc on weapon-ability heals as well as regular spells.
Aid Mastery increases AP of Aid and Greater Aid by 60. It also seems to have a higher proc rate than the Heart and Testament skills. Aid becomes 50% stronger and G.Aid becomes 67% stronger. If you're running these skills in pvp this is a great skill to have in main slot ahead of a lot of Cost Recovery. Given the strength of these heals without a boost, i think it's probably a waste of a slot to equip this in pve.
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So in summation, i think that right now for most questing content, the ideal skillset is:
Recover / Area Heal / Dignity / Area Recovery
Obviously it's not a universal skill set, and people should tailor their skills to their needs. I just cringe every time i see an endgame cleric using Cure or Aid. There are other options which are better in every way for pve situations.
I was most surprised to find out that Gatorade is so efficient. I expected it to be near the bottom of the stack in cost efficiency, but if you can be sure you won't overheal then it's actually pretty good. It's just rare to have a situation where you'd need all that health on three adjacent targets. May be nice for quests like Thanatos with powerful 3-person % damage. The fast cooldown means it should be ready any time the attack goes off. Could also see use in pvp where a big heal could save survivors of a unison / meteorain / crush.
((MATK * 0.69) + (MDEF * 0.46)) * (AP * .01) * Randomness
Let's talk about healing strength. This is something that bugs me to no end when i'm talking to my UL friends - that nobody seems to understand what heal AP anything is. I think part of it is confusion after ateam retooled the ability/passive balance a while back, and part of it is that most of my UL friends aren't dedicated clerics, so i'm seeing people talk about it from a perspective of either looking at the ability descriptions or playing around with cleric on the side. As a disclaimer, i don't presume to be the best or smartest cleric in the game, but i pay attention, and this post is going to lay out my opinions on how healing works, along with some math to illustrate.
Regardless, here are all of the current heal stats including passive bonuses assuming book or relic in your main slot. You better have a book or relic in your main slot. If you don't then you're not a cleric, and you shouldn't be carrying heals.
| Name | AP | Cost | CD |
| Heal | 70 | 10 | 5 |
| Recover | 90 | 11 | 7 |
| Cure | 110 | 12 | 9 |
| A.Heal | 50 | 12 | 15 |
| G.Healing | 70 | 15 | 17 |
| A.Cure | 90 | 20 | 22 |
| A.Recovery | 70 | 16 | 20 |
| Cleanse | 60 | 16 | 20 |
| Dignity | 60 | 20 | 30 |
| Aid | 120 | 15 | 5 |
| G.Aid | 90 | 20 | 7 |
| Prayer | 20 | 12 | 7 |
| Hallo/Xmas | 40 | 5 | 8 |
For the following numbers i'm using an approximation of my stats as the basis. I have about 30k MATK and 80k MDEF. It doesn't really matter where your stats are for the purpose of this list - since all heals scale the same with stats, moving the numbers higher or lower won't alter efficiencies relative to each other. I've also calculated the numbers assuming multi-target heals are hitting the signified number of people and not overhealing anybody. Any time you overheal on any spell, you lose efficiency.
| Name | Health | HP/Cost | HP/Sec |
| Heal | 40250 | 4025 | 8050 |
| Recover | 51750 | 4705 | 7393 |
| Cure | 63250 | 5271 | 7028 |
| A.Heal (3) | 28750 | 7188 | 5750 |
| G.Healing (3) | 40250 | 8050 | 7103 |
| A.Cure (3) | 51750 | 7763 | 7057 |
| A.Recovery (3) | 40250 | 7547 | 6038 |
| Cleanse (3) | 34500 | 6469 | 5175 |
| Dignity (5) | 34500 | 8625 | 5750 |
| Aid | 69000 | 4600 | 13800 |
| G.Aid (3) | 51750 | 7763 | 22179 |
| Prayer | 11500 | 958 | 1643 |
| Hallo/Xmas | 23000 | 4600 | 2875 |
1) Prayer is a really bad heal. It costs too much to get a lot of benefit from Cost Recovery, and it does too little to count on for any significant restoration. Least efficient heal on the chart, though obviously it heals better than a basic attack. (I still favor Basic Attack for party utility)
2) Aid is decent after the update! HP/Cost was the lowest of the proficiency heals by a strong margin, but after the update it's a nice strong, non-proc-reliant heal for pvp.
3) Gatorade is expensive to rely upon, but it is far and away the best way to pump out a lot of health over time.
4) Everybody already knew this, but multi-target heals are very cost-efficient. The worst multi target heal is more economical than the best single target.
5) Cure heals for 63250 without any procs. At my level, i have only 55824. You will almost never use Cure in pve without overhealing. Bring Recover instead. I would be bringing Heal if it removed status ailments.
6) The new Halloween weapon ability is slightly worse than Recover in HP/Cost and almost as bad as Prayer in HP/Sec. It's not as OP as people are making it out to be but at least it doesn't suck. Finally Ateam gives us some love in the Basic Attack replacement skill department.
How procs impact efficiencies:
Cost Recovery (process rate: 33% main, 18.5% sub) gives more efficiency to lower cost abilities. With a single proc of the Halloween skill, you're giving back a quarter of an HP bar for free and gaining 1% of your uni gauge. A single proc doubles Heal's cost efficiency and nearly doubles Area Heal's efficiency. Single proc turns Aid into a Heal with slightly better heal power than Cure (so 10ap stronger than the equivalent Heart proc on Heal). Lower cost skills also generally have lower cooldowns, so carrying Recover and Area Heal over Cure and Greater Healing both makes it more likely you'll always have a spell ready and likely saves you some cost in the process. As long as you're healing enough then don't bump up to a stronger spell.
Heart of Health increases healing power by 40ap on all heals in rings 1-4. It will proportionally affect lower-AP spells more strongly, kinda like how Cost Recovery affects lower-cost spells. So again, weaker spells will gain more efficiency, while stronger spells will run a greater risk of overhealing. However, this doesn't necessarily increase heal efficiency. Remain mindful of overhealing when stacking up procs.
Heart of Recovery increases AP of Heal, Recover, and Cure by 40. It's basically the same as HoH but only for those three skills. The main benefit here is the weapons are only 24 cost, so you may be able to fit more procs on a pvp set, increasing effectiveness with large HP pools. There may be a proc rate difference, but i haven't done large enough trials to confirm.
Healing Testament (process rate: 25.5% main, 10% sub) increases heals by a percentage of their HP value (XL seems to be at or just above 40%), so this shouldn't affect efficiencies at all. A benefit to this is it will proc on any AP-based heal, which means a) it's power-creep-proof and b) it will proc on weapon-ability heals as well as regular spells.
Aid Mastery increases AP of Aid and Greater Aid by 60. It also seems to have a higher proc rate than the Heart and Testament skills. Aid becomes 50% stronger and G.Aid becomes 67% stronger. If you're running these skills in pvp this is a great skill to have in main slot ahead of a lot of Cost Recovery. Given the strength of these heals without a boost, i think it's probably a waste of a slot to equip this in pve.
~~~~
So in summation, i think that right now for most questing content, the ideal skillset is:
Recover / Area Heal / Dignity / Area Recovery
Obviously it's not a universal skill set, and people should tailor their skills to their needs. I just cringe every time i see an endgame cleric using Cure or Aid. There are other options which are better in every way for pve situations.
I was most surprised to find out that Gatorade is so efficient. I expected it to be near the bottom of the stack in cost efficiency, but if you can be sure you won't overheal then it's actually pretty good. It's just rare to have a situation where you'd need all that health on three adjacent targets. May be nice for quests like Thanatos with powerful 3-person % damage. The fast cooldown means it should be ready any time the attack goes off. Could also see use in pvp where a big heal could save survivors of a unison / meteorain / crush.
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