Free Stat SPR - Is it really useful?

[kirbysprite]

Okay this is from the official forums.

This is a question I've been asking myself for quite some time. A lot of people recommend SPR for a cleric. The 25 SPR, rest END or STR builds are common, and many people recommend SPR as the stat to add for supporting clerics, because it increases SP.

I, however, am not so sure it's that useful, particularly not after taking a closer look at what SPR really offers.

Now, a point of SPR gives three benefits: 5 max SP, 0.5 added M.def, and 0.2% critical bonus.

The max SP is supposed to be the best benefit for a support cleric, right? More SP means more heals. However, this is not necessarily the case with clerics in Fiesta. 25 SPR gives an extra 125 max SP - not a significant amount at high levels. More to the point, though, a cleric's healing capacity is dictated more by his stone and potion supply than it is by max SP. At high levels, clerics rarely rest to recover SP; they just use a stone. Clerics have plenty of SP with or without SPR, so getting full benefit from a stone is almost assured.

Now - here is one of the big myths about SPR - free stat SPR does *NOT* increase the amount a SP stone heals. (Neither does added SPR on gear, and the same is true with END and HP stones.)

It was easy enough to test whether SPR on gear increased a stone's healing amount - I just took off all my gear, used a stone, then put it all back on and used a stone. Sure enough, they healed the same amount.

Free stat SPR could well be different, though, so to test this I made a newbie cleric and leveled him to level 5, without using any of his free stat points. Here is what I found:
A level 5 cleric has 9 base spr. One SP stone restored 83 of his SP.
I then used free stats to raise his SPR by 5. He now had 9+5 SPR. The SP stone, however, still restored 83 SP.

Therefore, if you use stones to heal, the max SP benefit does not help you. If you rest, you do regain SP at a SLIGHTLY faster rate, but again, high level clerics rarely rest. Contrary to popular belief, SPR has almost no benefit for a pure support cleric.


The next benefit is magic defense, 0.5 per point. 25 SPR gives you 12.5 extra magic defense. This defense is like the defense on END - it's a flat reduction in the damage you take per hit, *not* an addition to your m.def score.

This is not useless. However, at higher levels 12.5 damage is not a lot when the magic using monsters are hitting for 200-300 - never mind when the magic attacks hit for 1000+, as the Heart Trumpies in TR do. The same could be said for END's defense - but END also adds block rate, which also helps against magic. This benefit alone is not a good reason to add SPR.


The final benefit of SPR is the increased critical rate. This is the reason many people favor 25 SPR in builds. 25 SPR gives an extra 5% critical rate, boosting damage. But how much, and how does it compare to the equivalent points spent in STR?

25 points in SPR adds a critical every 20 hits. So every 20 hits, 25 SPR adds, on average, an amount of damage equal to the damage of your average hit (including bashes, etc). 25 STR adds, on average, 600 damage per 20 hits, plus additional damage from critical hits that averages out to (600 * crit%).

What does this mean? It means that unless your average damage per hit (including bashes) is 600 or higher, 25 SPR will NEVER outdamage 25 STR. If you've got, say, 10% critical rate without SPR, your average damage has to be over 660 for the SPR to outdamage STR. Now, even capped clerics generally don't hit this hard. At level 70 with a hammer, I hit for 310-320 at most... now I use a mace, and hit for even less. At this point, I doubt any cleric hits hard enough to make SPR a better investment for damage than STR... not to mention, STR damage is more consistent.

In conclusion - if you add SPR for the extra SP, you're not really gaining any appreciable benefit. If you add it for the crit % and damage, you are voluntarily lowering your damage for the negligible benefits of SP and M.def.
Now, other classes might do enough damage to make the crit % from SPR worthwhile over INT or STR - but, as a cleric, I really can't see that happening until at least a cap raise or two from now.

Thoughts?