Mythbusters: Does Heal really depend on ASPD?

I was really pressed for time with other things, so I couldn't test everything I wanted in this article.

Since the beginning of time, mankind has taken the assumption that his ASPD affected his healing speed. Verily this was the case long ago. In ancient times, Crusaders traveled across the land in full support mode, and took to their Peco Pecos. In order to conserve their meager ration of skill points, Crusaders took away their ranks of Cavalier Mastery. However, these support Crusaders found in horror that their heal speed had been slowed to one Heal every two seconds!

And it was thus that the reverse was found to be true as well. Priests of that time who carried a rod imbued with the power of Doppelganger Cards found that their heals were lightning fast, faster than a half second between each casting.

But time went on and many episodes passed. Many things changed.

The test:

I set up a bot healer, programmed to cast Heal as quickly as possible on itself. I equipped it with two dopp cards and gave it Berserk Pitcher to get it to 190 ASPD.

---------- Char Stats ----------
Str: 1 +42 #2 Atk: 293+0 Def: 58 +100
Agi: 1 +11 #2 Matk: 451~752 Mdef: 35 +127
Vit: 89 +11 #10 Hit: 249 Flee: 107+1
Int: 61 +66 #8 Critical: 3 Aspd: 190
Dex: 81 +73 #10 Status Points: 7
Luk: 1 +7 #2 Guild: None
--------------------------------

[Aug 25 04:25:05 2007.98] AI set to auto mode
[Aug 25 04:25:05 2007.36] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:06 2007.79] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:08 2007.22] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:09 2007.63] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:11 2007.56] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:12 2007.47] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:13 2007.91] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:15 2007.32] You use Heal on yourself : 388 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:25:16 2007.49] AI set to manual mode

In this test, 8 castings of Heal are done in a total of 9.96 seconds. The average casting time of Heal is about 1.245 seconds. That's awfully slow for 190 ASPD...


Unequipping my weapon (an Evangelist) gives me 173 ASPD (the berserk pitcher is still going). Still, 173 ASPD is still 1/3rd of a second longer than 190 ASPD. If we do the same test, it should take much longer...

---------- Char Stats ----------
Str: 1 +32 #2 Atk: 33 +0 Def: 58 +100
Agi: 1 +11 #2 Matk: 266~458 Mdef: 35 +97
Vit: 89 +11 #10 Hit: 219 Flee: 107+1
Int: 61 +36 #8 Critical: 3 Aspd: 173
Dex: 81 +43 #10 Status Points: 7
Luk: 1 +7 #2 Guild: None
--------------------------------
[Aug 25 04:26:54 2007.80] AI set to auto mode
[Aug 25 04:26:55 2007.18] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:26:56 2007.60] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:26:58 2007.25] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:26:59 2007.33] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:27:00 2007.76] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:27:02 2007.18] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:27:03 2007.60] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:27:05 2007.25] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:27:06 2007.44] You use Heal on yourself : 345 hp gained
[Aug 25 04:27:07 2007.49] AI turned off

Nine castings of Heal were done in this test, which took 11.26 seconds. Waiiiit... That gives us a 1.2511 (repeating of course) second casting time for Heal, even with ASPD that is two and a half times slower! We're looking at a difference of less than a hundredth of a second, which we can safely attribute to latency rather than to the ASPD difference - any difference in ASPD would yield much larger results.

Somewhere along the line between when it was discovered that Heal was ASPD dependent and now, the skill was changed. Is this for the better?

What still is affected by ASPD then?

For Priests, the main skills that are still ASPD-dependent are Holy Light and Magic Crasher. Blessing is too, but I doubt too many people really care about 190 ASPD Blessings.

For Monks, your combo skills are still dependent on ASPD, as is Throw Spirit Sphere and Dangerous Soul Collect/Call Spirits. Obviously Holy Light and Blessing are too.

For Crusaders, you still have Bash and Holy Cross. Shield Boomerang was one of the skills that I wanted to test but couldn't due to time. However, it does seem like ASPD does have a positive effect on the skill from secondhand statements made by Crusader and Paladin players. Obviously, Martyr's Reckoning is also ASPD-dependent.

Crusaders and Monks likely won't have too many recarding issues, but for Priests who only slotted dopps for heal speed, what do we slot in our Evangelists now?