Returning Player; WHM or SCH?

[Rabbtit]

Hi there! So back when I first played, I did a little bit of both. I started fresh now with a new character on a new server, and am currently lvling up BRD, but I want to start working on a healing class too.

I did a bit of WHM and summoner back in the day, but didn't really touch scholar that much.

I've been browsing the forums and people don't seem all that happy with the state of healers right now, but healing is my natural role so I want to do whatever is most useful for others (:

Could anyonne possibly please give me a list of pros and cons of both classes? Thank you!

[Jaelommiss]

WHM — Stand in one spot throwing sparkles at the enemy. Throw sparkles into the sky to hit multiple enemies. Grow flowers, use flowers to heal allies, then use three flowers that are soaked in your allies' blood to beat the enemy to death. Place healing bubble on ground that your allies will run out of. Grow wings every two minutes to look pretty and boost the power of your healing spells that you almost never need to use. Play with super efficient heal over time spells that will get wasted because your cohealer won't allow anyone to be below 98% HP.

SCH — Stand in one spot throwing dimmer sparkles at the enemy. Use lower damage instant spell to deal less damage while moving. Get resource for oGCD heals, but blow it all on Energy Drain for more damage. Ignore healing almost entirely because your pet can handle it. Use special oGCD commands to make your pet do special heals, but the pet will wait until half your party has died before doing what you told it to. Take out your frustrations by beating the ground when you need to hurt multiple enemies. Place shields on your allies that are almost always worthless outside of Ultimate and later Savage fights.

AST, since we're here — Similar healing tools to WHM, but can trade heal over time for shields if you want to blow all your MP or make your SCH cohealer cry. Throw celestial objects at enemies, but do it really fast and move between each cast. Instead of growing flowers, you draw cards that you can staple to your teammates to make them do more damage. All of your cards fall onto the floor every three minutes and you ignore everything for a while until you have sorted them all out. Place exploding star on the ground that everyone will run away from, but would have healed them if they'd waited another two seconds. Make a healing bubble that disappears the moment you stop holding it in place, but that's fine because no one was standing near you anyway. Run out of MP as soon as you need to do anything, but it's okay because all your weapons have truckloads of Piety on them instead of anything useful. Try to keep track of all four dps' rotations and burst windows to make the most of your cards, play your keyboard like a piano to place the right card on the right person, realize everyone's terrible, give cards to tanks instead. Collect different stickers from cards to make your party-wide damage boost marginally stronger.


I main AST and love it within a static raid environment, but I'd never use it if I didn't know my team. I use SCH for dungeons most of the time because I can heal everything without needing to take time away from beating Eorzea to dust with my fists. WHM is mostly used when I tire of AST or for learning casual content with strangers.

[Brandedblade]

Hi there! So back when I first played, I did a little bit of both. I started fresh now with a new character on a new server, and am currently lvling up BRD, but I want to start working on a healing class too.

I did a bit of WHM and summoner back in the day, but didn't really touch scholar that much.

I've been browsing the forums and people don't seem all that happy with the state of healers right now, but healing is my natural role so I want to do whatever is most useful for others (:

Could anyonne possibly please give me a list of pros and cons of both classes? Thank you!

WHM

Pros:
-The only healer you can start the game as.
-Considered by many to be the easiest and most straight forward.
-Best Personal Damage out of the healers.
-Most Mana efficient healer.
- Very powerful GCD heals.
-Access to Benediction, the most powerful single target heal in the game.
-The lily system allows them to minimize the damage loss of casting GCD heals.


Cons:
-No raid utility.
-Only has Divine Benison for shielding.
-Damage mitigation is locked behind a 2min cooldown.


SCH

Pros:
-Best damage mitigation options.
-Powerful ogcd options for healing.
-A healing pet that can act somewhat independant of the player
-Increases raid dps with Chain Stratagem.
-Slight Edge in mobility due to Ruin II and AoW.

Cons:
-Utilizing their ogcd heals is locked behind managing the Aetherflow resource.
- The fairy's responsiveness can be wonky when improperly used.
-Worst GCD healing options.

[Sloprano]

Hi there! So back when I first played, I did a little bit of both. I started fresh now with a new character on a new server, and am currently lvling up BRD, but I want to start working on a healing class too.

I did a bit of WHM and summoner back in the day, but didn't really touch scholar that much.

I've been browsing the forums and people don't seem all that happy with the state of healers right now, but healing is my natural role so I want to do whatever is most useful for others (:

Could anyonne possibly please give me a list of pros and cons of both classes? Thank you!

Currently having a slight big disagreement with developers on the direction some of the jobs are taking. If you're just looking to heal, might not be anything to worry about.

On that note, if it's a good while (pre-5.1, pre Shadowbringers?) since you played I'd recommend unlocking and giving all three a go. Astrologian, Scholar and White Mage. They've changed a fair bit so reading up their skills to level 80, taking them to PotD\HoH and other dungeons you might be surprised to find the one or three that appeals to you thematically, gameplay-wise or just feels good.

Only played Scholar to it's fullest so it's pros when being Healer:
- Lots of mitigation
- Adlo and Succor Shields that block the amount healed (Galvanize) and bonus shield if crit heal (Catalyze), aswell as Consolation from temporary Seraph that works as Succor
- Can make next Galvanize into a heal
- Can force next shield to be a crit with Recitation
- Get a fairy pet that follow you and can be placed anywhere that have a powerful heal-over-time and magic defence/healing up buffs
- Fairy will heal anyone under 100% hp and in range with it's Embrace
- Can spread shield(Galvanize) to other pary members
- Powerful healing abilities that share resource you get three of each minute, Aetherflow. Can banish the fairy for 30s for a full stack and healing buff.
- Not any mana problems to speak of with Lucid Dream unless you need to ressurect several people.

Cons:
- Fairy's Embrace is very weak now and you can't chose who they target.
- Fey Union takes a long time to get going, plan additional healing if you want to use it in a triage situation.
- To use fairy abilities, you need to use a hotbar command, this can sometimes go on cooldown without the fairy using the ability.
- The level 80 skill, Seraph, is particulary guilty of this and has an addtional two second delay before casting anything
- And despite being only healing job with a pet your signature level 60, 70 and 80 skills all contradict each other for it:
* Must have fairy out to use Dissipation, which removes her for 30s.
* Must have fairy out for Seraph, which replaces Lily for 22s but prevents use of Dissipation and Fey Union.
- Despite only usable for placing and calling back the fairy, the pet hotbar is still around and cannot be edited.
- While strong, the healing abilities are limited by resource and many are cooldowns, which can make healing a ton of health on short notice often difficult if not planned ahead.
- You can get a couple "healing spell bonus" buffs, but most of your healing comes from Abilities and are not affected by these buffs.
- If you run out of resources you might scramble and drain your mp to heal with Physick, Adlo and Succor and be at the mercy of which target your fairy will heal.
- Aetherflow cannot be used out of combat, so at start at any zone or dungeon you will be empty and want to put yourself in combat as soon as possible just so you can get it on cooldown.
- If AF is not off cooldown, but fight is about to end, you can use Dissipation to get three stacks, not this one is not usable out of combat either.

[Rabbtit]

Thank you everyone!! I think I might focus on white mage, and then try scholar when I have the option after summoner. In the past I somehow found scholar a bit confusing and hard to manage but I think the changes sound more appealing to me now tbh.

As for astrologian, I tried it before and could barely last a few seconds, didn't appeal to me at all xD

[EaMett]

At this point sch and whm pretty much play in a similar fashion for most of the content, so go with whichever aesthetic you like most. The rest of us can just be bitter in our corner while you have fun, hoping there was more gameplay variation between healers like in the good ol days.

[Averax]

WHM is just excellent right now. Scholar is good too, but suffers from having a lot redundant abilities.

As far as the daily dungeon grind goes. WHM also wins out because HOLY SPAAAM

But for content that's around level 50 i prefer SCH for having lustrate. WHM doesn't get Tetra till 60.

[vtndll]

Scholar also has the extra benefit of being connected to summoner so if you level one you level the other, but chances are you know that already.