What changes will push sch out of meta

As much as I enjoy playing sch. It would be nice for the healers to be more equal and give whm/ast a shot to be meta. For me the problem seems to me focused around how strong Eos is. Maybe a pet rework would help balance. Thoughts?

Get rid of the fairy.

Give whm a buff that can be applied to party members that when that party member drops below a certain hp% the buff heals the player for the same potency as say cure II and also has the ability to crit and do splash healing.

Basically like a heal "bomb" that blows up if the player takes too much damage.

Before someone says that's too OP. This is what happens every time a fairy casts a heal automatically.

Nothing.

That free regen vs Noct Astro healer that has no access to regen is already the largest burden to overcome. Scholar is a pet job, and that part isn't going to change.

You can clear all the content in the game including Creator Savage as WHM/AST if that is what you desire, it doesn't have to be the meta to be viable.

Orrr maybe instead of "pushing out" a third wheel, they can make any combination of the three synergize better? Reduce mp costs for other healers, or like as suggested give them an ability that could act like a fairy for a short time, They probably will start treating dissipation like how dreadwyrm works on smn though for future skills, you gotta eat dat fairy-my biggest fear


EDIT maybe some simple changes to skills like cleric stance, instead of the mind/int swap what if it swapped healing/attack potency so skills like dissipation/divine seal/whatever ast has would bring more incentive to considering other healers for off healing.IDK

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Originally Posted by Tiva

As much as I enjoy playing sch. It would be nice for the healers to be more equal and give whm/ast a shot to be meta. For me the problem seems to me focused around how strong Eos is. Maybe a pet rework would help balance. Thoughts?

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So, SE already nerfed the fairy pretty hard with HW. Just from quick sync testing, the 3.5 fairy is only 50% or 60% as strong as the 2.5 fairy was. I don't think pet nerfs will do it unless it's to the point the fairy becomes irrelevant (more or less already the case in PvP, where SCH is considered the worst healer now).

And, honestly, I don't think anyone that really wants healer balance wants that, as that would just lead to SCHs being on bottom. As to how SE will do it though... I have no idea.

A race to the bottom is not the solution. Nerfing jobs to the point that ppl don't want to play them is not the solution. Balancing gameplay and jobs around all encounters is what is required-- not making a job less fun/powerful/desirable so the player picks up something else to play. Bring other jobs up. Give them unique party skills so that taking one over another doesn't create a required advantage-- it just creates a different advantage.

One of the perks to the SCH kit is the fact that the Fairy provides an MP-free 0-GCD HoT that's more potent than most individual HoTs in the game right now. Embrace is a fairly powerful spell when compared to similar nature spells and abilities in other kits.

So, if you were to balance Embrace out with other items it would either need a potency nerf (maybe indirectly via level correlation) or give the other kits a more potent HoT / buff their HoTs. Giving N.AST a sect-less HoT would also get around this too.

It's just one aspect that makes the SCH kit strong but it's something I expect to see changed in 4.0.

I don't really want to comment on the rest of the SCH kit until I get to see what all the healer's get in 4.0. There's a lot of things I can think of but I'd rather just wait and see at this point in time.

Change the DoTs into HoTs... :)

Get rid of cleric in instances, but if its compulsary for all healers to dps, then make things simpler like give all healers a dot and an attack spell. Make fairy auto so embrace cant be macroed to mash heal with. I wouldnt nerf the pet unless having one actually makes a scholar's healing more than the other classes. It may be part of the balance.

I am just hoping they don't add more heals to WHM in SB. That might be odd to say but WHM is already stupid powerful with its heals and at this point any additional healing has a far smaller value. Throughput healing is about effectively meeting a quota on the amount of heals given in any given point at time. Anything on top of that is wasteful and of little value. WHM is also extremely good at meeting that quota. More heals on top of that really don't offer much to a WHM's tool kit.

You don't want to push a job out of the meta, you want to pull currently undesireable jobs into the meta. As long as Balance remains a +20% buff, AST is gonna have an assured place, so really I think the issue lies more in WHM needing desperate buffs, or reworking (not nerfing) AST so that Diurnal doesn't make them basically a better WHM. Granted, reworking AST in that fashion might actually be considered a nerf, but eehh, with how powerful the cards are, I don't think there's much you could do to AST's actual healing kit bar making them completely unable to heal through fights that would actually push them out of the meta.

That said, if what you want is to absolutely remove Scholar from the meta, then they'd have to get rid of the fairy, and they can't really do much to her that wouldn't alter Scholar's very core concept, except nerfing her healing potencies to the ground, which could possibly end up making the class useless, indeed.

If they introduce a healer that is good at DPs and adding healing buffs that will affect your healing partner.

Like he will have low heal potency in general but put healing buffs on the party in order to heal, and his partner also benefits from these buffs.
This will make people take AST in Nocturnal Sect and this new healer.

So he will be the type to try and reduced damage + low healing potency + no shields but rather he buffs the party to receive more heal potency that affect his partners heals as well.

He can have abilities like:

- Increase healing potency by -- for -- seconds.
- Increase healing received by --%.
- Increase HP and fill it by --% for -- seconds.

He could use a combo healing system.

You get the idea.. I did not give it much thought yet but the idea is there.

SCh strenght is the powerful damage mitigation, since you can heal pre-emptively and most of the healing potency will always be used while WHM and AST in Diurnal Sect must wait until HP is low enough to avoid overhealing. Shielding healers tend to be the most effective type of healer in MMORPG.

That said, if a healer falls out of the meta is purely because its performance is subpar in everything, as it happens with any other roles (looking at you, early Heavensward PLD). WHMs have a raw healing potency that SCHs don't posess. ASTs have the flexibility and a more powerful (although RNG bound) buff that SCHs don't have. And each class performs well in all enviroments. Also you can only have one SCH per group, so it's hard if not impossible for the SCH to overshadow other healers in the meta.

At last, the mindset should be about making the useless jobs not useless, not having the other classes become also useless.

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Originally Posted by Feyona

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Problem is that a DoT and an Attack Spell can't make up for the damage boost Cleric Stance provide since damage still scales out of INT, not MND.

what about a bubble that stacks with shields?

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Originally Posted by Yeol

If they introduce a healer that is good at DPs and adding healing buffs that will affect your healing partner.

Like he will have low heal potency in general but put healing buffs on the party in order to heal, and his partner also benefits from these buffs.
This will make people take AST in Nocturnal Sect and this new healer.

So he will be the type to try and reduced damage + low healing potency + no shields but rather he buffs the party to receive more heal potency that affect his partners heals as well.

He can have abilities like:

- Increase healing potency by -- for -- seconds.
- Increase healing received by --%.
- Increase HP and fill it by --% for -- seconds.

He could use a combo healing system.

You get the idea.. I did not give it much thought yet but the idea is there.

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give an edge to stoneskin though in all honesty it might be put in the cross role skill list....unless they just make it a whm only thing

Let Eos Share off your MP pool.

Give WHM some kind of team-wide utility spells that don't just revolve around massive healing.
Maybe something like, summoning protection from elementals offering various resistances? Dunnu, something like that. Just not more heals.

Redesigning AST so that it isn't WHM v2.
AST is so similar to WHM on the healing end (even in Noct) that there is little reason to not bring a SCH.

SCH is the only one bringing a unique healing kit.

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Originally Posted by winsock

Redesigning AST so that it isn't WHM v2.

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Unfortunately they've already said they aren't going to do this kind of overhaul. AST's healing kit will largely remain a copypasta of WHM's.

Which is also why I'm skeptical that SE can balance it. If AST can't keep up with healing, people will have to take WHM. If it can, then it can heal just as well as WHM (if not better like currently) and also hands out Raging Strikes CDs, among other things.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Unfortunately they've already said they aren't going to do this kind of overhaul. AST's healing kit will largely remain a copypasta of WHM's.

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That's a shame. Im curious to read what they had to say. Could you link if you still have it around?

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Originally Posted by winsock

That's a shame. Im curious to read what they had to say. Could you link if you still have it around?

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Full text here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ival_eu_press/

Relevant QA:

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Q: What can expect from the combat revamp and how will the abilities be handled?
Y: What we're not going to be doing is we are not going to be rebuilding it from the ground up. So we're going to concentrate on two things with this revamp. During the course of the 3.X series and the introduction of more actions the action rotation that was necessary for high DPS became very complex so we started seeing a big gap form regarding the skilled and casual players and we wanted to bring up the bottom. The second thing is currently with Final Fantasy XIV a lot of players use the controller so with the amount of actions it's getting very difficult for a lot of those players to use all of the actions available. So with the raise of the level cap to 70 it's getting to the point where there is not enough ways to use all these actions. So we'll be cutting the number of unused actions and combining similar actions to keep the total number of actions at 70 at about the same it is now.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Unfortunately they've already said they aren't going to do this kind of overhaul. AST's healing kit will largely remain a copypasta of WHM's.

Which is also why I'm skeptical that SE can balance it. If AST can't keep up with healing, people will have to take WHM. If it can, then it can heal just as well as WHM (if not better like currently) and also hands out Raging Strikes CDs, among other things.

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I honestly don't believe they'll be able to fix AST vs WHM either.
See, there's an inherent problem with WHM. Creating a healer that can heal higher than others is nice, but other healers still need to heal content without too much trouble as well, so those higher heals become unnecessary as the content is balanced to a point where you don't need the higher numbers.

It's not safer either, as people like to claim. Mitigation makes things safe, not higher healing power. And WHM has 0 mitigation, probably won't have any in 4.0 either.

That's a real shame, I hadn't really read any of that.

I was thinking the other day what changes to AST could be made to restore WHM their identity without pushing AST out. I thought that instead of making AST a "main-heal" kinda class, they should have left them as a regen/shielding hybrid throughout the fight. Leaving the cards as they are and limiting some of their more powerful healing hit (Benefic II and Aspected Helios) to CDs, while allowing them to change Sects in battle (with a 30 sec CD on the sect, maybe) could have worked for a more interesting class that doesn't get in WHM's shoes too much, and also makes it so you don't have to balance two healing classes in one, since DiAST and NoctAST wouldn't have to be seen as different roles.

It's probably not perfect, but I think these changes would be healthy for the meta:

- Getting rid of Benefic II and replacing it with a 45 sec-1 min. CD that would increase the healing potency of the next spell cast by 50%. This would make a Benefic the same potency as Benefic II, and would increase Aspected Benefic's potency a lot to serve as cushion.

- Changing Aspected Helios to be an instant ability, not a spell, on a 1 min. CD, affected by Sects respectively. To make up for Synastry not affecting Noct!Helios, the shielding potency could be brought up to 290 or 300 to be a surrogate Deployment Tactics (as it is right now).

- Allowing sects to be used in the middle of battle with a 30 sec CD, thus allowing for hybrid healing styles.

- Getting rid of Stella and giving Malefic the Heavy effect (since all healers have a form of this).

- Replacing Stella's skill slot with a 3 min CD ability that would make all Aspected effects be transformed into healing on all targets within 15ym of the AST. Basically something similar to Emergency Tactics, except that you'd use it after casting, thus transforming all remaining HoTs into burst healing, and all shields into burst healing as well. With this, the healing potency of Helios might have to be changed, but being on a 3 min CD I don't think it's awfully necessary.

- Additionally, combined total potency on AST's HoTs would probably have to revised, and possibly reduced, as well as the duration on Aspected Helios' regen.

- Cards are left as they are right now, with Balance, Arrow and Bole being dumb af.

I'm not sure these changes would actually bring WHM up from the grave, but at least I think making AST's burst healing more gated, like Scholar's is, would make seem WHM more desireable.

AST already seems the theoretically strongest healer to me, so focusing primarily just on WHM:

Revamp the CNJ procs to make them more responsive and reliable than just mana reduction on sequential casts, thereby also making WHM more mana-efficient as an off-healer. That's basically all you need. SCH's advantage here is much like WAR's as an OT; just as WAR relies least on actually tanking for its damage output, the SCH relies least on sequential casts (actually healing) for its output over time. Level the responsiveness some. It's alright for WHM to still ramp up some compared to AST somewhat and especially to SCH, but it shouldn't be unreliably fishing for procs. And if a portion of WHM mana restoration should still be based on casts dealt, it should apply also to offensive casts, not just curative ones. It would be ideal if the replacing traits play somewhat into increased spell speed or oGCD spell-power, in order to improve WHM's sense of responsiveness.

Finally, you can improve their synergy with AST (especially Diurnal AST) by revising certain card effects to be more universally useful, rather than just situational, preferably without relying on absurdly strong effects such as post-buff Balance or its counterpart 'minute-long-Rampart'. If needed for either, you can also cause overheal ticks to "bloom", spreading to nearby wounded instead. I'd recommend possibly allowing for 'bonus' healing against heavily wounded allies, but WHM is already a strong enough progression healer. Unless DPS requirements are very high, it's during the farming period that it falls out of fashion.
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As for improving AST as a progression healer, the main direction is the same as ever: Fix the cards. Their tooltips might need to be expanded significantly, but they shouldn't so often go situationally to waste. Ideally, each should adjust group play somewhat. However, even should they end up about equally useful in most circumstances, albeit for different purposes, I'd still like to see more control exertable over the RNG components of drawing cards.

At most, you might add another spell or two involving card usage for added versatility.

Make fairyskills cost mana. (about 10% of the Players cost for a similar spell)

The higher requirement to micro the fairy and the decissionmaking wheter to use the mana to heal or deal damage would rise his skillcap and lower his value.

Ok ok lots of great replies, awesome!
I want to address a point I've seen brought up many times so far.
"Meta" is always going to be one comp. That is literally what "meta" means. Unless we get massive class homogenization (I don't recommend it) there will always be one "best" comp, mathematically. What I would like to see personally is that meta is only slightly better than maybe 2 or 3 other possible comps. Instead of being such a big gap.

By saying "how can we push sch out of meta", I do not mean "how do we nerf the shit out of sch and make healing unbalanced in favor of whm/ast". That is not what I asked and it's sad that healing has been so unbalanced this expansion that this is the immediate assumption from so many people. I'm saying, how do we make it so whm/sch and ast/sch comps are slightly worse than whm/ast, therefore giving these classes a chance to be in meta together. This does not mean that I would like to see sch become unviable. That would suck. I just feel (and I feel the same about monk and paladin btw) that its time to put the "spotlight" on other classes and let them shine for a while.

Dirunal AST is probably actually the best healer right now. If you nerf SCH's fairy or you give the noct AST the answer to the fairy, you risk that AST/AST being the best thing. AST has the potential to replace both healers and they have insane card buffs. If AST heals are equal or even just "good enough", they will better than both the WHM and the SCH.

Currently, one of SCHs largest strengths is fight design. SCHs best healing and mitigation tools come from their cooldowns. With how scripted the fights are currently designed, it doesn't take too long to determine the optimal moments to use the correct cooldowns.

If fights were designed to be much more random in nature, it would put a monkey wrench in the SCH kit as it becomes more difficult, if not impossible, to have an ideal CD rotation for the SCH. That would push SCH away from being the optimal choice for those particular fights if this were to occur.

Upping overall healing frequency would also potentially put a damper on SCH because, again, their best tools are cooldowns. You'll notice that despite the strength of SCH, there are very very few SCH solo heals in the 3.X era versus the 2.X era. This just showcases how limited SCH can get.

The strength of the SCH kit is not just the kit as a whole, but also revolves around fight design and party design. If that gets shaken up in some capacity, you may see SCH slip out of the Meta as players shift to more favorable and direct healing that AST and WHM can provide.

Not to say and of the above will happen in 4.X, but it's one of the contributing factors to SCHs current position.

As long as SCH has a fairy that acts like a completely free permanent regen effect, SCH isn't going to go anywhere. WHM is not going to be desired in groups unless it gets HUGE changes. AST does everything WHM does and more. Why take WHM? Cure 3? Incredibly niche. Benediction? More like mehnediction.

WHM has garbage resource management, basic healing spells that cost more than AST's despite having the same potency (why the heck??????), No native mitigation beyond the absolute trash that is Stoneskin (which is single target only, don't even get me started about untraited Virus/E4E) in exchange for slightly higher burst healing output and a marginal personal DPS advantage. Compared to the alternatives...well.

WHM needs reliable mitigation skills to even begin to approach the table AST and SCH currently sit at.

Remove Indomitability, WHM should be the only healer with an instant AoE heal. Sacred Soil is never used because Indomitability exists.

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Originally Posted by Tiva

By saying "how can we push sch out of meta", I do not mean "how do we nerf the shit out of sch and make healing unbalanced in favor of whm/ast"

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Well in that case, there are a few things that needs to be addressed

First of all would be the requirement of the whole player base to stop tunneling into White Mage or Diurnal astrologian being the "main healer". As many perceive Nocturnal Astrologian as a healer similar to scholar, they tend to get treated as a scholar as well. Which isn't odd. Considering our lord and saviour Yoshi P made the comparison himself.* This is exactly the part where we need let go if we want to "break the meta". In a sense, a White Mage is more suitable to take the off-healer slot than Nocturnal Astrologian. Simply for their ability to keep healing while being in Cleric's Stance - Which off-healers are more in than not compared to the other healer with the meta. This is due to having Regen available. Which Nocturnal Astrologian does not, as it's equivalent is locked in Diurnal Sect. While either stance does have access to Collective Unconsciousness, it cannot be maintained indefinitely and white mage has something similar called Asylum. So as a pure napkin theory, Nocturnal Astrologian taking the main healing slot and White Mage taking the off-healer slot seems more promising than the other way around. I made a topic about this a few months ago too.**

However, and this brings us to the second point, stamina is a problem. White Mage simply does not have the ability to fulfill the role to primarily do damage while also doing their share of healing. Compared to Scholar the MP efficiency on damage spells is terrible (with exception of Broil) and their MP recovery ability doesn't scale with MP pool. There is also significantly more effort required to do so by switching back and forth between maiming and mending more frequently than a Scholar would. Even if it's only to re-apply Regen every 21 seconds. But, in my opinion, effort shouldn't be a primary issue here.

While I don't believe the meta would shift from astrologian+scholar being the most optimal duo if said issue would be addressed. I believe it does lessen the preference gap between the healing compositions available. No hard nerfs would be required. Maybe tuning shroud to be on par with Luminiferous Aether or lower the damage spells cost would be a good start. Or make said skills scale on MP pool like how Aetherflow does. As this is the only ability that only gets better as our gear progresses.

* https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/125199-Famitsu-PAX-East-Interview-(3-14)-Translation
** http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/279963-Astrologian-impossible-to-balance-as-it-is

Really, the focus should be on "what would make WHM a desired pick" rather than "What would push SCH out". It's sort of pointless to even consider trying to make WHM/AST pairs more viable or desired when WHM itself just...isn't.

Don't get me wrong, I have never been fond of how incredibly secure WAR and SCH's places are in the meta. But we need to fix what's broken (WHM/PLD/MNK) before we can focus on making the meta a more malleable thing.

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Originally Posted by Ariane

Dirunal AST is probably actually the best healer right now. If you nerf SCH's fairy or you give the noct AST the answer to the fairy, you risk that AST/AST being the best thing. AST has the potential to replace both healers and they have insane card buffs. If AST heals are equal or even just "good enough", they will better than both the WHM and the SCH.

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So much this.

Scholar was indeed the undisputed king of 8-man healing at the start of the expansion, but after the devs buffed and buffed and buffed AST, it's honestly hilarious how much better AST is than both SCH and WHM. Not only are AST's buffs much stronger (neither WHM nor SCH have an answer to Balance and Arrow, or any card for that matter. And no, Fey Wind is not even remotely comparable to Arrow), but AST has ridiculously good MP efficiency when healing, great DPS sustainability, and is also a powerhouse of single-target healing with Asp. Benefic, Benefic II and ED. AST's biggest "problem" is a lack of proper burst AoE healing, but Lightspeed and the mitigation tools they have kind of make up for this, not to mention Celestial Opposition gives them more AoE healing output for less MP as well if the regens from AspHelios and CU are extended. On top of this, they can play the bard role and give their co-healer or themselves more MP, or feed a TP starved PLD or physical DPS.

The thing with the AST+SCH comp being so much better is not because of SCH, it's because WHM is crap. You most definitely don't want to miss AST because of all the amazing things previously listed, and both SCH and WHM can effortlessly make up for AST's one weakness (burst AoE healing). So, when you have the option of SCH and WHM, which one do you pick? The answer is pretty obvious.

The other big problem is that NoctAST's lack of regens is very unfortunate. As someone else said, NoctAST is better suited to be the healer focused on the main tank, but when WHM can't even sustain being the support healer, then what do you do?

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Originally Posted by Feyona

Get rid of cleric in instances, but if its compulsary for all healers to dps, then make things simpler like give all healers a dot and an attack spell. Make fairy auto so embrace cant be macroed to mash heal with. I wouldnt nerf the pet unless having one actually makes a scholar's healing more than the other classes. It may be part of the balance.

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Considering Eos can solo heal almost everything in the game, getting rid of cleric stance would make Scholar the most boring class to have ever existed. You would just be chaperoning the real healer around and going afk during pulls.

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Originally Posted by Kitfox

Get rid of the fairy.

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This is the truth.
As many experienced healers have said before, the primary resource of a healer is not MP, and is actually the number actions you can perform within a time frame, AKA our GCDs.

With the fairy, you have a regen that needs no re-application (WHMs need to do it every 8 GCDs, Diurnal AST every 7 GCDs), can change target at will.
With Eos, you have AoE Regen, AoE MDEF up, AoE Heal received up, you do not even need to insta cast weave these spells like you do if you want to Assize/Lustrate/Essential Dignity.

Over a course of a fight, the amount of "extra GCDs" you have over the other 2 healer is nothing to scoff at.

This is why as long as the fairy is a part of scholar, the scholar will always be considered superior.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

Let Eos Share off your MP pool.

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Potential bad idea in that it'd lead to a situation where Scholars would NOT want their fairies to heal in some situations.

Potential good idea in that it'd actually encourage use of Dissipation.

Potential bad idea in that some Scholar mains out there don't want to give the devs any ideas in justifying the existence of Dissipation.

Anyway, WHM just needs two things: MP costs reduced across the board/better MP regeneration, and some form of mitigation. It feels like in today's raids, WHM's primary strength in the amount of regens they have cannot come close to keeping up with the amount of damage coming out, which by default means that mitigation is the best tool to counter all of that (and hell, one could argue that mitigation would give time for the regens to really make a difference anyway). And AST and SCH's mitigation are miles better than what WHM has. It's no wonder WHM is so undesirable today, when the other two healers have taken WHM's only mitigation tool for themselves (Stoneskin), also have access to regens on top of all of their other advantages, with WHM also having the poorest MP management by far.

Or, in short, remember how at the start of the expansion, people slammed AST because its heals were too weak to be considered a good healer? We're now seeing an alternate version of that - WHM is now a healer without any exclusive mitigation to be considered a good healer.

If you're talking about 8 man content then SCH will always be part of the meta because it's the best OH in that case due to it's utility play. AST brings the buffs, SCH brings the support, WHM brings... overhealing. The only healer I see getting no love these days is the WHM and that's for obvious reasons. The AST/SCH combos are the bread and butter of end game right now. SCH doesn't need to be changed other than maybe MP use. WHM needs to be made relevant again. Having an abundance of over healing from a class is no longer needed or necessary these days.

Mitigation and better resource management alone won't make WHM desirable, but it will bring them a lot closer than they are right now. They're still going to need more love to compare to the other healer's toolkits.

I've made this comment in the past somewhere but I thought it would be pretty neat if the gave WHM so much healing power that they effectively tell you "You should run one healer and five DPS in your raid". I know it won't happen but the thought of it makes me giggle a little inside. Not really a thing to push SCH outta the meta but perhaps if we can encourage more diverse party compositions. There will also be on "absolute optimal" composition but at least having the differing options would reduce the thoughts of "uselessness" in some jobs.

Another thought... Quick fix SE could do right now: Slash the cost of all WHM DPS spells (except maybe holy) in half.

WHM already tops the charts for healer DPS in both dungeons and raids. Just let them do that without needing MP support and it would have its own niche.