Is there a reason a hefty chunk of SCH heals are unaffected by buffs

With 4.1 coming out, and no fix to this in sight, I thought I should ask if this is intentional or an oversight.

A fair bit of the healing I had been putting out as SCH pre-SB was from Lustrate, but most of it came from some sort of spell-based sort, so I didn't really care too much. However, now, with the nerf to Embrace, and the addition of Excognition most of my heals are coming from abilities as opposed to spells. WAR/SCH pairings were a bit troublesome before for this reason, since Defiance's heal buff does not affect Lustrate, but again most of my healing was coming from spells so I didn't care too much. I wouldn't call it truly problematic since I've never been in a situation where I was in any serious content with a pair of warriors and another scholar (WAR/WAR +SCH/SCH), but it is still an issue that seems like it needs addressing. To add insult to injury, we now have Largesse as a role action, which does nothing to boost ability healing.

I'm happy to see Succor's shielding increase, this was a sore spot for me, but the MP un-nerf from Adloquium seems unnecessary now. I've never really had issues with SCH's MP before, so it seems like a wasted jesture (pun intended) when what really needs to happy is a change to how Largesse, Defiance, Fey Illumination, and the other similar buffs that I can't think of off the top of my head.

So, is there a reason for this? Is SCH unbalanced otherwise? When one tank/healer pair is so much worse than another, that doesn't seem like you're balancing anything.

edit: In general, I'm satisfied with SCH kit, it just that there are some significant disparity in some cases, most significantly 4-man dungeons with a WAR tank. This seems to be a significant balance issue since healing a DRK or PLD as SCH is largely trivial in these dungeons, but a WAR is actually a bit of a challenge if I actually want to get DoTs in. To clarify, and give a concreate indicator, if the tank is a WAR, I can barely get DoTs in. Sometimes, if that tank isn't geared as well as I'd like, I can't even get all my DoTs in. Otherwise, with the other two, I'm spamming Broil II.

I suspect the reason is "because it's always worked that way and nobody has gotten around to looking at changing it" honestly. It's one of the fiddly things from earlier in the game's life that mostly serves to confuse people who don't understand it. It makes Largesse weird, as well, since it says it increases your healing but doesn't do a good job of explaining that it doesn't work on half your heals.

The Largesse side of it may prove an issue, but I don't think it'd be the end of the world if Defiance worked on all healing. (It'd also help stuff like Tetra when used on a Warrior.)

I've thought about Tetra, but WHM has enough, and beefy enough, heals that Tetra is an added bonus. Or it would seem that way. Ditto for Essential Dignity. I'll admit that my WHM is only level 57, so perhaps things change latter, but for AST, which is the first healer I got to 70, most of my healing is coming from spells. The issue with SCH is that most of my heals are coming from abilities. With AST, healing a WAR is just marginally more annoying than healing a PLD or DRK.

Also, I'm not going to touch on the issue of Fey Union + Rouse. That may have been intentional. Seems silly since the pet has to stop casting Embrace which DOES benifit from rouse, but meh. Whatever. Fey Union is still more potent than Embrace + Rouse + Fey Illumination + Defiance + Convalescence... by 5 points.

edit: To be clear, it seems as if to make the situation with WAR better you'd need to buff something, but SCH heals for PLD and DRK are just fine, which would make SCH OP.

My point is simply that it's not just a SCH thing when it comes to Defiance, although it hits them the most. But since it affects every healer in some way, I don't think it'd be a big deal if they changed Defiance to not work that way anymore and have it affect all healing. So I'm agreeing with you. :)

Tridus, seeing as how you have WHM listed as your main, how much of your healing comes from abilities? As mentioned my WHM is only 57.

Tetra is the only non-AoE. It also impacts Assize, Asylum, and Plenary Indulgence. I feel it primarily on Tetra because it's effectively an instant Cure 2 on PLD/DRK but on WAR Cure 2 is 140 potency stronger. That's pretty noticeable. Certainly less than it impacts SCH (Lustrate could really use that extra oomph with the size of a WAR health bar), but it's there.

This does look like an oversight, but it may very well be that the SCH kit can keep up a WAR in all content, even if it's touchy. I find it further interesting considering Lore implies SCH/WAR is a powerful synergy, but numbers can't lie.

Ah, but, what about Emergency Tactics? The dropped MP cost of Adlo allows us to rely on it more easily, but Emergency had it's cooldown lowered in the last series of adjustments. While it still counts as an "ability" heal, trading the sheild for a double potency heal can absolve some of the issues.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

This does look like an oversight, but it may very well be that the SCH kit can keep up a WAR in all content, even if it's touchy. I find it further interesting considering Lore implies SCH/WAR is a powerful synergy, but numbers can't lie..

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Lustrate used to be a straight +25% of the target's health, ignoring Healing reduction. Guess which Tank got the most 'raw' healing from that :P

While the healing buff issue is real, and could turn into a major problem if not watched carefully, it's not that much of a concern compared to other things. Because of Lily SCH's had their "buff" similar to WHM and AST, though withe her nerf and the other changes that is no longer that case; seriously SE you should of adjusted the scale again not the potency. But anyway, the real issues are the skills SCH has that are becoming useless more and more, if they were ever used at all. Primarily Silent Dusk and Dissipation are the big two, Deployment Tactics and Sacred Soil are up there but still "okay", Adlo and Succor are being addressed in 4.1, and they are checking on Excog; it's better than its initial iteration but still meh.

For the most part SCH is "okay" now, they just have reduced skills like the rest of the jobs; the main issue with that and why things feel sluggish and underwhelming is because SCH was very rotation oriented compared to the other Healers. Whereas the other healers would heal and use a single attack over and over until more healing was needed, SCH, since it branched off of a DPS class, shared that DPS rotation, and they alternated between their heals and DPS rotations. (And stance dancing don't forget stance dancing, how i sorta miss it too, T.T) That's not the case anymore, so they feel less engaging. And it doesn't help that WHM and AST got skills to make them more engaging.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

Lustrate used to be a straight +25% of the target's health, ignoring Healing reduction. Guess which Tank got the most 'raw' healing from that :P

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I'd certainly be happy with a return to percent based healing. After all, my complaint is disparity, not the actual amount of healing done.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

This does look like an oversight, but it may very well be that the SCH kit can keep up a WAR in all content, even if it's touchy. I find it further interesting considering Lore implies SCH/WAR is a powerful synergy, but numbers can't lie.

Ah, but, what about Emergency Tactics? The dropped MP cost of Adlo allows us to rely on it more easily, but Emergency had it's cooldown lowered in the last series of adjustments. While it still counts as an "ability" heal, trading the sheild for a double potency heal can absolve some of the issues.

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The issue isn't whether a SCH CAN keep a WAR alive. I know I can. The issue is that there is a large disparity with the specific combo of SCH/WAR that does not exist for other heals or tanks. Of the nine possible combinations, this is the only one that has this much of a problem. Again, it isn't game breaking, but it is very noticeable.

The other side of it is that the lack of support for healing abilities (vs spells) by these various buffs (not just Defiance, though it is the most significant in my opinion) impacts SCH far more than the other two. As a tank, I throw up Convalescence expecting to get extra heals from my healer. Fortunately, I'm a DRK, not a WAR, but if I was a WAR, I'd be concerned if my SCH healer was aware of the fact that his or her heals won't actually heal any better.

On a side note, the post length restriction on this forum really is a bit ridiculous.

Truthfully, a lot of the healer kits have gotten heavier with heals classified as "abilities" instead of "spells". In ARR white mage only had Benediction, and SCH's lustrate was always 25% so it didn't get too critical an eye there.

But, times have changed. It would be nice if Largesse, Fey Illumination, and so on were changed to affect both.

Even if the heal bonus was reduced, I'd be happy if for no other reason than to even things out. It seems as if it would help in balancing the classes in general if the dev team didn't have to consider how much healing was done by what kind of source.

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Originally Posted by Krovoc-The-Destroyer

Even if the heal bonus was reduced, I'd be happy if for no other reason than to even things out. It seems as if it would help in balancing the classes in general if the dev team didn't have to consider how much healing was done by what kind of source.

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Largesse already had its output cut by 33% and its cooldown increased by 50%; I'd rather not see more nerfs to it, personally. FI's 10% also doesn't strike me as something overly powerful...

FWIW, I've never really seen anything like "Well SCH's so powerful, that's why defiance doesn't affect healing abilities" from the dev team. I think it's just been an incidental mechanic... that used to just not really matter much. And when lustrate was % based, defiance would boost healing received by boosting the warrior's HP.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

FWIW, I've never really seen anything like "Well SCH's so powerful, that's why defiance doesn't affect healing abilities" from the dev team. I think it's just been an incidental mechanic... that used to just not really matter much. And when lustrate was % based, defiance would boost healing received by boosting the warrior's HP.

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Yeah, that's what I think too. At one point Warriors had Bloodbath and they probably didn't want *that* getting boosted, hence the mechanic. Now it's effectively just something that's left over from back then because it's never gotten high enough up the priority list for someone on the dev team to put time into it.

At least, that's my theory. :)

Hate to say it but I hope they give me another vial to level 60... SCH is on the bench

Figure I’d post here since this doesn’t need its own thread.

What’s up with deployment tactics for 4.0? They put e4e in role actions but force the sch to cc it because it basically halves deployments ability without it.

Sorry if is been discussed, just started to work on my sch and didnt pay attention the the forums on the matter

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Originally Posted by BorisDaBlade

Figure I’d post here since this doesn’t need its own thread.

What’s up with deployment tactics for 4.0? They put e4e in role actions but force the sch to cc it because it basically halves deployments ability without it.

Sorry if is been discussed, just started to work on my sch and didnt pay attention the the forums on the matter

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Since E4E only procs off physical damage, it's never had great synergy with deployment to begin with. I wouldn't worry about it, situations where E4E is useful on anyone but the tank are very rare and niche.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Since E4E only procs off physical damage, it's never had great synergy with deployment to begin with. I wouldn't worry about it, situations where E4E is useful on anyone but the tank are very rare and niche.

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Ah, ok. Thanks for the clarification. :)

E4E isn't worth taking, tbh. Long cooldown, no guarantee it'll work, and because it procs off physical damage it's pretty useless in raids.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

E4E isn't worth taking, tbh. Long cooldown, no guarantee it'll work, and because it procs off physical damage it's pretty useless in raids.

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I don't know about ruling it out entirely. It does sometimes see use in bleeding edge progression, in cases where damage all around is just very heavy. While the proc can only be triggered by physical damage, the damage reduction applies to magic too -- i.e., it does make those raid hits weaker, the raid hits just won't trigger it in the first place. I wonder if we'll see any of the top groups use it in Unending Coil? But with Addle replacing Virus, maybe not. And if the auto attacks are magic, that will also rule out E4E. We'll see soon, I suppose.

But in all cases I would call it pretty niche. Maybe it too could use a small buff to be more competitive...

On phone so won't go into much detail atm. Careful what you wish for -

Having abilities unaffected by buffs means they're unaffected by debuffs, too, both healing done and healing received ones. These have existed in the past and may exist in fights in the future, and I don't just mean Ramuh. Might call em fringe cases, but they exist. And can be used while silenced, just to throw that out there. While generally it'd be a boon to let these things be affected, especially with defiance, it's worth keeping this in mind.

This was a specific, intended change back in HW, as asylum was initially buffed by divine seal at launch, leaving us unsure what the developers wanted. When they patched it to be unaffected like other healing abilities and mentioned it in the patch notes, the intent was clear.

We have more and more ability heals, and I see SCH specifically sometimes passing on largesse. Perhaps they will reevaluate it at some point, but currently it is very much intentional. I know it feels odd with warrior and defiance, believe me. I always felt they should benefit from defiance's increase across the board, but here we are.

E4E isn't useless cause most autos are physical so you'll usually always have a tank target to apply it too, which when proc'd acts like reprisal. It can also be proc'd multiple times refreshing the 10s 10% damage reduction. Where E4E is completely useless rn is neo cause he doesn't auto attack and theres no adds that can attack.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I don't know about ruling it out entirely. It does sometimes see use in bleeding edge progression, in cases where damage all around is just very heavy. While the proc can only be triggered by physical damage, the damage reduction applies to magic too -- i.e., it does make those raid hits weaker, the raid hits just won't trigger it in the first place. I wonder if we'll see any of the top groups use it in Unending Coil? But with Addle replacing Virus, maybe not. And if the auto attacks are magic, that will also rule out E4E. We'll see soon, I suppose.

But in all cases I would call it pretty niche. Maybe it too could use a small buff to be more competitive...

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I feel like it needs to be able to proc off magical damage as well, and an odds increase on the proc activating. 3 minute cooldown on a 20s buff that only has 20% chance of a proc isn't very useful. 25% or higher maybe. But 20%? Few bosses do more than 6 hits in the span of 20s, it won't proc in most cases (especially for those of us with bad luck).

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Originally Posted by Erakir

Having abilities unaffected by buffs means they're unaffected by debuffs, too, both healing done and healing received ones. These have existed in the past and may exist in fights in the future, and I don't just mean Ramuh. Might call em fringe cases, but they exist. And can be used while silenced, just to throw that out there. While generally it'd be a boon to let these things be affected, especially with defiance, it's worth keeping this in mind.

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If SE specifically changed how Largesse/FI/Defiance worked, that wouldn't mean changing how debuffs and silence works. If we asked SE to change oGCD heals to be spells, it would. But they could just as easily -- perhaps more easily -- go "these healing buffs now affect abilities" and leave it at that.

And, we haven't had any especially notable heal debuff fights* since ARR. As in your example. If SE designs a new encounter with a healing debuff, it's probably going to take into account the very generous amounts of ability healing all 3 healers have now.

*Yes, I know Alex and Omega both have it for failing mechanics, but that's a bit different compared to say, Leviathan or Twintania, where it's part of the normal fight mechanics you always have to deal with. And, of course, Halicarnassus kills you anyway with the DPS down debuff....

I just which they would have unnerf Adloquium MP or buff the absorb. Seems like its not good heal to mana ration

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Originally Posted by Aniond

I just which they would have unnerf Adloquium MP or buff the absorb. Seems like its not good heal to mana ration

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They... are. Both Adlo and Succor are getting thier MP costs reduced (Though I don't believe we know by how much yet?), and Succor is being buffed from 150h/150s to 150h/225s.

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An issue wherein the white mage action Largesse was benefiting the action Plenary Indulgence.

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Well, RIP. (But, hey, they can definitely do it).

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

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An issue wherein the white mage action Largesse was benefiting the action Plenary Indulgence.

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Great Scott, we wouldn't want the job we've designated as the vanilla potency healer to heal for too much. That might be broken.

*proceeds to potency buff Emergency Succor above Medica*

Giving SCH some quality of life is one thing, but that intentional potency gap is creeping and creeping. And creeping.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Great Scott, we wouldn't want the job we've designated as the vanilla potency healer to heal for too much. That might be broken.

*proceeds to potency buff Emergency Succor above Medica*

Giving SCH some quality of life is one thing, but that intentional potency gap is creeping and creeping. And creeping.

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Emergency Succor is once every 20 seconds, though, so it's not as if WHM suddenly do less AoE healing...

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Originally Posted by Erakir

Having abilities unaffected by buffs means they're unaffected by debuffs, too, both healing done and healing received ones.

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I might be wrong, but I remember them being affected by some debuffs. Is it just my memory being faulty?

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Great Scott, we wouldn't want the job we've designated as the vanilla potency healer to heal for too much. That might be broken.

*proceeds to potency buff Emergency Succor above Medica*

Giving SCH some quality of life is one thing, but that intentional potency gap is creeping and creeping. And creeping.

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Succor is not exactly something you want to spam as a SCH, ET has a cooldown, and WHM great healing is definitely not in just how much medica heals for.

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Originally Posted by Erakir

On phone so won't go into much detail atm. Careful what you wish for -

Having abilities unaffected by buffs means they're unaffected by debuffs, too, both healing done and healing received ones. These have existed in the past and may exist in fights in the future, and I don't just mean Ramuh. Might call em fringe cases, but they exist. And can be used while silenced, just to throw that out there. While generally it'd be a boon to let these things be affected, especially with defiance, it's worth keeping this in mind.

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I'd have to test it out, or someone else can, but I'm not sure that is entirely accurate. Buffs tend to come form our side, the caster, which is why they aren't effected, but debuffs tend to be placed on the other side, the receivers. There aren't many debuffs that lower the healing given, I only know of the one in Hullbreaker HM, but most debuffs lower the healing received, disease being the most known.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

I'd have to test it out, or someone else can, but I'm not sure that is entirely accurate. Buffs tend to come form our side, the caster, which is why they aren't effected, but debuffs tend to be placed on the other side, the receivers. There aren't many debuffs that lower the healing given, I only know of the one in Hullbreaker HM, but most debuffs lower the healing received, disease being the most known.

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If I'm understanding you correctly, you're unsure about whether our healing abilities pierce our own debuffs, (-% healing done from us rather than -%healing received on our target?)

I just went into Hullbreaker to test that healing down debuff - It was my assumption that since healing percentage buffs on our own end do not buff abilities, that healing debuffs on our own would not negatively impact them as well.

This held true. There are examples in this video of Tetra and Assize without the healing debuff, and with the healing debuff. Their potencies were unaffected, though my Cure 2 certainly was. You can also check my regen ticks when applied without the debuff and with the debuff to see that they were properly reduced (they go from ~3.2k to ~1.3k noncrit)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA9t...ature=youtu.be

0:09 - Tetra, 14.5k, normal
0:29 - Assize, 6.3k, normal
1:09 - Tetra, 22.1k (crit), healing debuff
1:35 - Assize, 6.3k, healing debuff
2:11 - Tetra, 14.4k, normal
2:40 - Assize, 6.3k ,normal
3:13 - Tetra, 14.3k, healing debuff
3:48 - Assize, 6.1k, normal

As for buffs and debuffs on the recipient's end, there are plenty of examples of abilities being unaffected, from Defiance, Convalescence, Infirmary debuffs, and Ramuh. All in all abilities seem to go through all modifiers, both from the caster and on the recipient.

I'm split with this.
On one hand, I truly would love abilities to benefit from. Healing buffs.
A buffed Asylum or buffed Plenary would be godly.

On the other hand, the potentcy of most OGCD heals are so potentcy pumped that it could easily be OP.
Indom is 500 pot now, with a Lagresse it would literally become a 15y Cure III (it already is but even more so).
SCH also has the most healing buffs in the game. If OGCD heals were effected by all those buffs, if would be a bit ridiculous.

If this were to happen, SCH would have to lose Fey Illumination to keep their healing in check

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

If this were to happen, SCH would have to lose Fey Illumination to keep their healing in check

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I never really understood this argument. It's almost like WHM/AST mains are forgetting it's an AoE party buff.

Not that it will ever happen anyway. The recent adjustment to Plenary Indulgence pretty much confirms it.