How SE Can Fix SCH

One Step Forward, 2 Step Back

Before I get into the meat of my discussion, I want to give Kudos to SE for the QoL changes / Buffs we got in 5.0.

Dissipation got the Bahamut Treatment
Pets Don't Die
The Mechanics of Catalyze
Sacred Soil got a Regen
We got a way to guarantee Crit Adlo Deployment.
More options for AOE healing through Consolation & Fey Blessing.

SCH tool kit seems very strong in the healing department and I can't wait to try it out in raids.

However, While I love these changes I feel that some of the other changes are downright annoying and SE shafted a great majority of their player base who play SCH by removing key skills. It seems they made some changes ignoring why a lot of people love SCH in the first place.

What I loved about SCH in 4.0 was that it was an incredibly strategic job; If you knew the encounter well enough, you had an answer for everything a boss could throw at you. You'd laugh at the boss as his group-wide AOE barely tickles your party; you then added insult to injury as you countered with Broil, Dots, Shadowflare. Since 2.0, SE Slowly chipped away at this identity and more and more SCH is changing to what WHM uses to be in 2.0 (Strong Healing, limited utility). If I wanted to be a WHM I'd play a WHM. I love SCH because it rewards being Pro-active and not Reactive. If you are an amazing SCH, your jobs becomes less about healing and more about mitigating, assisting, and aiding your allies in the fight (DPSing).

In 5.0, most of that Identity has been stripped away. They dumbed SCH down to reduce the skill gap, but for those of us who mastered it, the pace is to slow. Simply healing is boring. I now feel like a Baby sitter who no longer contributes much outside of healing. Below are my suggestion of how we could make SCH Better.

Let us use Aetherflow outside of battle

For years now, Its has been the norm for tanks to pull big in Dungeons. My answer for this before was to place an Exog on them before they pull. Changing it so that we can only use Aetherflow in battle created an unintentional problem. It has only been a day but I have had multiple tanks die because "I" wasn't in battle so I couldn't use aetherflow; Our strongest heals are gated behind Aetherflow. What was so bad about it before that you needed to nerf it ? I hate when developers nerf things for the sake of nerfing things. If it an broke, don't fix it.

Give us back Bane & Shadow Flare

I get that some people thought SCH was too busy so I understand why you turned some of the fairy actions into SCH abilities and removed a lot of pet actions and SCH actions. But I think some of us can agree that the number of skills removed was overkill. I personally didn't think SCH was too busy, it was versatile. On top of this, a lot of its complexity could have been mitigated through Macros. With all the skills that were removed, I find myself sitting on my hands, spamming Broil, or wasting MP with Art of War. I think a good compromise would be to give us back Bane and Shadowflare. Its very tedious applying dots to every mob without bane. Since Bio, Bane, and shadownflare are all instant, it shouldnt be too hard for new players to keep them up. Im ok with losing Miasma 2/3 since Art of War sort of makes up for it.


Show Fairy on Party List

Outside of your fairy gauge on post 70 content, its hard to tell when your fairy is there. It can easily get lost in the chaos. I can't tell you how many times my fairy despawned without me noticing. It's cool you made them invincible, but when i don't have my gauge, (pre-70 content) I always have to be aware where my fairy is because without um, were severly hindered; WHM/AST don't have this issue. Its a small detail I never thought I'd miss.

"Give Summon Seraph Baked in Fey Light/Fey Glow"

I'm reaching here, but these skills were good but underutilized because Selene was so bad. Similar to how you get a free regen when you summon Phoenix, It would be cool to see these actions make a comeback upon summoning Seraph. This would more of a nice to have.


I'm not asking for SE to make SCH OP, I'm just asking for SE to give back things that made SCH a SCH: A Master Tactician.

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

I'm thinking the option of giving a SCH a full aetherflow stack on zoning or an encounter reset would probably be an easier middle ground for this, ensuring that SCH don't find themselves in an oGCD handicap at the start of an encounter. I'm sure we've all done it with the fairy in the past ;)

I'm soso on the return of bane and honestly I wonder if there would be a better way to handle this. Shadowflare and ED are things to consider though, especially given that SF is kind of a foil to the newly buffed Sacred Soil.

For the fairy on the party list thing. I'd have thought a simpler option would be just to have pets simply teleport to you and auto heel when you run out of range of them?

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

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Your solution would work or a GCD spell with a decent cast (like 5 seconds) with: Gain III Aetheflow. Can only be used outside of combat, like old SSII.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

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The thing with this is right now there's far less value to front loading a bunch of aetherflows at the start of a pull with the removal of ED. All the other options save for lustrate are tied to a cooldown, and if you're needing to pump out 9 lustrates in the space of a minute...something has either gone wrong or you're not healing efficiently.

Like...with the removal of ED I feel like the change to aetherflow is kinda pointless and only serves to make the class feel clunkier...

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

I'm thinking the option of giving a SCH a full aetherflow stack on zoning or an encounter reset would probably be an easier middle ground for this, ensuring that SCH don't find themselves in an oGCD handicap at the start of an encounter. I'm sure we've all done it with the fairy in the past ;)

I'm solo on the return of bane and honestly I wonder if there would be a better way to handle this. Shadowflare and ED are things to consider though, especially given that SF is kind of a foil to the newly buffed Sacred Soil.

For the fairy on the party list thing. I'd have thought a simpler option would be just to have pets simply teleport to you and auto heel when you run out of range of them?

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I personally never asked others to wait for my Aetherflow to reset before a pull and I don't ever recall another SCH asking for this either. I simply adjusted. 3 stacks going in was more than enough and even if you had no stacks, you always had dissipation as a backup. While othere jobs have this problem its not as big of an issues WAR/SMN. WAR gets two charges of infuriate, and SMN "aetherflow (energy drain)" is on 30sec cool down. It isnt as bad since they use their charges for damage. SCHs could use their aetherflow preemptively (Excog/Sacred). Those little differences made huge impacts in some encounters.

I dunno why they did the aetherflow out of combat change anyway, they removed energy drain: the main reason people did the 1 minute pre pull to begin with

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Originally Posted by OmegaSinX

I personally never asked others to wait for my Aetherflow to reset before a pull and I don't ever recall another SCH asking for this either. I simply adjusted.

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It was primarily a savage thing. As you say, it wasn't ever really a consideration for dungeons, and rarely mentioned in Trials unless you're going with a static perhaps.

It's just an odd quirk and in my eyes it'll primarily cause problems for a particular niche aka non DPSing lower APM casuals in dungeons. Outside of that, it's not really much of a deal, as above states, with ED gone and Excog/Sacred Soil not being sustainable, SCHs are likely going to have charges to spare more often than not.

Also, your sig makes me chuckle every time, I love it <3

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Originally Posted by Jerichai

Like...with the removal of ED I feel like the change to aetherflow is kinda pointless and only serves to make the class feel clunkier...

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Couldn't agree more.

Only agree with point 1 and 3

Bane is pretty meaningless with 1 DoT and Shadowflare was a fire and forget DoT with a CD so it wouldn't add anything to SCH in terms of making the class more interesting. I'd take Energy Drain over both since then I have something to dump excessive Aether Stacks with to help me build up fairy gauge on top of being a nice MP sustain tool being infinitely more useful to SCH as a whole than either Bane or Shadowflare ever were.

Seraph already has enough going for her that adding Selene's Old Abilities on top would be sort of overkill. She already grants an extra shield for even more mechanical nonsense blocking so I don't view this suggestion as anything other than a buff to SCH for the sake of Top Healer privilege.

The other thing that annoys me to no end with the "aetherflow only in combat" thing is:

There seems to be a variable amount to time from when you damage an NPC to when aetherflow becomes available for use. I've had times where I'll throw a dot and the ability is immediately up. Other times I'll don't and it seems to take a second or so for the game to fully realize that I'm in combat and the ability should be available. This just adds to the clunky nature of the change in my eyes.

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Originally Posted by Jerichai

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This is probably the game waiting on a dot tick to register? Theoretically Ruin II should be instant every time although I could be wrong!

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Only agree with point 1 and 3

Bane is pretty meaningless with 1 DoT and Shadowflare was a fire and forget DoT with a CD so it wouldn't add anything to SCH in terms of making the class more interesting. I'd take Energy Drain over both since then I have something to dump excessive Aether Stacks with to help me build up fairy gauge on top of being a nice MP sustain tool being infinitely more useful to SCH as a whole than either Bane or Shadowflare ever were.

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Bane saved GCDs spreading dots one by one. Precious time you could be using on something else. Shadow Flare had chance to slow enemies; minor but it was added damage + mini utility we lost with its removal. This would definitely make SCH more interesting if it didn't compete with Sacred Soil ( we could then have both up: Slow + Dot + 90% damage + Regen).

If they wanted to make SCH dot management more simple, they could have combined Bio II & Miasma III into the new Biolysis spell (100 potencies combined maybe?) similar to Tri-Disater on SMN.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

This is probably the game waiting on a dot tick to register? Theoretically Ruin II should be instant every time although I could be wrong!

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Honestly you're probably right. I'm so used to opening a fight with setting up dots that I was just doing that out of habit. I'll given ruin 2 a try when moving with the tank.

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Originally Posted by Jerichai

The other thing that annoys me to no end with the "aetherflow only in combat" thing is:

There seems to be a variable amount to time from when you damage an NPC to when aetherflow becomes available for use. I've had times where I'll throw a dot and the ability is immediately up. Other times I'll don't and it seems to take a second or so for the game to fully realize that I'm in combat and the ability should be available. This just adds to the clunky nature of the change in my eyes.

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To be more specific. "Aetherflow only in combat and you have to be on the hate list(rank doesn't matter)".
Currently, if you don't do anything in the combat, you won't be able to cast Aetherflow. So even in the combat there's a situation Aetherflow is unavailable.
This is very frustrating. SE should at least let us cast Aetherflow once your PT member gets on the enemy's hate list.

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Originally Posted by Avih

if you don't do anything in the combat, you won't be able to cast Aetherflow. So even in the combat there's a situation Aetherflow is unavailable.
This is very frustrating. SE should at least let us cast Aetherflow once your PT member gets on the enemy's hate list.

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This is extremely annoying, to get around this I have to use Biolysis on the mob as tank pulls. Theres have been times I've was taking damage and still couldn't use aether.

I think your points are pretty good and I really think SCH needs Bane + Miasma back, so Biolysis + Miasma 3 could be a thing again. Why is SE so scared of castable DoTs?

My brother played a lot today(DRs) to test SCH, AST and WHM. His points are pretty clear:
The identity of SCH is completely gone, SCH feels unfinished and clunky. Not having Aetherflow before a fight is making no sense at all, it just gives SCH a less good feeling, not seeing the fairy in the party is horrible. He didn't even notice that Eos was gone today and had to call her back and you know what he said? "It doesn't even matter if she is there".
Today we were playing with a lot of really horrible tanks and some good. Even with the horrible tanks he was DPSing in Alliance Raid around 90% of the time. DPSing = Broil. It feels not engaging, it feels unfinished, the identity(and this is a mmoRPG, which means identity is IMPORTANT, espacially in a game with Job quests) and the healing is just instant heals and then Broil again.
He said that it feels like losing the core skills on a job because not seeing the fairy, not really having a Pet Hotbar makes Eos/Selene feel like a turret which just passive heals and you yourself use skills but not the pet. This is different from what SE was expecting, SCH doesn't feel like having a Pet anymore. I am SMN main, for SMN it is the same, not seeing the Pet, not having the skills on the Hotbar, using 2 skills for the Pet, is feeling weird, but for SCH the problem is that the Fairy feels unnecessary and weird.

Also seeing Healer in Need explains a lot.
He is very disappointed and I see no way that SE is changing the PvE content that you heal nonstop because you do not do so in synced DGs this means lowcrew and mediocre gameplay is dead for SCH.

What should be done: Energy Drain back, with DMG and MP, Miasma back, Bane back and AoW DoT based instead of this horrible thing.

I really hope SE is changing this.

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Originally Posted by Jerichai

There seems to be a variable amount to time from when you damage an NPC to when aetherflow becomes available for use. I've had times where I'll throw a dot and the ability is immediately up. Other times I'll don't and it seems to take a second or so for the game to fully realize that I'm in combat and the ability should be available. This just adds to the clunky nature of the change in my eyes.

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Very true, and I've had the flipside annoyance happen as well: I'll go to hit Aetherflow when the final mob in a pack has 5-10% HP left, and I'll even hear the Aetherflow sound effect go off, but presumably because the mob died just before the game registered I'd hit my skill, I don't get a stack. Ugh, it's made me want to flip a table the stupid combat-AF thing.

I don’t mind that they got rid of shadowflare but I do think we should get bane back as a 30 second cooldown (no aetherflow cost) just because spamming art of war gets really boring and having just 1 thing to mix it up a little wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Another thing I want back is energy drain. Even if they make it deal no damage and just restore mp, it was nice to have something to spend aetherflow stacks on when aetherflow was coming off CD, I’ve found myself throwing out sacred soils at random and never healing outside of using lustrates just to try and get through my stacks. Would also help sch mp since I find myself burning through it on dps cause I just don’t need to do anything else.

Totally agree about adding the fairy back to the party list, I always find myself wondering if she’s still around since I can’t personally see her.

Also agree about using aetherflow outside of battle, I get why they did it, they want to remove the whole “you need to wait 30 seconds before you pull for my cooldown!” stuff. But it’s very annoying having to get yourself “registered” as in combat just to access your oGCD heals which you’ll need ASAP when the tank pulls big.

Finally, i’d like whispering dawn and fey illumination back on the pet hotbar, if people like having them on their personal hotbars, fine by me, but I liked having them on the pet hotbar. It’s not like they even got rid of the pet hotbar, it’s still there, it just doesn’t do anything now.

On a semi-related note, why did they keep Selene? Could they not just make a fairy glamour system? Seems really silly to have a separate button that is literally just a palette swap. While I’d prefer they brought back Selene having distinct abilities and just focused on making them more viable, I wouldn’t be too bothered if they just get rid of her entirely as a separate entity and made her a glamour.

I'll add to that give back Energy drain and quickened aetherflow, those skills helped to make AE a more interesting mechanic while also allowing us to not waste resources like we do now (lustrate spam) also the quickened aetherflow trait helped us tu build fairy gauge better making it a more realiable mechanic. There are more changes that could be done like giving us back Selene but right now Sch is such a mess that I think it needs those changes asap.

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Originally Posted by OmegaSinX

Bane saved GCDs spreading dots one by one. Precious time you could be using on something else. Shadow Flare had chance to slow enemies; minor but it was added damage + mini utility we lost with its removal. This would definitely make SCH more interesting if it didn't compete with Sacred Soil ( we could then have both up: Slow + Dot + 90% damage + Regen).

If they wanted to make SCH dot management more simple, they could have combined Bio II & Miasma III into the new Biolysis spell (100 potencies combined maybe?) similar to Tri-Disater on SMN.

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And hitting Bane after Bio 2 and spamming Art of War for 30 seconds is somehow interesting? Are you serious? Same thing with Shadowflare. Neither ability would break the monotony of SCH's current situation in any meaningful way and would do nothing for serious content and be of minute benefit in casual content since you'd only use them once every 30/60 seconds and just twiddle your fingers for the rest of the time in between. It's more damage but that's all it realistically offers SCH at all. Energy Drain would offer the same while being more beneficial to SCH's toolkit as a whole by being a MP management/Aether Stack burner tool on top of damage without being stuck on a CD. It's offers a much more meaningful addition to SCH's toolkit than Bane or Shadowflare can ever hope to match.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

And hitting Bane after Bio 2 and spamming Art of War for 30 seconds is somehow interesting? Are you serious? Same thing with Shadowflare. Neither ability would break the monotony of SCH's current situation in any meaningful way and would do nothing for serious content and be of minute benefit in casual content since you'd only use them once every 30/60 seconds and just twiddle your fingers for the rest of the time in between. It's more damage but that's all it realistically offers SCH at all. Energy Drain would offer the same while being more beneficial to SCH's toolkit as a whole by being a MP management/Aether Stack burner tool on top of damage without being stuck on a CD. It's offers a much more meaningful addition to SCH's toolkit than Bane or Shadowflare can ever hope to match.

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Your seriously underestimating the value of Bane + Shadow Flare, with our dots up, that was like 850 potency dps over their duration that could be spread every. With this change, our dps plummets because in most scenarios that matter, you won't have time to add dots to 3+ enemies. In serious content, I only use ED to dumped Aether or if I was low on MP; otherwise, bane was more valuable in dungeons or end game content that has a lot of trash mobs since ED is single target. Lets not forgot how valueable it was if an encounter required alot of movement.

Lastly, the monotony is much worst now. Now we're forced to: apply dot> wait for GCD > apply dot to mob 2 > wait for GCD > apply dot mob 3 > wait for GCD. Your better off just spamming Art of War since by the times your dot is applied across the mobs, they're about dead

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Originally Posted by OmegaSinX

Your seriously underestimating the value of Bane + Shadow Flare, with our dots up, that was like 850 potency dps over their duration that could be spread every. With this change, our dps plummets because in most scenarios that matter, you won't have time to add dots to 3+ enemies. In serious content, I only use ED to dumped Aether or if I was low on MP; otherwise, bane was more valuable in dungeons or end game content that has a lot of trash mobs since ED is single target. Lets not forgot how valueable it was if an encounter required alot of movement.

Lastly, the monotony is much worst now. Now we're forced to: apply dot> wait for GCD > apply dot to mob 2 > wait for GCD > apply dot mob 3 > wait for GCD. Your better off just spamming Art of War since by the times your dot is applied across the mobs, they're about dead

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No, I'm not underestimating anything. You're living in the past when SCH actually had DoTs to use whereas I'm looking at the current rendition of SCH. Shadowflare would add only damage to SCH's toolkit and nothing else. Bane would spread Bio and that's it for 30 seconds. These actions being reintroduced would do nothing to help SCH in its current state. They wouldn't break up the monotony of SCH gameplay at all.

Let's compare this to AST. For the past 2 years, AST has had all of 3 DPS skills but was not viewed as overly monotonous because it had its card mechanic to keep the monotony at bay. SCH does not have the micromanaging component to it anymore due to the simplification of its toolkit to such an extent that, reintroducing Shadowflare/Bane would do nothing to break up the monotony since they're simply fire and forget. There's no unique aspect to them, no mechanical awareness to them to be mindful of, and no value to them outside of extra DPS. AST can sit there and Spam Gravity while having its cards to manage while SCH spamming Art of War wouldn't have anything really to think about when using Bane or Shadowflare

Sure, a DPS increase is fine and dandy but its clear SE is having a hell of a time balancing Healers and have fallen to a flimsy Damage vs Utility mindset in which WHM is the damaging healer, having the highest potency DPS skills of all healers but lacking any utility, AST has the most utility but lowest DPS skills and SCH is in the middle. Given that mentality, it would be hard to just give SCH more DPS since it would overset into the only asset that WHM has, which is high personal DPS. With this in mind, I see reintroducing Energy Drain as a far more likely scenario to happen simply due to the fact that it actually aides in furthering SCH's toolkit on both a DPS level and Healer level since it helps remove access Aetherflow, helps with MP sustain and grants them more damage but not to such an extent that it would be overstepping on WHM.