SCH is no longer fun to play! Detailed review

I apologize for the hyperbolic title but #baitclick #fakenews.

I made it to lvl 80, I've done the ex trials, solo healed them too, got one of the two mounts, working towards the second one. Am currently BiS-ish, at least my best approximation atm. Not fully melded but this shouldn't change much.

There's so much to go over that it's hard to structure this. I decided to tackle it on a per content basis


Solo content and open world leveling:

Ok, not going to lie. I have quite a few positive things to say about SCH but this is not one of them. It's basically like being in sastasha. You're pressing 1 button 99% of the time. You have no use for your stacks. Not having ED, shadowflare, miasma, miasma II to fill time really doesn't give you anything to do. If you have multiple mobs or want to farm multiple mobs the mana requirements for AoW really limit you.
Hands down the least fun I've had since I was lvl 15... And this was at lvl 70+. Honestly, I find this shocking.
Thankfully the amazing msq and zones we had this expansion took my mind off of it. But it's otherwise very grim.

Leveling dungeons:

60 and bellow are just tedious. You don't have anything worthwhile to use your stacks on. It's basically 60 levels of playing with 4 skills. Bio, Ruin/broil, whispering dawn and lustrate. In a game where the number one complaint is how boring lower levels are, and incidentally the biggest sticking point in acquiring new players, I just don't understand how these changes make any sense.

60-70 dungeons aren't as bad but still suffer from monotony due to lack of skills, it's turned into a one button spam, just that the button spammed has changed. It's made a little better from the fact you have a few more skills compared to 60 and bellow but it's definitely worse than before the changes.
They also suffer from some mana management issues due to the lack of energy drain mana regen. The shorter lucid cooldown does not make up for the loss of ED.

70-80 dungeons are ok at the current ilvl. You can get away with barely using GCD casts once you get used to your kit (even wall to wall). Things are harder because of gear but seem to be on par with SB launch. I personally haven't seen anything as hard as Bardam's, just saying.
There are a few things to say here, namely that the single button AoW spam feels ok at the moment because we're filling with a lot of healing ogcds on our tank. With that said once you hit expert roulettes things seem to become easier and I can foresee this type of content becoming faceroll once we gear up again. AoW spam will eventually become tedious. It's my opinion that another multi-target skill is needed (we have one less than the other two healers too)
The big sticking point here is mana. With 2.2k piety I still struggle with mana in dungeons (comparatively I rarely dip bellow 70% mana on ex trials) there's a problem in calibration here. SCH does not have any Mana management tools (like thin air or lightspeed) so we run out super fast. The shortened lucid does not help.

Normal trials:
Nothing much to say here. Healing requirements are low so we have so many unused stacks, so much mana. End up spamming 1 button for most of the trial. I won't go on about it here since I don't feel like this is what SCH was meant to be measured against.

Ex Trials:
On single target the gameplay changes a bit. Because of the setting with Ruin II not being a viable option for single weaving we end up with a lot of clipping our Broils (#1 feelsbadmoment). In addition to this the healing requirements haven't changed since SB but our toolkits have. The end result is that we don't have to heal as much and therefore many a Bio cast will go without weaves (#2 feelsbadmoment). Both combined make the class feel horribly clunky.

As part of an attempt at optimizing and feeling better about our lives, the gameplay seems to revolve around picking which oGCD skills to use and bundling them in pairs to use with ruin II.
You end up becoming very meticulous about which skills to use and discard skills that aren't suited for the moment or that are simply too weak (looking at you fey blessing).
Now there's also a perverse side effect from not having a stack dump. And that's that optimizing your faery gauge by overhealing or placing your excog/sacred soil on cooldown actually un-optimizes your play because oGCDs cost you dps and your gauge can increases with seraph anyways.

The end result is that you only use the skills you need, in pairs, when you need them. You can weave random stack skills into your bio if you want/can afford it but most of the time you're holding onto your cd for a mechanic and you end up just having stacks sitting around. Mana is a non-issue in ex trials so sometimes you don't even refresh your AF for the 10% MP.
Basically things haven't changed since SB, you just have a little less healing to do in these first trials (think lakshmi) so imagine how many EDs you would use and that's how many stacks you have left.

On the plus side seraph is a really good healing mechanic. Consolation is a good skill. The short uptime, double consolation stacks and fairy gauge boost means that you need to give it some thought and really push it into your rotation. Not being able to use fey union also gives it a risk/reward dimension. 5/5 would recommend to a friend.

Last note is that our pDPS is really low compared to WHM. Like, there's being low to make up for CS and then there's your WHM solo healing the content and almost on par with you in dps low. Usually 1k+ dps ahead if you both properly heal. Considering party DPS is around 65k, CS does not make up for it and most likely won't make up for it this entire expansion (I don't see parties breaking the 100k dps)

Changes that need to be looked at:

- DPS stack dump needs to happen. It can't not happen. It's a mechanic that would give the soloing, open world, 60- leveling content more dimension. It introduces more optimization options for the players that plan on sticking around with the class for a while (which SE should be striving for). It allows for more liberal use of Ruin II, it adds a bit more potency into our rotation for a bit of added extra needed dps. (lets not go nerfing whm, they can keep their top position, lets just balance things)
- Ruin II should standalone work for a single weave. For this it's potency would need to be brought up to 230 at least. Or Broil III nerfed to 260 potency (but another dps skill would need to be provided to make up for this). The solution is probably to nerf broil and buff Ruin a little to find a good median.
- Could use one more multitarget skill. Something similar to shadowflare perhaps. This can go many ways, having it require a stack would probably mean the stack dump would be preferred in single target situations. No stacks means we could enrich our gameplay across content.. I'll leave this one up to the devs but it's a necessity in order to make up for the ilvl race that's about to occur throughout the expansion. It would also go a long way towards making the class a little more appealing at lower levels.
- Reduce AoW cost by about 15%. There's no point in giving another mana management tool to SCH, this is literally the only place they need mana. Reducing the cost to make up for lack of management tools seems appropriate.

If we got those four changes SCH would be in a good spot. I don't care about potencies as much but mostly gameplay here. 2 new skills and 2 potency/mana fixes seem reasonable and would go a long way towards improving the class.

A few more things worth mentioning (I'll add to this list as I remember them):

• Love the consistency across the animations. I'm personally digging the tech vibe.
• The faerie can be really hard to notice at times. I have to look for her shadow under the boss, or move her back into place just in case (even though she's still there), etc. Please give us the option to display her name in combat at the very least. Settings > Character > Control > Target > untick "Dissable targeting of pets and minions in battle"
• Recitation and the Galvanize/Catalyze split was a great move. Looked good on paper but is also great in practice.
• Dissipation just no longer works well with our toolkit. It's basically relegated to the "oh shhh my tank is about to die I need three stacks" button in dungeons (which is very rare and will probably get rarer), or some very precise min/maxing.

Mandatory viewing:

https://youtu.be/TSK_lnZpRfY

He sums up many of the things we have said, plus talks about the good aspects of the job. He said, however, that this is the worst version of SCH we have had in the game so far, and I think he's right.

So, pretty what was expected. The balance changes seem to be entirely based around minimizing inter-player drama (job-meta feel bads, healer DPS debates, more complex jobs leading to wipes leading to drama) rather than correctly interfacing with content and being engaging.

Only have SCH at 54 on my main and 70 on an alt, but I can corroborate that old content, at least, is utterly dire as Scholar now. I was already unmotivated to play WHM for anything less than solo-healing EX's in Stormblood, and new SCH at <71 is by far worse than that.

Dev team, if you want pure healers, where's the freaking damage?

My biggest beefs after playing are: Aetherflow usable in battle only WHY!!!!! Why why why why why! This is beyond stupid, it literally makes me rage if I think about it. And then the fact that our Faerie abilities tooltips literally just say "Uses [Faerie Ability name]" Are you... serious? Of course I know. It's literally the name!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gaethan_Tessula

Dev team, if you want pure healers, where's the freaking damage?

---

In the Shadowbringers dungeons. Most wall to wall pulls have ended with me having used everything to keep the tank up, the tank having used everything to keep themselves up, and the DPS having spammed AoEs in a frantic panic to avoid the tank going down. The damage is there if you're doing multipulls, it's not there much outside of a few dungeons if you're doing singles.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Endeleon

My biggest beefs after playing are: Aetherflow usable in battle only WHY!!!!! Why why why why why! This is beyond stupid, it literally makes me rage if I think about it. And then the fact that our Faerie abilities tooltips literally just say "Uses [Faerie Ability name]" Are you... serious? Of course I know. It's literally the name!

---

This was mostly done so there was no more need to wait on players before pulling. I disliked it on paper, in practice I got used to it really fast because I don't have much to do with my stacks anyways.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

In the Shadowbringers dungeons. Most wall to wall pulls have ended with me having used everything to keep the tank up, the tank having used everything to keep themselves up, and the DPS having spammed AoEs in a frantic panic to avoid the tank going down. The damage is there if you're doing multipulls, it's not there much outside of a few dungeons if you're doing singles.

---

You can cut down on requiring GCDs for wall to wall pulls. There are a couple of really spicy pulls in some dungeons but most wall pulls are pretty easy to handle with your ogcd cooldowns if your tank is awake and trying. You have to be awake yourself though, which is good because we'd be dying with our single button AoW spam if not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

In the Shadowbringers dungeons. Most wall to wall pulls have ended with me having used everything to keep the tank up, the tank having used everything to keep themselves up, and the DPS having spammed AoEs in a frantic panic to avoid the tank going down. The damage is there if you're doing multipulls, it's not there much outside of a few dungeons if you're doing singles.

---

From what I've seen, groups with both HLR and TNK at full ilvl for a given leveling dungeon (so far, the first three) don't have issues multi-pulling unless someone screws up. Damage spikes up and down, but it's the same "nuke it" healing tactics from the Heavensward multi-pull days. Which isn't particularly interesting when it's the one flavor for sale besides utter boredom, in my opinion (no mechanics besides orange-stuff on trash, difficulty is highly swingy based on ilvl). Also it doesn't exist in the current endgame EX trials/dungeon bosses apparently. Healing output feeling like Lakshmi EX, per this thread's testimonial, is NOT a great place to be when mashing one button or checking out between heals FF11 style is what you do when not healing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

You can cut down on requiring GCDs for wall to wall pulls. There are a couple of really spicy pulls in some dungeons but most wall pulls are pretty easy to handle with your ogcd cooldowns if your tank is awake and trying. You have to be awake yourself though, which is good because we'd be dying with our single button AoW spam if not.

---

Gear unfortunately takes a role as well. I ended up spamming the 75 dungeon just to gear out my SCH and had quite a bit of difficulties at first. It really didn't help that several of the tanks and DPS were undergeared themselves, whether by just gunning through the story or because it's an alt job, I'm not sure.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Gear unfortunately takes a role as well. I ended up spamming the 75 dungeon just to gear out my SCH and had quite a bit of difficulties at first. It really didn't help that several of the tanks and DPS were undergeared themselves, whether by just gunning through the story or because it's an alt job, I'm not sure.

---

Absolutely. It's also worth noting that I did most of my leveling (up to 77) on day 1. Needless to say that my random pug party members were almost all wearing UCoB/UwU weapon glams. Not exactly your average player base and skill does make a difference. I definitely didn't experience the content the same way many others have/will in the following days.

Hey EaMett, what's your thoughts on the mana cost for the new AOE DPS spell?

I find myself running out of mana from spamming it too much even with lucid dreaming and aetherflow being used. Frankly I find it costing 800 MP ridiculous.

I have to agree, 800 MP does seem a bit ridiculous...but I assume SE was thinking that 800MP was a good number considering it's an instant spell and not a cast like Holy/Gravity.

I do agree that healer aoe mp requirement should be lowered. maybe 500-550 range, or raise the potency. almost every class has a higher potency AND no recourse management on it.

an aoe dot that requires a Aether point to spend would be really nice. it could also spread biolysis as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

Changes that need to be looked at:

---

- Absolute yes to stack dump.
- In the context of how WHM is right now, no to Broil III nerf. Yes to buffing Ruin II if it means no Broil clipping.
- No to Shadowflare. Yes, if it shares cooldown with Soil. I'd like to see something like: SF resets cooldown of Soil, but removes existing Soil. Soil resets cooldown of SF, but removes existing SF. So you can swap between them at the cost of 1 Aetherflow.
- Somewhat yes to AoW, mostly because it's double the cost of Holy. If you're running out of MP due to AoW, it's because your party has DPS issues or your tank is doing baby pulls.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

• The faerie can be really hard to notice at times. I have to look for her shadow under the boss, or move her back into place just in case (even though she's still there), etc. Please give us the option to display her name in combat at the very least.

---

To see fairy's name:

Settings -> Character -> Control -> Target -> Untick "Disable targetting of pets and minions when in battle".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

In the Shadowbringers dungeons. Most wall to wall pulls have ended with me having used everything to keep the tank up, the tank having used everything to keep themselves up, and the DPS having spammed AoEs in a frantic panic to avoid the tank going down. The damage is there if you're doing multipulls, it's not there much outside of a few dungeons if you're doing singles.

---

yeah, no. it's like that at every expac's start. bardam's mettle was a nightmare at the time, and tanks were only pulling 2 packs of mobs. wall to walls in ShB most of the times means 3 packs.

there is absolutely no surprise in that.

I’m currently playing through the 70-80 dungeons and despite the claim that it would be harder, even in the first primal I have had to waste my stacks just to get more aetherflow. I almost have a rotation in lower level dungeons now where I pop excog on gaining aether, pop sacred soil at thirty seconds, then pop another excog before the minute is up. In dungeons where excog is not available and I can only pop two sacred soils a minute, I have to waste a lustrate to gain aetherflow. I’ve not noticed mp issues but that might be because I’m more conservative on when I use art of war. But it’s very dull as soon as the healing stops.

For me, the biggest joke of the expansion so far has been that first rolequest. Disclaimer, I’ve only done quest one but (spoilers for first role quest):

why is it that in the first healing role quest, we are tested through a dps check and the heal aspect of the quest is reduced to a healing action? I thought Se wanted us to heal more. It’s a joke. I love the npc - we totally got the best one- but if even the heal specific quests are dps based, it suggests they've got no idea. I laughed when it happened.

Currently finished all combat content, and I agree with OP. Was tempted to record my solo instances to demonstrate how dull the fights were on SCH. Chain, DoT, hit broil for 30s. White mage at least has presence of mind, assize, misery and thin air, AST has buff cards and damage cards. Meanwhile we’re just here hitting broil III for the entire duration of fights, making every combat instance miserable.

Already doing large pulls without GCD heals, what was the point of removing SCH’s dps abilities? SCH felt good because of its ability to weave in everything consistently, while WHM was actively encouraged to commit the cardinal sin of GCD heals with its flower mechanic. AST can still weave on every GCD, WHM’s big DPS ability only neutralizes the cost of spending three GCDs healing- what was the goal? Nothing has been achieved here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Inkpot

Nothing has been achieved here.

---

Well they did manage to piss off a lot of people, that's an achievement.

Pretty much sums up my experience. Healing requirements haven't changed overly much, our healing kit expanded yet again, and our DPS kit is 1 button w/ a 30 second dot occasionally popping up. As expected, SE's pruning just turned us into a one-button pony that occasionally uses healing abilities that our single buff doesn't effect. Gimme back ED; gimme back my Fairy Partner, not this random heal every 2 seconds gimmick; gimme back bane and at least one more dot.

At least it's early in the expansion and you have tanks still often eating cones/AoEs from trash mobs in large pulls, and people consistently failing ex mechanics. So there is still "some" healing required.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ftail

Hey EaMett, what's your thoughts on the mana cost for the new AOE DPS spell?

I find myself running out of mana from spamming it too much even with lucid dreaming and aetherflow being used. Frankly I find it costing 800 MP ridiculous.

---

I think AoW needs a bit of a reduction to it's mana cost. I feel like 15% would be a good number but this depends a lot on actual data from the player base and only SE has that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LariaKirin

snip

---

Thanks for the extra info!! Especialy the faerie name. Updated my post.

Regarding AoW, I'm basing this off of wall to wall pulls with 2.2K piety. Also comparing it to ex trials where I have so much mana it's ridiculous, there's a big discrepancy here. I'm also going to say that in the past 90% of my expert roulettes have had lukewarm party dps and this is a trend I don't expect to change. With all that in mind I felt like a 15% reduction in AoW spam was a good spot. That's one more cast every 6ish casts so not that overpowered. It also doesn't affect the other content like another management tool would.

I also think shadowflare should share a cooldown with sacred soil. That would be a lot of fun.

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I literally can't find where the so called pet oGCDs are. Tried dragging them from the actions tab, nothing happens. And they don't show up anywhere else.

Personally I don't feel SCH needs an Aetherflow damage dump, just make Aetherflow itself restore more MP and generate Fey Gauge for excess Aetherflow stacks for now. 5% MP and 10 gauge per stack feels fair to me. Bumping Broil III down to 270 and Ruin II to 220 is close to ideal, isn't it? I feel it should be a slight penalty for single weaves but that would be insignificant enough not to matter. I agree that Art of War should go to 700 MP but doesn't need to go lower. I'm more worried about Piety itself being too weak atm beyond anything else needing changes.

After that it's on SE to actually make us care about healing more.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ekimmak

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I literally can't find where the so called pet oGCDs are. Tried dragging them from the actions tab, nothing happens. And they don't show up anywhere else.

---

Player pet commands are up at the top, with the actual pet abilities that you can't hotbar below. Whispering Dawn is a level 20 player ability, and Fey Illumination level 40 in your action list.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AristocraticCorgi

Mandatory viewing:

https://youtu.be/TSK_lnZpRfY

He sums up many of the things we have said, plus talks about the good aspects of the job. He said, however, that this is the worst version of SCH we have had in the game so far, and I think he's right.

---

Sadly, whatever that was has been removed

On Topic:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

Solo content and open world leveling:

Ok, not going to lie. I have quite a few positive things to say about SCH but this is not one of them. It's basically like being in sastasha. You're pressing 1 button 99% of the time. You have no use for your stacks. Not having ED, shadowflare, miasma, miasma II to fill time really doesn't give you anything to do. If you have multiple mobs or want to farm multiple mobs the mana requirements for AoW really limit you.
Hands down the least fun I've had since I was lvl 15... And this was at lvl 70+. Honestly, I find this shocking.
Thankfully the amazing msq and zones we had this expansion took my mind off of it. But it's otherwise very grim.

---

This was 100% forseen. Anyone without blinders knew this was coming. Healers have to be able to reasonably complete the MSQ and this simply ain't it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Sadly, whatever that was has been removed

---

It was just this video. Not sure why it was reposted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbgDp8xCgBk

Also I am always surprised to see people leveling in the MSQ and open world zones as a SCH. Being able to do it as a SMN and switch to SCH for dungeons is a super class advantage, so why not use it?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LegoTechnic

Also I am always surprised to see people leveling in the MSQ and open world zones as a SCH. Being able to do it as a SMN and switch to SCH for dungeons is a super class advantage, so why not use it?

---

Speaking for myself : Because i don't like SMN, and i have no idea how to play it.

And also because i want to do the MSQ with my main !

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LegoTechnic

Also I am always surprised to see people leveling in the MSQ and open world zones as a SCH. Being able to do it as a SMN and switch to SCH for dungeons is a super class advantage, so why not use it?

---

For me it's mainly since I don't want to have to re-gear constantly. I'd basically have to do double the Dungeon Runs. And since the new MSQ notices that you're a healer a little more often that's also a factor...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Personally I don't feel SCH needs an Aetherflow damage dump, just make Aetherflow itself restore more MP and generate Fey Gauge for excess Aetherflow stacks for now. 5% MP and 10 gauge per stack feels fair to me. Bumping Broil III down to 270 and Ruin II to 220 is close to ideal, isn't it? I feel it should be a slight penalty for single weaves but that would be insignificant enough not to matter. I agree that Art of War should go to 700 MP but doesn't need to go lower. I'm more worried about Piety itself being too weak atm beyond anything else needing changes.

After that it's on SE to actually make us care about healing more.

---

The problem with this is that we don’t really need mana in any content other than dungeons. Also the way ruin II is currently set up our ogcds are expensive DPS wise. You wouldn’t bother to weave energy drain if it were for the mana only. Just like you don’t bother to weave AF at the present if you still have stacks left.

Ruin single weave can’t have a slight penalty or you simply wouldn’t use it and clip your gcd. It has to be a dps gain compared to a clip. And clipping should be avoided because it’s just clunky gameplay. With that said, 220/270 would work.

The other option would be to keep things as they are. Giving the stack dump some dps as expected. Meaning that single weaves would have to be double weaves with the stack dump to not be a dps loss. This is worse than what we had in sb but better than the current configuration. I however feel like this wouldn’t be to SE’s liking because it makes this a little too complicated as per their apparent design philosophy.

Honestly, whm has enough leeway atm that a slight buff to sch with a stack dump dps skill wouldn’t dent its situation. We’re talking on average an extra 150pot per minute. With a higher gain potential for those who like to push optimization.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

Honestly, whm has enough leeway atm that a slight buff to sch with a stack dump dps skill wouldn’t dent its situation.

---

This is complete nonsense. WHM is still in a precarious spot, and its position has been altered more as a result of AST nerfs than anything done to WHM. The challenge with SCH right now is that it remains overpowered, but now it's simply as boring to play as WHM is.

I'm all for making gameplay changes to SCH. I really understand how jarring it is and I think it's extremely unfair that they gutted SCH and AST because they couldn't be bothered to fix WHM. But the moment you start talking about straight buffing SCH, you lose me, and many others I suspect, because fundamentally SCH remains the strongest healer by far.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

This is complete nonsense. WHM is still in a precarious spot.

---

Are we playing the same game lol? Whm pDPS outperforms sch total dps (including raid buff) by a safe margin all the while healing more. Whm is in a great spot and totally meta currently. And that’s great, let’s keep it that way. Like I said the buff I’m talking about would be on average 150pot per minute. Not much to write home about and would fix most of our issues + make up the slight disparity we currently see (while leaving whm well ahead of the game)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

This is complete nonsense. WHM is still in a precarious spot, and its position has been altered more as a result of AST nerfs than anything done to WHM. The challenge with SCH right now is that it remains overpowered, but now it's simply as boring to play as WHM is.

---

It's hard to take this post seriously when WHM's are parsing over 2k more than the other healers. They are even crushing the tanks DPS by comparison and basically becoming an extra DPS themselves. With the raid utility for both AST and SCH being nerfed this expansion, WHM is completely in the meta right now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

Are we playing the same game lol? Whm pDPS outperforms sch total dps (including raid buff) by a safe margin all the while healing more. Whm is in a great spot and totally meta currently. And that’s great, let’s keep it that way. Like I said the buff I’m talking about would be on average 150pot per minute. Not much to write home about and would fix most of our issues + make up the slight disparity we currently see (while leaving whm well ahead of the game)

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ftail

It's hard to take this post seriously when WHM's are parsing over 2k more than the other healers. They are even crushing the tanks DPS by comparison and basically becoming an extra DPS themselves. With the raid utility for both AST and SCH being nerfed this expansion, WHM is completely in the meta right now.

---

I assume the basis for this claim of WHMs parsing 2k more than the other healers is based on Titania EX. First, let me correct you: "more than AST". Second, let me laugh, because Titania EX is a joke. Yes, when WHM can go for several minutes without ever having to use a GCD on healing, it does great damage. If that's what we can expect from forthcoming Savage content, well, then any semblance of balance is out the window anyway.

Even just moving to the slightly more challenging Innocence, the disparity between WHM and AST drops to 1500; between WHM and SCH, it's half of that. To put that into perspective, raid DPS is just under 60k in the corresponding percentile. The gap between WHM and AST is therefore around 2.5% of rDPS, and 1.25% between WHM and SCH. Not so great a gulf after all, is it? So while 150 potency per minute sounds like a drop in the bucket, it's actually not, because WHM is just barely holding its own even in these fights that represent the best case scenario for its performance at endgame.

The moment that WHM has to start seriously healing, it will be screwed - just like in Stormblood (seriously, I swear we had these exact same arguments with Lakshmi EX). This goes to the fundamental flaw in WHM's design. It has a much lower maximum APM output because there's simply fewer buttons to press compared to AST and SCH*. Yet to be effective, it has to pack just as much power into this more condensed arsenal, meaning each of its GCDs is (relatively) more valuable. Consequently, it overperforms in undertuned or outdated content, where SCH and AST cannot bring the full weight of their oGCD toolkits to bear, and lags behind when things get hectic.

This is why the SCH and AST changes made absolutely no sense from a balance standpoint. They did nothing to rectify the actual source of the imbalance between the healers, which is WHM's egregious GCD bottlenecking relative to the other two. It's infuriating to see them wreck the other two healers' fun factors while piling even more on-global healing spells into WHM, and I really hope they correct some of it.

*Just consider that WHM has only 4 oGCD abilities with a CD of 60s or less, while SCH has 10 (AST is harder to quantify because of the way cards work and the charges on Redraw); meanwhile, WHM has 8 healing spells on the GCD, while SCH has 3 and AST has 5.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

I assume the basis for this claim of WHMs parsing 2k more than the other healers is based on Titania EX.

---

WHM is parsing insanely high on more then just Titania EX. They are pulling over 8k DPS on both ex primal fights.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

Even just moving to the slightly more challenging Innocence, the disparity between WHM and AST drops to 1500; between WHM and SCH, it's half of that.

---

AST is parsing around 5.5k DPS on innocence and WHM is clocked in at 8k for that fight. While SCH is clocked in at 6.4k DPS. I'm getting my information from FFlogs, I don't know where you got your numbers from.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

*Just consider that WHM has only 4 oGCD abilities with a CD of 60s or less, while SCH has 10 (AST is harder to quantify because of the way cards work and the charges on Redraw); meanwhile, WHM has 8 healing spells on the GCD, while SCH has 3 and AST has 5.

---

Many of SCH's oGCDs are locked behind aetherflow usage, and that's not even taking into account WHM has higher healing potencies. You're also acting like fights are forcing you to GCD heal because the outgoing damage is high, it's not, and if it was you'd have a point.

WHM is literally in the best position right now, out of all 3 healers. Which I say, good for them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Trunks

Even just moving to the slightly more challenging Innocence, the disparity between WHM and AST drops to 1500; between WHM and SCH, it's half of that. To put that into perspective, raid DPS is just under 60k in the corresponding percentile. The gap between WHM and AST is therefore around 2.5% of rDPS, and 1.25% between WHM and SCH. Not so great a gulf after all, is it? So while 150 potency per minute sounds like a drop in the bucket, it's actually not, because WHM is just barely holding its own even in these fights that represent the best case scenario for its performance at endgame.

---

Not exactly sure how you're going about doing these calculations. I'm basing this not off of the 2k difference from higher tier logs but a more generalized 1k difference.
For SCH CS accounts for roughly a 10% uptime at 10% extra crit (or 1% uptime at 100% crit < not entirely correct since 100% crit is not guarantied but lets go with that anyways). It's a crit buff btw not a flat increase to damage output. If your raid DPS is 70k that would be about 350 extra rdps for sch (if you account crit hits to increase damage by 50% which it's usually lower). Again it's less because 70k is already high and already accounts for CS but whatever lets use that 350 figure anyways.

This means WHM is still ahead by 650 dps. If you go into higher tiers of play you're looking at 1250-1650 dps difference. So considering SCH dps is around the 4.5-5.5k range we're looking at WHM doing anywhere between 14% to 30% more dps.

Yes you are absolutely correct in that WHM will see diminishing returns with higher healing requirements. But with the way healing works that return will only diminish after all 12-14 ogcds have been used. SE has significantly increased ogcd options/power for healer pairs (esp in the case of sch) and some GCD healing increases. Which means it's going to take a faire amount before that hits WHM hard.
For reference this represented about a 8% dps decrease for WHM during SB between savage and ex trials. Also worth noting that all healers saw a decrease in their pdps output roughly equivalent to that. But again lets ignore that for now and imagine a world where neither AST nor SCH suffer any dps loss due to all their ogcds.

That means that WHM is still a projected 6%-22% ahead in dps. Again I can't stress enough that I'm fine with this. WHM won't be pulling this much in prog anyways as groups are more likely to heavily rely on their healing. So things will be pretty equivalent for a while. Their MP management means they'll be better for raising as well. And that's amazing. WHM around eorzea have spend the last 4 years in limbo, they deserve their current standing.

But back to the initial suggestion. 150pot per minute is perfectly fine. If I round it up we're talking about a ~2% dps increase for sch, 5% if you manage to use all 3 stacks (which is very unlikely). Nothing that would even remotely dethrone WHM. It might bring SCH up on par with WHM in a lesser optimized setting but WHM will still be miles ahead of the other healers and their rdps in optimized play.

So yeah... Is there room for error in the above? Sure maybe whm will see an decrease in dps higher than 8% but given how all the sch numbers I used were toned down a ton (ignored their dps decrease for savage, used 70k raid dps as a basis, used 50% damage increase from crit, used 100% uptime as a basis which is the best case scenario, etc..) I think it's safe to view it as accurate enough.

tldr; Give us an ED equivalent back. Of course knowing SE what is more likely to happen is SCH get nothing and WHM get a nerf.

WHM damage is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than SCH in addition to having stronger heals and infinite mana.

Please stop gaslighting.