SCH heals

Just wanted some general feedback from the community and not just the healers, hence I'm posting this here.

I currently have both AST and SCH at 80. I haven't touched SCH. I only unlocked it because I have SMN at 80, so it was automatic. However, AST is actually becoming my new main. I really enjoy healing with it.

One thing I've noticed about SCH when I play DPS, is the heals seem slower. This is totally anecdotal so I'm not basing this on anything other than the groups I've been in. But it seems they struggle getting everyone back to full after boss AoEs, and I've seen the tank HP get frighteningly low on large pulls before going back up. This is quite different than AST, which has multiple ways to top everyone off very quickly. This is especially noticeable on boss fights where AoEs can come very close together. With an SCH healer it can get kind of scary and I've actually seen people die because the heals weren't fast enough. SCH shields, on the other hand, are great.

So, I'm just wondering, when you run dungeons with an SCH healer, do you notice this or do you actually not care who the healer is, as long as they know their job and keep everyone alive. :D I understand some tanks might actually prefer an SCH healer as well.

From my healer experience:
SCH has Excogitation which is a triggered heal at 50% and will heal to nearly full hp even on a tank. Paired with Recitation which can be done every other time and that's all the way to full hp. A good scholar will let the tank drop to that amount during a large pull at least once.
SCH doesn't struggle to get hp back to full at all. Indom, emergency tactics+succor and Fae Blessing make it easy to top the party up. Their shields make it less urgent I find, however, so SCH might get around to doing it later than a WHM/AST might.

From my tank experience:
I found that AST healers in general were the worst. They tend to run out of mp, get sidetracked by cards, and were most likely to be unable to keep up with healing. Exceptions existed of course, but it was rare to find a really good AST in DF.
Scholars were middle of the road. A bad scholar was very noticeable, but a good one made things a breeze. There are enough bad scholars out there to unfortunately not be uncommon. HP bars move far less with a scholar as the healer and that gives me a much better sense of security if the SCH is decent. When I was on my DRK with a SCH after level 70 my hp bar basically never moved.
WHM were the most stable to play with. It was rare to find a WHM that couldn't keep up with healing and if they used Holy correctly it would make for even more stable trash pulls than with a SCH. That said, they are also the healer that gave me the most scares due to Benediction. I prefer a decent SCH healer just for this reason alone.
All of this is less to do with the jobs effectiveness as it is the relative difficulty of the jobs in my opinion. I.e. Given skilled players, all 3 healers perform equally well. It's when you start to move down in skill level that differenes start to show up. AST is busy and requires good mp management, which are skills that the average DF player isn't going to be great at. SCH is relatively easy compared to that, but still has enough difficulty to managing its resources and fairy that a bad player can be bad. WHM is so straightforward that even a less than average player can be successful at it and other players probably won't notice unless they're one of those Cure I or Cure III spammers.

SCH healing does tend to be more "bursty" due to them not having regen effects they can maintain 100% of the time like WHM and diurnal AST.

I don't find SCH healing any rougher then WHM/AST, nor do I notice issues with them any more often then the other healers while tanking/DPSing, though.

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Originally Posted by Lium

and I've seen the tank HP get frighteningly low on large pulls before going back up..

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That's by design. Excogitation, the biggest heal SCHs have, only works if the target is below 50% health. You HAVE to wait until the tank is at low health before you use it.

Also, with healing it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between panic and skill. Letting a tank drop really low might be a sign of a bad healer or a mistake, but it could also be a really good healer who knows exactly how much healing is needed when.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

That's by design. Excogitation, the biggest heal SCHs have, only works if the target is below 50% health. You HAVE to wait until the tank is at low health before you use it.

Also, with healing it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between panic and skill. Letting a tank drop really low might be a sign of a bad healer or a mistake, but it could also be a really good healer who knows exactly how much healing is needed when.

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That said, if a tank's HP goes from full to ~30% within a single gcd, that's on them no matter how much they want to blame the healer.

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Originally Posted by Lium

One thing I've noticed about SCH when I play DPS, is the heals seem slower.

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Unlike other healers, SCH is a proactive healer and the task is not to quickly heal, but to mainly mitigate the damage and heal the rest.

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Originally Posted by Lium

This is especially noticeable on boss fights where AoEs can come very close together. With an SCH healer it can get kind of scary and I've actually seen people die because the heals weren't fast enough. SCH shields, on the other hand, are great.

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Shields give you a margin of time, so you don't have to be particularly fast, to be honest. But you can be very fast at the same time, if needed. Depending on the situation, you can use several skills, combine them or use one after another to keep your group alive. After 62 lvl Excogitation working pretty well.

The SCH, like other healers, is good enough on large pools and has enough tools to heal anyone, unless your entire group has drowned in endless AOEs, and tank does not know how to mitigate damage. If you manage your AT stacks well, you and your group will have no problem.

Even if for some reason you got stunned, turned into a frog or caught some other crowd control, you always have a fairy. ;)

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Originally Posted by Lium

So, I'm just wondering, when you run dungeons with an SCH healer, do you notice this or do you actually not care who the healer is, as long as they know their job and keep everyone alive. :D I understand some tanks might actually prefer an SCH healer as well.

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I always laugh a lot when some SCH is trying hard and painfully to heal me using only Physick.

NYMIAN MARIIIIIINNNNES!

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Snip

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*Raises hand*

I’ve been distracted by cards before and looked up to see the tank precariously low. But like I said, ASTs have amultiple ways to get someone back to full ASAP. It’s definitely a busy job, though, which is why I prefer it. I started out leveling WHM and got it to 55 and then picked up AST and never looked back. WHM is extremely powerful and I found myself getting bored in dungeons.

SCH just seemed slower. But like someone else posted, that may be by design since it’s a job built around mitigation.

Also, I never responded to your post in the Rescue thread about David Gaider. I think that’s really cool! And BW used to be my favorite developer.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

That's by design. Excogitation, the biggest heal SCHs have, only works if the target is below 50% health. You HAVE to wait until the tank is at low health before you use it.

Also, with healing it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between panic and skill. Letting a tank drop really low might be a sign of a bad healer or a mistake, but it could also be a really good healer who knows exactly how much healing is needed when.

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To add to this, it's also a nice 'set it and forget it' ability. Recitation + Excog on a tank during both trials and dungeon runs basically makes even the biggest of pulls laughably easy by providing you a huge space of breathing room to do as you will. Tank is good at their job and doesn't need much babysitting? It'll last them awhile before you need to heal again. Tank is bad and needs a lot more babysitting? Gives you time to put down more heals and or mitigation to keep them from being squished too badly.

In general however a bad SCH is a /lot/ easier to spot than a bad WHM or even bad AST, which is why you likely have had so many notable experiences with them OP. A bad WHM can just spam Medic 2 and generally get through content just fine due to their built in mana battery and easily applied regens but a SCH who spams Succor is not only not going to get quite the same amount of healing out of doing so - they're actively going to run out of MP if they aren't careful. So it's less of an issue with the class being incapable compared to the others and more an issue of people not actually understanding that they need to be proactive instead of reactive depending upon the level of the content in question. As well as, frankly, a lack of understanding of their kit. However while I'm not the best SCH in the world, I've never once had an issue keeping a party alive unless they were /actively/ trying to die.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

That's by design. Excogitation, the biggest heal SCHs have, only works if the target is below 50% health. You HAVE to wait until the tank is at low health before you use it.

Also, with healing it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between panic and skill. Letting a tank drop really low might be a sign of a bad healer or a mistake, but it could also be a really good healer who knows exactly how much healing is needed when.

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Wha? You don't wait until the tank is below 50% to use it... you put it on and when they reach 50% it immediately goes off. It's much better if the tank is actually below 50% to use recitated adlo...

I find it's a little easier to heal on SCH than on AST. But maybe that's because I play it more often, so I'm better used to it.

When watching others play SCH, there are usually two 'bad' variables though, that are very common unfortunately:
- The ones that rely almost exclusively on GCD heals and thus won't do much with just spamming Succor for raid-wide AoEs and Physick for tank busters.
- And then there are the ones that are either used to perfectly optimized content (OR just read a guide about how to play SCH in such content and think it's the right way in all kind of situations), but can't adapt to situations with random people who mess up a lot. Those players try to heal only with Faerie heals or Recitation, even when more heals are needed, in cases when the group is new and fails mechanics.

I found that those two are quite common, so even though SCH actually doesn't have much trouble healing when needed, you often see only small numbers from them. If only people where willing to use everything they have when it's really needed...

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

Wha? You don't wait until the tank is below 50% to use it... you put it on and when they reach 50% it immediately goes off. It's much better if the tank is actually below 50% to use recitated adlo...

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sometimes i let tanks hp drop before using excog. its usually like "will they survive till the end of the pull without healing? ....(art of war spam)... guess not! (excog)"

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

SCH healing does tend to be more "bursty" due to them not having regen effects they can maintain 100% of the time like WHM and diurnal AST.
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Embrace is a 100 potency regen every 3 seconds for 0 mp.