Tips for a non noob, but new whm ?

[Taerra]

I recently got whm to 50 so I could decide if I prefered healing as a whm or as a sch, and I have yet to get a real feel for it. I used to be a reactive healer back in wow (resto sham) and thought I'd give a real whirl to WHM. I'm almost full DL and wanted to make a final decision before I initiate the relic quest.

To say the least, my feelings are mitigated between both jobs. I absolutely adore divine seal/regen/holy and the big cures I'm getting from whm ... BUT ... I miss lustrate a lot (oh shh button) and sorely miss being able to "auto-pilot" with my fairy.

Are there any tips and quirks I should or should not be doing as a whm to help me get a feel for the job ?

[Githiun]

Negatives:
Huge agro pull if not careful. Medica I & II and Regen and quickly snap agro and kill you if you're not careful.
Mana Management - for pretty much every and all end game fights you'll need to constantly manage your Shrouds to make sure your timing them appropriatly to get you maximum mana regen and quickest recovery on CD

Positives:
Holy is seriously fun, love DPSing in WP's. Also very useful tool to stun mobs to allow healing of tank and DPS. Many times dps' are geting rocked that I pop swiftcast+holy then heal
Big heals. (Haven't played a SCH just from what i'm told) Sch's have a harder time topping off tanks that are dangerously low. Whm's we can do it pretty easily
Benediction - our oh shh button. My record is a 6800 HP Pld tank. 34 HP when Benediction hit, healed 100%. Love the button
Regen - also a negative because of agro but Looooooveeeeee the regen.

The way I related it is WHm = Holy Priest SCH=Disc Priests. I loved the Holy priest so I went WHm.

[harkinate]

Big heals. (Haven't played a SCH just from what i'm told) Sch's have a harder time topping off tanks that are dangerously low. Whm's we can do it pretty easily

SCH has Lustrate, which scales with HP (heals 20% of max) and is spammable and instant-cast. The downside is that it requires Aetherflow stacks so it may not always be available.

[CalvatE]

SCH has Lustrate, which scales with HP (heals 20% of max) and is spammable and instant-cast. The downside is that it requires Aetherflow stacks so it may not always be available.

When you take away Lustrate though, a SCH does actively top off a tank less.
Not to be mistaken to the fact that a SCH heals better, just that since half of the heal a SCH does is mitigation, it's not something you actively see in your HP bar - to of which, it doesn't 'top' a tank off.

A lot of people agree that the two healer's in this game are pretty well balanced. Heck even for end dungeons. People want SCH for AK (Fairy heal autopilot while you DPS), and WHM for WP (Holy spam). Bahamut's Coil? Run both!

OP I'd say just save up the myths, keep playing both classes - and then determine which one you'll find is funner.
Both of them are as viable as the next, regardless the dungeon. Some dungeons have preferences, some don't. Like I mentioned above, SCH favors AK, WHM for WP, but that doesn't mean you can't take one or the other at all.
I'd recommend trying all of the primals honestly, especially Garuda and Titan HM. Those are good tests of real battles to see what it's like to be a healer - providing your team isn't over geared.
End game dungeons are something anyone can do playing with their feet so don't judge your class based on these.

When you've decided, take on BC.

[Kyomih]

snip

Great post
Even though, Titan HM is much more of a pain with a SCH imo. Constant fairy placement and a much harder time with stomps than WHM.

[Taerra]

Thanks guys. I'll keep on experimenting with it and finish my DL set, maybe get some primals done for a weapon. We'll see later. I like both, but haven't tried either in harder content titan/coil.

[NeruMew]

Great post
Even though, Titan HM is much more of a pain with a SCH imo. Constant fairy placement and a much harder time with stomps than WHM.

What about the fairy placement? I've never had an issue, only reason why I don't love scholar more is because in order to maximize your output you need to control your pet though, which I dislike, specially wihtout the macros that are being added in 1.1.

On another note, I havent personally played WHM, but to top off a tank FAST you need lustrate as scholar, with it, you'll do it just as well as a WHM, good thing about Lustrate is that it is off GCD so you can combine it like this forexample for a extreme situation on a high hp tank (this is overkilling it btw, unless you're like on twintania maybe XD or somewhere where you know the tank is about to take a big big hit) but yeah -> Lustrate->Adloquium->Lustrate->Physick->Adloquium/Physick if necessary, that is a TON of Hps, like it's been said before, you must not forget the shielding provided by SCH. While their shields are great you also find yourself in the position where maybe recasting a shield spells gets sucky if you havent consumed the old shield (cause as we can all imagine it is not utmost efficient) but it works anyway :P (usually will hurt you when or if spamming Succor).

A last thing, you should not have any MP issues whatsoever, unless you either are Sacred Soil or Lustrate trigger happy or simply forget to use your Aetherflow on CD (you should be doing it, unless there isnt much to do and in all honestly casting either of your 3 stacks consumers is a compelte waste). In order to make sure your Lustrate is up for any emergency situation I like to keep one stack until Aetherflow is back up, or about to be.

Anyway, I don't know why I just went completely off topic and said all that but, Yay WHM! :3 I am leveling mine still but I have a feeling I'll prefer it, though I know I'll miss some of the scholar perks.

P.S.: Fairy auto-heal while on Cleric Stance dpsing is the best *-*

[NeruMew]

Also scholars have things you just can't trade back, as it was said, both are great healers ^^

You'll want both, high hps from WHM and preventive shielding from SCH.

Adloquium is great for preventing big hits, and just whm is amazing too for topping numbers quickly. Combined, they make an amazing team :3

Thanks guys. I'll keep on experimenting with it and finish my DL set, maybe get some primals done for a weapon. We'll see later. I like both, but haven't tried either in harder content titan/coil.

Yup! just keep playing them both for a while and find out which one you enjoy the most, and then boom! you'll have lots of points to spend on either. And more chances you'll be happy with your decision.

[harkinate]

When you take away Lustrate though, a SCH does actively top off a tank less.
Not to be mistaken to the fact that a SCH heals better, just that since half of the heal a SCH does is mitigation, it's not something you actively see in your HP bar - to of which, it doesn't 'top' a tank off.

Yes, when you take away our biggest tank heal, we don't heal as much. Very true. :P

Honestly, even without Lustrate our heals aren't too bad. When there isn't any raid-wide damage I'm almost always hitting the tank with Adlo + fairy heal at the same time. It's a pretty decent heal spike, especially if Rouse is active.

Also, to expand on your second point, while it's true that due to the nature of Adlo/Succor we aren't the best at "topping off" a tank, it is effectively just the same as doing so due to the damage shield. In fact, I'd go as far to say we're more efficient because of this as none of our pretty green numbers are wasted with overhealing.

[Kyomih]

What about the fairy placement?

You have to remember to place her back if she gets knocked back by landslide and it can happen quite frequently.
Unless of course you don't place her but I always do

Coming from a main whm who switched to sch recently, I still feel a bit helpless at times when shit hits the fan without me having any control over it. Such as big spikes on the tank in Caduceus. The hardest thing was to start to trust my fairy (when I am not manually casting embrace). It's more psychological than anything else. I just played WHM too long and have yet to fully trust the SCH mechanics. They ARE super powerful though. Especially with high base crit and good CD management. It's just less forgiving if you (or someone else) makes mistakes or wrong decisions.