(Serious) White Mage and Scholar are equally balanced.

[Raminax]

You must know something everyone else doesn't about Heavensward. Please fill us in on all the changes coming for the healers and exactly how AST is going to function, please.

My uncle works for Square Enix, and says that Astrologians will have the best shielding in Barrier Stance, and their card buffs will add like 4 digit DPS when used properly!

I feel bad for all Scholars, knowing that they will be replaced like the cheap things they are. (Incidentally, I can give you guys cookies and milk as comfort food. Especially the Miqo'te.)

[AmewKitsune]

The only thing that White Mage lacks is a better "oh shit" button

Mate, have you even heard of Benediction? Divine Seal? Presence of Mind? WHM really gets lots of "oshit" buttons. They all seem like solidly, if simply, designed panic buttons.

[mp-please]

Mate, have you even heard of Benediction? Divine Seal? Presence of Mind? WHM really gets lots of "oshit" buttons. They all seem like solidly, if simply, designed panic buttons.

PoM and SoS aren't "ohshit" buttons at all, you use them just like a dps uses their cooldowns. Benediction not as much, but its great to use it to top a tank mid holy spam or to save it for a hard hitting attack (flatten/ahk morn for example).

Saving it for "ohshit" situations is when it goes off too late, people die and you get a skill on cooldown for 5 mins.

[Sebazy]

The latency and delay of Bene will always stop it being a true panic button. Whilst it is still usuable as such, it has a wonderful habit of arriving just a split second too late in those situations.

It's safer to use it to give yourself breathing room and prevent excessive risks if a tank buster or dps killing mechanic is about to hit and someone isn't topped for it.

[MaxDetroit]

I have s Scholar at Level 50 and a Whitemage at Level 50, I think both are equally balanced and both are equally fun to play.

I would say whitemage is slightly more efficient when it comes to group heals, it's in encounters like titan or odin, where they shine the most. The Scholar is a pretty bad ass single target healer, and the damage mitigation skills are extremly helpful for protecting tanks against massive hits from bosses.

It's like with Paladin and Warrior, both are pretty good tanks, but warrior is more efficient to tank a group of mobs, while the paladin is a little more efficient for tanking single bosses.
The only thing you could complain about is that there are more encounters that favour one type of healing / tanking (e.g. no aoe damage, no adds). But that has nothing to do with ability of the classes.

[Zaft]

Mate, have you even heard of Benediction? Divine Seal? Presence of Mind? WHM really gets lots of "oshit" buttons. They all seem like solidly, if simply, designed panic buttons.

DS and PoM aren't panic buttons, they're healing cooldowns that you should be planning out and using at specific moments in the fight. Just like a tank shouldn't be saving his defensive cooldowns for "oh shit" moments, neither should healers be saving their healing cooldowns for them.

Bene just suffers from long as hell delay and a dreadfully long cooldown. It's better to be used in conjunction with something decided beforehand (such as a WAR holmganging Akh Morn and you Bene'ing at the end) than it is to try to save somebody.

[DarkmoonVael]

And if you think otherwise, you're dumb.

/thread

The truth, praise it. \o/.

[Menae]

Why? Because you can't Autopilot heal Haukke Manor on WHM like you can on SCH?

White mage utility is absolutely fine, they bring an extra source of virus/e4e, proshell and of course that trusty old 18% stoneskin that is virtually required to survive tank buster hits on progression content. Scholars bring superior shielding options to the table (at the expense of raw HPS throughput), a more versatile panic button (at the expense of MP regeneration and DPS) and some respectable if somewhat overrated spell/skillspeed buffs (at the expense of their primary raw AE heal). Full fat virus isn't really a factor since immunity prevents it from being spammed anymore whilst the E4E cooldown again isn't really a deal breaker either and imo are certainly not a fair trade for the much improved range of Medica and particularly Medica II.

If you disagree, then put down some cold hard facts and figures by all means (Preferably after you've actually cleared and understood the content your referring too).

Going to go through this point by point.

WHM bring:

Extra Virus/Eye for an Eye - so would a scholar. I don't understand this point. If you aren't bringing the WHM, you are either replacing them with a SCH who also brings these, but better, or a DPS/Tank, meaning it doesn't matter which healer has more utility since you aren't taking either in that party slot.

Proshell: Yep. While I COULD be super stingy and argue that the WHM doesn't even need to be in the party during the fight to grant the benefits of Proshell unless somebody dies, that's a real stretch of an argument. I concede this point.

18% stoneskin: This is a good thing, but it's not an 18% difference; it's only 8%, since a second scholar, or even a paladin, can still stoneskin.

AoE healing: No question. This is where WHM shine compared to SCH. SCH can still deal with all current content (as can WHM), but if you put them in a theoretical raid with heavy, constant AoE damage, the WHM would be invaluable. That said, I don't know that I consider healing to be a type of utility for a healer.

SCH bring:

Shields at the expense of raw throughput: I'm sorry, but what? I'm assuming you mean single target here. If a tank is getting murdered, a WHM's best throughput is Regen into Cure 2 spam. Similarly, a SCH's best throughput (ignoring Lustrate for now) is Adlo spam coupled with Embrace spam. Both are similar potencies. Yes, part of Adlo comes in the form of a shield, but honestly, you know what the effective difference between a target with 6k hp and a target with 4k hp and a 2k shield is? None. The only REALISTIC differences are that A) you can't heal somebody for more than their HP, but you can shield them, and B) that shielding doesn't stack. And it's true, Adlo doesn't stack, but if you are in a situation where the first Adlo shield hasn't run out by the time you cast the next Adlo, it's a damage environment where a WHM is not spamming Cure 2 either. So no, I don't believe that WHM have a significant single target healing advantage, because they don't. If I have misinterpreted what you meant and you were talking about AoE healing, then you have my apologies, and I already conceded that point above.

More versatile panic button at expense of regen and damage: You are looking at this backwards. It's not "if I don't Energy Drain I get to Lustrate." It's "if I don't need to Lustrate I get to Energy Drain." WHM do not have an analogue to this - if I don't use Bene for five minutes, I don't get a free cast of Holy that returns mana (Square, I have an idea for Heavensward). Furthermore, even if a SCH casts zero Energy Drains, they will still regen more mp than a WHM assuming their gear is even remotely comparable. Aetherflow is very strong, and it scales with Piety.


Skillspeed/spellspeed at expense of whispering dawn/magic defense/healing potency CD: First of all, I'm both shocked and appalled that you forgot the most important ability Selene brings - her silence! Kidding aside, this is actually an interesting point. You can either buff the party's damage, or buff healing. If you use Eos, you are kind of a pseudo WHM - you get a kind of Medica, you get a burst Proshell, and you get an AoE Divine Seal, all with longer CDs. If you use Selene, you buff the group's DPS, which is something that may be more or less useful depending on the fight and your party composition (more BLM = more Selene). I'd argue, though, that this is a good thing as far as utility goes, since it allows you to benefit the party in ways which aren't healing.

The real advantage SCH has over WHM as far as utility goes is DPS. A SCH can sit in Cleric's and retain access to both Embrace and Lustrates without stopping DPS. They also won't blow up their MP pool to do so, and they have fewer accuracy issues than WHM.

Now I'm not arguing that SCH are better than WHM, mind you, but I do disagree that the two provide similar utility. A SCH can benefit the party in ways which aren't straight up healing. A WHM is not nearly as effective at this.

[Cynfael]

Too much of a pain to selectively quote on my phone, but small point:

Sebazy referenced HPS, not single-target healing specifically; WHMs obviously trump SCHs in sheer healing power, which is of course how it should be.

Side note #2: Sustained DPS does come with an MP cost, even for SCH. This makes for a balancing act in fights like T13 where mistakes made by your team or yourself can instantly and exponentially increase the rate at which you bleed MP.

[Sebazy]

Going to go through this point by point.

With regards to the raw throughput, I simply mean that without cooldowns, a WHM can fill those HP bars back up faster. Allow cooldowns (Aka lustrate) and it's pretty fair to say SCH has the edge on single target, but WHM wins on AE throughput by a margin somewhere between a fair amount (cooldowns and eos) and a landslide (no cooldowns and selene).

On the lustrate vs energy drain thing, lustrate isn't quite a free lunch. I had many an occasion in the opening weeks of 2.4 where I burned my charges on lustrates to save a tank or dps, only to promptly wipe the group because I couldn't place a soil for an imminent transition.

The DPS aspect is something I should have mentioned as yes, WHM suffers horridly from accuracy issues in coil.

A SCH can benefit the party in ways which aren't straight up healing. A WHM is not nearly as effective at this.

The same could be said about PLDs vs Warriors, with warriors bringing better snap agro, better debuffs and more flexible DPS, yet people see double warrior in T13 and often run a mile.

A good WHM enables a SCH to maximise their utility and damage output in the same way that a good PLD allows a Warrior to focus on debuffing and DPS.

There is absolutely no way of seeing how Ast is going to mix things up until the job hits and people get a clear picture of how it's going to fit in the grand scheme of things. With what we know, it's all conjecture and you may as well say that it's going to make Monks redundant for all it's worth.