RIP WHM/SCH

[Remilia_Nightfall]

But think of certain situations where you need to top up a tank at low hp. Say the whm is busy casting medica 2 (long cast) and the tank drops very quickly. Oh shit you have no aetherflow stacks left! Boom emergency tactics adloquium = Nice big heal! No overhealing if he actually needs the health. It's very situational but I like the concept.

Who knows how it will come in handy. but its all speculation at this point. Maybe its a lot better than what the non-player translator made it seem to be.

...
I get that.
My question still stands - why?

Why is it better for the tank to have more health rather than less health but shield, for the same total amount?

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Benediction is an off-GCD, no cost single target full heal and has a five minute cooldown. What you're asking for would have a notably longer cooldown than that.

And I think that's what Dissipation is intended to be for - "Screw my fairy slowly healing everyone I need to do work now."

I'd much rather have macros which tell my fairy what to heal between my normal heals. Controlling the fairy is a big part of how SCH plays, if you don't you shouldn't play SCH.

Unless its something rather significant, its not worth it. Honestly. It will drop your HPS way more then help the group.

[desufin]

Of course they are not. Shield healing is pretty much always better. If you are sitting at 2000hp + 1200 shield on you, it is EXACTLY the same as having 3200hp with no shield - with Shield having the advantage of raising your max HP potentially into infinite.

I guess the concept would be clearer if life bars showed the shield portion on top of people's HP.

Shield healing is only effective when A) you aren't in need of casting a heal again before Galvanize is used up and B) galvanize is actually used up. I don't get why it's so hard to see why a raw heal vs. a 50/50 (or 33/66 on crit) heal can be incredibly useful. Also as was mentioned it allows for SCH stacking groups. The ability in general is NOT for 4man content.

Also the sacrifice fairy ability will need to be seen to judge, the official translation of its effect in the LL digest says it increases magic power which means it might be a really good DPS boost. And we don't know the intricate functions of it like if you are allowed to resummon fairy right away and keep the buff etc or not.

I'd much rather have macros which tell my fairy what to heal between my normal heals. Controlling the fairy is a big part of how SCH plays, if you don't you shouldn't play SCH.

Unless its something rather significant, its not worth it. Honestly. It will drop your HPS way more then help the group.

Macro'ing pet abilities is fine and all as long as you don't mix said macro with your own heals. That's incredibly bad and worse than people that don't (and frankly you don't need to because they can be hotkeyed like everything else) macro pet heals.

[Mendalas]

...
I get that.
My question still stands - why?

Why is it better for the tank to have more health rather than less health but shield, for the same total amount?

Because either way the tank needs to be healed up eventually. It sounds like an oh shit button when the whm/ast is either tied up with the party, or dead. Think of the combo: Emergency Tactics + Adloquium followed up by a normal Adloquium. Bam tons of heals and a shield.

Think of it as saving Mp for the whm? I dk, think about it a bit before throwing it out the door. I am almost certain (positive speculation) that it will be useful in party play somehow or another.

Also, Adloquium provides a timed shield for 30 seconds if I'm not mistaken. So if there is a part of the fight that a party member will not take damage for a bit, it would be more beneficial for said party member to be topped off, rather than to be at half health with a shield that may expire before he takes damage again. Speculation, speculation. hehe

[Brightshadow]

My problem with these changes is that it basically makes all the healers pretty much the same, so what would be the purpose/fun in adding new healers.

If white mage can burst heal and shield why play a scholar?
If Scholar can shield and burst heal why play a white mage?
If Astrologian can burst and shield by stance swapping why play any other healer?

Basically in my opinion they are making the healers super bland; because even tanks are receiving a new/fun ways of tanking with dark knight using MP as their resource.

We need different type of healing categories not the same old stuff we currently have in-game with some different animations. It defeats the purpose of leveling all the healers.

Also it seems they didn't learn from FF11 scholar, in that game they added a mage that could heal and cast damage spells almost on par with black mage and white mage, and guess what happened to them nobody wanted to use them because scholars were superb. Astrologian has the potential of completely replacing white mages and scholars with their stances.

[MirielleLavandre]

I posted something along the lines of this AST being preferred over in the 'Where does AST fit?" thread, stating that if it is given something in addition to healing, that WHM and SCH don't have, then it may become the preferred healer or at least become a set member of the 2 member raid setup. I mean, as I wrote there, all 3 healers need to be able to heal well enough to keep up a 4 member dungeon group, and well enough to main heal in a raid. Given this, AST may not be as potent in either role as a SCH or WHM, but they will and must be able to main heal both dungeons and raids. Now, throw on the random ability to buff damage, HASTE!!, and such...then it seems to me to be the prime healer as it brings the most to the table and to the party.

[Lemuria]

Why is it better for the tank to have more health rather than less health but shield, for the same total amount?

There are game mechanics in the game already which require you to heal a target to full HP, such as the doom effect in Wanderer's Palace HM. To a lesser extent, there's also Siren in Pharos Sirius who has a charm with the same mechanic. The point is, in both of those situations, shields won't help. They need HP heals pure and simple and having a means of buffing your cures is a good way to do that.

My only reservation with it is that it feels like Scholar is stealing White Mage's tricks with this. If it is a stance which can be kept on permanently, Scholar will literally be more powerful than White Mage as they're also addressing the Magic Defense imbalance on Protect. You'd have a job which has a strong healing potential, damage mitigation AND a separate healing pet rolled into one. White Mage's one remaining trick, Regen, seems like an afterthought against that onslaught.

Will either of them hold up against Astrologian though? We'll have to wait and see. I'm still hyped for White Mage if only for the new Holy spell and Stone/Aero III.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

snip

Yes, they are streamlining healers. With 3 of them, after thinking about it, it is a necessary evil. This is why they are giving Proshell to SCH as well - because if Astro does not have it, WHM would be mandatory just due to Proshell. They don't want ANY job to be mandatory (thus, I am sure that what BRD can do now can be replaced by something from Machinist or Astro). This makes things more -plain-, yes - but there is no way around it.

Deployment Tactics of SCH seems quite powerful tho - might make up with the uselessness of Emergency Tactics (yes, I still believe it will be rather useless, sorry :P)

But most of all, I am sad that they will butcher SCH's abilities' names once again. The original Japanese ones are awesome. The localized ones make absolutely no sense.

[Brightshadow]

Simple just add the "shell" spell to white mage, make it cross-class and make it so that proshell increases the potency instead of provides both effects, by making proshell available to all healers they are basically taking one of the best and main tools of white mage away.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

My only reservation with it is that it feels like Scholar is stealing White Mage's tricks with this.

In the same way WHM might be "stealing Scholar's tricks" by being able to do more DPS than it used to. Again, they are clearly streamlining healers.

Simple just add the "shell" spell to white mage, make it cross-class and make it so that proshell increases the potency instead of provides both effects, by making proshell available to all healers they are basically taking one of the best and main tools of white mage away.

That would still make WHM mandatory in progression raids.