RIP WHM/SCH

[papichulo123]

so astro does a bit of both scholar and whitemage thats cool

[LycorisSelunis]

[QUOTE=Remilia_Nightfall;2976075]How is Selene different since Astro will be able to use Haste with cards (among other buffs)?
QUOTE]

Selene is GUARANTEED haste buffs for the whole party on rotating CD. AST buffs are less reliable. Personally I still feel that each healer will be bringing enough. Lemme tally up some thoughts....

WHM- AST has not confirmed having regens means that whispering dawn and WHM are the only hots (regen, medica2, new ground aoe). Sure everyone gets proshell now but WHM still have traited stoneskin. Their aoe dps utility in holy gets even better with new dps skills, and new dps-to-heal skills (perhaps a la disc priest atonement in wow). They still have huge healbombs and mp efficiency with freecure and overcure, and their CDs increasing their own healing output. New instant healing spells of less potency, on top of benediction, gives more mobility than ever before.

SCH- New spell spreading E4E and adlo bubble means you can use the stronger shield of adlo in aoe, instead of succor. New aoe healing spells also to shore up succor and rouse/whispering dawn. New spell to change adlo into a curebomb helps with 2 sch healing comps as well. Traited virus (if you have no SMN) and E4E with shorter cd as well. Selene has reliable haste buffs and Eos has a mdef cd and aoe healing increase cd that stacks with whm cd. The fairy spothealing is also an amazing supplement and at times a mobility/spread healing tool, not to mention keeping people up while having a dps window to toss dots. Sacred soil is still awesome, and sch is still great on MP management. Still unsure as to how the fairy-sacrifice will work. Does it put her summoning on cd, or can you summon another one right away? Though the translation said magic power the effect in the video looks just like an aoe healing spell.

AST- We still don't know much about how they will function healing-wise. Though we hear about the stance switch we don't know much about the actual spell effects or how often they will be able to switch. The interviews generally have phrased that one would want to use barrier stance with a whm and healer stance with a sch, but perhaps healer stance and whm could work well (2 whm can stack hots now, but 2 sch cannot stack shields. who knows?) Are their barrier an absorption effect like adlo, or a reduction effect like sacred soil, would they stack with sch? we don't know. Also the randomness of the card buffs, while they are sure to be nice buffs are unreliable, not to mention that there sounds to be at least 3 actions associated with their use. I feel that this complexity may turn people away from the class, much like some healers play whm because they don't feel like managing a fairy. Also we know nothing of their dps capabilities, or how viable it will be for them to dps in downtime due to mp constraints. We also don't know what cross class actions they will have, though we can assume cnj for protect (they are reforming proshell after all) and cleric stance. But not sure if they will get can or thm for the other set- giving up e4e/virus or swiftcast/surecast.

In conclusion, I feel that each of the three healers will probably be bringing enough to the table not to be unwanted, or that stacking two of one healer would be optimal. Sure healer stacking could be viable, it already is, but it's not the most optimal which seems to be the concern.

[desufin]

From a healers perspective I would disagree with it being more important. Its an Arcanist ability, so if anything it should be shared amongst SMN and BLM. Protect being shared makes sense because if it wasn't it puts more strain on parties wanting to go AST/SCH, and so WHM would almost be a necessity for every group. Supervirus is actually one of the things that again makes SCH unique to WHM at the moment, so sharing it out would be rather counter-productive to your argument.

How can you possibly think Supervirus is less important than Proshell? If you have done BCoB/SCoB/FCoB before they each respectively got nerfed/echo you would know just what a gigantic impact to boss damage Supervirus has and done practically anything as a SCH to know what little impact Proshell has in comparison (not to mention SCH has access to Fey Covenant to use for the big aoe's reliably enough). Giving AST a similar skill wouldn't have been too much of a stretch but no, they took the easy way out and made Proshell baseline which isn't a big deal per say but it does drop WHM desirability a fair bit and while Supervirus stays SCH exclusive among healers, it will be unbalanced.
Saying DPS (BLM/SMN) should have it instead falls flat because neither are a must in a standard group while at least one healer pretty much is and the impact Supervirus has is as said, huge enough to warrant to give it to all 3 healers (not the reduced CD, just the effect).

[DarkmoonVael]

Haste has been in game for a long time, its called fey light and fey glow. Rip sch, who has been giving haste since 2.0.

[KarstenS]

although the thought of "sacrificing" Eos for more potent cures makes me feel sad :<

Yes. That is weird. The first thing that I got in my head was: demon lock?

Thats not what a Scholar is standing for.

[LycorisSelunis]

Yes. That is weird. The first thing that I got in my head was: demon lock?

Thats not what a Scholar is standing for.

Well it is called 'dissipate', not sacrifice or anything. It seems more like Lily is retreating to the soulstone by giving her aether to you or something along those lines, flavor-wise. Not so much killing her >:/

[elemental10]

You do realize that when it says Haste, it means more spell/skill speed?

Selene has been doing that for a long time.

Besides, I doubt AST can manage as much heal as a full WHM or make a defensive barrier as good as an SCH.

AST has the ability to do both but I doubt it has the same potency. What makes AST unique is the extra bonuses you get from the cards, augmenting your spells in a certain way.

[Seiko769]

I would of rather had something like an AOE emergency off-gcd no mana heal with a 2-3 minute cooldown that fully heals all party and raid members around you.

Or a shield that gives you shielding based off how much max HP you've lost. That would of been a cool mechanic, so if you have 10% of your life left 90% of the life you don't have turns into a shield. Which gives you time to bring everyone back up.

So basically a LB every 2-3 min? That sounds slightly broken on either variation

[Kabzy]

How can you possibly think Supervirus is less important than Proshell?

Yes, I understand it is a very important ability, T11 been there, done that. However it's still an ability/trait that is learnt as an Arcanist (DPS class), and is directly inflicted on the enemy. So I personally think it's more suited to be shared among casters. Also note that I said 'from a healers perspective'. And also it does not fall flat being on casters, I have yet to see a single coil static group that does not have at least one caster.

As for Proshell being on all healers, I think it's way too early for you to claim that it makes WHM less desirable. WHM gets more DPS abilities, an instant cure (assuming like Lustrate) meaning they can emergency heal while DPSing, as well as another HoT in the form of a bubble AoE. Each healer job is getting more tools, so for WHM to have been the only healer to keep Proshell would have been completely unfair. Also, Proshell does not have 'little' impact. It's a magic defense buff that will last an entire fight, the amount of mitigation that brings to the table alone is immense.

[Seryl199]

The way I see it, we still have 50 levels worth of job and class skills. Granted, this is my first MMO to see through to an expansion, but are the few new abilities really projected to completely change how each class plays? Or is it the usual hubbub of forum drama here. Unless one class becomes terribly underpowered to where it can't compete with the others, I'm sure I'll find myself swapping between all three, and I have no doubt SE will move to balance things out if an issue arises.

It's not as though either class is losing significant abilities, I doubt SCH or AST will be able to compete with WHM's raw healing throughput with Divine Seal, PoM, and high potency heals. Scholar will still have mitigation, DoT's that never miss, and a pocket healer. AST, as far as I know, is anyone's best guess. Not to mention, we have no idea about what kind of content we will be faced with. Perhaps healer abilities are being overlapped slightly because they plan on taxing more of our toolkit. Each healer will need to be able to function well in light party content, and that may mean WHM needs to mitigate more, and SCH may need to burst heal more. We just don't know, and everyone's eager to throw everyone else to the wayside instead of wait with baited breath and hope that every healer is awesome.