supervirus more impactful than proshell

[ckc22]

Every post in the healer forums is whms complaining they don't have access to every tool in every healers kit.

[mp-please]

Every post in the healer forums is whms complaining they don't have access to every tool in every healers kit.

Don't you mean scholars talking out of their asses of how great they're? Because that's what i've seen on this sub forum on the past 5 months since astrologist was announced.

[AishaK]

Every post in the healer forums is whms complaining they don't have access to every tool in every healers kit.

We dont want scholar's tools, we want all healing compositions other than two clones to be viable for endgame progression. I'd be perfectly fine with astro getting a comparable tool to supervirus. or another dps other than just summoner having something along these lines.

The worry is the trend towards big aoe "need to be mitigated to survive" attacks in current endgame design unnecessarily favors scholar. Things like nerve gas and gigaflare were clearly designed with scholar in mind. This was fine when only two healers were around but now we have to worry about the astro as well.

What square is doing with white mage is completely hypocritical when they say proshell is needed for healer balance without also looking at the other healer. It shouldn't be all give and no take. It's shoehorning scholar into the #1 healing position.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

What square is doing with white mage is completely hypocritical when they say proshell is needed for healer balance without also looking at the other healer. It shouldn't be all give and no take. It's shoehorning scholar into the #1 healing position.

This is not entirely true either. Square-Enix has the right mindset by giving White Mages more options to deal some damage. Mitigation aside, healer DPS is another task for Scholars in raid environment (or minmaxers in general). To off-set this, White Mages are getting more tools to theoretically close the gap on Scholars in this field. Whether it's equal or better will depend on the potency of each spell they'll be getting in HW.

However, this does not solve one of the main reasons why White mages aren't off-DPSing as much as scholars are: Accuracy. As long accuracy is a problem, White Mages will never be able to compete with Scholars in this area. With or without the new spells, especially when the accuracy requirement becomes higher and higher.

It's not like the new spells/abilities White Mages are getting are bad. They're bland, if anything. The damage abilities are just not very viable as long accuracy is a thing.

[spelley]

snip

I wouldn't be surprised if the "free" Accuracy on healer gear will increase significantly (or the accuracy requirements will be much lower) so it'd be far easier for healers to itemize for DPS.

[Sleigh]

Yep, literally an expensive cure II. And they have to be out of cleric to use it.

However, this means the SCH in that stance no longer has a way to shield for tankbusters. Or those big raid AoEs.

My main issue with this, which is a true statement, is you're not looking at HOW SCH DPSes. SCH is primarily CD/DoT based when attacking, which for a healer is as good as it gets; that means, after you've put up your DoTs, you can switch to heals and still be doing 80%+ of your core DPS just because that's how they do damage. This applies to how they heal in general, where whenever they have to drop Cleric they are still putting out their numbers, and whenever they do get spare time to DPS (which, in content you know well enough, is constantly), they're putting out their big DoTs immediately. In say a situation like T13 learning final phase way back in the early days, our healers were scared to DPS in final phase. We looked at the situation and saw that, damn, you can definitely at the least spend 10s after each mechanic and put up a set of DoTs, denting 5k~ off Bahamut with each set of DoTs.

Other healers would have to actively be attacking to produce that kind of damage. For SCH, skipping some Ruins, or letting some DoTs drop off momentarily, that's nothing. Yet another advantage to their unique style and why having DoT class as their base class just worked out so well for them. Heck, it's another reason why they, with all their other strengths, are a top tier mechanic class, where they can be the ones to do Bluefire or run up for the spread damage mechanics or run around hitting towers, with so little loss.

This is not entirely true either. Square-Enix has the right mindset by giving White Mages more options to deal some damage. Mitigation aside, healer DPS is another task for Scholars in raid environment (or minmaxers in general). To off-set this, White Mages are getting more tools to theoretically close the gap on Scholars in this field. Whether it's equal or better will depend on the potency of each spell they'll be getting in HW.

However, this does not solve one of the main reasons why White mages aren't off-DPSing as much as scholars are: Accuracy. As long accuracy is a problem, White Mages will never be able to compete with Scholars in this area. With or without the new spells, especially when the accuracy requirement becomes higher and higher.

It's not like the new spells/abilities White Mages are getting are bad. They're bland, if anything. The damage abilities are just not very viable as long accuracy is a thing.

I'd argue the real issue with WHM being an off-DPSer, aside from SCH just plain doing it better in every way while being able to throw out stronger heals while doing it, is MP. We've experimented a lot with trying to push SCH-esque numbers in an environment like FCoB post-echo, where Regen + Embrace spam is usually enough to sustain the main tank during regular phases, and the trouble isn't ACC, it's straight up keeping MP up while doing so. You can only DPS for so long because you're living on pot + Shroud, while SCH will be over there practically gaining MP while DPSing from Aetherflow every minute + 3 Energy Drains a minute if he doesn't need stacks for anything else.

ACC can be fixed with food/gear. Piety to sustain WHM DPS ... not enough available on gear to do it, not in the quantities you'd need to rival SCH. And this is talking about overgeared echo content where healing isn't needed, in actual progression or appropriate iLVL WHM simply won't be able to afford much more than spurts every now and then.

And don't even get me started on aldoquium! 300 cure potency and a shield of equal measure to 600. WOW! It's almost like it's the same as cure 2 that white mages get early on.

Adlo is straight up superior to C2. Ignore the extremely OP double crit shield aspect for a second: having shielding skills is very good for two reasons, the first of which is it's much more difficult to overheal with Adlo since you're always contributing to the tank's eHP, and the second of which is it lets you raise the targets eHP for the incoming attack which may otherwise one shot them (or bring them down to near death and one auto would kill them). The double crit aspect just takes it completely over the edge. The only weakness to Adlo, and a large portion of why SCH + SCH doesn't work as well as WHM + SCH, far from the only reason but a strong one nonetheless, is if you chain cast you'll overshield unless there's a very large stream of incoming damage (Akh, Bahamut's Claw), but it's rare to do in regular healing.

You might have some form of argument for WHM + AST based on WHM's pure heals, on the principal that it'd lead to the strongest overall heals, but what would be the point if the tanks and heals are skilled in a group? Serious question. For the most part, once you've learned a fight, two healers straight up healing is extreme overkill except for dealing with mechanics specifically, and I can guarantee Selene + SCH DPS is the absolute highest form of healer DPS this game has seen, and is assuredly still the most of the 3 healers in 3.0. The only times honest to goodness skilled healers purely heal is when they are in unknown territory, like the first 1-3 times you've entered a phase, otherwise DPSing has never been an issue from at least one healer 80% of the time.

Also don't mistake people talking about SCH vs WHM as if, if SCH is thought to be the better of the two (which by Curious Gorge it is but WHM covers SCH's weakness so the point up till now has always been moot), WHM goes and AST comes in. That's not true. It's just something you have to deal with if you're in a good group, or well, don't have to if you're in a slower group who doesn't care. Up to your group.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Every post in the healer forums is whms complaining they don't have access to every tool in every healers kit.

You couldn't be more wrong. Every thread like this that pops up in the healer thread is some person who only mains SCH talking about how fabulous they are, and how much WHM sucks/is lacking.

[loreleidiangelo]

I wouldn't turn this into a WHM vs. SCH grudge-fest, tbh. The OP has some valid concerns, and Sleigh highlighted some REALLY good points about how what SCH is bringing to the raid table currently will benefit progression-oriented groups way more than the brute-force healing of WHM will. If Astrologian's Disable acts as its own Supervirus then it will at least be POSSIBLE for WHM/AST comps to survive raid busters like Gigaflare/Nerve Cloud, but I still suspect hardcore groups will roll SCH/AST if those effects stack.

Essentially, SE wanted to give WHMs and SCHs more "mirror" skills of their counterparts - ie, SCH got more raw/burst/AOE healing, but the difference is, SE gave WHM more "instant cast" heals and some DPS increases rather than supply WHM with what they were truly lacking in an endgame environment - raid-wide mitigation. An easy fix would just be to allow Stoneskin II to be cast in combat...it has a long cast time and a huge MP cost, so you'd obviously only use it for raid busters, not just spam it all the time. I really don't understand why this wasn't considered from the start.

[Amaret]

Stop shitting your pants and wait for the preliminary patch notes which will come in the next few hours. Maybe they change virus for them too? Also... it depends on the fight... the int debuff itself was "mostly" useless until final coil.

Asylum: Generates a regenerative field area on the ground.
Assize: Instant WHM-centered simultaneous AoE damage and AoE healing ability.
Tetragrammaton: Instant HP recovery for target.
Stone III: Strongest earth elemental magic attack, pure damage.
Aero III: AoE wind elemental DoT.

Assize, Asylum, Tetragrammaton sounds like nice skills for use while Cleric Stance.

[Tint]

Also... it depends on the fight... the int debuff itself was "mostly" useless until final coil.

the thing is: the raid wide aoe damage will ALWAYS be magic-based, otherwise a ninja can simple dodge it with his cooldown as example and mages who has lesser life than other classes will survive it thanks to their higher mdef...