supervirus more impactful than proshell

[Risvertasashi]

Thank you for perfectly illustrating my earlier point.

Although I'm well aware of Vlady's (and some others') troll status, I think there have been some genuine questions in this thread. Although, in reference to the OP... t13 soloheal, didn't a WHM do that before SCH did?

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Don't be elitist, it doesn't serve to better your point.

The numbers are still wrong :P

If questioning the credibility of your post makes me an elitist, so be it. But your post can't possibly be taken seriously if you don't even know what each class does specifically. That's like saying haggis disgusting while you've never even tried it. In other words: You're not a reliable source of information.

And with that, how is your previous post relevant to the topic of discussion? The only one who even got remotely close to mentioning that scholar is "2 stronk" would be Sleigh on the first page. But he made a proper list of reasons why Scholars have a steady spot in a raid environment before doing so. Meanwhile you're posting something with numbers - Which aren't even correct - and soon-to-be outdated facts.

[SovereignAegis]

The numbers are still wrong :P

If questioning the credibility of your post makes me an elitist, so be it. But your post can't possibly be taken seriously if you don't even know what each class does specifically. That's like saying haggis disgusting while you've never even tried it. In other words: You're not a reliable source of information.

And with that, how is your previous post relevant to the topic of discussion? The only one who even got remotely close to mentioning that scholar is "2 stronk" would be Sleigh on the first page. But he made a proper list of reasons why Scholars have a steady spot in a raid environment before doing so. Meanwhile you're posting something with numbers - Which aren't even correct - and soon-to-be outdated facts.

Ah damn it, sorry. You weren't being elitist I reread it. Just have had some cases of people being that way so I am primed to take things that way. My bad, I apologise for that.

And it is relevant because of posts like this

The general feeling for a while now is scholar will be the required healer and astrologian and white mage will be fighting for the second spot.
Scholar just brings too many things to a group that other healers just can't even compare to.

Posts like this worry me.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

That seems a very plausible scenario to me. I mentioned Sleigh posted something about it before:

WHM looks to be getting some buffs, but I have to agree with Nihility, there is only one safe and secure healer in my mind and that'd be SCH.

Supervirus, which has ranged from just regular Virus to the only thing standing between the group and death due to iLVL? Check
Can DPS while directing very generous, unhampered heals at the boss's target? Check
Can AoE better than half the cast of jobs by spending 7.5s and one Aetherflow to set it up for the next 20s? Check
Adlo for the ability to virtually negate the next tank killer if it crits? Check
Selene massively boosting raid DPS for free? Check. We've dabbled in dropping SCH for solo healing in the past and it rarely pays off well, SCH DPS + Selene buffs are damn near a DPS by itself. Technically even stronger in 3.0 due to SS buffs
If needed, completely free, strong raid heals/buffs from Eos? Check. It's hard to notice how good Whispering Dawn really is until you try solo heal SCH and realize WD usually heals the whole raid almost to full by itself, usually well before next mechanics (situational).
Possibility in 3.0 to crit Adlo the raid before a T9 Megaflare/T13 Gigaflare type of attack? Check check check

I do not know which healer will prove dominant of WHM or AST. Probably will lead to personal preference mostly, maybe WHM for progression, maybe AST for speed runs since presumably higher group DPS, who knows? But I know SCH isn't going anywhere.

With 2.0-2.5 content, White Mages and Scholars fill each other's weaknesses perfectly fine. White Mages take on the greater share of healing where Scholars assist when needed while off-dpsing. With the raid meta anyway. But whatever edge White Mage had over Scholar when it came to Healing, in particularly AoE healing, will be patched up in Heavensward. White mages on the other hand:

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.

For the record, Scholars will be getting:
Indomitability - AOE Heal (Aetherflow required to cast)
Deployment Tactics - Gives Adloquium and Eye for an Eye to party members near the person they are casted on.
Emergency Tactics - Changes Adloquium from a shield to a pure heal
Dissipation - Consumes Eos or Selene for 50% extra healing potency (Currently overpowered, will be adjusted before release)
Unnamed Spell - Non Elemental Magic attack

White Mages will be getting:
Asylum - AoE Regen Bubble
Assize - AoE that does Healing and Damage at the same time
Tetragrammaton - Instant Heal for 50% of target's health
Stone III - Will Replace Stone II as main DPS skill
Aero III - AoE DoT

[loreleidiangelo]

Although I'm well aware of Vlady's (and some others') troll status, I think there have been some genuine questions in this thread. Although, in reference to the OP... t13 soloheal, didn't a WHM do that before SCH did?

With a SMN to supply Supervirus...which was kind of the point of this thread.

While I won't "doom n gloom" or claim innate superiority of any one healing job over another, just going off the information we have now, it seems like stacking SCH's mitigation and fairy DPS buffs with AST's regen sect and card DPS buffs will be the preferred healer raid composition for those on the bleeding edge of content. I say this as someone who is swapping to Astrologian, and raid healing with a WHM co-healer. We're not "server first" raiders in my group by any means though, so we'll progress at a slower rate with adequate gear buffers such that that level of mitigation and DPS boost provided by a SCH/AST comp won't be needed.

We won't know any of this for certain though until complete skill lists, CDs, and potencies are revealed.

[DarkmoonVael]

Scholar has been king now since day 1 of 2.0. Just now figuring that out? If anything double scholar will be a likely combo for high end progression now that scholar can spread adlo and has a stronger aoe heal and better emergency aoe heals now. Lol at white mage regen bubble.

Ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Yes because being able to possibly stack ast shields and adlo isnt going to be good now? Anyone said disable and virus?

Dear lord, learn about classes, and stop trolling.

[Risvertasashi]

For the record, Scholars will be getting:
Indomitability - AOE Heal (Aetherflow required to cast)
Deployment Tactics - Gives Adloquium and Eye for an Eye to party members near the person they are casted on.
Emergency Tactics - Changes Adloquium from a shield to a pure heal
Dissipation - Consumes Eos or Selene for 50% extra healing potency (Currently overpowered, will be adjusted before release)
Unnamed Spell - Non Elemental Magic attack

Well... let's look at a practical scenario here.

For the sake of simplicity, consider phase 2 of t13 (although final phase would work too). Assuming megaflare gets handled perfectly and no lustrates are needed to emergency heal someone... you have a short window to heal up the whole party.

So blow two atherflow stacks on that. Rage of bahamut takes their health right back down again, followed up by a flare breath and an auto attack (that might crit) on the main tank. Where do you spend that last aetherflow stack? Maybe you're using Eos instead of Selene (good bye DPS buffs), so you could lustrate the tank and Whispering Dawn the part.

But wherever you spent it, you no longer have it for 1. FB/Flatten/FB or 2. That mini death sentence thing the adds do. (And you better hope DPS never need an emergency heal from you.)

Ok, so use emergency tactics and you've got your single target HP/S back (at a cost of 400 MP a pop...). Only, now... while you can get the tanks HP back up, you can't shield for Flatten.

Do I think it will be possible to run without a WHM? Yes...
AST will be able to cover/supplement some of the weaknesses above.

Is WHM without its own advantages and reasons to bring it along for fights like that?

I really don't see why it would be. It will still have the strongest HP/S throughput in the game (pretty much nullifying megaflare/rage in 2 or 3 GCDs), and let the SCH get by with using Selene, help him/her conserve aetherflow stacks, etc.

For a phase 4 alternative, just fill in with megaflare/gigaflare/ES (again, hope the DPS are perfect if you're using aetherflow on AoE heals)/Tornado+flare breath combo, and finally Ahk Morn.

TL;DR job with the most powerful raw heals is unlikely to be obsolete.

It's also possible the new fights will be soft on healing, but at that point, just bring whatever, it doesn't matter.

With a SMN to supply Supervirus...which was kind of the point of this thread.

While I won't "doom n gloom" or claim innate superiority of any one healing job over another, just going off the information we have now, it seems like stacking SCH's mitigation and fairy DPS buffs with AST's regen sect and card DPS buffs will be the preferred healer raid composition for those on the bleeding edge of content. I say this as someone who is swapping to Astrologian, and raid healing with a WHM co-healer. We're not "server first" raiders in my group by any means though, so we'll progress at a slower rate with adequate gear buffers such that that level of mitigation and DPS boost provided by a SCH/AST comp won't be needed.

We won't know any of this for certain though until complete skill lists, CDs, and potencies are revealed.

Re: SMN. Does it really matter? As long as someone has the mitigation. And SMNs should be more popular come the expac (Though IMO, they're not really gimp right now, just underappreciated). WARs and MNKs help with mitigation too. More to the point, WHM had the raw healing power to do it pre echo.

ASTs have to deal with RNG though. You can't guarantee that you'll buff a party's or party member's DPS at any given moment. In fact, you might just make them or the whole party take a vulnerability up debuff.

[Ghishlain]

I think, looking at what we know about the current skills released, the end line of "which healer composition will be preferred" will come down to raid design. If raid busting damage is light and tank busters are all physical (like most tank busters in FCoB), Supervirus will mean very little in the grand scheme of things. Likewise, if we get a few attacks similar to Gigaflare / Auto-Crit Nerve Gas coming up, Supervirus will be very useful for that. I wouldn't be surprised if S-E designed all the Alex floors to be more beneficial to certain healing pairs versus other (but still clearable by any pair required).

We'll also have to see where the synergies are and how all the new skills mesh with each other. Will AST + SCH shield stacks? Will Disable + Supervirus stack? Will Disable provide an immunity after use to prevent double AST shenanigans? Will Antibody prevent Disable from working? Sacred Soil + AST version of Sacred Soil stack? Etc etc.

Notice how a lot of points above are questions about SCH + AST synergies. WHM is very bread and butter in the grand scheme of things and has an overall lower skill ceiling versus a SCH (and thus a lower potential). However, if SCH + AST don't synergize well, the go pair may just very well be WHM + ???.

Time will tell, and I'm sure we'll all figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each job once level 60 hits the table this week.

Scholar has been king now since day 1 of 2.0. Just now figuring that out? If anything double scholar will be a likely combo for high end progression now that scholar can spread adlo and has a stronger aoe heal and better emergency aoe heals now. Lol at white mage regen bubble.

Still waiting for any proof from your other threads / posts BTW~ When you can articulate your arguments like Sleigh and Velox can, then we might take you more seriously. Until then, good bye/

Although, in reference to the OP... t13 soloheal, didn't a WHM do that before SCH did?

Yes.

[Risvertasashi]

WHM is very bread and butter in the grand scheme of things and has an overall lower skill ceiling versus a SCH (and thus a lower potential).

I'm curious what you mean by lower potential? Scholar is certainly the more technical job...

[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.