With all these astrologian complain threads

[Verdan]

Wow healers are catty.

[NorthernLadMSP]

It actually wasn't an insult toward anyone specific at all, but a general statement. And no I'm not trolling, I'm dead serious. Being an amazing scholar is a walk in the park. Sorry if people here don't agree, but nothing you say will convince me it's a hard job to master, and this is coming from someone who's mained it since Jan. 2014.

[Kaizersan]

One of the ways in which I feel the cards should be buffed is to make Spear reduce the CD time on things already on CD and give Ewer TP AND MP regen instead of cost reduction.

I agree with the spear change and Ewer could be changed to refresh and the tp down card changed to regain the only other thing I'd change is spread use out of combat so you can prep cards before hand.

[fanservice]

Astrologian in Nocturnal sect has +5% added potency. Aspected benefic has 262 potency then and has an equally potent shield, totaling up to 524 potency (floored down).

Adloquium is 300/300, and when it crits, it's 450/900, but I'm not here to split hairs about spell potency, though adloquium's potential dwarfs it.

Not the most MP efficient thing to do, however. I really doubt scholars use 3 lustrates/minute. Or the very least, I don't

A SCH has the freedom to make that choice, if they feel it's necessary, which is alot more than an AST can say with their one essential dignity every 40 seconds.

Aspected Benefic can still function as a panic button heal, however.

If you need the heal now, yes, but otherwise it's a poor one; it incurs the 2.5 second GCD before you're allowed to begin to cast another spell. Lustrate does not do this.

After casting aspected benefic, you have to wait ~2.5 seconds to start your next spell cast, which means you'll finishing casting your next benefic 2 ~4.5 seconds later. Assuming no crits, that's almost 1200 potency worth of healing after ~4.5 seconds. You'd get a similar result casting benefic 2 twice. Since you're in nocturn, you have no HOTs.

That is a trade.

Lustrate is an ability with a 1 second cooldown on itself, and doesnt incur GCD on anything else. After casting it, and immediately following with adloquium, that's 1200 potency worth of healing in under 3 seconds.

That is going heal-positive.

You can only compare lustrate to essential dignity, and I already stated why aetherflow+lustrate is better.

Indomitability has 400 potency, but cannot be spammed back to back. In nocturnal sect Helios is 96 potency behind on this, but can be casted in succession. If indomitability isn't available, Scholars will have to do with Succor. Which Aspected Helios is only 3 potency behind on with the same effect in Nocturnal Sect. Or recover more HP over time in Diurnal sect.

You forgot emergency tactics that can turn the next succor into medica. You also didn't mention Eos bringing whispering dawn's AOE HOT that ticks for 100 potency for 21 seconds, and is used right after rouse to increase the fairy's output by 40% almost every time.

Anyway, I am aware. I admitted that SCH still has the least sustainable AOE healing pages ago despite the buffs. Thing is, the number consistent AOE damage heavy encounters that demand WHM-level AOE-healing potency have been dropping ever since 2.0 titan hard mode.

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with the aetherflow abilities part. From what I understand from it, unless you're sleeping, wake up and noticed the tank/party is in bad condition, then yes, that would be beneficial. But if you're in the heat of battle and paying attention, how is this a "huge" benefit?

I'll answer your question with my own.

Would you prefer your one healing ability off the shared GCD to:

-Have ~800 potency, and be usable once every 40 seconds

or

-Have 600 potency, and be usable up to 3 times a minute, or 6 times if sitting on charges (which is pretty much what raids should wait on before every meaningful boss fight).

This is a very easy question.

You also mentioned Astrologians can spam instant spells, but be locked for 2.5s every time for doing so because they're spells. Why does this not apply to Scholars who can only use 3 aetherflow stacks every minute? You could argue each use of Aetherflow ability has a 20s CD between each on average. Scholars do not ignore GCD/Cast times at will at all with the Aetherflow limitations. You could burn all your stacks in matter of seconds, if you want. But what about the remaining time while Aetherflow is on CD? Scholars are restricted to this.

Read above. SCHs have more freedom to do that than AST, and do it more often. When a SCH runs out, they still have their fairy at their command supplementing the SCH's heals, while not requiring the SCH to give up a physic, or adloquium cast to do so, unlike the trade that is casting aspected benefic or benefic 2. The SCH can focus-fire 300 potency embrace heals from the fairy every 3 seconds along side their own 400 potency physic, or 300/300 adloquiums (which can crit for 450/900). That is literally free healing in every sense of the word, and ignores the SCH's GCD restriction.

The one and only time AST can do that is once every 40 seconds not counting HOTs that the fairy can out-heal. How hard is that to understand? SCHs are far more flexible, and not limited by as much game mechanics as ASTs. If you can't see why SCHs can address a sudden dire situation better than an AST, I can't possibly hammer it into you any harder

And I'm not sure why you're mentioning the ability to control fairy mid cast here. What's the relationship in all this?

Read above. It's another source of healing that's not on the SCH's GCDs. SCHs don't have to stop what they're doing to have eos cast whispering dawn or embrace.


There is still the matter of SCHs having stronger MP sustain, and Eos carrying fey illumination (20% healing buff for everyone in range, including the SCH, and the fairy).


AST just cannot match a SCH in any regard aside of group buffing (which SCH personal dps apparently beats anyway according to other posters), and AOE healing (which is an inconsistent issue that potentially two 30 second cooldown 300, and 400 potency AOE heals + 100 potency (140 with rouse) fairy HOT can handle well when the need arises).

[Ballooooon]

I find scholar to be pretty simple. The fairy has inhuman reaction times when healing and knowing when to use fairy cooldowns is no different than knowing when to use personal cooldowns. Scholar may have to know when big hits are coming but so does white mage. The only difference is scholar must time the heal/shield to hit right before the big damage while white mage must time the heal to hit right after the big damage. Either way you must be ready.

In addition there's the mp management. Before white mage got assize you needed to be as efficient as possible or suffer the consequences. For example, did you know that if three people took damage it's better to use three cures than to use one cure 3 if the cure 3 will result in 40% total overhealing? Otherwise go cure 3. I think. Knowing stuff like that was important. Scholar, on the other hand, doesn't need to be nearly that on point. Finally, lustrate was a great band-aid for when you messed up.

The main difficulty from scholar comes from fight where you have to constantly move or heal your fairy and when you need to be manually casting embrace at all times. Which is ok difficulty I guess. AoE damage could also be a hassle but not anymore. That's just one man's opinion though.

[KisaiTenshi]

I think that another part of the complaints stems from a lot of people who main SCH. SCH is easy as hell to play, in fact the easiest healer in the game. You could be a bad player and still do alright with SCH because of the virtually unlimited MP and free fairy heals. WHM was the more difficult of the two to excel at. They have more MP management and aggro issues to deal with. Now, WHM is the middle of the road in terms of play difficulty. Then AST comes out, and it's definitely, IMO, the most challenging to play. I think people were expecting another cake walk healer like SCH and thus they are disappointed.

I'll echo this. AST feels no different from WHM other than the cards. It's also reflective in a lot of threads about "healers aren't required to DPS", as the ones most defensive of DPS are the ones who main SCH, not WHM. So here's a case where there is another stance and a mechanic that you have to split your attention with. If you weren't DPS'ing much on WHM, you're not going to DPS more with AST. If you were primarily letting Eos/Selene do cures before as SCH and you play WHM or AST, you'll find that you have to do all the healing and as a consequence have less opportunity to DPS.

So the people who are more likely to try and main AST are those who main WHM, because it's closer to WHM's healing mechanics out of the box than it is SCH's. What this means is that in 4-person parties, you will likely use experience you have with WHM, while 8-person parties assuming there aren't two AST's, you'll use the complementing stance. As gear creep and tactics for new dungeons ramp up, it may be far more viable to switch stances between pulls knowing in advance if shields or raw healing would be more productive.

But in the end, I think AST is going to require some changes to the card mechanic so AST is as efficient to use as WHM and SCH.

BTW... I'm wondering if it is possible to actually Macro the cards themselves, so one Macro "tries" all drawn cards and places them on their preferred targets.

[Kaizersan]

The thing is Aspect Benefic can be cast on the move while Aldo can\\'t allowing you to heal/barrier on the move in fights that are movement intense this can come in handy plus the use of synergy allows you to heal 2 people at once even if the other person that you are tethered to runs out of range they still get the heals allowing you to heal outside of the range of other healers.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Snip

I'm not even going to bother reading the rest after the first two sentences. You're not staying relevant to the comparison you made yourself.

[RichardButte]

Adloquium is 300/300, and when it crits, it's 450/900, but I'm not here to split hairs about spell potency, though ...
(snip)

Aaaaaand mic drop.

But seriously, I tend sit on three aetherflows for most of the cooldown, without needing them. Often, I'll switch to cleric stance and DPS for a while and when the tank finally gets in trouble, drop stance, single or double lustrate, repop stance and resume DPSing.

In most dungeons, I can get away with DPSing 80% of the time as SCH.

I'm not saying SCH is a hard class to play (not at all), but it DEFINITELY outshines the hell out of AST in raw healing power and mitigation and ultimately, that's what we're talking about here, healing potency, not how challenging the class is.

[fanservice]

The thing is Aspect Benefic can be cast on the move while Aldo can\\'t allowing you to heal/barrier on the move in fights that are movement intense this can come in handy plus the use of synergy allows you to heal 2 people at once even if the other person that you are tethered to runs out of range they still get the heals allowing you to heal outside of the range of other healers.

http://xivdb.com/?skill/189/Lustrate

http://xivdb.com/?skill/150032/Embrace

http://xivdb.com/?skill/166/Aetherflow

http://xivdb.com/?skill/150033/Whispering-Dawn

You make it sound like adlo is the only spell SCHs can cast at all. Abilities don't exist in a vacuum.