What is the be Healer?

[VanilleFang]

SCH mitigation

I'm glad you pointed this out. I had thought about making a whole post comparing Noct AST and SCH in way of mitigation, akin to Lyrica's WHM vs SCH post. Some people seem to think Noct AST has as many mitigation options as SCH. They may be similar but there are differences that make SCH, like you said, the best at mitigating damage.

[DarkmoonVael]

I'm glad you pointed this out. I had thought about making a whole post comparing Noct AST and SCH in way of mitigation, akin to Lyrica's WHM vs SCH post. Some people seem to think Noct AST has as many mitigation options as SCH. They may be similar but there are differences that make SCH, like you said, the best at mitigating damage.

SCH really is the king of mitigation, and i really do think that people seem to overlook this fact. Nothing else competes with Adlo, Deployed adlo, Succor, Fey covenant, Supervirus, eye-for-an-eye (low cooldown compared to those that cross class it), sacred soil and stone skin - which is now the same shield strength on all classes, which is a little sad (still think whm should have some tangable benefit here other than slightly increased cast time).

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

SCH really is the king of mitigation, and i really do think that people seem to overlook this fact. Nothing else competes with Adlo, Deployed adlo, Succor, Fey covenant, Supervirus, eye-for-an-eye (low cooldown compared to those that cross class it), sacred soil and stone skin - which is now the same shield strength on all classes, which is a little sad (still think whm should have some tangable benefit here other than slightly increased cast time).

Well, just so it's out there:
A non crit Aspected Benefic in Nocturnal Sect has a total of 603 potency, of which 341 potency is shielding. For the pure shielding purpose, Aspected Benefic is more potent than a non crit Adloquium. Healing combined with the mitigation is nearly the same, however. Biggest difference would be when either spell crits, obviously. Aspected Helios is also 157 potency. But that 7 potency difference is extremely minimal.
Virus reduces stats by 15%. Having a particular stat modifier reduced by 15% equals to 15% reduced damage dealt. Disable reduces any kind of damage by 10%. In both mitigation and duration, Disable falls short. One bright side for Disable would be that there are some attacks out there not bound by any stat for whatever reason. Mortal Revolution being one. But these kind of gimmicks are extremely rare and, in case of mortal revolution, disable doesn't last long enough to have any effect on it.

Other than that, Scholar holds a tremendous advantage: Eye for an Eye, Deployment Tactics, a hands-free Sacred Soil and sustained healing while they're in Cleric's Stance. If a White Mage was in the support healer spot, they can at least toss out a Regen before going into Cleric's Stance. The only thing remotely close to this would be throwing out an Aspected Benefic before going into Cleric and toggling it off again after 2-3 GCDs to re-apply Aspected Benefic. Which is not only a tenacious task, but also very MP straining.

[DarkmoonVael]

Well, just so it's out there:
A non crit Aspected Benefic in Nocturnal Sect has a total of 603 potency, of which 341 potency is shielding. For the pure shielding purpose, Aspected Benefic is more potent than a non crit Adloquium. Healing combined with the mitigation is nearly the same, however. Biggest difference would be when either spell crits, obviously. Aspected Helios is also 157 potency. But that 7 potency difference is extremely minimal.
Virus reduces stats by 15%. Having a particular stat modifier reduced by 15% equals to 15% reduced damage dealt. Disable reduces any kind of damage by 10%. In both mitigation and duration, Disable falls short. One bright side for Disable would be that there are some attacks out there not bound by any stat for whatever reason. Mortal Revolution being one. But these kind of gimmicks are extremely rare and, in case of mortal revolution, disable doesn't last long enough to have any effect on it.

Other than that, Scholar holds a tremendous advantage: Eye for an Eye, Deployment Tactics, a hands-free Sacred Soil and sustained healing while they're in Cleric's Stance. If a White Mage was in the support healer spot, they can at least toss out a Regen before going into Cleric's Stance. The only thing remotely close to this would be throwing out an Aspected Benefic before going into Cleric and toggling it off again after 2-3 GCDs to re-apply Aspected Benefic. Which is not only a tenacious task, but also very MP straining.

Oh yes you are absolutely right that the other healers have something that can be comparable to some of the SCH mititagion kit in their arsenal.

Without a SCH you can get close to what a SCH can do by themselves, but it requires the use and co-ordination of several different classes. Not an easy feat, but doable.

The SCH just simply brings a crazily diverse toolkit to content, which is not easily replaceable.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

Oh yes you are absolutely right that the other healers have something that can be comparable to some of the SCH mititagion kit in their arsenal.

Without a SCH you can get close to what a SCH can do by themselves, but it requires the use and co-ordination of several different classes. Not an easy feat, but doable.

The SCH just simply brings a crazily diverse toolkit to content, which is not easily replaceable.

Meh, I wasn't trying to disprove anything or was questioning your post in general. I merely wanted to point out that Astrologian's Aspected Benefic is comparable to Adloquium to an extend for it's intended purpose: Mitigation. Something a lot of players/healers don't seem to realise. Astrologian together with Scholar provides the a lot of on-demand mitigation together, though!

[VanilleFang]

Aspected Bene.

Yeah, when I was looking at all the spells that I could include in a mitigation comparison post, I saw that Aspec. Bene has a stronger non-crit shield.

I would say, because of unreliability and the way they function, Bole and E4E are somewhat comparable. They do literally the same thing if their buff is activated, they are just worded differently (enemy does 10% less damage/ally takes 10% less damage). Granted you can buff Bole to be stronger or whatever but it is far from reliable, and E4E, even with its long cooldown and 20% of activating, is more reliable. Bole is tied to so many other buffs, and I think a 20% activation rate is better than a 16.6666...% chance of pulling a basic Bole card.

Edit: I forgot to mention something obvious. In terms of AoE damage E4E easily wins since only the tank needs it to activate while you would need an Expanded Bole to get the same effect. So yeah, they are only some what comparable.

[DarkmoonVael]

Yeah, when I was looking at all the spells that I could include in a mitigation comparison post, I saw that Aspec. Bene has a stronger non-crit shield.

I would say, because of unreliability and the way they function, Bole and E4E are somewhat comparable. They do literally the same thing if their buff is activated, they are just worded differently (enemy does 10% less damage/ally takes 10% less damage). Granted you can buff Bole to be stronger or whatever but it is far from reliable, and E4E, even with its long cooldown and 20% of activating, is more reliable. Bole is tied to so many other buffs, and I think a 20% activation rate is better than a 16.6666...% chance of pulling a basic Bole card.

Edit: I forgot to mention something obvious. In terms of AoE damage E4E easily wins since only the tank needs it to activate while you would need an Expanded Bole to get the same effect. So yeah, they are only some what comparable.

Aspected Benefic in Nocturnal sect also makes a really nice emergency heal button, that instant cast is never to be taken lightly .

[TatoRazzino]

Virus reduces stats by 15%. Having a particular stat modifier reduced by 15% equals to 15% reduced damage dealt. Disable reduces any kind of damage by 10%. In both mitigation and duration, Disable falls short. One bright side for Disable would be that there are some attacks out there not bound by any stat for whatever reason. Mortal Revolution being one. But these kind of gimmicks are extremely rare and, in case of mortal revolution, disable doesn't last long enough to have any effect on it.

This is something I've been meaning to create a thread about. I don't notice any major difference in Virus and Disable in the mitigation aspect whenever only one of them is used. When alternating Virus/Disable (my group did that for the two Holiest of Holy in Thordan), the group seems to take the same amount of damage. Of course, the difference may be there and I didn't notice, but I was thinking about that and I have some reasons to believe that they are, at least in the actual output, equivalent. I believe that happens because potency is weighted different than stats in the equations that generate the healing/damage output – I got that info from the theorycraft in the Blitz healing calculator page. I would like more data about this, because all I have is my experience.

[Ghishlain]

This is something I've been meaning to create a thread about. I don't notice any major difference in Virus and Disable in the mitigation aspect whenever only one of them is used. When alternating Virus/Disable (my group did that for the two Holiest of Holy in Thordan), the group seems to take the same amount of damage. Of course, the difference may be there and I didn't notice, but I was thinking about that and I have some reasons to believe that they are, at least in the actual output, equivalent. I believe that happens because potency is weighted different than stats in the equations that generate the healing/damage output – I got that info from the theorycraft in the Blitz healing calculator page. I would like more data about this, because all I have is my experience.

I think I'll chime in here since I believe you're talking about my theory craft / data sheets / Google doc.

Here's the testing in question I did for Disable versus Virus with Gravity. I used Gravity specifically because Gravity is targeted and I could AoE into a second training dummy to get the 10% Potency reduction to simulate what Disable would do to its damage. Then I reduced my own MND by 15% to simulate how Gravity would be affected by Virus. More or less the results are expected. Disable reduced Gravity by approximately 10% and Virus reduced the damage by approximately 15%, thus Potency = Stats Reduction.

Just to add my own two cents to the Virus vs Disable part specifically - take into account that a single AST can disable 3 times in the span that a single SCH can supervirus 2 times, effectively meaning 10% reduction for 18s from a AST versus 15% reduction for 20s from a SCH. This makes Supervirus better than Disable at face value but like anything healing related, there's always context to consider. For example, Disable will out do Virus in A3S since Disable can be applied to every single Cascade while Supervirus cannot (though SCH still has the better mitigation toolkit in this case as it has Sacred Soil for every Cascade and it can Deployment Tactics Adlo on any Cascade they don't have Virus on whereas AST can only CU every other Cascade - but this is a tangent on my part on the Virus vs Disable context).

[TatoRazzino]

The data

This is very good! I like that, in some lines, the amount of damage reduced from the Disable simulation is more than 10% when compared to the regular Gravity. So the fluctuation I noticed exists, even though Supervirus is still better in the specific test. I believe Holy and other player spells will behave in the same way, and I see no reason to believe that enemy skills would behave any different. Does anyone have data on enemy damage output for Disable and Virus?