What is the be Healer?

[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?

[DarkmoonVael]

I'm going to be less "beligerant", or something like that, because it seems you're misreading what I said.

You claimed that a Regen + Cure/Benefic is different than a Physick + Embrace because of functionality. That's true, but it's also true that a Cure II/Benefic II is different than a Physick + Embrace in functionality. In potency they're equivalent, and that's what it was being discussed, not functionality. I never ignored it, I just didn't add it to the discussion because your post and the posts of other members in the forum were not including it and they were biasing the discussion into a pure potency thing. Don't blame me for a bias introduced by you and other people. And for the record: everyone in here is biased; there is no such thing as a non-biased discussion, in any level, in any discursive practice ever. Pointing out that someone is being biased is like pointing out that they're breathing. The only reason why I keep posting in here is because, when comparing my bias to your bias, interesting things emerge. It's not about proving my point and convincing you of something you probably will refute; it's about a process of learning by discussion. Isn't this why we all come to the forum? I'm not obsessed with being right, I'm obsessed by learning and discussing things that interest me. So, please, when I said that you introduced a bias I'm not trying to offend you.

Now let's get back into the discussion: I said that SCH's don't have a 300 potency heal built into the GCD. Succor is not a 300 potency heal. It's 150 heal + 150 shield. That's a difference in functionality, not a difference in potency. You have to decide if you're discussing functionality or potency, because I'm answering the claims according to the bias that was set. I'll say it again: if there was absolutely no difference between a 150 heal +150 shield and a 300 heal, there would be no reason for Emergency Tactics to even exist. The main difference I can see is when your shield doesn't register before the hit, but your healing does; the shield goes to waste in those situations. Succor requires pre-casting in a way Medica/Helios/ET+Succor does not. And that's what I was arguing: SCHs burn cooldowns to match that kind of potency in healing. Since you guys brought Nocturnal AST to the table in more detail, the difference becomes clearer: Noct. AST has access to Benefic II and Helios all the time, and also has access to Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios; SCH can make this transition every 30s, and when Emergency Tactics is on cooldown, they only have access to the equivalent of the two Aspected Spells. This is a weakness of SCH and a strength of AST; however, SCHs have the fairy and Noct. AST gets a 5% potency buff that's barely noticeable - that's a strength of the SCH job, and a weakness of the AST job. When I say that fights are catered to SCH, this is what I mean: they both have strong points and weak points (as every job in the game should have), but the weaknesses of the SCH job don't matter and the strong points of Noct. AST are wasted. This is a problem in fight design, not in the jobs.

Darkmoon mentioned the stack system, that is denied by SCHs in this forum (I read things that simply ignore the fact that you can't burst every single one of your skills at the same time, and whenever I was saying that it was ignored I was not addressing you specifically). Anyway, the stacks are a master mechanic found both in SMN and in SCH. I'll make a quick digression to compare SMN and BLM, but the point in healing will be aparent: when you see how SMN has to manage its stacks, you notice that they burn through them pretty fast to get in Dreadwyrm Stance to do their burst, and after that they go into a sort of low burst DPS rotation (their numbers are kept up by their DoTs still ticking) so the strength of the job lies in its ability to sustain DPS in the long run, because their burst phase goes down really fast; BLMs, on the other hand, are always bursting and that's their strong point. They're both good in different aspects and they all get to shine in basically any fight. Now let's go back to the healing jobs: to get the same burst in healing, SCHs have to burn cooldowns and stacks, and this is something that can be noticed in the way every SCH in here mentions how they do it. However, fights don't require you to burn your stacks fast; one of the reasons is that the main healer can do most of the job by him/herself. This is another way of catering fights to SCH: the weak points of the Aetherflow master mechanic are exploited in DPS scenarios, but are not exploited in the healing counterpart, rendering the difference in having burst built into the GCD useless. Again: this is not a job issue, but a fight design issue. There are very little scenarios in which a SCH gets penalized from having to burn stacks fast, but there are a lot of scenarios in which an AST gets penalized from not having more off-GCD heals and a WHM also gets penalized from not having more mitigation options apart from what's cross-classed. That's catering.

Fights are built around having a SCH, so the nuances and weak points of their toolkit are not apparent. They exist and can be exploited, and I hope SE does that in the future.
And please, for the 100th time, when I mean weak points, I don't mean to say that SCH is weak. Having weak points is about balance, not about being good or bad.
I'll use PLD as an example: the core component of the job is having a shield to block portions of physical attacks, which makes them good at dealing with that kind of damage; they also have a number of support skills that help the party deal with incoming damage: they can heal, they can cover and they can add magic shields to the party. That's their strong point, and their weak point is, because of having that many defensive options, they get less DPS options and dealing damage while tanking is their weak point. I saw a lot of PLD mains switching to DRK when they got into A3S, because the PLD's toolkit became obsolete in relation to the extra DPS and mdef DRK has. In A4S, PLDs are useless according to people who play DRK. Go to the tank forums and you'll see the amount of complaints about PLD's toolkit and threads asking it to be changed. The thing is, this is not a job problem, it's a fight design problem. They built a lot of interesting skills into the PLD toolkit and then designed fights to render it useless or less valuable than pure DPS output or mdef cooldowns. This is what I call catering. Of course you can do those fights as a PLD, but why would you when you can't use a big portion of your toolkit?

I brought PLD up because you claimed that it was a mitigation thing that made people chose SCH for high end groups. Mitigation is not a decisive factor in A1S and A2S; I've done both fights as an AST in Diurnal sect without a SCH back when ilvl was not inflated. AST had not been buffed by then, so there wasn't any kind of shields and Collective Unconscious only had a healing component. We also didn't have a PLD, so no Divine Veil was available. Tell me, then, why SCHs were so valued if not because of their DPS? If shielding was any issue at all back then, I could simply have gone Nocturnal and the amount of shielding I got from Aspected Helios would be more than enough since we weren't using any kind of shields in the first place? It was safe to not have any shields, and AST's shields could make it safer; Deployed Adloquium is excessive in there with a Cure III + Assize available – for the record, "excessive" means not necessary; having that kind of shielding would bring the benefit of allowing a WHM to save Assize for later or not cast Cure III at all. That was a fight design thing that allowed shields to be helpful but not needed. This is what I argued, not that SCH couldn't shield.

I also argued that a SCH can't use Deployed Adloquium to shield every cascade in A3S, which makes them use Succor for every other cascade. This means a Nocturnal AST can shield Cascades as well (if they couldn't, parties could wipe even with SCHs). The 20% fairy buff is actually very good, but some groups don't use it because some SCHs likes to have Selene out. That's the case of my group and, since we run AST/SCH, that's not an issue because I can mitigate damage as well. However, ASTs weren't favored in end game groups even after the buff they got, and that leads me to believe that mitigation is not as favored as people claim it to be. I already said that, if shielding was the issue, PLD's Divine Veil and ASTs mitigation toolkit (even in Diurnal) would be more valued in parties than they actually are. PLD + AST + SCH = the most party mitigation available in the game. If DPS wasn't the decisive factor, we would see more job combos than we actually see in play. My claim was never related to the fact that SCHs can or can't shield (that would be absurd), but that the shielding and mitigation difference is not what's making them special. It's a DPS obsession thing. Nowadays, with the extra gear we have, DPS checks shouldn't be an issue anymore; and yet you see people claiming that you can't bring PLDs into raid groups because they suck at DPS and you can't bring ASTs because their DPS support is based in RNG and they don't allow a SCH to DPS as much; shielding is not something that makes people bring this or that job. It should be, but it isn't.

About the WHM/AST cooldowns: I addressed that already, but I'll say it again in a different way. A lot of SCH cooldowns are there to fill gaps in healing that are addressed by the other jobs with their GCDs. There are cooldowns in the other jobs that help them catch up to SCH in emergency heals, but they're different, specially with WHM; they got Tetra because they were the only job that couldn't have an emergency off-GCD short cooldown heal before 50, so they got it at 60. The catching up ends there, in relation to SCH. Assize and Indomitability were introduced in the game at the same time; SCHs got it early in their quest line because WHMs already have Cure III and Medica available all the time. If you want to compare Essential Dignity and Lustrate, you'll see that Essential Dignity can reach a lot more potency and, if you consider stack management and healing rotations in a well learned fight, it can be used as frequently as SCH uses Lustrate. For emergencies, yes, SCH can use it three times in a row, but in normal healing situations they have to burn Lustrate sometimes to match what a WHM/AST are doing with Cure II/Benefic II. This is the reason why I didn't make comparisons with the cooldowns of the other healers. SCHs don't have something as reliable as Divine Seal to boost their healing potency; the fairy skill can replace it in solo heal situations, but with two healers in the party the buff will reach both of them, so the gap won't be filled. Asylum is something that SCHs don't have, since Eos' Whispering Dawn is only a little above Medica II's AoE regen when it's not roused (that's due to the scaling in stats). I can keep going, but the point remains the same: a lot of the cooldowns in the SCH toolkit are there to do stuff that the other healers have in their GCD; the cooldowns for the other healers usually add something extra or further enhance what they naturally have. This is why I didn't mention them and this is why they have different functions in the game. Since we're talking about functionality now, this can't be ignored.

Finally, I'll say that I didn't change anything I said and I didn't get to different conclusions. I was always trying to address the points that were said by others and I mentioned the particulars I disagreed with. There is no point in discussing things that are not in debate, so I thought they were implied. I hope I could address everything you asked me to.

I appreciate the response and the clarification. It seems what you previously posted was read by myself and others in a very different way than you intended.

The one thing i will pick up on, only for further discussion, is the point you make about catering fghts, but in this case it not about SCH or WHM but about AST. The penalisation of AST lack of oGCD is most likely an attempt to not oust WHM totally. The risk of a regen based healer that the group relies on to do the majority of healing in a fight whilst being able to, as on oGCD ability, buff the dps of the others in the group, puts the WHM position at risk completely if they are in a fight where they can not personally contribute to personal dps. Where as AST do technically have 2 oGCD heals (i dont think anyone would argue CU is an absolute oGCD as it roots you in spot for a period of time just to get the Wheel of Fate on people), they seem to have been designed to be able to perform the majority of healing in a raid scenario, albeit it a slightly higher risk on the helaing side compared to WHM (they do however have essential dignity, which i do personally believe to be the most powerful emergency heal in the game, but has a substantially higher drawback than the majoriy of other emergency heals with the inverse scaling of potency). However, this slight rambling leads me to the fact that there is a fight in the game which cater far more to AST than either WHM and SCH and that fight is Thordan EX. AST is purely phenomenal in Thordan EX compared to WHM and SCH, so we can see clear indication of its power as a healer when utilised properly and conditions are good for AST.

On a side note, perhaps we should be talking about this in terms of fights where certain healing classes shine, rather than fights that "cater" to a certain healer - cater can convey some pretty negative connatations, and this is perhaps where some of the negative misunderstanding comes from .

And i think for the OP, the TL;DR of this topic is pretty much the fact that all healers are good in capable hands. There are certain situations where one will shine more than the rest, and each healer has very different expectations placed upon them in 8 man content. Try them all out and pick the one you enjoy the most, as that going to be most likely the best healer for you.

In the mean time, i shall take my own advise, and get the AST relic, because quite frankly it more fun than SCH, which is have been playing for faaar too long (since beta........sigh). Yay to personal biased .

[TatoRazzino]

On a side note, perhaps we should be talking about this in terms of fights where certain healing classes shine, rather than fights that "cater" to a certain healer - cater can convey some pretty negative connatations, and this is perhaps where some of the negative misunderstanding comes from .

I didn't notice that at all. I'm Brazilian, so I wouldn't know that that this word had this particular negative meaning in this context. I used it because I saw other people using it, and I didn't think about the possible "side effects". That was my bad

[DarkmoonVael]

I didn't notice that at all. I'm Brazilian, so I wouldn't know that that this word had this particular negative meaning in this context. I used it because I saw other people using it, and I didn't think about the possible "side effects". That was my bad

No worries, thats language for you, lots of different ways things can be read .

[Ghishlain]

Does anyone have data on enemy damage output for Disable and Virus?

I imagine that data isn't available since it would be a PITA to test in any timely fashion given Disable is a 60s CD and Virus is a 90s CD while trying to record all the damage points from a mob. If they ever have CDs reset on wipe in a raid, I might consider taking a tank with me into undersized T13 and see what the Flatten damage is like since that move will have a large enough number and therefore it would be fairly easy to see it reduced by 10% / 15%.

For the time being, it's probably best just to assume monster stats / potencies work in the same way it works for players until its proven otherwise.

[DamianFatale]

Could a mod please edit the title of the post, I was on mobile, and it auto corrected me. D: