Tips for SCH? :)

[Gemina]

Shields are heals. They are just heals that cannot be stacked. Every time you cast Adlo or Succor you are healing for 600 and 300 respectively, so long as damage is incoming within 30 seconds. If you shield before the damage is incoming, you are losing 150 potency or half of the heal. Players also have natural health regain. You can shield before the attack if it makes you feel safer, but its a 50% overheal. You are costing yourself 2 GCDs, when 1 would be sufficient. An exception would be when massive raid wide damage is about to go out, and you need the extra healing, like in Sephirot during the third phase with adds. Shielding with succor during the knockback. Virus. Emergency Tactics. Precasting Succor. Succor. Indom. But even that is overheal if you have a good healing partner. (Thats 150+300+300+400 x 8 potency in 6 seconds.) In MOST content, precasting a shield, when you could be DPSing is an overheal.

Typically though on a single target, if you Adlo for that 600 potency heal (your 616 heal, 616 shield,) your fairy will be given more time to assist you, having 1.5x as much time to help heal.

Go into a pull. Tank has adlo (maybe even SS).Spamming Embrace at even 100% health. Popping rouse as bio or aero enters your rotation. Fairy can't keep up. CS off. Lustrate. Adlo. CS on. Thats 1200 potency in heals, while the fairy helps to keep up. Its even easier at 50 and below content, because the fairy nerf drops embrace from 300 at level 50 to 200 at level 60.

Adlo and succor are effecient healing spells that focus on retaining the heal if it would be overheal, but are inefficient if you try to stack them on themselves.

I think you and I have completely different approaches to galvanize. I don’t see Adlo and Succor as heals. I see them as shields with a restorative number that lets you know how much dmg it is going to absorb. I have always been under the impression that a SCH’s strength comes from their ability to mitigate damage. My time as WHM has shown how much more difficult it is for SCH to repair the damage after it comes. When I need to heal, I use Physick, Lustrate, and I’ll have Indom soon for a true AoE heal. I make no mention of stacking Galvanize. There is no over heal with Galvanize because I am not casting it to restore hit points.

Also, I missed this one. Selene actually has a terrible AI for Fey Caress. The only time it would be effective is if you know you'll be put to sleep, so that Selene could fey caress you out of it, since you can't micromanage incapacitated. If someone even has weakness, she'll try to Fey Caress it, when they raise. You could make the case for her silence, but an interrupt macro is about as reliable.

You also want to aim Fey wind's duration for a time when you can maximize your 30 seconds of uptime. She'll use it whenever it goes off of cool down, even if the boss is invulnerable or if you're at the end of a pull.

Allow me to be more clear about Sic/Obey. I know that keeping our fairy on obey is the most effective way to utilize her tool kit. However, the question is: Am I am more effective having her on manual control? If a debuff that needs cleansed is sapping away at the group that Selene would have picked up long before I cast leeches, or if Fey Wind has been sitting off CD for x amount of time during trash pulls or boss fights, the answer is no.

We can bring up the faulty fairy AI all day, while human error for some reason is never mentioned. I can only speak for myself when I say I am not a perfect SCH by any means, but if any of these derps I mentioned sounds familiar, I wouldn’t throw Sic out the window. If someone needs a rezz and Selene is on auto, take her off it while you’re casting it so she doesn't waste FC. Simple. There is no set rule that says you can’t toggle Sic/Obey to increase your effectiveness. Toggling them, really is part of the micro managing. I seriously doubt SE gave the Sic command so players can be lazy.

I should also mention that I use a controller. The hotbar setup does not allow me to see all CDs, and when a lot is going on all at once, especially when solo healing, it is VERY easy to miss a CD. I will tell a SCH that manual control is the most effective way to use our fairies, but I will never tell a SCH to keep their fairies on OR off obey.

A good example of when I toggled between Sic and Obey was during Garuda story mode. I came in with Selene and left her on Auto. SD is ineffective towards her, and she causes no debuffs that need to be cleansed. So I eliminated my own margin for error by leaving her on Sic to maximize Fey Wind. At around 60% before Garuda uses her signature ability, I brought in Eos and put her on obey. This made it much easier for me to regain control after everyone except the tank dropped lower than 20% HP.

Also Selene does not use Fey Wind every time it is off CD. She will cast it when the following conditions are met:

- Off CD
- Not silenced, slept, or other interruption
- Player is engaged in battle, or player is aggroed

She will not cast it outside of a fight. If she casts it towards the end of a trash pull, it’s on me for not taking her off of Sic, but considering that Fey Wind reduces cast times as well as CD’s, it not necessarily a bad thing if it is active between pulls, which are so ridiculously short you’re losing very little.