What changes will push sch out of meta

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

By saying "how can we push sch out of meta", I do not mean "how do we nerf the shit out of sch and make healing unbalanced in favor of whm/ast"

Well in that case, there are a few things that needs to be addressed

First of all would be the requirement of the whole player base to stop tunneling into White Mage or Diurnal astrologian being the "main healer". As many perceive Nocturnal Astrologian as a healer similar to scholar, they tend to get treated as a scholar as well. Which isn't odd. Considering our lord and saviour Yoshi P made the comparison himself.* This is exactly the part where we need let go if we want to "break the meta". In a sense, a White Mage is more suitable to take the off-healer slot than Nocturnal Astrologian. Simply for their ability to keep healing while being in Cleric's Stance - Which off-healers are more in than not compared to the other healer with the meta. This is due to having Regen available. Which Nocturnal Astrologian does not, as it's equivalent is locked in Diurnal Sect. While either stance does have access to Collective Unconsciousness, it cannot be maintained indefinitely and white mage has something similar called Asylum. So as a pure napkin theory, Nocturnal Astrologian taking the main healing slot and White Mage taking the off-healer slot seems more promising than the other way around. I made a topic about this a few months ago too.**

However, and this brings us to the second point, stamina is a problem. White Mage simply does not have the ability to fulfill the role to primarily do damage while also doing their share of healing. Compared to Scholar the MP efficiency on damage spells is terrible (with exception of Broil) and their MP recovery ability doesn't scale with MP pool. There is also significantly more effort required to do so by switching back and forth between maiming and mending more frequently than a Scholar would. Even if it's only to re-apply Regen every 21 seconds. But, in my opinion, effort shouldn't be a primary issue here.

While I don't believe the meta would shift from astrologian+scholar being the most optimal duo if said issue would be addressed. I believe it does lessen the preference gap between the healing compositions available. No hard nerfs would be required. Maybe tuning shroud to be on par with Luminiferous Aether or lower the damage spells cost would be a good start. Or make said skills scale on MP pool like how Aetherflow does. As this is the only ability that only gets better as our gear progresses.

* https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/125199-Famitsu-PAX-East-Interview-(3-14)-Translation
** http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/279963-Astrologian-impossible-to-balance-as-it-is

[IttyBitty]

Really, the focus should be on "what would make WHM a desired pick" rather than "What would push SCH out". It's sort of pointless to even consider trying to make WHM/AST pairs more viable or desired when WHM itself just...isn't.

Don't get me wrong, I have never been fond of how incredibly secure WAR and SCH's places are in the meta. But we need to fix what's broken (WHM/PLD/MNK) before we can focus on making the meta a more malleable thing.

[Fernosaur]

Dirunal AST is probably actually the best healer right now. If you nerf SCH's fairy or you give the noct AST the answer to the fairy, you risk that AST/AST being the best thing. AST has the potential to replace both healers and they have insane card buffs. If AST heals are equal or even just "good enough", they will better than both the WHM and the SCH.

So much this.

Scholar was indeed the undisputed king of 8-man healing at the start of the expansion, but after the devs buffed and buffed and buffed AST, it's honestly hilarious how much better AST is than both SCH and WHM. Not only are AST's buffs much stronger (neither WHM nor SCH have an answer to Balance and Arrow, or any card for that matter. And no, Fey Wind is not even remotely comparable to Arrow), but AST has ridiculously good MP efficiency when healing, great DPS sustainability, and is also a powerhouse of single-target healing with Asp. Benefic, Benefic II and ED. AST's biggest "problem" is a lack of proper burst AoE healing, but Lightspeed and the mitigation tools they have kind of make up for this, not to mention Celestial Opposition gives them more AoE healing output for less MP as well if the regens from AspHelios and CU are extended. On top of this, they can play the bard role and give their co-healer or themselves more MP, or feed a TP starved PLD or physical DPS.

The thing with the AST+SCH comp being so much better is not because of SCH, it's because WHM is crap. You most definitely don't want to miss AST because of all the amazing things previously listed, and both SCH and WHM can effortlessly make up for AST's one weakness (burst AoE healing). So, when you have the option of SCH and WHM, which one do you pick? The answer is pretty obvious.

The other big problem is that NoctAST's lack of regens is very unfortunate. As someone else said, NoctAST is better suited to be the healer focused on the main tank, but when WHM can't even sustain being the support healer, then what do you do?

[Vrmillion]

Get rid of cleric in instances, but if its compulsary for all healers to dps, then make things simpler like give all healers a dot and an attack spell. Make fairy auto so embrace cant be macroed to mash heal with. I wouldnt nerf the pet unless having one actually makes a scholar's healing more than the other classes. It may be part of the balance.

Considering Eos can solo heal almost everything in the game, getting rid of cleric stance would make Scholar the most boring class to have ever existed. You would just be chaperoning the real healer around and going afk during pulls.

[DreamWeaver]

Get rid of the fairy.

This is the truth.
As many experienced healers have said before, the primary resource of a healer is not MP, and is actually the number actions you can perform within a time frame, AKA our GCDs.

With the fairy, you have a regen that needs no re-application (WHMs need to do it every 8 GCDs, Diurnal AST every 7 GCDs), can change target at will.
With Eos, you have AoE Regen, AoE MDEF up, AoE Heal received up, you do not even need to insta cast weave these spells like you do if you want to Assize/Lustrate/Essential Dignity.

Over a course of a fight, the amount of "extra GCDs" you have over the other 2 healer is nothing to scoff at.

This is why as long as the fairy is a part of scholar, the scholar will always be considered superior.

[SaitoHikari]

Let Eos Share off your MP pool.

Potential bad idea in that it'd lead to a situation where Scholars would NOT want their fairies to heal in some situations.

Potential good idea in that it'd actually encourage use of Dissipation.

Potential bad idea in that some Scholar mains out there don't want to give the devs any ideas in justifying the existence of Dissipation.

Anyway, WHM just needs two things: MP costs reduced across the board/better MP regeneration, and some form of mitigation. It feels like in today's raids, WHM's primary strength in the amount of regens they have cannot come close to keeping up with the amount of damage coming out, which by default means that mitigation is the best tool to counter all of that (and hell, one could argue that mitigation would give time for the regens to really make a difference anyway). And AST and SCH's mitigation are miles better than what WHM has. It's no wonder WHM is so undesirable today, when the other two healers have taken WHM's only mitigation tool for themselves (Stoneskin), also have access to regens on top of all of their other advantages, with WHM also having the poorest MP management by far.

Or, in short, remember how at the start of the expansion, people slammed AST because its heals were too weak to be considered a good healer? We're now seeing an alternate version of that - WHM is now a healer without any exclusive mitigation to be considered a good healer.

[dotsforlife]

If you're talking about 8 man content then SCH will always be part of the meta because it's the best OH in that case due to it's utility play. AST brings the buffs, SCH brings the support, WHM brings... overhealing. The only healer I see getting no love these days is the WHM and that's for obvious reasons. The AST/SCH combos are the bread and butter of end game right now. SCH doesn't need to be changed other than maybe MP use. WHM needs to be made relevant again. Having an abundance of over healing from a class is no longer needed or necessary these days.

[IttyBitty]

Mitigation and better resource management alone won't make WHM desirable, but it will bring them a lot closer than they are right now. They're still going to need more love to compare to the other healer's toolkits.

[Ghishlain]

I've made this comment in the past somewhere but I thought it would be pretty neat if the gave WHM so much healing power that they effectively tell you "You should run one healer and five DPS in your raid". I know it won't happen but the thought of it makes me giggle a little inside. Not really a thing to push SCH outta the meta but perhaps if we can encourage more diverse party compositions. There will also be on "absolute optimal" composition but at least having the differing options would reduce the thoughts of "uselessness" in some jobs.

[Risvertasashi]

Another thought... Quick fix SE could do right now: Slash the cost of all WHM DPS spells (except maybe holy) in half.

WHM already tops the charts for healer DPS in both dungeons and raids. Just let them do that without needing MP support and it would have its own niche.