SCH 4.0 ability mp costs

[Menae]

I'm personally disappointed. If Aetherflow is reduced

It isn't; somebody read a tooltip incorrectly. It's still 20%, and you get a trait which gives a chance to reduce its CD (although it works out to be an incredibly minor buff, to be fair).

it basically forces me to get the cross class mana regen skill, which I don't like.

Yeah, I hear you. The role slots feel less like bonuses or customization options and more like 3-4 mandatory picks (mp regen, healing buff, swiftcast, and can maybe skip protect if your cohealer grabs it) and maybe one or two to play with or swap in based on fight. It also sucks that every healer (and probably all the tanks/DPS too) feels like they lost abilities to the role skills and now they need to use their limited slots to be able to do what they used to. I understand what Square was trying to do, but it doesn't feel great.

The loss of Bio potency is a hit to our ST DPS and AoE DPS and I feel we have been hit the hardest in this department.

I haven't looked at the ST numbers, but for AoE I fully agree. SCH is going to be very boring to play in regular dungeons if the dungeons don't have some very real damage output. You set up DoTs/Shadowflare, Bane, and then alternate performing your single target rotation with crying because the tank moved everything out of the shadowflare and you can't recast it for another 58.3 seconds WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS, TANK? Bane remains the highest single button AoE skill, if you don't count the DoT setup, but pushing a "fun" button once every 30 seconds and using the rest on Broil isn't the most compelling gameplay.

Stratagem most likely is but a small Critical hit buff which feels poor, especially considering our tools are mostly outshined by AST and it comes at a higher MP cost for us. I feel that even regardless of this, SCH will still be the go to healer. But because we are less vocal than the White Mages, who rightly are furious, it seems some issues with the class are overshadowed. It's just absurd that Astrologian got such great new tools and buffed on top of being already incredibly strong. Double AST as meta is not unthinkable.

I'm a WHM, and I still feel for SCH. I'm not blind to the issues they have. I realize the fairy is still the fairy, even with another embrace nerf, and they'll certainly have no issues finding a home in statics, but I don't feel like this expac has been a big win for them either. They've got an interesting new toy or two, but they lost a lot as well. We'll have to hope Square does another balance pass on them as well. At least give them a spammable AoE to do something useful in dungeons - if I end up rerolling away from WHM, I don't want to have to do 30 runs of whatever Stormblood leveling dungeons exist with just BANE.