My ideas on healer design

[LegoTechnic]

SCH in it's current form works really well, and the new stuff just plays to it's strengths.. Balance issues are in that:
- AoE is too efficient.. that can be solved by capping the dot duration on bane (I don't like damage fall off at all), need to use more stacks to keep dots up.. We also need a new AoE filler.. with a potency of 60 instead of 50 ideally.. just give that a reasonably high MP cost.. that should fix those issues.
- Fairy is OP.. ok.. here I'd change some things: 1. Embrace should not be able to target the fairy itself. 2.. I actually have changes to other healers in mind to fix the rest.

These are both less than ideal. SCH should want to be less like WHM, not more, so a spammable DD AoE is probably not what we should be asking unless it had a unique SCH spin to it. We spammed Blizzard II not because we wanted to, but because we had nothing better to do, and that's the problem. No one actually wants to spam Blizzard II, it's just the best we had!

Since Sustain has been removed, removing the fairy's ability to heal itself is a death knell for it, and honestly it's fine as it is. Basically when the fairy is injured its "regen" effect of embrace is turned "off" until it finishes healing itself. Additionally the Fairy is far, far from OP. It's very useful and definitely the defining trait of the class, but it's a supplement there to compensate for SCH's gated use of support heals that use Aetherize stacks or lengthy cooldown Tactics buffs, and that they have no large heals without them. The offset is that the fairy is drunk and heals whatever it damn well pleases even if you try to direct it otherwise.

[Vulcwen]

...

The removal of Sustain is not an issue, physick was better anyway, with the only downside that you need to target the pet.
I'd rethink the pet self-heal, mainly cause you pointed out a reason to consider it a buff :P.. but I kinda want to care more about the pet's survival, and with it self-healing you don't need to pay attention to it's health bar. Anyway, the fairy is OP because it offers more DPS uptime and MP efficiency.. which is good, don't want to see it gone.. that's why I rather give other healers also a tool to increase dps uptime, that fits the flavour of the job.

About AoE filler, you suggested a fester-like aoe.. which might be nice.. but AoE spam is just part of this game. I don't think SE wants more buttons for AoE, so the fester-like effect can be on a GCD ability you can just spam. (something like 30 potency + 10 for each dot (bio/miasma) on the target).
Also, I do like Blizzard 2's animation.. I kinda want to use it.