Healer adjustment in 4.05

[LegoTechnic]

My thoughts on the SCH adjustments.

The purpose of Emergency Tactics is to allow SCH spells to emulate a WHM's Medica or Cure II briefly with a restricted cooldown. I don't want to be too critical of this because it's actually a useful change, but reducing the cooldown of ET pushes SCH playstyle a little closer to the WHM baseline, further eroding the individuality its playstyle maintained (which seems to be the trend). While a useful adjustment I can't really say I'm happy with its direction; The SCH class had a pretty unique playstyle for a healer, and if I wanted to play like a WHM then I could just switch to AST.

The Good:
- An Excogitation potency adjustment should be good, as the move is extremely lackluster given its harsh 60 second cooldown and stack cost, especially when put up alongside Lustrate.
- Fey Union tether range adjustment to 15y is good, as this puts it equal to Whispering Dawn's range and is a quality of life fix involving fairy placement. While range is just one of the issues Fey Union faces, this fix should at least aid in both tank movement issues and in start up time (less time spent repositioning for the fairy).
- Aetherflow stack use still builds meter even if the ability fails, which I guess really only matters if you flub your Bane or something? I guess that happened?

The Maybe:
- A new Miasma II can be good but largely depends on its effect and potency. If it's a 10 potency DoT with a 15 second duration like previously then it's just going to be filler trash again, so I assume it will be rebalanced.
- Indomitability's changes are unknown. I'm unaware there were any issues with indom, honestly. What wasn't to like? Still, any buff to indom would be good I suppose since it's already pretty cool.
- "Introduction of a trait reducing the cooldown of Aetherflow" <-- This could be potentially massive if it's a static reduction, as it would push SCH more towards its previous playstyle of mana regen through aetherflow despite its 10% nerf (not as much return but at a slightly faster rate), and also mean more stacks available in a minute. However if it ends up being another proc effect for cooldown reduction like the current level 68 trait then it will be steaming hot garbage. Have to wait and see what they do.

The Bad:
- No mention of mana cost, particularly Adlo's, though this may actually sort itself out a little depending on the new Aetherflow trait.
- SCH shields still maintain a performance disparity against Noct AST.
- SCH "death penalty" is still fairly massive, as recovering the fairy is a hefty 2400 mana expenditure on top of across-the-board expensive heals.
- Fairies are still considered "too strong" despite being mostly ignored since the release of HW.
- No adjustment to Dissipation.

Currently SCH is perfectly viable with a strong toolkit for all content and while steps have been made to normalize it closer to the WHM style it still plays fine, but I feel like it just takes more work to get the same results as a SCH than when playing another healer class, almost like the disparity between playing a MCH compared to a RDM. I anticipate these adjustments to help alleviate this, though I'm again just a little concerned about the direction they're going. They seem happy with the fairies but Selene is still a "place-and-forget-she-exists" mechanic compared to the utility-rich Eos, and their embrace potency is still on the level of a single WHM regen which while free comes with random targetting and restrictions when it likes to be applied, as well as a harsh re-summoning cost if you lose it.

As always the devs will do what they want; I just hope I continue to enjoy the class they design, as I really enjoyed the ARR and HW SCH playstyle. So far the SB changes have all been noticeable methods of making them play more like WHMs, whether it be in DPS playstyle or in their mana regen, and I'm eagerly hoping they stop that and start showing some class individuality (though preferrably without the nonsense of RNG mechanics like lilies and confession, thanks; keep those away).

[VanilleFang]

No, Stoneskin also required a GCD.

DB has more flexibity in that since it is oGCD as long as you have a lily you can use DB whenever you need it. It also adds some mitigation to Cure II, which is a nice touch.

I'm not saying DB is good, but It's at least not a hindrance like SS was.

Also 65 levels without shielding... Lol. Did you rely on SS that much? I actually don't notice a difference at all.

[Wilbow]

Susano EX Healer DPS
#1 WHM - 2,458.6 DPS
#1 SCH - 2,422.7 DPS (1.5% less than WHM)
#1 AST - 2,126.7 DPS (14.5% less than WHM)

Lakshimi EX Healer DPS
#1 WHM - 2,878.7 DPS
#1 SCH - 2,347.7 DPS (18.4% less than WHM)
#1 AST - 2,126.8 DPS (26.1% less than WHM)

So while I agree with you that 4.0 WHM is better off than its 3.4 counterpart, the above reasoning is TERRIBLE. Even assuming there's no Balance padding in those parses, no healer's hitting that without spending every GCD DPS'ing -- as in, they're TRYING to be #1 for fun and having the other healer solo heal. Such a setup would obviously never be useful in a real static, as at that point you'd sub that healer for a DPS.

The reason why this is important is because setting up Expanded Balance costs oGCDs, while WHM higher personal DPS costs GCDs. A good AST will know how to minimize clipping their GCD with oGCDs, so the raid DPS they provide through Balance can still be given even as healing demands increase, while the same cannot be said for a WHM. You could argue that a WHM has more healing oGCDs, which allows them to spend more GCDs doing damage, but every or nearly every oGCD that AST has that can be compared to a WHM is better than its WHM counterpart overall (from a healing perspective), which mitigates that WHM advantage a fair bit.

In practical settings (see 75th - 80th percentile, for example), a WHM brings about 150-200 personal DPS more than AST, which isn't nearly enough to cover the difference in raid DPS from Expanded Balance. Because of Sleeve Draw, expanded Balance is technically stronger in 4.0 or 4.05 than it was in 3.4 because its uptime will go up.

Honestly, the issue is that many of the advantages that a WHM brings (notably MP efficiency and AoE damage) work really well in dungeons, but don't translate well to 8 man content due to raid design in HW and now Deltascape. If you don't want WHM to give raid utility, to be the SAM of healers, that's fine. But in order for that to work, Stone IV and Aero II should get a potency buff, which should help WHM in 8 man content without making them any more ridiculously good in dungeons.

[SuzakuCMX]

ITT: Comparing WHM's worst DPS cases to AST/SCH's best DPS cases and saying any evidence brought up to support WHM as best DPS for healer is for XYZ reason and not because they have best ability to DPS since it doesn't fit your narrative as WHM = trash.

Y'all ridiculous.

Benison? A slightly stronger, far less flexible Stoneskin

I mean it's not like anyone was really using Stoneskin unless their SCH partner fucked up big time anyways. Cast time was trash on it and it cost way too much MP to be useful with how trash our MP management was. You used it pre-pull and maybe if someone died and was going to die with weakness on and otherwise forgot about it.

Also, I would argue WHM is MORE reliant on the rest of the party playing perfectly than, say, SCH, because I still can't heal and DPS at the same time outside of Assize, while SCH still has the Fairy (even with the nerfs)

PLEASE, Scholar has the shitty "250" Potency fucked up scaling fairy Embrace and we have 300 Potency between Regen, Medica II, and Assylum + Benediction, Tetragrammation, Assize, and sometimes Plenary Indulgence. Even if you don't count Asylum they're about equal and....I don't know why you counted Chain Strategem in here. You seem to just have a hate boner for WHM. WHM is the LEAST reliant on party playing perfectly since they have the best mana management for Cure II healbombs/rezzes at the moment and the most oGCDs dedicated to recovering HP if party is dumb enough to get hit by unavoidable mechanics. Thin Air alone puts it miles ahead of the other 2 healers for recovering from party fuck ups.

[Indiction]

I've read over the upcoming changes and I'm still...lost as to what SE even wants SCH to be.

Pet healer? They nerfed our pet's healing and took away our sustain. The skills given to one fairie (Selene) aren't even great, haven't seen a rework, and other skills such as dissipation work clunky as all hell with fairies and our mp management rn.

Mitigation healer? They made AST a more effective mitigation healer, with really only our crit adlo deployments topping them, but not by much I'd say. Noct AST just brings so much more in the way of DPS, utility, and overall healing and mitigation.

DPS healer? The only healer with no real AoE (lol bane), they nerfed our dots, and mp management is pretty bad to even sustain DPS.

Like I've said, I've seen the upcoming changes. Who knows if they'll change things for the better, but honestly, I feel they completely and utterly smeared any image SCH was supposed to have. We're not great healers, we're not great DPS, we're not great mitigation. Heck, even our image as a pet healer is clunky at best.

I wish they would rebalance/redo skills to fit the mitigation/pet healer job image instead of edging us more towards WHM style healing. It's nice to have those, and they are useful, but I'm not playing WHM for a reason. Fey Union doesn't really make me go 'wow' for a 70 skill. When I first saw it, I had hoped it'd be a -dmg taken tether or something along those lines. I know they said SCH wouldn't get much this go around just because they were so well thought out in HW, but this is honestly just a bit insulting.

[Ghishlain]

How about looking at the numbers when a group doesn't buff up one player by putting the balance on them and only them.

Susano EX Healer DPS
#1 WHM - 2,301.5 DPS
#1 SCH - 2,210.3 DPS (4.0% less than WHM)
#1 AST - 1,965.3 DPS (14.6% less than WHM)

Lakshimi EX Healer DPS
#1 WHM - 2,548.5 DPS
#1 SCH - 2,220.3 DPS (12.9% less than WHM)
#1 AST - 2,045.5 DPS (19.7% less than WHM)

WHM still leads the DPS trial without Balance (though I guess it's rare to see an AST parse without Balance being used, gotta love that RNG). Also expected SSS numbers substantiate how S-E perceives the damage tiers to be and the % ahead. Again, of course that changes based

You are telling someone who stuck with WHM through all of 2.x and 3.x, and will continue to do so during 4.x, despite the blatand weaknesses of the job they are a sheeple and blind meta follower for feeling they didn't do enough to help the job? I literally played AGAINST meta for around the past half year or longer, and you still tell me I'm a 'blind follower of meta'? LOL. If that were the case, I would have switched to AST ages ago because that's the only healer I feel makes sense to play right now. But, you know, I love WHM and want to play it, even though people told me how much slower their runs are with me instead of an AST in 3.3 and 3.4. And just for your information, I don't need anybody to tell me how good or bad something is, I think for my own, and if my own opinion, by chance, aligns with most other people, that still doesn't make me a blind follower of anything. The blind meta junkies are the reason I'm so angry, because they are the ones who exclude people from stuff for playing certain jobs.

Also, you did literally nothing to rebuke my claim of WHM being 200 DPS ahead of SCH, you even gave me the proof I was looking for the past half an hour. Thank you for that I guess. Also, I would argue WHM is MORE reliant on the rest of the party playing perfectly than, say, SCH, because I still can't heal and DPS at the same time outside of Assize, while SCH still has the Fairy (even with the nerfs) and Stratagem is a buff to the party, not reliant on how well people dodge and how much unavoidable AoE goes out. I, however, have to care about those things very much and it greatly lowers my DPS if I have to heal instead of DPS. And why should I not treat it like a 3.4 kit? We got almost nothing new in Stormblood except for MP management, and even lost so much it's not even funny. Benison? A slightly stronger, far less flexible Stoneskin. It CAN be instant of you have a Lily, but will likely not be, forcing you to cast Cure II to get one, giving it a cast time again. This can also screw with you majorly if your co-healer tops off the tank before you can. Even after playing 4.0 WHM for a month now, the Lily system still feels incredibly clunky, and gets ignored by me for the most part because why bother if the benefits are so miniscule and I have to jump through hoops to get them? Also, there are far, FAR too many Lily dumps and too few skills that build them, and half of them is reliant on RNG. Horrible design. And lets not even start on the train wreck that's PI, not even YOU can think that skill is actually good...

Then if I may make a suggestion - stop sounding so angry with all your posts and about how "WHM is dead, the sky is falling!" because that's the perception I'm getting from your posts. You have shown a very biased opinion that WHM is dead in the water and an inflexibility about how the WHM kit actually works. Claiming Divine Benison is bad makes me shake my head. It's infinitely better than Stoneskin because it's an oGCD, even with the Lily requirement. You got something that allows WHM to become more flexible - as long as they're attentive with their resources. Don't save Benison for a tank buster, use it when you get it! You'll get far more mileage out of Benison then you would EVER get out of Stoneskin pre-4.0. Why Stoneskin when using Cure II is generally a more efficient use of the GCD? At the same MP cost and cast time. Yes, there's an argument to use Stoneskin on weakened players pre-4.0 but with the changes to Stormsblood, players maintain their full HP values even when weakened, meaning it's still up to them to ensure they do mechanics properly and they won't get wiped out by Raid buster due to that 10 or 15% hit to their Vitality. Keeping Stoneskin is pointless given the current Weakness changes and how much better Cure II would be compared to Stoneskin under the same GCD.

To answer some of your points more directly - Yes, I am hoping Lily generation gets changed. Not in terms of % proc rate but more in terms of the number of ways to get Lilies would be increased. This would make the WHM kit less narrowly focussed and funner to play overall.

I don't find PI to be terrible, but it definitely needs some QoL love and not a giant overhaul. Again, to mimic other suggestions made, I'd be happy with infinite duration Confession stacks or higher / more ways to generate Confession. There was even one suggestion where turning PI into a DPS ability and I'd actually wouldn't mind seeing that either. Holy damage under a title of "repentance" that generates when you DPS a mob. The way the Live Letter went, it seems they've hit these two issues I had a concern with the WHM kit and I'm reserving further judgement on changes until I see what they're actually changing.

So while I agree with you that 4.0 WHM is better off than its 3.4 counterpart, the above reasoning is TERRIBLE. Even assuming there's no Balance padding in those parses, no healer's hitting that without spending every GCD DPS'ing -- as in, they're TRYING to be #1 for fun and having the other healer solo heal. Such a setup would obviously never be useful in a real static, as at that point you'd sub that healer for a DPS.

The reason why this is important is because setting up Expanded Balance costs oGCDs, while WHM higher personal DPS costs GCDs. A good AST will know how to minimize clipping their GCD with oGCDs, so the raid DPS they provide through Balance can still be given even as healing demands increase, while the same cannot be said for a WHM. You could argue that a WHM has more healing oGCDs, which allows them to spend more GCDs doing damage, but every or nearly every oGCD that AST has that can be compared to a WHM is better than its WHM counterpart overall (from a healing perspective), which mitigates that WHM advantage a fair bit.

In practical settings (see 75th - 80th percentile, for example), a WHM brings about 150-200 personal DPS more than AST, which isn't nearly enough to cover the difference in raid DPS from Expanded Balance. Because of Sleeve Draw, expanded Balance is technically stronger in 4.0 or 4.05 than it was in 3.4 because its uptime will go up.

Honestly, the issue is that many of the advantages that a WHM brings (notably MP efficiency and AoE damage) work really well in dungeons, but don't translate well to 8 man content due to raid design in HW and now Deltascape. If you don't want WHM to give raid utility, to be the SAM of healers, that's fine. But in order for that to work, Stone IV and Aero II should get a potency buff, which should help WHM in 8 man content without making them any more ridiculously good in dungeons.

I agree with the sentiment that there is fault in looking at the absolute best and an average in the 80% is more pragmatic. For those wondering here are the 80 percentile results:

Lakshmi EX
Susano EX

Inb4 "SEE! SCH IS BETTER DPS!!!!"

I will disagree with your sentiment that setting up Expanded Balance is easier for a AST and rather push the argument that both setting up Expanded Balance on AST and providing heavy DPS while on WHM while not shirking your healing duties have similar skill sets - setting up your oGCDs to minimize your GCD clipping.

If I were to compare oGCDs amongest AST and WHM, AST's oGCD provide more raw benefit (ED > Tetra; ES > Assize; CU > Asylum), but the fact WHM has more oGCDs they can use to heal their party means eventually AST has to stop DPSing to spend GCDs to heal. Of course gauging where the break point where AST contribution > WHM contribution and vice versa is not something easy to make.

This is why I keep commenting over and over that it's important for players to pick the healer they feel comfortable playing. Even if a kit may be marginally better than the other, your comfort level can make up that difference or make you play the other kit worse and make you an overall worse healer. I get tired of the players blindly following the meta and the rage that ensues. Yeah, I know I'm not exempt from that rage either *Points to earlier comments in the thread* so I'll apologize for that.

I do agree that if we want to give WHM more damage, the way to go is through things like Stone IV and Aero II.

[simiii]

The question then remains, for YOU, as the player - can you bring more DPS playing WHM, SCH, or AST? If the group DPS is lower than the pinnacle of skill level, then you might just get more overall output as a WHM than if you would play SCH or AST. This is up to each individual group to decide where their strengths and weaknesses lie and build accordingly.

All things wrong with this logic
1) idc how bad you are your basic combo plus a balance of any potency will be more damage then a whm.
2)yay now I have enough mp to rez people over and over and over and over till we meet enrage. On sch and ast I can rez maybe 3-4 times before I go into mana conservative mode and with that many deaths your prob going wipe anyway
3) after you perfected the fight there is no reason to be a whm cuz how your described whm is that it\\'s nothing more then a safety net

[VanilleFang]

@Ghishlain: Besides the use of the word "funner" great post, as ways!

[Novak_04]

For love of God stop saying whm has more dps like searsouly. A whm dps can not even come close to a aoe balance.

Don't bother saying
"But balance is hard to get and is rng"
Cuz I can have a aoe balance up almost a entire primal fight

I killed lakshimi in a pug CLEAR group for a friend and we killed lakshimi before we got lb3. I had aoe balance up the entire fight but adds cuz I was like meh i don't think you need buffs for this.

Now yes aoe balance dose have SOME down time but not much

You had what we Astros like to call "luck." There are 6 cards in the deck. (all calculations account for Redraw)

Probability of Drawing Balance: 11/30
Probability of Drawing RR Effect: 11/15

Probability of getting both a Balance AND RR Effect each minute: 121/450

This isn't including Sleeve Draw.

With Sleeve Draw: 8/15 every 2 minutes JUST to get a Balance (includes Redraw). This isn't including getting the AoE RR effect at the same time, or perhaps by RR the new Draw card. While it's completely possible to have Balance up for any large portion of the fight, it's highly improbable. I usually get lucky with three, maybe 4.

Getting Balance is random... in some dungeons I can draw three back-to-back, while others, I get Spear/Spire back-to-back. I won't argue the advantages and disadvantages of bringing an Astro, or those of bringing a White Mage because they'll fall on deaf ears. However, the cards drawn are COMPLETELY random, regardless of which method we use to obtain the cards. We have roughly a 27% chance each minute to acquire the cards we need to provide this "insanely OP" buff to the group each minute.

The HPS White Mages bring to the table, combined with their MP reservoir makes them a formidable healer.

[Wilbow]

I agree with the sentiment that there is fault in looking at the absolute best and an average in the 80% is more pragmatic. For those wondering here are the 80 percentile results:

Lakshmi EX
Susano EX

Inb4 "SEE! SCH IS BETTER DPS!!!!"

I will disagree with your sentiment that setting up Expanded Balance is easier for a AST and rather push the argument that both setting up Expanded Balance on AST and providing heavy DPS while on WHM while not shirking your healing duties have similar skill sets - setting up your oGCDs to minimize your GCD clipping.

The thing about SCH having the best healer DPS is actually more depressing if you look into it deeper. At 80 percentile, AST and WHM HPS are basically neck and neck at around 4k HPS, while SCH is sitting at 2.5k (I have no idea how it calculates shields into its calcs, so take it with a small grain of salt).

Coupled with the fact that WHM personal DPS on a dummy is higher than that of SCH, the best interpretation is that AST and WHM are doing the heavy lifting of healing because SCH isn't really as able to, leaving SCH to sit there spamming Broil II and thus accumulate a higher DPS in comparison than it otherwise would.

Healer balance is mainly down to the specifics of SCH/WHM changes on Tuesday, really.

As for the second point, when I say "easier", I don't really mean from a skill ceiling perspective. To be more specific, AST can set up Expanded Balance while healing with GCDs, while DPSing vs. healing with WHM is a mutually exclusive choice outside of things like Assize. This is largely in part because oGCDs, even at maximum clipping, only eat up around 1/3 - 1/5 of a GCD, while GCDs eat up 2.5 seconds. In addition, ASTs can barely clip, if at all, if they use a oGCD after the 2 second cast of Benefic or Benefic II, not just after Aspected Benefic.

Say you have a raid encounter where the incoming damage is low and you spend 80% of your GCDs DPSing and 20% of them healing; both healers won't really have much of an issue giving the raid DPS then, right? But if the incoming damage goes up (phase change, mechanic is failed, etc.) and now you're spending only 20% of your GCDs DPSing and 80% of them healing, WHM DPS is hurt way more than AST because AST can probably still find the time to put out Expanded Balance, but a WHM has no way to recover extra Stone IVs except *maybe* (s)he might find a way to spend 30% of their GCDs DPSing instead if they're wise with oGCDs. This is somewhat troubling for WHM in Savage because I can only presume that the healing requirements in the upcoming Savage will be higher than those of the Ex primals.