So...Can a SCH tell me how SCH's are right now relative to WHM and AST?

[RajaVamberaux]

The thing is, prior to SB, SCH was a proactive healer, shining in preventing damage so that they wouldn't need to use their Emergency heals like that. Now, they're being changed into reactive healers because they can no longer do that, at least not as effectively, and because they don't have the same tools as AST and WHM, they have no choice but to use Lustrate to try and become these reactive healers that SCH was just not designed to be.

First off, I disagree with the notion of Lustrate and Indom being emergency heals. Both should be used on cooldown when possible to maximize your MP and DPS efficiency.

With Scholar’s current toolkit now having Fey Union, Excogitation, and Quickened Aetherflow – in addition to Succor, Sacred Soil, Aldo, and Fey Covenant – I’d completely disagree and say that Scholar is now more proactive than ever.

With Fey Union, you must use it when the tank is near full HP, and can expect it to keep their health steady for a not insignificant amount of time (until the next dungeon pull or until the next raidwide AoE when it’s time for Whispering Dawn). If you wait too long you’ll find that it’s not enough to top the tank off in time.

With Excog, you have to plan with your cohealer which segments are appropriate for its use, apply it at the right time, and then not heal (i.e. DPS instead) so that it goes off effectively.

With Quickened Aetherflow, Scholars now need to be much more attentive to their stack usage otherwise you’ll find yourself sitting on Aetherflow with no MP. You have to plan your heal stacks such that the rest can be used on Energy Drain, and you now have to use your stacks 25% more quickly.

All of these abilities are in addition to what we had in 3.x, when we already had to use Succor wisely otherwise face MP issues, proactively Aldo incoming busters, determine which damage was magic-based and Covenant appropriately, etc. A Scholar using all of these tools is in no way underpowered in comparison with the other healers, who simply can’t do any of this without losing DPS uptime.

To say that Physick is our last resort is a bit of an exaggeration as well. We have no other spammable heal since Adlo had its cost increased, so realistically, you would be using Physick more often than a last resort. This is why I'm so adamant about SE letting E-Tactics reduce the cost of Adlo/Succor by half, because it's our Cure 2/Benefic 2 equivalent and while Crit Adlo is a godsend, it's much more infrequent now than ever before, making it foolhardy to rely upon and since Adlo cost a good 33% more than it's counterpart, this would help SCH by giving it a more consistent power heal without breaking the bank. Hell, if it was up to me, I'd also give Adlo a very slight potency buff to 350, from 300, just to sweeten the deal a little bit.

Your spammable heal is Lustrate. Don’t know how many times I can say it. You get 3 every 45s, which should be used as such:
Lustrate/Excog == Indom >>>>> Energy Drain >>> Sacred Soil.

The instant single target heals from WHM & AST have a much longer cooldown in comparison:

WHM: Tetragrammaton (1 per 60s); Benediction (1 per 3m)
AST: Essential Dignity (1 per 40s)
SCH: Lustrate (3 per 45s – can be boosted by Dissipation; shares resource stack w/ Indom)

Aetherflow stacks are shared of course, but with no Energy Drains and party damage you can still Indom (which should be enough) and still have 2 Lustrates available. One of these is enough to keep any party member in comfortable health-territory in almost any content in the game (I know because I’ve saved party members in O3S plenty of times with a single Lustrate).

Furthermore, because WHM/AST have only one on a moderate cooldown, the risk of using either outside of any planned usage is far greater. Let me explain:

In content: While using Gravity/Holy/Stone IV/Malefic III you let the tank’s health get quite low to maximize Essential Dignity, but a rogue DPS simultaneously takes an AoE to the face. If you quickly ED that DPS knowing that party damage is incoming (perhaps this is the final boss in Ala Mhigo), you’ve now increased your quickest response time to the tank to 2.5 seconds. You have to pick one.

This situation arises in numerous content, both serious raid and dungeon content, and in those situations WHM/AST is always faced with a choice, to then suffer the consequences later. But Scholar (stacks willing) can always do both. So to say that Lustrate is underpowered in comparison is not seeing the full picture.

Also, you have to consider that SCH needs to use a oGCD to get an equivalent heal to Cure 2/Benefit 2 but consider that AST and WHM have their own oGCD that do the same thing as Lustrate but still have their GCD heals on top of that, it's not outlandish to say that SCH is getting the short end of the stick currently.

Not having to use a GCD (or as you put it – needing to use an oGCD) is a benefit not a detriment. I don’t think I should have to explain the value of the GCD.