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

[Silver-Strider]

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.

I will admit that Excogitation is a proactive heal, however, I can't count neither Fey Union nor Quickened Aetherflow as such. Fey Union is gated by the Fairy Gauge, of which you need to build up by using your stacks. That alone means it cannot be used proactively until much later into an encounter, and even then it's going to be used as a more reactive. As for Quickened Aetherflow, this is something that more proves my original point of SCH being made into a Reactive Healer than a Proactive healer, as by your own words, Lustrate is our "spammable" Cure 2, something that should be used to maximize our DPS and MP efficiency, and Quickened Aetherflow is actively rewarding us for doing so but since the majority of our Aetherflow abilities have CDs or ill suited to be spammed, we don't have much choice in the matter as to what we spam, leaving Lustrate as the only real option in the matter.

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.

Your example is bias towards SCH and thus completely neglecting the rest of WHM/AST tools, just to make SCH look better than it realistically is but if we're going for a REALISTIC context, let me put it in a more factual setting.

Now, if in a situation a WHM/AST is using Holy/Gravity, a SCH should be using Bane and last I checked, Bane uses an Aetherflow stack so we're down to 2. That would remove Energy Drain from your supposed optimal usage of stacks. Now, let's say we use Sacred Soil (2nd stack gone). WHM has Asylum, AST has Earthly Star (2 abilities you failed to mention btw) All act in a similar fashion of reducing healer strain, just in different methods. Sacred Soil does it by reducing damage, Asylum does it by granting a regen and Earthly Star is just a time bomb heal that AST can set off whenever. Eventually, you'll need to heal, of which AST is currently in the lead as Earthly Star already did that, so WHM and SCH use Tetra/Lustrate. Guess what? All 3 stacks are now gone buddy. You no longer have your safety net to DPS and Aetherflow might still be on CD. So, SCH stops DPS to Heal. WHM still has Assize and AST still has ED so can DPS for a little longer.

Let's go to a boss setting now.
Stone4/Malefic3/Broil2 are going off, letting the tank get low. DPS gets hit by X just as a group attack is coming.
AST = Lightspeed Helios/Benefic -> ED
SCH Double Lustrate or Lustrate + Indom
WHM = Presence of Mind Medica 1/2 + PI -> Tetra
All three jobs have the necessary tools to do the same exact thing. AST/WHM just have to use more of their toolkit but that's not exactly a problem because, unlike SCH, their toolkit isn't handcuffed to Aetherflow stacks

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.]

It's not a detriment, it's just that SCH is more limited in this department BECAUSE it doesn't have a stronger GCD than Physick and had no choice in the matter and unlike WHM/AST, are at the mercy of Aetherflow to grant them a heal WHM/AST have naturally, on top of their oGCD to heal more effectively. It's not a matter of using oGCD as a detriment, it's that SCH has to use their oGCD to make up for their lack of a Cure 2/Benefic 2 whereas WHM/AST do not.