what's the deal with sch?

[Starflake]

FWIW my static has a very capable SCH that's nearly solo healing savage fights and putting out respectable DPS, allowing me to focus on DPS for all but the heaviest damage phases. If you want to play SCH, play SCH.

If you want the mandatory party slot... yes, that's not SCH anymore. Play AST for that.

Is your co healer also a level 50 healer? http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...racter/2309835

[Risvertasashi]

Is your co healer also a level 50 healer? http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...racter/2309835

Yes, we like doing omega savage at level 50 for the extra challenge.

[Jonnycbad]

Miasma 2 can be repeatedly spammed for 100 potency instantly and then it ticks for another potency from dot for a total of 200. It's verrrrrry good in dungeons, at least better tbs gravity. Damage doesn't decay with additional mobs and it's an instant cast

[Vyriah]

Some of their alreday strong skill get buffed certainly so they don't get thrown out of Omega's parties, so yeah it have possibilities.

The real question, is how much you can expect absolutly any player with what the job give to you ?
"Some is doing something" is not a proof that the job is fine as it is. There's players actually struggling neither "get gud u scrub lol" or "my top tier static player did that in our raid run" means anything to that. It sometime look some people answer in those thread only to piss at HW SCH because it was "easy and OP" (while it's a lot easier to play now).

The problem in SCH lie in its half DPS-half healer design. That's something that was supposed to be adressed in SB and mostly left SCH with a lot of tools but no real core design. Their most basic spells are underwhelming, leaving needing to learn higher level of play earlier with a job that have more specific (for the best, unreliable for the worst) skill set, only to get chewed if they fail.

Most of this thread is basically who will be boasting who's the best healer over the noobs SCH. It's just gloating over playing the lest used only to come arround to way "oh you can't do that ? You're so bad, look at easy it is when I'm doing it".
Yeah, cool. I hope can get spend all those awesome strong healer token for some fashion at least. But it makes it even more obvious that something need to be done as part of a game that is meant to be played be something always than SCH-nerds and elitist wanabe.

[Pyitoechito]

Miasma 2 can be repeatedly spammed for 100 potency instantly and then it ticks for another potency from dot for a total of 200. It's verrrrrry good in dungeons, at least better tbs gravity. Damage doesn't decay with additional mobs and it's an instant cast

It's even better than that. Because it's instant-cast and 100 more total potency than Ruin II, SCH can use it when weaving oGCD skills (like Energy Drain, Shadow Flare, etc.) to avoid the clipping with Broil spells.

[technole]

Actually SCH is somewhat "harder" to play now in SB. Compared to WHM which got even easier to play,

If you were a slouch with SCH resource management back in HW, you'd be able get away with it. Now with higher MP requirements, if you already had bad habits in HW, and carried them forward to 4.0, plus being really bad at maintaining Aetherflow, you will feel the pinch much sooner.

The job rewards good Aetherflow play, if you are just sitting on stacks for days or blowing them in the wrong way, you are playing it wrong.

[Vyriah]

This isn't harder, it just asks you to press one new bouton every two minute.
It just mean that pressing the MP keybind give MP when I need MP.

SCH having no MP management was absolutly logical : they had aether stacks. That's the ressource you're dealing with and design-wise it makes sense that eather flow give you mp back : you're playing with this set of spells that are more powerful but only 3 of them can be used every minute. That's a strong core design coupled with how the class interacted with cleric stance. This is already rewarding careful playing over panic pressing the big heal for instant reward. Eather stacks is already locking the strongest part of your kit if not used properly, the new MP cost only seem their to force lucid dream on SCH.

The current SCH isn't harder, just press the OGCD while you DPS. Do it after an instant cast for optimisation. Order Eos while casting. DPS. That's it, you're SCH.
But there's more to focus on and there's nothing holding all those 40 something skills you can press, on top of the fact that you have to watch all corners of the screen because it's your job in the party. And the better you're trying to do, the easier it'll be to overlook anything.

I'm pretty sure every single player I've seen telling the SCH was rewarding impliyed in a way or another that the other were doing it wrong or were just plain bad. When you get that kind answer, there something wrong in your design.
When did your that kind of things about AST or WHM ? Card management QOL for AST, lillies and plenary indulgence for WHM, two things that got patched 4.05. And there's no complain about that anymore, not matter how much it was "more skilled" or "still playable" at that time. SCH AoE damage also works.

tl;dr : The deal with SCH is that they have no design anymore.

[Lastelli]

You did get healing buffs. Emergency tactics, Indom, excog and Fey Union changes.
Sure you don't have op broken shields and you fairy Isn't solo healing dungeons, but SCH is very strong right now.

Surprisingly enough, I agree with you on this XD
Indeed, SCH is not OP anymore, but right now, after AST's Balance nerf (took them long enough...) I believe the 3 healers are very well balanced.
1) WHM have the highest healing throughput, highest aoe and single target burst dps and best mana sustainability (aka infinite mp), but zero utility.
2) AST have a lot of utility, rng utility to be more precise but we can still start the pull with aoe balance and another balance in our spread and we have a lot of tools to mitigate rng. However AST personal damage is fairly lower than whm's and sch's. Healing spells are solid, both in noct and diurnal sect.
3) SCH have very solid aoe and single target damage and a lot of instant heals plus some utility (wind/stratagem and other smaller stuff) and eos is still pretty good when maganed correctly.

As a unrelated note, I usually do my expert roulette with SCH even if I have all healers to 70. It just feels easier to me and letting eos do all the work during bosses while I focus on dps feels good (yes, this is still the case, you don't need to heal at all during bosses if your party is competent enough).

As for MP management...well, all 3 healers can easily heal and do dps without ever running out of mp so it's not really a problem.

[jstamos]

SCH's fine, it's just not OP anymore in a lot of situations, and can't pump out quite the DPS it used to.

[lulunami]

SCH's weakness has always been sustained HPS. AST has better sustained HPS and WHM obviously is even more the case.

The main reason is because SCH's GCD healing spells got nerfed. They try to counteract this by lowering the cooldown on Emergency Tactics. When you play SCH, you should try to do minimal GCD healing and rely a lot on oGCD healing and fairy skills. It is still the same as before: DPS as much as possible while spending minimal GCD time healing.