4.1 and us healers

[Ghishlain]

I don't understand why you think MP cost matters in this case, scholar has slightly higher mp cost at the moment and SE promise will reduce mp in coming 4.1.
And most important thing is, aetherflow returns MP constantly and faries' healing is FREE and automated.

You do realize that it's illogical to compare about two spells side by side with no other kit interactions, effectively demand that one spell matches the other without considering other differences in the spell and/or kit interactions, then start a counter argument around considering whole kits, yes?

-snip-

A lot of posters were proclaiming that WHM would've been dead on arrival and that was the crux I was aiming for. In reflection now, we know that would've not been the case. Just to reiterate some of what you've said, Thin Air is amazing, the changes to Divine Benison makes it much more usable over Stoneskin, and the change from Shroud of Saints to Lucid Dreaming offer WHM much MP sustainability and removed WHMs one of two largest flaws - MP consumption. The other flaw I see is a lack of raid utility but to be fair, I'm honestly okay with this given high DPS and nigh infinite MP. S-E certainly missed the mark with both PI and Lilies on its inception but by removing the one critical weakness to WHM sustainability, they've pushed WHM to be a very competitive healer as a no frills healing bombshell.

My complaint towards that initial mess of 4.0-pre-release is people being non-constructive with their comments and spreading misinformation. I keenly remember a few posters doing ability counts and proclaiming that WHM kit continues to be pruned and pruned and pruned without having replacements. Yet when you get down to the nitty gritty and look at each kit logically, WHM did indeed have less abilities but not 10+ less abilities that some posters were proclaiming. It's information like this that doesn't give the developers good insight on how to constructively change things.

With the above being said, I do feel it's important to be continue to be critical of changes but at the same time don't start to second guess what could be happening until you get to see all the changes in their entirety. It's difficult to give a thoughtful and constructive response until we see the entirety of the changes. I am also be cautious about changes from the development team in the healing department due to these missteps that you documented in your post. However, I feel someone claiming that we're moving towards the healer imbalance that was shown in 3.4 does feel a bit extreme and premature at this juncture without more information.

[era1Ne]

You do realize that it's illogical to compare about two spells side by side with no other kit interactions, effectively demand that one spell matches the other without considering other differences in the spell and/or kit interactions, then start a counter argument around considering whole kits, yes?

Spot on. You have to look at the complete toolkit for healers and not compare skills for themselves.

However, I feel someone claiming that we're moving towards the healer imbalance that was shown in 3.4 does feel a bit extreme and premature at this juncture without more information.

As i recall they overbuffed ast for 3.4 on purpose with the reason that he was technically fine with 3.3, but most of the people didn't want to use the class, since he was not as good before. An practice often used in games. Could be wrong, tho. Was a long time ago.

[Semirhage]

I'm honestly okay with this given high DPS

In theory. On a training dummy. WHM could always theoretically outdamage SCH, but they've always been much closer in actual content than pure numbers would suggest. So SCH has comparable damage AND raid utility, seems fair to me. /s

[Dregenfox]

Now that they fixed SCH mp costs on adlo we should be better single-target healers than WHM. Now they just need to lower Succor mp costs to be the same as WHM so we can at least match them in AOE healing and SCH should be good. Maybe give us something equal to Cure III also.

Indom's 500 pot/30s kinda makes up for plenary indulgence/assize but costs us an aetherflow stack while it costs them nothing except a 1m cd.

[Cynfael]

In theory. On a training dummy. WHM could always theoretically outdamage SCH, but they've always been much closer in actual content than pure numbers would suggest. So SCH has comparable damage AND raid utility, seems fair to me. /s

Prior to 4.0 WHM DPS was unsustainable due to MP issues; that's why SCH was the definitive single-target attacker despite WHM's greater burst.

[IllyaPrisma]

SCH has an incredibly raid oriented kit, much more so than AST/WHM. In trade for how crucial SCH is to optimize a raid group, they lacked the ability to sustain raid health by themselves. This seemed like a fair trade off. My concern is that SCH will become all around too good at everything with more sustainable GCD healing.

SCH rivals WHM damage output, while offering only slightly less raid DPS contribution than AST, which actually feels a little problematic.

So, while SCH could certainly use a few QoL changes, the other 2 healers should receive some as well:

-Secret of the Lily II is still the absolute most garbage trait in the game and should be replaced with something else.
-The Lightspeed Trait is not useful, since Lightspeed is not an ability that is used off cooldown. If it comes up early, I still will just save it for when I need it.
-Stone IV and Malefic III should both see slight potency increases
-All cards should have a 30 second duration (looking at you Spear)

[Jxnibbles]

Now that they fixed SCH mp costs on adlo we should be better single-target healers than WHM. Now they just need to lower Succor mp costs to be the same as WHM so we can at least match them in AOE healing and SCH should be good. Maybe give us something equal to Cure III also.

Indom's 500 pot/30s kinda makes up for plenary indulgence/assize but costs us an aetherflow stack while it costs them nothing except a 1m cd.

I disagree with this so much if you give Sch an aoe that rivals Whm what exactly does Whm offer? Remember Whm is suppose to be the "Pure Healer"

Our only Niche is Dps, and strong Heals. If you rival us in Heals we are absolutely useless may as well turn us into a Dps or delete us at that point.

Anyway the "Pure Healer" niche doesn't work especially when Astro, and Sch can heal just fine. If you want our Aoe and Gcd Potencies you better be ready to give up all your utility.

[Erakir]

Prior to 4.0 WHM DPS was unsustainable due to MP issues; that's why SCH was the definitive single-target attacker despite WHM's greater burst.

Sure, prior to 4.0, but we're past that now and it's still holding water to an extent. Now WHM and SCH appear to pretty similar with their personal numbers.

Despite Stone sea sky having a ~10% DPS advantage for WHM with the superior MP economy, for the various fights:

-WHM and SCH roughly share damage output on Neo with an edge to WHM. This is a fight in particular where I constantly hear that you become a "Green DPS" for long periods at a time, which ties into points below.
-SCH appears more often with than WHM on Exdeath, Hali, Catastrophe, and Alte Roite, but you still see both.
-AST is pretty much nowhere to be seen in comparison as expected.

Take these as you will as they're gonna be speed based, and most combined healer damage ones are using AST + SCH/WHM, etc etc.

Hali's gonna be annoying to deal with just cause of ninjas that can be used to pad.

The takeaway is obvious. Due to overall healing kits, damage kits, and expected playstyle in raids, despite a whopping 10% theoretical expectation from SE on raw numbers, WHM does not maintain that edge in a raid environment. Nor does it bring a nifty little crit buff.

It means that Scholar damage is ultimately more practical to maintain (or approach optimal) in raid environments and WHM does not have the stationary time to tunnel into damage that they need to see that 10% advantage. There are going to be tons of factors to look at for *why* that's the case, but such things will include WHM needing to spend 10% of its GCDs to maintain regen on a single target with reasonable uptime, having to make the choice to heal via regen or DPS via Aero when moving (and also only having the option to clip Aero, compared to choosing between Ruin 2, Bio 2, and Miasma 2). They will include the difference of maintaining DoTs with longer durations requiring less GCDs (SCH) than ones with more potency per second that fade quicker (WHM). They'll include the ability to dump Aetherflow into ED even though that's not necessarily the ideal way to spend a charge.

They'll include each job's role and responsibilities, as WHM and SCH don't exactly do the same things. It's a very long comparison to really do thoroughly, and I'm not going to try at the moment. It's even harder when you try to go digging for -real- maximization of combined damage which includes healers sharing healing burden whenever possible so they're both able to make use of their strongest personal DPS spells more often and not have one go into nuke spam while the other has to spam healing for 30 seconds.

I'm not really complaining, either - but the data's out there. WHMs are not pushing the damage difference SE has given them the potential to, meaning it's just likely not as practical to use enough GCDs on damage with the healing GCDs they're fitting in + mobility options. We're not the ones that bring a crit buff or raidwide mitigation, either. We do, however, bring the nuke that makes you KNOW we're DPSing. Ka-chunk~

Edit: And to try and be fair, on the flipside if you go looking at healing numbers themselves it's quite a different story as scholars are hard to come by, but that again has to take into consideration who's shielding and who's HoTting in comps and a whole other variety of factors like general utility. Plus you've got the bit that the better your group is, the less healing is required, so these numbers are often a show of who can put out the most emergency wipe-prevention sort of healing. The whole thing is messy and is part of why raw number comparisons are only going to show so much. It's just never as easy when you add in the variable factor of healing to try and compare these sorts of things. Ever.

Double edit: To re-iterate, this isn't a complaint, just an observation. If their idea is WHM should bring superior personal damage numbers in raid content due to a lack of ability to buff others' damage, then I'd say they should look into some adjustments since theoretical maximums aren't really being reached - but that's far from the only way to balance things, and like others I believe healers are ultimately in an alright state right now. Could be better - hence succor tweaks, Adlo tweaks, etc, but feels like one of the better periods that I've been playing in representation-wise that I personally remember.

[Kabzy]

Now that they fixed SCH mp costs on adlo we should be better single-target healers than WHM. Now they just need to lower Succor mp costs to be the same as WHM so we can at least match them in AOE healing and SCH should be good. Maybe give us something equal to Cure III also.

Indom's 500 pot/30s kinda makes up for plenary indulgence/assize but costs us an aetherflow stack while it costs them nothing except a 1m cd.

It's because of people like you that we're getting all this homogenization BS that is clearly making jobs like SCH less fun to play. None of your suggestions make any sense. If SCH has the same AoE healing as WHM, can push out very similar DPS and has the Faerie AND other utility on top of that, what is the point in WHM now? You can't just pick a job, add ridiculous buff suggestions to it and completely ignore the other jobs that compete with it. It's beyond stupid.

And as for Adlo's MP reduction, it will literally do nothing to add to SCH dps. All it does is make Adlo a little more accessible to the newer SCHs who can't grasp MP management as well. Any SCH that is raiding and getting decent results will literally not change their playstyle at all due to an MP reduction on Adlo. It's too early to speculate, as we don't know the final changes, but if they're not actually going to address Dissipation or Selene, then there's no real point to updating SCH with these minor things. SCH is already okay, and nothing mentioned in the Live Letter so far is going to make it OP in any sense.

[Tridus]

It's because of people like you that we're getting all this homogenization BS that is clearly making jobs like SCH less fun to play. None of your suggestions make any sense. If SCH has the same AoE healing as WHM, can push out very similar DPS and has the Faerie AND other utility on top of that, what is the point in WHM now? You can't just pick a job, add ridiculous buff suggestions to it and completely ignore the other jobs that compete with it. It's beyond stupid.

Agreed. Those suggestions were absurd.

And as for Adlo's MP reduction, it will literally do nothing to add to SCH dps. All it does is make Adlo a little more accessible to the newer SCHs who can't grasp MP management as well. Any SCH that is raiding and getting decent results will literally not change their playstyle at all due to an MP reduction on Adlo. It's too early to speculate, as we don't know the final changes, but if they're not actually going to address Dissipation or Selene, then there's no real point to updating SCH with these minor things. SCH is already okay, and nothing mentioned in the Live Letter so far is going to make it OP in any sense.

It should be a help to SCH players who are learning the job or are not at the high end content tier, because they'll be using Aldo and Succor more. If it helps SCH at that level (where I find it's the hardest of the three healers to play) but doesn't significantly alter the high end balance, that seems like a pretty good change.