4.1 and us healers

[Dregenfox]

The issue here is that you guys are taking into account the pet without taking into account ways WHM has to bypass GCD's as well. WHM's compensation for the pet is their HoT's. Even though regen and medica II have GCD's the nature of their mechanic means you end up using them to reduce the need for GCD's in the future.

Medica II is 1000 pot/60m or ~16 pot/s. If you take the WHM's HOT's into account you'll find that the need to cast GCD's are different depending on incoming damage. SCH handles "light" damage better, but once incoming damage passes a certain threshhold they end up having to use more GCD's than a WHM when solo healing.

If you take both a SCH and WHM into separate dungeon runs you'll see that both classes end up casting a fairly similar amount of GCD's during a run - they just have different timings on when they need to start casting GCD's.

Also I never stated that I wanted to erase WHM from the game. I want SE to compensate for the huge Adlo/succor buffs by giving WHM more damage. More healing for WHM doesn't cut it because that would still shut WHM's out from non-prog runs because groups don't need more healing from WHM, they want more utility/damage.

Guess what happens when Adlo/succor get buffed in 4.1? It frees up the other healer for more utility/damage. The issue though, is that no one cares about the 10% dps advantage WHM has over other healers when doing damage because utility is just better, so it just further entrenches the SCH/AST meta.

[Kabzy]

Guess what happens when Adlo/succor get buffed in 4.1? It frees up the other healer for more utility/damage. The issue though, is that no one cares about the 10% dps advantage WHM has over other healers when doing damage because utility is just better, so it just further entrenches the SCH/AST meta.

I can't be bothered getting into a whole debate, but the Adlo/Succor changes are not huge. All they are doing is lowering the skill floor. Newer Scholars can use those abilities without necessarily going OOM so easily. In V4S, I'm not going to start wasting more GCDs on Adlo or Succor just because they got buffed. It is not efficient and it will literally make no difference to higher level gameplay at all. I have no reason in raids to waste more GCDs on healing, so why would I bother?

Now I'm not saying that the other healers shouldn't get adjustments, even though I don't particularly feel like they need them, but your reasoning for it is pretty irrelevant.

[Ghishlain]

The issue here is that you guys are taking into account the pet without taking into account ways WHM has to bypass GCD's as well. WHM's compensation for the pet is their HoT's. Even though regen and medica II have GCD's the nature of their mechanic means you end up using them to reduce the need for GCD's in the future.

Medica II is 1000 pot/60m or ~16 pot/s. If you take the WHM's HOT's into account you'll find that the need to cast GCD's are different depending on incoming damage. SCH handles "light" damage better, but once incoming damage passes a certain threshhold they end up having to use more GCD's than a WHM when solo healing.

If you take both a SCH and WHM into separate dungeon runs you'll see that both classes end up casting a fairly similar amount of GCD's during a run - they just have different timings on when they need to start casting GCD's.

Also I never stated that I wanted to erase WHM from the game. I want SE to compensate for the huge Adlo/succor buffs by giving WHM more damage. More healing for WHM doesn't cut it because that would still shut WHM's out from non-prog runs because groups don't need more healing from WHM, they want more utility/damage.

Guess what happens when Adlo/succor get buffed in 4.1? It frees up the other healer for more utility/damage. The issue though, is that no one cares about the 10% dps advantage WHM has over other healers when doing damage because utility is just better, so it just further entrenches the SCH/AST meta.

Then you're talking about something completely else. SCHs have a ton of non-GCD abilities that are both powerful and potent because they are a job designed around resource management (Aetherflow stacks and cooldowns). The changes to Quicken Aetherflow is perfect for a kit that revolves around generating and using stacks of resources. Their entire heal kit revolves around using minimal amounts of MP to do their desired healing. Giving them more powerful GCD-style heals is counter intuitive to their current design.

This is in contrast to WHM who have things to make their GCD usage more efficient. The spells you've posted still consume a GCD, but they have the ability to allow the WHM to use less GCDs for healing due to their power level. From a time perspective, Regen and Medica II aren't free (you lose 2.5s and 3s respectively) whereas the worst thing a non-GCD heal will do is clip into a GCD for 0.5-0.75s.

Also, I think you're severely overestimating how much these Adlo and Succor changes are going to add to a raid-level SCH. They'll definitely help raise the skill floor but at the highest tiers you'd want to be using as few Succors and Adlos as possible so the impact should be minimal.

We also still don't know if the other healers won't be changed either. Making changes to Secret of the Lily II would be very nice for WHM given how... invisible the trait is. So, we'll see if there are other healers that get some TLC too that will coincide with the SCH changes.

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Also I'll just post the quote below since the Live Letter thread was updated by the CM:

Arcanist

• Summon / Summon II / Summon III – MP cost has been reduced, and the time required to cast has been reduced from 6 to 3 seconds. With this players should be able to recover quicker when the player or pet is KO’d and they need to re-summon their pets.

Scholar

• Adloquium – MP cost reduced.
• Succor – MP cost reduced. The barrier effect is currently equal to the amount of HP restored, but this will be increased to 150%.

Caster Role

• Surecast - Currently this action allows players to case the next spell without interruption, and has an additional effect to nullify knockback and draw-in effects will be adjusted so that players are able to cast without interruption for 5 seconds, keeping the additional effect. This should help casters dodging mechanics some more.

Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar

• Sustain - Sustain is returning for arcanist, summoner, and scholar. We had a lot of requests for this, so we’ll be bringing it back in Patch 4.1.

The summon cast time changes could potentially make Dissipation more palatable depending on the situation.

Surecast looks like they're potentially splitting out the non-interrupt and prevent knock back component? I guess we'll see.

Sustain wasn't really a thing for SCH due to them being a healer themselves but figured I'd post it there just for completion sake.

[IllyaPrisma]

Now I'm not saying that the other healers shouldn't get adjustments, even though I don't particularly feel like they need them, but your reasoning for it is pretty irrelevant.

The only changes that I'd argue for the other 2 healers would be:

Secret of the Lily II and Lightspeed Trait (both becoming something more useful and impactful for the jobs)
Very small potency increase of Malefic III (no more than 10 potency)
Potency tweaks to Lord and Lady of Crowns
All cards on a 30 second duration

[Tridus]

Secret of the Lily II and Lightspeed Trait (both becoming something more useful and impactful for the jobs)

I like to ask other WHMs I know if they can remember what Secret of the Lily II does, or if they're aware of it ever happening. The responses are about what you'd expect (No, and No).

I mean if you have a 20% crit rate, it's got a 4% chance to take 5 seconds off a cooldown per cast of Cure and Cure 2? It's entirely probable to go through entire dungeons without that ever happening. Even if it does happen, who notices 5 seconds off Asylum?

[Dregenfox]

Ok, lets take a look at some of the top speed runs done in fflogs by SCH/WHM combos and compare their actual total oGCD healing done in a savage raid situation.


https://www.fflogs.com/reports/F7qar...pe=damage-done
WHM - 1670000
SCH - 1488400
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/jv3Wz...0&type=healing
WHM - 1202900
SCH - 1457000
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/xyHXJ...pe=damage-done
WHM - 1533000
SCH - 1832600
https://www.fflogs.com/reports/dcvZg...aling&source=5
WHM - 1525800
SCH - 1379800

WHM average - 1482925
SCH average - 1539450

WHM wins on 2 of those runs, while SCH wins out on 2 runs. The average done by SCH is slightly higher over those 4 runs by ~3.8%. But this doesn't take into account the HoT utility provided from Medica II because it was too hard to separate the hot portion from the actual base potency. Both healers end up having similar oGCD healing numbers in practice, even in the most difficult savage encounter.

https://www.fflogs.com/reports/NPyVd...8&type=healing

Fastest WHM/SCH o3s run -

WHM - 1144900
SCH - 989400

WHM wins out here as well with the fastest o3s SCH/WHM run I could find.

It's nice to talk about how awesome SCH oGCD's are, and I won't deny that they are awesome, but WHM bring just as much potential to the table in raid encounters when they are forced to use their entire kits.

The flexibility of SCH oGCD + chain strategem is the reason SCH are preferred as the 2nd healer, because SCH in their current state depend on their co-healer to carry the brunt of all GCD healing.

Anyway, like I said if you buff WHM's damage by 10% or so while giving SCH the ability to carry GCD healing, you can start making a case for bringing more WHM to the top raids. Right now the utility of Chain Strategem and AF stacks is causing groups to use only AST/SCH combos with WHM being left out most of the time.

I actually had to go to the 2nd page to find WHM/SCH combos for o4s because they're so ridiculously rare.

[RyuDragnier]

I can't be bothered getting into a whole debate, but the Adlo/Succor changes are not huge. All they are doing is lowering the skill floor. Newer Scholars can use those abilities without necessarily going OOM so easily. In V4S, I'm not going to start wasting more GCDs on Adlo or Succor just because they got buffed. It is not efficient and it will literally make no difference to higher level gameplay at all. I have no reason in raids to waste more GCDs on healing, so why would I bother?

Now I'm not saying that the other healers shouldn't get adjustments, even though I don't particularly feel like they need them, but your reasoning for it is pretty irrelevant.

The changes do help with one thing at endgame raids...should the other healer fall, we won't cut our MP pool so badly bringing them back and keeping everybody up. Though in a static, that should not happen that often.

[Lastelli]

Ok, lets take a look at some of the top speed runs done in fflogs by SCH/WHM combos and compare their actual total oGCD healing done in a savage raid situation.

Some of those logs mostly show a sch/whm combo healing suboptimally, with SCH hps way lower than it should be, as the hps percentiles clearly show. Take the first log, for instance. The SCH used WD and Indom only 6 times. Fey Union wasn't used at all. Also, he died, so this probably contributed to further decrease his hps.
Actually you just need to look at rushers' sch healing to so how absurd sch ogcd healing potential is.

[Sebazy]

Right now the utility of Chain Strategem and AF stacks is causing groups to use only AST/SCH combos with WHM being left out most of the time.

I'm kind of confused as to why you're using speed runs as an example to buff SCH's GCD heals. In essence, speed runs are a freak show that boils down to optimising GCDs and yes, oGCDs as well. An Indom that isn't needed is still a DPS loss after all. Until you give a SCH Medica II, these groups won't pay any head to the buffs you are suggesting and thus it's rather the moot point no? If a mechanic can be healed with just a Medica II and WD, then that's all it's going to get regardless of how juicy Indom or Succor are.

But on the flipside, a 10% damage boost for WHM vs allowing SCH to push raw HPS throughput outside of their fairy and cooldowns? That's a horrible trade, WHM shone during the progression race this tier because when coupled with AST, you had respectable DPS coupled with superior HPS and mitigation. Giving SCH a significant leg up in HPS throughput would wipe WHM out here, and a 10% DPS bump is never going to compete with cards or chain stratagem for a party spot.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that SCH isn't in a good place right now (thus my wall-o-text revamp post). But in terms of raw 'competitive' balance, all 3 healers are there or thereabouts at the moment with the upcoming buffs hopefully making SCH a little more forgiving to learn and play at lower tiers.

[technole]

I can't be bothered getting into a whole debate, but the Adlo/Succor changes are not huge. All they are doing is lowering the skill floor. Newer Scholars can use those abilities without necessarily going OOM so easily. In V4S, I'm not going to start wasting more GCDs on Adlo or Succor just because they got buffed. It is not efficient and it will literally make no difference to higher level gameplay at all. I have no reason in raids to waste more GCDs on healing, so why would I bother?

Now I'm not saying that the other healers shouldn't get adjustments, even though I don't particularly feel like they need them, but your reasoning for it is pretty irrelevant.

Yep, pretty much. If anything you'd be healing less in O4S because of such. Really no place you'd be OOM anywhere this tier with the current state of SCH unless stuff hits the fan too much. Scholar was already good this tier.

Although I hope they don't lower costs that much because dropping the skill floor too far isn't good for the job. People who can't manage Aetherflow just won't ever learn to do it right. The current state of the job encourages such and that is a good thing. But that may also be why there is a wider gap of better scholars to the not-so-good.