4.3 Thought on 3 healers

[Risvertasashi]

You bring up a good point about astrologians. There are times when I blank on a card. But, I have to wonder, which healer demands the most multi-tasking, astrologians or scholars?

AST has a much lower work rate but demands more mental agility of the player with the somewhat unpredictable nature of cards. You can streamline it somewhat with flowchart style prioritisation but on the flipside, Sleeve Draw can be an absolute pig at times.

The key technique here, IMO, is to do cards between GCDs, even if it's ones with a hard cast time. That way you have time while your next spell is casting to let the card animations play out, to see what you pulled up and decide what to do with it.

It sounds straightforward enough, but there's seriously tons of ASTs that will essentially stop all else to handle cards.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to call SCH 'mindless APM', but I think Sebazy was getting at is that SCH actions are pretty much predictable, and that's correct. Action sequences can be a bit complex but you know in advance what the outcome will be.

Still, there are hallmarks separating the skilled from less so. e.g., those that think "well SCH is the DPSy healer" and so don't even bother with lustrates a lot of the time, vs those that can pull 2k+ dps while still doing amazing healing (rare, but very nice SCHs to group with).

[Vyriah]

As someone who is an absolute disaster when it comes to multitasking, SCH feel more demanding. APM is a thing, but we're talking about stutter casting that make you lose some uptime type of issue but the real issue is the timing of everything.

SCH is basically a MCH but everything have a different timing. Cleric stance and eather flow are at each ends of your opener wich will them go two different 15 sec differed 45 sec cycle. There's something like 2sec unsynch with shadow flare and chain stratagem that you have to align yourself 2 minute in the fight. There's miasma en bio doing their lives on their own and this just cover the DPS part of the job. And while there's a general consensus for "healing is easy", a lot of SCH kit actually need different skills to be used in top of each other. And often they're different type of spells you use in different way and while it isn't critical to clearing a fight. There's a way to handle any of this individually, but doing everything while minding the fairy and bosses mechanics is a lot of things at the same time.

While AST involve a bit of RNG and a lot of on the flight decision making, the basic is to press draw and handle what comes out of it with experience alone. The fact that cards doesn't have such direct impact on the fight itself makes even tricky situation less taxing to handle. Maybe there was a better way to use those cards, but at least you know that it can happen now. I'm a pretty regular puzzle game and card gae player, so card handling feels at home but guess some people will have their brain melt over doing some logical gymnastic mid-fight the same way it does for me when I have to pay attention to more than three things at the same time.

So SCH is the number and AST the quality kind of thing, more or less.
But SCH is by far the most distracting, pet jobs kinda always are.

[Kacho_Nacho]

The key technique here, IMO, is to do cards between GCDs, even if it's ones with a hard cast time.

That way you have time while your next spell is casting to let the card animations play out, to see what you pulled up and decide what to do with it.

It sounds straightforward enough, but there's seriously tons of ASTs that will essentially stop all else to handle cards.

That's for sure. Sadly, humans tend to struggle with multi-tasking.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to call SCH 'mindless APM', but I think Sebazy was getting at is that SCH actions are pretty much predictable, and that's correct. Action sequences can be a bit complex but you know in advance what the outcome will be.

Still, there are hallmarks separating the skilled from less so. e.g., those that think "well SCH is the DPSy healer" and so don't even bother with lustrates a lot of the time, vs those that can pull 2k+ dps while still doing amazing healing (rare, but very nice SCHs to group with).

*nods enthusiastically*

There's just something about Scholars, isn't there? Don't get me wrong, I LOVE white mage, and I have made my fair share of saves with Kacho; but, no other class makes me shout "Holy Crow! Did I just see that?" like a scholar being played right. I have much respect for their good players.

As someone who is an absolute disaster when it comes to multitasking, SCH feel more demanding. APM is a thing, but we're talking about stutter casting that make you lose some uptime type of issue but the real issue is the timing of everything.

SCH is basically a MCH but everything have a different timing. Cleric stance and eather flow are at each ends of your opener wich whill them go two different 15 sec differed 45 sec cycle. There's something like 2sec unsynch with shadow flare and chain stratagem that you have to align yourself 2 minute in the fight. There's miasma en bio doing their lives on their own and this just cover the DPS part of the job. And while there's a general consensus for "healing is easy", a lot of SCH kit actually need different skills to be used in top of each other. And often they're different type of spells you use in different way and while it isn't critical to clearing a fight. There's a way to handle any of this individually, but doing everything while minding the fairy and bosses mechanics is a lot of things at the same time.

While AST involve a bit of RNG and a lot of on the flight decision making, the basic is to press draw and handle what comes out of it with experience alone. The fact that cards doesn't have such direct impact on the fight itself makes even tricky situation less taxing to handle. Maybe there was a better way to use those cards, but at least you know that it can happen now. I'm a pretty regular puzzle game and card gae player, so card handling feels at home but guess some people will have their brain melt over doing some logical gymnastic mid-fight the same way it does for me when I have to pay attention to more than three things at the same time.

So SCH is the number and AST the quality kind of thing, more or less.
But SCH is by far the most distracting, pet jobs kinda always are.

That's an interesting take on the subject, Vyriah.

[NobleWinter]

SCH has the most demanding Healing Skill Set to me. WHM can power through anything even with bad choices and AST is over tuned to compensate for it's simplicity. To me SCH is so much more rewarding because it takes so much thought to be efficient. You can't spam Succor and think you're going to survive everything like Medica or Helios. Nothing is better than throwing out Sacred Soil 10 sec in advance so that even the most lazy DPS has time to enter the effect and catch your Deployed Adlo and Fey Convenant for the next big Boss AoE. When your cohealer is rendered useless you know it was a job well done.

[Godofhealing]

whm classic healer

scholar unique healer

astrologian a copy cat.

[Sciwolf]

I still miss the days when sch was a god amongst men. playing a whm is such a bore. AST is interesting but doesn’t ‘wow’ you.

[Trunks]

I wonder what content people are doing that WHM is boring them. If all you do is heal or all you do is DPS, maybe...?

SCH and AST are boring. They each have one of their two functions almost entirely off the GCD. But WHM has to balance their cast times, and indeed their relative viability (i.e., personal DPS) is predicated on doing so. This means there's always room for improvement, basically, so long as people still have more than 1 HP when they take damage.

[KDSilver]

"Boring" is matter of personnal opinion.
That's useless trying to find which one is the most.

What can be boring for one can fun for someone else.
Each players have their preference.

[Trunks]

"Boring" is matter of personnal opinion.
That's useless trying to find which one is the most.

What can be boring for one can fun for someone else.
Each players have their preference.

Right, well, thanks for that nugget. Not all opinions are equally valid or valuable. Reasoned ones provide the basis of most civil discussion; unreasoned ones provide the basis of most human conflict. What people proclaim to be "fun" and "boring" at least has some abstract influence on a medium which exists to bring us fun. Things which people say are "fun" can be incredibly destructive. Just ask Bambi.

[basketofseals]

I still miss the days when sch was a god amongst men.

Aside from the brief stint at SB's release, I wasn't aware this had ever stopped being a thing.