SCH needs some nerfs

[Ghishlain]

Thanks everyone for clearing that up.

I'm a little confused though because the healing toolkit is pretty irrelevant in and of itself. There's barely any healing required and there are actually quite a few speed runners that run noct AST with SCH (AST does almost all the shielding). I believe there's even a post in this forum about such a comp on chaos.
Adding new classes won't change this much unless SE really bumps up healing requirements.
Of course healing toolkit has an impact on pDPS but more about that bellow.

When it comes to defining meta the only thing that counts is rDPS. And that's not even on a lower tier of skill, meta is defined by the higher tiers where class potential is properly expressed.
As it stands AST and SCH are pretty balanced and performing miles better than WHM (historically SCH has always been the rdps master up until very recently, hence it's presence). That's why WHM is left out. I'm not sure how nerfing SCH helps in all of this.

I feel the comments towards SCH nerfs is in part driven by an aggravation and frustration of a favoritism S-E seems to show for the SCH job.

With that being said, there's been a lot of comments made in these threads the last couple weeks that have made me think and reflect a lot about the current healer balance. Given the high skilled AST can keep up with the equally skilled SCH in terms of pDPS, my largest complaint about the current balance is just how powerful AST given the ease of their kit. AST doesn't have to make many optimization decisions regarding clipping since the Malefic change, there are minimal healing oGCDs to optimize for a fight, and optimizing 2 of those 3 oGCDs is more about group coordination than individual skill. The 700+ potency of Earthly Star and Collective Unconsciousness is just icing on that cake. This isn't to undermine the achievements of the highest tiers of ASTs, but I certainly feel a lot more effort is required to eck out every inch of DPS on WHM or SCH whom have significantly harder clipping decisions to make during the course of a fight.

I'll lead this on to your next post:

What's your take on the difficulty to play each class? WHM/AST/SCH. How do you think they scale with skill comparatively to each other?

I feel the skill level difficulty would be AST > WHM > SCH, but I feel AST's power level is a lot higher than the other two when you correlate skill versus power.

With that being said, content design can help reduce the gap. You can see that with the Ultima logs where WHM leads both DPS and HPS categories at almost all percentiles. If SCH and AST aren't allowed to play with zero weakness, it certainly shows.

And as a final point to the whole thing, I'd like to see the pDPS spectrum to be AST > SCH > WHM given the turret nature of WHM.

It is not. healer balance is the worst it's been all expac.

Here's a nice starting point but you're right in that it's been discussed to death.

Going to agree. Healer balance was definitely a lot better pre-Malefic changes to AST.

[MoroMurasaki]

Why are these things still being discussed? The parallels have been addressed and deciphered. Healer balance is good, it's damn near perfect compared to the other balances. Most of the issues any healer has, and they all have them, are within their personal kit.

And why is their DPS still a "factor", it's already been explained why their DPS is "high" during raids.

They're still being discussed because they're still an issue.

Healer balance is literally the worst it's been since the start of SB. If you can't see that then there is no point in talking to you further until you choose to educate yourself.

[EaMett]

[...] I feel the skill level difficulty would be AST > WHM > SCH [...]

That's interesting. So even considering the fact WHM doesn't have many skills to juggle you still think it's harder to play than AST? Do you attribute the difficulty to it's turret nature?

[MoroMurasaki]

That's interesting. So even considering the fact WHM doesn't have many skills to juggle you still think it's harder to play than AST? Do you attribute the difficulty to it's turret nature?

Not my response but I'll bite because I feel the same.

I think the main thing that makes AST easier is the cast time reduction on Malefic and the maneuverability in general. You can get a lot more cheeky on AST with dodging than you can with WHM and you almost never have to plan your oGCD uses because they fit behind your most used spell. Add to that the same or better healing potencies and I think AST is the friendlier class at this point.

[EaMett]

Hmmm.

I'm on the fence here. I definitely think AST flows better for all the reasons you mention (especially when pit against clipping god WHM). But AST is essentially a WHM toolkit with added card complexity and a few less intuitive skills (ES in place of assize, Synastry in place of DB) or a bit of a dumbed down SCH.

In a sense even weaving is an added complexity over WHM gameplay (regardless of how streamlined it currently is).

That's why I've always thought of the skill cap being WHM > AST > SCH. The more skilled the players the bigger the gap between AST/SCH and WHM (since WHM is capped early due to how little options you have)

Do we happen to know how healers compare in a striking dummy dps comparison? Is WHM still leading here?

I personally would like to see higher potency on Stone IV, Aero II, and a return of damage to fluid aura for weaving with Aero II. But to the original topic. I don't really see where the nerfing of sch comes into play (in the current lineup, maybe if you had asked me a few months ago)

[Ghishlain]

That's interesting. So even considering the fact WHM doesn't have many skills to juggle you still think it's harder to play than AST? Do you attribute the difficulty to it's turret nature?

...I realized I wrote the < in the wrong direction so I'll correct that with words but I still think you still understood my point.

I would feel AST is the easiest to play, WHM would be the next, followed by SCH.

I mimic's Moro's thoughts in the sense that AST is very streamlined. At it's core, you're essentially smashing Malefic III when not healing and using any and all oGCDs without a care about clipping. Your GCD heals at face value are generally equal to or better than WHM, even in diurnal.

With WHM you have to think about when you want to clip and you have far too many oGCDs to try to use within the windows that applying Regen and Aero II will allow you to. If you want to optimize for DPS, you need to plan out your heals and DoT applications much further in advance than you would have to as AST. And if you don't plan out those usages, you start running into significant clipping issues which in turn leads to significant loss of overall pDPS. Also the WHM oGCDs are less impactful but more varied, so you generally have to stack a few of them to get the same effectiveness as a single oGCD from AST. This also means the WHM has to think about how they want to layer their tools to maximize their effectiveness and give them enough tools to use throughout the fight to minimize GCD healing.

AST just doesn't have to face any of the challenges WHMs have to face when dealing with mechanics and clipping. Even if a party were to go south, the limited number of healing oGCD options for AST means you'll just go straight into turreting GCD heals where as WHMs have to fight with choosing to GCD heal or pop an oGCD and figure out how to make up for the loss of that oGCD later.

[edit] I'll just also add that even if both AST and WHM had the opportunity to turret, AST would have less decisions to make due to the limited number of healing oGCDs they have and even an "incorrect" use of an oGCD would result in minimal DPS loss while an incorrect oGCD on WHM results in a fair chunk of DPS being lost. [/edit]

Also, if I were to reverse your question and ask which jobs have the lowest skill floors, I'd say SCH has the lowest skill floor, followed by AST being on equal footing with WHM.

SCH has an auto healing pet, so it doesn't really get much easier than that if you're geared enough for the fairy to handle everything. AST's GCD heals are equal to or better than WHMs more often than naught, and they cost 10% less MP so "wasiting" GCD heals is less of a problem on AST than it is on WHM. WHM does have the benefit of having a larger eMP pool just because of Thin Air and Assize and have more answers to derps due to the myriad of oGCD heals it has at its disposal.

Do we happen to know how healers compare in a striking dummy dps comparison? Is WHM still leading here?

SSS-wise, WHM is still rated as the highest DPS with it going WHM > SCH > AST in terms of overall damage.

In Savage play, AST and SCH do about equal DPS with WHM lagging behind a good bit. I'd be on board with a DPS bump to WHM since it should have the highest pDPS if SSS is to be any indicator.

With that being said, WHM in Ultima (Ultimate) has the highest DPS of the three healers but a fair margin, which is where it should be. It's a shame it takes content as hard as Ultima to allow WHM to shine in that capacity.

[MoroMurasaki]

In Savage play, AST and SCH do about equal DPS with WHM lagging behind a good bit. I'd be on board with a DPS bump to WHM since it should have the highest pDPS if SSS is to be any indicator.

With that being said, WHM in Ultima (Ultimate) has the highest DPS of the three healers but a fair margin, which is where it should be. It's a shame it takes content as hard as Ultima to allow WHM to shine in that capacity.

I would add that SCH is significantly ahead of AST in pDPS at specifically at the high end in most fights for Alphascape.

The only reason WHM manages to pull ahead in Ultimate is that once you force all healers to burn GCDs healing WHM is suddenly more efficient thanks to increased MP efficiency and Cure III. The difference between that and Savage is that in Savage AST and SCH can subsist (sometimes almost entirely) on their oGCDs. That o9s clear linked in another thread has 13 healing GCDs from the SCH, the best WHM clear of the same fight (at least as of a day or so ago) had 27 for comparison.

Otherwise thanks for explaining my viewpoint better than I could Glishain, very well done

[JohnSeal]

Wow that’s really the thread of the day, certainly for how silly it is. I mean really, why? The SCH is a fantastic class with great ability and it’s meta simply because of the schield potency, damage mitigation and CS. The DPS is not excessive anyhow, in fact AST is right there dmg wise. Probably your complain comes from not truly understanding how this class work and function (: it’s much more difficult to optimise healing with a careful CDs rotation in endgame savage content, and to optimise dmg considering all the available skills by weaving efficiently. Anyway even if mitigation is great the raw healing power of the SCH is lower compared with the other two healer so that’s why in endgame contest SCH work on mitigation mainly while doing a consistently steady DPS, mitigation reduces amount of healing required by the other healer. Actually what is needed by SCH like me is a little buff: Emergency tactic 5sec Cd instead of 20!! So you healer more if required without wasting a schield.
If you are frustrated because WHM don’t get valued anymore in savage and are not meta is because of the lack of raid buffs so SE should probably add one or two ^^ Savage WHMs are in overhaul less simply because as a class it’s more difficult to optimise dmg, the inability to weave like AST/SCH is penalising I know but that’s why the basic WHM dmg it’s higher the the other two healer, so
If you are really good can do amazing with it. Oh yes, the WHM it’s so easy to heal with, like perfect for prog and straightforward. No need of nerf trust me just a WHM buff (:

[JohnSeal]

SCHs have been broken since forever. The one time they were slightly behind they were instantly buffed up again. I think people don't bring it up often because we know SCH is SE' baby. For whatever reason, it isn't allowed to be anything but the absolute greatest.

It sounds silly, but it does seem like they have their job preferences. WAR and SCH are absolutely untouchable and everyone just accepts how broken they are. I just hope the next healer can challenge SCH, instead of being another "WHM with X ability" like AST is.

You really don’t know what you are talking about.. SCH broken? It’s the most complete and efficient healer, great OGCD, ability two weave, CS, High mitigation, so please have a moment of meditation before type stuff like that lol xD
And what about: “WHM with X ability" like AST, I Hope was sarcastic saying really! AST is a flawless new concept of healing majestically with ability to attack at almost all time and that gives tremendously good party buff.

[Grimoire-M]

You really don’t know what you are talking about.. SCH broken? It’s the most complete and efficient healer, great OGCD, ability two weave, CS, High mitigation, so please have a moment of meditation before type stuff like that lol xD
And what about: “WHM with X ability" like AST, I Hope was sarcastic saying really! AST is a flawless new concept of healing majestically with ability to attack at almost all time and that gives tremendously good party buff.

SCH is broken because of those reasons. There are two definitions of broken. The first is 'overpowered to the point of breaking the game with minimal effort', and the second is 'underpowered, non-functional, and incapable, even when optimized fully'.

Exil there was referring to the former. SCH needs nerfs in order to put it in line with the other two healers. That's the point of this entire thread.