SCH needs some nerfs

[Jinzhu]

This, for real. The card system sucking so bad at first along with needing to heal more really messed things up. AST should have never been doing WHM level (or in the case of CU and Star, higher than WHM) heals.

They really need to step back and look at AST again. There's no downside whatsoever to it's massive amounts of utility it brings. It heals as well as WHM, it does more damage with less effort. It just makes no sense.
AST can just have whatever it wants with no drawbacks, it doesn't make any sense.

I don't necessarily agree with the damage part. There's a lot of things you have to do to optimize damage as an AST. Lining up cards so that it doesn't decrease rDPS but let's you get potential lords under raid buffs like trick, litany, contagion etc takes a bit of thought as well as using sleeve draw optimally so you can potentially get 2/3 lords under raid buffs.

For example 3 Lord trick would be have a held lord and save it for trick > use it > draw > redraw and and minor arcana it (only if its a bad card) > Lord > Sleeve Draw > Lord. That's not even the maximum potential either since there's 4 Lord trick (generally only used prepull) since it takes a bit to pull off.

4 Lord trick: Have Lord held > Use redraw and hold it for 20+ seconds (bad card only) > Use Lord > GCD > MA draw card + Lord > GCD > Draw + Redraw > GCD > Lord + Sleeve > GCD > Lord.

And if you let your Sleeve Draw shift even a little bit you're losing quite a bit of damage so making sure delayed draws don't interfere with SDs CD is pretty crucial.

Where as White Mage is just hit Assize under TA if it doesn't save a heal and holding PoM for 30 seconds so it aligns with 3 minute burst but if you lose a use you just use it on CD. Not thinking too much about what you're doing.

There's also more you have to know and study up on as an AST vs WHM to maximize it's potential. If you draw an Arrow during a point of the fight who does it benefit the most? The NIN will get an extra Spinning Edge but the DRG will gain a Full Thrust but if you don't know that and give it to the NIN it's an easy loss of potency. It's also important to know how giving that Arrow during the point of the fight will affect their rotation at that point i.e giving the DRG an Arrow can make BoTD and oGCD usage a little funky. So you basically have to study everybodys own timings. If the Arrows value wouldn't exceed 230 potency (Broil II) then you're left at 2 options. Either give it to the SCH as they are almost guaranteed to get an extra GCD from that Arrow or gamble it to try and get 300 potency.

It's the same if you pull an extra Balance. You gotta know how much damage each person is doing relative to the timer on the fight. Giving it to the NIN during 2:00 intervals so it catches their full burst. Giving it to the BRD during it's Raging Strikes + Minuet window. Giving it to DRG when they are about to enter Nastrond. The problem with Balance is because it's 30-45 seconds even if it catches their burst it might not be worth it if the seconds after burst is bad i.e MCH where they have a pretty powerful 10 second window but drop afterwards.

That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of AST optimization, there's a lot more minor stuff but those alone make AST harder to play than WHM. It's why I think AST is the hardest job to play as they have to optimize healing, optimize the raids DPS and optimize their personal DPS. As a SCH with a high end cohealer all I do is fill in the gaps where my ASTs heals dont reach.

It's also pretty interesting to note that AST does about 8-10 more CPM than WHMs do on average. Juggling a lot more actions than WHM has to even if it's because they have a 1.5s cast time.

I agree though that AST damage shouldn't be doing WHM levels of DPS (more after the Minor Arcana change). WHM pDPS should be 15% more damage than AST and SCH (if AST/SCH are doing 4k then WHM is doing 4.6k). That value changes in between patches as Balance and Chain get stronger per patch. I don't like to take Fey Wind into account because on XIVRDPS it's weighted way higher than it should be as it can't properly calculate the amount of extra GCDs you gain from it giving everyone a set value. Even if you don't gain a GCD from it Fey Wind will still have value on it.