SCH needs some nerfs

[Grimoire-M]

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I specifically said 300 potency on a 1s cooldown like Lustrate. Not 300 potency on a 30s cooldown (which is still better than Assize by the way. Hell it's comparable to Medica and Helios, but you still get to deal damage during it). It's basically at will. You can still weave two of them in a single GCD and get 600 potency with minimal clipping (It's equivalent to using Swiftcast Med II + PI on WHM with better results), which is more than enough when you need that. Again, SCH has a lot of tools to deal with single target healing without spending a single GCD or Aetherflow at all, and they're the only healer with an instant cast DPS spell that they can always use to weave. Hell they have the Aetherflow to spare for Miasma II + Energy Drain when that's available already. The Fairy is that good. The current Indom handles their AoE side practically by itself in everything but Ultimate. And that combination is what pushes them over the edge compared to WHM and AST, and it's primarily the cooldown that's doing that in the first place. They have it up too often, and it's too good. If you're in a fight where that's somehow costing you multiple GCDs over a fight you're likely already using Succor to begin with and will have a good reason to consider using Soil and ED instead.

The only other reasonable alternatives would be to leave the potency as is and either nerf the cooldown to 60s, or make it cost 2 Aetherflow. But neither feels right. And 400 leaves it at an awkward spot where it might be enough in some spots and forces overhealing in others compared to the current version. Hence why I settled on 300 potency on a 1s cooldown. It's the right nerf, out of all the reasonable options.

Regarding Adlo/Succor, reducing their MP costs is a buff, not a nerf. If they cost less to use that leaves SCH with more MP for their DPS spells. The reason SCH felt bad at launch (aside from QoL, cause there was a hell of a lot of QoL issues that SE then went ahead and added more buffs on top of fixing those issues) was because those two spells had their MP costs increased, and Energy Drain and Aetherflow had their MP restoration nerfed as part of the 4.0 changes. Keep in mind Quickened Aetherflow was not reliable then either, and Summons still cost a ton of MP and took nearly as long as a res, so you couldn't even use Dissipation to counteract the problem even in ideal situations. It would only put you further and further behind until the 4.1 changes happened. I specifically said to only consider reducing the cost of Adlo/Succor costs if and only if 300 potency/1s CD Indom change was done in the first place. It's contingent on that one change. Just because SCH wants to avoid using Succor/Adlo doesn't mean they won't use it if they have to. Thus, if SCHs are using a lot more Adlos and Succors as a result of the nerfed Indom, then make that change. If not, then it's clearly not needed.

Comparing Diurnal Helios and Medica II to Succor is a mistake too. They're HoTs, and thus they require time to become more efficient than Succor. Succor is only 375 Healing potency, but it's all applied immediately. It takes Medica II and Diurnal Helios 4 server ticks to become more efficient, which is 12 seconds after you cast it. That's enough time that you're probably dead if you used it to replace a Succor at the time you'd want a Succor at all. You use Succor, Helios, and Cure III when you need enough healing and/or mitigation to survive something in a couple GCDs (in other words back to back AoE) and don't have any appropriate oGCDs to spare for that task in that moment. The only exceptions to this really is PI + Medica II which breaks even but still costs two cooldowns (one of which could be used in multiple better ways) on top of the GCD to add 150 potency, enough that it might matter alongside a Succor for some heavy hitting AoEs, or spacing out Medicas during a jump phase in order to set up PI stacks for another AoE later on because those let the SCH get in multiple ED + Miasma II weaves for more overall DPS.

Exiled_Tonberry already hit the note on why the nerf needs to happen in the first place. oGCDs are too good right now, but SCH has the the majority of the best ones. I don't feel that Star is out of line though. It's right where it needs to be. Indom needs a nerf and Assize and possibly PI need buffs. PI mostly in generation, and Assize in potency. Assize would be a good candidate for 400 healing potency in all honesty (assuming Lily changes boost its potency further) Maybe make it generate a PI stack too.

[jameseoakes]

Exiled_Tonberry already hit the note on why the nerf needs to happen in the first place. oGCDs are too good right now, but SCH has the the majority of the best ones. I don't feel that Star is out of line though. It's right where it needs to be. Indom needs a nerf and Assize and possibly PI need buffs. PI mostly in generation, and Assize in potency. Assize would be a good candidate for 400 healing potency in all honesty (assuming Lily changes boost its potency further) Maybe make it generate a PI stack too.

But burst healing is pretty much the whole healing kit, WHM needs some love but gutting another class to do it isn't the way.

[Jinzhu]

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I know what you said and I mentioned that even if it was 1s it would still be bad. Succor is a tier 1 spell and the equivalent of Helios/Medica, not Indom. Regarding clipping, you using 2 back to back isn't going to magically make it better. Aspected Helios and Medica 2 will still be better than using 2 for reasons I already stated. SCHs equivalent to a tier 2 spell like ASP H and M2 is Indom and you making it 300 potency is just going to push the burden onto them as the healing potency per damage potency isn't worth. Making it cost 2 Aetherflow stacks and keeping the healing the same would also be bad since it'd be 300 potency for a 500 heal which still wouldn't be worth.

I never compared Succor to Aspected Helios/Medica 2? Even then it doesn't matter because you SHOULD still compare Succor to Aspected Helios/Medica 2 since that's SCHs only GCD AoE heal and you NEVER use Medica/Helios in an optimized environment EVER. This means WHM/AST AoE heals only consist of ASP H/M2. It doesn't matter that their HoTs when it only takes 12 seconds for it to outvalue Succor especially that there is hardly any situation in the game where you would utilize succor > ASP H/M2. Succor is 375p /hGCD for 230p damage while ASP H is 660p/hGCD for 220p damage and Medica 2 which is 700p/hGCD for 250p damage. Just because it takes time for it to outvalue a Succor doesn't matter since most damage in this game doesn't happen within 10 seconds of each other and actually statistically most damage happens 30-60s apart from each other. The average distance between AoE damage in O9 is 40 seconds, same for O10 and O11. 12 is actually worse because there is small burst damage every few minutes and no damage for 60+ seconds.

I know that oGCD usage is the problem. I've stated in this thread before that Earthly Star and Collective are the sole reason you can use 0 indoms in 9-11 without hurting your cohealers damage. Ironically enough if you make Indom cost 2 Aetherflow stacks or change it to 300 potency you're indirectly nerfing WHM as well since it would be even more of a struggle to optimize healing with them them due to their lack of efficient healing tools. Which would make AST+SCH comps even stronger.

[Grimoire-M]

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It wouldn't make AST/SCH comps that much stronger when you now get the option to fit Assize alongside a single Indom with no overhealing at all compared to what you would've had to do before in a SCH/WHM comp. Assize's damage potency is equal to its healing potency, which makes it strong enough that you would treat it as a damage cooldown all the time even if that meant overhealing, except when you have absolutely no other way to save a healing GCD within a reasonable amount of time. This is in comparison to Star primarily being used for its ability to avoid needing to use another AoE heal alongside it in the first place, because that full charged heal at the right time is simply worth more than the extra damage you might get from aligning it with TA, while Assize will almost never have that opportunity in Savage regardless of which healer you're paired with (all the more reason to buff its healing and nerf its damage). While ES can heal mechanics on its own when fully charged, Indom and Cure III are already more than capable of handling the majority of those mechanics by themselves. And when paired with an AST, WHM gets to use Assize in those situations where it's somehow not enough, while in that ES situation the SCH or AST has to pop another cooldown that typically isn't Star and Indom paired together, or use a GCD to avoid risking overhealing.

And yeah I should've used Indom with the Med II/Aspected Helios comparison there, not Succor. The point still stands that you're not using HoTs unless you can afford the time to, and I don't think it needs to be said that popping an Indom is still going to be better because you still get to use Bio II/Miasma II/Ruin II to weave indom in during that period while the other healer gets to DPS as well. SCH also has Whispering Dawn for those situations anyways and even with pet potency it's still more efficient than an Indom. It doesn't force a clip like CU does, it has better uptime due to the lower cooldown, and also has a larger range over CU. That's not even getting into the fact that Asylum is laughably bad in comparison to both at the moment.

And for what it's worth, every one of SCH's aetherflow cooldowns currently is better than ED in terms of a DPS gain, because the GCDs you gain from using them in the first place makes it more worthwhile. This is true even of the 300 potency Indom I've suggested. Even if you're using Ruin II this is still true, because you can always make sure you get to double weave inbetween a single instant damage GCD whereas your co-healers do not have that flexibility whatsoever. 150 potency worth of damage and 80% of the MP cost one of your healing GCDs later on doesn't make up for your cohealer needing to fill the gap unless you already had the aetherflow to spare because of the fight itself not putting enough pressure on you. At the moment, all of SCH's Aetherflow heals are all so good that you don't need to spend all of your Aetherflow to handle Savage fights, which is contributing massively to the sheer amount of Miasma II spam SCH gets away with in practice. Nerfing ED's damage wouldn't change that, and I don't feel Miasma II can really be nerfed in a way that doesn't destroy its initial purpose. Retuning ED into another ability that explicitly doesn't deal damage or only buffs Ruin II's damage would also help, but that replacement would still be used because that's a massive MP boost to fuel Miasma II spam.

I agree that the Gauge isn't pointless either. A single Fey Union tick is often enough to save a tank from an auto-attack post-buster. However, making Fey Union cost Aetherflow on cast is a giant nerf that would essentially remove it from the game. After all, why use it when you can just manage Rouse better? It would accomplish what we're both after, sure, but in a way that's even worse than simply toning down Indom in the first place. It takes 50 gauge to break ahead of Excog (assuming that ordering the fairy to use it also charges the gauge, otherwise its 60), and that's still spread over 15s, and you'd be encouraged to use as much Aetherflow as you could during the time you had it in order to continue to pad out the healing so you can minimize how many times you have to cast it, and it stays on one target as opposed to Rouse and roots the Fairy in one position once cast. And if you lose a tick due to movement you've essentially wasted any advantage you could've gained from using it compared to just asking your co-healer to regen the tank and be done with it. That is true of the current version but you can interrupt it at any time with only a minor 30 potency lost for using Aetherpact later on. This proposal loses a Lustrate/ED/Excog alongside that and those abilities are just plain better, particularly Excog.

There really isn't a better option than simply nerfing Indom or removing Quickened Aetherflow. What that nerf will be is debatable but I'm leaning towards my 300 potency/1s CD proposal simply because it's the easiest change to implement and accomplishes every intended goal without making SCH so bad they're unusable, despite what you think of it. They have the aetherflow to spare. And it's still a healing oGCD on a class with a plethora of instant cast DPS spells to double weave it in. It's a DPS nerf, not the end of the class.

On the subject of Earthly Star itself, I think it actually needs a third stage. Not for the healing potency, though. I'd scratch the potency boosts altogether and leave it at the initial healing and damage values regardless of what stage it is in to bring it more in line with Assize and Indom. Instead, each stage increases the range of the Star, starting at the current range, growing to normal AoE heal range in the second stage, then Medica II range in the third. That's an appropriate nerf, not really changing its use case, but gives you more situations where you can use it if you plan ahead.

And we all agree WHM needs love. Lots of it.