White Mage Overflow

[Lagomorph]

Trick attack is also only 10 seconds long. Stacking raid buffs during burst windows matter.

And, yes, healer composition doesn't matter outside of savage. That's always been the case. You balance around savage because that's where jobs are tested and pushed to their limits. Outside of savage, WHM never needed buffs. Nor did AST in stormblood. In fact, outside of savage, we didn't need any job balancing changes at all, with DPS and tanks too.

And, yes, scholar shields are pretty ridiculous. It makes me feel bad for Noct ASTs, how weak and pitiful their shields are in comparison.

But, we both agree AST needs some love. But that's also the only thing that needs to happen. As mentioned on page 1, WHM clear rates will drop when AST is stronger.

Not that I necessarily expect SE not to do it - but buffing Scholar as this point would be an encore of Stormblood balancing.

Regarding chain, I posted this a while back...

According to stone sea sky hp values, whm is expected to do around 1.2k more than sch is. Now in 8 man content, if you have a group of skilled players who are able to both use raid buffs well and play their classes to their full potential, you'll rarely exceed 75k raidwide dps. Chain stratagem is 10% crit buff for 15 seconds, with a 120 second cooldown. Essentially it's a 5% damage buff with 12.5% uptime. This raid buff would provide 469 dps if raid damage is constant throughout the encounter. Now this isn't quite true; classes have burst phases to account for, so we can assume that this buff is slighly more potent that 469 dps in a high-end group. In your average pug, I can guarantee you that it is worth far less than 469 dps. But the dps difference between whm and sch is nearly triple this.

You can stack buffs, but that will not nearly increase the value of chain to a number that would make scholars compete with white mages right now.

Also hard disagree that healer balance doesn't matter outside of savage. You can change some things about the various healers that would have an enormous impact on their dungeon experience without it affecting savage at all. What if gravity had a stun? That would be a game-changer for ast, and literally would not change how they function in savage. Saying balance only mattered in savage is kind of just an excuse to ignore balance in all other areas. There is absolutely no reason that white mages should be this far ahead in dungeons as it is right now.

Lastly, regarding shields and noct ast: Adlo gives a shield with a potency of 375, while aspected benefic gives a shield with a potency of 500. Succor gives an aoe shield with a potency of 225, while aspected helios gives an aoe shield with a potency of 250. Noct ast shields aren't weak; the problems with noct ast run a lot deeper than shield potencies. If it were just about shields, then it wouldn't matter in the slightest because, like I said, shields are largely unnecessary. If the upcoming raids have the same difficulty as stormblood, then very few mechanics will actually require shielding. Usually you can get away with just full hp. Sure shielding is helpful, but it's never been a requirement except in maybe the final fights of each tier.