A (Probably Terrible) Idea to Help SCH class identity

[Rilifane]

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding but that sounds like AST is simply the superior healer, not only able to heal without dps loss but also heal enough to cover a fair bit of the co-healers share too? In the case of WhM/ScH the issue then is that there isn't an AST to shoulder the actual healing for free, so they can spam dps. While a WhM or ScH can shoulder extra healing, it takes a heavy toll on dps.

That sounds like bad design personally. Would it be better to extend the 1.5 sec cast time to Glare and Broil III too? There's the argument of homogenization or class identity, but clunkiness never seemed like a great identity for a class and they could differentiate in other ways. WhM in particular is incredibly immobile even compared to caster dps such as BLM and cannot avoid some clipping.

Aye, the main issue is that AST is too strong right now.
They can cover so much healing on their own and without dps loss that any comp with AST has a significantly higher combined healer dps. Even for average groups where you have a lot of unneccessary healing, AST comps are already better and the gap widens with better party play.
And there is the harder to measure value of safety because of the huge amount of baseline free healing AST offers while SCH/ WHM take more risks for their numbers. I can slidecast all the way across the platform to take an orb somewhere in Narnia or ferry mechanics on AST while on WHM I get annoyed if someone uses the one I've been slidecasting to for the last 15seconds or forces me to move.

WHM could certainly do with another instant. Or maybe up Misery's potency so using Lilies is not a dps loss over Glare. The resource is still limited compared to Ruin II but not punishing if you need it for weaving and it wouldn't "force" you to dump Lilies in transitions or overcap them when nothing is happening. Even my BLM feels mobile compared to WHM and that a class has clipping issues by design just feels wrong and clunky. SCH could use a little bump and AST needs to be brought down a bit. I just hope they don't do it by simply homogenizing everything.
I think it's not a bad approach that each healer has a different focus when it comes to optimizing. AST has MP issues and leaves little room for error unless running a high piety set, WHM has mobility and weaving issues and SCH, while mobile on demand, needs to reduce Ruin II as much as possible.
It's just that the latter two feel too extreme right now compared to the relatively easily solvable MP issues AST deals with.

[MorganG]

Would it be better to extend the 1.5 sec cast time to Glare and Broil III too? There's the argument of homogenization or class identity, but clunkiness never seemed like a great identity for a class and they could differentiate in other ways. WhM in particular is incredibly immobile even compared to caster dps such as BLM and cannot avoid some clipping.

Personally, as a SCH main, I wouldn't be a fan of getting the Malefic treatment. Using an instant cast GCD to weave and double weave just feels so core to the SCH kit. If anything, I'd rather they give SCH a tool like Lightspeed or Dreadwyrm Trance so they can move and weave more freely without the 80 potency loss of Ruin II over Broil.

[elioaiko]

Would it be better to extend the 1.5 sec cast time to Glare and Broil III too? There's the argument of homogenization or class identity, but clunkiness never seemed like a great identity for a class and they could differentiate in other ways. WhM in particular is incredibly immobile even compared to caster dps such as BLM and cannot avoid some clipping.

100% agree. Clipping is so annoying and makes it hard to optimize in movement heavy sections. WHM would benefit so much from it personally. There's times where I have to suffer and clip for Tetra or Assize.

But also to add, AST is a monster when it comes to healing. My co-healer consistently out heals me just from oGCDs. They have so many answers whereas SCH also does but at the cost of their DPS.

[Rilifane]

100% agree. Clipping is so annoying and makes it hard to optimize in movement heavy sections. WHM would benefit so much from it personally. There's times where I have to suffer and clip for Tetra or Assize.

But also to add, AST is a monster when it comes to healing. My co-healer consistently out heals me just from oGCDs. They have so many answers whereas SCH also does but at the cost of their DPS.

Just roll with it and dump more responsibility on them; it's fine. ASTs were made for it. We appreciate low HP bars so our fully cooked Star chan can feel useful. Let the Broil spam intensify! The only time I get out healed on AST is when the my co healer is a healbot who immediately heals everyone to full, going so far as to precast heals during the aoe cast.
My static co healer is trying to experiment with how low he can go without forcing me to hardcast. So far he is at a 6 healing parse on Ramuh with the majority of it coming from Assize.
"Do you need me to heal?"
"Nah. ED in 12 seconds, he'll just have to survive until then"
Seeing how low you can go is a fun little mini game.

[Liam_Harper]

Well, that depends. The last AST I had in e7 missed 6 Earthly Stars, half their Plays, 3 Lucid, used 0 Celestial Intersection and had 55% uptime so I've had to take a bulk of healing even with an AST at times. You have to judge whether the AST is competent. Earthly Star seems like a monster though and due to the damage potency, I imagine it's actually bad to try and help your AST with a share of the healing when it's available, since they want to take center stage and use it and you'd just be causing overheal.

An instant for WhM does sound better than homogenizing Glare with Malefic, even just a 30-60 sec cd nuke on 2 charges to create a weave window with. The game of trying to minimize dps loss while healing efficiently and recognizing where you have to bite that bullet and where you don't isn't necessarily a bad one at all, but mandatory clipping and next to no movement feels clunky for WhM. Perhaps SCH is actually in a good spot in the middle there.

[YusiKha]

The last AST I had...

Well yeah, all of this talk is in the context of 2 competent cohealers. You can't judge job design from how the worst people use them, because there are thousands of ways to play jobs badly, and only 1 way to play them well.

I imagine it's actually bad to try and help your AST with a share of the healing when it's available, since they want to take center stage and use it and you'd just be causing overheal.

Correct. I always call out 'star's down' to my cohealer to ensure that she doesn't waste resources healing when I have it covered.
Assize wants to be used on cooldown too, but doesn't have an automatic 10s warning for your cohealer, nor a super high healing potency (400 is nice, but Shadowbringers' formula change means it isn't as obvious as it was before).

The game of trying to minimize dps loss...

Now this is the part of healing as WHM or SCH, Heck WHM + SCH especially, that I dislike so much. It's not a game of managing your DPS tools to freely heal, but a constant DPS loss that someone has to bite the bullet for.
WHM has no free healing outside of Dia refreshes (of which Assize takes a weave slot in half of), since Afflatus is a built-in damage loss, but Asylum, Tetra, and Bene are all immediately strong and useful.
It blows my mind that it's optimal to just ignore a job's main mechanic

SCH has access to free weave slots (3 per minute plus Dissipation, which is also your movement), but the only skills that can be freely used are Embrace/Seraphic Veil (Unconrollable 105p/280p) Whispering Dawn (580p), Fey Blessing (245p), and Fey Union (280p/tick). Compare that to AST's free everything
'Oh but Yusi you also have Seraph's Consolation and Recitation too' Those both require 2 energy drains to use! 3 for both Consolation stacks! A 2 minute cooldown and all 3 aetherflow stacks used on uncontrollable single-target heals and 840p worth of healing and shielding.

[Rilifane]

Well, that depends. The last AST I had in e7 missed 6 Earthly Stars, half their Plays, 3 Lucid, used 0 Celestial Intersection and had 55% uptime so I've had to take a bulk of healing even with an AST at times. You have to judge whether the AST is competent. Earthly Star seems like a monster though and due to the damage potency, I imagine it's actually bad to try and help your AST with a share of the healing when it's available, since they want to take center stage and use it and you'd just be causing overheal.

I've seen the log (yep, feeling like a stalker) because I was genuinly curious how your AST co healers played and figured they might have been lacking if you were unaware of the huge amount of healing AST can cover for their co healer.
And that was unfortunately an example of a really bad AST and luckily not represenative for the average one; of course someone has to heal if one healer is bad.
Quite impressive that you still managed to get so much dps out.
You can't just blindly trust in them really covering the bulk of required healing even if the class design would easily allow it and refusing to do more than you theoretically should even with an average healer is just hurting the party. Nonetheless, a somewhat competend AST allows a WHM/ SCH to cut back a lot of healing and focus much better on dps.

I still have a lot to improve on AST and haven't been playing it for long in endgame, so I'm by no means an expert and still somewhere in the mediocre range trying to work my way up but ASTs not even using a single CI and missing so many casts of other skills makes me wonder if they ever read the tooltip or have it on their hotbar. That's some fundamental lack of understanding for their class. If we're talking about potential and possibilities, of course we have to assume someone is at least somewhat competent.

[Liam_Harper]

Oh indeed, definitely not disagreeing or using bad AST's as an example, We're on the same page that a good AST can cover the bulk of the healing and class design should be based around playing the class properly.

Now this is the part of healing as WHM or SCH, Heck WHM + SCH especially, that I dislike so much. It's not a game of managing your DPS tools to freely heal, but a constant DPS loss that someone has to bite the bullet for.
WHM has no free healing outside of Dia refreshes (of which Assize takes a weave slot in half of), since Afflatus is a built-in damage loss, but Asylum, Tetra, and Bene are all immediately strong and useful.
It blows my mind that it's optimal to just ignore a job's main mechanic

SCH has access to free weave slots (3 per minute plus Dissipation, which is also your movement), but the only skills that can be freely used are Embrace/Seraphic Veil (Unconrollable 105p/280p) Whispering Dawn (580p), Fey Blessing (245p), and Fey Union (280p/tick). Compare that to AST's free everything
'Oh but Yusi you also have Seraph's Consolation and Recitation too' Those both require 2 energy drains to use! 3 for both Consolation stacks! A 2 minute cooldown and all 3 aetherflow stacks used on uncontrollable single-target heals and 840p worth of healing and shielding.

Don't disagree there either. I honestly don't have a definite answer to how to fix it or improve it while having no negative impact in other parts of gameplay, class identity or homogenizing, but the discussion is quite interesting. How would you fix that issue with WhM/ScH yourself?

[YusiKha]

How would you fix that issue with WhM/ScH yourself?

At the very minimum
SCH: Add a new spell, called Vitriol (to fit with SCH's spell names having conversational double-meanings)
Vitriol would be an instant-cast targetted AoE (think BLM freeze) that deals 350p over 24s. It would require a Dark Humour stack to be cast.
Dark Humour would be accumulated by consuming Aetherflow aside from Energy Drain (so every healing AF, but no recitation). Casting Aetherflow would remove existing stacks of Dark Humour.
Dark Humour would overwrite the spent AF on the gauge, as shown in this sloppy mockup:


The purpose is to reward the cast of an AF heal with a damaging effect that cannot be spammed. You're be encouraged to chain Dark Humour stacks via Vitriol + AF Heal, while still needing to dump excess aetherflow with Energy Drain (since Vitriol is only once per 24s). Biolysis + Energy Drain is still a DPS gain though.

WHM: Decrease Afflatus Misery's blood lily requirement to 2 (You'll still be able to bank 3)
This means that it is now equivelant to the 3 glares lost to cast it, and WHM players can rejoyce.
Assize changed to an instant-cast 1.5s GCD (think MCH Heat Blast) with 2 charges.

The Misery change is how it should have been from the start - you get an efficient-but-low-potency heal every 30s, and the skill comes planning uses ahead so you can use multiple Raptures alongside Plenary. It also increases WHM's movement by a whopping 1/3 GCD per minute
The Assize change would pack even more unique traits into the skill, partly because I think it would be hilarious, partly because I think that giving WHM more mini-movement&on-demand weaving tools would help them, but not take away from it being the least mobile healer. Also the charges mean that you can save assize for damage, instead of saving damage for assize - I'd be easily persuaded against the charges though, if people feel like assize's static-ness is core to the class.
A 1.5s GCD would reduce its effective potency by 33.3p, but I think the extra damage gained from Misery's change, as well as no longer needing to weave half of your assizes with Afflatus skills, would more than make up for the loss.

[Seraphor]

^ these are both great ideas.