After E8S, I promised myself I would play another role instead

[Brandedblade]

Yes but at the same time they made not pressing Broil like your life depends on it even more punishing, you better not press that Ruin II button.

Thank god I'm not a world first raider or else I'd be in sooo much trouble right now.

[EaMett]

Thank god I'm not a world first raider or else I'd be in sooo much trouble right now.

Playing optimized isn't just limited to world firsts

[Gravagar]

My static let me swap off healing to be a tank for a tier. I'd absolutely want to swap back if I got my old Scholar playstyle back, of course, but it feels futile to even hold out hope for that.


Also, uhh... yeah, enjoying the feeling of contributing as much as possible to your party's success via skilled plays is not mutually exclusive with being on the bleeding edge of savage clears. Current healer design is sorely lacking in that feeling compared to past healer spell/ability loadouts.

[ItMe]

Playing optimized isn't just limited to world firsts

Yes, optimization is good, but beneath worlds firsts and ultimates this is basically just needlessly hyperbolic:

Yes but at the same time they made not pressing Broil like your life depends on it even more punishing, you better not press that Ruin II button.

[Liam_Harper]

It's true though. It's not that you aren't allowed to lean on Ruin II or you have to min-max in Savage, EX or Normal, but many of us do and the fact is you're punished with a 90 potency loss each time and those add up fast. So for players who simply enjoy optimizing and pushing their best regardless of the content, the main way to do that is spam Broil and cut Ruin II usage as much as possible.

[EaMett]

Yes, optimization is good, but beneath worlds firsts and ultimates this is basically just needlessly hyperbolic:

That list is far from complete, you're forgetting early tier clears, min ilvl encounters, non-homogenous skill levels in groups where some people have to push to cover for others (which is like 80% of groups tbh), pugs for those same reasons, and you know... everyone who wants to be good at what they do.

If your point is that with gear people will eventually make it then 1) that's not true, not everyone gets to clear a tier, 2) we could always take that reasoning further and say everything is fine because they'll be able to downsync the content next expansion. Why bother right?

The reality is that even today almost one month into the savage tier release. You aren't making it past 12s without optimizing some. (And the DPS checks this tier aren't the worse we've had)

We also can't forget that optimized play is the measuring stick for balance. So it's also very important.

[Rilifane]

Yes, optimization is good, but beneath worlds firsts and ultimates this is basically just needlessly hyperbolic:

It doesn't matter if it's neccessary or not.
The point is that healers are the only role that gets punished for better gameplay. And they even made it worse with 5.3 AST and 5.4 SCH change. You basically have to chose between good gameplay and fun gameplay. You may be able to chose fun gameplay for casual content and use skills like Physick, Adlo, AF heals and other skills you don't really need at that time just so you have a bit more variety in which buttons you press, but deep down you know a good old Broil is what you should be doing. Now more than ever.

[Dogempire]

It's honestly pretty sad that they've made the tactician job braindead, you get 1 dot, 1 filler, and a pet that comes in a choice of 2 colors.

[Gemina]

I don't run current savage with my SCH, but I believe it was around Innocence EX that I made the decision to try giving a DPS job a try in harder content. Previous to that it was all SCH. As I took SCH into additional trials like Hades, Ruby, and WoL; it finally became clear to me that I was strongly disliking that I could not heal reactively in these encounters, and expect to get clears.

What I mean by that is that not only is it detrimental if I am too slow, but it also is if too many players are taking unnecessary damage and KOs. In short, the healing, along with the encounter is scripted. This combined with filling downtime with Broil definitely has caused a bit of a withdrawal from healing harder content, and I can only imagine it being even worse in savage and ultimate where there is even less room for error.

Healing more reactively and having to resort to GCD heals is when I am the most engaged as a SCH or any healer. I don't gain many fans saying I couldn't care less about what SCH has lost as far as its DPS identity goes throughout the years. If 3.0 SCH was still with us today, I would have made the same afore mentioned decision because I DO NOT want to be focusing on optimizing my damage when playing a healer. DO NOT get me wrong; I still do this when I play healer. I am just not a fan, nor ever was a big fan of being a green-DPS outside of 4-man content.

[Gemina]

It doesn't matter if it's neccessary or not.
The point is that healers are the only role that gets punished for better gameplay. And they even made it worse with 5.3 AST and 5.4 SCH change. You basically have to chose between good gameplay and fun gameplay. You may be able to chose fun gameplay for casual content and use skills like Physick, Adlo, AF heals and other skills you don't really need at that time just so you have a bit more variety in which buttons you press, but deep down you know a good old Broil is what you should be doing. Now more than ever.

Odd thing about this, is that I find WHM to be the healer that suffers the most from this. Not SCH. This is especially true in casual content where the Afflatus skills aren't really needed because the ogcd threshold is never breached. I suppose Solace is still viable outside combat if someone needs to be topped up. Asylum and Assize will take care of any AoE healing that needs to be done, which negates Rapture. Basically, if you want to use Misery, you can't optimize WHM.

Then you have PE which requires you to follow up with a GCD, and that negates the ogcd benefit to this ability. It isn't my intention to compare WHM to SCH, both have issues that involve clipping and being punished for optimal gameplay. However, I did want to point out aspects within healing that also have issues. Aetherflow and lilies are both on this list. If the devs were to address these issues properly, it should improve the gameplay overall for both jobs. That is what I would hope for in 6.0, and not reverting back to the relic that is 3.0 SCH.