New healer: Sage. Barrier healer.

[IceBlueNinja]

If double AST was meta, then you’d see it more frequently. But somehow...you don’t. Besides, blowing all of your big healing and shielding CDs at the same time would be a horrible use of resources in any serious encounter. It would make some mechanics too mitigated, and leave others with nothing. Nice try, though.

The developers have had 3 expansions to get Nocturnal Sect “right”—or the hybrid aspect “right”, if you’d rather think of things that way. They have failed each time. The duality/hybrid nature of AST has always been a balancing nightmare: make it too strong in one sect, and you oust the accompanying healer—especially when you factor in AST’s rDPS gains. Make it too weak, and AST is ousted (see early ShB and how terrible both Diurnal and Nocturnal AST was in terms of healing versus WHM and SCH) or one Sect becomes staggeringly superior (this has been the case with Diurnal versus Noctural for ages—even after countless buffs to Noct to make it “better”, Diurnal has always been the more MP and resource efficient of the two. Even now. This was an inevitability, and it has very little to do with people being “scholar lovers”. People that see this are just being realistic. And understanding the struggle this job has gone through in terms of balancing for 6 years.



The issue here is getting it to crit on all party members. Whether or not an Aspected Helios crits is RNG. It will crit on some party members, and not crit on others.

point is sch migi is garbage and its the lamest healer needing resources to heal and that is dumb . weak potency hral and lacks emegency heals. dark night has ld on and u got no aether flow to lustrate and imdo the only weak aoe heal they got is a 35 sec cd while as can light and fling heals none stop or whm can bene to heal the dark.

[IceBlueNinja]

If double AST was meta, then you’d see it more frequently. But somehow...you don’t. Besides, blowing all of your big healing and shielding CDs at the same time would be a horrible use of resources in any serious encounter. It would make some mechanics too mitigated, and leave others with nothing. Nice try, though.

The developers have had 3 expansions to get Nocturnal Sect “right”—or the hybrid aspect “right”, if you’d rather think of things that way. They have failed each time. The duality/hybrid nature of AST has always been a balancing nightmare: make it too strong in one sect, and you oust the accompanying healer—especially when you factor in AST’s rDPS gains. Make it too weak, and AST is ousted (see early ShB and how terrible both Diurnal and Nocturnal AST was in terms of healing versus WHM and SCH) or one Sect becomes staggeringly superior (this has been the case with Diurnal versus Noctural for ages—even after countless buffs to Noct to make it “better”, Diurnal has always been the more MP and resource efficient of the two. Even now. This was an inevitability, and it has very little to do with people being “scholar lovers”. People that see this are just being realistic. And understanding the struggle this job has gone through in terms of balancing for 6 years.



The issue here is getting it to crit on all party members. Whether or not an Aspected Helios crits is RNG. It will crit on some party members, and not crit on others.

point is sch migi is garbage and its the lamest healer needing resources to heal and that is dumb . weak potency hral and lacks emegency heals. dark night has ld on and u got no aether flow to lustrate and imdo the only weak aoe heal they got is a 35 sec cd while as can light and fling heals none stop or whm can bene to heal the dark. besides sch cant even stack each skills while 2 ast can with all skills except cards . 2 whm can stack regens and dirunal ast can work with whm. sorry dear sch needs improvement.

[Saefinn]

I instantly cringed hearing the words "PURE HEALER" and "BARRIER HEALER".

I am conflicted. Because I think it could either work great or work badly. This depends on implementation. I'll give my reasoning.

In 2.0. The shield healer mentality worked. SCH and WHM had a good relationship where their opposing healing philosophies balanced each other out.
In 3.0 a new healer tried to find its place in this relationship, so it tried to fit in both niches. It didn't work. Balance was a nightmare and the measures to fix it had been unfriendly.
In 3.0 SCH also got one of its weaknesses patched up, it was enough to make it OP. It's weakness made it more dependent on its shields.
But more oGCD's and strong heals meant SCH, WHM and AST could have a decent amount of pure healing.
So as it stands there mentality is not really present. Hence my previous suggestion of making healers well rounded and changing the mechanics and feel of how they play.

This is why I'm conflicted. I see the logic. It's a design philosophy that worked and it's one from when healers we better balance. And maybe there can be an encouraging thought in that they maybe asked the question "what worked before?"

I can see how it makes balance easier. And honestly? I'd like to go back to that mentality, because I love shield healing. It was one things I enjoyed about SCH. So seeing this makes the nostalgia part of me think "actually, this is the kind of thing I want". SCH is a husk of what I use to like about it. It's why I'm an AST now.

But for shield healing to work, you need to make some dependency on shields and not JUST great shield abilities. 5.0 showed more shield focus in some of the toolkit, but its oGCD's are just too efficient to make it dependent on shields. If you don't make the healers dependent on them, then they act as buffers to damage not as a healing style.

So it's going to end up being pure heals up until you get to high end content when it's not enough. Heck, that said, I know a SCH who is top percentile that doesn't tend to rely on shields.

So I think for them to make this work then other adjustments are needed. I am hoping with them making it their mission to do "pure/shield" mentality that they don't have to try to make jobs too well rounded. Yet, the track record for healers at the moment leaves plenty to be desired. But I'll withhold judgment until I was what it will actually entail.

In a situation where it works as intended. I expect we'd have more set ups like: WHM/SCH, WHM/SAG, AST/SCH. AST/SAG and fewer WHM/AST and SCH/SAG.
It could then meaning SCH for example is left to compete with SAG rather than SAG, WHM and AST.

[Jirah]

Starting level 70

Welp hopefully SAG means don’t like glam weapons cuz you’ll have none

[Absurdity]

SCH just always has a response for unavoidable AoE damage, and through various methods which really makes them feel like a tactician opposed to the fewer fallback choices AST has. IOW, SCH has its identity set in stone as a primary mitigation healer.

Sure makes me feel like the barrier tactician when I make the tactical decision to simply ignore my shields since it's a waste of a GCD, let people take the damage because I know it won't kill them anyway and then just heal the damage with a guaranteed crit indom that also doesn't cost me any aetherflow. /lol

Starting level 70

Welp hopefully SAG means don’t like glam weapons cuz you’ll have none

Anyone that plays gnb or dnc is already used to it

[HyoMinPark]

point is sch migi is garbage and its the lamest healer needing resources to heal and that is dumb . weak potency hral and lacks emegency heals. dark night has ld on and u got no aether flow to lustrate and imdo the only weak aoe heal they got is a 35 sec cd while as can light and fling heals none stop or whm can bene to heal the dark.

SCH’s niche is preventative healing—in other words, mitigating hits to lessen incoming damage. Not burst healing. That has never been its niche despite Indomitability being a good resource (it was actually super strong in HW, and one of the best AOE heals at that time). SCHs exist to mitigate the damage—not to provide raw healing or “emergency healing” like WHM or Diurnal AST.

Living Dead is a terrible tank cooldown to begin with that even AST has to waste more resources on than a job like WHM, who has Benediction (which it’s actually terrible design to lock a skill like Bene into LD—it really lessens the uses you could optimally put it towards, as you will always want it to be there for LD versus not there). Sure, it doesn’t suffer as much as SCH, but then again, SCH has never been meant to provide that kind of burst healing in a party setting. They exist to mitigate. As does AST when you put it in Nocturnal Sect—and you’ll notice that Noct AST lacks some of its raw healing that it has in Diurnal Sect (e.g., Diurnal COpp regens, CU providing a lasting regen, Aspected Helios regens, just a simple Aspected Benefic regen, which is an infinitely better use of A.Benefic’s GCD versus a shield outside of tankbusters—which are less frequent nowadays compared to in the past).

Your problem ultimately seems to be a failure in understanding how each healer is supposed to function, and instead thinking they should all function in the same way/have the same kind of raw power or niche. They all have their own niches that they fulfill: some mitigate, some burst heal. That is purposeful. It’s no doubt that all three could use adjustments—and SCH is not nearly as strong as it used to be. But as I said before, if double AST was such an optimal combination, you would see it in speedkills. Double AST has never been meta outside of late HW where it was parse meta to have two ASTs. And that had nothing to do with their healing toolkit, and everything to do with AOE Balance being a +10% damage buff.

besides sch cant even stack each skills while 2 ast can with all skills except cards . 2 whm can stack regens and dirunal ast can work with whm

Double AST cannot stack skills that are the same. Two Diurnal ASTs cannot stack regens. Just like 2 Nocturnal ASTs cannot stack shields (so just like 2 SCHs and SCH+Noct AST, if you’re running that for whatever reason). So hopefully you realize that, and are aware of it when making this comment. ASTs being able to stack skills relies on them being in two different sects—but even so, Nocturnal AST does not have answers or equivalents to some of SCH’s toolkit. And their resources are more efficient when being put towards regens. That has always been the case. Nocturnal Sect has never won out over Diurnal as the better sect, and there lies the issue with the hybrid design.

This is exactly what I mean. You simply don't need noct AST for most fights since you still have access to shields through neutral sect which will most likely be all the shielding you'll need if combined with other mitigation tools, if you even need any shields at all.

This is however also my fear for the rework, that shields will stay unnecessary for most encounters if you mitigate them properly, making double regen healer the more useful option.

Ultimate will likely still require shields to survive certain mechanics. So there will be those situations where I think double regen healers wouldn’t be a viable option for most groups—even with Neutral Sect. TEA’s healer comp is still WHM/SCH or DiAST/SCH. There are two comps I’ve found that are WHM/AST for TEA and the AST is DiAST, but they are also some of the fastest kills for the fight, and therefore the most optimized. Fact of the matter is that most Ultimate groups won’t be able to achieve such optimization—and while it’s been shown that double-regen is viable, it’s also likely unachievable by your standard Ultimate group. So they will still default to regen-shield combo, more than likely. Neutral Sect isn’t available for the 70 ones, so UCoB and UwU would likely still require the intended regen-shield pair even with all of our mitigations we have now.

Ideally, I would like for shields to still remain viable in both Savage and Ultimate. Not just in Ultimate.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

point is sch migi is garbage and its the lamest healer needing resources to heal and that is dumb . weak potency hral and lacks emegency heals. dark night has ld on and u got no aether flow to lustrate and imdo the only weak aoe heal they got is a 35 sec cd while as can light and fling heals none stop or whm can bene to heal the dark.

400 potency (potentially 3200 pot total per use) heal every 30s
800 potency heal every 45s that can also be preplanned or used reactively.
600 potency aoe regen every 30s, coupled with 10% dmg reduction.
588 potency aoe regen every 60s for free & can be placed strategically.
245 potency (potentially 1960 pot total per use) aoe heal every 60s provided you have 10 fae gauge to spend (you will always have it past 10-20s into a pull or you're really doing something very wrong). Also a great follow-up heal.
Strongest single target regen
An ability to force some of their heals into critical heals + no resources required.
Free fairy ‘regen’ across the duration of encounter, 2100 potency per minute as long as she has somebody to heal constantly.
Fairy on steroid, a.k.a. Seraph.
Oh, and they’re all oGCD & can be used in combat.

I ain’t sure from where did you come up with ‘weak potency’ against SCH.

Lack of emergency heal? Solution: personal/group planning to not let that ‘emergency’ happens How often do this ‘emergency’ happens? If it happens too much in one’s gameplay then they need to assess not only their own SCH (or basically any healer) performance, but also their party/group’s. Same goes to DRK’s [Living Dead]. Tanks never need their invuln in normal contents unless some stupidly disastrous behavior happens. For raiding, that’s why we have ‘cohealer’. Work together with them and walk out happily with your spoils.

[GrimGale]

As for Sage, we didn't exactly get a clue on its internal systems. Hopefully they will give us something more interesting a resource than lillies.

Maybe some sort of Aetherial charge for each Noulith?

Shields getting hit refills the aetherial charge or some such.

[Gemina]

Sure makes me feel like the barrier tactician when I make the tactical decision to simply ignore my shields since it's a waste of a GCD, let people take the damage because I know it won't kill them anyway and then just heal the damage with a guaranteed crit indom that also doesn't cost me any aetherflow. /lol

Do harder content.

[Gemina]

While I know the footage we got with Sage showed some basic offensive skills, what I saw was this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IU5V_NiqRk

around 30:42. I'm sure many of you have seen this series.