Is it fun?

[Grimoire-M]

I imagine it's mainly that it's a negative downside of having a pet, but there aren't many upsides to pets. Sure it's "avoidable" but compare it to, say, AST that simply presses a GCD and it triggers just fine. It's not unusual that players find it preferable to play classes where oGCD's function in a straightforward manner rather than a class where half the oGCD's are tied to a mechanic that complicates them, with little unintended interactions to micromanage and avoid, but doesn't offer any benefit in exchange. Either way, regardless of my own opinion, it's a fact SCH popularity has plummeted this expansion.

Clipping for dps gains and potions are indeed issues too.

The obvious benefit in exchange is range and tempo. You have a second character that can handle mechanics entirely separate from what you are doing and can be in positions you can’t be in order to do so, but you have to think ahead if you want to have it react properly. The only functionally similar abilities to to what the fairy can do on AST and WHM are Medica II, Cure III, Asylum, Synastry, and Earthly Star, most of which don’t emulate the same range and require GCD input to take advantage of at all. Place still works the way it did in Stormblood. I think it’s fine apart from the issues we’ve brought up around their numbers lacking clarity and needing more tweaking to the current toolkit and AI. I’m in the camp that she needs to resolve her orders faster but otherwise functions fine given her constraints.

[Manuka]

The obvious benefit in exchange is range and tempo. You have a second character that can handle mechanics entirely separate from what you are doing and can be in positions you can’t be in order to do so...

Sadly I wouldn't call it much of a benefit anymore since that aspect of the fairy was nerfed into the ground. Removing manual Embrace, plus the change to the AI healing threshold, plus the removal of Rouse and just a general reduction in potency overall has left the fairy completely neutered. In past expansions she was great for triage healing in things like Hello World or A7S jails where you could place her near targets of high priority and Rouse+Embrace spam those targets with great success. Currently Embrace heals what, ~5% of a non-tank health bar? At that potency it will never top anyone off in time in situations that call for it. And that's assuming she even heals them since you can no longer manually Embrace and with no threshold she's liable to heal the person missing two health over the person at 2% health. You could Aetherpact but its application is based on your range not the fairy, meaning you'd have to preset it before you move outta range and waste some gauge. As it stands the best triage move in the game probably belongs to Ast now with Horoscope. Once you get the timings down you can easily set up Horoscope to auto-pop during moments where you can't reach everyone (ie. Icelit or Relativity). Meanwhile the fairy's strengths now lie in its AoE skills and being eaten for more energy drains.

[Brandedblade]

snip.

Irregardless of whether or not the benefit is as potent as it used to be, it's still there and present. Being able to do silly things like Send my fairy on the other side of the map on e3 so that i can use her abilities to heal the group over there while using say, Indom on the side im on to heal them, no matter how niche and unneeded it might be, is still fun. I could care less whether or not it actually mattered, having a seperate entity that i can use as a focal point for some of my spells is fun, it's something extra to manage at the end of the day regardless of it's actual value.