Potential Fixes to SCH's Ongoing Design Problems

[GrimGale]

If we can have jobs without party utility like BLM and SAM that ditch out high dps, we cam have Helaers without party utility that ditch out high dps.

Sage seems to be going the route of "Selfish" dps with shields.

Having WHM be the selfish dps with regen/pure heals seems perfectly plausible.

[Semirhage]

If we can have jobs without party utility like BLM and SAM that ditch out high dps, we cam have Helaers without party utility that ditch out high dps.

Sage seems to be going the route of "Selfish" dps with shields.

Having WHM be the selfish dps with regen/pure heals seems perfectly plausible.

I agree this could work. The community would have to be okay with it in order to make it work.

The beginning of Shadowbringers doesn't give me much hope in that vein. Remember the AST/SCH threads baying for blood demanding the "overpowered" WHM get its personal damage nerfed because it was tooooooooo stroooooooong? The DPS seem content with their relative pecking order within their subroles. I have never not seen SCHs flip their lids when WHM gets to do significantly more damage than them. Because Scholar is "supposed" to be "the DPS healer". That's a perception that would need to change for it to work. Scholar can't be "the DPS healer" AND "the utility-rich healer" AND "the smart healer" etc etc etc. One of the major beefs I've had with Scholar as a job over past expansions is that community perception sort of hogged up all of the identity space due to being good at everything; it lead to a lot of "well you can't do this to improve WHM, that would be stealing SCH's identity!".

[dezzmont]

One of the major beefs I've had with Scholar as a job over past expansions is that community perception sort of hogged up all of the identity space due to being good at everything; it lead to a lot of "well you can't do this to improve WHM, that would be stealing SCH's identity!"

I agree with this beef. WHM's overall design also makes it the 'correct' job to be the high personal DPS healer, due to its obvious parallels to BLM with how its DPS rotation is almost purely GCD requiring every cast to come with commitment, while SCH is running around with a lot of weaving mobility, a variant of our GCD that can be used on the run, and a 'co-healer' who keeps up some maintenance heals even while we are DPSing as a key part of our identity that can't be removed when reworking oGCD healing.

Obviously, when you look at that, either the WHM needs to bring some ridiculous party utility, or it needs to do a LOT more DPS than the SCH to make sense. And because we don't want WHMs doing more DPS than dancers, its clear SCH's damage as part of its identity is.... 'wrong.'

A more complex offensive rotation can be part of its identity, or strong toolbox heals that let it spend more time DPSing, and I think the job should definitely be very 'active,' but that really shouldn't translate to potency.

The big issue, of course, is that a lot of nuance between the healers is lost in the current healing system. So small DPS gains on each other makes them the 'best' as well as the fact its much easier to 'enforce' a meta because you can, in fact, just switch to WHM from SCH with a day or two of practice and grinding, compared to making your RDM go SAM or SMN or whatever.

[Dearche]

Sch needs to be detached from arcanist for good

I agree with this. I don't really see why it's so difficult to do either. Just make SCH a classless job like all the newer jobs, and for those people who already has SCH unlocked, just make sure that they have the new SCH at the same level.

Maybe there's some sort of internal coding which prevents this, but I wish that SE would simply admit that if that was the case. Then we wouldn't be so frustrated about it.

I agree this could work. The community would have to be okay with it in order to make it work...

To be honest, this is entirely SE's fault though. Admittedly, it was originally caused by the complaints of dual SCH in DF, but SE's solution was to give big raw heals to SCH, rather than find some other sort of solution.

Being the DPS healer was just happenstance due to SCH's origins as ACN, but that didn't mean that the best solution was to just nerf SCH's damage. It wasn't like they were out DPSing the actual DPS (at least when they were equally skilled). Utility on the other hand could easily be shared. AST became the utility healer the moment it showed up, as it was part of its core identity. Any complaint regarding that only started when chain stratagem was introduced, and even then it was only one skill that wasn't connected to any SCH abilities, just the lore. And the idea of a unique preventative healer was destroyed as WHM got even better mitigation than SCH and a nice shield on top of that.

The only real identity SCH has left is being the broken pet healer.

Admittedly, if SE's real goal in ShB was to wipe out the existing preconceptions by wiping out any real identity and enjoyability of the healers before they actually fix things from a fresh plate in EW, then I would admit things might be worth it. But if that's true, then the changes we get better be REAL good to make up for these two years of tedium and anger, as SE'll have to earn back all the healers that gave up and quit to DPS.

Personally, I enjoy DRG, BLM, and SMN way more than playing SCH lately, and my persistence in my first love doesn't pay out in EW, I'm going to jump ship to being a DPS main from now on.

[Liam_Harper]

WHM doesn't even need to have ridiculous dps compared to the other two, but what gets to me most is how WHM is the least capable of healing while doing dps. As a WHM you don't get both, you pick one or the other. SCH suffers heal tax too, but can output a fairly decent hps without suffering too much loss. AST pays no heal tax at all. WHM however kills its heal output just to barely keep up with the other two on dps. Assize is blown on cd for damage, lilies are for movement or intermissions, your oGCD's rely on very limited weave windows and GCD heals are a 300 loss.

If WHM is going to be the 0 utility healer, it should be churning out both competitive dps and healing. AST does both easily and has utility. Currently WHM functions because AST carries it and SCH isn't everyone's cup of tea, but once we divide into shield/pure and WHM is competing directly with AST for one of two "Pure" spots, it's in trouble unless things really change. Why bring a healer that does one of two things and can't do the third when you have a healer that does all 3 simultaneously.

[Semirhage]

WHM doesn't even need to have ridiculous dps compared to the other two, but what gets to me most is how WHM is the least capable of healing while doing dps. As a WHM you don't get both, you pick one or the other. SCH suffers heal tax too, but can output a fairly decent hps without suffering too much loss. AST pays no heal tax at all. WHM however kills its heal output just to barely keep up with the other two on dps. Assize is blown on cd for damage, lilies are for movement or intermissions, your oGCD's rely on very limited weave windows and GCD heals are a 300 loss.

If WHM is going to be the 0 utility healer, it should be churning out both competitive dps and healing. AST does both easily and has utility. Currently WHM functions because AST carries it and SCH isn't everyone's cup of tea, but once we divide into shield/pure and WHM is competing directly with AST for one of two "Pure" spots, it's in trouble unless things really change. Why bring a healer that does one of two things and can't do the third when you have a healer that does all 3 simultaneously.

I completely agree. One of the myriad reasons WHM has traditionally fallen so far behind after an expansion gets past its first major patch or two (obscene overbuffs to the competition aside) is that its personal damage is so rough to upkeep compared to the other two. If we're aiming at a landscape like the caster DPS, where you have the utility-heavy casters doing less personal damage than BLM but bringing raid buffs to (mostly) make up for it, it's harder to get working just because of the way that AST and SCH's healing/damage kits aren't mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if SCH does *slightly* less personal damage than WHM against a training dummy, because SCH is just head and shoulders more capable of keeping the blasting rolling while making sure the the party stays alive. Add utility on top of that, and the healer that has to eat into their healing commitment time to do damage stands no chance of keeping up with the wonder twins.

[Rilifane]

I completely agree. One of the myriad reasons WHM has traditionally fallen so far behind after an expansion gets past its first major patch or two (obscene overbuffs to the competition aside) is that its personal damage is so rough to upkeep compared to the other two. If we're aiming at a landscape like the caster DPS, where you have the utility-heavy casters doing less personal damage than BLM but bringing raid buffs to (mostly) make up for it, it's harder to get working just because of the way that AST and SCH's healing/damage kits aren't mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if SCH does *slightly* less personal damage than WHM against a training dummy, because SCH is just head and shoulders more capable of keeping the blasting rolling while making sure the the party stays alive. Add utility on top of that, and the healer that has to eat into their healing commitment time to do damage stands no chance of keeping up with the wonder twins.

It was really sad to watch how quickly WHM got outperformed once again by SCH.
The first tier, AST/ WHM was great and SCH was the red-headed stepchild. After that it only went downhill. The only boss where even AST/ WHM comps playing at average level pulled ahead was e6s because of the extremely low healing requirement coupled with frequent transitions for lily dumps and the low movement requirement.
But the healing potential SCH has is completely bonkers; they have so many tools to deal with all kinds of situations that they will not suffer a signifcant dps loss unless a party is really, really bad. WHM suffers in anything but perfectly coordinated parties even with an AST as co heal.
And with lilies having to be used for weaving, movement and healing, competing for 3 different functions and all with different timings, while being on a 30s cooldown, what good a are a few hundrep dps more on paper? The moment a WHM cannot freely use lilies as movement and weaving tools and having to hold them back for healing, they fall behind big time. Then they get to chose between being Ser Clip-a-lot and Ser Medica Spammer or (more likely) a lot of both.
Even in coordinated parties I felt like I was griefing my co heal no matter how well I tried to time my movement lilies with healing.

Right now it's not a choice between "take a team of two healers with high healing potential for safety" and "take a team with less healing potential but good dps if you feel brave". You get both by ditching WHM. It could very well be the high risk/ high reward healer but that probably goes against SE goal of making it the beginner-friendly healer. Even risks that only become apparent in endgame content are probably not acceptable in SEs book.

A few things I'd like to see for SCH are:
- an option to turn Succor/ Adlo into a full shield, similiar to ET and on a low CD aswell
- make the next 3 AF skills crit after Dissipation, maybe let the heal bonus affect oGCDs aswell, because right now the skill is pretty lackluster, boring and mostly an optimization tool
- Aetherpact and Fey Blessing can still be used when Seraph is summoned, because it's supposed to be an overall stronger version of the fairy, not a limited one
- fairy always remembers the position it got placed. Seriously, the frequent repositioning is annoying and costs valuable time until you can use the fairy skills effectively again
- fix ghosting. Enough said.

But for the fairy itself I pretty much lost all hope unless they reverse the change made to fairy skills. But not having them as oGCDs would make SCHs free heal explode and would require signifcant rebalancing, escpecially for WHM. Pretty sure that's not going to happen.