Live letter expectations.

[ForteNightshade]

I straight up don't get how people can say sch is terrible but say whm is actually good. Whm has just as many as problems sch.

Because White Mage's flaws aren't nearly as noticeable outside higher end content. In the hands of a skilled player attempting to optimize, you'll notice the lack of oGCD healing, the lack of mobility and constant clipping issues. None of these stand out in more casual play where someone is far less likely to even care they clipped their GCD or aren't focusing on their Glare casts.

Scholar, on the other hand, is harder to play. That alone breeds criticism. Shields are also routinely unnecessary, especially in lower difficulty content. Which means a good portion of their kit is often useless. Ghosting abilities is equally noticeable because, well, what you intended to have happen just... doesn't. Perhaps the biggest damning aspect for Scholar's criticism though is it had stuff people actually miss. White Mage suffered for years as being the "prog healer" no one wanted afterwards due to its horrible MP management, lack of utility and low damage as a result. Shadowbringers is the first expansion people actually wanted White Mage and weren't asking them to switch to Astro later. Scholar only lost many of the aspect which made it great.

Simply put. People miss what was taken away more than what could be. White Mage could be better but Scholar was better.

[Acece]

Because White Mage's flaws aren't nearly as noticeable outside higher end content. In the hands of a skilled player attempting to optimize, you'll notice the lack of oGCD healing, the lack of mobility and constant clipping issues. None of these stand out in more casual play where someone is far less likely to even care they clipped their GCD or aren't focusing on their Glare casts.

Scholar, on the other hand, is harder to play. That alone breeds criticism. Shields are also routinely unnecessary, especially in lower difficulty content. Which means a good portion of their kit is often useless. Ghosting abilities is equally noticeable because, well, what you intended to have happen just... doesn't. Perhaps the biggest damning aspect for Scholar's criticism though is it had stuff people actually miss. White Mage suffered for years as being the "prog healer" no one wanted afterwards due to its horrible MP management, lack of utility and low damage as a result. Shadowbringers is the first expansion people actually wanted White Mage and weren't asking them to switch to Astro later. Scholar only lost many of the aspect which made it great.

Simply put. People miss what was taken away more than what could be. White Mage could be better but Scholar was better.

So because whm was pretty much always bad people think it's fine now meanwhile sch was great but now it's bad because it's a bigger leap in quality. I guess I can see that. Still don't like it.

Also whm does have the most casual base out of all the healers so it make sense what you're saying.

[FoxCh40s]

So because whm was pretty much always bad people think it's fine now meanwhile sch was great but now it's bad about it's a bigger leap in quality. I guess I can see that. Still don't like it.

Also whm does have the most casual base out of all the healers so it make sense what you're saying.

Scholar isn't even a mere shadow of what it once was. It would be lucky to be just a shadow of its shadow.

[SweetPete]

Scholar isn't even a mere shadow of what it once was. It would be lucky to be just a shadow of its shadow.

Scholar was OP as all heck in ARR/HW/SB. You could dps and do literally very little to no actual healing, adlo, succor and leave it all to your fairy. When your fairy can solo heal dungeons it’s OP. Embrace was ridiculously OP. Not sure if you were on these forums back then but people complained that scholar needed to be nerfed badly and finally in Shb they were.

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right. Now I didn’t think they would go hard like they did on scholar and I agree that it is nothing like it use to be. But let’s be honest here. Scholar needed to be knocked down a peg.

[Anhra]

Scholar isn't even a mere shadow of what it once was. It would be lucky to be just a shadow of its shadow.

More like a shadowflare of its former self, amirite?

[Liam_Harper]

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right.

He was completely off the mark actually. At the time he stated that, SCH's in raids were generally contributing more healing than the other two. They just weren't mindlessly spamming GCD heals or wasting Atherflow on overhealing. This was the same story when they nerfed ED recently to make SCH heal more. SCH's were healing plenty. It's still the same after the nerf. Even after they made Succor cheaper as a hint, good SCH's refused to play badly and overheal to please the devs misinformed notion on how healers "should" work.

It's actually tedious how stubborn they are. They just don't get it.

What is hilarious however, is that this is 100% how WHM's play at endgame. The optimal way to play WHM is to dump the bulk of the healing on your co-heal, especially if they're an AST. Not just for selfish reasons, but for better group dps overall. The entire class is designed into a corner where it has to play that way to be optimal. Your GCD heals lose you more potency, holding Assize loses potency and moving hurts you far more, so if the group needs a hardcast heal it's better overall to dump it on your partner. However, the devs see nothing wrong here at all and stubbornly cling to the triple weakness WHM design of no mobility, no weave and no utility. But they're obsessed with SCH's spamming Succor more.

[Truen]

My guess is they'll continue forcing 1-button spam dps options on us and continue this boring, lame 5.0 healer design intent on homogenization above all else. I have no faith in their ability to create compelling and fun healers anymore.

[FoxCh40s]

More like a shadowflare of its former self, amirite?

HAHA BAZINGA

[QooEr]

Scholar was OP as all heck in ARR/HW/SB. You could dps and do literally very little to no actual healing, adlo, succor and leave it all to your fairy. When your fairy can solo heal dungeons it’s OP. Embrace was ridiculously OP. Not sure if you were on these forums back then but people complained that scholar needed to be nerfed badly and finally in Shb they were.

I think it was a bit much but I did see Yoshi P’s point. He said scholars would leave the bulk of the healing to their healing partners in raids and that wasn’t fair. He was right. Now I didn’t think they would go hard like they did on scholar and I agree that it is nothing like it use to be. But let’s be honest here. Scholar needed to be knocked down a peg.

none of the changes for scholar in shb were justified, except for decreasing the potency of embrace

good scholars back then would actually heal MORE than their cohealers because you could order your fairy to do stuff without dropping your damage gcds, not just things like whispering dawn but you could micromanage embraces to heal people who actually needed it. On top of that they had miasma ii to be able to weave aetherflow heals without the massive potency loss that was ruin ii. That was not a flaw and it was not "OP". Scholar was the only healer where you were actually rewarded for healing more smartly.

come shadowbringers and scholar suddenly has huge dps losses for using any heal, ever, and very little way to mitigate it. and on top of that a mindnumbingly moring damage rotation. thats less of a nerf and more like crippling every aspect of the job for mo reason

[Semirhage]

Scholar absolutely dominated the healer meta for six years. It was a jack and master of all trades. It suffocated healer design space. Squeenix nerfed the everloving crap out of it in Shadowbringers because they were sick of trying to take a careful scalpel to the beast only to see it still dictating party composition after poking around at it.

Shadowbringers changes made Scholar boring, and that sucks. But it absolutely needed the everloving crap nerfed out of it.