A summary of healer issues

[FoxCh40s]

Heavensward wasn’t special. ARR through SB Scholar was absolutely broken though. It had too much free healing. And warped the other two around it. Micromanaging the fairy wasn’t worth the carpal tunnel at high ping imo. I’m fine with the nerfs it got in Shadowbringers. I’m not okay with the trim on their DPS kit. Any changes I want on the healing side are baseline throughput nerfs that come coupled with flexibility focused buffs. Mostly because I want to widen the gap between Scholar’s min and max throughput.

All Heavensward really had was consistent tank damage that actually cut into Embrace and Regens through a combination of omni-present autos, mini busters/cleaves, crits, and actual factual tank busters. Stormblood Scholar had a sheer excess of tank auto tools. Shadowbringers gave everyone Tank Mastery instead of killing aggro reduction from non-tanks and took away the mini busters and consistent autos for less frequent periods of slightly heavier auto damage contingent on each fight. Those changes resulted in more consistent damage intake, that is overall lower than previous expansions when you finally factor in relative gear scaling into the equation.

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

[Mortex]

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

and also only the problem that noc ast was hot grabage almost all the time together with white mage so you only had one decent healer option that whas also good and fun too play.

[Roeshel]

and also only the problem that noc ast was hot grabage almost all the time together with white mage so you only had one decent healer option that whas also good and fun too play.

How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

[Grimoire-M]

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

No. Because I still think you could nerf Scholar harder given how little SE challenges healers as-is. It also wasn't that deep back then either. The majority of your gameplay that's different from now was in-between your Broil spam you'd occasionally mash an Embrace macro or target a party member manually for it between casts if the AI wasn't going to handle it (fun fact, The fairy was generally decent at this, so you'd really only do this for a tank when literally nothing was going in), or one of three pet actions, the majority of which were close to useless on BOTH pets. And the Embrace portion you can simulate with /place now with exactly the same results, just under different conditions.

Sure, sometimes you might have some Deploy shenanigans that were worthwhile, which I agree was satisfying to use with the old fairy, but most of the 'interesting' situations with that involved LB cheese or pet abuse during the same raidwide spam we complain about having too many actions for now, the former of which wouldn't be possible even if SCH hadn't been nerfed. Shields already need a second look to ensure their shelf life extends past the first month.

And as for the rest of Scholar's best traits, most of it wasn't even in Heavensward! Quickened Aetherflow and Miasma II were Stormblood exclusive interactions. Booksmacking and Ruin II spam wasn't a staple like it was in ARR either, where I'd say SCH was at it's best because it actually kind of sucked at something (and didn't have to compete with another healer or force its co-healer to fight over a slot). Cleric Stance wasn't an amazing button either. Most of Scholar's best abuses of it died with ARR Lustrate, which, yes, meant you'd swap out and back into it fairly consistently if you needed to use Aetherflow heals, but I don't think that added engaging gameplay.


If you like fiddly micromanagement, fine, but don't pretend it was 'complicated'. Fights never demanded you actually jam 4 different actions and movement into a single GCD as the "Scholar's potential" back then. At best you were just delaying your pet's 2s cast timer because of the same garbage AI you're mad at now, only now it fires without you needing to give yourself carpal tunnel.

Finally, we get to Selene. Which most people didn't use past the opener. Gordias showed everyone where she was useful and where she wasn't, and it became clear Eos was the better option most of the time based purely off of Rouse + Whispering Dawn's value. Keeping both healers DPSing as long as possible was worth more than a fiddly haste buff that you had to adjust your party's skill/spell speed thresholds around to really properly abuse.

Scholar's healing kit is just as complicated now as it was back then. More cooldowns, less synergies. The problem is the DPS kit being gutted, pure and simple. I don't think we need a Cleric Stance rehash across all healers (if SE wants Sage to use it then I hope they actually DO MORE with the stance concept, ideally more than Tank Stances and AST Sects were), but beyond bringing the DoTs/Bane back I would like to see something added to make weaving feel less like hot garbage. I don't expect more than that because SE's pretty good at messing things up as it stands.

sch+ast wasnt the only decent comp. when people say it its mostly hyperbole. Whm+sch was a decent healing pair as well. it was just mostly better for prog and was usually the comp in world 1st clears. however Whm+sch was actually found in some top speedkills in Stormblood, so its not like sch ast was so overpowering that it was impossible to compete.

sch+ast wasnt "too strong" imo, but it was easily the best comp because whm lacked utility/damage and noct lacked mitigation. for whm ast to be on par with the other healer comps whm wouldve needed to do more damage to compensate not having chain strat, and noct ast would've needed enough mitigation/healing to compensate not having soil. but they never bothered touching either the whole expansion

had they ever actually adressed those issues then maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

WHM/AST didn't have Embrace. They had to overcome an effective 2% DPS difference just from the regen tax alone. Nevermind all the other crap Scholar did. It's also why current Scholar isn't that bad. Free healing is good. Even if you can't control it perfectly.

[QooEr]

WHM/AST didn't have Embrace. They had to overcome an effective 2% DPS difference just from the regen tax alone. Nevermind all the other crap Scholar did.

i agree, i forgot to mention the free healing from the fairy that both also lacked and cut into their combined dps even more.

It's also why current Scholar isn't that bad. Free healing is good. Even if you can't control it perfectly.

I wouldnt say any of the healers are bad rn, just boring. If anything ast is too strong for the same reasons scholar was too strong pre-shb (most dps, endless free healing).


I concede that embrace was too strong back then, but at least fairy micromanging was something else you had the option to do if you wanted to try even harder to optimize healing. Current healing optimization is mostly letting ast do everything, begging your party to use their mitigations and healing whenever a weave window comes up. zzz

[Roeshel]

i agree, i forgot to mention the free healing from the fairy that both also lacked and cut into their combined dps even more.



I wouldnt say any of the healers are bad rn, just boring. If anything ast is too strong for the same reasons scholar was too strong pre-shb (most dps, endless free healing).


I concede that embrace was too strong back then, but at least fairy micromanging was something else you had the option to do if you wanted to try even harder to optimize healing. Current healing optimization is mostly letting ast do everything, begging your party to use their mitigations and healing whenever a weave window comes up. zzz

AST is not that strong when compared to the other healers at min item level. It is just the healer that scales better and it becomes more apparent in 8-man content.

AST is a favorable choice only for raids and trials. For casual content at level cap, WHM and SCH win hard over AST with over 2k rDPS in Paglth'an. You are simply more effective as a WHM or SCH in dungeons than as an AST.

From what I learned, SCH was better than anyone in anything, including dungeons.

Edit:
We can just compare healers rDPS in Amaurot(item level sync) with Matoya's relict(no item level sync):
Amaurot: :
AST: 9k-9.5k*
SCH: 10,5k
WHM: 11,3k
*The first AST has 9k rDPS patch 5.3 but the 2nd has 9.5k and they are from patch 5.4

Matoya:
AST: 16,1k- 13.1k*
SCH: 15k
WHM: 16,6k
*First and second-best again. If SCH was in a party with yellow parse players like the #1 AST instead of gray they would have probably gone up to 16k as well.

The out scaling is visible. AST is a good role to pick when people around you know how to play but that's rarely the case in dungeons. AST's damage output falls off quickly in casual content.