Balance between SGE and SCH

[Sighearth]

Not every GCD heal is the same.
Helios: 400 healing potency, 15y radius, 700 MP (on the healer with infinite MP), costs 250 damage potency
Cure III: 600 healing potency, 6y radius, 1500 MP (on the healer with the worst MP economy), costs 310 damage potency.

None of this screams "more efficient" at all.

Yours is indeed a flawed logic. Bigger shields and Expedient are very strong exactly because they are not mandatory. As such, they are an advantage and not a requirement. Why do you think Divine Veil, Shake it off or Passage of Arms are strong skills? Becausethey are not mandatory (nothing is anyway) and represent a clear advantage that give you an easier time in prog/in some strats.

Unless a job is hilariously undertuned (like PLD and DNC at the moment), it doesn't matter. SCH and SGE have both their pros and cons (and they could even be used together to great results, making your point even worse). If and when Chain Stratagem gives SCH higher rDPS, will you be asking for SGE buffs because there is no reason to use it?

1) It actually screams efficiency, suppose you need 4000 potency to heal the party. WHM -> 6.6 Cure III (10 000 MP) and 2046 damage potency cost.
AST -> 10 Helios -> (7000 MP) 2500 damage potency cost.
So cure 3 achieves that in less gcds (meaning faster), costing less damage. If you use 2 thin airs, the MP cost will be the same (7000 MP)

2) I'm not saying that they are not strong enough because those are not mandatory, what I'm saying is that they will NOT be used to guarantee a sch,PLD,etc a spot exactly because they are not mandatory. What is mandatory is damage, if the damage discrepancy between 2 jobs is high it doesn't matter any other utility that does not translate to damage. SGE have 30% more free heals than SCH while also doing more damage. That 30% translates directly into damage that makes the situation worse. Now get SCH and don't use ED at all to compete with SGE healing, you will be healing more than SGE but SCH dps will be so much worse than SGE that this discrepancy will makes SGE objectively better choice. SCH can be behind SGE and terms of DPS and healing, even if chain surpasses the breakpoint of 8% SCHs DPS, the problem is that 30% free healing difference is too much. For SCH to be close to SGE (even if it loses by a small margin) it will be healing way less. Can bigger shields. expedience, translate in more raid dps? Maybe in niche situations that more likely than not will not make SCH a more attractive choice.

3) SCH and SGE working good does not goes against my argument. On the contrary, SCH can't replace SGE so it works with it because it does more damage than AST currently. As WHM can't free heal, the other contender would be SCH or AST (that can free heal) since AST dps is way too low right now, SCH wins out. If AST gets a slight dps potency adjust then the speed kill/optimization comp will not be SCH/SGE but AST/SGE.