So 4+ years on since the pairing first Dominated the raiding scene.

[ty_taurus]

SGE sacrifices utility and offensive buffs in exchange for high personal DPS that does outperform SCH & AST even with their raid buffs. It's also no slouch on mitigation and offers the highest total sustained healing even if its burst healing potential is low. The fact that its GCD barriers don't stack with SCH's is largely irrelevant as a good SGE rarely casts barriers to begin with, and since SCH's barriers are generally better thanks to Deployment Tactics, SGE very comfortably takes a back seat to rare instances of barrier healing when paired with a SCH.

SCH offers decent damage and a very powerful raid buff in Chain Stratagem as well as greater party utility over SGE. Expedient and Deployment Critlo offer a much wider safety net than what SGE can provide making it especially safer for less confident healers and parties. Something to note that applies to AST as well is that raid buffs shine very strongly at the beginning of a raid tier because the healer doesn't need to roll for gear in order to improve in contributions since geared DPS will add to your contributions for you during buff windows. SGE needs to be selfish to keep up with SCH and AST early on which isn't ideal.

AST lacks overall offensive contributions, but once again buffs do matter especially at the beginning of a raid tier (and the DPS love the constant flat boosts overall). It just has extremely powerful healing resources and burst healing potential, which is especially helpful and safe for tight healing windows such as final Coherence during P2S (and of course Death's Toll). Savage can have some demanding heal moments which AST can do far easier than any of the other healers, and it's not just Macrocosmos we're talking about. Neutral Sect, Earthly Star, and Collective Unconscious are all extremely useful and are straight up better than most of what anyone else offers in terms of healing. It's not necessary by any means, but AST makes healing checks far easier.

Any combination of these 3 has value. SGE offers high performance, AST offers high safety and great early prog benefits, and SCH fits comfortably in the middle offering good performance, good prog benefits, and good safety. I'd say that's pretty nicely balanced for the most part. If they can preserve that balance and finally fix healer gameplay, we could have a really fun and healthy healer meta.

[Semirhage]

Any combination of these 3 has value. SGE offers high performance, AST offers high safety and great early prog benefits, and SCH fits comfortably in the middle offering good performance, good prog benefits, and good safety. I'd say that's pretty nicely balanced for the most part. If they can preserve that balance and finally fix healer gameplay, we could have a really fun and healthy healer meta.

I'd agree as long as WHM has a place in that meta after fixing healer gameplay, and isn't relegated to where it's basically always been: "SGE is performance, AST is safety, SCH is a balance between the two, and WHM eats crayons."