What dps/utility buttons old or new would you add to your healer?

[Renathras]

I had raid night and my brain is a little fried.

All good.

"As far as WHM stuff" - Already went over this (and it's why I didn't mention WHM other than pointing out Water there) that we wouldn't agree on it since you want it to change and I want it to not change (though I'm offering some changes anyway) and so it's no point talkingabout otherwise. So I'll log you as "No, you don't want Water as an early AOE spell version of Holy". Got it. : )

"For SCH" - I figure Biolysis is a different enough name from merely Bio, and this would let us have Bio, Miasma, and Biolysis spell lines in the future (additional spell ranks or whatnot) without the names tripping each other up. Well, except for Masma 2...I suppose we could just make that Shadowflare and be done with it. Have it apply a DoT on enemies entering it akin to how Lype (SGE LB) works in PvP, maybe, and that can count as the 6th DoT. I'm not really married to the idea. But yeah, that's why I suggested the name scheme the way I did. I don't understand how "Bio 3, Miasma 3, Miasma 2, and...Bio 2...?" all being single target DoTs makes very much sense when we could instead have Bio 1/2/3/4..., Miasma 1/2/3/4..., Biolysis 1/2..., Shadow Flare 1/2... instead. I feel that'd be quite a bit LESS confusing. I already find BLM's system annoying (though at least it and RDM use the nomenclature of "even numbers means AOE", I guess...) I never felt SCH was "sci-fi", so I'm a bit confused about that. I always thought of it as a combination of fae and barrier magics.

What I REALLY wanted to know is if you like or dislike the idea of a DoT that has 3 stacks and Fester that optimizes use based on playing with 3 spamable DoTs, one that stacks to 3, and one on a CD that must be used smartly to maximize damage potential. You talk all the time about skill expression, and I feel that's some pretty good skill expression...but you completely...ignore that part of the idea. <_< That's the part I actually most wanted your feedback on. XD I personally love the idea because I liked Resto Druid in WoW having a HoT that worked that way (in fact, all of the stuff here I presented as DoTs Resto worked with HoTs...which I wasn't thinking of when I wrote it, but funny how that worked out; including the "makes a burst heal based on which ones are on the target" thing), so I was hoping to hear your take on that.

"As for AST" - I think what the playerbase hates about the single target buffing is that you're trying to do it as weaves. Malific-Draw - Malific-target-Play - Malific-Draw - Malific-target-Play - Malific-Draw - Malific-target-Play is pretty hard to do. But Draw-target - Play - Draw-target - Play... would fix most of that issue. It is, indeed, why I proposed it. That and actually making it where the AST gets to choose the buffs they want, thus preventing the "Balance fishing" issue, which was why the cards were changed in the first place.

You may be right that they'll just gut the single target buffs, but I'm trying to come up with an idea that's not that. Also to bring back dAST/nAST since I do feel a lot of the playerbase enjoyed that. Though the likely alternative is that they'll just make them like PvP Cards where they're AOE so you could just Draw and Play them right away (if the radius is big enough) and the auto-self-targeting affect the whole party.

I agree on this point but I disagree on how you addressed the issue. Granting an Aetherflow spender that is just a shield or heal is no different than just spamming Lustrate to get rid of excess stacks; It's pointless overhealing/overwriting the shield.

Uh...but it's not?

This is going to take a sec, but I genuinely don't understand your position here...

In practice, you're never sitting on 3 AF stacks when AF is coming off CD. IF you didn't have Energy Drain, AF spenders would be your go-to heals, and one per 60 seconds (2 every third minute or so) are spent on Excogitation, which is basically always useful to put on the Tank (again, if you have no ED so aren't suffering a DPS loss by doing so). Soil can be used twice per minute as well. Note that Tanks are always taking damage outside of downtime, so there's no time that these are ever pointless choices. But you can sometimes run into a situation where you've used Soil based on a big damage portion of the fight that required you to hold it for 15-20 seconds of this AF CD (meaning it won't be up again before you need to refresh AF) and Excogitation is already on the Tank, so you have 1 stack left. Presumably if you used Dissipation, it's because you had a lot of healing needs, so we're going to assume you shouldn't have a full 3 stacks from that.

This means, in practice, you only ever "needed" to burn 1 AF stack.

Placing a barrier on the Tank would always be a good use of the resource. Especially in ShB when encounters didn't have 30-50 second gaps where the bosses did literally no (unavoidable) damage. The shield being used on the Tank or being thrown on a party member with a Vuln stack would pretty much always be useful in this sense. It was for this ONE errant AF stack at the end of a 1 min AF cycle that SCH had to have ED added back, but what that did was make people try not to use ANY AFs on healing (since it was now costing them 150 or whatever the potency was before they nerfed it even further to 100) and just dump them all into ED, which also meant using Dissipation as a damage CD instead of a healing one (WHM has this same general issue with Presence of Mind, which was, in ARR alongside Divine Seal, supposed to be used as a healing CDs). In short, rather than saying SCH's toolit is reliant on Energy Drain, I'd say ED broke SCH.

Lustrate DOESN'T work like this because it's a heal all at once. This means if the Tank is at 100%, it does nothing useful. A Shield OR a HoT wouldn't have this problem, as at least some of them would be useful even if the Tank is at 100% right this second, where a Lustrate would not. This is why either of those would be useful, and why I often propose Lustrate should be weaker but have a small shield so it's at least vaguely useful, even when the party's all at 100%. A Shield or a HoT would work, as either one is likely to be at least somewhat useful.

SGE has a similar problem in that it doesn't have a good AG dump, but because it doesn't have ED, people instead think of "Well, since we can't use this on damage...it means using AG isn't a damage loss! So instead, let's talk about how best to use it on healing/mitigation!" (which should be the point of...Healers...after all; at least in theory). So the discussion is instead about keeping good, but also effective, Taurochole and Kerachole uptime and conserving SGE's bigger CDs for more important/heavy hitting mechanics. Where SCH uses AF as a last resort (well, last resort before GCD heals, other than Recitation Spreadlos which is sometimes even used before AF healing), SGE does the opposite, prioritizing AG heals first and then CDs second or in tandem with AG spenders.

This makes SGE feel much better, smoother, and more dynamic since you aren't tying your hands by trying to ignore that 1/8th of your toolkit exists unless you're forced to engage with it. SGE, instead, is rolling through these short CD abilities, throwing them out left and right between its damage rotation, while still having its bigger CDs to fall back on, which honestly feels WAY better and more satisfying to me to play.

And I think this goes into how SCH and SGE (despite superficial similarities and people suggesting otherwise) actually are and feel different to play. They have essentially an inverted priority system where SCH attempts to heal and mitigate through CDs first while SGE attempts to heal and mitigate through resource spenders first. While both are Barrier Healers, both focus more on mitigation than throughput, and both attempt to work out healing plans, SGE's is a lot more flexible to deal with mistakes from party members since it has a much lower cost to throwing out, for example, a Durochole on someone than SCH does a Lustrate.

Though...I'm somewhat curious:

You say that Aetherpact and Dissipation are "reliant" on ED. Shouldn't that be more worded "They aren't reliant on ED, but not having ED makes overcapping them - which feels bad since it's foregone efficiency - feel bad"? You don't HAVE to spend all your AF before refreshing Aetherflow when it comes off CD. It feels bad to do it, but you can hit your AF refresh button even if you have 3 stacks unspent. I'm not trying to be...not trying to get you on some kind of technicality, I feel this actually is an important distinction. The Job doesn't NEED Energy Drain to work. If Energy Drain was removed and Broil did 15 more potency of damage (more or less damage neutral vs using an average of 4 Energy Drains per minute - 3 natural from AF and 3 per 3 mins of Dissipation = +1 per minute average for a total average of 4 per minute; that would technically be 16.6... more, but I'm trying to keep it simple, so pretend that's 15 for now ), then SGE would have the exact same performance it does now under optimal ED play, meaning the Job would not be suffering at all - in terms of clearing Enrages and stuff, I mean.

I'm just not sure how it breaks the Job. Feels bad IS a big deal - 100% agreement from me on that - but I'm more saying I don't think it is the crux of the toolkit. And if SCH had something to spend those extra stacks here and there on that felt useful (barriers or HoTs for the MT are basically always useful), then it would even remove that. This also addresses the Aetherpact/Faerie Gauge thing (though I think most of us (?) agree that mechanic ITSELF needs a serious rework...)

The only thing it wouldn't do is that there wouldn't be a "skill" DPS gap between SCHs using ED and those not doing so or not spending all AF on ED, I guess?

I'm also confused why you think buffing Broil would make SCH overpowered in the burst window. It'd be the opposite - ED allows you to slam more buffed potency damage in the burst window whereas putting it on Broil would (15 potency per cast) would reduce SCH's burst potential slightly, but overall it would average out to a similar amount. If it was a smidge low, 20 potency instead would more or less equal it out.

I don't think the Job "(fell) to pieces" without ED the last time. It still worked fine and was still the meta Healer in both SB and ShB during the periods where it didn't have ED. It just felt awkward to play. (WHM had a similar issue with blowing a Lily on overhealing as a movement tool being a DPS gain in ShB...I guess it technically still is/does.)

IF we removed ED tomorrow but buffed Broil by 20-25 potency, SCH would actually be VERY slightly buffed as a Job, not nerfed. Note Glare 3 does 310 damage per cast vs Broil 4 doing 295. A 15 potency boost would make Broil 4 equal Glare 3. A 25 potency boost would make Broil 4 do 10 more potency than Glare 3, which would also be 10 less than Dosis 3's 330. (And keep in mind Biolysis and Eukrasian Diagnosis both have 700 overall potency vs Dia having 660 but applying 60 immediately on hit with the 600 being from the DoT). On balance, SCH needs ED because Broil 4 is 15 potency weaker than Glare 3. Boosting it 15-25 potency would entirely eliminate the need for ED in terms of damage balance. WHM has Assize and SGE Plegma - which I could do the math for when less sleepy - but SCH brings Chain Strat, so those should roughly even out depending on your party's crit luck and performance.

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Short version/TL;DR:

I'm not sure SCH needs Energy Drain in terms of balance. I think the question is more does it need it for play/feel/satisfaction. And as I said, "feels" IS an important part of gameplay, so IS important (to be absolutely clear, I'm not hand-waving that; I just feel that's the actual question). And I say it definitely does while there's no good AF dump.

...but if there were better AF dumps, it might not. So I'm not sure ED is inherently tying the Job together.

But as far as SGE goes, I think it NOT having something like that is actually a positive. It makes it feel and play differently than SCH (in both healing and in damage), which is probably a good thing, and imo (subjective assessment), it makes SGE feel more dynamic, smooth, and fun.