Healers, then and now:

[Renathras]

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Hm...not trying to say this the wrong way, but I think it's posts like this that make me think you don't understand the way that I think.

Speaking for myself, I like the idea of buffing people, but I don't like the idea of building exploding buffs. That just seems like "complex DPS rotation with more steps that does DPS while pretending it doesn't". The kind of buffs I like are more things like Protect or Haste or Regen (using normal FF game terminology), or...well, FFXIV doesn't have many good examples of it, honestly, since most buffs are AOE "use ever 2 min on CD". But basically, if you had a selection of buffs to choose from,t hen chose from them and cast them on people whenever, maintain buffs that can be kept up 100% of the time (like Resto Druid in WoW rolling HoTs, particularly on the Tank(s)), etc. Playing a little FFXI, I kinda love using stuff like Protect and Bar-spells, even if they're infrequent. It's also enjoyable (to my old-school MMOer mindset) of buffing random people I come across (bonus points - it levels Enhancement skill anyway)

I don't think "buff" as "stack several things on someone that then explode and do damage. To me, that's no different than Solace/Rapture -> Misery, except I like those better since they seem way more intuitive than exploding buffs and have direct and generally useful effects (filling party health bars that are lowish essentially for "free" in terms of not losing DPS or whatnot for it).

Further, I don't mind dealing damage - and do so frequently - I don't like complex or convoluted DPS rotations, preferring my mental energy be focused on heals and not damage spells. Hence what I mean about I don't think you understand the way I think.

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Anyway, as I demonstrated on the first page of this thread, WHM essentially now plays the same as it did in SB (and HW if we ignore Cleric toggling). The main difference in a GCD sense is that we need less Cure 2/Medica casts since we get those as part of our damage rotation in Solace and Rapture, so we're doing a bit less (for players trying to be skilled, ideally zero) GCD cast healing, but if you WEREN'T having to cast Cure 2/Medica before, then the rotation would have been more or less identical, you're just using Solace/Rapture in place of 1 Aero II and 2 Aero III casts per minute (note the numbers more or less shake out the same).

So WHM as it exists right now is not only more or less what it was in SB, just less rigid (the Aeros were locked by duration, Solace/Rapture can be moved anywhere within a 60 second window), it's arguably the most complex it's been from 4.0 to present.

So all this time I've suggested "leave WHM alone" is, now that I've actually broken it down in depth, functionally equivalent to "leave WHM's damage kit like SB's" as it's more or less equivalent, people just tend not to think of Solace/Rapture as Aero 2/3 replacements, but that's what they are in the rotations and how they work in optimal gameplay.

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Which really leaves us with the crux of it:

SCH very clearly took some major hits (GCD and oGCD), especially when Broil's cast time was reduced, and AST's underlying rotation isn't what changed, it's...basically everything ELSE in the Job, given its DPS kit is the only part that HASN'T changed.

...and then there's SGE...

Very true IMO, the removal of Miasma/Miasma II and now Ruin II being relegated to solely movement at a DPS loss is a huge problem for Scholar.
My thoughts on the weave windows every healer has are mixed, but they definitely damaged SCH's DPS "rotation" flow going into EW, since at least you'd hit Ruin II 3 times a minute or more because of the lack of weave windows. They didn't even consider something like making Energy Drain locked behind Ruin II as a combo of sorts to make Ruin II necessary to use or anything. It's strange but not unexpected.
Now, being optimal on SCH is just being a Broilbot - there's no break from hitting Broil outside of refreshing Bio; literally nothing you can do to escape it. Returning Miasma would really help SCH feel a bit better and give it something unique to do comparatively to other healers now. SCH needs its GCD damaging suite back; things like Shadow Flare (as cool as they are) can stay gone since they're functionally just boring fire and forget oGCDs (though they could make it a GCD again, I guess.)

Please return Miasma and Bane to Scholar, Yoshida. It's insane to me that the healer that starts as a DPS class and was originally "the DPS healer" now has the least amount of AoE options in the game (1 total) and optimal single target GCDs in the game (2 total).

Agreed.

Thank you for this post!

It's...so weird having all of you agree with me on things (more or less), but kinda nice.

I honestly didn't really think about HOW MUCH the Broil cast time changed SCH. I played SCH (decently enough) in ShB, and I used Ruin 2 and stuff, but I guess it just didn't occur to me how often Ruin 2 WAS used for weaves that got removed with Broil having a 1.5 sec cast. Like...you don't think about it, since I guess we all think of Ruin 2 as "movement tool", but when you think of it as "weave tool for a Job that has tons of oGCDs", suddenly relegating it to movement only exposes just HOW BIG of a change that was. And then looking at the fact WHM still has Afflatus abilities to at least mimic the lost DoT refreshes, SCH has none, and that SCH casts more Broil IV in current fights than WHM casts Glare...and it's kind of eye opening.

Somehow, I thought WHM was the worst offender here. But by the numbers and looking at actual logs...I now see it's actually SCHOLAR that has it the worst.

I'm not even sure quite what to think of that...