When is SCH’s turn?

[GrimGale]

Snippity.

• Ruin/Ruin II/Bio/Bio II/Resurrection are reused ACN/SMN abilities
  
  -Yes, but apparently SCH wasn't good enough to retain Shadowflare, Miasma and the other enfeebling DPS tools that made Arcanist interesting.
  
  
• Energy Drain's damage and HP restoration are negligible and it's a reused ACN/SMN ability
  
  -I wouldn't say "negligible", losing 300 potency (Not accounting the extra Aetherflow of Dissipation or any party buffs.) per minute to access healing made WHM's lillies undesireable until they updated Afflatus Misery's potency. If WHM can have it why can't SCH?
  
  
• Until it changes again, Biolysis is weaker than Eukrasian Dosis III at the expense of coming out sooner
  
  -I guess I understand the lower potencies of the offensive spells on SCH are part of the "support" ability tax we get from Chain Stratagem.
  
  
• Physick reuses Cure I's audio and is a reused ACN/SMN ability
  
  -Nothing to say here. I guess it uses a default audio for "healing". But then again who uses Physick anyway? The bigger issue is that, like Cure I, it becomes largerly obsolete at later levels.
  
  
• Adloquium costs 100 more MP than Eukrasian Diagnosis and has a cast time (longer than Eukrasia's recast time and no shorter than both combined)
  
  -They have the same healing potency. I'd say the MP tax comes from the fact that SCH gets to use Recitation in tandem with it, nullifying the MP cost and gaining a massive potency with it that Zoe for Sage can't really compare to.
  
  
• Succor is the same as above, with the base heal being twice as strong
  
  -Sage gets access to the flat heal skill which has an extra healing potency over Succor with Prognosis. I guess what Succor gains in healing potency, is spread between Eukrasian Prognosis and Prognosis.
  
  
• Emergency Tactics requires a GCD heal unlike Pepsis
  
  -To be fair, Pepsis does require a GCD heal, as in it requires an active shield on a target, which you can only provide by pre-applying a shield from a GCD spell.
  
  
• Embrace requires the fairy to be summoned (Kardia doesn't cost MP or have a cast time), is interrupted by fairy abilities and Dissipation (only GCD heals interrupt Kardia), is more delayed than Kardia's heals, has a 0.5s longer recast time for only 10 more potency, and is only buffed by Seraph (Soteria has a 30s lower cooldown and stronger-potency heal if Seraphic Veil's barrier isn't consumed)
  
  -I'd say these two are actually fairly well balanced. What Kardia gains in speed it loses in versatility. As you said Kardia proc requires you to DPS where as SCH can pretty much do whatever and still get Embrace casts.
  
  
• Fey Illumination only buffs healers and only GCD heals (and not fairy heals), and reduces magic damage by 5% (Kerachole reduces all damage by 10% at 1/4 the CD and Holos does the same)
  
  -I'd compare Kerachole and Sacred Soil specifically as mitigation tools. Really the only problem is the fact that Sacred Soil costs Aetherflow. Sacred Soil gets a certain advantage on being able to be placed down while Kerachole doesn't need to be placed but depends on the placement of the Sage themselves.
  
  -Holos is ridiculously strong- Shield, Heal and Mitigation on a 120s CD- No SCH ability truly stands comparable to that.
  
  
• Whispering Dawn has 60 more total potency than Physis I but requires its two additional ticks to achieve that and is more delayed because it's a fairy ability, while Physis II has more total potency, twice the range, and has an improved Fey Illumination tacked on
  
  -Fey illumination boosts healing magic exclusively while Physis II boosts all healing abilities. Not sure how much that matters really in terms of effective efficacy of the skill for SCH.
  
  
• Aetherpact is the only ability that uses the fairy gauge, it's not even twice as potent as Embrace (while still getting interrupted by other fairy abilities), and it requires an extra input to switch targets
  
  -Soteria would be the equivalent to Aetherpact I suppose. I guess Krasis and Protraction could be used for the extra potency respectively. In any case, Aetherpact is somewhat more versatile, being able to turn it off and on for at least 3 procs every minute is fine.
  
  
• Seraphic Illumination and Angel's Whisper are only cosmetically different from the regular versions
  
  -I don't understand why we don't get extra potency on those, considering Seraph was meant to be the substitute to Rouse.
  
  
• Consolation doesn't have an MP cost or cast time, but is weaker than Succor and the second charge has reduced effectiveness if the barriers from the first aren't consumed
  
  -Seraph does cast Seraphic Veil on targets and its potency is effectively like a Haima. Combine it with Consolation and Seraph is a bit like a more controled Haima+Panhaima at the same time.
  

[Renathras]

I think the better question is "Do you really want/trust the devs to rework SCH?"

Of the reworks you mentioned, PLD is the only one that has been somewhat widely praised as far as I can tell. And it's been more "neutral" or "50/50" than outright praised.

SMN has been widely attacked (though a lot of players seem to like it), MNK is super love/hate with people, same with MCH, the WHM change (ShB) is praised by people that compared it to how bad the SB incarnation was, but decried by those who liked SB SCH and AST and want Aero 3 no matter how much worse that version of WHM was. The SCH change in ShB was disliked. AST's changes have ALL been disliked. SAM's will never shut up about Kaiten. BRD's changes have consistently been criticized. DRK's changes have been hated. A lot.

They seem to get some 50/50s here and there, and rarely get one done really well (5.0 WHM) with it still being attacked by people.

I'm not sure there's a way to do a rework that wouldn't just infuriate tons of people, since they very likely wouldn't give people quite - or...at all - what they want.

.

EDIT:

If only they could give back even ARR gameplay, which had infinitely more depth than the current sch iteration.

And the devs have shown that they can do great things with the gameplay, see sage in pvp for example, which is what many players want. Do damage, get shield. Break shield, get strong damage. The interactions are perfect.

Yes, but a lot of people also dislike SGE in PvP, even that like it in PvE. SCH in PvP plays COMPLETELY different than SGE, and in a way many people find more fun because it doesn't have its healing tied to damage.

As for ARR: The modern community is so in love with oGCDs and "healing plans" they'd have a meltdown if told they have to use GCD heals again.

To be honest, maining SCH, I don’t want them to change it at all. I don’t see or felt that issue of, “something is extremely wrong in the state of this job.” It’s actually in a very good spot. Well, other than Fey Union, but that’s about it.

Somewhat agreed, but not entirely.

As I've said since ShB and still believe - SCH is the most powerful healer Job (though AST gives it a run for its money), it's just several kinds of clunky and has anti-synergies. The big things I'd change is to cut down a bit on button bloat since it has a few too many buttons, and make some more useful in the process. I did a write-up not too long ago, but the short version is:

1) Do SOMETHING ELSE with Dissipation - it's anti-synergy and hella annoying. Just having it not dismiss Eos would be a start. It's not "intelligent use", people use it for Energy Drains most of the time anyway, and when they're not, they're using it for bit Adlos. No one's doing an active cost-benefit analysis in their head of "Can I lose Eos for the next 30 seconds? I'll lose access to these abilities...should I use them first before Dissipation...? etc". NO ONE is doing that. It's just dumb, clunky anti-synergy for the hell of it. It was never a good ability, not from the start and certainly not now, and it's both antithetical to SCH lore AND anti-synergistic with SCH's kit. It's the single worst offender in the entire kit.

2) Combine Fey Blessing with Whispering Dawn - it's already trying to be Medica 2, just have it trait upgrade when Physis does and call it a day.

3) Make Aetherpact worth using. Boost its healing, give it a shield, SOMETHING.

4) Make Energy Drain consume Faerie Gauge instead of Aetherflow - the gauge just sits there most of the time, and it would still give you the "heal or damage" gameplay while not disallowing use of AF abilities which are cool AF (see what I did there?) and we avoid using because of blasted Energy Drain's whole 100 potency!

5) Have Fey Illumination upgrade into Expedient at some point and give Expedient the extra effects. Same CD already and Expedient is good against all damage types so would be a flat upgrade.

6) Have Seraph work like Rouse and actually boost Fey Dawn/Whispering Blessing and stuff.

7) Make Emergency Tactics have no CD. Modifier abilities are cool...though I guess this one's already pretty short (though not AS short as Eukrasia...but some difference in Jobs is good, so this one...meh, take or leave it)

8) Have Lustrate upgrade into Excogitation and remove the CD on Excogitation. It's an 800 potency heal, not a Bendiction Re-Raise.

9) Have Physic upgrade into Adlo. Increase Adlo's healing potency to match Physic's (lower the shield to where it's unchanged from today) and lower the MP cost to 700 or so. It won't be OP and SGE's higher MP cost is paid for by the fact theirs is instant cast. This is what we call "balance". SCH's having a lower MP cost is paid for by having to stand and hardcast it. This is fine.

That gets rid of most of the anti-syerngies, gets rid of the button bloat, and overall just makes things better.

You're missing out then. We had some pretty cool tools before ShB- Eye for and Eye, Virus, Shadowflare, Bane and Miasma III. They had in-built mitigation effects and we're pretty nice to use in dungeons and some raids.

Osmand is right about the button bloat, but that aside:

Eye for an Eye was an unreliable "mitigation" that often didn't work. It was cool you could Deploy it for all of one expansion, but it wasn't a great ability.

Virus was nice, but we have other mitigation instead. Though it's basically Addle at this point. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind that being a Healer Role Action, but it's not exactly something to write home about.

Bane was nice, but more for perception. You wouldn't be using it in most boss fights today (though with these giant radii, I suppose it could be used for add phases), and at any rate the reduced DoT gameplay makes it far less interesting. They could give its effect to something like Art of War, though.

Shadowflare was interesting in ARR, it wasn't after that.

Miasma 3 was never interesting.

By that logic, new healing buttons are also useless and should also be trimmed down to be the same as our DPS rotation. 1 Spammable, 1 HoT and 1 AoE Heal.

On the one hand:

That's stupid hyperbole, and even you know it. Healer is the role, so having more healing buttons than damage buttons makes sense. Not to mention we have more Damage buttons than that. Single target, AOE, Job gauge related, and "something else". Every Healer Job has at least 5 damaging buttons: Glare/Dia/Holy/Misery/Assize, Broil/Bio/Art of War/Ruin 2/Energy Drain (and arguably Chain Strategem), Malific/Combust/Gravity/Earthy Universe/Macrocosmos, Dosis/Eukrasia Dosis/Dyskrasia/Phlegma/Pneuma. In fact...I think they all have exactly 5. So having 2x that would be 10 heals.

On the other hand:

I also think we have too many healing buttons on MOST Healer Jobs. SCH is actually the exception since it only has 3 GCD heals (Physic/Adlo/Succor), and arguably 7 oGCD heals (Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing, Lustrate, Indom, Aetherpact, Soil, Excog); the others are all modifiers, not heals themselves, and arguably Aetherpact falls into that camp (since it effectively is a modifier placed on Embrace), and Soil is more a mitigation that has a heal as an added bonus. Seraph is a modifier, Recitation is a modifier, Emergency Tactics is a modifier, Deployment Tactics is a modifier, Fey Illumination is a modifier, Protraction is a modifier, and Swiftcast is a modifier.

(Like, seriously, contrast it with AST and WHM, WHM in particular, which have multiple versions of THE EXACT SAME ABILITY - WHM has 3x Cure 2s between Cure 2/Tetra/Solace, and 2x [3x] Medicas between Medica/Rapture/Assize; at least each of SCH's heal buttons are healing for different amounts and effects [mitigation/shields/origin of character or faerie/none], be they GCD or oGCD.)

SCH actually has the least "here's another button that just heals" toolkit of all the Healers. It only has 10 direct healing buttons, which is exactly 2x its damage buttons (if we aren't counting Chain as one). What would be interesting is if they made some other buttons work both ways - for example, what if Emergency Tactics could be used on Biolysis to give it the Thundercloud treatment of its full duration damage in one attack? Maybe using it with Broil makes it instant cast like RDM's Acceleration? And obviously Deployment Tactics getting the PvP treatment, but it would need a shorter CD. This would make up, though, for having a few less mitigations like if Fey Illumination were trait upgraded into Expedient; the extra party mit you could just pull from more frequent Deployments if you felt the need, especially since you wouldn't be Deploying Bios on single target boss fights.

Balance! \o/

.

Honestly, there ARE a lot of things we could do with SCH to make it better. Even pretty small tweaks. Won't happen because the combat system and "balance" are too rigid right now, though.

I really wish they weren't, though - Emergency Biolysis and more frequent Deploys for both healing or for DoT spread would be fun to me.

[Sebazy]

I think the better question is "Do you really want/trust the devs to rework SCH?"

I doubt many people do at this stage, but in a completely selfish manner, honestly I'd take a roll of the dice over what we have now

The suggestions are all pretty solid stuff, lustrate upgrading into excog has the potential to be a little bit problematic, but a quick fix for that would be to make another ability 'detonate' the excog for full potency on use. Synergy yeeee.

[fulminating]

I think the better question is "Do you really want/trust the devs to rework SCH?"


As I've said since ShB and still believe - SCH is the most powerful healer Job (though AST gives it a run for its money), it's just several kinds of clunky and has anti-synergies.
1) Do SOMETHING else with dissipation anti synergy some more words I accidentally deleted because I held delete down too long on mobile
That's stupid hyperbole, and even you know it. Healer is the role, so having more healing buttons than damage buttons makes sense….. Protraction is a modifier, and Swiftcast is a modifier.

As I said earlier, absolutely not. They first would need to drop basically their entire current encounter paradigm to even begin to make space for healers with different niches. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with some fights being significantly harder on some healers as long as it’s not every fight. If there’s a boss with constant tank autos, sage should shine with the supposed heal through damage identity. If there’s a boss with frequent heavy raid damage, white mage should be a good fit with strong heals. If there’s a boss with several high damage phases and a fair bit of downtime, scholar and its mitigation toolkit would work well. They could put ast sects back and have them work in combat for a flexible healer.

Anti synergies are engaging-interesting design. And I do that more often than burning for 300 potency of free* damage.

Shall we compare with the tank role? Provoke/shirk/Rampart/reprisal/25s/60s/90s/120s “tomahawk”/1/2/3/1m burst activator/“fell cleave”/aoe 1/aoe2/aoe “fell cleave”/gap closer/30s ogcd/some more buttons. It’s definitely inclined in the damage direction.

Protraction does heal for 10% upon use as well as being a modifier.

[Osmond]

Thank you for telling us what you want out of the forums.

It’s cool, If SCH was that bad, the devs would be talking about it. At the same time not many players are having an issue with SCH despite ppl think it is. Just the little things, yet the job is fine. It make sense for WHM and AST to receive changes due to its abilities and flow of combat out of whack. If they were to overhaul SCH into the next expansion. It’ll just put more work on themselves, having to balance it out patch by patch so it’s been in a good position. I’ll give it 2-3 more expansions then they’ll change SCH.

[Osmond]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see anyone else here typing in caps sir

…..so caps can decide if ppl are upset or not?

[GrimGale]

Anti synergies are engaging-interesting design. And I do that more often than burning for 300 potency of free* damage

Regarding Energy Drain, I often read two things:

1. The choice of using AF for Healing or Damage makes the gameplay interesting, and offers a layer of optimization that gives Scholar a distinct identity amongst the healers.

2. Losing 300 potency a minute is such a minuscule difference that really, it doesn't matter.

So which one is it? If it's such a minimal difference and 300 potency is such an unimportant gain, surely it wouldn't matter wether we removed the skill at all, at least it terms of trading healing for damage.

The point of Energy drain had always been as an AF dump, to be used at the end of Aetherflow's cooldown so that the charges are not overriden if any of them remain. To get some value out of the healing we didn't need to use in that 1 minute cycle.

But why does it have to be a trade for damage. Why can it just be MP. We all understand that damage has better value than healing, so finding the rare occasions where AF for healing would be a DPS gain, like Sacred Soil is already an effective trade, between needing to use a GCD heal tool and casting another Broil.

I'm not advocating for the removal of Energy Drain as an AF dump tool, but rather I'd like it to actually be an AF dump as it is clearly intended, rather than damage lost whenever we use Indomitabily, Sacred Soil, Lustrate or Excog.

[fulminating]

Regarding Energy Drain, I often read two things:

1. The choice of using AF for Healing or Damage makes the gameplay interesting, and offers a layer of optimization that gives Scholar a distinct identity amongst the healers.

2. Losing 300 potency a minute is such a minuscule difference that really, it doesn't matter.

So which one is it? If it's such a minimal difference and 300 potency is such an unimportant gain, surely it wouldn't matter wether we removed the skill at all, at least it terms of trading healing for damage.

I don't think it can't be both. If beating the enrage is dependent on your scholar casting another broil per minute, you should probably have some serious discussion with your dps players.

As aetherflow is at the heart of scholar's mp management it's pressed on cd, which would lead to overcapping without a dump. Sage has a similar issue in that addersgall abilities are tied to mp generation and therefore often pressed not for the healing, but the 7% mp recovery, which frankly just feels bad to me. I don't like the idea of removing any complexity from scholar's damage kit either, primarily because so much of it's already gone and a job themed around tactics really should be rewarding fight knowledge just from a thematic perspective if nothing else.

[GrimGale]

I don't think it can't be both. If beating the enrage is dependent on your scholar casting another broil per minute, you should probably have some serious discussion with your dps players.

As aetherflow is at the heart of scholar's mp management it's pressed on cd, which would lead to overcapping without a dump. Sage has a similar issue in that addersgall abilities are tied to mp generation and therefore often pressed not for the healing, but the 7% mp recovery, which frankly just feels bad to me. I don't like the idea of removing any complexity from scholar's damage kit either, primarily because so much of it's already gone and a job themed around tactics really should be rewarding fight knowledge just from a thematic perspective if nothing else.

I understand there is some grey- But my point still stands. Is it a significant enough potency gain to justify the jankyness or isn't it? You can't say its a meaningful choice if the value said choice brings is meaningless. Or outright detrimental to the kit itself, as we see with Dissipation, where its used as a DPS burst tool rather than a healing tool.

[fulminating]

It's a nice bonus when you can afford it. Since it's ~1/3 of a broil you can use it to make up for a necessary gcd heal. I'd like it to be a little stronger, but I think it's fine.
Why can't I? If it's bringing enough damage that it's noticeable in a team of eight, it's way too strong, and if it's doing 5% or so of your scholar damage then it'll be near enough, and if it's less significant than crit/dh/general hit variance on sch, it may as well not exist.