Quote Originally Posted by Calysto View Post
As a former career SCH (2.x-5.99), I can say that's mostly wrong - at least for that job.
I said that. And have over and over again.

SCH is kind of a weird exception to the rule. In ARR, Lustrate ignored Cleric stance, and by the end SB, SCH had a ton of oGCDs.

ARR was never balanced between attacks and healing. SCH was balanced around leaning heavily into attacks and doing light spot healing or pre-shielding while WHM was balanced leaning heavily in to healing and being main healer for groups, only dealing light damage in most situations. The balance was not that all healer Jobs were balanced between attacks and healing. It's that SCH was balanced around mostly attacks and WHM around mostly healing, so that together, they completed each other and balanced around both. SCH actually had relatively few heals. Physic, Adlo, Succor, Lustrate, and Wispering Dawn, I believe (Embrace if we count it), and could Cross-Class Stoneskin. By contrast, it had an extensive DPS suite of Ruin, Ruin 2 (same damage, high MP cost to pay for free movement), Bio, Bio 2, Miasma, Bane, Shadow Flare, Energy Drain, and could Cross-Class Aero (from CNJ) for yet another DoT and Blizzard 2 (from THM) to give it a spamable AOE attack, something it otherwise lacked at the time.

My one problem with the "they won't increase healing because they've said they don't want to do it since it will scare new healers" argument is that ALSO means no new damage buttons, since they've said they don't want to do that since it scares new healers, too. All their actions have been towards reducing the healer DPS footprint in terms of abilities and complexity, and even making things like Misery and SGE MP regen that directly reward healing - even overhealing.

They aren't likely to go back on the DPS one but not the healing one, since they've been much more explicit about it and designing specifically for healers to have less DPS actions over time.

So "DPS and utility" is not what's left, as "DPS" is also not allowed.

The only thing left is actually utility. And as you say, that's irrelevant/niche. So that means we can hope for no changes at all.

...but there's no fun in that, so instead, we talk about the things we want to see.

I want to see more healing and more GCDs devoted to healing.