Healer Guide/Class Comparison

[Raestloz]

Okay, let's analyze this post:


The 'healbot' does generate enmity, but not for the player itself. Granted this never really becomes an issue in normal circumstances, but I have seen some scholars pop up their fairy skill at the worst possible moments (mostly on add-spawns with blank aggro sheets) which has gotten their fairy KO'd. It escapes me why would you bring up the other point, as scholars are supposed to excel at single-target healing. It's not like the WHM can't do some nasty single-target healing with some decent sustainability, ie. a divine sealed regen (which can be applied directly after the DS cast and refreshed at 1s of DS left for 34s~ of DS-potency regen per minute), on top of just curing with DS or otherwise and getting those procs in. Sure, the SCH has cheaper and better single-target heals over time, but then what?

Compare to White Mages, who will eat the entire enmity themselves. It is true that Embrace generates enmity, but so long as the enemies are not targeting you, they are not attacking you, which means you're not going to get interrupted with attacks.

The enmity that matters is the enmity that reaches the peak. Even if the total of your and your fairy's enmity is more than the enmity of a single White Mage, if yours (and/or your fairy's) are skidding the borders of out-hating the tank while the White Mage's are breaching the UI bar, you are in for an easier time


Needing to do something and it being advisable to do something are different things. If you want to snipe the fairy buffs and skills in terms of eyeing the 15y range optimally for as many people as possible (or 30 for Selene, which is a non-issue), you should place it. If you want to minmax Embrace up-times in dodge-heavy content so that you can manually embrace while you yourself move - you should have the fairy placed and re-placed on demand. If you want your Eos buffs to reach the tank in the Twister-phase of T5, you will want to place her to a spot where she doesn't get plummeted but her own skills reach the tank (and the melee who can get occasionally get plummeted when applying hits from a certain angle on Twin at certain times), also possibly re-placing her on demand or have her next to you and then temporarily placed for the skills themselves, followed by another Heel command. I could go on, but the point should be apparent by now.

I presume you know why I chose the word "have" instead of "supposed"? The ultimate Scholar will always optimize their spells, but doing so is not a requirement to successfully deal with most contents.


Yes, but how is this relevant to the scholar being 'easier'?

Please remember that I was replying to another post, so deconstructing my post and using them without any point of reference will, of course, remove their intended meaning

It would make sense that the easier content is easier to do, yes. That aside, being able to have the fairy on Sic doesn't mean you should ever have it on Sic. Unless, of course, you want to lose your on-demand "enhanced cure II" which you mentioned, seeing as the fairy's AI is slow on the uptake and most of the time you would want to spam her to do embrace ahead of the tank dropping sub-80%, like you would cure on WHM just before a hit is about to land and thus keep up with the damage easier. Any decent scholar will not autopilot easier content either, because manual embracing will always maximize their DPS-times.

No. Not just "makes sense". Please remember the order of my post and where exactly that sentence was placed. In particular, that sentence is placed after this:

"It is true that managing Fairy can be a bit... "challenging" but then again"

The assertion is that fairy micromanagement is one of the challenges in using Scholar. Having fairy on Auto removes that bit. It is true that in Manual your fairy will fare better , but if you do not need to do it, doing it won't give you bonus points


How easy something is sub-50 is meaningless. The game starts at 50. Agreed, though, it's pretty funny to see those scholars afk when I level my alts.
I do not see how you can claim that "game starts at 50". There are 49 levels you need to gain to reach level 50. During those time, 20 are spent having access to Fairy. Are you claiming that they're pretty much non-existent?

This is true but doesn't really help with your argument of the scholar being easier to play. As opposed to just sitting there waiting for damage to happen on a WHM, you could play actively and fast-pacedly on the scholar. But yeah, it's not like you can't also throw in some aeros or stones on the WHM if going OOM is not an imminent threat.

Yeah, it's not like Stone requires me to stand there and risk getting interrupted by attacks. I mean, sure it's direct damage, and if the cast is interrupted I don't get jack, but it's much easier than DoT where you don't even need to stand still for it to have effect, yeah? Also, Aero II is much much shorter, requiring me to cast it more frequently, increasing the frequency at which I'm a sitting duck.

But of course, the point was certainly not that SCH is easier to play than WHM


Aetherflow is 20%.
Close enough


Yes, Lustrate is godly. I do agree it didn't need a buffage from 20% to 25% in 2.1. And I would also agree that Lustrate is superior to Benediction (dat animation delay), but it doesn't mean the latter can't be used well, either. Lustrate is a ridiculously good skill, but it is just there to solidify the SCH as the superior single-target healer which is what it is supposed to be anyway.
I do not see how your assertion that SCH is supposed to be the superior single target healer makes it any less right that SCH is easier to play. Lustrate, which you can cast every minute, and doesn't require you to make a gamble of "Should I use it now, or later, if things get even MORE grim?".

To illustrate, Ultima Hard casts Ultima at 10 minute mark. At the very most you'll only get 2 chances of using Benediction. With Lustrate, you just "I can do this again in a minute" and cast away. There are considerations like your current stack of Aetherflow, but the point is that Lustrate requires less precise calculations.


using the fact it takes very little effort to be a scrub-level scholar as a premise to your argument of the scholar being easier to play.

You yourself claims this as fact. Now, you never said that it takes more effort than that to be a scrub-level white mage. I do not know the threshold of "scrub-level scholar" for you, but considering the tools available for SCH and WHM at various situation, SCH is indeed easier to play

And yes, I have both classes, having done all content on both. For what it is worth, I think both classes require effort to master, whereas it is easier to slip unnoticed as a bad/mediocre SCH compared to an aggro-pulling or OOMing WHM. On the other hand, at max levels of play, I feel like the SCH is a tad more challenging.

And that is some of the point.

For what it's worth, the difficulty of White Mage is not restrained to the number of buttons to press, but the pressure of MP management and other lesser stuff. When to use Cure, when to use Cure II, when to use Shroud, when to use Benediction, and also Enmity Generation.

All those adds up, especially because White Mage relies on three factors to succeed at MP management: Lady Luck where Freecure and Overcure procs, Mage's Ballad, and the WHM's own use of spells. The tactic you use today maybe overkill for tomorrow when Freecure procs a lot, or underpowered where Freecure doesn't even proc. Then there's that time when you overcured the tank and Dreadnought hugs you.

Mandatory 10 chars

[OrganizationXIll]

Be sure to note that Benediction is literally one shot. If it doesn't heal the tank, it will heal you instead. There is no way to save Benediction, pun absolutely intended

Macro it.

/micon "Benediction"
/ac "Benediction" <t>

If you do this will either heal the target or fail. If it fails it will not heal you instead.

[UOdhn]

Macro it.

/micon "Benediction"
/ac "Benediction" <t>

If you do this will either heal the target or fail. If it fails it will not heal you instead.

This is broken, ala patch 2.14(?). <t> no longer applies, for whatever reason. If you have a target, and cast it, even if your target is dead/cannot be casted upon normally, the heal is still casted on yourself. Granted, if you have no target, it won't cast. Meh. May have been fixed in 2.2, have not had a chance to test.

[Marcusow86]

Compare to White Mages, who will eat the entire enmity themselves. It is true that Embrace generates enmity, but so long as the enemies are not targeting you, they are not attacking you, which means you're not going to get interrupted with attacks.

The enmity that matters is the enmity that reaches the peak. Even if the total of your and your fairy's enmity is more than the enmity of a single White Mage, if yours (and/or your fairy's) are skidding the borders of out-hating the tank while the White Mage's are breaching the UI bar, you are in for an easier time

You need to watch your enmity if you are pulling too much shit that will go after you, that or your tank sucks. Nothing seems to point out that SCH is at fault here. Another thing you seems to 'forget' is that SCH's fairy need to be control. I need to split my attention to place her, watch out for her hp, etc. So when i am doing that, why can't you watch out for your enmity bar.

The assertion is that fairy micromanagement is one of the challenges in using Scholar. Having fairy on Auto removes that bit. It is true that in Manual your fairy will fare better , but if you do not need to do it, doing it won't give you bonus points

Another, SCH can be challenging....but if you look it this way, WHM is harder PoV. Not going to explain further, look at my previous post in this topic.

Yeah, it's not like Stone requires me to stand there and risk getting interrupted by attacks. I mean, sure it's direct damage, and if the cast is interrupted I don't get jack, but it's much easier than DoT where you don't even need to stand still for it to have effect, yeah? Also, Aero II is much much shorter, requiring me to cast it more frequently, increasing the frequency at which I'm a sitting duck.

Most WHM that are competent enough would not get hit when they try to DPS, if you want to contribute in DPS, know your limit, if you are BAD, you can always opt for healing only. No one forces you to do it. SCH's Dot need cast time to apply as well except for bio. I cannot see the establishment of your statement here.

For what it's worth, the difficulty of White Mage is not restrained to the number of buttons to press, but the pressure of MP management and other lesser stuff. When to use Cure, when to use Cure II, when to use Shroud, when to use Benediction, and also Enmity Generation.

All those adds up, especially because White Mage relies on three factors to succeed at MP management: Lady Luck where Freecure and Overcure procs, Mage's Ballad, and the WHM's own use of spells. The tactic you use today maybe overkill for tomorrow when Freecure procs a lot, or underpowered where Freecure doesn't even proc. Then there's that time when you overcured the tank and Dreadnought hugs you.

Let me rephrase your sentence to look like how a think-a-like SCH can write: For what it's worth, the difficulty of SCH is not restrained to the pressure of MP management, but the number of button to press and other lesser stuff. When to use physic, when to use adlo, when to use lustrate, when to use energy drain, and also where to place the fairy, what fairy to use.

All those adds up, especially because SCH relies on three factors to succeed at healing: Lady Luck where Adlo Crit, Good fairy placement, and the SCH's own use of spells. The tactic you use today maybe overkill for tomorrow when Adlo crit a lot, or underpowered where Adlo doesn't even crit. Then there's that time when you misplaced the fairy and she died.