WHM vs. SCH -- What is the basic difference.

[peaches]

As a WHM main, I have a question to veteran Scholars, hope I can be enlightened

Sacred Soil Usage for raid damage reduction, personally I feel SS should be used for Levi Ex 4 spumes + tidal roar phase, moogle Ex meteor, T9 megaflare, and T8 Allagan Field + Defensive Maneuver ONLY, as I can only think of these 4 situations where without SS, a party wipe may occur. Why bother using for any other AoE damage? With SS, medica 2 suffice, without SS, medica 2 also suffice, why waste an aetherflow stack for any other raid damage situation other than the 4 I listed above?

PS : For those with reading comprehension, I am talking about Sacred Soil Usage to reduce raid damage, not Sacred Soil Usage to provide mitigation on tanks (which I personally found to be more useful).

In answer to this, there are a few general places I'll use SS. When Aetherflow is either almost off cooldown, or it is off cooldown and I have stacks to spare, and don't foresee any major damage incoming where I may need 4-6 Lustrates, and my MP is high enough I don't need to use Energy Drain, I'll spend one of them on SS. In Titan, it can be useful for Stomps if some people aren't full health, or say if you have two Scholars healing and the AoE numbers aren't quite high enough - any mitigation you can get there helps, but ONLY if you have stacks to spare. I find sometimes if I'm in a situation where I could use a SS, I need Lustrate even more.

An example in some pretty easy content is Garuda HM. If the tanks mess up grabbing Suparna and Chirada and they run towards the healers or dps, I'll put up a SS. Sometimes I'll put one up there anyways, because most tanks don't position them right so we always get hit by wicked wheel.


But yea, like Gallus says Lustrate is almost always better than SS if you HAVE to choose between one or the other, and are low on Aether stacks. It's just too useful of an ability. You can use it to heal while moving, to help heal while you're DPSing without exiting Cleric's, give the tank a quick pop of health if he takes spike damage - this actually saves a lot of wipes, because sometimes the tank will take massive damage while there's movement, and the time to cast Physick or Adlo is way too long to save him, let alone movement + a heal. Or it can be used to quickly top up a DPS/healer in any situation, but especially when there is raid damage coming up soon that isn't avoidable, and they may not survive.

Here's a question:

Is the learning curve higher on a SCH? A lot of the time when I get queued with a SCH they almost seem like they are not healing at all and just hanging out occasionally healing but mostly doing dps.. I chalked it up at the time that SCH have a different role to play in the fight, but after reading all of your responses I see that it's not the case..

I'd say there's a bit of a higher learning curve in 8 man content. Knowing how to manage your Aetherflow stacks is huge, for MP regen and making sure you have an Aether on hand for unforeseen damage. Knowing when to use specific cooldowns like Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant (20% magic damage reduction), Virus, Eye for an Eye, knowing when to pre-bubble a tank, knowing how to position your fairy so it won't die in some fights but is still in range to heal everyone. It's not terribly difficult, but I just tried WHM recently and found myself standing around a lot more than as SCH. I didn't really have any options other than Regen, Stoneskin, or a cure of some type.

Gallus is right about that though. Most of the time in 8 man content you don't have time to DPS, unless you have a good second healer you can trust to keep thing up for you while you do that, if you really do need the extra dps. But in 4 man content, you can usually DPS the entire time if the tank is pulling one group at a time. I've macro'd my fairy's heal to every one of my DPSing abilities and set it to focus target, so every time I do any DPS ability, it spams Embrace on the tank which is anywhere from 600 to 1200 crit, and usually it's plenty to keep them alive. If they dip to half health or under, just pop a Lustrate without exiting Cleric's Stance. All this being said, I can be pretty lazy sometimes and just hang back and heal :P