SCH even better!

[Nevaldus]

"New action: Indomitability (AKA Medica II without regen?)
A new AoE healing action will supplement scholar’s current AoE healing strength, which may have felt a bit weak up until now.

New action: Deployment Tactics
This action will extend the effect of Adloquium and Eye for an Eye that is on the target player to other party members in range.

New action: Emergency Tactics (AKA Physick II ?)
Instead of adding a barrier effect to Adloquium, this action will give addition healing power for the amount of the effect of the barrier.

New action: Dissipation
With this action, you dismiss your fairy in exchange for magic power."

Edit: "Aside from additional components, white mage was the only job that could increase magic defense by using Protect; however, with the addition of a third healer job, we made it so other jobs will also can use the fully buffed effect of Protect as part of a balance adjustment."

Protect will be buffed like WHM's.

SCH is my favourite class of all, and thanks to Heavensward it seems they are getting even better, spreading defensives, Better AoE and single target healing, and a tradeoff by consuming your summon for more power, this sounds fantastic and i cannot wait.

What do you think?

[Niqote]

I think pretty much all the abilities that are upcoming are really interesting and I am greatly looking forward to sinking my teeth into them and working out new rotations.
I play SMN and WHM so I am pretty happy with the showcase. As a SMN, fun new abilities (ahkmornbitch.gif) and having some more versatility as a WHM (instant heal + heal/dps at same time) are going to refresh the classes.

I have felt that 1 SCH and 1 WHM has been the perfect combination for a party as they compliment each other wonderfully... It seems like now they will be closing the gap and making each healer as beneficial as the other.

My concerns are as follows:
-I just hope that they (WHM,SCH,AST) retain a unique playstyle.
-I play a healer to heal, not to DPS (though I will when I can, holy bombing is great!), so if the pressure to DPS becomes too large (in raids) it could be a problem (eg. healer job is to clean up other party member mistakes... having the same party members complain about your dps would be frustrating)
-Why they thought the skill name 'Assize' was the best choice, I'll never know... Surely 'Verdict', 'Jury' or 'Decree' would have served the same purpose XD

[UltimateAoe2]

To be honest, I think they just made it into a mini White Mage :x.
Who knows, we don't know every skill yet, xD.

[Gamer3427]

Honestly, while I don't play as SCH that often, it is my main healing class, so I'm interested to see how these skills will work in actual use. Out of the four shown, the only one I'm particularly interested in is Deployment Tactics, as I had a similar idea for a possible Aetherflow powered spell but that worked on any spell that wasn't already AoE the next time you cast it. Still, I can see this having some pretty effective use as it not only improves Eye for an Eye's effectiveness, but also gives us an AoE heal/shielding method for use in raids where you don't want to get close enough to the tanks to use Succor......

[Shurrikhan]

I think I'd rather see Medica and Cure II (->Physic II) stay on WHM. That's not to say that I don't want SCH to have decent raw AoE healing (thought I would prefer it to be limited to cooldowns, as per Whispering Dawn at shorter CDs), but I don't want them to simply stance-swap to WHM and drop all job-synergy in favor of being 'well (completely) rounded'. I feel the burst healing of Emergency Tactics would be better served through a more creative use of detonating Galvanize itself (e.g. an Adloquiem critting for 2k would provide 4k shielding, which can be detonated for a crit of 6k). There's so much SCH could do to play around more with what it already has; I don't see why it needs to combine healer jobs to function well. (With the addition of Aero III, WHM AoE dps will even further outstrip SCH's. Does that mean they'll then have to get Holy as well, or can we start applying reflective shielding or whatnot, something that has both raw damage and utility in a uniquely SCH-like manner?)

Also, Deployment Tactics seems a bit too powerful for the moment, and would, in the end, likely only turn Adloquiem into a shieldy Cure III or an in-combat untraited Stoneskin II (be sure to pick the highest [+Healing_Received] target for the origin!).

Sidenote: Is there any point to the damn WHM HoT-Soil? Just to stack with Medica II and hope the entire fight can fit inside of it?

Just some ideas of what you could do with Galvanize via new abilities, using either CDs or Aetherflow stacks:
- For burst healing - as above, just 1) prevents the shield from going to waste, 2) can double-crit by critting from already-crit shields.
- Damage reflection - probably more useful for dungeon speed-run tank-grabs than for real AoE dps, but might do a decent bit depending on how it's done. For one, the 'reflect' property could either have mitigation of its own (reflected damage is not first taken) or solely counteroffensive (absorbed damage duplicated against attacker). Additionally, it could continue reflecting a percent of entire attacks for as long as the shield remains (you absorb only 50 damage of a death sentence via a wounded Galvanize, but still reflect damage equal to 20% of that attack too) or only as much as is absorbed (would reflect whatever percentile of only that 50 remaining shield HP).
- Blow the Galvanize up for AoE damage - probably no Succor application; use is fairly obvious. Could also, instead of consuming the Adloquiem, simply pulse a percent of the shield strength (or amount of shield health lost) as damage, either as a single nuke based or recalculating and re-ticking every second or two for up to some duration.
- Use the Galvanize as some manner of beacon/battery/casting node/whatever. - Let your imagination do with it as you like.

[Gamer3427]

Also, Deployment Tactics seems a bit too powerful for the moment, and would, in the end, likely only turn Adloquiem into a shieldy Cure III.

I think the effect of it only refers to spreading the shield from Adloquium to nearby players, not the actual healing, since that takes place when the spell is cast while I'm guessing Deployment Tactics works like Bane but on beneficial effects. I too wasn't sure though, which is why in my post above I put "heal/shielding". Still, the more I think on it, the more likely this seems to be the case. Otherwise why announce a new AoE healing spell as well?

[Shurrikhan]

I think the effect of it only refers to spreading the shield from Adloquium to nearby players, not the actual healing, since that takes place when the spell is cast while I'm guessing Deployment Tactics works like Bane but on beneficial effects. I too wasn't sure though, which is why in my post above I put "heal/shielding". Still, the more I think on it, the more likely this seems to be the case. Otherwise why announce a new AoE healing spell as well?

Even then, all you'd need to do is target a Convalescence-Warrior (+40% yay) to an easy 2k shielding on the whole party, 3k if crit. The other strange thing is that it's basically the same as Sacred Prism (1.0) + Stoneskin. I'll admit I'm more fond of this than that, but both seem kind of awkward. Basically a double-strength Succor if the party stacks, once per <CD>.
The Eye for an Eye effect seems both reasonable and... lackluster. Basically just asks your tanks to be in range of each other each time the SCH, rather than the SMN, AST, BLM, or WHM, would cast EfaE. No one else, hopefully, will be under fire from enemy attacks long enough to proc it.

[Lemuria]

I'm skeptical about sacrificing your fairy. We don't know much about how it will affect your magic potency, but we do know that it's a huge loss to healing potency to have your fairy dead or dismissed. How they'll balance it is a mystery, but it's nice to see more AoE heals being added. I always felt Succor was a bit on the weak side.

Being able to exchange barriers for healing potency will be beneficial for DPS and other healers on the team who aren't taking immediate damage. I always hated how the barrier effect was essentially wasted if used on many non-tanks since the duration often wears down before they get hit. On the other hand, it's very white mage-ish and feels like they're sticking the two in a blender to make one single class.

[Dualblade]

I'm skeptical about sacrificing your fairy. We don't know much about how it will affect your magic potency, but we do know that it's a huge loss to healing potency to have your fairy dead or dismissed. How they'll balance it is a mystery, but it's nice to see more AoE heals being added. I always felt Succor was a bit on the weak side.

Dissapation>Swiftcast>Summon

[Lemuria]

Dissapation>Swiftcast>Summon

This is assuming they let you recast. Remember that this is a straight potency boost to our spells which means it needs to be significant enough to be worth doing, but also balanced which means there's a good chance we'll be unable to resummon our fairy until it's effect is gone. Further, we don't know the skill duration. It could be a hugely powerful boost but with a very tiny duration, such as 10 seconds meaning wasting time resummoning would be wasting the effect altogether.

Until we have more information speculation is all we have, but consider this. What would be the point in dismissing the fairy if you could instantly summon it with no problems?

It's like Party-Stoneskin, but stronger.

Not sure stronger is the right word. On some jobs, perhaps, but the duration is still capped at 30s. The shield bonus has only ever been as much as the cure potency, and Adlo is quite a weak cure on its own. While it will almost certainly be stronger than cross-classed stoneskin, only on targets with a lower max HP will it be stronger than White Mage's version.

Given that the Black Mage in the example had a whopping 9k+ hp at level 60, it's probably safe to assume that you'll never have a moment where it exceeds Stoneskin in normal use.