What is the be Healer?

[Sleigh]

It's hard to say what the "best" of anything is because you never want to stack classes due to synergies and buffs/debuffs, but I can tell you what the most irreplaceable healer is: SCH. Like DRG and WAR, SCH is the one healer you really can't go without unless you like gimping yourself.

- Ridiculous mitigation capabilities. Not just Succor and Soil, some raidwide mechanics are now and in the future are literally tuned around having Deployment Tactics Adlo IMO when not in max iLVL gear.
- Not having to stop DPS to keep up their healing. Eos or Selene, the fairy is the thing that takes core SCH from mediocre to utterly ridiculous; Embrace is basically a super powered Regen that not only is free and always happening, and you don't even have to command it to do so (though most top SCHs do since it won't heal if everyone's above 80% HP or so). Eos is a mini-WHM in healing capabilities, Selene buffs the group constantly without RNG like AST and thus it's easier to plan what a DPS check's requirements are and how to deal with them.
- Virtually infinite MP unless you just have to heal a crazy amount, which means either poor play from one/both of the healers. This nearly limitless MP pool means you will rarely have both healers OoM, and when it comes to raising players, SCH won't get hurt too badly.
- Super-Virus. Due to how Anti-Body works, you basically have one Virus every 60s, and usually there's little reason to Virus every 60s in the first place, so if you're gonna Virus, SCH's the guy to do it. While we only really saw one fight this tier make Super-Virus ridiculously strong, it sure is strong at what it does, and A1 and A4 also benefit from the tank killers getting Super-Virused (Virus won't work). To go without a SCH means you are virtually required to bring a SMN on the fights you are appropriately geared for and the mechanics are tuned around possibly getting Super-Virused, like Cascade, Nerve Gas, Gigaflare, etc etc etc.
- Good CD on E4E too. E4E is fantastic on the fights it works; woe is the party that neglects good E4E upkeep. Hopefully A5-8 will have a universal use for E4E beyond hitting adds.
- Their emergency heals, which are often what a SCH will be there for beyond planned big damage healing spots, are top notch. Even though WHM is no slouch with Benediction and Assize and Tetra, and Essential breaks it down on AST, you simply can't mess with Indom's 30s CD 400 potency ridiculousness, nor the power of as many 600 potency Lustrates as you have stacks for.
- While SCH's DPS isn't quite as great as a WHM's in raw strength (about 90-95% as strong in raw damage), their nearly infinite MP, lack of having to drop Cleric Stance to get off the heals they need to do in a majority of situations, and the sheer power/cheapness/speed of Bane makes them often do the most DPS of the three healers in the sustained, 3 to 13 minute slugfest we call raids.

All these things above make it so SCH is the healer you simply can't go without. You need this class on backup for if/when shit hits the fan and for general, vital shielding (specifically raid wide mechanics), and you want this guy as a semi-5th DPS because he's going to spend most of him time hitting things and making everyone's life easier with faster phases and pushes. SCH pairs well with a HoT class who will primarily take care of the party and tanks with HoTs, while the main healer itself also DPSes. That aside, the only other shielding alternative, Nocturnal AST, is woefully lacking compared to these tools, and while Diurnal AST can ghetto take care of the party's mitigation needs with Collective and Disable, it is still vastly inferior to a SCH who can Soil, Fey Covenant, and Deployed Adlo if needed. In fact, I feel like SCH's abilities have and will virtually force the devs to tune raids, and raid damage, around that level of possible mitigation. When you tune around that level, SCH is mandatory, since nothing can replace it.