What is the be Healer?

[liljramos88]

All depends on your style I have all 3 to 60 I tend to alternate between 2 the most.AST and WHM. SCH as sed be4 is a Jack of all trade. The WHM is pure healing power. As a WHM u are all about heals and HoTs. MOST people say that SCH is the best in dps. But a WHM dps is nothing to shrug off. AST is the weaker dps off both but with the buffs is not even something that is a impact.JUST make sure u learn and practice stance dancing. The only macro I use on healers are the virus,.eye for an eye, and the cleric stance macro witch will change your hotbar wen u switch on and off

[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.

[VanilleFang]

In the broadest sense? I would have to agree with Lyrica on SCH.

They are pretty much guaranteed a spot in end game raids right now, and they bring so much more in terms of mitigation and DPS. That being said, they are also my least favourite of the healers to play. I find them booooring. They also have the highest skill ceiling.

[FoxyAreku]

Scholar is OP and mandatory in all serious 8 man groups.

[TheWaywardWind]

They're all good for different reasons.
SCH mains just need to get off their high-horses a bit.

[Rivxkobe]

They're all good for different reasons.
SCH mains just need to get off their high-horses a bit.

As far as I can tell none of the people who said SCH is the best actually main SCH. They were just stating the obvious. WHM and AST are interchangeable in end game raids while SCH takes up the other slot. While they are all good for different reasons, SCH is the best (even if minimally) overall.

[Amiaze]

As others have stated, it really depends on the player and what you enjoy doing the most.

I main AST and mained WHM, but I do not have SCH to 60. This is because I don't like the idea of managing a pet or relying on a pet to help me do my job; I like to be in control of something that could make or break the party. I know, your pet is within your control, but the idea just doesn't sit well with me.

I use WHM for "pure" heals and good DPS output. I feel safe using it because its heals are so potent, so it's some peace of mind when I don't know who my co-healer will be. It also allows me to micro-manage things and switch to Cleric Stance to DPS. With AST, I micro-manage less and am constantly healing/buffing/shuffling through cards/DPS, all in turn.

So if you don't like automatically switching to a DPS when not healing and are okay with trying to manipulate RNG, I would say go AST. If you're okay with only switching between healing and DPSing, go WHM or SCH. WHM is more reactive healing while SCH is more proactive, and I prefer the former. (I also don't like going into Nocturnal Sect as AST because it is considered to be the "SCH" stance.)

[TatoRazzino]

As far as I can tell none of the people who said SCH is the best actually main SCH. They were just stating the obvious. WHM and AST are interchangeable in end game raids while SCH takes up the other slot. While they are all good for different reasons, SCH is the best (even if minimally) overall.

SCH has the slot for endgame raiding sinply because it's currently the only healing job that branches from a DPS class. There's absolutely no question when it comes to that. However, ask a SCH to main heal a fight like A3S and you'll watch them struggle. From a pure healing perspective, SCH has the short stick simply because they rely on cooldowns and stack management to catch up to a healing potency both WHM and AST have in their GCD. If you're going to use raids as examples, you may want to say that SCH is the best off-healer and it's mandatory because the current meta/fight design favors having an off-healer in the party instead of having two main healers or simply a solo healer. Change the way fights are designed and you'll see SCHs vanishing from end game content; in fact, by adding fights that require only one healer you'll basically see WHMs in learning parties and ASTs in farm parties. The OP was asking about healing and didn't specify any particular context.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

They're all good for different reasons.
SCH mains just need to get off their high-horses a bit.

High horse? Hardly. For starters, I'm on the main healer seat for 90% (if not more) of the activity I do with my FC. Meaning I'm usually on White mage or Astrologian and rarely on Scholar. I suppose this doesn't define me as a main Scholar.

As for why Scholars are "the best" right now is quite simple: Scholars simply makes everything more forgiving. Any content can be done with any healer combination, but bringing a Scholar makes things easier for the entire group. It eases up the HP check requirement or allows groups to push for more damage. In 2.X Scholars had this severe weakness for AoE healing, but this has been somewhat addressed as of 3.0. They do not have the ability to continuously heal the group for that much, however. But the addition of Emergency Tactics and Indomitability is definitely a good addition to their healing kit. The only real issue for this particular area of expertise would be the terrible MP/recovery ratio of their AoE healing capacity.

Does this make the other healers sub-optimal or a inferior pick? Well, no. Scholars have a pretty bad heal/mp ratio on single target or is very GCD inefficient. The basic healing spell is the same as White Mage's, but Adloquium is by far the most expensive spell. Obviously, you don't spam Adloquium to top someone off as with Cure II or Benefic II. Thus this makes their single target healing GCD inefficient. You could argue that the fairy's there to help buffer up the GCD inefficiency. But if that fairy's there for you, it's also there for the other healer.

So why not bring two Scholars if "they're the best"? Simply because the scholar-scholar synergy is terrible compared to whm/sch or ast/sch. I mentioned before that any job combination can be done for any content. But depending on the combination the gear check will be relatively high, compared to White Mage or Astrologian with a Scholar. Not convinced? Go into King Thordan EX with two White Mages with entry requirement equipment and see if your group can survive Ultimate End.

[TheWaywardWind]

^
Read the post above yours, thxbai.