Quote Originally Posted by Ririta View Post
What balance issues? Both works perfectly and are fun to play.
Except for the part where SCH DPS is insanely MP efficient due to their ACN roots, which can't be adjusted without hurting SMN? Were you even around for Final Coil? I was, where being a SMN was a hugely painful crunch of MP issues and lower damage, and the developers told me I'd have to sit that way until the expansion because they couldn't buff me without also buffing their OP golden child, SCH, who was solo healing T13s at the time and wrecking on mass Snowcloak pulls.

The problem comes from SCH DPS. I get that people don't like hearing that, and for once this isn't a criticism of the healer DPS meta, it's a criticism of class design. All of SCH's DoTs are designed around ACN, a DPS class, and later SMN, a DPS job. This means that they're given mana costs proportionate to the idea that they will be seeing 100% uptime on a boss. Those mana costs are IN NO WAY adjusted for SCH, who has a much higher natural MP pool due to piety, gets higher returns on Aetherflow because it's a 20% flat restoration rate, and also gets the advantage of getting piety on gear, which means higher in-combat mana regen. This wouldn't be a problem if their healing kit had inflated MP costs, but they don't - aside from two abilities, mana costs are exactly the same vis-a-vis on my SCH as they are on my WHM (identical gear).

Seriously, my SMN has almost 4k less MP at level 60 than my SCH, but DoT costs are the same. Basic heal costs on my SCH (Physick vs Cure) are the same as a WHM, cleanse costs are the same as a WHM, rez costs are the same as a WHM, Broil vs Stone III MP costs are the same, and SCH's "Regen" is MP-free, and off the GCD in the form of the fairy. Yes, DoTs are lower potency compared to WHM/AST, but the point remains that their mana costs are reflecting an uptime that is just not possible for the other healers to achieve, AND SCHs still have really efficient mana costs on their actual healing kit as well, save Adloquium/Succor which is pretty high I guess to discourage spamming. Pet abilities also cost no mana, which again, is likely a design decision influenced by ACN/SMN rather than SCH itself, and one of the biggest complaints balance connoisseurs have about SCH right now is how brutally effective and efficient the entire fairy kit is (Eos mostly).

As to your other point about SCHs being more "interesting" than spamming "3-4 abilities on WHM"...SCH doesn't really have that many more, tbh. They have 5 DoTs (including Aero cross'd from CNJ) and a filler. WHM has 3 DoTs and a filler, but also Fluid Aura every 15 seconds if they can get in range. SCH only has two more abilties to upkeep, and they're actually easier to manage because they have longer duration. WHM rotation is actually incredibly frustrating because of how short Aero II is and how much I have to pay attention to it. Even then, I can't say I'd care if they still want SCH to have a bunch of DoTs to upkeep to maintain the illusion of complexity... I just don't want those DoTs to be ACN DoTs, I want them to have higher mana costs to reflect SCH's naturally higher piety/MP pool.