SCH needs some nerfs

[Jerrkazoo]

I want to agree, but I think doing that would just make WHM feel more like AST and I don't really want that.
Really they just need another instant GCD ability similar to SCHs Miasma II or Ruin II, and I do feel like Fluid Aura would be just the thing here if they put it on the GCD and gave it some damage.

First post woot!

I've actually been thinking of an idea like this to help with WHM pDPS. As cool as it would be for Fluid Aura to do Lily-based damage, I think we would also be annoyed because we now have another oGCD to clip with. So my idea is to change Fluid Aura into a 1.5 sec cast time damaging GCD with an initial potency of 150 and inflicting a 6-sec DOT of 75 potency per tick, with the range, MP cost, and recast timer being the same as Stone. This would provide frequent windows to single-weave and still feel different from AST gameplay, since Stone's cast time would be unchanged.

And/or change PoM to a 60-second CD. Maybe that's an option?

[loreleidiangelo]

[edit] I'm also going to add here that I feel the reward-to-effort ratio for AST is far too high and needs to be knocked down for the sake of healer balance.

So much this. Cards are supposed to add this element of choice to the kit that makes up for a lot of fast casts/instant cast tools and general strength of the AST healer kit, but it's simply not there because of how binary the buffs are. A SCH at least has to think about using their stacks, and even in a raid situation sometimes you have to compensate with your stack usage to get your group out of a tight spot, no matter how well you plan out the encounter. AST doesn't have to do that with cards - there's never a time where you think, "I'll forego AOE Balance here for AOE Bole instead because [reasons]", making the whole concept of 'juggling' AST cards complete hogwash for the most part.

This might be an ugly opinion here, but tbh I feel like AST's original healing strength was fine relative to the utility they brought, it's just that their original card system sucked nuts and the healing aspect was buffed first, then the card buffs came later. Imagine if they fixed all the issues with the card system first, like Shuffle not giving you the same card again and Spear actually being a crit buff instead of the weird CDR gimmick it had, as well as the reduced CDs we got on things like Shuffle and tools like Minor Arcana to seal the deal on making a use out of "dead" draws. Then the card system would be as valuable as it is now, but as a healer AST might have to work a little harder to produce results, instead of gently rolling their face from one side of the keyboard to the next like they do now.

Can't wait to see how SE will ruin Dancer, if the rumors are to be believed that it's the next healer job. /trollface

[Exiled_Tonberry]

This might be an ugly opinion here, but tbh I feel like AST's original healing strength was fine relative to the utility they brought, it's just that their original card system sucked nuts

This, for real. The card system sucking so bad at first along with needing to heal more really messed things up. AST should have never been doing WHM level (or in the case of CU and Star, higher than WHM) heals.

They really need to step back and look at AST again. There's no downside whatsoever to it's massive amounts of utility it brings. It heals as well as WHM, it does more damage with less effort. It just makes no sense.
WHM isn't allowed utility because of it's supposedly stronger healing power.
SCH is limited by Aetherflow.
AST can just have whatever it wants with no drawbacks, it doesn't make any sense.

[Jinzhu]

This, for real. The card system sucking so bad at first along with needing to heal more really messed things up. AST should have never been doing WHM level (or in the case of CU and Star, higher than WHM) heals.

They really need to step back and look at AST again. There's no downside whatsoever to it's massive amounts of utility it brings. It heals as well as WHM, it does more damage with less effort. It just makes no sense.
AST can just have whatever it wants with no drawbacks, it doesn't make any sense.

I don't necessarily agree with the damage part. There's a lot of things you have to do to optimize damage as an AST. Lining up cards so that it doesn't decrease rDPS but let's you get potential lords under raid buffs like trick, litany, contagion etc takes a bit of thought as well as using sleeve draw optimally so you can potentially get 2/3 lords under raid buffs.

For example 3 Lord trick would be have a held lord and save it for trick > use it > draw > redraw and and minor arcana it (only if its a bad card) > Lord > Sleeve Draw > Lord. That's not even the maximum potential either since there's 4 Lord trick (generally only used prepull) since it takes a bit to pull off.

4 Lord trick: Have Lord held > Use redraw and hold it for 20+ seconds (bad card only) > Use Lord > GCD > MA draw card + Lord > GCD > Draw + Redraw > GCD > Lord + Sleeve > GCD > Lord.

And if you let your Sleeve Draw shift even a little bit you're losing quite a bit of damage so making sure delayed draws don't interfere with SDs CD is pretty crucial.

Where as White Mage is just hit Assize under TA if it doesn't save a heal and holding PoM for 30 seconds so it aligns with 3 minute burst but if you lose a use you just use it on CD. Not thinking too much about what you're doing.

There's also more you have to know and study up on as an AST vs WHM to maximize it's potential. If you draw an Arrow during a point of the fight who does it benefit the most? The NIN will get an extra Spinning Edge but the DRG will gain a Full Thrust but if you don't know that and give it to the NIN it's an easy loss of potency. It's also important to know how giving that Arrow during the point of the fight will affect their rotation at that point i.e giving the DRG an Arrow can make BoTD and oGCD usage a little funky. So you basically have to study everybodys own timings. If the Arrows value wouldn't exceed 230 potency (Broil II) then you're left at 2 options. Either give it to the SCH as they are almost guaranteed to get an extra GCD from that Arrow or gamble it to try and get 300 potency.

It's the same if you pull an extra Balance. You gotta know how much damage each person is doing relative to the timer on the fight. Giving it to the NIN during 2:00 intervals so it catches their full burst. Giving it to the BRD during it's Raging Strikes + Minuet window. Giving it to DRG when they are about to enter Nastrond. The problem with Balance is because it's 30-45 seconds even if it catches their burst it might not be worth it if the seconds after burst is bad i.e MCH where they have a pretty powerful 10 second window but drop afterwards.

That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of AST optimization, there's a lot more minor stuff but those alone make AST harder to play than WHM. It's why I think AST is the hardest job to play as they have to optimize healing, optimize the raids DPS and optimize their personal DPS. As a SCH with a high end cohealer all I do is fill in the gaps where my ASTs heals dont reach.

It's also pretty interesting to note that AST does about 8-10 more CPM than WHMs do on average. Juggling a lot more actions than WHM has to even if it's because they have a 1.5s cast time.

I agree though that AST damage shouldn't be doing WHM levels of DPS (more after the Minor Arcana change). WHM pDPS should be 15% more damage than AST and SCH (if AST/SCH are doing 4k then WHM is doing 4.6k). That value changes in between patches as Balance and Chain get stronger per patch. I don't like to take Fey Wind into account because on XIVRDPS it's weighted way higher than it should be as it can't properly calculate the amount of extra GCDs you gain from it giving everyone a set value. Even if you don't gain a GCD from it Fey Wind will still have value on it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This, for real. The card system sucking so bad at first along with needing to heal more really messed things up. AST should have never been doing WHM level (or in the case of CU and Star, higher than WHM) heals.

They really need to step back and look at AST again. There's no downside whatsoever to it's massive amounts of utility it brings. It heals as well as WHM, it does more damage with less effort. It just makes no sense.
WHM isn't allowed utility because of it's supposedly stronger healing power.
SCH is limited by Aetherflow.
AST can just have whatever it wants with no drawbacks, it doesn't make any sense.

This mentality is what needs to die or WHM will forever suffer. The devs simply have to accept we don't heal the way they intended us to, which is their own damn fault. It baffles me how they reduce the difficulty wholesale in Stormblood yet remain mystified people demanded more DPS from healers than even in Heavensward. Well, duh. You made it easier. They either need to embrace the community's approach and turn WHM into the SAM/BLM of healers, i.e., not only is its healing better it does monstrously high damage. Or they make healing far more demanding and let WHM fill that niche. What they cannot do is maintain the "raw healing!" philosophy for another expansion when they aren't adjusting the content to ever need it. And we haven't even touched on the fact WHM's raw healing isn't actually better.

Perhaps the one saving grace is Yoshida did mention during the Q&A then intend to add another layer to their balancing. One can only hope they start monitoring Savage and Ultimate more. Their focus on casual content for balancing is why so many jobs have struggled. You need to see jobs near their full potential. WHM is going to look fairly impressive in a dungeon setting but Alphascape Savage proves how decidedly out-classed it gets.

[Dzian]

So much this. Cards are supposed to add this element of choice to the kit that makes up for a lot of fast casts/instant cast tools and general strength of the AST healer kit, but it's simply not there because of how binary the buffs are. A SCH at least has to think about using their stacks, and even in a raid situation sometimes you have to compensate with your stack usage to get your group out of a tight spot, no matter how well you plan out the encounter. AST doesn't have to do that with cards - there's never a time where you think, "I'll forego AOE Balance here for AOE Bole instead because [reasons]", making the whole concept of 'juggling' AST cards complete hogwash for the most part.

This is a content problem and it's the same problem that affects all the jobs.

content is so heavily scripted and predictable for example that healers know exactly how many heals they'll need to use in the next few minutes and when. tanks know exactly which cooldowns theyll need for which moves and exactly when the boss will do that move.. and everyone knows exactly when mechanics will happen which basically allows them to time there buffs and stuff accordingly. this is why things like blms triple cast get used as a dps increase because blms know for certain they wont have to make any big movements in the next 2 minutes.

This is also why this thread exists. Scholars aren't exactly OP but the problem is when you know for sure exactly how many heals your going to use in the next couple of minutes then it becomes an absolute joke and why not burn all those extra stacks on dps or energy drains.

its also why tanks spend so much time in dps stance because they know exactly when they're going to get hurt and how badly literally minutes in advance. which again makes healing even more predictable and easy to deal with..

AS for ast and its cards the sheer predictability of content is again part of the problem. another part is that basically the only thing that ever matters is DPS. this is why ast will literally never aoe a bole instead of a balance because the incoming damage is so predictable it's quite often healed up before it's even happened.. and these days every job has unlimited TP anyway so spires are basically useless and Ewars dont even work on things like DRK or BLM so they're useless cards as well. iftossing a ewer on a blm allowed them to get off one extra fire 4 now and then would that be so bad.. hell there's time blms jump to ice even though they have a chunk of MP left and could squeeze out another fire..

Its also why whm is shunned so heavily because it has that extra healing power but never needs it. it's so predictable it's virtually impossible to be caught off guard..

if you made fights less predictable and less scripted you'd almost certainly find the healers would level out even without changes to the jobs.. because it'd be imposiible to know exactly how many heals your going to need in the next 2 minutes and exactly when you're going to need them. so that extra power a whm offers would actually see some use. scholars would be more conservative with there stacks. and even noct asts with there instant shields would have the chance to shine when an unpredictable tank buster starts going off.

would change tanks too. if they've had to burn all there cooldowns in 30 seconds are they going to stay in dps stance and hope they don't need more. swap with the other tank or enter defensive stance just in case another big hit comes out of no where...

so many of the problems jobs have in this game come down to content being so laughably predictable and scripted..

[Jinzhu]

This mentality is what needs to die or WHM will forever suffer. The devs simply have to accept we don't heal the way they intended us to, which is their own damn fault. It baffles me how they reduce the difficulty wholesale in Stormblood yet remain mystified people demanded more DPS from healers than even in Heavensward.

This this this. SE gave us more healing tools in Stormblood and REDUCED healing requirements in fights which is just baffling. Because of these new tools Ultimates are a lot easier to heal than they could have been. The only truly healing intensive part of UCoB was Teraflare phase (adds). Golden looked intimidating but there's only a spike of damage every like 40 seconds then no damage aside from auto attacks and tank busters. Same goes for UWU, Garuda and Aetherplasm phase were the only real healing intensive fights. My group got through UWU with 9 Succors during boss uptime. 3 Of those being in Garuda and 6 being after Aetheroplasm. And this was before the Passage and Collective change, I don't wanna think how much easier it is now.

3 Succors, 2 Indoms, 2 Excogs, 1 Soil in Garuda. 1 Adlo Deploy, 1 Indom, 1 Excog in Ifrit. 0 GCDs 1 Indom Titan. 6 Succors, 6 Indoms, 1 Excog. Total of 11 healer GCDs, 10 Indoms, and 4 Excogs over 15 minutes because AST can cover the majority of the damage with Earthly Star, Collective and proper Aspected Helios usage during downtime. And because there's so much time in between each set of damage Star and Collective are nearly up for every big AoE. As I said before this was before the Collective and Passage change so you can probably get rid of soils all together and probably 2 succors and a deploy.

I haven't had the chance to optimize UCoB like I did with UWU but I have a rough mapout of it and there's even less healing than UWU. The majority of healing will come from Add Phase. Even though it's super optimized it's still pretty pathetic that you can get away with doing that amount of heals just because ASTs kit meshes so well with the fight design.

[Jinzhu]

So much this. Cards are supposed to add this element of choice to the kit that makes up for a lot of fast casts/instant cast tools and general strength of the AST healer kit, but it's simply not there because of how binary the buffs are. A SCH at least has to think about using their stacks, and even in a raid situation sometimes you have to compensate with your stack usage to get your group out of a tight spot, no matter how well you plan out the encounter. AST doesn't have to do that with cards - there's never a time where you think, "I'll forego AOE Balance here for AOE Bole instead because [reasons]", making the whole concept of 'juggling' AST cards complete hogwash for the most part.

I replied to a post a bit below yours about how I don't agree with that. I think AST has to think more than any other job. As a SCH main you aren't really thinking about your aetherflow stacks and after you map out the fight your stacks are consistent and you generally won't use them outside of the mapped spots. Most of the time you're dumping all your stacks into trick attack in the form of Energy Drain. Trying to get 3 Energy Drains under trick. Bio > Energy Drain > Broil > Miasma 2 > Energy Drain + Swiftcast > Broil > oGCD + Energy Drain. Not much else to think about stacks there. Even if you aren't in a kind of environment where you can utilize that there's still not too much to think about because you should know the threshold on where you need to dump the rest of your stacks because Aetherflow is coming off CD.

[loreleidiangelo]

I replied to a post a bit below yours about how I don't agree with that. I think AST has to think more than any other job. As a SCH main you aren't really thinking about your aetherflow stacks and after you map out the fight your stacks are consistent and you generally won't use them outside of the mapped spots. Most of the time you're dumping all your stacks into trick attack in the form of Energy Drain. Trying to get 3 Energy Drains under trick. Bio > Energy Drain > Broil > Miasma 2 > Energy Drain + Swiftcast > Broil > oGCD + Energy Drain. Not much else to think about stacks there. Even if you aren't in a kind of environment where you can utilize that there's still not too much to think about because you should know the threshold on where you need to dump the rest of your stacks because Aetherflow is coming off CD.

And outside of managing multiple Lords during a Trick Attack window the AST card system has no more depth than sacking Energy Drains when Aetherflow is about to come off CD. It's a moot point for both classes, but at least SCHs have more than two damage buttons as part of their regular rotation and a fairy to micro-manage to at least SOMEWHAT up the skill floor.

EDIT: To clarify a bit, yes, at the top .1% of the playerbase you're generally going to be using more mental overhead to plot out optimal AST card timing compared to just straight-up AOEing everything that can be remotely perceived as a DPS increase and calling it a day. In those scenarios, AST is likely harder than SCH to play, because on top of that you're never going to need to use unplanned SCH stacks in an emergency to cover mistakes, either. But even among the Savage-clearing playerbase (of which I was a part until pretty recently), your scenario isn't the common one and for the other 99.9% of the playerbase AST is too faceroll for too much utility and healing, with a surprisingly strong card system given how little elements of actual choice exist within it.

tl;dr in my opinion even a mediocre AST can achieve tons of value with only a rudimentary clue on how to optimize the card system, whereas a mediocre SCH is a lot more easy to discern. Whether they tweak the card system to give actual elements of choice to it or simply nerf AST's bongos healing so that they at least have to work a little harder on the healing front, I'd like to see something done about the class, though I do admit it's unlikely given that SE has been terrified to hit it with nerf bats due to it's insanely underwhelming release (and subsequent attached stigma).

[Ghishlain]

I don't necessarily agree with the damage part. There's a lot of things you have to do to optimize damage as an AST. Lining up cards so that it doesn't decrease rDPS but let's you get potential lords under raid buffs like trick, litany, contagion etc takes a bit of thought as well as using sleeve draw optimally so you can potentially get 2/3 lords under raid buffs.

For example 3 Lord trick would be have a held lord and save it for trick > use it > draw > redraw and and minor arcana it (only if its a bad card) > Lord > Sleeve Draw > Lord. That's not even the maximum potential either since there's 4 Lord trick (generally only used prepull) since it takes a bit to pull off.

4 Lord trick: Have Lord held > Use redraw and hold it for 20+ seconds (bad card only) > Use Lord > GCD > MA draw card + Lord > GCD > Draw + Redraw > GCD > Lord + Sleeve > GCD > Lord.

And if you let your Sleeve Draw shift even a little bit you're losing quite a bit of damage so making sure delayed draws don't interfere with SDs CD is pretty crucial.

Where as White Mage is just hit Assize under TA if it doesn't save a heal and holding PoM for 30 seconds so it aligns with 3 minute burst but if you lose a use you just use it on CD. Not thinking too much about what you're doing.

There's also more you have to know and study up on as an AST vs WHM to maximize it's potential. If you draw an Arrow during a point of the fight who does it benefit the most? The NIN will get an extra Spinning Edge but the DRG will gain a Full Thrust but if you don't know that and give it to the NIN it's an easy loss of potency. It's also important to know how giving that Arrow during the point of the fight will affect their rotation at that point i.e giving the DRG an Arrow can make BoTD and oGCD usage a little funky. So you basically have to study everybodys own timings. If the Arrows value wouldn't exceed 230 potency (Broil II) then you're left at 2 options. Either give it to the SCH as they are almost guaranteed to get an extra GCD from that Arrow or gamble it to try and get 300 potency.

It's the same if you pull an extra Balance. You gotta know how much damage each person is doing relative to the timer on the fight. Giving it to the NIN during 2:00 intervals so it catches their full burst. Giving it to the BRD during it's Raging Strikes + Minuet window. Giving it to DRG when they are about to enter Nastrond. The problem with Balance is because it's 30-45 seconds even if it catches their burst it might not be worth it if the seconds after burst is bad i.e MCH where they have a pretty powerful 10 second window but drop afterwards.

That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of AST optimization, there's a lot more minor stuff but those alone make AST harder to play than WHM. It's why I think AST is the hardest job to play as they have to optimize healing, optimize the raids DPS and optimize their personal DPS. As a SCH with a high end cohealer all I do is fill in the gaps where my ASTs heals dont reach.

It's also pretty interesting to note that AST does about 8-10 more CPM than WHMs do on average. Juggling a lot more actions than WHM has to even if it's because they have a 1.5s cast time.

I agree though that AST damage shouldn't be doing WHM levels of DPS (more after the Minor Arcana change). WHM pDPS should be 15% more damage than AST and SCH (if AST/SCH are doing 4k then WHM is doing 4.6k). That value changes in between patches as Balance and Chain get stronger per patch. I don't like to take Fey Wind into account because on XIVRDPS it's weighted way higher than it should be as it can't properly calculate the amount of extra GCDs you gain from it giving everyone a set value. Even if you don't gain a GCD from it Fey Wind will still have value on it.

I really like this post just because it gives a lot of insight for card decision making at a very high end level. It doesn't change my opinion that the reward for playing AST as a lower skill level feels far too good for the effort you have to put into it as you can ignore a lot of this optimization and still get good mileage for your buffs as long as you have a general idea of how kits operate and a running gauge of everyone's DPS - but it definitely puts into light the amount of effort one has to put on to the table to reach those top percentiles. And even if you remove the card system entirely from AST they would still do more rDPS than WHM due to their current levels of pDPS.

Give party buffs gain strength as the gear levels increase in an expansion, I almost wonder if the party buffs given by healers could use a minor nerf just to allow WHM to keep up with the power creep for the expansion. Just some food for thought to put on the table.

This this this. SE gave us more healing tools in Stormblood and REDUCED healing requirements in fights which is just baffling. Because of these new tools Ultimates are a lot easier to heal than they could have been. The only truly healing intensive part of UCoB was Teraflare phase (adds). Golden looked intimidating but there's only a spike of damage every like 40 seconds then no damage aside from auto attacks and tank busters. Same goes for UWU, Garuda and Aetherplasm phase were the only real healing intensive fights. My group got through UWU with 9 Succors during boss uptime. 3 Of those being in Garuda and 6 being after Aetheroplasm. And this was before the Passage and Collective change, I don't wanna think how much easier it is now.

3 Succors, 2 Indoms, 2 Excogs, 1 Soil in Garuda. 1 Adlo Deploy, 1 Indom, 1 Excog in Ifrit. 0 GCDs 1 Indom Titan. 6 Succors, 6 Indoms, 1 Excog. Total of 11 healer GCDs, 10 Indoms, and 4 Excogs over 15 minutes because AST can cover the majority of the damage with Earthly Star, Collective and proper Aspected Helios usage during downtime. And because there's so much time in between each set of damage Star and Collective are nearly up for every big AoE. As I said before this was before the Collective and Passage change so you can probably get rid of soils all together and probably 2 succors and a deploy.

I haven't had the chance to optimize UCoB like I did with UWU but I have a rough mapout of it and there's even less healing than UWU. The majority of healing will come from Add Phase. Even though it's super optimized it's still pretty pathetic that you can get away with doing that amount of heals just because ASTs kit meshes so well with the fight design.

I am actually curious. If you look at the percentile logs for UwU, WHM pretty much kills the rest of the competition at almost all percentiles. Is there a reason for that in UwU?

If healing requirements are so low, that would imply a AST/SCH team would be able to handle it easily imply the three healers would have the same DPS heirarchy as Savage yet WHM sits on the healer DPS throne for UwU. I've only seen up to Titan enrage, so I don't have the know how to dissect the fight fully, let alone how to optimize fully for the fight.

[edit] Just going to randomly add that I feel like due to the way the fight was structured, the buff alignments for WHM worked out well as I feel like I had PoM + CS up for every primal transition which coincided with TA applications which may have helped the DPS.