SCH needs some nerfs

[LiddyGhu]

Sometimes I think they should just remove Energy Drain from Aetherflow (or remove it completely because it's an ACN ability anyway and put the MP on something else) and keep that only for healing.
I got too many SCH that only ever use their Aetherflow stacks for Energy Drain and nothing else because they would lose dps and MP if they did. If people are so low that Indomitability is truly needed and they still refuse to use it instead of Energy Drain there's something wrong. It is really great that they dps a lot but if they completely refuse to heal becaue of that they could also just go as DPS if everything the party gets is Selene's Embrace.
I'm also not talking about high-end speedruns here where every action is perfectly laid out beforehand but content where people could still mess up. I also personally believe casual or midcore content should not be neglected completely.

What do you as "experts" think about that? I only know that it's annoying to get a SCH as co-healer who refuses to heal and then uses Selene in content where getting heals would be nice, like in learning or casual farm parties. Do yo think content like that should be considered or should everything only be balanced around perfect play?

I don't think you can viably balance a class around players who don't play the class/ don't care about performing well with the class.
You're going to get annoying greedy healers in any content you ever do, regardless of job. I'm aware that it's more often than not scholars who do this, but even if you removed energy drain, let's face it, those players probably still wouldn't heal.

[Erakir]

What do you as "experts" think about that? I only know that it's annoying to get a SCH as co-healer who refuses to heal and then uses Selene in content where getting heals would be nice, like in learning or casual farm parties. Do yo think content like that should be considered or should everything only be balanced around perfect play?

Honestly I haven't seen any of the speedrunners in this thread suggest that we only look at that tip top of the iceberg. More that for non-savage content, every job is already more than capable and none of them have a ridiculous skill check to perform well enough to clear that content.

The mindset you're talking about isn't because of Energy Drain, but it certainly helps reinforce it in those with that mindset. I can't stand the type of healer who queues up for DF content, sees someone take extra damage and just glares because "I shouldn't HAVE to heal that" then proceeds to, you know - not heal them because it's not optimal. Believe me, I get it, it doesn't feel great to have to cast things you know are the things you want to avoid casting. I don't love when I have to Cure 2 spam for 10 seconds, especially when another healer says they could help but they'd lose malefic casts. I don't care what you lose, the tanks are dying right now for whatever reason. When I'm in content, I'm doing whatever I can to help clear it, and I'd say the majority of people I come across share that mindset. Yea, I'm gonna grumble at raising people non-stop in a 24m, but I *am* going to raise them if it's a net benefit.

In theory? I wouldn't mind some sort of change for SCH to push it more towards AF abilities only being for healing/mitigation - but you'd also have to redo/remove Bane on top of ED to do that, and yeah it'd of course come with rethinking MP restoration and potential damage tuning. At the same time I don't particularly mind it, either, and I'd still come across ASTs who stop healing someone because they didn't stand in the first Earthly Star in a trial roulette. Having a way to dump AF charges in a meaningful way that you forgot to use is likely something I'd keep in the game, though there are more options than direct damage.

On the plus side, every time you get a 'healer' like that you get to become better at solo healing and carrying DF parties through fights they had no right clearing~ Ah, Shinryu memories in 4.0.

[Limonia]

In theory? I wouldn't mind some sort of change for SCH to push it more towards AF abilities only being for healing/mitigation - but you'd also have to redo/remove Bane on top of ED to do that, and yeah it'd of course come with rethinking MP restoration and potential damage tuning. At the same time I don't particularly mind it, either, and I'd still come across ASTs who stop healing someone because they didn't stand in the first Earthly Star in a trial roulette. Having a way to dump AF charges in a meaningful way that you forgot to use is likely something I'd keep in the game, though there are more options than direct damage.

Ah, yes, I forgot about Bane. They could just make it independent from AF though and give it a longer cooldown. And the damage loss from not having Energy Drain would just make WHM and AST damage better in comparison. I guess you would need to remove Lord of Crowns from AST then as well... I personally wouldn't mind that though. As nice as it is to do more damage after getting an unwanted card, it's like with Energy Drain. Lady of Crowns just gets used on themselves at 100% HP to make space for Lord anyway. ;D
I would actually like it if they removed the damage from Assize and Earthly Star as well and put it somewhere else. I think because we already try to not cast any GCD heals, dpsing with oGCDs shouldn't come at the cost of losing healing oGCDs for it. I just seem to have seen too many healers trying to play like in parse runs in casual content with new players, but I digress...

On the plus side, every time you get a 'healer' like that you get to become better at solo healing and carrying DF parties through fights they had no right clearing~

But I'm having sooo bad luck with that. Really, EVERY time I get a full-dps co-healer it's in a party with multiple (new) players that don't know the mechanics (yet). Usually I'm lucky though and after like 3 wipes they finally start helping raising and healing a little. There's only so much I can do alone if people fail mechanics a lot.

[Deceptus]

I'll give some suggestions.
Increase the healing power of 'Assize,' and move the Damage it does back to another ability, keeping WHM's PPS the same while allowing WHM to use Assize for healing purposes. Let's say, instead of 300 HPot, it's 440 HPot.
Also move the MP restoring function of Assize onto another ability. Either put the same 10% MP recovery on another 1min-cooldown ability like Tetra, or reduce the cooldown of Thin Air.
Buff Divine Benison to 20%, making it about as strong as Lustrate to Tank.

Doing these things would put WHM in a more AST-like and SCH-like position where they are able to focus their OGCD heals to prevent healing GCDs from being necessary.

At the cost of making their healing kit better, I would remove/completely modify Plenary Indulgence into a raidwide Damage buff of some sort, theoretically equivalent in balance to Chain Stratagem.
At the cost of having a raidwide damage buff, make their Personal Damage equivalent to Scholar.

Having party-wide damage buffs makes it so that later in the expansion, WHM does not fall behind due to scaling of damage for healers vs scaling of damage for DPS. (Info about that in a previous post on this thread already.)
These are just some quick brainstorms of how I would change WHM to bring it up to AST's level.

Or allow Fluid Aura to give back some MP as it's useless normally.

Allow Lillies to act as confession stacks and make WHM the AOE heal king.

[Grimoire-M]

Regarding Energy Drain on SCH, I don't think it needs much of a change to work without dealing damage. Hell I'd like a change on SMN that gave them an ability they could use without needing an enemy around too, and ED is an ideal button to replace on them as well. I think keeping the MP restoration part of it would be fine for SCH. Maybe have it improve your next spell's potency as well and call it Focus, perhaps?

Though for SMN in particular it would need to be on par with Fester to be worth using, so SCH and SMN would likely need to diverge from that one ability into their own versions.

[Eloah]

Wow this thread is still going. Longest one I've seen of kind.

[loreleidiangelo]

Putting alleged "OP" or "UP"-ness aside, I do think that for a healthy game design moving forward both WHM and AST need to be retooled slightly so that their healing and DPSing feels a lot more natural and fluid like SCH's, or else this current healer parity will only continue. As someone else said in the thread, it's more that SCH's kit feels "complete" - aka innately designed from the ground up with the concept of "DPSing healer" in mind, from having a GCD and mana-friendly independent source of healing to their powerful oGCD substitutes to casted heals.

For a brief example, putting the differences in rDPS and utility aside, imagine how much friendlier WHM would feel to a DPSing healer if Tetragrammaton was given 3 charges with each charge having a 20-second CD. I'd hazard most would be fine with removing Cure II if that was what was required to keep the balance, even. Imagine if instead of lilies WHM had a passive aura that pulsed a 150-potency smart heal on the most injured ally within range every 3 seconds. Imagine if Cure III was now MP-free and oGCD but on a 60-second CD, etc. Even small changes for WHM like adjusting frickin' Aero II potency but making it a 30-second duration like every other healer DoT in the game would go a long way towards helping their overall fluidity (less time reapplying Aero = more Stone IV).

Alternately, if the game ever does a World of Warcraft-esque "stat squish" down the line, they could always use the opportunity to honest-to-goodness adjust healing modifiers and potencies relative to maximum health bars so that having a strong spammable toolkit of GCD-laden heals is actually a boon and not a bane, due to healthier healing requirements for content. *shrug* But if that's never going to happen, then the other healers really need to be made more "DPSing-while-healing friendly", IMO.

[HyperiusUltima]

Putting alleged "OP" or "UP"-ness aside, I do think that for a healthy game design moving forward both WHM and AST need to be retooled slightly so that their healing and DPSing feels a lot more natural and fluid like SCH's, or else this current healer parity will only continue. As someone else said in the thread, it's more that SCH's kit feels "complete" - aka innately designed from the ground up with the concept of "DPSing healer" in mind, from having a GCD and mana-friendly independent source of healing to their powerful oGCD substitutes to casted heals.

For a brief example, putting the differences in rDPS and utility aside, imagine how much friendlier WHM would feel to a DPSing healer if Tetragrammaton was given 3 charges with each charge having a 20-second CD. I'd hazard most would be fine with removing Cure II if that was what was required to keep the balance, even. Imagine if instead of lilies WHM had a passive aura that pulsed a 150-potency smart heal on the most injured ally within range every 3 seconds. Imagine if Cure III was now MP-free and oGCD but on a 60-second CD, etc. Even small changes for WHM like adjusting frickin' Aero II potency but making it a 30-second duration like every other healer DoT in the game would go a long way towards helping their overall fluidity (less time reapplying Aero = more Stone IV).

Alternately, if the game ever does a World of Warcraft-esque "stat squish" down the line, they could always use the opportunity to honest-to-goodness adjust healing modifiers and potencies relative to maximum health bars so that having a strong spammable toolkit of GCD-laden heals is actually a boon and not a bane, due to healthier healing requirements for content. *shrug* But if that's never going to happen, then the other healers really need to be made more "DPSing-while-healing friendly", IMO.

They did that with AST by changing Malefic to 1.5s. WHM is stuck with GCD-lock unless they use Aero II. What I'd like to see is WHM getting something that actually helps relieve some of its GCD Lock issues since the other two healers(AST especially) are much more free to handle their oGCDs and still keep the damage rolling since SCH has Ruin II to help itself to whenever it has to move on the fly. WHM can't keep moving and doing damage unless they Swiftcast a majority of the time, and this is just the GCD issues we have right now.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

Regarding Energy Drain on SCH, I don't think it needs much of a change to work without dealing damage. Hell I'd like a change on SMN that gave them an ability they could use without needing an enemy around too, and ED is an ideal button to replace on them as well. I think keeping the MP restoration part of it would be fine for SCH. Maybe have it improve your next spell's potency as well and call it Focus, perhaps?

Though for SMN in particular it would need to be on par with Fester to be worth using, so SCH and SMN would likely need to diverge from that one ability into their own versions.

The problem with that, what do you replace ED with? To new archanists, what do you do with your aether flow stacks until you get Fester (lvl 35) or the for scholar waiting to 45 with Sacred Soil. You would need a spell to replace it or Aetherflow stacks would be useless till 45 on a scholar and 35 on smn.

I know people are thinking of end game, but what about while you are leveling? What skill would you replace it with for archanists as they get aetherflow at level 6 so you'd be 19 or 29 levels without a use for the aetherflow stacks.

[Grimoire-M]

The problem with that, what do you replace ED with? To new archanists, what do you do with your aether flow stacks until you get Fester (lvl 35) or the for scholar waiting to 45 with Sacred Soil. You would need a spell to replace it or Aetherflow stacks would be useless till 45 on a scholar and 35 on smn.

I know people are thinking of end game, but what about while you are leveling? What skill would you replace it with for archanists as they get aetherflow at level 6 so you'd be 19 or 29 levels without a use for the aetherflow stacks.

I was thinking of Focus being the base ability truth be told. What I'd propose is something rather basic, like adding an additional 100 potency to your next Ruin spell, plus the current MP boost you already get from the current ED. This would then diverge via a trait gained at 30, allowing it to affect the next three Ruin spells for SMN, and allowing SCH to instead add a separate 100 flat healing potency to Physick or Adlo, without affecting the shield potency of the latter at all. It could later be improved to affect AoE spells too, possibly, though I'm hesitant to do that on either class given their AoE damage is already fine as it is. It could, however, add more healing potency to Succor in a similar manner. Just boosting the flat heal and not the shield. I'm just reluctant to even do that without a nerf to Indom itself.