SCH needs some nerfs

[Bourne_Endeavor]

in other words, while WHM and AST gets 5 new skills and traits each to close gaps in their skillssets SCH should have gotten nothing?

and just a little reminder: the reason SCH is the best Healer right now is comes from the combination of ogcd-heals, fairy and decent mitigation - nerf one skill and you risk that SE will buff another skill shortly after... wouldnt be the first time...
maybe it´s smarter to ask for content, that requieres more healing...

To be frank, yes. Except throw AST in the "no new abilities" category alongside SCH. Both are more or less set it terms of their respective kits. They have zero need of additional abilities, let alone five. One could easily argue some of their abilities ought to be nerfed given how extremely invaluable they are.

Regardless, we have reached a point where WHM isn't even the prog healer anymore. AST is objectively better at nearly every aspect. Meanwhile, SCH continues to dominate. While more difficult fights would be an absolute boon, it doesn't change how lop-sided the current healer balance is.

[HyperiusUltima]

Double SCH still has to be viable in duty finder content so they can't take to much too much strength out of it's aoe heals as it stills need to be a viable healer.

Funnily enough, before Indom was buffed it did just fine in Deltascape. They only gave them Miasma 2 back if I remember right in regards to 4.0 fixes.

[Ftail]

Funnily enough, before Indom was buffed it did just fine in Deltascape. They only gave them Miasma 2 back if I remember right in regards to 4.0 fixes.

You remember wrong. SCH got significant changes every single patch since 4.0 and got repeatedly buffed.

4.05 Emergency Tactics Recast time reduced from 30 to 20 seconds.
Indomitability Healing potency increased from 400 to 500.
Excogitation Healing potency increased from 650 to 800. Duration increased from 30 to 45 seconds. Recast time reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.
Fey Union Range increased from 10 to 15 yalms. The Faerie Gauge will no longer deplete when channeling from Fey Union is interrupted.
Aetherpact Aetherflow actions are no longer required to inflict an effect on a target to increase the Faerie Gauge.
Quickened Aetherflow Reduction to the recast time of Aetherflow changed from 10 to 5 seconds.
Chance to reduce the recast time of Aetherflow increased from 20% to 100%.

4.1 Summon Cast time reduced from 6 to 3 seconds.MP cost reduced.
Summon II Cast time reduced from 6 to 3 seconds.MP cost reduced.
Adloquium MP cost reduced.
Succor MP cost reduced. Barrier effect increased from 100% to 150% the amount of HP restored.
Fey Caress When in Sic mode, Selene will now activate Fey Caress when inflicted with an enfeeblement that can be removed with this skill.

4.2 Excogitation The effect "Grants target party member other than self the effect of Excogitation, restoring HP when member's HP falls below 50%." has been changed to "Grants target party member other than self the effect of Excogitation, restoring HP when member's HP falls below 50% or upon effect duration expiration."

4.3 Whispering Dawn Action category has been changed from Spell to Ability.Cast time has been made instant.Healing potency has been increased from 100 to 120.
Aetherpact Recast time has been reduced from 5 to 3 seconds.
Fey Union Fey Union can now be interrupted to order faeries to use another action.
Dissolve Union Recast time has been reduced from 5 seconds to 1 second.

4.4 Sacred Soil The effect is now applied as soon as the action is used.
Shadow Flare The effect is now applied as soon as the action is used.

These are just a few of the patches. Honestly, SCH needs a nerf and WHM needs a buff. But people saying to return to 4.0 SCH either have an agenda to punish SCH or they don't understand the significant changes made to it.

[Deceptus]

You remember wrong. SCH got significant changes every single patch since 4.0 and got repeatedly buffed.

- Excogitation Healing potency increased from 650 to 800. Duration increased from 30 to 45 seconds. Recast time reduced from 60 to 45 seconds.
- Fey Union Range increased from 10 to 15 yalms. The Faerie Gauge will no longer deplete when channeling from Fey Union is interrupted.
- Aetherpact Aetherflow actions are no longer required to inflict an effect on a target to increase the Faerie Gauge.
- Adloquium MP cost reduced.

4.2 Excogitation The effect "Grants target party member other than self the effect of Excogitation, restoring HP when member's HP falls below 50%." has been changed to "Grants target party member other than self the effect of Excogitation, restoring HP when member's HP falls below 50% or upon effect duration expiration."

4.3 Whispering Dawn Action category has been changed from Spell to Ability.Cast time has been made instant.Healing potency has been increased from 100 to 120.
- Aetherpact Recast time has been reduced from 5 to 3 seconds.
- Fey Union Fey Union can now be interrupted to order faeries to use another action.
- Dissolve Union Recast time has been reduced from 5 seconds to 1 second.

Most of these were desperately needed QOL buffs (They changed the way AOE started damage for other jobs as well)

The Excog change was needed because there were times where you'd put it on and the tank would stay above 50% and it was a wasted aether stack. Also before the potency increase it was only nominally more than a Lustrate. Now if your tank is <50%, you should be casting Excog if it's up.

Fey Union was changed because it was clunky as hell. There would be times you'd mash the button and nothing would happen.

The Whispering Dawn change was a straight up nerf. A pretty major one. Don't know why you put it on the list of "buffs". Now WD isn't affected by Rouse or Largesse. Many are of the mindset it's because the dev's acknowledged SCH was getting to good in the aoe department. So they increased player ability healing and decreased pet healing. You know, balance.

Same with

Quickened Aetherflow Reduction to the recast time of Aetherflow changed from 10 to 5 seconds. This was AFTER they reduced the MP gain from Energy Drain

It's almost like context is really important when looking at balance changes and you can't look at isolated events.

[Jinzhu]

You remember wrong. SCH got significant changes every single patch since 4.0 and got repeatedly buffed.

These are just a few of the patches. Honestly, SCH needs a nerf and WHM needs a buff. But people saying to return to 4.0 SCH either have an agenda to punish SCH or they don't understand the significant changes made to it.

Most of what you listed are good class changes and QoL that the person above pointed. The only thing I can really see being a fair nerf to SCH is a nerf to Indom back to 400 potency or a recast time change so you can get only 1 per Aetherflow Cycle instead of 2. An Embrace nerf is also needed. Frankly Embrace is the most broken part about SCH. In high level gameplay or lower tier gameplay Embrace is equally busted, but i've already spoke about it before in the thread before.

To put into perspective in a high level environment the change to Indom being 400 potency would do virtually nothing but would affect midtier players as 1. You don't do a single Indom in O9-O11 (obviously not everyone is in an equal group compared to mine but still you wouldn't even feel it) and 2. You would probably just end up using more Aspected Helios/Medica 2 most likely instead of Indom unless that Indom would push you over the HP threshold to live. (i.e you need 40000 HP to live and have 15000 HP. A 400 potency Indom would only do like 10K healing where an AH/Med 2 could barely push you over the safety net. This would be because of the obvious gap between potencies and would have more potential to save resources.

[Deceptus]

Most of what you listed are good class changes and QoL that the person above pointed. The only thing I can really see being a fair nerf to SCH is a nerf to Indom back to 400 potency or a recast time change so you can get only 1 per Aetherflow Cycle instead of 2. An Embrace nerf is also needed. Frankly Embrace is the most broken part about SCH. In high level gameplay or lower tier gameplay Embrace is equally busted, but i've already spoke about it before in the thread before.

Embrace has already been nerfed before. And even if the tooltip says 250 potency, it's really not due to the pet tax. Pets scale lower than players, by about 33%. So Embrace's "250p" really only heals equivalent to what about 165p-180p would be from a player.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

To me the solution is pretty simple. Nerf Indom to 300 potency, but make it's cooldown 1s, like Lustrate. The reason I think that's a good idea is because the current Indom feels too good, to the point that upping its cost to 2 aetherflow seems good, but doing so is also pretty restrictive. Nerfing the potency to 400 isn't really significant enough, barely putting more pressure on the other healer (or makes the SCH use one of their Eos cooldowns), and the lower cooldown doesn't really affect much in terms of common use (though Dissipation certainly gets better with it as a result). The main difference is in situations where Star/Assize is also being used at the same time. The amount of Indoms you may use varies quite a bit if you're coordinating with another healer's oGCDs.

I feel that change to Indom specifically is necessary because SCH has less AoE tools compared to single target ones, and while this certainly ups their frequency of use, it also puts more pressure on optimally managing Aetherflow overall, thus punishing SCHs for mis-using it more. And I do think it might be necessary to reduce the MP cost on some of their spells to compensate for this. I don't feel Miasma II or Physick need such a change, but Succor and Adlo might, and even then, a full revert isn't necessary, given Quickened Aetherflow does help a bit in that regard.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

I specifically said 300 potency on a 1s cooldown like Lustrate. Not 300 potency on a 30s cooldown (which is still better than Assize by the way. Hell it's comparable to Medica and Helios, but you still get to deal damage during it). It's basically at will. You can still weave two of them in a single GCD and get 600 potency with minimal clipping (It's equivalent to using Swiftcast Med II + PI on WHM with better results), which is more than enough when you need that. Again, SCH has a lot of tools to deal with single target healing without spending a single GCD or Aetherflow at all, and they're the only healer with an instant cast DPS spell that they can always use to weave. Hell they have the Aetherflow to spare for Miasma II + Energy Drain when that's available already. The Fairy is that good. The current Indom handles their AoE side practically by itself in everything but Ultimate. And that combination is what pushes them over the edge compared to WHM and AST, and it's primarily the cooldown that's doing that in the first place. They have it up too often, and it's too good. If you're in a fight where that's somehow costing you multiple GCDs over a fight you're likely already using Succor to begin with and will have a good reason to consider using Soil and ED instead.

The only other reasonable alternatives would be to leave the potency as is and either nerf the cooldown to 60s, or make it cost 2 Aetherflow. But neither feels right. And 400 leaves it at an awkward spot where it might be enough in some spots and forces overhealing in others compared to the current version. Hence why I settled on 300 potency on a 1s cooldown. It's the right nerf, out of all the reasonable options.

Regarding Adlo/Succor, reducing their MP costs is a buff, not a nerf. If they cost less to use that leaves SCH with more MP for their DPS spells. The reason SCH felt bad at launch (aside from QoL, cause there was a hell of a lot of QoL issues that SE then went ahead and added more buffs on top of fixing those issues) was because those two spells had their MP costs increased, and Energy Drain and Aetherflow had their MP restoration nerfed as part of the 4.0 changes. Keep in mind Quickened Aetherflow was not reliable then either, and Summons still cost a ton of MP and took nearly as long as a res, so you couldn't even use Dissipation to counteract the problem even in ideal situations. It would only put you further and further behind until the 4.1 changes happened. I specifically said to only consider reducing the cost of Adlo/Succor costs if and only if 300 potency/1s CD Indom change was done in the first place. It's contingent on that one change. Just because SCH wants to avoid using Succor/Adlo doesn't mean they won't use it if they have to. Thus, if SCHs are using a lot more Adlos and Succors as a result of the nerfed Indom, then make that change. If not, then it's clearly not needed.

Comparing Diurnal Helios and Medica II to Succor is a mistake too. They're HoTs, and thus they require time to become more efficient than Succor. Succor is only 375 Healing potency, but it's all applied immediately. It takes Medica II and Diurnal Helios 4 server ticks to become more efficient, which is 12 seconds after you cast it. That's enough time that you're probably dead if you used it to replace a Succor at the time you'd want a Succor at all. You use Succor, Helios, and Cure III when you need enough healing and/or mitigation to survive something in a couple GCDs (in other words back to back AoE) and don't have any appropriate oGCDs to spare for that task in that moment. The only exceptions to this really is PI + Medica II which breaks even but still costs two cooldowns (one of which could be used in multiple better ways) on top of the GCD to add 150 potency, enough that it might matter alongside a Succor for some heavy hitting AoEs, or spacing out Medicas during a jump phase in order to set up PI stacks for another AoE later on because those let the SCH get in multiple ED + Miasma II weaves for more overall DPS.

Exiled_Tonberry already hit the note on why the nerf needs to happen in the first place. oGCDs are too good right now, but SCH has the the majority of the best ones. I don't feel that Star is out of line though. It's right where it needs to be. Indom needs a nerf and Assize and possibly PI need buffs. PI mostly in generation, and Assize in potency. Assize would be a good candidate for 400 healing potency in all honesty (assuming Lily changes boost its potency further) Maybe make it generate a PI stack too.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

What I don't get is how they spent literally the entire expansion fine-tuning and perfecting SCH until it's the best healer in the game uncontested, yet WHM who had a horrible job mechanic that doesn't play to any of their strengths or benefits them in any significant way, and a trait that I'm almost convinced even SE forgot about with how utterly useless and unnoticeable it is has barely been touched.

I want to believe it's because they're overhauling them anyway so there's no point in touching things now, but that's me being optimistic. SE is stubborn and i can totally see them trying to double down on the awful Lily system rather than start over unfortunately.