SCH needs some nerfs

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

I suspect because they stubbornly refuse to balance around how we actually play the game. As a more aggressive healer who spends little time DPSing, WHM would look pretty decent. It's also arguably the best dungeon healer. And we know they like balancing around dungeons for whatever asinine reason. Basically, WHM's flaws aren't emphasised enough outside a raid environment. DRK is another example of this. Look how quickly they backpedaled because the WF UcoB group ran DRK/PLD. Meanwhile, 4.0 SCH was more or less worthless in dungeons and wasn't exactly stellar in eight man content either.

The one hope WHM has right now is how utterly dominate AST became in Alphascape. Even JP has been favoring it over WHM, and they're notoriously less meta centric. That being said, the devs need to make a choice regarding WHM:

1) Fully commit to the raw healer identity, letting it practically solo heal—therein by making up for its lack of utility through potentially allowing five DPS comps
2) Give it proper utility; Bravery/Cheer come to mind. A 5-8% aoe Balance equivalent but no RNG. Something which allows it to compete with SCH/AST in the buff department. Unless*

Much as I want WHM to go the utility route. I won't deny the idea of a truly dedicated healer would be interesting. Of course, I don't know how much I trust SE balancing such a concept. But they have to pick one come 5.0 otherwise WHM will once again die.

*With that all said, I actually want Balance changed to Direct Hit. One of the significant factors in the meta wars as a whole is how Balance is undeniably the best card. If it were moved to secondary stats exclusively, except Bole, it'd have far less an impact. Food for thought, I suppose.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

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.

That's the thing. Even with a previous nerf Embrace is really broken.
Imagine a free Regen tick from WHM, but it's on the tank 100% of the time, costs no MP, no GCD and can be buffed by rouse to heal even more.
Honestly while it seems unimaginable, Embrace either needs to have a CD (a really short one), needs to cost some MP or needs to be manually casted by the SCH. Even not looking at endgame content, the fact that it can solo heal almost all the dungeon content in the game is silly and never should have been ignored.

[lulunami]

The elephant in the room is Earthly Star. In fights where AoE healing is only required at most once every minute, Earthly Star basically trivializes any AoE raid damage. In Deltascape, Sigmascape, and Alphascape, Earthly Star is just too strong and makes Cure III so weak in comparison. Indom was likely buffed to 500 potency mainly because of how overpowered Earthly Star was in 4.0. Earthly Star is probably the reason why SCH can safely use Energy Drain and ignore Indom. The only fight where Earthly Star is weak in is UCoB since major AoE healing occurs more than once a minute. Earthly generates zero enmity for AST as well.

oGCD burst heals have become way too strong to the point that formerly cure-bomb heal, Cure III feel weak. If you make any healer able to heal any content, then it invalidates any healing advantage another healer has over another job. DPS utility becomes the only optimal solution and I frankly find that uninteresting for healing jobs.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

oGCD burst heals have become way too strong to the point that formerly cure-bomb heal, Cure III feel weak.

This is just it really. OGCDs have gotten out of hand, you barely have to manually heal anymore. It's probably far too late now, but getting rid of these massive healing CD bombs would probably do a lot of good for healers in general.

And yes, Cure III was good back when it was the only choice for massive aoe healing, but this is not ARR anymore. SCH and AST both have answers to a Cure III equivalent that actually works better. It's really nothing special anymore.

[Deceptus]

This is just it really. OGCDs have gotten out of hand, you barely have to manually heal anymore. It's probably far too late now, but getting rid of these massive healing CD bombs would probably do a lot of good for healers in general.

And yes, Cure III was good back when it was the only choice for massive aoe healing, but this is not ARR anymore. SCH and AST both have answers to a Cure III equivalent that actually works better. It's really nothing special anymore.

Cure3 isn't used more because of it's crazy small aoe range. If it had the same range as Medica it'd get used a LOT more.

[HyperiusUltima]

Cure3 isn't used more because of it's crazy small aoe range. If it had the same range as Medica it'd get used a LOT more.

It would, but then what’s the point of having a large ass AoE heal that is significantly weaker? Cure III is fine as it is since it’s an integral part of their kit, but we’ve been through this argument cycle time and time again: WHM needs a Job Gauge That doesn’t inhibit its play by being useless and unused 90% of the time. Every other job has some good interaction with their gauge, but nothing is less interactive than WHM’s.It’s simply filler.

[galbsadi]

It would, but then what’s the point of having a large ass AoE heal that is significantly weaker? Cure III is fine as it is since it’s an integral part of their kit, but we’ve been through this argument cycle time and time again: WHM needs a Job Gauge That doesn’t inhibit its play by being useless and unused 90% of the time. Every other job has some good interaction with their gauge, but nothing is less interactive than WHM’s.It’s simply filler.

I'd argue the fairy gauge is pretty damn useless most of the time.

[HyperiusUltima]

I'd argue the fairy gauge is pretty damn useless most of the time.

True, but the fairy gauge is mainly there as a resource to use for gigantic fairy regens.

Lilies just gives you Cooldown Reduction which is bad all around.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

I'd argue the fairy gauge is pretty damn useless most of the time.

The fairy guage is pretty pointless, but it does still directly tie in to your use of aetherflow and rewards you with a massive single target regen. Obviously you were going to use aetherflow regardless, but the point is the guage encourages that.

Now imagine the guage only filled through the use of Physick casts, something a SCH almost never casts and is in no way beneficial to the job. That's pretty much lilies, it's not only useless but goes against how a WHM should even be played.

[Jinzhu]

The fairy guage is pretty pointless, but it does still directly tie in to your use of aetherflow and rewards you with a massive single target regen. Obviously you were going to use aetherflow regardless, but the point is the guage encourages that.

Now imagine the guage only filled through the use of Physick casts, something a SCH almost never casts and is in no way beneficial to the job. That's pretty much lilies, it's not only useless but goes against how a WHM should even be played.

I disagree I think the fairy gauge is pretty good and not useless. It's linked to the strongest regen in the game, Fey Union. Locking it behind Aetherflow is good design which means you can't abuse it too much and it's part of the core rotation of the job. I'm sure they'll add more to it come SHB too. Like you said the problem with Lilies is that it's locked behind GCDs but that's not the only problem. The main problem is that it reduces certain skills recast times which is horrible design, especially on healers. The problem with recast on healers is that 1. You're not even Guaranteed an extra use if you use it on CD and 2. Because you map out your healing cooldowns even if they do come up early you're not just going to use it. You're going to save it for effective healing. You're not just going to use Asylum when the party is full HP and there's no damage going out. Same with Tetra. If anything this skill really effects Assize and DB. Which leads to another issue. As soon as you use it on one of the skills, Assize, Tetra, Asylum or Divine Benison it eats all your lilys. So if you have a coordinated spot where you want to use a CD like Asylum but don't want to use your lily's on it then you're screwed.