SCH needs some nerfs

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Your next Adloquium will crit and be applied to every player around your target)

This would be the most broken thing since 20% balance. As much as a guaranteed crit ability for SCH would be, it should absolutely not happen unless crit adlo gets nerfed.

[NobleWinter]

I've always felt that Deployment Tactics should be a hanging preemptive buff like Emergency Tactics. It could reduce your Crit Chance on your next single target healing spell by 3% but cause the effect to be spread to everyone around the target. You wouldn't be able to spread Eye for an Eye anymore, which no one should regret considering how lame the skill is, but both the initial heal and shield from Adlo could be shared. Plus, you could spread Physic for a cheap AoE heal when you don't want to overwrite your shields and Emergency Tactics isn't available. By removing and hampering the ability to guarantee a Crit Shield to the party the Cool Down could be reduced immensely to compensate allowing it to be used more often.

[number473]

I don't think the main problem with why SCH is so strong has anything to do with Adloquium specifically. In fact, Adloquium on its own is a rather weak skill; it is very expensive compared to the amount it heals. However, combined with various healing buffs and Deployment Tactics there are ways that it can be abused to get past mechanics in ways that are not intended. I don't think these skills need to be changed at all (although I do think the random nature of the crit bonus of Adloquium plays against the style of SCH which is meant to be measured and planned).
Instead, we just need to get rid of the ability to abuse shields in general, which could be done by setting an upper limit to the amount of shield that someone can have. If we cap the amount of shield possible at 50% or 100% (devs would need to decide how much they think is appropriate) there is no way they can be abused because fights can be planned to take into account the maximum possible amount of shielding available. Something like this would also make it much easier for them to allow all sorts of shields to stack. Currently, only % based shields stack freely because they can always know what the maximum possible amounts would be, but by putting in a hard cap to the amount of shields you wouldn't have to worry about even two SCH or a SCH+AST shield stacking.

[silverlunarfox]

I use all three healers regularly. After SCH had its MP costs tweaked its become a solid class again. I wouldn't say its OP however, because in bad situations it can run out of MP very quickly or isn't able to heal quickly enough once the aetherflow stacks are gone. In a good group however, its great. Not unlike AST thought I think AST performs far better in bad situations.

I think the bigger problem is WHM not being able to compete with the other two as much, so theres a sense of imbalance.

[Sylvain]

This would be the most broken thing since 20% balance. As much as a guaranteed crit ability for SCH would be, it should absolutely not happen unless crit adlo gets nerfed.

I did say it would be broken. (I mean, it already is broken, it's brokennness is just dampened by the rng nature of crit)

I just pointed that the only flaw of Deployement is the randomness of the Adlo crit. (Which makes it annoying to use).
And technically, it wouldn't be "much more" broken because you can already do an adlo crit deployed. The only difference would be that you wouldn't have to fish for it.

And they should anyway nerf the adlo crit. Because it's just too strong or too weak.
A non crit adlo is bad, a crit addlo is too good (mostly because you can spread it).

I much prefer the AST shield (from a balance perspective), at least it's more consistent.

[Mnemosynia]

Coming from an astro i tried out a SCH they seem to have the weakest healing in the game by alot V-cure heals as hard as my scholar so i think this thread is a load of BS.

[Sighearth]

Its been ages since healer balance is this good. Please dont make SE screw up all over again. In all honesty, today anyone can play any healer without any problem. I rly dont think sch is overtuned and even if it was just a bit, it is not worth to bring it down and have the healers unbalanced all over again.

[Risvertasashi]

Its been ages since healer balance is this good.

I couldn't help but stare at this for a long while. Did I step into a parallel universe? Maybe today is the day raiders stop asking me to switch to AST and SCH isn't considered mandatory..?

[Connor]

Personally, I feel like Scholar was intended to be a lower potency healer in exchange for shields, utility and having extra healing coming from fairy. I always loved the idea of a support healer with less healing output but a set of strategic spells that can be extremely useful when applied to the right situation. But then they started adding a ton of powerful off-GCD abilities with very short cooldowns and barely any requirements (you can pretty much always have at least 1 aetherflow ready if you plan properly). Indomitability, Excogitation, Fey Union, etc.
Then they started buffing these abilities and lowered aetherflow’s cool down. The result that is that you can handle most healing requirements effortlessly almost entirely using your off-gcd. Then all that’s left to do is spam Broil and DoTs, which doesn’t make me feel like much of a ‘Scholar’.

I mean, so many skills that Scholar has have been made nearly redundant by off-GCDs. Adloquium is a waste of MP when you can just use Excogitation for an even stronger heal with essentially no cost, on a very short cooldown. And since they buffed it to always take effect it’s pretty much impossible to waste it unless you somehow end up healing 0HP with it. Succor can pretty much always be replaced with Indomitability, or just left to co-healer or fairy regen. Physick hasn’t been considered worth using for a while, especially with the extremely powerful off-gcd combination of Excogitation, Fey Union and Whispering Dawn. And that’s not even considering Embrace or presence of a co-healer.

I personally think the reason Scholar is too powerful is that it has all these spells that are intended to balance it out (e.g Adloquium/Succor costs, cast times, lower healing potencies) with other healers can be pretty ignored in a lot of cases. I feel like if Scholars were more focused on shielding the party and providing support, rather than being the ‘everything-is-off-gcd-and-super-powerful’ class that has huge DPS potential, then it’d feel a lot more balanced in comparison to other healers.

I also feel like the design of the healing as a whole favours Scholar more naturally than it has the other healers. If healing were more frequent and damage was higher, Scholars would be under more pressure to use GCD healing / shields, maybe even stuff that doesn’t really have a use like Sacred Soil. That way they wouldn’t be able to just hit Indomitability and go back to Broils. I think this can also be applied to Astrologian to some extent, though I am aware that they aren’t as free to use off-gcd for the majority of their healing.

That’s just my opinion though, of course. But I personally find it becoming more and more boring as time goes on. Especially as gear improves and i gradually have less and less to heal. Maybe it’s just me but feel like Scholar was never intended to be designed an extra DPS like it currently is, it’s just became as such as a culmination of years of buffs with no checks put in place to balance things out after said buffs were applied

[Jinzhu]

Let's take the O11S fight timeline I posted earlier and just focus on the raid busters:

SCH can

• [00:07] Indom the Atomic Ray
• [00:26] Fey Covenant and Whispering Dawn the Flamethrower
• [03:02] Indom the Delta Attack
• [03:36] Adlo and Deployment Tactics the Flamethower (GCD)
• [03:43] Indom the Ballistic Impact
• [04:16] Indom the Atomic Ray
• [04:30] Succor the Peripheral Synthesis (GCD)
• [04:48] Indom the Electric Slide
• [04:59] Whispering Dawn the Peripheral Synthesis
• [05:48] Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant, and Indom the Flamethrower
• [06:28] Whispering Dawn the Ballistics Damage
• [06:40] Adlo and Deployment Tactics the double Wave Cannon Kyrios (GCD)
• [06:50] Indom the Long Needle Kyrios
• [07:10] Succor the Atomic Ray (GCD)
• [07:58] Indom the Atomic Ray
• [08:07] Succor, Fey Covenant, and Whispering Dawn the Flamethrower
• [08:59] Indom the Engage Ballistics System
• [09:11] Adlo and Deployment Tactics the Double Wave Cannon Kyrios (GCD)
• [09:22] Whispering Dawn the Long Needle Kyrios
• [10:04] Indom the Charybdis
• [10:29] Whispering Dawn, Fey Covenant, Sacred Soil, Indom all the Atomic Rays

===

TLDR: And combination of SCH's single target healing kit, raid healing kit, DPS buffing kit, and how well the SCH's kit design compliments the current raid designs allows SCH to shine as a healer at a much higher peak versus the other two healers.

It's funny that you think SCHs kit caters to the raid tier when it really doesn't and ASTs kit actually does.

> [00:07] Indom the Atomic Ray. No point in doing that when Earthly Star covers it.
> [00:26] Fey Covenant and Whispering Dawn the Flamethrower. No point in running Selene when AST can just collective after Flamethrower and be smooth sailing.
> [03:02] Indom the Delta Attack. Why would you waste Indom on Delta Attack when you can just GCD heal since the boss isn't on the field to attack.
> [03:36] Adlo and Deployment Tactics the Flamethower (GCD). No point in using Indom when you can use succor before the boss is targetable and Earthly Star covers the damage.
> [03:43] Indom the Ballistic Impact. No point in using Indom when Earthly Star covers the damage.
> [04:16] Indom the Atomic Ray. No point in using Indom when Collective covers the damage.
> [04:30] Succor the Peripheral Synthesis (GCD). Don't see how this made the list of "SCHs kit works so well for this fight" when it's just preshielding.
> [04:48] Indom the Electric Slide. No need to indom when Earthly Star covers the damage.
> [04:59] Whispering Dawn the Peripheral Synthesis. This is okay.
> [05:48] Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant, and Indom the Flamethrower. Super overmitigated lol. Why waste Soil when at most you're going to drop down to is 20k. No need to soil or Indom because Earthly Star will cover the damage.
> [06:28] Whispering Dawn the Ballistics Damage. No ballistic missles here, you're thinking of the wrong flamethrower.
> [06:40] Adlo and Deployment Tactics the double Wave Cannon Kyrios (GCD). Not sure why you would waste Deploy here when Collective and Indom can solo this part.
> [06:50] Indom the Long Needle Kyrios. No need if you have collective.
> [07:10] Succor the Atomic Ray (GCD). Again not needed because Earthly Star covers the damage.
You missed the red fists. If anything you'd Deploy for the red fists and build a whole LB3 back from it.
> [07:58] Indom the Atomic Ray. No need to Indom because of Earthly Star.
> [08:07] Succor, Fey Covenant, and Whispering Dawn the Flamethrower. This is okay.
> [08:59] Indom the Engage Ballistics System. No need to when Earthly Star + Collective Cover the damage.
Literally afk all of Pantokrator 2 because AST is busted.

Now let's see whats more busted because it's definitely AST rather than SCH. This is true for each fights this raid tier and not just O11 either. ASTs kit compliments the current raid tier (and previous raid tiers but more so this raid tier cause of the new collective change) and allows them to shine as a healer at a much higher peak versus the other two.