SCH needs some nerfs

[Ghishlain]

Yeah I agree that AST is is rewarded more for worse play in terms of damage. However I think that bad play is also punished more on AST because it makes your cohealer miserable. As an average AST will force you to heal more due to improper Star, CU, ED uses where as WHM there's not much that really punishes their cohealer (aside from the obvious of just not healing lmao). Can't tell you how many times i've been in a party with an AST who uses 2 Earthly Stars in a 10 minute fight and no CU or pops their Star when everyone is full HP. I would much rather have a WHM coheal than an AST coheal in PF for that one reason haha.

I've also been a huge advocate of nerfing Healer DPS in some way. In most groups our rDPS on healer beats most tanks which is ridiculous. I'm not sure how I feel about nerfing raid utility though because that's one of the things that keeps things interesting (looking at ARR where there was virtually no raid utility so there was no real coordination between players)

I can agree with the first bit. AST's power comes from a coordinated group taking full advantage of the power AST gives. As soon as you take things into a PuG setting when you can't guarntee the other 7 people will make use of the AST's tools, it certainly makes it less desirable in those scenarios. If even one person misses Star / CU, the AST will need to make up with that via Dignity and/or GCD heals. Though admittedly a lot of people talk about AST's strengths in the context of optimal play so..

I will disagree with the second bit unless they also give raid buffs to WHM as well. My reasoning is the fact that real DPS contribute a higher percentage of damage than healer DPS would. Even if gear scaling increases all player's DPS at the same magnitude, healers who contribute rDPS will get higher returns versus those who do not because the raw DPS increases will affect them more.

Here's an arbitrary example to visualize my thoughts:

ilvl 100
AST = 4,400 pDPS + 530 rDPS = 4,900 total DPS [Assume AST buffs contribute 1% more DPS for a group that does 53K total DPS]
WHM = 4,900 pDPS = 4,900 total DPS

ilvl 130 (assuming a +20% DPS increase)
AST = 5,280 pDPS + 636 rDPS = 5,916 total DPS [Assume AST buffs contribute 1% more DPS for a group that does 63.6K total DPS]
WHM = 5,880 pDPS = 5,880 total DPS

So with the above example, WHM and AST were equal on one tier but as soon as the next tier happens, WHM will start to fall behind. I feel this issue would be exasperated more if healer DPS was even further reduced and more emphasis was put on tank's and DPS' DPS.

Though again, if we give WHM some form of raid utility, that'll help bridge that potential gap and I'd be more inclined to agree with a healer DPS nerf.

One of the biggest reasons for that is because people aren't really optimizing Ultimate aside from a few groups because it's a huge time investment and because of that WHM exceeds as they don't really have to do too much optimization to hit high at the highest level compared to AST. (I also don't think the gap between WHM and AST is as big as Alphascape leaderboards are making it out to be. If you were to look at Sigmascape parses were a lot closer and it's not like that gap increases overnight. Hell the #1 Chaos for WHM is in a pug lol.)

There's a threshold on speed affecting your damage in UWU as well because of kill time. Depending on how fast you kill the primals the more your CDs can get misaligned. I think at about 7:25? If you kill Titan any earlier than that you lose a set of 3 minutes as they won't be back up for Ultima. To compare our fastest kill time is 14:23 (14:20 if someone lbed at the end xd) and we kill Titan at 7:00 and lost a use of Litany/Voice where as a groups with a kill time of 14:50+ got that use. You can also gain an extra use of Potions if you pop them during Ifrit dashes but again if you kill too fast they won't be back up in time for the opener so you're knocked down a use there as well.

Another problem with killing Ultima itself fast is that it's one of those fights where the longer it lives the more DPS you will do. There's two reasons 1. You have more time to bring your DPS up after the massive amount of downtime and healing and 2. Killing faster can mess with your reopener. In my best we killed it mid burst and thats starting as soon as it starts gathering aether. If the fight would have lasted 30 seconds longer my PB could have been around 100 DPS higher.

I'm not saying that's the reason that WHM is higher because the amount of groups actually killing it that fast is small but just comparing the top healer combined between SCH+AST and SCH+WHM and the WHM did 20 more healer GCDs than my AST. And ours isnt even completely optimized. Our current map out for heals is based around Selene where as the SCH+WHM one isn't. So that's 20+ healer GCDs less with Selene. Whispering Dawn is all fluff healing in with out current setup because Earthly Star covers all of the damage Whispering would. Sucks that we weren't able to get a kill with it because of Alphascape releasing. Anyways the only reason Selene is possible is because Earthly Star basically covers for WD and I can't imagine a WHM being able to do that without too much of a loss.

The pDPS discrepancy between WHM and AST is definitely over exaggerated though. It just comes down to the point I made before and that there are no truly great groups running with WHMs compared to their AST counterpart. Sure you can optimize on WHM but that's only a piece of the puzzle. The other halves being kill time, buff alignment and coordination and just looking at the top parses in Alphascape for WHM they are very mediocre in those aspects. Like I said earlier it's not like the DPS gap between WHM and other healers can just magically grow overnight. The best WHM in O9 was in a pug and is currently ranked #5 across all healers for that fight.

Thanks for the insight~

Just looking at FFlogs, the DPS discrepancy between WHM and AST is about 1000 on average. That's just not normal no matter how you look at it.

I'd like to add that AST is also almost equal to SCH in pDPS contribution across the board as well. For a healer job that is suppose to have the least potential DPS based on SSS, that's also something that we shouldn't consider normal.

The problem with the fairy comes down to Embrace honestly. Having a passive regen (that's stronger than ASP Benefic/Regen) that lasts throughout the fight and costs 0 resources is laughable because single target damage is the main source of incoming damage in this game. You have AoEs but those are covered with the large abundant of AoE heals each healer has. Where the only free single target heals we have in the game are Embrace, Fey Union, Essential Dignity, Tetra and Benediction. Every skill in that list is limited aside from Embrace which heals constantly for 5k/8k crit or 8k/11k Crit under Rouse.

Funny enough, Aspected Benefic is actually more potency per 3 seconds than either Regen or Embrace when you combine both the initial heal and the the HoT component of it.

Regen = 150 potency / 3s
Embrace = (250 potency*0.66) = 165 potency / 3s
D.Aspected Benefic = {[200 + (140*6)]*1.1} / 6 = 190 potency / 3s

With that being said, given the GCD commodity game we play now for optimized play, I'd also be inclined to nerf Embrace. Both Regen and D.Aspected Benefic cost a GCD and AB also costs an arm and a leg to cast where as Embrace is both GCD and MP free.

It's amusing - I wouldn't of remotely thought of agreeing with this suggestion back in the second / final Coil days but times have changed a lot since then.

[Erakir]

Regarding Scholar's personal DPS... well. Because of the aforementioned opportunity cost of Indomitability, Scholar actually ends up doing less damage than both of the other healers when playing optimally. The damage calculations you are probably looking at are attacks on Striking Dummy, where Scholar can use all of their Aetherflow on Energy Drain. Along with the lack of Energy Drain, they lose Miasma II weaving opportunities. When they can't do this, their DPS takes a nosedive. In-content is much different for Scholar.

Eh? Doing less when playing optimally?

This whole thread has had examples of current savage content and healer damage numbers, both in highly optimized and sub-optimal play (Come join me down here, we just killed O11, woo!~). Are the 99% combined healer damage numbers suddenly sub-optimal play? Say whatever we want about kill times affecting DPS numbers so the healer DPS number isn't the only real factor, the end result is still a stronger raid group.

Don't get me wrong I completely agree that SCH loses out on striking dummy damage from not being able to ED 3x every 45s in a real raid environment, but from an extremely quick look at logs I'm seeing SCH right up there next to AST on combined healer damage rankings, flip flopping some per pull. As expected these scholars are using a LOT of ED and limiting their Indoms, excogs, etc, but if we're talking optimal play - well there's still a lot of EDs going out there so they're certainly able to use it a good bit.

As I'd go down the list I'd fully expect to see less EDs being used, but the numbers posted much earlier in the thread don't lie. Scholar pDPS is high across the board at all percentiles, despite losing EDs on sub optimal parses, which means that regardless of what SCH is losing in less optimal play, ASTs and WHMs are losing just as much if not more for whatever reasons in their groups. SCHs are certainly not doing less damage, else this thread wouldn't really exist. WHM loses far more of their DPS potential on the whole, because let's face it - WHM still has the highest single target solo damage on striking dummies. The reason why WHM loses so much of its potential has been discussed at length already.

Miasma 2's cost definitely gets less and less of an issue with refresh and double refresh - no other healer gets to take advantage of extra MP at all DPSwise like SCH gets to when it comes to damage. Miasma 2 damage is kind of a bonus since as far as I know, Square has not retuned the SSS dummy formulas since adding it back into the game, meaning SCH's potential DPS is higher than their calculations use...if they honestly use those numbers for tuning (The numbers on the SSS calculator online show SCH at 90% of WHM target DPS across the board for what's up there, though I don't see Alphascape). None of us can know the extent of which they use those numbers, though. I mean, we obviously factor them, but when it comes to who specifically is tuning the encounters with all their deadlines, honestly dunno.

I'm not trying to be facetious, I'm just really not sure what you're getting at with that comment. Happy to hear any clarification!

I'd also argue that what you say about Indom is precisely why it's so powerful. Mmmm I can certainly agree that other abilities have less opportunity cost (Aetherflow and all) and can be used for wonderful effects, but it's simply its availability and versatility that shoot it up there. It's a very powerful tool that - I mean, I can kinda call it "icing on the cake" given everything the fairy does. I don't think it's THE reason, so I very much agree with you; the fairy is a far bigger deal overall. Indom is just really dang good at what it does and is ridiculously useful, even if it's the first to go as we get more and more optimal due to that opportunity cost. The 45s AF change and potency buff just make it even better at what it was designed for, even though we have ES now and a 60s Assize as well.

The fact that it's such a generally powerful ability and is used infrequently at top levels of play simply gives more credence to what you say with the fairy. SCH is as strong as it is without constant Indom, yet if they need it it's still there - it's kinda like Scholar is an expensive sports car AND comes with amazing insurance. The good drivers aren't gonna get into a wreck, but the less skilled ones still have it as an ace in the hole, and they have a lot of it. I'm always gonna be salty at Indom's kneejerk buff in early in SB cause it just honestly didn't need it, but what can ya do.

Regardless, as I mentioned a long time ago though, I pretty much agree and would really like to see Noct modified to better compete with SCH at what SCH does, in particular with things like modifying Synastry's function in Noct as well as thoughts of CU to better match Whispering Dawn. Or, as Ghish says, get a 4th healer and just draw the hard line of WHM/AST and SCH/DNC-or-Whatever and striking trying to make AST fit two kinda roles.

Edit: Since I've been gone from this thread the past week or two, it's had a lot of discussion and more in-depth analysis by various players. It's insightful and I agree with a bunch of what's been pointed out. Just wanted to thank those of you contributing, has remained pretty civil and informative.

[Deceptus]

As always when it comes to balance, my default stance is that other jobs should be brought up, not SCH nerfed down.

SCH, much like Warrior, has a complete kit. That is a good thing. The devs should strive to make other jobs do the same.

[Maltothoris]

The problem with trying to bring it up, per say, is how? The thing with this is it would drastically bring up the power creep that happens with every expansion. Not to mention, when that point is brought up, I rarely see others try to offer suggestions to bring the Whm up to DiAst and Sch level.

That being said, hard nerfs should not be the way as the beginning of SB showed in Sch. Having its mp economy reduced, its dps reduced and the fairy weakened was a bit much when only one of those would of done it. I think the change in whispering dawn in 4.3 is the best example of a decent nerf per say. Easier to use and higher potency but due to being changed into an ability, it lost its interaction with Rouse and Fey Illumination, not to mention the other healing buffs like Nature's Minne or Mantra. WD is now easier to use and can bring the fairy out of Fey Union but lost some burst. That I would be a good example of a decent nerf.

Edit: DOn't mean to be a downer but given SE's track record and having hear the same talk before back when it was 3.4-3.5 and hearing the same talk of "Just bring the Whm up to Sch level" and offer no suggestions on how to do it, just reminding pessimistic.

[LiddyGhu]

Eh? Doing less when playing optimally?
Are the 99% combined healer damage numbers suddenly sub-optimal play?
Miasma 2's cost definitely gets less and less of an issue with refresh and double refresh - no other healer gets to take advantage of extra MP at all DPSwise like SCH gets to when it comes to damage.


I'd also argue that what you say about Indom is precisely why it's so powerful. Mmmm I can certainly agree that other abilities have less opportunity cost (Aetherflow and all) and can be used for wonderful effects, but it's simply its availability and versatility that shoot it up there. It's a very powerful tool that - I mean, I can kinda call it "icing on the cake" given everything the fairy does.

The fact that it's such a generally powerful ability and is used infrequently at top levels of play simply gives more credence to what you say with the fairy. SCH is as strong as it is without constant Indom, yet if they need it it's still there

I, myself, am an example of '99% combined healer' play. I have 99% combined healer runs on all alphascape turns, and am #2 for SCH+WHM on O12S.
And I consider our play suboptimal (bolded the question). Still, it's not untrue for me to say that my WHM does almost 33% more DPS than I do, because all of my aetherflow is going to healing rather than Energy Drain.
Regarding Double Refresh, the devs have already talked about how they balance everything for 2x Melee, 1x ranged, and 1x caster. Given the developers' standard, I think this is out of discussion for balance. (Otherwise, we'd be talking about how OP Noct AST is and how it can solo heal every last bit of content in the game much easier than the other healers, including Ultimates.)
Scholar's GCDs are weaker than WHM's GCDs, so Scholar is the first player to heal in optimal play between the two classes. The dynamic changes in SCH+AST because AST's GCDs are weaker, but AST has more tools to prevent healers from having to spend GCDs at all compared to WHM, so the personal DPS of scholar ends up looking more "on par" with AST.

Calling scholar's indomitability "icing on the cake," is more like "really nice icing on a really MP inefficient cake."
The reason they have tools like Whispering Dawn and Indomitability is precisely because of how awful it is to cast Succor. It costs more than 1/8 of the MP bar after reaching better gear (low piety builds for higher DPS.) For an example, compare it to Cure III, who costs only 240 more MP and is 550 potency, versus Succor at 375 potency. The difference is massive.
Perhaps if they had a normal MP-efficient AoE heal like 'Helios,' or 'Medica,' then I would consider the idea of removing or nerfing indomitability, but as it stands, scholar suffers too harshly without it in the AoE healing category.

[LiddyGhu]

Actually it's a pretty common misconception but Whispering Dawn isn't the strongest heal in the game! A lot of people are fooled by the 840 potency it brings but don't realize that the fairy is actually weaker than the player. For example a cure potency of 120 is around 3.1K for a player but only 2.4k for the fairy. Theoretically an extended Collective by CO is the strongest heal in the game being 1200 potency for 36,000 healing (no crits) then followed by Asylum which is 900 potency for 28,000 healing (no crits). After those two Earthly Star is next being 720 potency for 22,000 Healing (36,000 crit). Whispering Dawn falls into #4 at 840 pet potency for 16K healing which isn't bad but doesn't compare to the abilities listed before. The main quirk as you said before is that it cost 0 oGCD spaces and 0 resources to use but so does Collective/Earthly Star due to ASTs 1.5s gcd. Asylum is a little more troublesome as it costs oGCD space which WHMs dont have much of but with proper play shouldn't be an issue.

The raw potency was not the reason why I labeled it as the "strongest." Sorry about the wording, but what I meant was "best."
The range, being completely cost-free, and only being 60s on cooldown (the most key point), as well as not requiring the scholar to stop casting for even a moment to use it are what makes it the best. My apologies.
Another noteworthy aspect would be that the fairy can often stand in places the healers themselves cannot, making it the only option available to hit all players in some scenarios.

[LiddyGhu]

The problem with trying to bring it up, per say, is how? The thing with this is it would drastically bring up the power creep that happens with every expansion. Not to mention, when that point is brought up, I rarely see others try to offer suggestions to bring the Whm up to DiAst and Sch level.

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.

[LiddyGhu]

Eh? Doing less when playing optimally?

This whole thread has had examples of current savage content and healer damage numbers, both in highly optimized and sub-optimal play (Come join me down here, we just killed O11, woo!~). Are the 99% combined healer damage numbers suddenly sub-optimal play? Say whatever we want about kill times affecting DPS numbers so the healer DPS number isn't the only real factor, the end result is still a stronger raid group.

I forgot one other thing in my last post towards you. Scholar's Omega weapon, i405, is actually their BiS. WHM's BiS is the tomestone weapon at i400, because of the poor substats on the omega weapon. So this tier can also be a bit of a bad example for WHM's personal numbers.
I've seen some builds for AST which use the i400 weapon as well, but it comes with less piety than the omega weapon rather than no piety, so I'm not sure I agree with those builds personally.

I don't necessarily believe Whispering Dawn is too OP simply because Eos isn't used at all in the top end environments because Earthly Star does it's job. Back in HW Eos was meta because Earthly Star didn't exist and Whispering Dawn saved more DPS from healers than Fey Wind gave.

Interesting. I don't heal with an AST, so I didn't know WD wasn't being used in favour of Fey Wind right now.

The problem with the fairy comes down to Embrace honestly. Having a passive regen (that's stronger than ASP Benefic/Regen) that lasts throughout the fight and costs 0 resources is laughable because single target damage is the main source of incoming damage in this game. You have AoEs but those are covered with the large abundant of AoE heals each healer has. Where the only free single target heals we have in the game are Embrace, Fey Union, Essential Dignity, Tetra and Benediction. Every skill in that list is limited aside from Embrace which heals constantly for 5k/8k crit or 8k/11k Crit under Rouse.

Embrace is the reason you can get through O9-O11 with 0 single target heals and only have to cast 3 ASP B in O12S. And either needs an obvious nerf or another job needs to have a similar effect like maybe DNC. In my opinion I think it would be good to tag some MP value on Embrace making it cost 100-200 per cast and taking the auto heal function off when on Obey. This would make it so that healers at a low skill level are still able to utilize her by leaving them on auto as they won't be DPSing much so they won't run into MP issues. But at the higher levels you would be picking and choosing where to heal as MP is a lot more limited.

I agree that Embrace is a problem. But I don't like the idea of having players constantly forced to micro the pet. I'd rather see the fairy act more akin to the PvP version of herself. Still technically automatic, but just adds a little but on top to whatever heals you give out while she's summoned. Or remove embrace entirely and keep Fey Union as the major fairy-healing option.
Having the MP cost on it would drive me absolutely insane to see a scholar in a pug. (Welcome to "get out of my party.")

[Erakir]

Hoo boy, I type too much and say too little -
-----
Heya Liddy - I appreciate the responses!

I didn't see your name looking around the few parses I did, but I see it now; your views at this level of optimization are appreciated and I better understand what you're getting at now. I didn't actually look at many WHM+SCH logs specifically. As you'd expect I'm certainly not at that level of optimization. As I peruse a simple few of the various WHM SCH logs up there, the differences in damage between the healers is obvious based on who's doing more of the healing. This becomes more and more apparent as I go through multiple fights and not just Final Omega. I see some roughly equal, I see yours with your cohealer WHM above, and I see some with the scholar still ahead. They're all doing pretty dang well as far as I can tell from down here.

Given, I am giving extremely quick glances at only a few of these logs. I'm not going to analyze them in depth right now, nor do I really have the know-how about all the specific fight timings for such runs since, well, we do nothing of the sort. When it comes to this kind of optimization, I have to bow to those of you executing it, for you have gone through all the numbers and performed as best you can to get up there. Regardless I do see differences in how they're being played simply by the raw number differences. While we could talk - or rather, I'd be mostly listening - about what would go into literal perfectly optimized play to maximize every number of the healers, I don't think it's a particularly....useful thing to do.

In regards to refresh (I only mention double because I see it in a lot of the parses up there) the point still stands that SCH is the only healer capable of converting excess MP to damage in some format with a potency that high and also allowing mobility and weaving. I do believe that's a factor that must be considered, and I tend to only bring it up since SSS calculations haven't changed since the skill was brought back into the game and it certainly is an option mid-raid to help SCH's maintain their SSS levels. I mean, if you're talking balance and optimization at 99+ where I'm seeing these double refresh comps...then it certainly becomes a factor specifically for that, whether the developers are going to balance around it to begin with. Their intended balance doesn't stop players from immediately finding what best suits progression and they need to react if anything gets stupidly out of whack - not that it really is for general savage raiders like myself.

I hear you that when going for kills like that, well yea, a WHM GCD spend on damage is generally gonna be more than a SCH one pending we're talking things like stone vs broil. It's simply potencies, which leads to exactly what you're saying; lean the most on the SCH toolkit to live as possible to allow said WHM to actually hit their damage potential. It just doesn't feel like the reward is there for the effort it seemingly takes for the majority of the playerbase attempting savage to actually....get there (let alone the less raid damage and all). I get you too with succor's cost making more of a case for indom and WD, but I'd still have to disagree on a purely philosophical level. When I see 15-20 casts of Miasma II in standard (1 ranged) comps, a skill that was added back into the game as an AoE tool to help SCHs not feel as hurt by Bane's gradual sadness since ARR, I....I can't care much about the cost of succor when considering Cure III's limitations that must be played around by a group. After all, it's still stronger than Medica, as is Aspected Helios on a purely potency basis - and across the board, there's still the shield aspect of it to be considered, on the flipside of not being able to spam it or having to burn ET + animation to do so. And of course, we could talk about PI being latched onto medica as well if we really wanted to with all of the stipulations that come with that discussion. Then there's the whole thing of more EDs being the cause of being able to get away with more Miasma IIs and how you'd have less MP as you go down the ladder with more spent on things like lustrate, gosh could go on forever.

But we both know how frivolous it is to talk about skills in a vacuum like this. There's tons of factors from group to group and it's hard enough to try and talk about them at one level of play, let alone everywhere, let alone without considering fight by fight stuff. Ultimately Indom was added to the game to help shore up SCH's lack of AoE options in HW, and it did its job then with a 60s Aetherflow CD. I don't think I'm ever going to be convinced that it needed to go to 500 potency even though we got ES, cheaper Cure 3, and other things across the healers...but all we can do is speculate on how everything would have turned out with it at 400 all expansion. Why, perhaps, wasn't Emergency Tactics buffed instead? Yeah, it's a button not a lot of people like hitting due to its animation, but hey, might as well take a button not really loved and give it some attention rather than taking a button everyone's already pressing and tell em pressing it is even better now. Doesn't matter though, what's done is done and indom is 500, everyone's used to it, and they've designed future content around that.

I'm just kinda talking in circles though, cause I think we don't disagree about the bigger points surrounding all of these specifics and what can/should be done regarding the current state of things.

I care far more about the overall trend of players across the entire spectrum than I do at the highest levels, and that's where I'm still seeing the trend of WHM doing less damage than alternatives as a whole and all the reasons why (Also thanks about the weapon difference; that's a clear factor at the high end of things although I do not know offhand what that 5ilvl roughly translates to in terms of output. I do know I've grumbled several times looking at that cane~). As I've mentioned before in other threads, balance should be striven for from the bottom up. If a job is getting kicked out of DF, for heaven's sake that comes first, all the way up to 24m raids, normal raids, extreme trials, savage, and then....arguably ultimate - things have to be in a really good state across the whole game and the developers are gonna need a lot of free time for a hefty amount of consideration towards that. When the developers are looking at what's optimal or just good, I don't think they're going to be giving too much of a look towards, quite simply, the level you and Jinzhu play at and how hard you push everything to its maximum.

There's a lot you say that I agree with - for instance, I've long disliked Assize being tied to MP return as it forces one to use it on CD or very close to, else consider the damage and MP wasted, but nobody wants to hits a big instant heal for 100% overheal just because of how things line up. I like a lot of your suggestions. I can't get everything I want into words here, but I'm trying to say that I might have some philosophical differences on how healing should be designed or changed, and I'm sure you could probably point out a lot of flaws with some of the things I've mentioned - but overall I do very much appreciate your thoughts and the viewpoint they come from <3

Edit: Bwah I need to sleep~

[Limonia]

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?