SCH needs some nerfs

[Erakir]

Hoo boy, I type too much and say too little -
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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~