SCH needs some nerfs

[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.

[jameseoakes]

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.

But burst healing is pretty much the whole healing kit, WHM needs some love but gutting another class to do it isn't the way.

[Jinzhu]

snip

I know what you said and I mentioned that even if it was 1s it would still be bad. Succor is a tier 1 spell and the equivalent of Helios/Medica, not Indom. Regarding clipping, you using 2 back to back isn't going to magically make it better. Aspected Helios and Medica 2 will still be better than using 2 for reasons I already stated. SCHs equivalent to a tier 2 spell like ASP H and M2 is Indom and you making it 300 potency is just going to push the burden onto them as the healing potency per damage potency isn't worth. Making it cost 2 Aetherflow stacks and keeping the healing the same would also be bad since it'd be 300 potency for a 500 heal which still wouldn't be worth.

I never compared Succor to Aspected Helios/Medica 2? Even then it doesn't matter because you SHOULD still compare Succor to Aspected Helios/Medica 2 since that's SCHs only GCD AoE heal and you NEVER use Medica/Helios in an optimized environment EVER. This means WHM/AST AoE heals only consist of ASP H/M2. It doesn't matter that their HoTs when it only takes 12 seconds for it to outvalue Succor especially that there is hardly any situation in the game where you would utilize succor > ASP H/M2. Succor is 375p /hGCD for 230p damage while ASP H is 660p/hGCD for 220p damage and Medica 2 which is 700p/hGCD for 250p damage. Just because it takes time for it to outvalue a Succor doesn't matter since most damage in this game doesn't happen within 10 seconds of each other and actually statistically most damage happens 30-60s apart from each other. The average distance between AoE damage in O9 is 40 seconds, same for O10 and O11. 12 is actually worse because there is small burst damage every few minutes and no damage for 60+ seconds.

I know that oGCD usage is the problem. I've stated in this thread before that Earthly Star and Collective are the sole reason you can use 0 indoms in 9-11 without hurting your cohealers damage. Ironically enough if you make Indom cost 2 Aetherflow stacks or change it to 300 potency you're indirectly nerfing WHM as well since it would be even more of a struggle to optimize healing with them them due to their lack of efficient healing tools. Which would make AST+SCH comps even stronger.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

It wouldn't make AST/SCH comps that much stronger when you now get the option to fit Assize alongside a single Indom with no overhealing at all compared to what you would've had to do before in a SCH/WHM comp. Assize's damage potency is equal to its healing potency, which makes it strong enough that you would treat it as a damage cooldown all the time even if that meant overhealing, except when you have absolutely no other way to save a healing GCD within a reasonable amount of time. This is in comparison to Star primarily being used for its ability to avoid needing to use another AoE heal alongside it in the first place, because that full charged heal at the right time is simply worth more than the extra damage you might get from aligning it with TA, while Assize will almost never have that opportunity in Savage regardless of which healer you're paired with (all the more reason to buff its healing and nerf its damage). While ES can heal mechanics on its own when fully charged, Indom and Cure III are already more than capable of handling the majority of those mechanics by themselves. And when paired with an AST, WHM gets to use Assize in those situations where it's somehow not enough, while in that ES situation the SCH or AST has to pop another cooldown that typically isn't Star and Indom paired together, or use a GCD to avoid risking overhealing.

And yeah I should've used Indom with the Med II/Aspected Helios comparison there, not Succor. The point still stands that you're not using HoTs unless you can afford the time to, and I don't think it needs to be said that popping an Indom is still going to be better because you still get to use Bio II/Miasma II/Ruin II to weave indom in during that period while the other healer gets to DPS as well. SCH also has Whispering Dawn for those situations anyways and even with pet potency it's still more efficient than an Indom. It doesn't force a clip like CU does, it has better uptime due to the lower cooldown, and also has a larger range over CU. That's not even getting into the fact that Asylum is laughably bad in comparison to both at the moment.

And for what it's worth, every one of SCH's aetherflow cooldowns currently is better than ED in terms of a DPS gain, because the GCDs you gain from using them in the first place makes it more worthwhile. This is true even of the 300 potency Indom I've suggested. Even if you're using Ruin II this is still true, because you can always make sure you get to double weave inbetween a single instant damage GCD whereas your co-healers do not have that flexibility whatsoever. 150 potency worth of damage and 80% of the MP cost one of your healing GCDs later on doesn't make up for your cohealer needing to fill the gap unless you already had the aetherflow to spare because of the fight itself not putting enough pressure on you. At the moment, all of SCH's Aetherflow heals are all so good that you don't need to spend all of your Aetherflow to handle Savage fights, which is contributing massively to the sheer amount of Miasma II spam SCH gets away with in practice. Nerfing ED's damage wouldn't change that, and I don't feel Miasma II can really be nerfed in a way that doesn't destroy its initial purpose. Retuning ED into another ability that explicitly doesn't deal damage or only buffs Ruin II's damage would also help, but that replacement would still be used because that's a massive MP boost to fuel Miasma II spam.

I agree that the Gauge isn't pointless either. A single Fey Union tick is often enough to save a tank from an auto-attack post-buster. However, making Fey Union cost Aetherflow on cast is a giant nerf that would essentially remove it from the game. After all, why use it when you can just manage Rouse better? It would accomplish what we're both after, sure, but in a way that's even worse than simply toning down Indom in the first place. It takes 50 gauge to break ahead of Excog (assuming that ordering the fairy to use it also charges the gauge, otherwise its 60), and that's still spread over 15s, and you'd be encouraged to use as much Aetherflow as you could during the time you had it in order to continue to pad out the healing so you can minimize how many times you have to cast it, and it stays on one target as opposed to Rouse and roots the Fairy in one position once cast. And if you lose a tick due to movement you've essentially wasted any advantage you could've gained from using it compared to just asking your co-healer to regen the tank and be done with it. That is true of the current version but you can interrupt it at any time with only a minor 30 potency lost for using Aetherpact later on. This proposal loses a Lustrate/ED/Excog alongside that and those abilities are just plain better, particularly Excog.

There really isn't a better option than simply nerfing Indom or removing Quickened Aetherflow. What that nerf will be is debatable but I'm leaning towards my 300 potency/1s CD proposal simply because it's the easiest change to implement and accomplishes every intended goal without making SCH so bad they're unusable, despite what you think of it. They have the aetherflow to spare. And it's still a healing oGCD on a class with a plethora of instant cast DPS spells to double weave it in. It's a DPS nerf, not the end of the class.

On the subject of Earthly Star itself, I think it actually needs a third stage. Not for the healing potency, though. I'd scratch the potency boosts altogether and leave it at the initial healing and damage values regardless of what stage it is in to bring it more in line with Assize and Indom. Instead, each stage increases the range of the Star, starting at the current range, growing to normal AoE heal range in the second stage, then Medica II range in the third. That's an appropriate nerf, not really changing its use case, but gives you more situations where you can use it if you plan ahead.

And we all agree WHM needs love. Lots of it.