The fun in healer DPS

[LariaKirin]

These job changes will not and can not change your playstyle. The only thing that can change playstyle is the content coming up in 5.0.

The only meaningful thing Scholar lost is Energy Drain as an Aetherflow dump and the occasinal decision of saving an Aetherflow for healing abilities.
What will be the next Aetherflow dump? We'll see (I think at the very least some Lustrates will be needed due to Embrace/Aetherpact nerfs).

What makes healer DPS engaging is the act of balancing your Healing and DPS abilities, not the number of different buttons you press.

Scholar single target:
1) Before: 21111111112111111111, occasinally replace a 1 (Broil) with a 3 (Miasma).
2) After: 21111111112111111111
And Ruin II as a weaving tool.

Scholar AoE:
1) Before: Miasma, Bio II, Bane, Miasma II spam
2) After: Art of War spam

If you think that "1" is engaging, but "2" is a snoozefest, I don't know what to tell you.

[Seath]

I personally can't make an opinion until I try the new content in 5.0, but you can try the new SCH today. You can do an expert dungeon and see if you like how it feels by removing the skills that are going away in ShB. It should be relatively close to how that dungeon will feel in the expansion. If you find that the experience is largely the same you should be ok. If not you will have to rely on content and tank changes to make up for anything lost in the experience.

[Seraphor]

I may not be in the majority with my opinion on SCH, but having just recently picked it up after AST and WHM, I feel like it’s AoE rotation is too many things to manage, for the same result that WHM and AST can do in half the time and half the buttons.

My main AST, is just Gravity spam, which I’m perfectly fine with.
WHM is just Aero III and Holy spam, soon to be just Holy spam because of Aero III going.
SCH, requires two dots and Bane just to set up the DoTs… and as damage over time, those 2.5 GCD’s eat into your damage, and with AoEs being used for trash pulls, that’s pretty much half the HP of the enemies anyway, they’re dead before your DoT collection has had a chance to do anything. And your AoE spam ability, is another DoT! So spamming it is actually a DPS loss.
And if like me you DPS via target-of-target macros, because you’re a controller player, then if the tank switches target, your DoTs end up on different targets, and you can’t Bane.

So yeah, I’m not at all bothered by this, will probably make me more likely to play SCH.

[EaMett]

I may not be in the majority with my opinion on SCH, but having just recently picked it up after AST and WHM, I feel like it’s AoE rotation is too many things to manage, for the same result that WHM and AST can do in half the time and half the buttons.

My main AST, is just Gravity spam, which I’m perfectly fine with.
WHM is just Aero III and Holy spam, soon to be just Holy spam because of Aero III going.
SCH, requires two dots and Bane just to set up the DoTs… and as damage over time, those 2.5 GCD’s eat into your damage, and with AoEs being used for trash pulls, that’s pretty much half the HP of the enemies anyway, they’re dead before your DoT collection has had a chance to do anything. And your AoE spam ability, is another DoT! So spamming it is actually a DPS loss.
And if like me you DPS via target-of-target macros, because you’re a controller player, then if the tank switches target, your DoTs end up on different targets, and you can’t Bane.

So yeah, I’m not at all bothered by this, will probably make me more likely to play SCH.

You miasma and bio during the pull then weave shadowflare and bane in as the tank settles. Then spam miasma II and weave ED in for the mana. Also weave lucid and af for the mana. You’ll be doing as much of not more as you would on whm (depends on how strong the party dps is)
Yes it’s more involved but that’s what makes the design great. If it’s too much you have two other healer to fall back on. But if you get bored of your ast or whm you also have a bit of a harder class to play in sch. Diversity is fun and gives you something more to work towards when you e already spent countless hours on the other healers.

[Seraphor]

You miasma and bio during the pull then weave shadowflare and bane in as the tank settles. Then spam miasma II and weave ED in for the mana. Also weave lucid and af for the mana.

During the pull? You mean while running? Bio...?
And again, the Tank changes target, and messes up my Bane.
Weave a ground targeting ability?

Are you telling me SCH is a M&K only job?

Yes it’s more involved but that’s what makes the design great.

This isn't a very convincing argument.
Complex doesn't mean it's good design.
SCH has always seemed like a mess to me.

Diversity is fun and gives you something more to work towards when you e already spent countless hours on the other healers.

Precisely why I'd like to be able to play SCH instead of feeling locked out of it due to playing on controller and it's messy DoT management.

You already have the pet to manage, which is one distraction, a messy DoT system on top of that is too much. Seems to me SCH has as much of an identity issue as the other healers. AST can’t decide if its Regen or Shields, WHM doesn’t have anything unique, SCH is trying to do too many things at once.
Perhaps if SCH focused more on its pet instead of tripping over DoTs, it would work a lot better.
Unfortunately both systems are being simplified, so I don’t feel SE have quite got it right still.

[EaMett]

Snip

SCH works fine on controller. You have the option of making a shadowflare macro anyways. Besides it's hardly the only ground aoe skill to weave. All healers have one and plenty of other classes as well.
SCH doesn't have more dot management than WHM. Only two (miasma, bio II). Shadowflare is a cooldown like assize and miasma II dot management only happens when you're looking to weave and don't want to overwrite it. Which is already not that frequent but is also self maintaining since you can check if it's up when you need to weave as opposed to having to keep track of it. In dungeons you just spam it on trash and disregard the dot aspect.

You should be targeting the enemy you're attacking. As an FYI having <t> macros on all dps skills is a dps sink because your skills can't queue (I don't know if it's your case or not but just throwing it out there). You can sprint or swiftcast to dot during the pull.

It's actually a basic game design principle that gameplay options and diversity are generally good and balancing through homogenization is generally bad. In that sense the diversity that sch provided was good game design. Talking about the skill base or skill ceiling levels and moving those around.. Sure. Maybe lowering the skill base a little makes sense but that's hardly what happened here.

The fact that SCH and AST are the best flowing healer classes currently is also just a fact. We're never clipping our GCD, we have plenty of stuff to weave after instant GCD skills so we're never just sitting there and waiting for the GCD to come back. WHM in comparison is clunky. SCH is now roughly the same as WHM in 5.0.

Also pet management took a minimal amount of time. You just place it. If you optimize a lot you manual embrace and manually stop it's casting for timed embrace. The current iteration of the fairy is good because you can just ignore it if you're overwhelmed or you can finely tune it if you're more experienced. DPS was the same. You can just clip your skills, or miasma II spam if you don't get enough out of bane. But if you want to and have more experience you can go all out and weave everything like crazy.

It's ok for a class to have a different skill base and ceiling as long as you have other options in the same role.

[EaMett]

Is this a troll? No effort was put into making those pre shb rotations even remotely accurate. What happened to shadowflare? ED? What happened to miasma 2? What about quickened aetherflow and the AF skill being used more often? What happened to dissipation as an optimisation tool for dps?
Why no mention of weaving?

Also ruin II is only good for double weaving so why no mention of the clipping? Fun gameplay is about having options for both healing uptime and downtime. Fun is about having the opportunity to take risks in order to gain more rewards. Fun is about feeling like your class flows, not like it’s a clunky clipping machine with constant instant gcd casts that you have nothing to weave into. Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon. Even if the current 7 skills we use are still not enough in your mind there’s no denying it’s better than 1.

[LariaKirin]

Is this a troll? No effort was put into making those pre shb rotations even remotely accurate. What happened to shadowflare? ED? What happened to miasma 2? What about quickened aetherflow and the AF skill being used more often? What happened to dissipation as an optimisation tool for dps?
Why no mention of weaving?

Also ruin II is only good for double weaving so why no mention of the clipping? Fun gameplay is about having options for both healing uptime and downtime. Fun is about having the opportunity to take risks in order to gain more rewards. Fun is about feeling like your class flows, not like it’s a clunky clipping machine with constant instant gcd casts that you have nothing to weave into. Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon. Even if the current 7 skills we use are still not enough in your mind there’s no denying it’s better than 1.

What about Miasma II? The only reason you would use it in single target is because it was better than Ruin II.
What about Shadowflare? Just an extra button you would press on cooldown with very few exceptions.

I've already said that ED is the only meaningful thing we lost.

We still have options for both healing uptime and downtime. You can still take risks.
"Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.

So I'll reiterate. The fun is in balancing your DPS with healing, not in having several buttons that simply replace Broil in your basic rotation.

[Elgeron]

What about Shadowflare? Just an extra button you would press on cooldown with very few exceptions.

But it was also a mitigating tool, actually more effective than Sacred Soil when dealing with big pulls, as it slowed down the enemy while doing quite a lot of DPS. And what does Miasma II is supossed to be used for AoE damage, it was a DoT which could have been used together with the new skill, considering that Yoshi said he wanted to make AoE more enganging by giving most classes atleast a AoE combo (guess Healer doesn't count).

"Fun is not spamming one button in a dungeon". But spamming one button with an occasional other button is? Because that's what we have at the moment.

Good way of oversimplifying things. Guess we can tell that to tanks and DPS too, perhaps they will enjoy 2 button rotations too.

[LariaKirin]

But it was also a mitigating tool, actually more effective than Sacred Soil when dealing with big pulls, as it slowed down the enemy while doing quite a lot of DPS. And what does Miasma II is supossed to be used for AoE damage, it was a DoT which could have been used together with the new skill, considering that Yoshi said he wanted to make AoE more enganging by giving most classes atleast a AoE combo (guess Healer doesn't count).

Good way of oversimplifying things. Guess we can tell that to tanks and DPS too, perhaps they will enjoy 2 button rotations too.

And how is "Miasma II + Art of War spam" more engaging than "Art of War spam"? You don't make things more engaging by adding buttons. Content itself must be engaging - dungeon content as currently designed will never be engaging, even if you give SCH a 50 different button rotation.

You're also missing my point, which is that the fun in dpsing as a healer is in balancing your healing/dps, not in having multiple buttons to press. I would say the same thing about dps and tanks, if the dps and tanks were healers...