How SE Can Fix SCH

[OmegaSinX]

One Step Forward, 2 Step Back

Before I get into the meat of my discussion, I want to give Kudos to SE for the QoL changes / Buffs we got in 5.0.

Dissipation got the Bahamut Treatment
Pets Don't Die
The Mechanics of Catalyze
Sacred Soil got a Regen
We got a way to guarantee Crit Adlo Deployment.
More options for AOE healing through Consolation & Fey Blessing.

SCH tool kit seems very strong in the healing department and I can't wait to try it out in raids.

However, While I love these changes I feel that some of the other changes are downright annoying and SE shafted a great majority of their player base who play SCH by removing key skills. It seems they made some changes ignoring why a lot of people love SCH in the first place.

What I loved about SCH in 4.0 was that it was an incredibly strategic job; If you knew the encounter well enough, you had an answer for everything a boss could throw at you. You'd laugh at the boss as his group-wide AOE barely tickles your party; you then added insult to injury as you countered with Broil, Dots, Shadowflare. Since 2.0, SE Slowly chipped away at this identity and more and more SCH is changing to what WHM uses to be in 2.0 (Strong Healing, limited utility). If I wanted to be a WHM I'd play a WHM. I love SCH because it rewards being Pro-active and not Reactive. If you are an amazing SCH, your jobs becomes less about healing and more about mitigating, assisting, and aiding your allies in the fight (DPSing).

In 5.0, most of that Identity has been stripped away. They dumbed SCH down to reduce the skill gap, but for those of us who mastered it, the pace is to slow. Simply healing is boring. I now feel like a Baby sitter who no longer contributes much outside of healing. Below are my suggestion of how we could make SCH Better.

Let us use Aetherflow outside of battle

For years now, Its has been the norm for tanks to pull big in Dungeons. My answer for this before was to place an Exog on them before they pull. Changing it so that we can only use Aetherflow in battle created an unintentional problem. It has only been a day but I have had multiple tanks die because "I" wasn't in battle so I couldn't use aetherflow; Our strongest heals are gated behind Aetherflow. What was so bad about it before that you needed to nerf it ? I hate when developers nerf things for the sake of nerfing things. If it an broke, don't fix it.

Give us back Bane & Shadow Flare

I get that some people thought SCH was too busy so I understand why you turned some of the fairy actions into SCH abilities and removed a lot of pet actions and SCH actions. But I think some of us can agree that the number of skills removed was overkill. I personally didn't think SCH was too busy, it was versatile. On top of this, a lot of its complexity could have been mitigated through Macros. With all the skills that were removed, I find myself sitting on my hands, spamming Broil, or wasting MP with Art of War. I think a good compromise would be to give us back Bane and Shadowflare. Its very tedious applying dots to every mob without bane. Since Bio, Bane, and shadownflare are all instant, it shouldnt be too hard for new players to keep them up. Im ok with losing Miasma 2/3 since Art of War sort of makes up for it.


Show Fairy on Party List

Outside of your fairy gauge on post 70 content, its hard to tell when your fairy is there. It can easily get lost in the chaos. I can't tell you how many times my fairy despawned without me noticing. It's cool you made them invincible, but when i don't have my gauge, (pre-70 content) I always have to be aware where my fairy is because without um, were severly hindered; WHM/AST don't have this issue. Its a small detail I never thought I'd miss.

"Give Summon Seraph Baked in Fey Light/Fey Glow"

I'm reaching here, but these skills were good but underutilized because Selene was so bad. Similar to how you get a free regen when you summon Phoenix, It would be cool to see these actions make a comeback upon summoning Seraph. This would more of a nice to have.


I'm not asking for SE to make SCH OP, I'm just asking for SE to give back things that made SCH a SCH: A Master Tactician.

[Sebazy]

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

I'm thinking the option of giving a SCH a full aetherflow stack on zoning or an encounter reset would probably be an easier middle ground for this, ensuring that SCH don't find themselves in an oGCD handicap at the start of an encounter. I'm sure we've all done it with the fairy in the past

I'm soso on the return of bane and honestly I wonder if there would be a better way to handle this. Shadowflare and ED are things to consider though, especially given that SF is kind of a foil to the newly buffed Sacred Soil.

For the fairy on the party list thing. I'd have thought a simpler option would be just to have pets simply teleport to you and auto heel when you run out of range of them?

[Zyneste]

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

Your solution would work or a GCD spell with a decent cast (like 5 seconds) with: Gain III Aetheflow. Can only be used outside of combat, like old SSII.

[Jerichai]

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

The thing with this is right now there's far less value to front loading a bunch of aetherflows at the start of a pull with the removal of ED. All the other options save for lustrate are tied to a cooldown, and if you're needing to pump out 9 lustrates in the space of a minute...something has either gone wrong or you're not healing efficiently.

Like...with the removal of ED I feel like the change to aetherflow is kinda pointless and only serves to make the class feel clunkier...

[OmegaSinX]

Like...with the removal of ED I feel like the change to aetherflow is kinda pointless and only serves to make the class feel clunkier...

Couldn't agree more.

[OmegaSinX]

I'm assuming a big part of the aetherflow out of battle thing was to put an end to high end SCHs needing to wait on Aetherflow to come back off CD for the pull. Personally I've never felt it was a problem given it was only a minute however this is admittedly pure conjecture on my part given the lack of feedback from SE on matters like this.

I'm thinking the option of giving a SCH a full aetherflow stack on zoning or an encounter reset would probably be an easier middle ground for this, ensuring that SCH don't find themselves in an oGCD handicap at the start of an encounter. I'm sure we've all done it with the fairy in the past

I'm solo on the return of bane and honestly I wonder if there would be a better way to handle this. Shadowflare and ED are things to consider though, especially given that SF is kind of a foil to the newly buffed Sacred Soil.

For the fairy on the party list thing. I'd have thought a simpler option would be just to have pets simply teleport to you and auto heel when you run out of range of them?

I personally never asked others to wait for my Aetherflow to reset before a pull and I don't ever recall another SCH asking for this either. I simply adjusted. 3 stacks going in was more than enough and even if you had no stacks, you always had dissipation as a backup. While othere jobs have this problem its not as big of an issues WAR/SMN. WAR gets two charges of infuriate, and SMN "aetherflow (energy drain)" is on 30sec cool down. It isnt as bad since they use their charges for damage. SCHs could use their aetherflow preemptively (Excog/Sacred). Those little differences made huge impacts in some encounters.

[Sebazy]

I personally never asked others to wait for my Aetherflow to reset before a pull and I don't ever recall another SCH asking for this either. I simply adjusted.

It was primarily a savage thing. As you say, it wasn't ever really a consideration for dungeons, and rarely mentioned in Trials unless you're going with a static perhaps.

It's just an odd quirk and in my eyes it'll primarily cause problems for a particular niche aka non DPSing lower APM casuals in dungeons. Outside of that, it's not really much of a deal, as above states, with ED gone and Excog/Sacred Soil not being sustainable, SCHs are likely going to have charges to spare more often than not.

Also, your sig makes me chuckle every time, I love it <3

[Reimmi]

I dunno why they did the aetherflow out of combat change anyway, they removed energy drain: the main reason people did the 1 minute pre pull to begin with

[Silver-Strider]

Only agree with point 1 and 3

Bane is pretty meaningless with 1 DoT and Shadowflare was a fire and forget DoT with a CD so it wouldn't add anything to SCH in terms of making the class more interesting. I'd take Energy Drain over both since then I have something to dump excessive Aether Stacks with to help me build up fairy gauge on top of being a nice MP sustain tool being infinitely more useful to SCH as a whole than either Bane or Shadowflare ever were.

Seraph already has enough going for her that adding Selene's Old Abilities on top would be sort of overkill. She already grants an extra shield for even more mechanical nonsense blocking so I don't view this suggestion as anything other than a buff to SCH for the sake of Top Healer privilege.

[OmegaSinX]

Only agree with point 1 and 3

Bane is pretty meaningless with 1 DoT and Shadowflare was a fire and forget DoT with a CD so it wouldn't add anything to SCH in terms of making the class more interesting. I'd take Energy Drain over both since then I have something to dump excessive Aether Stacks with to help me build up fairy gauge on top of being a nice MP sustain tool being infinitely more useful to SCH as a whole than either Bane or Shadowflare ever were.

Bane saved GCDs spreading dots one by one. Precious time you could be using on something else. Shadow Flare had chance to slow enemies; minor but it was added damage + mini utility we lost with its removal. This would definitely make SCH more interesting if it didn't compete with Sacred Soil ( we could then have both up: Slow + Dot + 90% damage + Regen).

If they wanted to make SCH dot management more simple, they could have combined Bio II & Miasma III into the new Biolysis spell (100 potencies combined maybe?) similar to Tri-Disater on SMN.