Playing SCH is so awkward and bad

[Melichoir]

It’s the idea of having more to do. Reapplying 1 DoT every 30 seconds and filling in the other non-healing GCDs with Broil is a lot less interesting than:
—keeping up with 2~3 DoTs each with their own separate timer (4.0 SCH had 3 DoTs to manage—Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II; 3.0 SCH had even more than that),
—managing mana to have as many Miasma II casts as possible (because it was pretty hard on the MP),
—making sure Shadow Flare remains on CD/optimizing its usage around things like raid buffs that would occur around the time it would come off CD,
—using Ruin II for this weaving,
—and then using Broil as a filler.

Being active and having more timers to pay attention to can make a job feel far more interesting. It’s why I miss Straight Shot on BRD: I like things like self-buffs that require upkeep. Having more oGCDs to engage you keeps gameplay interesting (so long as these oGCDs are able to be handled in a non-cumbersome way—see: 5.0 AST cards and Sleeve Draw for the definition of cumbersome).

I just dont see this being 'more interesting'. It runs into the idea that this more engaging simply because its more to do. As a point from my perspective, if youre not using Shadow flare on CD, you may end up missing a cast and hurting your overall dps. This isnt interesting to me as a mechanic, its simply "Press this button every 60 seconds", and to do that, you need to use something that you can weave with. There isnt much of an argument to say "Oh should I put off using ShadowFlare and hard cast a dot cause thatll be more damage." Only situation I can imagine where you might hold shadowflare is for damage windows, but if that damage window is more than so many seconds out, its not worth while to hold. This isnt any different than SE on DRK in this regards. I dunno if people would be happy if, lets say, they reduced the potency of Bio and gave you miasma back, so that both deal the same amount of damage, but now you have to manage two skills. More to do, but more engaging? Its like saying that to make things harder, just have the boss have more HP and better defense with nothing else.

I didnt play SCH in SB, and Im not going to say SCH right now is the most interesting thing since sliced bread, but Im just not seeing this position of it being that much better from a pure mechanics point. I guess if its just a matter of pressing more buttons ensure things are off CD, then yeah I guess. And I know you can boil that down to it broadly with any class, but I dont see much meta game here or actual thought process going into things that this system was that substantially more interesting. Shadow Flare off CD, press button unless youre within x seconds of TA. Simplistic PoV, sure. But I think saying that this kind of thing made a huge difference in play is a bit of a stretch to me.

This all being said, most of this can be fixed by adjusting almost nothing on the class and adjusting the fight mechanics in the game. This goes back to the issue I see generally is that a lot of complaints come from the fact the game has a low skill floor. Would SCH still be considered boring if you were required to cycle much faster through single target healing, aoe healing, shielding and using oGCD heals in a more managed way, and filling in the rest with Bio, Ruin, and Broil? Whre you had to rely much more heavily on hardcasting heals? I kinda feel this wouldnt be the case. But this requires harder encounters which requires higher skill floor. Heck, considering most players dont play savage, simply increasing the skill floor to be more healing intensive and managing your heals better would actually solve some of the complaints. Itd still be boring in savage, but for the average player, its gonna be more interesting simply because difficulty requires more from the healer than they would do currently.

I think that encounter design is the side of this equation that people rarely ever address. Its always "Its a class problem" and not "Its a fight problem". If the game had way harder mechanics that required more of youre input from the healing side, I dont feasibly see this being as big a problem. Maybe people feel itd be easier for the devs to change class mechanics rather than address battle mechanics.

[Billythepancake]

I think that encounter design is the side of this equation that people rarely ever address. Its always "Its a class problem" and not "Its a fight problem". If the game had way harder mechanics that required more of youre input from the healing side, I dont feasibly see this being as big a problem. Maybe people feel itd be easier for the devs to change class mechanics rather than address battle mechanics.

Because they'd have to change classes alongside battle mechanics. Healers in this game are not designed for constant healing. Try to constantly heal and you'd be running on empty 2 minutes into a 5 minute encounter. People ask for more DPS skills because they'd be the easiest to implement and wouldn't require an ARR level rework to get done. I don't want the next expansion just being them fixing healers and encounters, I'd rather have new stuff, and it'd be way easier and time effecient to just have healers work and be fun in current design rather than redesign the entire game on top of redesigning healers.

[hynaku]

All I know scholar needs some major changes done to it. I use to use scholar all the time when I healed now can't stand the class how bad it is compared to other two healers.

[Justadude]

Look i get it you are a whm main, SCH is not whm. its going to be different and awkward for you. SCH takes this lovely thing called skill. in time you may be able to be effective at sch, but right now this does not seem to be the case.

Git Gud.
Heres how:
If you would Medica2 on WHm you will use succor instead.
Once you have done that, you will follow up with a Emergency tactics then another succor, this will top off everyone, right about when their sheilds will shut down, follow up with another succor and take a nap.
If the part is taking a lot of damage, pop a shield dome and do the above. If your Emergency tactics is on CD, THEN you could use a lustrate, or indomitably.
If you need to go full HOT then pop your angel fairy transform and pop off a succor plus the fairy version of that, followed by the fairy buffs. then take another nap.

SCH is all about taking naps. Naps are great at clearing ones mind and ensuring a restful state throughout the day. Make sure to take naps regularly. Consult your physician if you find you are taking naps involuntarily.

[Mhaeric]

Have they fixed that issue where if you're multitasking while ordering the fairy to cast something it would sometimes put the ability on CD without actually casting it?

I've never seen this issue, although I've seen people talk about it.

When Fey Illumination is up I almost always use it and Whispering Dawn back to back between GCDs and both effects go off in sequence over the next couple of seconds. The only weirdness I find with this is that if you use a third fairy ability. If she's already casting a spell she gets a buff which acts as a queue for the second ability. The name of the buff is Summon Order and has numbered versions depending on what is being queue'd. E.g. if Fey Blessing is queued then it is Summon Order IV. This works as expected with only 2 fairy abilities in play, but if you try to use a third ability then the order she uses them is unexpected. While she has the Summon Order buff still active that third ability gets used before the queued ability which finally goes off just fine afterwards. E.g If I click FI then FB then WD in that order, she will cast FI, queue FB in Summon Order IV, use WD, and then use her queue'd FB.

[19:57]You use Fey Illumination.
[19:57]You use Fey Blessing.
[19:57]Eos gains the effect of Summon Order IV.
[19:57]Eos uses Fey Illumination.
[19:57]  You gain the effect of Fey Illumination.
[19:57]You use Whispering Dawn.
[19:57]You use Aetherflow.
[19:57]  You recover 1000 MP.
[19:57]Eos uses Whispering Dawn.
[19:57]  You gain the effect of Whispering Dawn.
[19:57]Eos loses the effect of Summon Order IV.
[19:57]Eos uses Fey Blessing.
[19:57]  You recover 7747 HP.

This example is using FI, WD and FB in that order. She casts FI immediately, queue's WD in Summon Order, uses Fey Blessing immediately when her GCD is up then uses her Summon Order stored WD.

[19:45]You use Fey Illumination.
[19:45]You use Whispering Dawn.
[19:45]Eos gains the effect of Summon Order.
[19:45]Eos uses Fey Illumination.
[19:45]  You gain the effect of Fey Illumination.
[19:45]You use Fey Blessing.
[19:45]Eos uses Fey Blessing.
[19:45]  You recover 7673 HP.
[19:45]Eos loses the effect of Summon Order.
[19:45]Eos uses Whispering Dawn.
[19:45]  You gain the effect of Whispering Dawn.

Here's a test with FI, FB, FU and WD used in that order. And again all 4 get used but in the unexpected order FI, FU, FB, WD. FB and WD were both queued in this case and used after FU took effect in the order they were queued. But all of the effects got applied.

[19:59]You use Fey Illumination.
[19:59]You use Fey Blessing.
[19:59]Eos gains the effect of Summon Order IV.
[19:59]Eos uses Fey Illumination.
[19:59]  You gain the effect of Fey Illumination.
[19:59]You use Aetherpact.
[19:59]You use Whispering Dawn.
[19:59]Eos gains the effect of Summon Order.
[19:59]Eos uses Fey Union.
[19:59]  You gain the effect of Fey Union.
[19:59]  Eos gains the effect of Fey Union.
[19:59]You lose the effect of Fey Union.
[19:59]Eos loses the effect of Fey Union.
[19:59]Eos loses the effect of Summon Order IV.
[19:59]Eos uses Fey Blessing.
[19:59]  You recover 7605 HP.
[19:59]Eos loses the effect of Summon Order.
[19:59]Eos uses Whispering Dawn.
[19:59]  You gain the effect of Whispering Dawn.

I'm never able to get it so that a fairy ability is put on cooldown but the effect is not applied. I even just spent the last 30 minutes outside my FC house trying all sorts of combinations and cannot get anything like that to happen. This matches my practical experience in dungeons, but it's possible I've missed seeing a missed application here or there if not really paying attention or the fight is frantic. What are people doing that is causing this?

[Sloprano]

I think that encounter design is the side of this equation that people rarely ever address. Its always "Its a class problem" and not "Its a fight problem". If the game had way harder mechanics that required more of youre input from the healing side, I dont feasibly see this being as big a problem. Maybe people feel itd be easier for the devs to change class mechanics rather than address battle mechanics.

Find the fights to be more or less the same since ARR. Only Scholar has changed and the game isn't as enticing for me anymore.

I'm glad you brought up Shadowflare, because that used to have a long cast time, but with no cooldown and added slow to enemies. It made me think if it was worth using a Swiftcast for, only for the tank to pull big without cooldowns seconds later. That is all gone now, but I realize a whole bunch of the new stuff is just cooldowns. When saying "cooldowns" I'm thinking about more and more of the new skills is the 1 - 2 min scale. Now this don't sound like much, and probably lines up with someones boss script "you're gonna need a cooldown for this"-attack perfectly, but it's turning Scholar into a MOBA or Overwatch character for me. For a job that had a world of fun at it's fingertips now I need to wait for Fun to get off cooldown.

Before I had cooldowns in form of Aetherflow, Deployment Tactics, ET and risky Dissipation which felt very well paced as for example back then 30s without Embraces was a substantial hit to your healing. Other than that, the whole skillset was reactionary and on just a gcd, which meant you could adapt very well. Now all that is gone and I'm waiting on Chain strat, Seraph, Excog, Fey Blessig, Indom, Recitation, 2-3 min to fill up Fey Gauge in nor particular order to come off cooldown so I can press it and forget about it.

[HyoMinPark]

I just dont see this being 'more interesting'. It runs into the idea that this more engaging simply because its more to do.

I think you missed my point: for some of us, “more engaging” is synonymous with “more interesting”.

Another healer example: ShB got rid of Aero III on WHM. WHM has never been the more complex healer, but I liked having two separate DoTs to manage. It kept me engaged; it kept me attentive to my DoT timers, and it also just simply gave me another button to press that wasn’t Stone IV (not to mention, it was good for both single-target and AOE scenarios). Being more engaged in keeping track of timers and having more to press made the gameplay more interesting simply because it wasn’t so monotonous as Dia > Glare > Glare > Glare > Glare > Glare ad nauseam until Dia is about to fall off. Monotony is what healers are complaining about when it comes to their neutered damaging toolkit—and since the developers won’t actually give us MORE healing in encounters, damage is the only other thing we have.

For another example unrelated to healers: ShB BRD has been simplified and lost all of its SB complexity when it comes to snapshotting buffs and manipulating Repertoire for increased proc chances and DPS gains. Keeping track of Chain Strat and Battle Litany usages and manipulating our DoTs was a more engaging aspect of the job—which made it more interesting for BRDs that want to optimize and push out those minuscule bits of damage. When they announced the changes to Repertoire in the pre-expac PLL, a lot of BRDs that enjoy optimization were really unhappy with it because it simplified the job, made it more boring, and made higher levels of performance far less rewarding.

[YojimboM]

I've never seen this issue, although I've seen people talk about it.

It mostly happens when the fairy needs to move around to keep up with you or get to you and then the casts get backed up in its queue logic. Sometimes it'll move and then toss in an Embrace that it wanted to use before you started moving, and just never use whatever you told it to. Other times it'll stop immediately and use the commanded skill. Moving around and commanding pets has always been awful in this game, and it's even worse with the Fairies because they automatically attempt to cast Embrace.

[Melichoir]

Because they'd have to change ...<snip>...on top of redesigning healers.

I dont quite agree with this. IIRC outside of Succor and Adlo, healing skills on SCH are the same cost as DPS skills. And some of this is offset against fairy buffs and Aetherflow skills. If you wanted to tweak it so healers would last longer or heal more, its a matter of tweaking MP regen rates or mana costs. But adding dps skills shifts encounter designs quite a bit in of itself. Faster you kill, less of the encounter you see, less you have to heal. It gets more complicated when you have to add DPS skills to both AST and WHM to ensure they all do around the same damage output, otherwise SCH becomes a must take because the encounters are designed around damage output.

This is just a difference in outlook though. You want more Damage cause you think thatll fix the class, I personally want harder encounters overall to raise the skill floor of all players without relying on DPS checks because I dont think the class is inherently broken. It's more a matter of shifting focus away from "I need to do DPS" to "I need to resolve boss mechanics while keeping people alive." Heck, might kill two birds with one stone and get people to hush about "Healers just heal and nothing more".

Find the fights to be more or less the same since ...<snip>... press it and forget about it.

Unfortunately this is the direction most of the classes went into. Its more heres a CD, use it. Thats a problem with the xpac class wise. This would be fine if the fights were harder/more interesting overall. Simplifying a class and giving you a basic kit is fine if that kit is flexible and the fights were challenging.

I think you missed my point: for some of us...<snip>... of performance far less rewarding.

I think I get what you guys are getting at broadly, its just I feel that its a ...flawed way of looking at things? I know that comes off as condescending, but its partly the way Im seeing this. Its like arguing that when something was ultra clunky, it's still good due to how much APM or how many buttons to press. My understanding of SMN is that this is the problem - to much going on. More buttons can be interesting, but it tends to sidestep other issues such as "Is this even well designed?" What Im feeling is that this feels like the illusion of gameplay, rather than actual gameplay. Like how for a while in games everything was a QTE. Like there wasnt deep thought for on keeping straight shot buff up. Is it gonna fall off? reapply before anything else. If you can get a straighter shot crit, great. Its something to do but its not meaningful skill.

Id say that yeah, if we want to debate if things got simpler this xpac, sure. I think thats the case. I have my complaints about DRK personally, but I think the thing Im not connecting with here is simply how this is being framed. This isnt like DRK, as an example, where you had managing 2 buff windows, ontop of mana pool management that couldnt be remedied by someone elses raid buffs, oGCD usage of DA (as in where you use it in the oGCD) paired with Tank CDs and aggro management, but now its just Put on Grit, use that Standard DPS combo, and spam EoS until youre down to 3k mana, and use Delirum and Spamotard BS. The skills shifted into much less interesting versions of themselves, aggro management is now a joke, youre not really managing mana anymore, you dont really have to care about how oGCDs are used, etc. Im not seeing my blind spot on this when people are saying "Oh, we lost an oGCD that was used on CD, and a dot that was mana heavy, poor poor selene, therefore the class is substantially less interesting." What Im asking is where is the big nuances that define a substantial differences between 4.x SCH vs 5.x SCH? Cause I can do that with DRK, but Im having difficulty doing that with SCH, even after reviewing guides on SCH from 4.X, particularly since some of these nuances seemed like bad game design. Not that DA spam was good design. It certainly wasnt, but some of the things buried in there were. There was more meta thought to it. You could do more damage doing DA earlier in the GCD. Things like that.

So if there is something akin to this, then Id be interested in hearing that. But the "Well I needed to use this skill on CD, and that dot was kinda mana intensive" isnt telling me that there was much deeper things going on.

[SomeRandomHuman]

All I know scholar needs some major changes done to it. I use to use scholar all the time when I healed now can't stand the class how bad it is compared to other two healers.

I fail to see how it is bad. The shield is always useful regardless of which healer its paired with, whispering dawn is a great HoT, Sacred Soil is a better version of Collective Unconscious, Indom is still one of the best AoE healing spells, Seraph makes Barrier stacking so dumb in terms of mitigation, it has no MP issues unless you're rezzing a lot, excog and lustrate are wonderful panic heals, the dps is still solid, AND that crit buff is still nuts.