A summary of healer issues

[Mortex]

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

and also only the problem that noc ast was hot grabage almost all the time together with white mage so you only had one decent healer option that whas also good and fun too play.

[Roeshel]

and also only the problem that noc ast was hot grabage almost all the time together with white mage so you only had one decent healer option that whas also good and fun too play.

How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

[QooEr]

How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

sch+ast wasnt the only decent comp. when people say it its mostly hyperbole. Whm+sch was a decent healing pair as well. it was just mostly better for prog and was usually the comp in world 1st clears. however Whm+sch was actually found in some top speedkills in Stormblood, so its not like sch ast was so overpowering that it was impossible to compete.

sch+ast wasnt "too strong" imo, but it was easily the best comp because whm lacked utility/damage and noct lacked mitigation. for whm ast to be on par with the other healer comps whm wouldve needed to do more damage to compensate not having chain strat, and noct ast would've needed enough mitigation/healing to compensate not having soil. but they never bothered touching either the whole expansion

had they ever actually adressed those issues then maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

[Grimoire-M]

Can we stop with the Scholar was OP thing? That is a old, tired, very very dead horse.

Scholars JOB DESIGN was glorious back then; hell, it could have done absolutely awful damage and healing wise and I still would have played it because of how complex and deep it was.

No. Because I still think you could nerf Scholar harder given how little SE challenges healers as-is. It also wasn't that deep back then either. The majority of your gameplay that's different from now was in-between your Broil spam you'd occasionally mash an Embrace macro or target a party member manually for it between casts if the AI wasn't going to handle it (fun fact, The fairy was generally decent at this, so you'd really only do this for a tank when literally nothing was going in), or one of three pet actions, the majority of which were close to useless on BOTH pets. And the Embrace portion you can simulate with /place now with exactly the same results, just under different conditions.

Sure, sometimes you might have some Deploy shenanigans that were worthwhile, which I agree was satisfying to use with the old fairy, but most of the 'interesting' situations with that involved LB cheese or pet abuse during the same raidwide spam we complain about having too many actions for now, the former of which wouldn't be possible even if SCH hadn't been nerfed. Shields already need a second look to ensure their shelf life extends past the first month.

And as for the rest of Scholar's best traits, most of it wasn't even in Heavensward! Quickened Aetherflow and Miasma II were Stormblood exclusive interactions. Booksmacking and Ruin II spam wasn't a staple like it was in ARR either, where I'd say SCH was at it's best because it actually kind of sucked at something (and didn't have to compete with another healer or force its co-healer to fight over a slot). Cleric Stance wasn't an amazing button either. Most of Scholar's best abuses of it died with ARR Lustrate, which, yes, meant you'd swap out and back into it fairly consistently if you needed to use Aetherflow heals, but I don't think that added engaging gameplay.


If you like fiddly micromanagement, fine, but don't pretend it was 'complicated'. Fights never demanded you actually jam 4 different actions and movement into a single GCD as the "Scholar's potential" back then. At best you were just delaying your pet's 2s cast timer because of the same garbage AI you're mad at now, only now it fires without you needing to give yourself carpal tunnel.

Finally, we get to Selene. Which most people didn't use past the opener. Gordias showed everyone where she was useful and where she wasn't, and it became clear Eos was the better option most of the time based purely off of Rouse + Whispering Dawn's value. Keeping both healers DPSing as long as possible was worth more than a fiddly haste buff that you had to adjust your party's skill/spell speed thresholds around to really properly abuse.

Scholar's healing kit is just as complicated now as it was back then. More cooldowns, less synergies. The problem is the DPS kit being gutted, pure and simple. I don't think we need a Cleric Stance rehash across all healers (if SE wants Sage to use it then I hope they actually DO MORE with the stance concept, ideally more than Tank Stances and AST Sects were), but beyond bringing the DoTs/Bane back I would like to see something added to make weaving feel less like hot garbage. I don't expect more than that because SE's pretty good at messing things up as it stands.

sch+ast wasnt the only decent comp. when people say it its mostly hyperbole. Whm+sch was a decent healing pair as well. it was just mostly better for prog and was usually the comp in world 1st clears. however Whm+sch was actually found in some top speedkills in Stormblood, so its not like sch ast was so overpowering that it was impossible to compete.

sch+ast wasnt "too strong" imo, but it was easily the best comp because whm lacked utility/damage and noct lacked mitigation. for whm ast to be on par with the other healer comps whm wouldve needed to do more damage to compensate not having chain strat, and noct ast would've needed enough mitigation/healing to compensate not having soil. but they never bothered touching either the whole expansion

had they ever actually adressed those issues then maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

WHM/AST didn't have Embrace. They had to overcome an effective 2% DPS difference just from the regen tax alone. Nevermind all the other crap Scholar did. It's also why current Scholar isn't that bad. Free healing is good. Even if you can't control it perfectly.

[Mortex]

How is OP considered decent? Was the state of healing that terrible back then that the only thing that's decent is the overturned job?

Well the problem was you only had 3 healer and one of the two shield healer was way way better then the replacement option aka astro. Also astro being absolutely bad as hell at the start of every expansion didn’t make it better. Like pre creator astro was not so good to say it friendly. Doesn’t mean whm was any better. They did buff astro like every patch back in heavensward and with that I mean 20 % single balance and 10 % aoe balance were the best arguments. And stormblood was another thing. They nerfed sch (not for a long time before they gave buffs there), nerfed astros balance and also every other healer got decent too good new toys were astro had some bad stuff. Also they tried to bring noc astro too the lvl of sch but it was still so farm away from it that you rather replaced whm then scholar. We’re Paladin got really good changes and new abilities too get back in a good tanking spots healer we’re just disappointing changes. Also they did ignore a entire expansion again white mage (I don’t count 15 seconds reduce on assize a good change, made it even worse too weave effectively).

[QooEr]

WHM/AST didn't have Embrace. They had to overcome an effective 2% DPS difference just from the regen tax alone. Nevermind all the other crap Scholar did.

i agree, i forgot to mention the free healing from the fairy that both also lacked and cut into their combined dps even more.

It's also why current Scholar isn't that bad. Free healing is good. Even if you can't control it perfectly.

I wouldnt say any of the healers are bad rn, just boring. If anything ast is too strong for the same reasons scholar was too strong pre-shb (most dps, endless free healing).


I concede that embrace was too strong back then, but at least fairy micromanging was something else you had the option to do if you wanted to try even harder to optimize healing. Current healing optimization is mostly letting ast do everything, begging your party to use their mitigations and healing whenever a weave window comes up. zzz

[FoxCh40s]

No. Because I still think you could nerf Scholar harder given how little SE challenges healers as-is. It also wasn't that deep back then either. The majority of your gameplay that's different from now was in-between your Broil spam you'd occasionally mash an Embrace macro or target a party member manually for it between casts if the AI wasn't going to handle it (fun fact, The fairy was generally decent at this, so you'd really only do this for a tank when literally nothing was going in), or one of three pet actions, the majority of which were close to useless on BOTH pets. And the Embrace portion you can simulate with /place now with exactly the same results, just under different conditions.

Sure, sometimes you might have some Deploy shenanigans that were worthwhile, which I agree was satisfying to use with the old fairy, but most of the 'interesting' situations with that involved LB cheese or pet abuse during the same raidwide spam we complain about having too many actions for now, the former of which wouldn't be possible even if SCH hadn't been nerfed. Shields already need a second look to ensure their shelf life extends past the first month.

And as for the rest of Scholar's best traits, most of it wasn't even in Heavensward! Quickened Aetherflow and Miasma II were Stormblood exclusive interactions. Booksmacking and Ruin II spam wasn't a staple like it was in ARR either, where I'd say SCH was at it's best because it actually kind of sucked at something (and didn't have to compete with another healer or force its co-healer to fight over a slot). Cleric Stance wasn't an amazing button either. Most of Scholar's best abuses of it died with ARR Lustrate, which, yes, meant you'd swap out and back into it fairly consistently if you needed to use Aetherflow heals, but I don't think that added engaging.

Don't cite the magicks to me, I was there when it was written.

How could nerf Scholar even harder? It's objectively the worst healer right now, just sounds like you're one of the people who would Rage at Scholar no matter what state it was in. Scholars wanted everyone brought up to their level, not everyone brought down to White Mage.

Can we not argue old semantics that no longer matter, this is a tired old, VERY DONE, arguement.

[Lyth]

Simple. You create a new sub-role around SCH, and then introduce in a second job into that sub-role that does the same thing better. SE doesn't like openly nerfing jobs, so they usually do it on the sly during expansion transitions when most people tend not to notice. The problem, as you know, is that if they do it to a job that's been a dominant raid pick across a few expansions (i.e. the big three), there's a huge outcry when players of the job are suddenly not the best at everything and the devs end up having to rapidly backpedal and revert most of those nerfs. {Everyone's Grudge}.

But if everyone's busy trying out a new job, there's nobody left to complain. We've seen a couple of successful examples of this already. It ends up being more amicable and better for the community in the long run. I just wish that they would be more open and more frequent with their balance adjustments. Sometimes comps just get stagnant and you need to force a change, regardless of whether feelings are hurt in the process.

[Boizinho]

How could nerf Scholar even harder? It's objectively the worst healer right now

I'm curious to know what you even mean by this and what the rationale is. On a personal level you could argue it's the clunkiest healer or that it's a shadow of its former self, but in terms of actual performance I'm not seeing a lot of competition in the healers. There's a pretty clearly defined winner and loser imo, and Scholar's in the middle. Without harping on about AST being the best healer, Indomitability, Excogitation, Sacred Soil, and Whispering Dawn are better than anything in WHM's kit and as limited as Ruin II might be, at least it exists. SCH is ahead of WHM in rDPS as well. Better mobility, better damage, better oGCDs, and better tools to weave them.

SCH has its problems, but I wouldn't trade it for the Glarebot with cement shoes.

[FoxCh40s]

I'm curious to know what you even mean by this and what the rationale is. On a personal level you could argue it's the clunkiest healer or that it's a shadow of its former self, but in terms of actual performance I'm not seeing a lot of competition in the healers. There's a pretty clearly defined winner and loser imo, and Scholar's in the middle. Without harping on about AST being the best healer, Indomitability, Excogitation, Sacred Soil, and Whispering Dawn are better than anything in WHM's kit and as limited as Ruin II might be, at least it exists. SCH is ahead of WHM in rDPS as well. Better mobility, better damage, better oGCDs, and better tools to weave them.

SCH has its problems, but I wouldn't trade it for the Glarebot with cement shoes.

*sigh* how many times do I have to say it's not about the NUMBERS, it's about the gameplay?

Scholars gameplay loop right now is absolutely AWFUL, coming from a Scholar main since 2.3 (7-8 years ago). It is NOTHING like it used to be gameplay wise; no shadowflare, no using fairy actions in between casts, no micromanagement of fairy embraces, no Miasma 2, no Eye for an Eye spread, no original virus, no Malady debuff, no slow debuff.

NOTHING.