A summary of healer issues

[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.