Improving feel of play for SCH/WHM

[YusiKha]

Compared to AST’s smooth gameplay, SCH and WHM feel awkward - always chasing damage losses and lacking enough weave slots to play as efficiently as they can.
I’d like to make a few suggestions to resolve those issues.
Bear in mind; these changes are intended foremost to improve the feel-of-play for SCH/WHM, any buffs/nerfs are incidental and should not be considered in discussion.

Both:
Change cast times (but not recast times) from 2.5 to 2.3
With a shorter cast than recast time than cast time, chain casting Glares/Broils won’t come with the slight stutter of animation lock and slidecasting will be more forgiving.
SCH and WHM will feel smoother to play, like RDM (there’s a reason RDM cast times are 2.0).
The change will make clipping your GCD less inefficient, but the further changes I’m proposing will nullify that.

WHM:
Afflatus Misery will require only 2 lilies to cast (you can still store 3)
Assize becomes a 1.5s GCD (damage changed to compensate)

The Afflatus change will make them 1:1 with Glare casts, so weaving/moving is limited, but doesn’t come at a cost.
Advanced players can look for situations to burn unnecessary lilies outside of buffs to have an empowered Misery, so the skills aren’t worthless in 0 healing, 0 movement situation.
The assize change is mostly to remove the indecision between clipping assize or spending an afflatus on it. It also provides a single weave space and minor amount of movement.


SCH: (I will be referring to Eos/Selene as Lily)
Summon Seraph becomes a buff & particle effect, rather than replacing Lily.
All fairy heals are buffed by ~1.5x so their tooltip potencies are accurate.
Energy Drain becomes a 300 potency GCD
Ruin 2 is buffed to 250 potency.

Fairy responsiveness is a given, so not included.
Some of Seraph’s skill-eating woes come from the fact that she and Lily are separate entities, so unexecuted orders aren’t carried over when she is spawned/disappears. Changing her into a buff instead of separate entity straight up fixes that issue.
While never shown to the player, Lily’s skills are subject to her own, separate, pet scaling. In Shadowbringers, her skills are ~0.64x as effective as the SCH’s due to this pet scaling, and that pets don’t receive the bonus from having 1 of each role. Increasing their potency, or just changing her scaling to match the player’s (like Earthly Star’s matches) would make her skills feel a lot more impactful.
The energy drain & Ruin2 changes are twofold:
It reduces the opportunity cost of using Aetherflow heals from 230 to 50, making them a much more appealing option outside of Recitation.
It increases the amount of damage efficient weave slots, since casting ED currently removes 1 weave slot and SCH has a lot of oGCDs to weave (Summon Seraph + 2 consolations, recitation + Indom/Excog, SCH’s general reliance on more frequent but weaker oGCDs).

Thanks for reading!

[Risvertasashi]

I'd just suggest the following:

Instead of 2.3s cast with 2.5s recast, just make the main DPS nukes 1.5s cast, recast 2.5s. This would standardize it with other spells that allow for weave windows and, well, actually allow for a weave without clipping.

(Or IDK, maybe healers could get a mechanic like Ruin IV - that allows that healer to have flexible weave windows and choose when to use them, but not have them every cast?)

But regardless of how it's done, getting decent weave windows would be very welcome...

[Liam_Harper]

Sure, I'd take it.

It feels like you're being a little cautious with WhM though. If we aren't getting the Malefic treatment (which is understandable with the current toolkit, but I hope we do eventually since it's so much smoother to play), I'd make Assize a 2 charge instant GCD for better weave/movement and so we can finally use it as a healing tool. That would make WhM feel much smoother and give it the identity of strong healing, rather than being meant to sit back, Glare, and let the AST heal. WhM currently has a triple weakness of immobility, utility and no shielding without bringing much to the table besides simplicity and more rdps than SCH, so it gets picked to pair with AST. It wouldn't hurt to lose a weakness and have a strength or two.

SCH changes look nice. Do the fairy skills need buffing though with Aetherflow heals being worthwhile? Whispering Dawn or Aetherpact would become the strongest HoT's in the game and Fey Blessing would put Plenary/plain Horoscope to shame.

[YusiKha]

Instead of 2.3s cast with 2.5s recast, just make the main DPS nukes 1.5s cast, recast 2.5s.
(Or IDK, maybe healers could get a mechanic like Ruin IV - that allows that healer to have flexible weave windows and choose when to use them, but not have them every cast?)

I avoided 1.5/2.5 on purpose because it’s the most boring way to get weaving windows, and I’d remove it from AST if I had the opportunity, swapping it for something with more thought/planning required.

Of course, mechanics for flexible weaving would be the best way to go, like your ruin4 suggestion, and that is precisely what I turned Afflatus and Energy Drain into in my post.

[YusiKha]

WHM Snip

I played it safe with WHM because I don’t have much experience with it - my cohealer is a career WHM. But yeah 2 charge assize would be best, especially since WHM’s AoE healing is probably the worst of the 3.

SCH Snip.

You have a point with the fairy potencies, I forgot just how bloated the tooltip values are.
If they were to be balanced, I’d say WD should be 600-700, Blessing/Consolation be 250-300, and Union be 300-350.
(I wouldn’t cry to see Blessing gone tbh, it feels super unnecessary)

[Caliburn]

SCH has major button bloat compared to WHM and AST. Also too many setup actions, i.e. 3 different actions which interact with Adlo. I know SCH is about strategy but to me it feels clunky to play.

AoE healing as SCH just isn't fun for me in high-stress scenarios due to the amount of buttons involved - I struggle to pull off clutch heals fast enough. We have:
- Succor (fine)
- Indom (great)
- Succor pre-buffed by one of two actions (3 keybinds involved)
- Adlo AoE involving up to 3 button presses for AoE-Critlo
- three Fairy AoEs requiring fairy placement (up to 5 different keybinds inc. Place/Heel, plus ground targeting for fairy position)
- Summon Seraph + AoE (similar to above)

AST and WHM AoE heals are much easier to pull off in those "oh sh**" moments.

Other things to think about:
- Eating fairy for extra heals but no longer having fairy actions
- Summoning Seraph and no longer having regular fairy actions
- Is my Aetherflow cd up yet and do I need to start spending it?

I used to main SCH back in HW but I really don't enjoy it now. I think the difference is back in HW the fairy could almost main heal and you could just focus on DPS and shields. Then they nerfed fairy healing to oblivion, emphasised fairy healing actions all requiring positioning, let us eat the fairy, let us replace the fairy temporarily...

It's just not fun anymore to me. I'm sure others will love it but give me AST's fluid lightshow playstyle or WHM Confession/Medica/Cure3 spam any day.

[Mortex]

What I would like for sch would be old fairy and make deployment tactics always spread a normal casted adlo with the option too spread a cridlo or use it in combination with Recitation too always spread a critdlo . Old fairy helps with the button bloat because it is now In the pet hotbar and now deployment tactics is useable mid fight without years of preparation

[glamazon]

The more I read all these healer threads the more it seems people want all the healers to be exactly the same play the same and be the same. It’s depressing. Three healers should mean three different play styles all equally viable but appealing to differ types of players.
Why did they nerf the fairy?
Why did they need cards?
Why is whm so simple?

Did the devs react to the player base? I joined in shadow but from everything I read it seems like things took a giant step backwards because healers complained about each other too much.

[glamazon]

What I would like for sch would be old fairy and make deployment tactics always spread a normal casted adlo with the option too spread a cridlo or use it in combination with Recitation too always spread a critdlon

I wish recitation reset the four skills it affects. Too often I need a spell and it’s on cd

[ADVSS]

The more I read all these healer threads the more it seems people want all the healers to be exactly the same play the same and be the same. It’s depressing. Three healers should mean three different play styles all equally viable but appealing to differ types of players.
Why did they nerf the fairy?
Why did they need cards?
Why is whm so simple?

Did the devs react to the player base? I joined in shadow but from everything I read it seems like things took a giant step backwards because healers complained about each other too much.

A legit argument. But i dont really feel like this is what caused the devs to do this, i mean they did that to the tanks, and it seems like theres always that one in both roles that gets the bad end of the stick every expansion cycle.