Is it fun?

[TaleraRistain]

For me, yes. I've been a WHM main since 2014 and I enjoy playing it every time I log in. I've been there for our low times and our high times and never wanted to main anything else.

I like supporting my party. I could live without group dps and have group support skills instead.

[TaleraRistain]

I am a bit late in responding to some people, been doing other things. What I am kind of hoping for, which probably will never happen here, is to recapture the immersion I felt when I played Everquest way back when it was at it's height. The class I enjoyed most was Enchanter, which is the most indirect spellcasting class you could possibly play. I enjoyed that my class had a lore that it adhered to and no the raw numbers werent the most important aspect of it, it was how it fit into the world and how it played with the party. I think what would really help the healing jobs is to roll more support elements into them rather than continue stacking them with healing skills and amping up their DPS numbers. Support skills are incredibly hard to balance though and so it is unlikely that SE will add any more of those.

I was a Human Enchanter for over 10 years, but to be fair, support and crowd control were baked into that game and absolutely necessary. Even in places like Kael where we couldn't mez, we could charm. Our DDs were almost never touched.

Support and crowd control have never really been a factor in this game. Maybe way early Brayflox days with Repose or Sleep on the second dragon, or a handful of other places. But now and for a while now it's just been zerg everything to death. Which as a former EQ player is kind of funny to me, because we used to make fun of that mentality. Like when those guilds "downed" The Sleeper by continuously zerg rushing it.

Unfortunately, support and CC seem to not really be much of a factor in any MMOs anymore. I was hoping we would move to more of a support role and gain skills along those lines, but they instead focused us on dps when there isn't anything the heal.

[Liam_Harper]

I still don’t get why people complain about ghosting on SCH so much. It’s actually rather intuitive apart from specific interactions with Summon Seraph that are frankly avoidable. What sucks is clipping for DPS gains, and I suspect most of those complaints stem from that exact interaction. I have way more issues with Potions and that’s because those don’t queue.

I imagine it's mainly that it's a negative downside of having a pet, but there aren't many upsides to pets. Sure it's "avoidable" but compare it to, say, AST that simply presses a GCD and it triggers just fine. It's not unusual that players find it preferable to play classes where oGCD's function in a straightforward manner rather than a class where half the oGCD's are tied to a mechanic that complicates them, with little unintended interactions to micromanage and avoid, but doesn't offer any benefit in exchange. Either way, regardless of my own opinion, it's a fact SCH popularity has plummeted this expansion.

Clipping for dps gains and potions are indeed issues too.

[Grimoire-M]

I imagine it's mainly that it's a negative downside of having a pet, but there aren't many upsides to pets. Sure it's "avoidable" but compare it to, say, AST that simply presses a GCD and it triggers just fine. It's not unusual that players find it preferable to play classes where oGCD's function in a straightforward manner rather than a class where half the oGCD's are tied to a mechanic that complicates them, with little unintended interactions to micromanage and avoid, but doesn't offer any benefit in exchange. Either way, regardless of my own opinion, it's a fact SCH popularity has plummeted this expansion.

Clipping for dps gains and potions are indeed issues too.

The obvious benefit in exchange is range and tempo. You have a second character that can handle mechanics entirely separate from what you are doing and can be in positions you can’t be in order to do so, but you have to think ahead if you want to have it react properly. The only functionally similar abilities to to what the fairy can do on AST and WHM are Medica II, Cure III, Asylum, Synastry, and Earthly Star, most of which don’t emulate the same range and require GCD input to take advantage of at all. Place still works the way it did in Stormblood. I think it’s fine apart from the issues we’ve brought up around their numbers lacking clarity and needing more tweaking to the current toolkit and AI. I’m in the camp that she needs to resolve her orders faster but otherwise functions fine given her constraints.

[Manuka]

The obvious benefit in exchange is range and tempo. You have a second character that can handle mechanics entirely separate from what you are doing and can be in positions you can’t be in order to do so...

Sadly I wouldn't call it much of a benefit anymore since that aspect of the fairy was nerfed into the ground. Removing manual Embrace, plus the change to the AI healing threshold, plus the removal of Rouse and just a general reduction in potency overall has left the fairy completely neutered. In past expansions she was great for triage healing in things like Hello World or A7S jails where you could place her near targets of high priority and Rouse+Embrace spam those targets with great success. Currently Embrace heals what, ~5% of a non-tank health bar? At that potency it will never top anyone off in time in situations that call for it. And that's assuming she even heals them since you can no longer manually Embrace and with no threshold she's liable to heal the person missing two health over the person at 2% health. You could Aetherpact but its application is based on your range not the fairy, meaning you'd have to preset it before you move outta range and waste some gauge. As it stands the best triage move in the game probably belongs to Ast now with Horoscope. Once you get the timings down you can easily set up Horoscope to auto-pop during moments where you can't reach everyone (ie. Icelit or Relativity). Meanwhile the fairy's strengths now lie in its AoE skills and being eaten for more energy drains.

[Brandedblade]

snip.

Irregardless of whether or not the benefit is as potent as it used to be, it's still there and present. Being able to do silly things like Send my fairy on the other side of the map on e3 so that i can use her abilities to heal the group over there while using say, Indom on the side im on to heal them, no matter how niche and unneeded it might be, is still fun. I could care less whether or not it actually mattered, having a seperate entity that i can use as a focal point for some of my spells is fun, it's something extra to manage at the end of the day regardless of it's actual value.

[Manuka]

...

I don't know, I can see how some might find it fun to just zip her around the arena and do things, but it doesn't really change that the optimal thing is to just plop her in the center and leave her since all her power is wrapped up in WD and Consolation now. You’ll move her when the party has to shift of course, but it’s nothing like it was before. In previous expansions her power was predominantly in her single target healing, meaning you would be rewarded for moving her around to exploit her range to focus her attention while manually Embracing. Now, there is no real reason to do so since she’s basically a Mobile Medica in the same vein as Star or Asylum but with an annoying delay.

As for whether it’s fun or not, personally not really. Granted I might be a bit jaded since I’ve been playing healers since the beta and Shb has been such a downgrade in play-feel that I don’t even play healers much outside of my group anymore. The only job I might give a semi-pass to is WHM, which don’t get me wrong the job is still a clipping mess with a kit that’s skin and bones. But the abilities WHM has, as few as there are, feel impactful enough to get some enjoyment out of it. Landing a 6-digit DHCrit Misery in a buff window? Godlike. Assize? Spin-to-win. Holy? Still stunning. Benediction? Make the tanks sweat. Temperance? Okay it’s nothing but a re-re-packaged Divine Seal, but it looks cute with my glamour so it gets a pass.

Meanwhile, Sch doesn’t really have much of a ‘wow’ factor to fall on and was always this slow-burn class that relied on multiple chores to do from AF management to fairy management to DoT management to mitigation prep. But the payoff for juggling all these systems effectively was an incredibly strong job, to the point it was obvious who was good at it and not. Fast-forward to now and it’s basically another filler mage with all the chores removed/redundant besides AF Management. What this left behind is a job that feels underwhelming, even if it is still strong. Also still triggers me you can’t AF out of combat, but that’s just me.

AST however is in a weird situation; it does have that wow factor in things like Star and its mobility makes it feel fluid and engaging over the competition. My guess is that besides the class fantasy (WHM as a concept is just popular) the mediocre card system really drags the rest of its kit down. While the old card system was problematic from a balance standpoint and was reduced to Balance fishing at a min-max level it was still more enjoyable to interact with, especially outside of a speedrunning/ postprog setting where you had the freedom to play with the other cards. Currently the cards feel tedious and annoying with the constant target swapping while the whole symbol slots feel tacked on at best. Getting your three seals doesn’t give you same rush as back-to-back Balances, but like you accomplished the bare minimum. While getting back-to-back Ewer’s when not needed sucked, at least old Lord/Lady were nice consolation prizes. Redrawing and getting Balance>Bole>Balance when you need a Moon with 20secs to Divi makes me want to toss the job in the dumpster, even though the cards are still op. Compare it to DNC where you pop your 30/120sec dances, play a little minigame and do tons of damage on top of your buffs, it just feels good. Basically with DNC I dance because I want to, on AST I draw because I have to.

Sorry for the blog, kinda went on a tangent lol

[Kacho_Nacho]

Currently, I'm leveling white mage and scholar at the same time and it has been enjoyable. Healing is more rewarding to me than damage dealing.

[Anxin]

I have fun. Not as much as before I took a several year break, however. When I came back, the healers were simplified too much. With the kits we have now, I would prefer to solo heal most 8-person content. The healing output for AST and WHM certainly allows you to do so (on casual content) with time to DPS besides. Honestly, I miss solo-healing large groups. When I played Guild Wars 1, most of the time I solo healed.

[Acece]

No, not really. Sch has a clunky kit that fights against each other (like why does it cancel my heals when I move my fairy lmao). Whm is functional but has the most boring heals and job gauge of the 3. Ast is actually pretty good but I prefer the old card system.