Because why not: A Moderate Proposal - SCH

[Renathras]

I wonder what other potential areas of agreement exist here...

[Tigore]

I'm not sure. I said that it could be a possibility to work Expedient into a low level spell, but if we were to keep it the way it is for the switch, it would kind of take the focus a little away from Aetherflow. As others said, Sacred Soil has been a major part of what SCH does even though Expedient might technically do it better. I think we have slightly more saying no to the spell swap, but we still have enough disagreement to suggest we may need to discuss why the switch is wanted. Looking through the SCH Beginner Job guide, these look like our milestones.

- 50: Sacred Soil
- 60: Dissipation
- 70: Aetherpact
- 80: Summon Seraph
- 90: Expedient

Dissipation is already going through discussion with the first post to no longer sack the fairy and may have other effects desired. Such as extending the healing buff to spells and oGCDs and maybe buffing / refreshing shields on the party. Aetherpact is already suggested on the first post to essentially become the new "Lustrate" using fairy gauge. Summon Seraph could use some discussion of thought since they only really have a couple weak AoE shields on the party and that's about it. Maybe it could also have a single target shield that shares charges with the AoE one? Expedient has already been dubbed the best milestone having the mobility with it although with no HP regen and likely does not need any changes to it if it stays here.

[ForsakenRoe]

- 50: Sacred Soil
- 60: Dissipation
- 70: Aetherpact
- 80: Summon Seraph
- 90: Expedient

When I look at this list, I realize: Two of these are just 'Rouse, but reskinned'. Aetherpact could instead just be 'your next X Embraces are empowered by Y potency' and it'd be almost identical. Just that you wouldn't be manually targeting the target of the Embrace, but people used to do that with macros in the old days anyway. And Seraph is 'Rouse again, but the bonus effect granted by Rouse is not flat HP but instead granted via a shield'. Expedient is different but at this point I'm chalking it up to them thinking 'if we give them Rouse AGAIN they'll realize'

I'll say it again, Expedient does not need to be moved in level, it's fine where it is. Moving it would throw a lot of things into disarray, like old Ultimates are tuned around Soil being available every 30s. Are we reducing Expedient's CD to 30s? What about it's duration, surely that would change too, we can't have 33% uptime on a partywide sprint surely! Everything about the skill has to be changed to accomodate it being moved to level 50, and it'd be way more work than the actual solution, because this doesn't really address the real problem (imo): the other capstones feel bad in comparison to how useful Expedient feels. So make those better, and Expedient being great isn't as glaring a difference

[fulminating]

Soil's good and better after 76. Could this trait be added at a lower level without unbalancing everything? Probably not.
Dissipation is basically fine as is, there just needs to be more encouragement to use the button.
Aetherpact is pretty good, but doesn't feel it
Seraph's 2 free succors.
Expedient is good.

I don't think aetherpact or seraph are helped by the way they interact through the pet. Seraph in particular given it replaces the pet with another pet.

[ForsakenRoe]

TBH if they made DOTs tick every 1.5 or 1.0 seconds instead of 3, Aetherpact would feel way better just off of that I think

[Osmond]

It’s not going to happen with the current system they have in the game. It’ll just create a can of worms, open the floodgates that they can’t close. If this spell can have a 1-1.5 sec DoT, then the DPS DoT should have it, then the tanks. Then it’ll be something else because it’s never enough.

[fulminating]

Flamethrower, phantom flurry

[Tigore]

The Machinist already has temporary sped up GCDs to make their rotation work with overheat. As far as I know, the other class players did not constantly, as a whole, ask for every GCD to be like that.

[Tigore]

Dissipation I did successfully use for 4 man wall to wall pulls. I use up my Aether on Excog, Sacred Soil, etc then use Dissipation like as if it is a second Aetherflow cooldown. I have used Recitation shields to start a pull, but I was thinking in my posts it should be after Dissipation for a healing buff to the shield. I think it just needs to extend the healing boost to oGCDs so the 3 bonus Lustrates (or Excogs with Ren's suggestion) are also buffed with the fairy still being there using Embrace.

For Summon Seraph, it is interesting to look at it as 2 free Succors. I wonder how many players would rather have the spell just do that directly? Rename it to Fey Union and have it change Adlo and Succor to Fey Adlo and Fey Succor temporarily with 2 charges. Since the current shield is an instant oGCD, these ones may need to be mana free instant oGCDs too just for the Fey forms. I think the only disadvantage is this may remove double shields with Succor + Seraph.

[Post]

I'd argue SCH's been in a state of "Rouse, but reskinned" since StB. I have a lot of thoughts on how it ended up that way, but it'd be a long(er) post.

Suffice to say, SCH's basically been too powerful relative to the other two healers since 3.0 and to the encounters in the game since 3.4, but it feels bad to nerf jobs outright and they want to keep adding new actions every expansion.

On the subject of old capstones, they fit better in the past environments before StB.

At ARR's Level 50, SCH's only strong, reactive heal was Lustrate. It costed SCH's overall dps to use (instead of Energy Drain; Bane). Notably, this is the only period in the game's history that Energy Drain is stronger than SCH's basic Ruin damage (100 vs 80). WHM by contrast gets the ultimate simple emergency healing tool, Benediction.

At HW's Level 60, SCH is still a mostly planning-oriented healer and still the main job that mitigates party damage. Dissipation grants an emergency reaction state comparable to Benediction, again at a major cost to its dps and even its sustained healing if done at an inopportune time. Other healers get their own flavors of SCH's Indomitibility and Lustrate because they're so strong.

At StB's Level 70, SCH follows suit behind WHM and AST and starts copying its own actions. It has to lose power (Embrace) and buttons (Rouse) only to get them added back (Aetherpact) so it feels like it's still progressing on paper. But this is the first time none of the healers really get anything too new in their toolkits. They've hit a rhythm with their encounter design: most healers can handle everything thrown at them without casting and then some, even in the new "Ultimate" modes. The meta leans further towards dodging and mitigating, not healing, and especially in savage floor 4s, which now invariably are designed around walls of "get 5+ debuffs and puzzle out what the hell to do" and not "this boss hits really hard and has multiple adds so puzzle out how to spread out so you can reach everyone and who's healing which tank." Healers have their offensive debuffs removed and given entirely to dps and tanks. They add Rescue, but overall the game's healer meta is kind of solidified.

SCH made off like a bandit this time because it got the first new tool that fits in its own unique way with the "mostly avoid the damage" meta. It has a mitigation slapped on there so it's always useful, but because it has so many other buttons, SCH can easily save it for when movement would help. It has the unique action that brings it out of line with the other healers for now; please look forward to the other three healers getting an answer in 7.0 unless some serious overhauls to how healers fit into the the battle system happen.

Edit: I wouldn't mind Seraph doing that, considering they've basically made Consolation weaker than Succor at 90 and everything she does is just a less responsive oGCD now that you can't use pet actions while casting. I dunno how many Fey Adlo's you'd get if they're meant to be her Seraphic Veils, but considering those are about 40% as strong as Adloquium if they were just buffed up to match, who cares? They could also just add Seraph for 20 seconds instead of replacing your faerie. Outside of duties, you can have a minion, a pet and a companion with you simultaneously, so... Anything to keep her clunky ass animation from eating my faerie cooldowns or preventing me from using faerie Indomitability and dumb Rouse. Hell, I think in other FF games SCHs would get 'faerie circle' which would have an animation with like 3 of em showing up; maybe Summon Seraph shoulda gone the way of Neutral Sect and also let you use both faerie's actions for a time. Y'know, before they were trashed.