A half an hour sch toolkit from an ex healer.

[Recon1o6]

I'll be honest, I never really played much sch compared to whm or ast but I always appreciated having a competent sch with me back when I used to heal in hw and sb.

But whatever this thing is, its not sch. Its an awful anti synergistic mess held up by energy drain and the whole thing falls apart without it. where's the dots, wheres the debuffs, where's selene?
This isnt the badass job that had my back in the coils, nor the teacher that showed me shield healing for when I picked up noct ast.


So...here's a sch idea from a none sch.

Note: I am not going to give potencies. That's on SE to balance


Goals
1. Add in dps buttons without compromising too much on hotbar real estate (there's room thankfully)
2. Significantly improve the synergy of the kit, the capstones in particular.
3. Return popular removed actions, selene and sch's previous identity as a dot based shield healer with two fairy stances (and fill out the levelling curve)
4. Increase the skill ceiling for both healing and damage without hurting the floor
5. Make sch's healing more shield/burst healing than regen.
6. Make the fae gauge actually useful for more than just a build/spend.

Gauge changes
-Fae gauge now focuses on healing, aetherflow on damage
-Excog, lustrate, indom and soil now cost fae gauge instead of aetherflow
-Aetherflow now usable outside combat. Restores max fae gauge and aetherflow
-In combat, aetherflow now gives 50 fae gauge
-Quickened aetherflow trait returns. also functions on Fae gauge heals.

Fairy changes
-Selene returns. Summon eos now changes to summon selene and vice versa. Summoning a fairy is cast, swapping fairy is instant
-Selene shares her actions on the hotbar with eos
-New pet commands: targeted embrace, embrace (lowest hp), embrace (nearest)
-Summon seraph. Seraph now uses both abilities of the fairies at once during her summon.
-New action: Sustain. While using Selene, converts 1 aetherflow to 30 fae gauge (60s cd). Shares a hotbar space and cooldown with Storm
-New action: Storm. While using eos, converts 30 fae gauge to 1 aetherflow. (60s cd) Shares a hotbar space and cooldown with Sustain
-New action: Seraphic Spur. Restores 1 aetherflow and 30 fae gauge. Can only be executed while summoning seraph. Replaces Sustain/Storm during use.

Healing actions
-Deployment tactics changed to the pvp version. Upgrades from bane (30s cooldown if not 15s from pvp)
-Dissipation now has you go double time with the fairy. Every time you execute a heal, the fairy mirrors it with her own potencies. During execution, broil becomes instant cast
-Seraph mentioned above
-Aetherpact now functions as follows: Costs up to 50 fae gauge. Restores hp to target equal to twice the amount of fae gauge used (so 50 gauge restores 100% health, 30 restores 60% and so on)
-Sacred soil no longer regens. Instead it grants a healing buff to everyone inside the circle in addition to the mitigation
-Eye for an eye returns, upgrades to protaction
-Leeches returns instead of esuna. Restores 10 fae gauge upon cleanse
-Rouse returns, upgrades to seraph
-Succor and Adloqium change so they restore shield and any extra hp is carried over into actual healing
-Emergency tactics makes it so the next fae gauge heal now costs 1 aetherflow instead. (useful if you're out of fae gauge)
-Physick upgrades to Adlo

Dps actions
-Miasma 1/3 is back
-Miasma 2 is back
-Shadowflare is back. Still costs 1 aetherflow
-Bane returns, upgrades to deployment tactics.
-Fester returns, upgrades to contagion. Damage based on dots. Costs 1 aetherflow
-Contagion now functions as fester but as a targeted aoe like energy siphon on smn.
-AOW now a gcd cd. Changes ruin 2 to ruin 4 for 5 attacks and adds 20 fae gauge.
-Energy drain upgrades to energy siphon. Adds 20 fae gauge and restores 800mp
-Broil now 2s cast time. (gives ruin 2 a use and dots for weaving)




In short, the goal is the more you dps and heal, the more you are able to keep dpsing and healing.
You have two pools of resources, and can convert one to the other with the right faerie periodically so as not to abuse it. The levelling kit is filled out, and more synergy is added to the job. Many old actions that were moved higher are now put back to where they were to make levelling smoother.

The healing style is to try and make it less reliant on regens and more like a shield healer albeit one where SE hates shields. You still have a regen in whispering dawn though.


What would I know though. I didn't put much thought into this. Then again half an hour is more than SE will.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

The tryhards incessantly complained about jank and their precious balance and SE gave them exactly what they were asking for.

Are you not entertained?

[Kacho_Nacho]

The tryhards incessantly complained about jank and their precious balance and SE gave them exactly what they were asking for.

Are you not entertained?

I don't believe Square Enix listened to the "tryhards" more than veteran healers in terms of feedback. No camp somehow has S.E.'s ear over anyone else.

The current state of healers has come about because they have listened only to fellow employees who play healers. Hence, Square Enix isn't seeing the problems they are creating.

You can see this whenever a question about healing pops up in one of the live Q & As. Yoshi always appears stumped then gives a "corporate" answer. Notice how Yoshi will talk for minutes about damage dealers but anything healer related is rushed through.

It's a classic "White Tower" situation and it's a big cause of failure in the gaming industry. FFXIV desperately needs a team devoted solely to the role of healers, people who will take the time and effort to make healing fun, and bring back the core identities of the healer jobs.

[UkcsAlias]

I don't believe Square Enix listened to the "tryhards" more than veteran healers in terms of feedback. No camp somehow has S.E.'s ear over anyone else.

If they listened to tryhards, healers would already have more DPS options.

And the problem isnt even lacking dps options, its lacking healing opportunities in fights. Not enough healing moments means more time has to be spent on dps.

More dps buttons only has 1 effect that is beneficial: in case there is no healing to be done, you have a bit more button variety. But it doesnt solve the root cause at all.

[Shurrikhan]

The tryhards incessantly complained about jank and their precious balance and SE gave them exactly what they were asking for.

Are you not entertained?

SCH mains of old: "This action has a high chance to ghost, doing literally nothing by wasting its CD without being used. Could we, idk, fix this?"

Kevin: "Simplifications are the community's fault!!"

-Fae gauge now focuses on healing, aetherflow on damage

Can't say I'm a fan of this. I feel like all healers ought to have their outputs made a bit more flexible again, between damage and healing.

Note that this doesn't have to come from shared resource costs like that of Energy Drain opposite other AF spenders, but simply that with so much of each Healers' potency per minute being locked into healing alone due to the glut of oGCD heals (which in turn tends to balance down healers' maximum offensive contribution) we're given considerably less dynamism or available swing in our outputs than we used to.

Even if a limited feature instead, I like that SCH is able to make at least some use out of its otherwise excessive healing.

At a mere 100p of offense vs. at least 700p of healing, it's not as if Energy Drain gets competitively/optimally used unless that healing would, after all, be excessive, as cost of a single lost Broil is so much more than what Energy Drain produces.

-New action: Sustain. While using Selene, converts 1 aetherflow to 30 fae gauge (60s cd). Shares a hotbar space and cooldown with Storm
-New action: Storm. While using eos, converts 30 fae gauge to 1 aetherflow. (60s cd) Shares a hotbar space and cooldown with Sustain
-New action: Seraphic Spur. Restores 1 aetherflow and 30 fae gauge. Can only be executed while summoning seraph. Replaces Sustain/Storm during use.

Not sure what you're trying to accomplish with this part, and it's odd that you've inverted the former pet identities (Selene previously being offensive, as would suit FG->AF, and Eos being curative).

This just feels like a much clunkier / more bloated way to handle shifts in output than just leaving both healing and damage on AF.

I'd recommend instead just giving Eos and Selene some small further buff on their actions, such as Selene producing a small amount of shielding on Fey Blessing and Eos producing a larger-total-value HoT, and Eos providing mitigation on Aetherpact and Selene providing movement speed, or something of that sort. (Seraph could, again, just provide both benefits simultaneously.)

Perhaps have swaps be oGCD (two charges, 20s recast), with resummoning (including automatically after Dissipation) resetting charges.

[Recon1o6]

Snip.

This is kind of what I was thinking about actually. Selene and Eos get their normal actions back and thus their identity. Selene is offensive, Eos defensive. But I wanted to avoid the situation where staying in one fairy is optimal, but I didnt want a constant back/forth either.

Storm/Sustain is therefore an emergency button AND an optimisation tool rolled into one. Under Selene, you can sacrifice an aetherflow to get some emergency healing resources while attempting to trigger quickened aetherflow.
Under Eos, the opposite is true, you convert excess healing gauge into an aetherflow to boost your damage output.

when Seraph is out, you simply gain free resources to spend as you see fit. You could theoretically get an extra aetherflow at the end of it when seraph goes and you return to eos, then convert the seraph fae resource to an aetherflow.


tbh im not really a sch player, I've not touched it much compared to the other healers.

Snip

Some of the mergers/upgrades are designed to either make up for the loss of sch's regens and to give more unused buttons a place. I'm a big proponent of changing and improving abilities rather than deleting them

In protractions case, I didn't want to delete protraction despite never having seen it used once, yet I was conscious of eye for an eye which is a popular sch ability not having a place either given current circumstances. The idea of putting it on gave sch a unique single target buff to make them easier to heal and lower the enemy damage on them without making it directly a shield like benison.


Seraph does indeed have the rouse buff built in. This is because seraph was just rouse with a new appearance back in shb. Functionally it occupied the same role. This is also so it works with your other capstone at 60 and 70 for big heals. (if SE ever lets us do them :P)


The aoe rotation is supposed to be (Aetherflow), Miasma 3 (shadowflare), miasma 2 (bane), art of war (contagion), then several ruin 4s, then back to miasma (miasma 2 at least had a shorter duration iirc)

[Recon1o6]

editing complete

[AnotherPerson]

Deployment Tactics will be subject to a 120 second cd. Bane, I assume, will not since it's mainly used in trash pulls. If Bane upgrades to Deployment Tactics, then will Bane require a cd adjustment in that sense? Or will the CD adjustment to Deployment Tactics only occur as a debuff?

[Recon1o6]

Deployment Tactics will be subject to a 120 second cd. Bane, I assume, will not since it's mainly used in trash pulls. If Bane upgrades to Deployment Tactics, then will Bane require a cd adjustment in that sense? Or will the CD adjustment to Deployment Tactics only occur as a debuff?

As mentioned, its upgraded to the pvp version which has a 15s cooldown. Though I'll edit the op for clarity. I think a 30s cooldown would be sufficient for pve

[IDontPetLalas]

"FFXIV desperately needs a team devoted solely to the role of healers, people who will take the time and effort to make healing fun, and bring back the core identities of the healer jobs" that fits with the game design.

All of the above won't work if someone (or several people) are brought in with good ideas, and are dedicated to healer job design, but it doesn't fit with the other job designs and the way that group and solo encounters are designed.