DEV[1024] Job Adjustments: scholar

[Ahrana]

allow me to express my opinion on sch main healing and nuking i guess. being a hybrid means(to me at least) being able to do what each of the mains can do, but not as efficiently or potently. im fine with having sch not being as good as whm or blm. and i do not think they should be denied higher tier spells from each class. but as i stated before some type of penalty should be in place.

The term hybrid gets thrown around a lot, and it's such an elastic term that it pretty much fails at properly describing things. For instance, red mage could be a white mage and black mage hybrid, but it's not really in between those two job. It takes a little bit of both and combines it will a lot of enfeebling, a little support, and a dash of melee (not as much as many red mages like to pretend, but enspells, phalanx and composure are all melee buffs). They have access to all their abilities all the time, which means that they can be completely reactive to whats happening right now.

Scholars are a different type of hybrid. They do exist between the two extremes of white mage and black mage, but they specialize into one at the expensive of the other. My vision of scholar is a job that can hang with black mages when focusing on it (specifically by burning stratagems), or they can hang with white mage when focusing on it (again, but burning stratagems), but if they try to do both then they end up burning all their stratagems to switch between addendum white and black. I should also say that I have no problem with the specialized classes being a bit better then a scholar who is specializing, but if a specialist isn't available a scholar should be able to step in and play the role adequately.

Black mages sometimes grumble about scholars doing similar damage on single target nukes, but they have superior tools and a much deeper spell list to separate themselves as specialists. Scholars do fine on the nuking side of things because if you run out of stratagems you can nuke without for less damage, but it ultimately has little impact on the party. The issue with scholar is that the light arts side isn't strong enough right now, and in end game events you can't have healing suddenly drop off. It doesn't matter if you go the rapture or penury route to try healing with cure IV, you're going to run out of stratagems and pull hate from cure spam.

[zell_]

I never said it wasn't welcomed. I was just pointing it out.

ahh ok sorry about that then.

[zell_]

you are correct about it being a different type of hybrid. it can go deeper into one of its two arts via addendum. and basically what this thread was made for was to inquire about pushing scholar even deeper into tiers of those two extremes. basically more healing magic abilities and more dark/black magic abilities. or even spells that are unique to sch that make it at least keep up with whm and blm.

[Ank]

I don't think that giving sch curev would bring it so far above whm that it would require a penalty, making it addendum white only already requires the sch to focus on light arts in order to toss them out. If anything, more addendum spells would be nice so that they feel more useful to put up. But I don't really want to add an appendix to my addendum =/

[Merton9999]

I don't like the idea of gaining access to higher tiers of white or black magic via the use of additional strategems, or, as Ank stated so well, "adding an appendix to my addendum."

At that point, I might as well have come WHM or BLM. The use of even one more strat (let alone two or three) to push me into appendix mode would be so restrictive that the idea of being able to toggle when necessary would be almost lost, and take away one of the major things I like about SCH. More importantly, if all that is done with the job is to add these higher tiers of spells white and black mage already have, then I don't see the point of me choosing to play SCH over those jobs. All we would have done is create a job that doesn't have to go back to MH between fights to switch from WHM to BLM.

My favorite thing about SCH is that even though we start as being a white or black mage with a couple neat MP and casting reduction strats, the job took a unique identity with the introduction of accession, storms and later helices. That's when my interest swelled, and I like that SE has tried to keep that concept going for SCH by not adding Cure V and instead trying to focus on unique abilities.

In concept, the ideas are sound if you look at them in the context of what old exp parties used to be like, and second, for battles that last a while and require some strategy. For example, if you can control enmity well enough, you won't have to waste MP cure bombing the DRK or saving the BLM. WHM can't control what the DRK is doing and thus just has to respond with cures. We could potentially "cure" differently in this way by not having to cure at all, and that takes some forethought. If you can increase TP gain for the right people enough you can help a PLD or NIN keep hate by letting him do more damage and thus have to cure other people less. If you can create skillchains with magic, you can add that to storms to let the BLMs and yourself kill more quickly.

The problem, as we all know, is that these new tools are not potent enough to be used in the ideal way. Additionally, they seem based on old party styles that don't fit the context of Abyssea, where enmity and TP gain are out of control, and where trying to time an Immanence SC with WSs going off every other second (not too mention gear swap lag that ruins your timing) is so frustrating the ability just becomes a solo/duo tool (though I mist admit, a very fun one at that).

The concept of SCH being a unique healer and nuker 40-75 is why I've always advocated giving SCH a unique damage mitigation or recovery spell that is not Cure V, but serves a similar purpose. Cure V will let me main heal in parties, but I choose SCH over my WHM for a reason. I'd love to be able to do what I did 40-75 and keep a party alive through semi-carefully planned damage prevention and slow recovery, rather than repeated casting of a single reaction spell.

The problem I'm having realistically with any of the good suggestions on this job forum to cure in some unique way is that SE already has some idea in mind of what they want SCH to do, yet they're scared to implement it in a way that we can actually do it right. That's where I then understand these suggestions that we just be given Cure V because even playing SCH as almost-WHM would be better than not playing it at all.

I sincerely hope that this latest job announcement is only a taste of what will actually be implemented for levels 91-95. Their roadmap did suggest more frequent updates. Also, the announcement yesterday came very close to the inital responses from the dev team to players' feedback on the manifesto, leading me to believe that all that stuff they said they were considering for SCH in the three rep posts we got will come down the road a bit.

I'm very interested in Merton (or what ever horrendous name they stupidly changed it to - my bitterness over this will never die) and Embrava (I actually like this name better than Brave). There is potential there for some very interesting contributions to both Abyssea and post Abyssea end game...

If the numbers work out well. And that is where I'm worried that the tired 76-90 problem of Overpromise and Underdeliver will unfortunately plague SCH again.

[Ank]

I'm really warming to the idea of enhanced dmg mitigation for sch or rdm, especially if cure v is as out of the question as it apparently is. There are a lot of things that could cover that from reflect, elemental absorptions, stoneskin2, whatever.

Anyone else kind of hoping enlightenment will give access to merton/brave?

[zell_]

although my ideas seem to be out of the question in terms of actually being added, i do enjoy the conversation that has come from me bringing them up. merton9999, i understand your points of view and i do agree, damage mitigation would be a wonderful addition.

and to ank, that would be amazing if enlightenment did that. i mean just thinking about if they allow us to access those spells that way gets me all excited. i mean it makes sense for it to do that. i sure hope that is the case. and if its not, msg to the community reps: please do allow embrave and merton/whatever its called now to be accessed with the ability enlightenment!

[Merton9999]

I'm really warming to the idea of enhanced dmg mitigation for sch or rdm, especially if cure v is as out of the question as it apparently is. There are a lot of things that could cover that from reflect, elemental absorptions, stoneskin2, whatever.

Anyone else kind of hoping enlightenment will give access to merton/brave?

Heck yeah on enlightenment allowing Merton and Brave. A lot of people insist there's no reason to merit Enlightenment past 1, but with my play style I really like it at 5/5. Merton and Brave every 5 minutes? LOL. My expectation is that we will be able to boost Brave to 7.5 minutes with Perpetuance and AF3+2 hands so I'm guessing this won't happen, but a SCH can dream.

I'm glad you mentioned Reflect too. The constant argument against it is that most mobs will absorb the element they cast so you wouldn't want to reflect it. That's exactly I want it to go to SCH. Make it so reflect changes the elemental alignment of the reflected spell to the weather currently on the target. I love the idea of not only damage mitigation for SCH but in spells that actually combine our LA and DA sides. With this type of reflect you could prevent damage and nuke with the mob's weakness element all at once. I'd like to see it be almost insta-cast but last only 5-10 seconds, with a fairly high MP cast (Cure IV-V-ish). That way you'd have to react quickly like stun and time it right. I'd also like it to be fairly quick to recast, so SCH could actually use it as a Cure V alternative on casting mobs if we're smart and fast.

I'm also getting ahead of myself with a JA/JT concept from FFIX where reflected spells would do double damage. We could get a merit ability that added a MAB percent to reflected spells.

[zell_]

it brings great joy to me that you guys are thinking outside of the box on this stuff. really nice ideas!

[Merton9999]

although my ideas seem to be out of the question in terms of actually being added, i do enjoy the conversation that has come from me bringing them up. merton9999, i understand your points of view and i do agree, damage mitigation would be a wonderful addition.

and to ank, that would be amazing if enlightenment did that. i mean just thinking about if they allow us to access those spells that way gets me all excited. i mean it makes sense for it to do that. i sure hope that is the case. and if its not, msg to the community reps: please do allow embrave and merton/whatever its called now to be accessed with the ability enlightenment!

I'm enjoying the conversation too. Despite the backlash over the announcement I really am sticking to the fact that the dev response to our manifesto feedback was just too close time-wise to actually implement anything other than what they already told us in the manifesto for the Augtember update.

I think it's important to continue the discussion at least for a few more update cycles and see what happens. What bothers me most is that the SCH updates 76-99 seemed so geared toward non-Abyssea style play when everyone was doing Abyssea that it made me wonder if the dev team actually plays or listens to people who do, or if they're stuck on some vision they had for SCH at 75 cap in 2007.

Merton's behavior seems ideal for Abyssea in some ways, so we'll see if they're getting the idea. However, depending on what we all end up doing for the next year, as has been said recently, Merton seems a little .... "doh! If only I had that in 2010!"