SCH Adjustment Ideas

[giantslayer]

Instead of just asking to buff things, I've focused on looking for other solutions that are small and simple, yet clever and effective. These ideas are more about playability and the feel of the class than raw power. My goal is to present viable ideas that the Dev team could implement without needing to tone them down first.

Adjustments

Dissipation:
If Faerie Gauge is at 50 or higher, consumes Faerie Gauge instead of un-summoning Faerie. Restores Aetherflow based on current Faerie Gauge (50 for 1, 80 for 2, 100 for 3). If Faerie Gauge is 40 or less, it will consume the Faerie, restoring 3 Aetherflow stacks.
Remove 20% healing buff and 30s summoning lockout.

Fey Union:
Initial activation range is still 10y, but effect range is increased to 20y and deactivates automatically if the target is more than 20y away.
Reduces damage taken by linked target by 15% while active. (This is in addition to the current healing effect.)

Deployment Tactics:
Remove existing effect.
Transforms the next Adloquium or Succor cast to restore no HP and to add the amount that would have been healed to the barrier.
Reduce cooldown to 30s.

Excogitation
Change triggering threshold from 50% to 65% of max HP.

Enhanced Bane:
New Trait, ideally acquired somewhere between lvl 50-60.
Potency is no longer reduced based on the number of enemies.
If necessary, this can replace Quickened Aetherflow.

Selene:
Silent Dusk:
Replace with a new ability that increases physical defense, similar to Fey Covenant.

Embrace:
Increase the potency of Selene's Embrace to be 50 Faerie Potency stronger than Eos's Embrace.

Faerie Potency (both Faeries):
Remove the odd level scaling from 50 to 60 and adjust potency of Embrace, Whispering Dawn, and Fey Union down to true level.


Commentary

Overall, these adjustments are actually very modest in terms of power increases:

• Damage Reduction on Fey Union would be a decent buff.
• The removal of the healing buff on Dissipation offsets nicely against the removal of the faerie summoning restriction. Consuming Faerie Gauge for Dissipation is more of a lateral move as it is an alternate use of an existing resource, not a new resource.
• The new Deployment Tactics would increase SCH's overall shielding capabilities without raising potencies, and at the expense of losing the potentially godly power of a deployed Crit Adlo.
• Excogitation change is neutral.
• Enhanced Bane would be a nice buff to AoE for dungeons but have a negligible impact in a raid setting.
• Changes to Selene’s skills will bring her to roughly equal with Eos.
• Faerie Potency adjustment would be neutral at 60-70 and actually a nerf at lower levels.

Dissipation: This will make most of the player base happy, both those who don’t like the current Dissipation as well as those who don’t like Fey Union. Pre-70, this would solve the main complaint with Dissipation (no Faerie for 30s) while remaining a relatively neutral change by removing the healing buff. At 70, this increases the importance of the new Faerie gauge, reinforces the SCH playstyle of having multiple options to spend a shared resource pool, and maintains the flavor or concept of Dissipation.
Since it is an alternative method of utilizing the Faerie Gauge, the overall increase in class power at 70 would be small. However, since 3 Lustrates are a bigger healing gain than 10 ticks of Fey Union, a buff to Fey Union would be in order.

Fey Union: It seems the biggest issue is the skill deactivating if the target walks outside of the short range of the tether. I have limited experience playing at 70, but I suspect the issue is that if the faerie is more than 10y from the target, it will move to exactly 10y away and activate Fey Union. If the target moves just a little in the wrong direction, the tether is broken.
The damage reduction buff is much more interesting than a simple potency increase and will help Fey Union stay relevant with the new Dissipation.

Deployment Tactics: This will make SCH competitive with Noct AST in the shielding dept without buffing the potency of any abilities. While AST will still have a superior overall shielding toolkit, being able to claim the strongest shield (even if by a small margin), will have a disproportionately large effect on players' perception of the class.
This creates a nice juxtaposition of Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics basically having opposite functions. Being able to deploy a 300 potency shield through Succor will be much more user friendly than the old Deployment Tactics, which required everyone to stand close together. Reduced cooldown will convert this from a "use when everyone stacks for damage" move to a regular part of the toolkit.
Lastly, this also solves the problem of the current Deployment Tactics being too powerful when used in conjunction with a Crit Adlo.

Excogitation: The number one complaint with Excogitation is having it go to waste if incoming damage is wrongly estimated. Raising the triggering threshold will greatly reduce the waste without having to buff anything.

Enhanced Bane: My assumption is that the Bane nerf was designed more with SMN in mind than SCH. The way the two classes share skills makes this tricky, and using a Trait is a way to work around that limitation.
Having zero damage drop-off may seem powerful at first glance, but it’s not really that powerful. Considering that WHM can put a 40 potency DoT with no damage drop-off and no CD for one GCD, being able to put 70 with two GCDs and an Aetherflow stack is not really that excessive. This also needs to be a little stronger than Aero III to balance out SCH's lack of spammable AOE attack (e.g. Holy/Gravity).

Silent Dusk: Silent Dusk needs to be replaced. Not only is it a useless skill, but it also no longer fits into the current design philosophy, where debuffs such as Silence are outside the Healer Role. I really like the idea of creating a direct contrast with a Magic Defense buff on Eos and a Physical Defense buff on Selene.

Embrace: The fact is that Selene's AoE cleanse is nowhere near as useful as Whispering Dawn. The only ways to make Selene a truly equal alternative to Eos would be to substantially increase her speed buff or to increase her base healing. I figured increasing healing would be the more acceptable idea for the Dev team.

Faerie Potency: This is primarily a fix for the Faerie being too powerful in pre-50 dungeons. Outside of that, it is a quality of life fix so that it’s not such a pain in the butt for the community to discuss ability potencies.

[giantslayer]

I've added a couple more ideas (change Deployment Tactics and buff Selene's Embrace). These were inspired by some thoughts/ideas I've seen on other threads (although my ideas for implementation are different).

[Galliford]

I just wanted to say how much I like these ideas. Granted, I'm new to the game and still very much getting the hang of Scholar, but I think you've put forth some great suggestions here. In particular I like how Dissipation and Aetherpact would interact with each other -- mutually exclusive because of a choice you're making about your resource management (which v. much fits the theme of Scholar), and both useful in different ways.

[Xygoz]

Fey Union: Initial activation range is still 10y, but effect range is increased to 20y and deactivates automatically if the target is more than 20y away.
Reduces damage taken by linked target by 15% while active.
Deployment Tactics: Remove existing effect. Transforms the next Adloquium or Succor cast to restore no HP and to add the amount that would have been healed to the barrier. Reduce cooldown to 30s.


Dissipation: Instead of dismissing Faerie, consumes Faerie Gauge to restore Aetherflow. Number of stacks based on current Faerie Gauge (50 for 1, 80 for 2, 100 for 3). Remove 20% healing buff and 30s summoning lockout.

Fey Union has A LOT of problems but turning it into a 15% dmg reduction I dont think is enough to be useful. As its stand tanks have cooldowns for days another 15% wouldnt really help plus we would also lose out on the fairy heals while its channeling.

Deployment Tactics im NOT a fan of this idea, Deployment tactics is one of scholars realy good skills, while I do agree it can be hard in pugs to spread it to everyone the same can be said for cure 3 or any bubble effects where people need to be in an area, a lot of fights do have enough stacking mechanics where you can spread your adlo out.

Dissipation I like the idea of giving aetherflow stacks but I don't like it eating the gauge they can take everything off of it and just have it give aetherflow back with a decent cooldown on it.

As far as the fairy's base heal I'm fine with the way it is atm its was a nerf but I IMO scholar has more problems then a 50 pot nerf to embrace, I've also giving up on want scholars to have its dps restored the devs have made it clear they don't want healers push really high numbers. Having cleared all the current content on scholar I can tell you our dps is still fine on single target and AE is decent, while it may be some what boring to spam broil 2 the dps is there.

[giantslayer]

Thanks for the feedback!

Fey Union has A LOT of problems but turning it into a 15% dmg reduction I dont think is enough to be useful. As its stand tanks have cooldowns for days another 15% wouldnt really help plus we would also lose out on the fairy heals while its channeling.

This would be in addition to its current effect. I agree that by itself, a 15% damage reduction would be worse than its current state. I apologize that may not have been clear.

Deployment Tactics im NOT a fan of this idea, Deployment tactics is one of scholars realy good skills, while I do agree it can be hard in pugs to spread it to everyone the same can be said for cure 3 or any bubble effects where people need to be in an area, a lot of fights do have enough stacking mechanics where you can spread your adlo out.

I was also a little iffy on removing a unique mechanic from the game. The thought process behind this was to address the complaint of how AST has completely overshadowed SCH in their former specialty, shields, in a way that seems to fit the style of SCH. This would give SCH the capability to output a stronger shield, but only once every 30 seconds and at the expense of removing the healing. More importantly, this is something the Dev team could realistically be talked into doing, whereas a potency increase to our base abilities has slim to no chance of implementation.

This is speculation, but my guess is that the current deployed crit adlo is too powerful from the dev team's standpoint. People have speculated he increased cost for Adlo was done to discourage crit fishing. This idea is a way the Dev team can solve that problem while giving the players something useful in exchange, instead of just giving us a nerf.

Dissipation I like the idea of giving aetherflow stacks but I don't like it eating the gauge they can take everything off of it and just have it give aetherflow back with a decent cooldown on it.

While I agree it would be nice from a player's standpoint, I see virtually zero chance of implementation for two reasons:
1. This would make it no different from Aetherflow, except for being on a separate cooldown.
2. The Dev team will want to retain the theme or concept of Dissipation. By definition of the word, Dissipation involves an expending or wasting of something. My idea retains the concept, but changes the object being dissipated from the faerie to the faerie gauge.


I really do appreciate the feedback/discussion and hope this didn't come across otherwise. Understand that I am trying to look at this from the perspective of the Dev team and recommend changes that they could agree with, both in terms of the amount of power as well as the thematic concepts.

[giantslayer]

I re-worked my Dissipation idea to work before you acquire the faerie gauge at 70, removing the need to change what levels abilities are acquired at. I also added an idea for Excogitation.

[sumiree]

Quite a nice idea. overall not too OP at least.
As much as I want that enhanced bane, but in reality, I would say it is a little too strong.
Considering we still have our shadow flare as another DoT.
Maybe can match the pot reduction to be the same as Holy.

[Marcu18]

Adloqium-potency from 300 to 350
Embrace-potency from 250 to 300-350
Excognitation- Use on self and/or long duration to a minute
Chain stratagem- target takes 15% MORE damage
Fey Union-10 yalms to 20, turn off when target is out of range
Shadow Flare- put back the way it use to be.
Aetherflow stacks- 2 or 3 more.

[Kozhark]

Excogitation: Allow for crit heal and if the timer runs down, apply a short duration shield equal to heal amount to target. Right now it is just a minimally stronger lustrate I dump on the tank when aetherflow is back up.

Fey Union: Increased tether range and remove the wind-up time for the ability to start. Allow +healing abilities to affect the healing potency.

Dissipation: Automatically re-summon fairy at the end of the duration.

Sacred Soil: Guaranteed free succor. Indomitability is a much better use of a stack at this point.

Quickened Aetherflow: 50% chance to reduce Aetherflow cd by 10 seconds when using aetherflow abilities.

[Riyshn]

Quickened Aetherflow: 50% chance to reduce Aetherflow cd by 10 seconds when using aetherflow abilities.

Why do people keep suggesting "fixes" for this that fail to solve the core problem that RNG CDR is a garbage mechanic in general, and ranges from worthless to actively harmful on healers?