New 2-hour Abilities

[Zirael]

[...]With that said, we are planning to make necessary adjustments to not only the abilities, but to content as well. [...]

The JP version of this post mentions that PD and Embrava will be weakened first and content relying on them to be won, readjusted at a later time.
What are supposed to do people who made groups/linkshells dedicated solely for the purpose of Nyzul Isle, ADL or Legion do in the weeks/months between PD and Embrava being invalidated and content adjusted?
I realise party/alliance full of Ragnaroks and Daurdablas99 might not suffer as much, but even then going for something like ADL or Paramount Botulus will be an interesting thing to see.

[Sargent]

As a result we would like to make it so summoner and scholar can widen their range of play and usefulness via other elements.

Let's look at Summoner outside the use of Astral Flow/Astral Conduit. You can use an offensive Blood Pact every 45 seconds, and a defensive Blood Pact every 45 seconds (provided delay is capped). Your melee damage in between is.. pathetic, and you can only provide your pet with 10% Haste in gear to enhance this (5% head, 5% belt), as well as +9% critical hit rate (3% head, 6% body). Blood Pacts deal around the same damage as a single weapon skill, or tier 5 nuke provided you use a decent mix of gear and don't stick to the fulltime AF3 garbage.
If you want to make them useful for endgame outside PD/squall... increase the frequency of Blood Pacts outside of a 30~120 min JA that lasts 30 seconds.

Scholar's situation isn't as bad, but a WHM is more proficient at curing, and a BLM is more proficient at nuking. If your not in need of Embrava for an Endgame event, you tend to favour WHM/BLM since they're better at the role required.

Now, not jumping the gun and saying "SMN/SCH are going to be useless when PD/Embrava is nerfed" because the honest truth is no one knows to what extent they are getting nerfed. But please bear in mind that you do need to look into how to make other jobs (not just SMN/SCH) useful since you have acknowledged the increase in battle speed this game has experienced.

[Babekeke]

We feel that it's unfair to have RDM sat in the corner all alone in uselessness, so by nerfing PD and Embrava, RDM will no longer be alone!

Or something like that?

[Ophannus]

If you uncouple shared recasts like Spirit/Soul jump >>PLEASE<<< do not make them weaker. One of the community reps said the reason why they grant so much TP is because it's a shared timer and if the timers became unshared they would need to weaken the effects. Please do not weaken spirit and soul jump by lowering their recast or their damage or their TP generation. DRG needs TP generation to deal damage compared to compete at all with other damage dealers. Spirit Surge is a 2hour version of a 25% ability haste which lasts for 60 seconds--compared to Last Resort which does the same haste but also grants attack boost and lasts for 3minutes and 5min recast!!

[Zirael]

If you uncouple shared recasts like Spirit/Soul jump >>PLEASE<<< do not make them weaker. One of the community reps said the reason why they grant so much TP is because it's a shared timer and if the timers became unshared they would need to weaken the effects. Please do not weaken spirit and soul jump by lowering their recast or their damage or their TP generation. DRG needs TP generation to deal damage compared to compete at all with other damage dealers. Spirit Surge is a 2hour version of a 25% ability haste which lasts for 60 seconds--compared to Last Resort which does the same haste but also grants attack boost and lasts for 3minutes and 5min recast!!

Last Resort can be merited down to 4min10s. Sorry to add salt to your wounds :/

[Martel]

Seconding this. While I'd love separate timer for jump/high jump and spirit/soul jump, if you have to nerf them to do it, don't bother. We'd just end up with twice as much JA delay cutting into our melee for the same or less TP gain.

Now, if they won't be nerfed, then /joy, 4 jumps!

[Taint2]

Scherzo and earthen armor are worthless on this fight unless you're severely underleveled or you intentionally gear up with as much -HP junk as you can find. I don't know where you'd get the idea they'd be useful. There's other problems with your suggested strategy, but I'll just let them get by for now because I'm freaking tired of hearing people think scherzo does anything when you're getting beat on by 4 targets who only hit for 300-700 damage.

ADL is not hard because he hits for massive damage in single hits. He's hard because you have to deal with 2-4 of them spamming aga III (IV when lower on health), and AoE WSs which do too little damage to trigger scherzo. It's like thinking scherzo will save you vs. hundred fists.

If I hadn't killed without PD I'd agree with you. But I have and so have otheres.....squall is a powerful tool, he won't be getting much of anything off. Earthen armor/scherzo are just part of stacking the odds, good DDs and squalls are the foundation.

Is it fool proof, hell no, is it doable, without a doubt.

[Kari]

How about giving DNC some of that "Not shared JA Timers" love? =P

[Sasaraixx]

As a result we would like to make it so summoner and scholar can widen their range of play and usefulness via other elements. We understand that these adjustments might be somewhat of an inconvenience, but we appreciate your understanding.

Somewhat of an inconvenience? Talk about a huge understatement. I am all for you all creating content that doesn't revolve around us needing to be invincible in order to win consistently. The problem I have is that you still don't seem to understand that certain jobs have practically ZERO use in endgame content. For all of this talk of balance, this is an area that you have not properly addressed. You are going to need to do more than just "widen their area of play and usefulness." I would like a statement showing some serious commitment to this issue. "Somewhat of an inconvenience" does not inspire much confidence.

That is why so many of us have continued to ask for adjustments to the many useless spells and abilities SCH has because without Embrava the job is left basically in the exact same place it was in years ago. (And we all knew an Embrava nerf was coming.) Sure SCH is a better healer now, but that isn't going to get it invited to just about anything. SMN has use now for Shock Squall and Earthen Armor occasionally. Astral Flow has returned to being fairly lackluster as well. I already have free avatars, normal BPs do more damage and Odin is pretty useless.

I'll be satisfied when I see details for revamping the enmity system, the animus spells, Aldoquium, Libra, MV, Ward potency, BP timer caps, avatar melee damage, avatar favor mechanics, etc.

Don't get me wrong. There are other jobs out there who have it worse than SCH and SMN. You've just effectively moved them to top tier of the misfits club.

I'm excited for all of the other changes. Splitting those JA timers and addressing some of the new content is awesome news.

[Yinnyth]

If I hadn't killed without PD I'd agree with you. But I have and so have otheres.....squall is a powerful tool, he won't be getting much of anything off. Earthen armor/scherzo are just part of stacking the odds, good DDs and squalls are the foundation.

Is it fool proof, hell no, is it doable, without a doubt.

Of course it's doable. But what exactly is scherzo + EA doing for you? What ability does ADL use that does 800+ damage in a single hit? Even though he synchs his WSs perfectly when he splits, they're both checked seperately for whether or not scherzo will have an effect. Having dozens of ADL attempts under my belt, I have yet to see him do any attack besides Thundaga IV on a single target or Dynamic Assault which would actually cause scherzo to proc. If Thundaga IV is on a single target, you're in trouble anyways. Dynamic Assault he only uses at higher HPs, is a single-target attack, and is still survivable by most melees.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at. I'm not saying "it's impossible to win without PD." I'm saying "why are you using scherzo?" Scherzo is almost completely worthless vs. ADL. You may as well be using aubade to increase sleep resist.