Thoughts on the FFXI Job Adjustment Manifesto

[Economizer]

Let's be honest, no one invites a job because of their 2hour. The exception is SMN, and only for Perfect Defense (ask a SMN when the last time they got invited for Zantetsuken was, other than gimp Abyssea EXP groups who think it's cool). It's nice, but will do nothing to increase demand for SCH.

Warrior gets a pretty nice boost to AOE WS using Fell Cleave. But for exp parties, 2hour abilities aren't really what you get invited for. For NM on the other hand (and I'm not talking about weakling Abyssea seal NMs), jobs get invited to 2hour for various reasons. SAM, DRK, PLD, THF, SMN, RDM all come to mind.

Considering that one of the biggest complaints I hear from SCH is not being invited to do stuff, adding a powerful and unique ability to assist in zerging stuff down shouldn't be dismissed as useless. But I have a feeling that short of obsoleting other classes (even if boo hoo you can only obsolete one class at a time), some Scholars (not all, but some) will never be happy. I'm not sorry your class is no longer better then White Mage at curing or Black Mage at nuking. I'm also not sorry your class doesn't have the same ability as either of these classes, and no, only being able to be the same as one of this classes at a time due to Light Arts or Dark Arts does not count as balanced either.

If Brave and Merton are both significantly powerful, prepare to see Scholar get a unique position in endgame content as the premier zerg and zerg support class, in addition to its other incredibly potent roles it already has. Boosting the usefulness of Scholar's unique abilities and giving it more unique abilities is definitely the way to go for a more powerful and unique Scholar.

[Unctgtg]

Warrior gets a pretty nice boost to AOE WS using Fell Cleave. But for exp parties, 2hour abilities aren't really what you get invited for. For NM on the other hand (and I'm not talking about weakling Abyssea seal NMs), jobs get invited to 2hour for various reasons. SAM, DRK, PLD, THF, SMN, RDM all come to mind.

Considering that one of the biggest complaints I hear from SCH is not being invited to do stuff, adding a powerful and unique ability to assist in zerging stuff down shouldn't be dismissed as useless. But I have a feeling that short of obsoleting other classes (even if boo hoo you can only obsolete one class at a time), some Scholars (not all, but some) will never be happy. I'm not sorry your class is no longer better then White Mage at curing or Black Mage at nuking. I'm also not sorry your class doesn't have the same ability as either of these classes, and no, only being able to be the same as one of this classes at a time due to Light Arts or Dark Arts does not count as balanced either.

If Brave and Merton are both significantly powerful, prepare to see Scholar get a unique position in endgame content as the premier zerg and zerg support class, in addition to its other incredibly potent roles it already has. Boosting the usefulness of Scholar's unique abilities and giving it more unique abilities is definitely the way to go for a more powerful and unique Scholar.

I love my sch cause it lets me nuke, cure, support all in the same. I don't need to be the main nuker, I don';t need to be the main healer, etc. I like assisting and making other jobs better. And nothing beats a helix

[Raksha]

My twilight cape info was outdated, it isn't a seperate term. Kirschy failed me ;_;

Also am I the only one who noticed that the Initial damage of Merton did much more damage than the DoT? Looks like it isn't going to be an Uber Helix. Looked like the DoT ticked faster than a helix also

EDIT:

Lots of replies since yesterday @_@. A few thoughts:

1) Cure6 is pretty terrible
2) Enmity is only a problem without DD tanks
3) Cure potency isnt SCHs biggest problem it's recast timer on cure4. Cure5 is the easiest fix, but isn't the only one.
4) One of the bigst problems with SCH is that most SCHs have whm and/or BLM levelled also. So if you need a healer you'd come WHM or if you need a nuker you'd come BLM. This is the case with every SCH in my endgame LS (except me!).

[Bubeeky]

can we whms get a little manifesto love? some jobs have been given multiple updates and we haven't even gotten one

PS I know this isn't the whm forum, but obviously the devs are paying more attention to sch forums than whm, so here's hopin' <crosses taru paws>

[Unctgtg]

can we whms get a little manifesto love? some jobs have been given multiple updates and we haven't even gotten one

PS I know this isn't the whm forum, but obviously the devs are paying more attention to sch forums than whm, so here's hopin' <crosses taru paws>

Whms will probably get something cool

[Calamity]

Cool as the spell looks... I just can't get over that it's named "Merton". How could you take someone serious who threatens to use "Merton" on you? -.-

[Alhanelem]

A dark magic spell that does about double to triple of what an ordinary helix does, and we can only use it once per 2 hours (depending on JA resets).

Let's be honest, no one invites a job because of their 2hour. The exception is SMN, and only for Perfect Defense (ask a SMN when the last time they got invited for Zantetsuken was, other than gimp Abyssea EXP groups who think it's cool). It's nice, but will do nothing to increase demand for SCH.

Who cares? It's awesome. Stop being such a party pooper. And I use Zantetsuken all the time. There are times when it can save your butt; and an exp group doesn't have to be "gimp" to "think it's cool." Given the high frequency of 2-hour chests, that's a lot of instant kills.

You're right that no one gets invited for their 2hour. The 2hour by itself isn't something that should attract anyone to a job. 2-hours are generally just strong tools to help out in a bind. They don't define the whole job...

Now, it would have been better to see the spell used on something stronger, but at least it gives us a good idea how powerful it is.

[Raksha]

Who cares? It's awesome. Stop being such a party pooper. And I use Zantetsuken all the time. There are times when it can save your butt; and an exp group doesn't have to be "gimp" to "think it's cool." Given the high frequency of 2-hour chests, that's a lot of instant kills.

You're right that no one gets invited for their 2hour. The 2hour by itself isn't something that should attract anyone to a job. 2-hours are generally just strong tools to help out in a bind. They don't define the whole job...

Now, it would have been better to see the spell used on something stronger, but at least it gives us a good idea how powerful it is.

It looked to me to be about as powerful as a good t5 nuke, with a hefty DoT (non-helix-like DoT). Only awesome part I see is that it is AoE'able. That alone makes it awesome.

[Sotek]

If that video is anything to go by (and it isn't since I still remember the AV strategy video), Merton easily replaces Black Mage in Abyssea for Azure/Chest farming, it basically one shots everything.

Still, it is impressive even if it may be highly exaggerated. I can only hope Brave offers similar results.

PS. Boo at derailing a topic on Cure V and how crap Animus spells are.

PS I know this isn't the whm forum, but obviously the devs are paying more attention to sch forums than whm, so here's hopin' <crosses taru paws>

When your job actually has need for an update you'll get one. Until then enjoy being the single most needed job in the damn game for ten years running.

[Economizer]

I love my sch cause it lets me nuke, cure, support all in the same. I don't need to be the main nuker, I don';t need to be the main healer, etc. I like assisting and making other jobs better. And nothing beats a helix

Thank you for not being one of the vocal "give me everything, and balance can home point!" Or worse, someone who doesn't remember meriphos or what else happened at 75. I appreciate it, and it I hope that Scholar gets more fun abilities outside of the new two hour stuff.

I have to say that the Helix spells are definitely something very nice, and they synergize well with the weather spells, which was something else I've always liked about Scholar. I definitely hope that improvements to Scholar are as outstanding as these two faucets of the job.

I hope Scholar gets more Helix type spells.

I've never understood why Scholar's TP spell was so terrible. I think that even if SE refused to increase the potency too significantly, doing something like moving its tics to match that of a Helix spell would be a much better move for example. This way you'd at least get 3 TP every ten seconds, which is more likely to help a WS on someone building TP very quickly. Of course, if the spell was also more potent, this would also work well, without just becoming Meditate (since the spell can't currently get Raptured, wouldn't 10TP every ten seconds be more fair? Or if it was allowed to get Raptured, 6TP/10 seconds would be a very big deal.)

I think using Helix like effects could be a very good template for improving Scholar in general. Imagine an enhancing spell that forced the next attack from someone to double attack, and then did it every ten seconds afterwords. Or if the enmity spells increased or decreased enmity over time on a Helix timer. Or a fairly potent (at very least Cure III potency, but preferably much, much more) healing spell that worked like a Helix. Or Helix 2 spells (meritable probably).

On Merton, I believe it a post on the JP forums by the devs stated that it is single target, Dark Magic, and has slip damage equal to initial damage. Of course, as always, I'm going by a terrible machine translation, so I could be wrong about this.