Rejoice!

[Mageoholic]

RDM is getting a solid nuking buff. Our ability to cast spells incredibly fast is going to have us blazing through our MP in no time. Planned changes have T4 spells going from over 8 second cast time to 6. And mid 30's recast to 30 RDM can essentially chainspell nukes with the correct fast cast and recast setup. With damage variables being adjusted to allow for a nice cycle of 2 spells for constant nuking.

It is a good day to be a RDM.

T5's recast and cast time increase.

SCH is also going to benefit from this buff as well, we aren't the best but it is a step forward.

[Tamarsamar]

While I'm generally not a huge RDM nuking fan (anything that I could solidly nuke I'd usually rather, ahem, get up close and personal with and not burn up all of my MP), from a game design perspective I'm ecstatic that they're giving basic Elemental spells not named "Blizzard" and "Thunder" some marginally more meaning.

[Sunrider]

It seems nice, we'll find out when its put in practice.

The thing is that, like Immunobreak, this nuke update is for all nukers, so what seems like a step forward will likely just leave RDM in the same place.

[Demon6324236]

It seems nice, we'll find out when its put in practice.

The thing is that, like Immunobreak, this nuke update is for all nukers, so what seems like a step forward will likely just leave RDM in the same place.

Really this is the same to be said with everything RDM related sadly. If they fix one handed jobs, RDM will get buffed, but so will everything else around it currently, so nothing will really change for it. Healing was the same, order was WHM>SCH>RDM>PLD, now its WHM>SCH>RDM>PLD, enfeebling was no different, and nuking wont be either. Its good to know we are getting buffed, but we can not let this stop us from asking to be improved still because even after all of this our overall position will not have changed.

[saevel]

And what would you nuke on RDM that you wouldn't nuke better on SCH or BLM? At least the melee line there can be some argument for self sufficiency via self buffing, but for magic DD it would be asinine to take this as anything but a buff to BLM and SCH.

[Demon6324236]

Part of RDM's ultimate flaw is the fact that SCH exists. Because SCH can do everything RDM can do but better, except for melee.

[saevel]

Part of RDM's ultimate flaw is the fact that SCH exists. Because SCH can do everything RDM can do but better, except for melee.

Pretty much. The job SE should of never created, yet it's too late to stop it now.

[Hashmalum]

Pretty much. The job SE should of never created, yet it's too late to stop it now.

It's sad but true. SCH, as it was brought into FF11, was one of several jobs that was fundamentally misconceived--brought into Vana'diel without a soul of its own and for all the wrong reasons. They made a job that was mostly meant to exist as a subjob--basically, a job half-alive and half-dead--and it has struggled to fill the emptiness inside with roles stolen from other jobs ever since. Like a vampire, SCH was (re)born wrong. It is inherently parasitic; in such a situation, it is impossible for both predator and prey to both thrive. And as far as I can tell, both SCH and it's fellow stunted half-job DNC were created basically because the dev team knew that players like new jobs, and here were two from previous games that hadn't been done yet. (The equally misconceived PUP showed how bad things went when they tried to create a new never-before-seen job, and they were already lowballing things as it was by recycling so many areas in that expansion, so they stayed safe and went for the fanservice.)

[Carth]

A bit off topic, but since it was talked about, I would say DNC at least in concept was a well-made job. At the beginning, it was poorly conceived. Lacked abilities, low damage, and a general misconception from the playerbase at large on how it was meant to be played. But after a few updates and learning the job, it's definitely the most unique class that was ever made by SE. Unfortunately the same can't be said on SCH, which I'm almost 100% positive they made the job mainly as a mage subjob.

[Hashmalum]

A bit off topic, but since it was talked about, I would say DNC at least in concept was a well-made job. At the beginning, it was poorly conceived. Lacked abilities, low damage, and a general misconception from the playerbase at large on how it was meant to be played. But after a few updates and learning the job, it's definitely the most unique class that was ever made by SE. Unfortunately the same can't be said on SCH, which I'm almost 100% positive they made the job mainly as a mage subjob.

Admittedly, DNC is still better off than SCH for a number of reasons--but even so, SE has still struggled to fill out the job at higher levels. Honestly, look at Ternary Flourish and tell me that they knew where they were going here. Or poaching Dual Wield from NIN--is that really a sign of a job conception that was solid from the beginning? But the subjob levels, those are fine. SE said outright that making both SCH and DNC good subjobs was a design objective from the beginning.

Of course, Scholar has been troubled ever since its beginning early in the Final Fantasy series. The very first SCH was in FF3, and it had the dubious honor of being the most worthless job in the game. Its only ability--not just its only unique ability, its only ability--was being able to see an enemy's elemental weakness, and this was valuable in precisely one fight in the entire game where the long-running Barrier Change ability was first born. From this inauspicious origin, SCH has had to have abilities from other jobs cobbled onto it to keep it viable ever since.

SCH's next appearance was in the FF3 remake for the DS. This version added a dispel effect to the weakness scan, and added some black and white magic as well as poaching Chemist's ability to double the healing of potions. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 kept only the weakness scan, and swapped out the dispel effect for the ability to see the target's equipped items and hidden loot. The black and white magic were swapped out for a bizarre bunch of novel and not seen since abilities with no real unifying theme; FFTA2 SCH could deal non-elemental damage to one race of your choice on both sides (RACISTS!), deal several arbitrarily chosen elemental damage types to everyone on both sides, give a random buff to one target, or raise status resistance in a small area. Friendly fire and racism didn't make for a very compelling job, so the lack of stolen job abilities really hurt SCH here.

Then WotG came out with our SCH--except that it didn't yet have Embrava/Kaustra or any of the addendum spells (no -na, no Dispel or Sleep, no Reraise, only RDM-tier nukes), any merits, and lacked basic utility spells like Sneak and Invisible. It also hadn't yet had the "_______ over Time" or "enmity management" roles clumsily grafted onto it, so helixes were much higher level, WHM hadn't had its highest level Regen spell poached from it yet, and effects like Adloquium, Animus, the -enmity arts, and Libra were completely absent. Oh, and in keeping with Tanaka's infamous "mushroom strategy" of player management, the iconic SCH ability of seeing a foe's elemental weaknesses was (and still is) completely absent.

The third Chocobo's Dungeon was the next appearance of SCH and again it was quite different from its predecessors. The weakness scan was kept, and it received two more informational abilities; one of which identified unidentified items (a major game mechanic in the Chocobo's Dungeon series) and the other of which filled out the player's mini-map of the current level including traps, items, and enemies (Chocobo's Dungeon's main distinguishing gameplay mechanic has always been dropping the player into randomly generated dungeons with randomly placed traps, items, and enemies). Aside from that, it had a couple of abilities to temporarily boost item effectiveness, a couple of self-healing abilities, and the ability to cast a completely random spell.

Final Fantasy 4: The After Years gave us a Scholar character whose weakness scan also had a Dispel tacked on to it as well as adding a new elemental weakness, and could also Gil Toss (originally introduced with FF5's SAM). Sadly she could do nothing else on her own except stab, shoot, or whip things and was not terribly useful. Finally Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light gave us a scholar mostly unrelated to those who had come before, having some black and white magic competency and a quartet of strange abilities that would temporarily lower the stats of all enemies (but no weakness scan).

So as you can see, in the face of this mess, it's hardly surprising that the dev team has struggled to find a role for our SCH job. In fact, the job was considered so non-iconic that between its introduction in FF3 in 1990 and FF3's rerelease 16 years later, not a single game featured a scholar job or had a character who you could plainly say, "Yes, he's obviously a Scholar". In fact nearly half a dozen job system games have chosen to pass up the chance to have SCH as one of their jobs (FF5, FF Tactics, FF Tactics Advance, FF Dimensions, and the as-yet-not-translated Bravely Default: Flying Fairy). SCH's fairly unimpressive track record to date would suggest that they were wise to do so.