Feedback on 4.05 Scholar

Hi first time poster here,
Can I ask for clarification on where SE stated SCH was no longer to be the mitigation healer?? There has been a lot of changes to SCH in recent patches but haven't seen anything where this has stated.
My thoughts were that overall WHM was to be the pure healer class, SCH was to be the mitigation healer and AST was a mix of both with an emphasis on support through the card system.
My question with this basis is why can't we have better dmg mitigation than AST? Specifically for single target with aoe through DT. This only happens when we crit on adlo with no warning so it's a pure rng and hope it crits when we need it.
I would love to see a UI indication like on both WHM and AST when their respective teir II spells freecure and crit. It wouldn't make us OP as DT can only be used every 90 secs or was that 2 mins still?
The other changes above especially from OP are good.

Not really into OP's suggestion of adding Physick II to SCH's toolkit - instead I would prefer fairy AI to be tweaked so you could more easily direct Embrace unto a specific target without having her finish a dozen random target embraces first.

I would like Obey to make fairy NOT cast Embrace unless told to - I get that fairy randomly topping people off at the cost of nothing is a very good very poweful tool, but having her specifically target x team member in time with your Physicks, without resorting to unreliable macros, would fix both

a) "homogenization" issues, as we would still have very powerful single target healing tools without them being another Cure II

b) our lack of a powerful single target spammable heal

Having the option to direct fairy's Embrace could however kinda mess with Fey Union, since this does exactly what I propose above - make your fairy focus on a single target with repeated "Embraces". And that is why I kinda don't really like this skill all that much, since all it does is give you something you should have had from the start: the ability to choose whom your fairy heals for a time.

I'm not really into the idea that your biggest skill in an expansion is basically fairy AI QoL - so I like OP's suggestion that faory gauge be used instead to cast fairy skills such as Whispering Down. Let them still be on the same cooldown if you must, but instead fix the damn fairy AI and we no longer will need cure 2 :P

As for Dissipation, yeah, please give us the fairy back after the 30 sec - either by resummoning her, swapping to the other fairy (my preferred option although Selene would need some changes before this), or even not desummoning her in the firat place and instead freezing her for the duration of the buff - any kind of change to this would make me happy at this point, really.

Emergency tactics was nice - but maybe we could perhaps have it lower the cost of the next shield by 20-25%?... SE does not seem at all willing to give us back our shielding niche by lowering the costs of adlo/suc, so having this on a cooldown would already make me pretty satisfied. I don't dislike that they seem to be throwing SCH into an emergency ogcd healer, but since we got all these shields we might as well not have to cry inside everytime we have to cast one, yes? :)

Lastly, SE, thank you for:
-Miasma II (we needed this)
-Indom (didn't see this coming but not gonna complain)
-ET (it's okay. Could be better, but thank you still!)
-Excog is nice but why does it still not go off at the end?!
-Quickened Aetheflow thank Jesus
(Not sure if this is the place to say this AND also haven't done PvP since .05 - but the PvP changes seem real nice too at least on paper)

No need to say anything else => I agree with everytime the OP said.

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Originally Posted by Dregenfox

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WHM doesn't also have to worry about using that oGCD heal that could potentially lock them out of using their oGCD AoE heal, oGCD AoE DPS (more specifically their DoT spreader), oGCD damage/MP restorer, and oGCD tank-buster heal since they would lack the resource to do it (except for maybe Divine Benison) or sacrificing a whole different set of cooldowns and their passive heal to get the resources to do it.

On top of that, all healers, not just the SCH, want to avoid using their GCD heals as much as possible, but SCH wants to avoid them even harder than the other two since those heals are weak and expensive. When it comes down to using their GCD heals, the WHM and AST can do it better and more efficiently than the SCH to go back to DPSing sooner. SCH usually has to leave it to someone else because they pretty much can't. As soon as the bulk of the healing falls on the SCH, unless they're overgeared or have all of their cooldowns available, the SCH will struggle much more than the other two. That's not good balance. The problem of not being able to heal content was exactly why AST was initially barred from content. True, it's not so bad that SCH can't physically heal anything, but it's come to a point where you have to ask "What does SCH bring that the other two can't do?" Yeah, they have good oGCD heals, but Earthly Star is godly when timed right, and WHM has Assize, Medica, Cure III, and PI. SCH has Indom... on a 30s timer. SCH has Succor... that's a weak heal and weak shields and not much better under Emergency Tactics that's on a 20s cooldown (which was formerly 30s). They have Whispering Dawn... that's a passive heal on a 60s timer.

When people balk at these suggestions I'm making, they seem to do it under the assumption that I have no idea how to play SCH. I cleared O1s and O2s in the first week with my static. Sure, you can argue those are the easiest encounters this raid tier, but we cleared them after 9 hours of work - 3 hours for 3 days. We are not hardcore. We're midcore at best. However, to clear these two raid tiers so fast means that I do have some idea of what I'm talking about. Yeah, I avoid using my GCD heals as much as possible. I rely on my fairy cooldowns and oGCD cooldowns a lot. I've timed for when to specifically fire off my heals for their most optimal use.

It's for when things go wrong and my plan is interrupted that SCH lacks the flexibility to recover that the other two have. SCH has almost 0 wiggle room for mistakes by the rest of the party, even worse its own. If I die and Aetherflow's on cooldown, I'm pretty much still dead. I have almost 0 healing potential because the little bit of MP I get from being revived has to go into resummoning my fairy. I have to beg my party for MP, even if Lucid happens to be ready to use. Sure, you can argue, "Well, don't mess up." Yeah, and we live in a world where pencils don't come with erasers.

I dont really want to comment on the WHM vs AST vs SCH thing going on here. I just want to say that SCH itself is in a decent spot. All my suggestions are aimed at making the class more fun and looking at some skills that need tweaking to be truely useful. In regards to the Physick II comments: This is just a suggestion if SE prefers to keep Adlo in its current spot. I thing most of us are not happy about Adlos spot right now so I made some suggestions on how to fix it besides just a flat potency buff (If SE was willing to do that I believe it would already have happened in 4.05). Adlo is a bit tricky to deal with. Its shielding is primarily used for predictable burst damage (tank busters, raidwide aoe etc) and this is where it is weak in compairison to Divine Benison and Asp.Benefic but its high mana costs are not an issue because you dont need it that often. However Adlo also fulfils the role of being SCHs Cure II and its total healing potency of 600 is sufficent for that but for that role the MP cost is just to high to warrant its use in such a way. IMO that is the reason why Adlo is hard to balance. It has to fulfil two roles for which the other healers have seperate skills. My suggestion of a Physick II is therefore only an idea if SE is unable to find a sweetspot for Adloquium to push it into a pure shielding role and replace its "higher tier heal" place by a Physick II.

The crit trait on Adlo is the same deal. SE is scared of buffing adlos shields to not break some mechanics. Having a rng based 1000 potency shield deployed for example would be bad for the game. Therefore I would rather see the trait removed and Adlo buffed to let's say 300/450 in healing/shielding. Yes it would take away a bit of class identity but I personally would trade a bit of that identity for more reliable and overall better shields on Adloquium.

I think the way Aldo works is fine. What I think needs to happen is for succor to be given the same crit treatment and both have a innately higher chance to crit so those two specific spells crit more. Auto crits would be too powerful, but if SE can find the right balance the shielding capabilities of the Ast and Sch could be on average the same power over the course of a fight.

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Originally Posted by inhaledcorn

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I don't get how you're upset that SCH can't match a WHM's raw AOE output, because that is pretty much their entire reason for being invited to a raid.

Assize + medica + PI is roughly 750-900 potency depending on confession stacks, but that's once per minute.

ET + Succor + Indom is 800 potency, and can be done every 30 seconds.

Cure III is good in the right situation, but it's a small AOE and costs a lot of mana. But if we buffed SCH's AOE healing then what is the point in bringing a WHM?

The problem is the randomness of crits. As a healer you want to have an entire fight planned out in your head and thats the goal for a healer during progression. Having truely mastered a fight means having every spellcast and every ogcd planned ahead of time so no healing gets wasted and dps gets maximized (of course this is just an ideal world, mistakes happen). And as long as the fights in FF14 are as scripted as they are, crits on a healer are not worth anything usually. Sure a crit at a good timing can save you one additional heal but you can never plan with this crit heal. Therefore the crit trait of Adloquium puts it in a weird spot. The current 300 potency shield feels too weak in many situations and the other healers are just better in that regard (AST shield for example is 575 potency in shielding alone). The crit however turns Adlo into a 600 potency shield that is oviously a crit (let's assume a crit modifier of 1.5 just for arguments sake), that means it is a 900 potency shield. That is a massive difference. If I had to choose between a 300 potency shield that sometimes is a 900 potency shield and a flat 575 potency shield, I would take the 575 shield all of the time. I would even take a 450 potency shield over a 300/sometimes 900 shield. Healing in FF14 is all about reliability. Adlos crit triat just contradicts the foundation of healing in this game and is therefore useless in almost all scenarios. Why is the new Qickened Aetherflow trait so incredibly more useful than the old one? No rng involved. And right now I really feel like the crit trait on Adlo is the only thing preventing SE from buffing it to compete with AST shields. It does not need to be on par because a Noct AST has no faerie to back him up. However I feel like nearly double the potency is a bit too much. A deployed Adlo is straight up worse than an Asp.Helios. Thats why I fell 450 potency in shielding is a valid suggestion but the crit trait would turn that into a 1350 shield which is too insane. Thats the reasoning behind me disliking the crit trait on Adloquium.

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Originally Posted by Dregenfox

I don't get how you're upset that SCH can't match a WHM's raw AOE output, because that is pretty much their entire reason for being invited to a raid.

Assize + medica + PI is roughly 750-900 potency depending on confession stacks, but that's once per minute.

ET + Succor + Indom is 800 potency, and can be done every 30 seconds.

Cure III is good in the right situation, but it's a small AOE and costs a lot of mana. But if we buffed SCH's AOE healing then what is the point in bringing a WHM?

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Personally I'm fine where SCH is concerned in terms of AOE heals. With the CD reduction of Emergency tactics, the increased viability of Eos, Indom, and now Excog to help mitigate tank busters, SCH has never been in a better position when it comes to AOE heals and anything more would put us dangerously into the same territory where AST's current reside in terms of doing far too much, far too well. Especially considering the fact that Rouse + Whispering Dawn AND Largesse + Indominability and Emergency Tactics is pretty strong when paired. Not as good as repeat Medicas, no, but hardly limiting enough to make fights unwinnable if mass damage is incoming. I haven't had a single problem with solo AOE healing in any of the current progression raids.

Lagresse doesn't buff ability heals.