Scholar -- the game at 50 and beyond

I have only just begun to heal as a scholar, but even now I can see some of these glaring issues, mostly with the pet ai. One slight fix I have for the pet's stance toggle is that I stuck steady on an easily accessible hotkey, and whispering dawn, so I can tell her to use the aoe heal and tell her to go back to steady before she bombs the magic reduction cd. If I am fast enough that is! This shouldn't be what I have to do though, I feel like SE dropped the ball on pet control.

As an old wow healer as well, it is easy to compare the white mage and scholar to holy and disc priests. The difference is that disc priests in wow have LARGER shields than heals to accentuate that as their main mechanic. they are huge, noticeable, and with the recent patches easier to see in raid frames exactly how much of your shield is left before it breaks (god how I miss seeing incoming heals on my bars).

The scholar gets a lil buff icon, and not exactly the most noticeable spell effect for actually seeing the bubble. In my experience being able to see what is going on with your healing in the battlefield is just as crucial as the information on your raid frames and I would really like to see these improved for healing. But I digress.

The shields of a scholar have potential that is currently unrealized by their size. The white mage has heal over time that is perhaps a bit more reliable. Fixing the faerie aoe heal in potency would really go a long way to aoe healing I agree. I think what I would like is a absorption effect uncoupled from a heal, of substantial effect with a cooldown of sorts. And perhaps a buff to succor. I don't know. I do know that adloquium feels....lacking. It has such a prohibitive mp cost for feeling so weak. If this is a problem for me now, I can't imagine it being much BETTER at 50.

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Originally Posted by Tersia

snippity snap

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if you use the 'obey' command (you have to use it on an enemy even though fairies don't attack monsters) then eos will only auto cast the aoe heal and the normal heal, the two other abilities will be left up to you to manually cast them, the same applies to selene, except she will only autocast her heal

Even though I have only healed to Sunken Temple so far. I have already felt pretty much how everyone feels about SCH healing. When the pet should be casting its direct heal, it casts aoe heals instead. Then sits and does nothing unless someone drops below 50% health. The pets also need to not be affected by status effects - such as doom, paralysis, etc. It's just too much to manage with a class that constantly has to be doing something just to keep up.

I decided to shelve SCH for now and level as a WHM. Already, my heals feel 10x more effective when things are bad - using the same gear my SCH used to level up with. As SCH, I know I don't have the healing power to dig a group out of a bad spot without OOMing myself. This is partly be due to not getting the MND bonus versus an INT bonus.

Edit: Also, the pets should NOT be drawing aggro. I can't count how many times my pets got destroyed due to add spawns getting to her before the tank could when she was placed in the middle of the room to ensure her heals hit everyone.

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Originally Posted by hamsteak

if you use the 'obey' command (you have to use it on an enemy even though fairies don't attack monsters) then eos will only auto cast the aoe heal and the normal heal, the two other abilities will be left up to you to manually cast them, the same applies to selene, except she will only autocast her heal

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Thanks for posting that. I was kind of confused why people were complaining about the Obey command. I always engage targets with Obey in order to keep control of my other abilities. I don't see why that would be any different at lvl 50.

My experience thus far has been great in 8 mans when the other healer is a whm and I find we complement each other great. However in amdapor on the last boss when I have a warrior as a tank I pretty much have to focus 100% healing on him and often use up my lustrates before aetherflow is off CD which means sacred soil doesnt come into play and I have to try to sneak in energy drains for many upkeeps. Psysick has to be spammed on the tank leaving very little room to heal others and if the dps make an error I find succor doesnt have the juice to get people back up. This could just be a gear issue at this point though.

I'd love to see a straight up aoe heal that uses an aetherdam tic for these situations

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Originally Posted by serpint

Even though I have only healed to Sunken Temple so far. I have already felt pretty much how everyone feels about SCH healing. The pets also need to not be affected by status effects - such as doom, paralysis, etc. It's just too much to manage with a class that constantly has to be doing something just to keep up.

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I second that the pets should not be affected by instakills like that. They should take massive damage, yes, but not outright kill them. I was trying to heal the first boss of the temple last night, and encountered that problem. Even by micromanaging the position of the fairy, it will die in under a minute because of the delay between issuing the command and having it actually move.

Oh, and the time you spent telling your fairy to move? Guess what, didn't get to the platform in time. Dead healer.

I think I'll happily leave Sunken temple healing to white mages until they fix the pet ai some more.

I think Whispering dawn CD needs to be reduced drastically 30sec CD is better and its potency needs to be increase from 100 to 175-200 IMO. Its the only helpful AoE skill the scholar/fairy has. I only use Succor before an aoe attack (protection) or after so I can bubble everyone and heal the rest with physick/embrace. Also Obey needs to be a pet STANCE because the fairy cast whispering dawn when its really not needed and when you do need it its in cool down *sigh*.

What people don't realize is that sometimes you have to command the pet to use Embrace/Whisper and this ALWAYS forces your pet into the Guard stance. The pet will then start blowing all of it's other abilities on cooldown.

OP, I agree with everything you said. Everything about Scholar screams early Cataclysm Holy Paladin. Weak AoE healing while having to stick to babysitting the Tank's health bar. Absorbs not rolling and needing to use a weak single target heal to handle the bulk of your healing needs.

If they can do what other MMOs do with pets, such as Rift, it would be nicer. In Rift you can put some pet skills on your hot keys so you can command them to cast that skill at any given time. If Obey worked, plus allowing access to put Whispering Dawn in my own hotkeys, that would potentially omit all my issues with the class so far.