Feedback on 4.0 Scholar

I think increasing the CD of Sacred Soil to 90 seconds and make it so it doesn't waste Aetherflow would be a buff since Sacred Soil is nearly always outclassed by Indomitability and at least it wouldn't compete with other skills with Aetherflow.

Bluntly put, we have too many abilities that use Aetherflow stacks and not enough Aetherflow stacks to use all our abilities. Aetherflow interactions and mechanics should have been changed when Aetherflow was changed, just because nerfing it nerfed roughly half our kit without giving us anything useful in exchange.

Oh but you see, they did give us more Aetherflow stacks! The on average 0.5 extra casts over the course of a 10 minute fight (If I remember the math someone did, it will average at one extra cast over the course of a 20 minute fight, assuming all stacks are used in the first 30 seconds of it's cooldown and it is recast immediately after coming off CD.) from Quickened Aetherflow will fix all of our Aetherflow problems!

/s

Really, if they wanted to give us more stacks to use with our growing number of Aetherflow abilities, they should have just make the trait a flat cooldown reduction. I'd even accept reducing the MP return on it even more if that's what it takes to bring Aetherflow down to a 30 second cooldown. 5-7% Mp restored to keep the total about the same as the new nerfed value, but double the amount of stacks over a given period of time? Yes please.

Sch has been my main since 2.0 and I've always loved the class but I'm really just not enjoying any of the changes - so many skills felt pointlessly taken away and what was given in turn was really lackluster as well as a bunch of hidden nerfs that made the class basically pale in comparison to Astro or White Mage. I'm pretty uncertain whether I want to even stick with the class the way it is right now and how much less fun it has been running content...I hope we eventually get some buffs or stuff put back because it's just kind of miserable to play esp seeing how much better the other healers are doing atm. In a raid environment it seems really pointless to be playing a sch...

I pretty much agree with everything said here.. I've been a sch main since turn 5 and while I enjoyed astro in HW, I always stuck to my beloved SCH. Now? I'm 70, and feel like I can barely keep up, so I'm leveling my astro to replace my sch. :( Sad times.

There are quite a few changed that could be made so we are in a better place, some should just be done in general others would be nice.

For Adloquium if you want the new MP change make the heal stronger, or revert the MP cost back. The main reason SCHs accepted the high MP cost of some skills was because we knew our MP regen was in good shape. Now we are almost forced to bring Lucid Dreaming (that name). Adloquium was a great unique skill now its old and bland because of the shiny new AST changes.

Bottom line is we dont have an second tier heal, so we can't restore a lot of HP at once without Lustrate. But Lustrate isn't one of a kind anymore. Granted we can use it 3 times in 60 seconds, but then we lock out some of our other Aetherflow skills. We have Emergency Tactics but thats on a 30s CD, and the cost of Adlo and Succor is horrible compared to the other 2 healers. Not saying Lustrate itself needs a change, but if you nerfed us we need another way to generate big heals.

Succor is similar to Adlo, but in this case we don't have a first tier spell equivalent. Yes we have Indomitability, and it is a great skill on a decent CD, but thats just it its on a CD. The only AoE heal we can spam is Succor, and the heal is small, with a really high cost, shield or not. But again we didn't mind since we had good MP regen. Something should be done, either a slight potency increase or MP reduction. I mean ASTs Aspected Helios is the same potency that does a 150% shield, and it costs less. Why?

The other kind of skill we are missing is an instant cast spell. WHM has Regen and AST has Aspected Benefic. Now we have Lily, which is fine, she acts as a regen of sorts and opens up other abilities to us. But the nerfed her, now we have to work harder to recover from big hits if we dont have access to our other skills. It would be cool if we got a new spell that was a shield; we've been asking for more shields for a long time.

Both WHM and AST got cool new healing skills that heal for a decent amount. We got Excognition; basically a timed Lustrate that might never go off, and just becomes a wasted Aetherflow stack. Excognition needs to have its timer removed or have another effect added should the timer expire, the best thing would be some sort of shield.

Chain Strategem is not a good substitute for our lossed DPS and the CD is too high. AST are able to assist with DPS every 30ish seconds, we have to wait 2 minutes. The CD either should be reduced or the potency increased.

No buts about it, we NEED some kind of AoE spell. Our spells from SCH seem to be light based(aether); just my inference and the fact that the fairy skills have light adjectives; so why not a Holy and Gravity equivalent, maybe something like Radiance or Brilliance.

I would like to see the gauge value affect our heal potency and shield quality, and decrease a bit based on spell use, again being raised by aetherflow abilities. The gauge doesn't raise fast enough for this though. Excognition I can do without. Even on Susano EX I find 90% of the time for a tank buster or orbs its wasted due to mitigation or other healers. Just get rid of Union and give back my embrace potency. Either give aetherflow a direct lowered CD or bring back the MP restored and make the fairy gauge raise more per ability used.

The majority of newly added skills as of now are a waste of space on the hotbar if I may be completely blunt.

Excogitation:
There is absolutely no benefit to using that skill over lustrate. Sure it has a slightly higher potency but I feel like I lose control/flexibility when I use it. I commit to something that might happen in the next 30 seconds and have wasted a Stack if it doesn't. Sure I could let the tank get under 50% on purpose but why would I do that?
I feel like the Aetherflow Cost should be removed or there should be an additional effect while the target is still above 50%.

Aetherpact
Maybe this is just me but again I don't really like using it because it takes away control over the fairy. Plus the short range and delay that can happen before the fairy cast it is also a huge burden. The potency doesn't feel appropriate for the amount of work it takes to fill the bar. Maybe there should be a chance for it to regenerate Stacks per tick or something. Or also have an additional effect while channeling.
I also like the idea about it maybe having an AoE version as the OP suggested.
Or heck let us have both fairies for the time being. 1 That channels the beam and the other still under our control. Obviously numbers would have to be adjusted but I am just brain storming here.

Chain Strategem
It's fine.

In terms of MP regeneration I don't think it is that bad. Sure I have to rely more on energy drain than before, if the situation allows, but it could be way worse.
The lack of dmg spells sure does make playing a bit more boring but this should be the case for all healers. At least it was really apparent on AST. (Only 62 though)

*EDIT*

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Originally Posted by zeopower6

The benefits of Excogitation will probably become evident in the Omega raid. I assume that is what it was intended for and situations like Alexander where the tank will DEFINITELY lose a lot of HP unless they are crit-shielded.

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But how will Excogitation work in that scenario:
The tank has let's say 10.000 hp at 50% and has Excogitation applied, which will heal for roughly 2k dmg.
Now a tank buster hits for 11.000k dmg.
Will the tank be dead or still standing with 1k HP left?

My personal guess would be that the spell won't trigger because technically the hp never went below 50% but instead was instantly 0 (dead).

The benefits of Excogitation will probably become evident in the Omega raid. I assume that is what it was intended for and situations like Alexander where the tank will DEFINITELY lose a lot of HP unless they are crit-shielded.

If a coming boss uses an attack like Nidhogg's Ahk Mourn that only targets the tank where he isn't hit with one single spike, but back to back heavy hits until the attack ends Excog could be useful.

Excogitation could be better and worth using a stack of AF if it was a shield maybe.
Free shield trough aetheflow. Slighty higher than adloquium (400 potency).

Since adlo has now a higher mp cost, it could be great.
We don't have free shield like this with AF.

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Originally Posted by Supersun

If a coming boss uses an attack like Nidhogg's Ahk Mourn that only targets the tank where he isn't hit with one single spike, but back to back heavy hits until the attack ends Excog could be useful.

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Not really. You can just use Lustrate. If a one second recast is too short to handle such a mechanic, then no other healer can do it.

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Originally Posted by Rubiss

Not really. You can just use Lustrate. If a one second recast is too short to handle such a mechanic, then no other healer can do it.

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Rremember in Nidhogg, there was a pretty lengthy pause right before he unleashed Ahk Mourn with Ahk Mourn coming ~30 after that break (just had some AoE dodging first). If you know a tank buster is coming well in advance because you know the fight the real strength of Excog is using your last Aetherflow 20ish seconds before the buster, popping Aetherflow, and now effectively having 4 Lustrates to deal with the buster. I mean 30 seconds is half the cooldown of Aetherflow, If your Aetherflow is off cooldown and you have one more stack left, and you are going to very soon need to heal a giant spike popping Excog instead of an Energy Drain may be worth it as it lets you precast that Lustrate and not have to either hold the 1 charge or simply waste the 1 charge on an energy drain.

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Originally Posted by Supersun

Rremember in Nidhogg, there was a pretty lengthy pause right before he unleashed Ahk Mourn with Ahk Mourn coming ~30 after that break (just had some AoE dodging first). If you know a tank buster is coming well in advance because you know the fight the real strength of Excog is using your last Aetherflow 20ish seconds before the buster, popping Aetherflow, and now effectively having 4 Lustrates to deal with the buster. I mean 30 seconds is half the cooldown of Aetherflow, If your Aetherflow is off cooldown and you have one more stack left, and you are going to very soon need to heal a giant spike popping Excog instead of an Energy Drain may be worth it as it lets you precast that Lustrate and not have to either hold the 1 charge or simply waste the 1 charge on an energy drain.

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They could have also just given us a fourth stack of aetherflow and stop with this crappier lustrate non-sense. Excog exists as a throwaway Aetherflow filler. The "strength" is barely anything worth talking about. Add in co-healers and your own tank's CDs and you'd be lucky to even see Excog go off reliably.

The more we talk about excog the more I think it should galvanize if it diesnt proc or just be a shield to begin with.

I've been playing SCH since release. Since 4.0, I've decided to main WHM (which I never thought I would). The ONLY reason you would want to use SCH is for PVP.

Not going to repost the list I posted in the other threads, just going to be blunt: It sucks hard.

The class lacks cohension, our new skills are pretty trash and we lost a ton. I have not been this mad at SE in a LONG time.

We and they both know which classes suck and they have hundreds of pages of suggestions since they clearly have no clue what they are doing with this class to pick from.

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Originally Posted by Rubiss

Not really. You can just use Lustrate. If a one second recast is too short to handle such a mechanic, then no other healer can do it.

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Things happen though. In a perfect team with no errors, Excog is kinda useless. But nobody is perfect, and if the other healer is down or a DPS got unnecessarily hurt, you're going to need Excog to cover the tank while you quickly heal the ally (especially if raidwide damage is coming after that tankbuster).

Attempted a few A12S runs to see how things feel with the difference, and I'm finding uses for Excog and Aetherpact. Though I'm also really feeling the heat from the Adlo MP cost increase (it's ridiculous combined with the Aetherflow MP heal nerf), which I still think is something they should revert.

So I killed Lakshmi EX yesterday and...
As well as every battle I do, I try to see how and when I could use Aetherpact.
But for Lakshmi I needeed my fairy to be free all the time so she can move and use her buff. It ended with my gauge being full because I couldn't spend it.

For Susano, the only time I was using it and when it worth using it was during the Sword part where I linked the fairy to the one under the sword. But since there are two wave of balls and thunder, I could only use aetherpact efficiently one time.

They really should rework that. Imo

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Things happen though. In a perfect team with no errors, Excog is kinda useless. But nobody is perfect, and if the other healer is down or a DPS got unnecessarily hurt, you're going to need Excog to cover the tank while you quickly heal the ally (especially if raidwide damage is coming after that tankbuster).

Attempted a few A12S runs to see how things feel with the difference, and I'm finding uses for Excog and Aetherpact. Though I'm also really feeling the heat from the Adlo MP cost increase (it's ridiculous combined with the Aetherflow MP heal nerf), which I still think is something they should revert.

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Who cares about 60 content as a level 70?

Now that i've finished all the primals, all the "challenging new content" I can say this, 2.x SCH = fun as heck, HW sch = fun as heck and near perfect, SB still fun but no feeling of reward for playing well at all and the shields no longer feel as useful as before. Excog has cost me more wasted aetherflows that I just started using it as a lustrate when tanks are already below 50% for that abysmal 50 extra potency.

Here's an idea for Fey Union though, get rid of it and bump embrace back up and then allow us to select a single target for dedicated embrace healing. Problem solved.

EDIT: CHOCOBOS HEAL MORE THAN EOS, GET YOUR SH*T TOGETHER SE

I don't particularly have any real issues with my scholar outside of it being boring. I will say Fey Union activation is buggy at best and it has a terrible charge up time. Excog is useful in Susano and other random 4man dungeons where a dps is about to get smashed. I don't know. I don't have many issues with the class outside of how boring it kind of feels to DPS. I don't know the "boring-ness" in 8mans though.

Been playing sch since start of 2.0 in September 2013, I have enjoyed it until now. So I thought I would give my dark knight a try and see how others did healing me. I almost always get an Astro and that works decent. White mage is rare to see but seems ok. The sch I have gotten, they all seem to struggle healing like I do at level 70. I have always liked healing and will be trying astro soon but until they fix sch, I am one less healer in the queue for now while enjoying blm for now.

After being 70 now for a week, I've played much of the content out there and I have come to some conclusions. Something about sch healing needs to be increased, rather it be through our fairy, allowing us to spam adlo, or make physic potency even higher. Something needs to give so we can heal on par with the other two healers. Another thing that I find that hasn't been brought up about our fairy gauge is the aether stack part. Now, I agree that the fairy tether is too short, however being stuck in a raid with another sch is now an inconvenience due to no longer being to see each other's aether stacks. Pls remove those three dots and give us back our aether count in party. We have to coordinate badly enough as is, but now we are unable to see if our co-healers are out of stacks or not which means that we don't know if we need to spam ours or pull back when in stressful situations. Using the df and being paired with a sch is a sentence I wish on no party but I think allowing us to see each other's aether stacks once again will help us greatly.

Sch sucks now, It's overwhelming. Managing mp is hard, Succor is really expensive and I pray to God that it'll crit because everyone's hurt from a big aoe that the primal did. Why is Eos/Selene's cure potency reduced to 250, And a chocobo does a better job? Why did scholar's cure potency feel low? The Fey union isn't even that good to use. Selene's fey wind is useless.. Why not 5 or 10%? Can't use the DoT's and broil II because the MP, Afraid of running out and killing the tank because no mp to heal the tank... Aetherflow can't cover that mp no more. RIP SCH DPS, Bane and Flare do no good, Exog is meh.. Just fix scholar, Thanks S-Sha.

Lol, Neptunia V II.

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Originally Posted by Lildragora

HW sch = fun as heck and near perfect

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That's why I don't understand why they did that to scholar.
He was near perfect. He almost needeed any change.
That wasn't scholar that needeed this.
They messed everything up while they could just work on the other healers instead to actually balance healer.

my 270 level 62 ast has a bigger shield than my level 70 314 SCH
when both of their shields are crits the asts shields are only ~4k weaker
this is an 8 level difference with a 50 ilvl difference in weapon

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Originally Posted by tikiwiki

my 270 level 62 ast has a bigger shield than my level 70 314 SCH
when both of their shields are crits the asts shields are only ~4k weaker
this is an 8 level difference with a 50 ilvl difference in weapon

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Scholar's shield potency definitely needs a boost. I think that would help a ton.

I feel like people are making a bigger deal out of the mp issue than it is. At the beginning of HW spells were expensive too and that issue went away once everybody had geared up. And even without a full 310 set managing your MP is not that difficult.
You have Lucid Dreams, Aetherflow and Energy Drain if you're really hurting.

"Hello, Good potency, balanced healing?"

"Broke"

" Understandable *peace sign*... But my party depends on me, keeping their HP above 50%+, and If I fail because my mp drains faster than the speed of sound and none of the refreshes help, I'm gonna have to switch AST at FinalFantasyXiVonline.com for the Xbox 360"

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Originally Posted by Kiso-Kai

"Hello, Good potency, balanced healing?"

"Broke"

" Understandable *peace sign*... But my party depends on me, keeping their HP above 50%+, and If I fail because my mp drains faster than the speed of sound and none of the refreshes help, I'm gonna have to switch AST at FinalFantasyXiVonline.com for the Xbox 360"

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Had to get your sponsor in there huh?

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Originally Posted by Miiu

I also feel like people are making a bigger deal out of the mp issue than it is. At the beginning of HW spells were expensive too and that issue went away once everybody had geared up. And even without a full 310 set managing your MP is not that difficult.
You have Lucid Dreams, Aetherflow and Energy Drain if you're really hurting.

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While I agree that the MP issues will lessen as gear increases, whith Piety being everywhere on healer gear and Aetherflow being % based. That doesn't change the fact that right now, at base level 70 4.0, there are serious issues. The way to manage MP right now is mostly "Don't use Adloquium", which is terrible, what with that being our signature ability. I don't know if you actually noticed the numbers, but currently Aetherflow barely restores more than Energy Drain (https://puu.sh/wy8Ll/d91276d71f.png), and Adloquium costs more than Aetherflow restores (https://puu.sh/wy8Sa/0b6418f3f7.png)!

Sure I see the numbers but you still can use these tools in conjunction with your other abilities that don't cost any MP to never run dangerously low. In Susano EX for example I use Adloquium all the time before AoE attacks (Around 1-2 times during the Sword Phase) and I have no issues keeping my MP from running out. My equipment is now mostly 310 but even at 300 it didn't feel much different. And this is even in situations where people screw up the markers and damage the whole group

Don't get me wrong SCH has problems right now but mp management is the least among them.

Edit: I honestly believe this was also an intentional decision given that most of the dps jobs (brd/mch and casters) can give MP to party members.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

snip!

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I will say at i314 the mp problem is completely gone with dungeons and primals but still falls far short if people are dying. MP management was never a problem for SCH so why did SE feel the need to create one. After finally starting to lvl WHM I find thin air holy spamming stupid (it's great, but stupid). In HW I never felt too stressed for MP on AST or WHM despite nuke spamming. I feel the best remedy would have been to bring AST and WHM mana regen up a bit instead of up for them and down for SCH. It doesn't make any sense. Cant speak on SB primals yet for WHM but in terms of HW it never felt too stressed (WHM and AST) except in a bad party where people are dying but that should be expected to be taxing on MP. I imagine just thin air alone would have solved most my WHM problems. AST I always tried to get a Ewer in but that was never great due to rng so they could have just gotten a higher refresh on Luminous Aether or worked it into earthly star.

These changes will make drop this game. ONLY played SCH because it was the only class that was fun for me. I wrote a long wall of text here why I want to drop the game now and why these changes are so bad but, I went way past the character limit so instead I will keep my bitching short. RDM will only keep me interested for so long. SCH was what made this game for me and now it will break it for me.

Some mod needs to put all these threads together...

A few things I noticed with SCH so far:

MP is not a problem if you take Lucid Dreaming, I'd say it is slightly better because you can #1 half your enmity in cases the tank dies #2 you can apply it on demand if Aetherflow is still on cooldown.

Embrace nerf is quite noticeable. If you think 'just 50' potency is not much consider that it's 1/6 or ~17%.

Excogitation is a pretty neat skill combined in a macro, no need to stop dps to Adlo the tank (at least in Susy-EX). If it can't crit, I guess that is its tradeoff or a bug?

Fey Union is mostly not worth using: #1 way too slow (I especially like how it say 'instant' on its tooltip) #2 tether range way too short (faerie needs to move in position that costs extra time and puts her in danger, why did you remove sustain?!) #3 can't use any abilities (it should cancel the tether if you use her other abilities, imo) #4 tether breaks too easily (and still consumes faerie gauge?!).
On a similar note of mostly useless final skills why doesn't Dissipation resummon faerie afterwards like SMN's bahamut?

Chain Strategem is a thing that will keep SCH a door open into raids if it does apply its buff additive (though I have my doubts there).

Adloquium costing more MP, why? Because of deployment tactics?

The new Aetherflow trait is pretty neat.

AOE (Bane, no Blizzard 2, Shadow Flare, etc) all these changes at once completely gutted any fun in dungeons. Using Broil 2 if there are about 10 enemies is just not efficient and makes you feel bad. Bane is like a fart, pretty sure it was balanced around SMN and Shadow Flare having only 1/2 its previous uptime and no chance to replace - not so great.

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Originally Posted by BunnyChain

The new Aetherflow trait is pretty neat.

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This passive is actually one of my main concern. Everything about it doesn't work.
It makes SCH wanting for more procs where it woudl benefit more from getting more sustain or more adaptibilty. What this passive actuallly does is granting you something like a new aether flow cast at arround 9 minute at the cost of the cast no be on a strict 60sec rotation anymore. The way it's design makes it so that you're not sure what state will be your stacks at wich moment, but else invite to use a stack earlier to get the proc as it's garranted to lose efficiency under 10 sec. Unless you completly ignore the mecanic and use eather flow at set interval, like every one already did.

An auto crit' passive would have been better, SCH wasn't needing mor RNG they already had. Something like, next spell being auto crit' after a certain number of eather stacks used.

Hey was thinking about this earlier---what if Dissipation ate the fairy, but you were still able to summon the OTHER fairy? Would make some neat uses for it.

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Originally Posted by Mythikah

Hey was thinking about this earlier---what if Dissipation ate the fairy, but you were still able to summon the OTHER fairy? Would make some neat uses for it.

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See I wouldn't mind this. Hell, if Dissipation was just on a ten second cooldown it'd be viable as well. The huge cooldown just simply isn't worth the lack of access to half of your kit, particularly with the current nerfs.