SE, what is the vision and identity of Scholars?

We talk a lot about the problems of Scholar and ideas to fix them, this post is going to be no different, but honestly what is SE’s vision for Scholar. It feels like the class is the midst of an identity crises and a lot of the issues stem from this. Is scholar meant to be a mitigation healer, but if that’s the case, why do they have worse shields than Astrologians? Are they supposed to be more of a healer/dps hybrid (considering they are the only healer based off a dps class), then why are they at the bottom of the heap for dps? Or maybe are they supposed to be a pet healing class? If that was the case why did the nerf the fairy to near irrelevance and put contradictory abilities like dissipation and fey union in (as the capstone abilities for level 60 and 70 none the less). Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a post to bring Scholars back to op status like before, but I think it would be nice to have some kind of identity established for them. At the moment it seems like SE threw up their hands and just did what they could to bring Scholars back down to the other healers, and in the process they lost their identity. The fairy gauge is a perfect example of this. They added it in because all of the other classes were getting a gauge but it seems like they had no idea what to do with it. The sad part is, I believe this gauge could have a lot of potential and synergy if they just tried. One idea I had was to have the fairy gauge provide a 1 - 2% across the board buff to all of the fairy’s ability every 10 gauge points. They could then change dissipation to give the free atherflows and do a large fairy based AOE heal depending on the level of the gauge. The only caveat would be that dissipation would drop the gauge down to 0. The fairy would still stay up, but it would lose power in exchange for an AOE heal and atherflows. This would probably bring much better synergy between the capstone abilities and make the fairy gauge more engaging. Now it would be a decision between a stronger fairy, having a large AOE heal, or having a strong single target heal. In the end though, all of these ideas are kind of pointless until SE decides on an identity and makes the appropriate changes across the spectrum of abilities. I’m okay with the class lagging behind in certain areas if they excel above the other classes in other areas. Having the class be behind in every area (like they pretty much are now) or above in every area is simply not acceptable. This isn’t class balancing and you didn’t add another healer class to this expansion to justify the state Scholar is in. I hope SE takes all of the community’s comments seriously and makes the necessary changes without forcing the community to wait until 5.0 for them. Just because the class can “work” in current content doesn’t mean there isn’t problems with the class. Having classes that are engaging to the players, which also have an identity is important to keep people playing the game. The classes are the lenses that players look through and it’s important to get right now and not later. All of the visually stunning zones, instances, raids, and quest mean nothing if the game play isn’t engaging.

With a lot of the nerfs I get where SE is coming from. Healer that can avoid piety like the plague, passive heal while DPSing all the time? Ok...

But I don't think shields was called for. It's a bit ridiculous that, on AST, I can spam shields all over the place... for example, susano ex? Shield the tank not just when the tankbuster is there, but to free time for DPS. Shield every person that gets marked with lightning. Still have enough MP left over for for a few raises, or heals when people mess up mechanics (like hitting the whole raid with said lightning).

But on SCH, the job that was originally built around shields..? If there's one thing that SCH should be good at, it's that. Cut the cost of adlo a bit (or more than a bit), it won't make SCH MP management OP again.

SCH, as far as it's identity goes, is in the exact same place as WHM. They don't exactly have one thanks to AST doing what you already do, beyt than you can do it.

SCH at the very least has fairies, but imagine how WHM feels, having lilies being the only thing they unique have, and even that's simply mitigation and a useless heal.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

SCH, as far as it's identity goes, is in the exact same place as WHM. They don't exactly have one thanks to AST doing what you already do, beyt than you can do it.

SCH at the very least has fairies, but imagine how WHM feels, having lilies being the only thing they unique have, and even that's simply mitigation and a useless heal.

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Are you serious? WHM are in a great place right now, probably top heals in the game. Funny how all the WHM uproar before 4.0 dropped, then SE reacted by buffing the shit out of them before early access and left SCH broken as hell.

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Originally Posted by Scox

Are you serious? WHM are in a great place right now, probably top heals in the game. Funny how all the WHM uproar before 4.0 dropped, then SE reacted by buffing the shit out of them before early access and left SCH broken as hell.

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The hell are you talking about?
Buffing the shit out of them? What we saw before 4.0 is what we got on release. At least have some grounds to back up the shit you're saying.

As far as WHM being the strongest healer, that's only slightly true. They simply have more OGCDs.
But all of these extra heals are almost never actually needed, so it's kinda pointless to brag as the "strongest" healer when no one gives a fuck.

My pet theory: relatively shortly before SB launch, possibly with the rise of the "healers cant be expected/dont want to DPS", there was a last-minute change of course for healer and tank DPS. Basically, they decided to go back to DPS = DPS roles job only. Having little time, they simply nerfed the highest DPS on the support classes to get to that point, and massively nerfed mob HP across the board.

This is why its precisely WAR, DRK and SCH, the DPS-focused of their roles, that are in trouble, because for some reason their DPS is now below that of their erstwhile more defensive counterparts. They were simply changed to accommodate the Yoshi-P communicated stance of "DPS is not a healers/tanks job", and there was too little time to rethink their role otherwise.

I dont claim its true, its just occams razor at this point, but to me it seems fishy that its those 3 classes that have massive issues AND are being out-DPSed by the defensive jobs, while having apparently zero redeeming values otherwise. Only the fact that, probably as part of this nerf, FFXIV:SB is the easiest that the game has ever been prevents these issues from becoming an actual problem.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

The hell are you talking about?
Buffing the shit out of them? What we saw before 4.0 is what we got on release. At least have some grounds to back up the shit you're saying.

As far as WHM being the strongest healer, that's only slightly true. They simply have more OGCDs.
But all of these extra heals are almost never actually needed, so it's kinda pointless to brag as the "strongest" healer when no one gives a fuck.

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Whm is in a pretty good spot. It only didn't get the utility some were looking for and the lillies are at least useful.

SCH now has such unique identity that outshine AST/WHM, listed as follows:

1. heals/utility that gated by a resource that hold up to 3 and takes 60s to refresh

2. basic heal (physick) spam just to save some stacks

3. rarely used heal II (adlo) with SHIELD, wow

4. non-spammable AOE heal (succor), you use it at most 2 times in a row

5. 30s cd AOE heal (indom) that you either safe it for big AOE damage or die

6. a safety heal (excog) that doesn't pop half of the time for shields or CDs

7. fairies, YAY

8. strongest HoT just from a PET, just take 4s to activate and forever to build up

9. what happens when everything's going wrong? we spam physick, lives saved


ok I'm just being salty here, but seriously, #BuffAST

RIP SCH I was surprised at how bad it was actually. I expected WHM to be hit the hardest from the pre 4.0 info but darn SCH have it really bad.

As things are WHM is doing well, although all the concerns people had going into 4.0 are still valid, they will only start showing once iLvls get higher.. So we're at least safe for now (minus PI that stuff is just mind blowingly horrible).

I always thought (and played) Sch to be the offensive healer. Half our class is dedicated to DPS. I'm pretty sure SE thought of us like that at one point as well. Why else would they branch us off a DPS?

And why else call it Scholar? This class, through all previous iterations, has always been able to heal and damage (albeit, never at the levels of their counterparts, but always enough to pass if thought through). I'm not sure if SE lost their way, just want all roles to do their one role exclusively (which is quite boring and would make all classes too similar), or a myriad of other things.