Scholar is still the only class in the entire game with a single AOE dps skill

WHM has Assize and misery that they can passively charge,
Sage has Phlegma (two charges of 255 potency every 45 seconds), and the occasional Pneuma.
Astrologian's Star got buffed so now it's pretty good for damage (It's stronger than Dragonfire Dive, to put it into perspective), the occasional Lord, and they can use Divination to enhance everyone else's dps.

But SCH has....Chain, which works on single targets only, and Arts of War, which is the GCD hit any class has.

I feel like that's a bit of a weird design choice. It can't even buff people to do more damage, you will only do one button to dps and can't really hold a different CD for certain circumstances where aoe damage is viable (add phase in P3S).
It feels especially weird because SMN has had, since the previous expansion, an AOE equivalent of Energy Drain (Energy Siphon) which I might add, they don't even really need as their aoe damage is pretty good and consistently available.

I feel Scholar could really benefit from having an extra aoe they can splash into their rotation in Dungeons and any relative circumstance. Bane and Shadowflare were decent SCH staples before Shadowbringers, and I'm not quite sure if it would be a good idea to make a skill rely on Aetherflow charges because SCH tends to rely on them for healing in AOE situations.

And before you say Arts of War compensates for having the highest aoe damage in the game among healers, yes I know that, I'm perfectly aware that in a long term SCH could probably do more damage, but that's besides the point. It just has nothing going for it at all in the AOE department which usually feels very underwhelming when running dungeons.

All Healers could use more DPS buttons but scholar has it worst.
ED feels more punishing now than in ShB due to aetherflow being tied to healing and it being weaveable with Broil. In ShB it was only weaveable with Ruin 2 and the DPS gain was tiny (like 10 potency) so using a heal over ED never felt like that big of an issue.
Speaking of Ruin 2, now that every healer can slidecast with their nuke the usefulness of Ruin 2 dropped too (It's still useful just not as much as before).
I feel like these 2 buttons would serve well to be replaced with more interesting ones (at the very least update Ruin 2 animation its been 9 years) or just add new/old DPS buttons because why the hell not.
SCH was tons of fun before ShB and now it feels so incomplete.

You can definitely tell they didn't think of what anything would feel like on Scholar when they removed a bunch of DPS actions and gave it a recycled PvP animation for it's "new" AoE in ShB. Art of War is only marginally the highest AoE damage as well, Dyskrasia II functions exactly the same as Art of War while also being a gain on 2 targets and it does only 10 potency less, but Sage also has Toxicon II (gain on 3 over Dyskrasia II) Pneuma (gain on 2) and Phlegma (510 potency) to use in AoE situations every 45s.
Scholar also has 2 buttons in it's ST rotation if you're saving Aetherflow for healing and Ruin II always being a punishment to use because of 1.5s cast times now, which has left it feeling like a vestigal button that only exists so they can say "Look, SCH has the same amount of DPS actions as the other healers do!"

I am a big proponent of giving SCH Miasma back along with Bane because if SCH got Miasma+Bane back, this would bump SCH up from 1 AoE button to 4 total while also adding a button and another timer to reduce the tedium of SCH's single target rotation. Bane was detached from Aetherflow on SMN in ShB too, so they can do this to not dip into SCH's healing capability in dungeons.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

All Healers could use more DPS buttons but scholar has it worst.
ED feels more punishing now than in ShB due to aetherflow being tied to healing and it being weaveable with Broil. In ShB it was only weaveable with Ruin 2 and the DPS gain was tiny (like 10 potency) so using a heal over ED never felt like that big of an issue.
Speaking of Ruin 2, now that every healer can slidecast with their nuke the usefulness of Ruin 2 dropped too (It's still useful just not as much as before).

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I agree completely with you about Ruin II and ED in EW. EW making ED more of a DPS gain than it was in ShB was a very strange choice to me considering they nerfed it from 150 to 100 mid ShB to encourage the usage of it on healing more. Your post made me think, why not just bump ED up to the same potency as Broil IV and make it an instant cast single target GCD so it solely acts as a stack dump, isn't a DPS loss if you have to use Aetherflow for healing because of 1.5s cast times and could also function in the same way Toxicon does for movement? I know people hate the idea of homogenization on the healers, but it could be a way to get rid of Ruin II and ED making healing a DPS loss while not changing much about how SCH manages Aetherflow. This could even potentially encourage SCH to sit on Aetherflow when it was off CD for movement heavy parts so SCH would have a guaranteed 6 EDs for movement. I'm not certain if this would be seen as a big nerf to SGE though due to Toxicon not being DPS neutral outside of prepull and downtime.

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

I agree completely with you about Ruin II and ED in EW. EW making ED more of a DPS gain than it was in ShB was a very strange choice to me considering they nerfed it from 150 to 100 mid ShB to encourage the usage of it on healing more. Your post made me think, why not just bump ED up to the same potency as Broil IV and make it an instant cast single target GCD so it solely acts as a stack dump, isn't a DPS loss if you have to use Aetherflow for healing because of 1.5s cast times and could also function in the same way Toxicon does for movement? I know people hate the idea of homogenization on the healers, but it could be a way to get rid of Ruin II and ED making healing a DPS loss while not changing much about how SCH manages Aetherflow. This could even potentially encourage SCH to sit on Aetherflow when it was off CD for movement heavy parts so SCH would have a guaranteed 6 EDs for movement. I'm not certain if this would be seen as a big nerf to SGE though due to Toxicon not being DPS neutral outside of prepull and downtime.

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Ruin 2 replacing ED as a DPS neutral movement AF dump is the most logical "fix" to ED in my opinion. You get rid of 1 button therefore reducing bloat, keep the AF dump skill and remove the pressure of using all AF on Damage rather than heal.
A lot of people seem to suggest a "eukrasian Toxicon" that functions exactly the same as the Ruin 2 suggestion, eating a Addersgall instead of Addersting so it seams to be a popular idea to improve both SCH and SGE. But yeah right now both ED and Ruin 2 just serve as proof that Square does changes without thinking about how it'll affect the rest of the kit. Right up there with Lilies being de-valued from their ShB weave & movement tool purpose.

As for bringing new offensive buttons Miasma is probably the most cost effective way for Square to give Scholar "new" toys without investing too much into R&D. It's just a tiny little bit baffling to me that SMN gets this entire overhaul to simplify the job and get rid of DoT upkeep while scholar gets nothing at all (and I totally blame the Under the hood improvements on them releasing SGE and cleaning up their barrier healer code). Part of me feels like the only reason Scholar was so fun to play in 2.x~4.x is because it was tied to SMN and every time they wanted Arcanist related changes for SMN they were forced to improve SCH as well but that bond was severed and now they can ignore SCH to their heart's content.

Honestly, while the universal 1.5 second cast time on DPS actions is a functionally beneficial addition to the healers in EW, we really didn't need that specific solution to the mobility problem. Ruin II has always been a simple, yet unique solution that SMN and SCH had access to, but for some reason they decided to nerf it when it was never broken to begin with. Back in the day, the potency used to be the same as your Ruin/Broil cast, but costed more MP, meaning there was no reason to spam it, but enough reason to use it for mobility.

If we just went back to that and made Ruin II's potency match the Broil of the week, but cost 600 MP, you could keep Broil at a 2 second cast and be fine.

It was really just WHM who needed an actual answer to mobility and not just "overheal for a DPS loss," and it could've been something unique to them as well

There is no reason for me to play a Scholar so long as Sage exists. While I have the class levelled passively due to having levelled Summoner, I am effectively boycotting it permanently unless major changes happen.

Edit (in response to the post directly below mine):

The class is a horrifically boring mess of bland abilities and has the honor of having the worst damaging abilities of all the healers. Energy Drain should have stayed gone if it was going to draw upon the same resources as our heals, Dissipation is a relic of Heavensward where they had no idea what to do with neither Scholar nor Summoner since dismissing the pet is not something that should have ever been a thing for Scholar. Whether the pet AI is perfect is irrelevant given how underwhelming the class feels to play unless I'm paired with a tank who has absolutely no idea what they are doing, in which case I'd probably rather bail than carry someone who hasn't grasped the fundamentals of tanking 101.

Scholar may as well not exist to me anymore, let me know whenever they finally get their act together when it comes to this class.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

There is no reason for me to play a Scholar so long as Sage exists. While I have the class levelled passively due to having levelled Summoner, I am effectively boycotting it permanently unless major changes happen.

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Good to know that you’re still ignorant of the pet AI improvements despite literally having the option to test them available to you. Keep putting your foot in your mouth. Please look forward to it.

That aside, Scholar’s issues aren’t that different from the other healers. oGCD bloat, lack of a DPS rotation. The pet suffers more from redundancy than anything else. I’d like to see Seraph and Dissipation combined and retooled in some manner to cut back on their problems and highlight their strengths, for one extra oGCD DPS skill to be added that rewards using Aetherflow/Fey Gauge for healing, Bane to be brought back and integrated into Deployment Tactics as an alternate mode, and for the other fairy actions and superfluous cds (Protraction, Expedient), to be removed and reworked into something more solid and cohesive. AoE Fey Union typically comes to mind as a catch-all that could replace Whispering Dawn/Fey Illumination outright.

Aetherflow actions including ED and Recitation are fine. Make the rest of the kit better.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Honestly, while the universal 1.5 second cast time on DPS actions is a functionally beneficial addition to the healers in EW, we really didn't need that specific solution to the mobility problem. Ruin II has always been a simple, yet unique solution that SMN and SCH had access to, but for some reason they decided to nerf it when it was never broken to begin with. Back in the day, the potency used to be the same as your Ruin/Broil cast, but costed more MP, meaning there was no reason to spam it, but enough reason to use it for mobility.

If we just went back to that and made Ruin II's potency match the Broil of the week, but cost 600 MP, you could keep Broil at a 2 second cast and be fine.

It was really just WHM who needed an actual answer to mobility and not just "overheal for a DPS loss," and it could've been something unique to them as well

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Yeah I always was jealous of SCH for Ruin 2 when i mained WHM during ShB. Using lilies to weave is functional but i'd rather have something that doesn't force me to waste resources and Dia only comes up so much. But now there is practically no need for it which is kinda lame.
Having a dedicated Movement/weave button also meant that oGCD heals had a DPS cost across the board (except for AST but AST had way smaller potencies across the board) and that excused Misery being a DPS loss because a SCH weaving with Ruin 2 was also a DPS loss. But now everything is free, nothing interrupts our 1-button spam and things that do become even more jarring than they used to be. They really should've put more consideration into this Nuke cast time change.

Shadowflare and dots+bane did help breaking the one button spam monotony, for sure. If it could <t> on the selected entity without a macro, it would fix the only gripe I had with it at the time.
An Energy Siphon equivalent would be really nice too, I think.

I know it's not directly related, but I find it a bit baffling that Holy is still at full GCD cast time rather than half, like the other jobs.

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Originally Posted by RinaShinomiya

As for bringing new offensive buttons Miasma is probably the most cost effective way for Square to give Scholar "new" toys without investing too much into R&D. It's just a tiny little bit baffling to me that SMN gets this entire overhaul to simplify the job and get rid of DoT upkeep while scholar gets nothing at all (and I totally blame the Under the hood improvements on them releasing SGE and cleaning up their barrier healer code). Part of me feels like the only reason Scholar was so fun to play in 2.x~4.x is because it was tied to SMN and every time they wanted Arcanist related changes for SMN they were forced to improve SCH as well but that bond was severed and now they can ignore SCH to their heart's content.

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I don't even particularly care about Miasma or DoTs specifically despite liking them, I just think suggesting simple changes that won't cost a lot of developer time is an easier path to getting positive changes. I was really hoping with SMN losing it's DoTs in EW that we would get Miasma back, it's not a lot of work for them compared to developing entirely new stuff. No new icons/animations or anything, all they need is to tweak the balance and add it back. They could've even reused Miasma III as an "upgrade" to it for an EW trait and I would've been very happy despite that being an old animation for Summoner. I think you're definitely right about SCH now, now that it's severed from ACN they can just ignore it, that's the only way I can make sense of Ruin II and ED being the same icon, animation and name as ACN/SMN skills despite working completely differently for SCH, especially after SMN got reworked. Why didn't they take the time to at least give new icons/names to SCH's versions of these skills? They're already completely separate from ACN/SMN's versions. Why make Ruin II a button SCH never wants to use and ED more of a DPS gain in EW despite them clearly trying to move away from that twice in ShB?

It's hard to not feel like your entire role is being ignored when there are still so many glaring issues with jobs like Scholar, White Mage or Astrologian, especially when a lot of these are issues they created going into this expac and haven't bothered to address at all like Lilies, which should've been taken care of by now.