Consolidated Scholar 4.0 Feedback Thread

(Obviously no existing threads have actually been consolidated here since I am not a forum admin)

It seemed to help with providing WHM feedback, so why don't we try focusing our feedback more into one thread for the development team?

Please share your opinions and experience of playing SCH in 4.0, both positive and negative, being mindful of content spoilers this early into launch.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-your-thoughts

I feel SCH is really weak compared to the other 2 healers right now.

MP goes down extremely fast now since aetherflow gives only 10% MP and Adlo's MP consumption got significantly increased with absolutely no changes on potency or effects. Lucid Dreaming helps but you end up with no MP in boss fights anyway, as long as you are DPSing ofcourse.

Single target DPS is fine, i can live with the lack of DoTs, but AoE DPS is a joke now...

Excogitation is bad, i mean BAD, taking 1 aetherflow stack for a heal that only works when your ally's HP goes under 50% and only lasts 30 seconds (oh yes, you cant use it on yourself)... there is no point on casting it for a CHANCE of triggering it since it not guaranteed that the HP of your ally is going down during that time, if it doesnt you just wasted an aetherflow stack... i rather save it and use Lustrate if needed since it is instant cast and has almost the same potency.

Chain Strategem sounds good but is not that good in paper since the duration is only 15 seconds, how many GCDs is that? 4/5?, with only a 15% increased chance of crit on a SINGLE enemy.

Quickened Aetherflow (Trait) rarely procs, you only get 3 uses of aetherflow on a 20% chance of cutting the CD by only 10 seconds... it's funny since WHM users were complaining about low chances on their new Lilly mechanic and it got buffed significantly, but we keep the utterly low proc chances on our new trait.


What needs to be changed IMO:

Adloquium: Either lower the MP consumption or increase the shield potency (AST has better shielding abilities now)

Bane: Decrease the penalty on the 5th+ targets to 50% (down from 80%)

Excogitation: Make it heal if the effect is not triggered after the 30 seconds timer, allow it to be used on the caster.

Chain Strategem: Either increase its duration to 30 seconds, or increase its effect to 30%.

Quickened Aetherflow: Increase the chance of reducing the cooldown on Aetherflow from 20% to 50%.

Embrace: There was no need to nerf it... just increase its potency back to 300.

Fey Wind (Selene): I would also love to see Fey Wind buffed a bit to make it stand against AST buffs, 3% is barely noticeable...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-your-thoughts

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The point is to get feedback that's been repeated in that thread and others under a thread title that mirrors the popular WHM thread....

Edit: Counting 4 SCH threads alone on the 1st page at this time. We could probably do with a clean-up and some focus to draw more attention. I'm not normally one for starting a bandwagon thread, but I'm feeling pretty strongly about SCH's issues this patch and think that we as a community underestimated the damage while we were distracted by the seemingly tone-deaf WHM design.

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Originally Posted by RevoluXoN

Excogitation is bad, i mean BAD, taking 1 aetherflow stack for a heal that only works when your ally's HP goes under 50% and only lasts 30 seconds (oh yes, you cant use it on yourself)... there is no point on casting it

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Excogitation is GREAT. It is 650 heal potency compared to Lustrate, and it procs instantly. You use it when you know a boss is going to be doing a tankbuster, or any situation where you have an unknown. Heal like you normally would, use Lustrate for those big heals, but use Excogitation when you know your tank has a lot of damage incoming. It has removed so much stress for me already!!

We really do need AoE DPS, though. I miss Miasma II fiercely. Shadow Flare wasn't good enough before, and it certainly ain't cutting it now.

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Originally Posted by MoonDream

Excogitation is GREAT. It is 650 heal potency compared to Lustrate, and it procs instantly. You use it when you know a boss is going to be doing a tankbuster, or any situation where you have an unknown. Heal like you normally would, use Lustrate for those big heals, but use Excogitation when you know your tank has a lot of damage incoming. It has removed so much stress for me already!!

We really do need AoE DPS, though. I miss Miasma II fiercely. Shadow Flare wasn't good enough before, and it certainly ain't cutting it now.

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"Removed" stress? Don't you mean "added"? You put it on and then you watch it not proc because either your cohealer prevents the target from hitting 50% or the tank self-heals, regens, or mitigates to prevent it. Worse yet is a fight with tank busters that come in intervals less than 60 seconds so you move to apply it and catch it on cooldown, and then there's that great moment when you crit your shield and prevent the tank from hitting 50% on your own. And in the end it really is a flat 650 potency. That is 50 potency more than a lustrate, and as an ability cannot be effected by largesse, dissipation, tank stance, convalescence, and so on.

I like excog, it's a fun idea and I intend to use it as much as possible until I get used to it, but I fully admit it's just as irritating to see it wasted as it is to completely overheal a lustrate. We'll live doing it, certainly, but it feels bad when you're in try-hard mode. Having it auto-proc after 30 seconds would be a nice QoL addition, but we'll get used to it regardless, because that's Scholar life.

What ive said I think would benefit SCH:

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

Remove Ruin mastery that turns ruin into Broil. Instead:

Disastrous Ruin- Ruin's mp cost raises to 1.33 times that of Broil II. 80 Potency AOE within 8 yalms of the target. 20% chance your next ruin will be instant cast. Maybe change Ruin II into broil. Bio II ticking for 9 seconds would outweigh it.

Shadowflare- Places an Aoe at a given area dealing 25 potency a second over 30 seconds. There is a 15% chance that each bio/bio ii or miasma ii tick will reset the timer. Can only be reset once every 15 seconds. While already active Shadowflare becomes a 250 potency aoe around the target, instead of a placeable field. Bane will 100% reset the cd. CD of 60 seconds.

Dissipation- Healing spells increased by 20%. Lustrate, Indomitability, Sacred Soil, Excogitation, Bane and Energy Drain have their potency increased by 20%. You gain III aetherflow stacks. If used while Fey union is tethered to a target, the target has 20% of their mp,TP and hp restored, a barrier of 20% of their max hp is added to the target. Will overide any Galvanize or Nocturnal Benefic/Helios. Cannot be overidden, except by Galvanize or Nocturnal Aspected Benefic/Helios of a higher potency. Successfully using Summon or Summon II removes the effect of Dissipation. Duration 30 seconds. Recast time of 180 seconds.

Virus- Removes the effect of Addle. Target has 15% reduced attributes for 10 seconds.

TRAIT-Brilliant Broil II (instead of just broil to broil ii upgrade)- Embrace has a 20% chance of causing your next broil II to be instant cast. Upgrades Broil to Broil II. (Opening more opportunity to weave.) Duration: 20 seconds.

Deployment tactics. spreads galvanize onto nearby party members and resets its duration. If used on an enemy, spreads Virus to surrounding enemies and resets its duration. Eye for an Eye spreading has been removed since it is a role skill.


Fey union- When used with eos, damage taken is reduced by 10% on top of a ~350 potency, realword healer potency every 3 seconds. IF selene is attached, damage done is increased by 5%, spell based healing received is increased by 50% (Selene will not heal the target.)


If you feel this is overpowered, take a good long look at AST.

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If adding new fairy skills:

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

Selene getting a magic vuln up on a single target for 8 seconds every 90, call it Fey Charm
Eos getting a buff that she would place on a single target that would place a shield for 50% of the next spell based healing received. Call it Fey Memento.

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Aetherflow may also need restored to 20% or ALL SPELLS NEED THE AST TREATMENT.

General feel of SCH 4.0:

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

Gutted. Nerfed. Dead Fish playstyle. Little Brother Ast can do it better.

Leaving it to rot, until some decent changes are made to address AOE and to provide solid opportunities to use OGCD. Maybe 5.0 will offer fairy swapping mechanics and more pet skills/traits?

I'm alright with the removal of Virus. I'm alright with the Eos nerf.

The overall feel though is that SCH is going to have a hard time with mp management and have a very basic dps rotation. Our effecient, low costing, DOTS are gone. More nuking means less MP. Ironic how the class with the most DOTS suddenly became the healer with the worst DoTs. They had always been weaker, but their combine strengt helped to balance the other healer's nukes. Mp wise its going to be a mess. SCH will have to elect to Energy Drain every aetherflow stack we get and pray for the crappy proc, just to not be a reincarnated 4.0's WHM mana situation. Adlo's mp going up, without an increase in utility or cast time exasperates the issue. Fairy will have a very similar potency to regen and aspected benefic. She is going to heal 20% less embrace wise. Thats potentially, 20% more healing SCHs will have to do. SCH needed a decrease in MP costs for their healing spells, not an increase. The fact that Combust II had its mp cost reduced that makes me cynically laugh.

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I can't speak for excog, but on paper it seems like yet another wasted ability for the reasons I have seen stated here already. Between SCH and WHM what is with these mechanics that basically force us to let players take damage in order to utilize the new abilities?

Lilies and confessions need cures instead of regens to proc, and excog seems to be better served in dungeons where the SCH has the sole healing responsibility. In 8-man a WHM or AST is going to heal that damage, especially a WHM wanting lily procs, so SCH mechanics basically completely conflict with current WHM. Are their any main healers at SE? Who's designing this stuff? Who's bright idea was it to completely nerf SCH damage into next to nothing AND also nerf the fairy? It's like the person calling the shots has a recent ex that was a SCH main. That's how bad it is.

I can't believe I've totally lost my desire to play this job. It was my first main, even before WHM. SE, fix this. Please.

Honestly, I am kinda mad that they have not given the same treatment to sch as they did whm. When sb was two weeks out from early access they addressed their outrage. I haven't seen a single dev so much as address us. I have played sch since 2.0 and never have I seen this class in such a bad state. Hell, I think smn is pretty bad as well so its not like I can just switch to smn to avoid this nightmare. So it makes me think that there were two people working on arcanist and didn't even bother to share their notes.

But when it comes to sch, it is just rife with 'what the hell were you thinking'. Why would you lower our dps and then make our healing more expensive or less effective? What the hell did my poor fairies ever do to you, especially eos? If you're going to have ast out strip us in every way, could you at least give us back our dps and fairy capabilities? Like, I'd rather go play with the clunky whm mechanics than heal another dungeon with sch. At least they can heal AND have mp.

I realize we will not get anything fixed until 4.1, but could they at least give us an acknowledging post like they did whm?

Yeah having done one of the extreme right now and doing all the new 70 dungeons, I can for sure say that SCH is in a bad position right now. Our heals not getting any sort of increase to potency or the shields does not warrant using adlo as much as before, rather just regular heal the tank instead of wasting like 2k mana, i say 2k cause im not sure if its 1800 or around there. Tanks pulling large pulls is kind of annoying to heal through not without wasting all your heals on lustrate on them or something, as well as not being versatile if say the tanks want to get more adds after a few mobs die.

Our new skills need a big adjustment.Fey Union is the new dissipation, fucking useless, starts off 0 when the fairy is summoned and only gains 10 stack per use of an aetherflow and drains way to fast when its used as well as the short tether is just not great unless you position the fairy yourself at the middle of the fights but in ex fights you don't have that much time to thing about it when your worrying about everything else you need to keep your mana up.
Chain Strat need its duration increased or the percentage increased for such a long cd.
Excog its a nice skill when your in a dungeon when the tank pulls large pulls or the start of a boss fight but for raids or 8 man's this skill is not that great because your cohealer isnt going to just let your tank stay at a certain percentage of health so one of your skills pops and theres to many variables that can also mess this up. so this needs to be changed to where it either has no time limit or still heals them at the end

They also need to give us back the 20% when we use aetherflow because 10% is not enough when you can't use your skills for engery drain and Lucid dreaming barely keeps our mana stable, also the new trait needs to be something else to be honest its shit, needs to be reworked into something else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MoonDream

Excogitation is GREAT. It is 650 heal potency compared to Lustrate, and it procs instantly. You use it when you know a boss is going to be doing a tankbuster, or any situation where you have an unknown. Heal like you normally would, use Lustrate for those big heals, but use Excogitation when you know your tank has a lot of damage incoming. It has removed so much stress for me already!!

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I'm with Lego on this:

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Originally Posted by LegoTechnic

"Removed" stress? Don't you mean "added"? You put it on and then you watch it not proc because either your cohealer prevents the target from hitting 50% or the tank self-heals, regens, or mitigates to prevent it. Worse yet is a fight with tank busters that come in intervals less than 60 seconds so you move to apply it and catch it on cooldown, and then there's that great moment when you crit your shield and prevent the tank from hitting 50% on your own. And in the end it really is a flat 650 potency. That is 50 potency more than a lustrate, and as an ability cannot be effected by largesse, dissipation, tank stance, convalescence, and so on.

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I agree that Excog has applications in theory and will likely see use in raid content where split healing requirements tend to be higher and tank busters powerful enough that the tank is guaranteed to drop below the threshold. On the other hand, having it tick away with a chance not to activate due to factors outside your direct control, as Lego pointed out, makes it a lackluster tool for players who are accustomed to planning their actions a few steps ahead. Frankly, if I know the fight, I have no need for a preset heal unless the mechanics specifically reward its use (i.e. Excog is guaranteed to proc and be more efficient/safer than just timing your casts and abilities in anticipation of the damage as usual). Generally speaking, Lustrate is a superior skill since the potency is nearly the same and you know exactly what you're getting and when you're getting it at all times.

Aside from Excog, these are a few of my feedback points:

+ Putting Shadowflare off the GCD was helpful, and the decreased duration with increased potency makes it more impactful for shorter encounters. Not being able to place it at will is occasionally frustrating, and I think the CD could stand to be a little lower (it's a 50 potency stationary DoT field that lasts for 15 seconds and has an utterly negligible debuff...I think we can be a little more generous, no?).

- Fey Union is a good idea with very poor execution, as others have pointed out. Extremely short tether, unnecessarily long activation time (seriously...this skill is not so cool that it requires a Limit break style dramatic pause before it starts performing), decent-but-unimpressive healing. Rouse and Embrace spam works more reliably from a greater distance, requires neither gauge nor wind-up, and doesn't preclude the faerie using other abilities or being forced/allowed to heal other targets. Also, having the Faerie Gauge reset the way it does seems very unnecessary.

- Quickened Aetherflow can be great when RNG loves you while you unload Energy Drains, but there are too many opportunities for this skill either to fail to activate or to do nothing if it activates only as you unload that last stack you were holding onto and didn't need to use in the final handful of seconds before the CD came up.

- Faerie Embrace potency nerf + horrible level scaling is unacceptable. I had to get lvl 70 and put on artifact gear before Embrace caught up to its effective potency at lvl 60 right before patch. SCH has been a very strong Job for some time now, but to compare to AST yet again, any argument for nerfing SCH went out the window when AST went from strong to beastly in the same patch that SCH went from strong to struggling to be special.

- Adlo MP increase was unnecessary. Same heal and shielding potency since forever ago, now costing more MP. Again, compare unfavorably to AST's single-target shield option, which has a lower heal potency (but not quite as low as it looks thanks to Noct's inherent potency buff) and a huge shielding potency. Not to mention the instant casting feature, which is a nice bonus. If there were a way to guarantee critical Adlos as part of the SCH kit, it might be a different story, but that's not the case.

- If we're going to homogenize the healers further, can we allow SCH to remain somewhat competitive in AoE damage? I thought it was fine and fitting that WHM was the AoE king of healers, but SCH is so far behind both WHM and AST now that it's silly.

- Critical Stratagem: I have not personally tested the math on this, but I'm skeptical as to how much benefit this is offering. Frankly, even if it performs well in a raid environment, it's not substantially adding to the fun factor to be tolerated as an acceptable co-healer just because Stratagem is wanted to push DPS at a critical phase in progression. Besides, AST now has a potentially useful action with each Draw even if RNG sees fit to deny Balances.

- I don't feel that giving SCH access to Lucid Dreaming and nerfing Aetherflow MP restoration was a great move thematically. It feels like rebranding something that was already working fine just for the sake of making each healer operate similarly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Anselmet

Honestly, I am kinda mad that they have not given the same treatment to sch as they did whm. When sb was two weeks out from early access they addressed their outrage. I haven't seen a single dev so much as address us. I have played sch since 2.0 and never have I seen this class in such a bad state. Hell, I think smn is pretty bad as well so its not like I can just switch to smn to avoid this nightmare. So it makes me think that there were two people working on arcanist and didn't even bother to share their notes.

But when it comes to sch, it is just rife with 'what the hell were you thinking'. Why would you lower our dps and then make our healing more expensive or less effective? What the hell did my poor fairies ever do to you, especially eos? If you're going to have ast out strip us in every way, could you at least give us back our dps and fairy capabilities? Like, I'd rather go play with the clunky whm mechanics than heal another dungeon with sch. At least they can heal AND have mp.

I realize we will not get anything fixed until 4.1, but could they at least give us an acknowledging post like they did whm?

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It's because we didn't shout loudly enough.

Personally I wasn't nearly as concerned about SCH since I didn't know enough about the changes to be truly worried. WHM's Lily mechanic, on the other hand, was so terrible on paper as of the build that the media played that it sparked an immediate and strong response.

SCH playerbase pre-4.0 = sitting pretty, not too concerned since we've had it good since 2.x. 4.0 is a rude awakening.

WHM playerbase pre-4.0 = many players already experiencing disappointment and/or identity crisis and not seeing the solutions they hoped to see, thus the outcry.

do not change ecig. it is fine as it is and a very strong ability. say your tank has 30k ho and is about to get hit by a 40k damage buster. excog will activate and save the tank from death. it is a different mechabic altogether.

also it removes the need for " timing lustrates " at the exact second. on a 60 sec cd.

2 bare minimum, simple, and reasonable buffs

1. increase tether break range.
2. revert adlo changes

at least start with this.

i wouldn't say SCH's had it good but more like they were really balanced on how things went when it came to new patch's. Also SCH didn't cry when you know dissipation and emergency tactics were crap because our kit was still good even with those crap skills so we learned to deal with it. But 4.0 they just took the nerf bat to SCH in every direction to our mp regen, to heals, to dps, to our fairy, they covered every aspect of a SCH's kit and hit it with a giant bat. It would have been fine if like our dps was nerf and they didn't change anything else with our kit, because they didn't even bother fixing dissipation.

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Originally Posted by Amenako

i wouldn't say SCH's had it good but more like they were really balanced on how things went when it came to new patch's. Also SCH didn't cry when you know dissipation and emergency tactics were crap because our kit was still good even with those crap skills so we learned to deal with it. But 4.0 they just took the nerf bat to SCH in every direction to our mp regen, to heals, to dps, to our fairy, they covered every aspect of a SCH's kit and hit it with a giant bat. It would have been fine if like our dps was nerf and they didn't change anything else with our kit, because they didn't even bother fixing dissipation.

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Emergency Tactics is fantastic in raids; I had a lot of effective use with it in Gordias and Midas given Indom's 30 second cooldown. Sometimes it's more useful to have Succor be a Medica, and damn it, it feels good when it works. That swirly effect is love.

And we cried a never-ending river of salty tears over Dissipation, one that still flows to this day, but to be real that was probably the worst of our class problems and compared to AST mana issues it wasn't a crippling class issue.

Does someone here leveled up astrologian ?

What happen to Earthly star if we don't don't press the button to trigger the heal?
Does is still heal or does it disappear at the end of the timer ?

Cause if it heals...
Exgocitation should heal at the end of the duration if it didn't trigger.
This way it won't be lost sometimes.

Or just remove the duration on it...

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Does someone here leveled up astrologian ?

What happen to Earthly star if we don't don't press the button to trigger the heal?
Does is still heal or does it disappear at the end of the timer ?

Cause if it heals...
Exgocitation should heal at the end of the duration if it didn't trigger.
This way it won't be lost sometimes.

Or just remove the duration on it...

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Waiting 10s or executing Stellar Detonation while under the effect of Giant Dominance creates a Stellar Explosion dealing unaspected damage with a potency of 200 to all nearby enemies. Also restores HP of self and nearby party members. Taken from the tooltips it would seem as though it times out and auto detonates.

Just some curious questions regarding the SCH Lv 70 skill:

1) Does it remove 10 points per HoT tick?
2) Does it have an initial cost to establish the tether?
3) Can you rapidly switch between tether targets to perform "spot regens" on them?

Thank you in advance for your answers. :)

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

It's because we didn't shout loudly enough.

Personally I wasn't nearly as concerned about SCH since I didn't know enough about the changes to be truly worried. WHM's Lily mechanic, on the other hand, was so terrible on paper as of the build that the media played that it sparked an immediate and strong response.

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I agree with this mostly, but I think this has slowly been coming for sch. I might be a huge pessimist, but I cannot be the only sch who noted certain decisions over the past year as a bad sign. Like when they first buffed noct ast I began to worry. And when Yoshi-P came out and said that healers do not need to dps, I felt that meant sch would be the most effected at this point.Then there were small things like seeing shadow flare instant and I thought to myself there is going to be a giant caveat to that skill. I think over all the signs were there but like you said we did not shout loudly enough. I'll be honest, never in a hundred years would I have thought our changes would be this bad. But I think sch are now shouting quite loudly but also I personally feel as if we have been mostly ignored.

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

Just some curious questions regarding the SCH Lv 70 skill:

1) Does it remove 10 points per HoT tick?
2) Does it have an initial cost to establish the tether?
3) Can you rapidly switch between tether targets to perform "spot regens" on them?

Thank you in advance for your answers. :)

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1/2. Its 10 points on activation and then 10 points per hot tick.
3. Rapidly? I wouldn't exactly say its rapid due to the 5second recast and the long windup animation to begin the heal.

So if it does auto-detonate, that would be a good fix to excog to detonate as well at the end of the duration.
So we don't "loose".

We all know that we hate wasting aertherflow stacks.

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Originally Posted by MsTanya

1/2. Its 10 points on activation and then 10 points per hot tick.
3. Rapidly? I wouldn't exactly say its rapid due to the 5second recast and the long windup animation to begin the heal.

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Thank you so much.

Uhh, am I wrong in saying it's basically a 24 sec super Regen with 3 min CD? (3 Aetherflows = 90 points, -10 points for activation, so left 80 points for 8 ticks)?
Because that's honestly quite underwhelming, or am I missing any features of that skill?

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

Thank you so much.

Uhh, am I wrong in saying it's basically at 24 sec super Regen with 3 min CD? (3 Aetherflows = 90 points, -10 points for activation, so left 80 points for 8 ticks)?
Because that's honestly quite underwhelming, or am I missing any features of that skill?

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I think it still heals on the initial cast, so its 9 ticks at 90 gauge, and no you aren't missing any other features other than its inconveniences such as the tether range being only 10y and I believe if the tank outranges it, the heal stops but the gauge still depletes, someone correct me if I'm wrong on that though as I rushed red to 70 and am only 68 on my sch at the moment.

1. anecdotal answer: about ten per second.
2. yes but the first cost/tick will still heal
3. no. it has around a 2.5 second animation time. untethering also puts a short cd on it. so you would link to tank. watch it's animation. hit the button again and wait for the CD. then afterwards you may tether it to again. it at least prevents accidentally slam clicking it and wasting 10 gauge

I've not played SCH in SB yet, only going off my feelings at 60 and just looking at the mess of patchnotes.

Scholar AoE was pretty nuts, but that's because Bane could spread 3 DoTs instantly and shadowflare had 100% uptime. Now Bane itself got nerfed into oblivion, it only spreads 2 DoTs and Shadowflare has a cooldown. It's the reverse of AST where it only needed one of three nerfs, maybe, but got all of them just to be sure.

I agree with the fairy nerf or the Adlo nerf because it was too easy to just stay in Cleric for entire runs, but, again, I don't agree with both.

Excog being a "just in case" heal is dumb because it has nothing over Lustrate. It seems like it was designed during the Cleric Stance days then forgotten about when they changed it.

Union I can't comment on from a practical point, but on paper it looks alright. I've heard issues about range and such, though.

Overall, Scholar got hit hard. Probably harder than it should have. But on the bright side it's just a numbers game here. I think every problem SCH has can be solved with moving potencies, costs, durations, or cooldowns around.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

Just some curious questions regarding the SCH Lv 70 skill:

1) Does it remove 10 points per HoT tick?
2) Does it have an initial cost to establish the tether?
3) Can you rapidly switch between tether targets to perform "spot regens" on them?

Thank you in advance for your answers. :)

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1. Yes it looks like one tick is 10 gauge. I think spellspeed affects this because it feels slightly faster but likely my imagination.
2. No cost to tether beyond Eos taking what feels like 4 seconds to begin (proactive skill not reactive at all.)
3. You can't switch targets. Recasting the ability cancels it (the skill changes on your hotbar).

Once they announced Redmage I knew I would switch and keep SCH for the quick queues. While Yoshi-P announced that adding 2-DPS would not hurt queues because healers will still heal and tanks will still tank, that might have been true had they not butchered WHM and SCH. Although, I think WHMs have some solace in Thin-Air, and the devs' acknowledgement of the concerns. So I think while WHM gets shafted with the RNG based Lily system, they have some nice additional skills and a hope that they will receive some tweeking in the future. However, Scholar....nope Scholar in my eyes is unplayable.

I've mained SCH since 2.0 because it was the closest we had in FFXIV to a Redmage, and arguably still the closest the game has to a traditional Redmage. We can buff our allies, debuff our enemies, deal a moderate level of damage, and of course heal, a true Redmage. However, now we have a named Redmage and it looks amazing. With all the buzz surrounding the WHM pounding, I didn't even think about SCH nerfs! This shit caught me by surprise and damn it hurts!
SCH in PVP No...just no.
o Chain Strategem, sweet increased damage on the Target and it does work coupled with the PvP Broil is amazing...oh wait AST has that as well.
o No AoE heals in PvP (AST as well though)...are you kidding me!
o That Fairy Gauge tho.....Really!? So 1 heal gives 5 gauge IF in combat. And the bar depletes so fast that it is only worth summoning her if the gauge is full or near full. Remember in PvP it reduces per tick and per heal, HOLY POPSICLES! -20/tick! Thats max five heals and it takes 10-20 just to summon it!....RIP SCH heals in PvP..although AST doesn't look much better but at least their main mechanic isn't nerfed.
o WHM seems like the defacto heals in PvP now, look at them Assizes AND 1 lily per heal...not on RNG, guaranteed..
But we aren't here to talk about WHM.

SCH in normal content No thanks, I'll just AST if I want to stay a healer
o That MP Management. I think this one everyone else has covered. FeelsBadMan
o Ok, so the class is built for LVL 70 Content great!....Um how am I supposed to run my synced roulettes? Pharos Sirius (NM) was Serious! My FC tank pulled everything first room....nope that didn't work out so well.
o Where is my Miasma II with heavy, so that I can hit the first pull with it and they take a while to catch up to the last group pulled?
o Boring content. Hydalean damn it all. 2 DoTs and a Broil? Good thing I have Energy Drain to keep my MP up.
o Role skills - Lets not beat around the bush here:
- Protect
- Esuna
- Lucid Dream, thanks for this I guess
- E4E, could go in the next one too, but since I have no utility anymore I'll take it.
And the rest are situational.
- Cleric Stance: 5%.......
- Swiftcast: When I need to rez someone yes. Solo, nope, 4-mans...lets hope not
- Break: LOL
- Largesse: I mean, if there is nothing else to put up there and since ADLO is expensive now, sure.
- Surecast: Never needed it pre 4.0
- Rescue: This is the most specific damn skill I have ever seen. LOL
o Dafuq did Stoneskin go? Why I only get one shield now? SCH = Preemptive and Damage Mitigation style healing.
o Excogitation: Ok 30s is really short, I find myself PURPOSEFULLY letting the tank hit 50% just so I had something to use it on. If its a mass AoE, I'm going to INDOM and probably Lustrate the Tank. Excogitation is cool in theory but situational as best.
o Ruin II: shit man, you even took my blind debuff!


Bye SCH, you were fun since 2013, I'll miss you my friend, so many memories. DPS queues here I come!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tillen

o WHM seems like the defacto heals in PvP now, look at them Assizes AND 1 lily per heal...not on RNG, guaranteed..
But we aren't here to talk about WHM.

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May I also add, please don't balance healers based on PVP in PVE? Somehow I have a feeling they did that...

Anyway, I was hoping to actually play scholar in SB. I usually level it with SMN since I couldn't really get to liking the faerie and all that. I thought if it was fun I'd give it a go. I can't really say what you guys might need, but I just wanted to chime in and say I support you guys getting some loving. I am not sure SE knows how to balance healers... I wonder if they even play healers in PVE... =/

Excog should be spread by deployment tactics and heal if it expires.

Dissipation: should have the fairy aoe heal potency 250 every 3 seconds until the fay gauge is empty the it unsummons. If the fairy is still active at the end of the 30s the fairy does not unsummon.
Dissipation makes zero sense in a post fay gauge world. We need more senergy back.

fey union should not use up fairy gauge when the target goes out of range. rigjt now usong union plants the fairy in olace. when your target runs 10y away it stays there and continues to drain your gauge. ran all mihgo and didn't cancel the tether while the scientist boss cast his soul rip ability and I couldn't cancel the union. it drained the gauge from 100 to 0 before I could get to my body.

great..

Can't honestly say I've noticed a difference between 3.X and 4.X for SCH. Honestly, the dps was too good, it needed the nerf bat.

Feedback:

Fey Union: The range really needs to be increased. 10 yalms is pretty small. The potency needs to be increased, its a fairly marginal gain over just Embrace-spam. I've also heard that Rouse doesn't work with it. Really????

Excog: This should be deployable.

Chain Strategem: This should be bane-able

It's kinda embarrassing how these new abilities don't even work with the SCHs existing toolkit.

It feels like a lot of SCH's keypoints got butchered.

-From 4 to 2 DoTs, we lose a lot of our variety and have an overall decrease in damage. The changes make us have an overall lower potency contribution and stray away from the "DPS healer" role fantasy so many of us seemed to enjoy

-With the loss of 2 DoTs, also, we spend a lot more time casting Broil which uses more mp than DoTs. That means mp depletes rather quickly, and with Adloq's reduced shields and Succor's healing compared to the other classes', we're using more mana than ever.

-Don't even get me started on how sad the Aetherflow nerfs are.

-I think we all know how awful our AoE is now. Another sad fact is that while our AoE DoTs get butchered, Aero 3 seems be just fine. And of course, I don't even need to add the fact we don't have a big, spammable nuke like Gravity or Holy! Shadowflare's changes are nice, but in the end it's still only 250 potency. And of course, we could use it for pre-pulls.

(Sorry for the double post, but character limit!)

That being said, a quick overview of my part on the new actions we've learned.

-Excognitation: Giving someone an 'trigger heal' is a really cool concept and it fits the Scholar's theme. That being said, a 30s duration chance of healing someone for only 50 potency more than Lustrate sucks. I think Excog should either have a way longer duration, heal for more, and either not cost aetherflow at all or give the SCH an Aetherflow stack back if it expires.

-Chain Stratagem: Awesome skill, damage boosts are always welcome, but it lasts too little and has a pretty huge cooldown. I hate making comparisons, but in 120 seconds an AST can use Draw 4 times...

-Quickened Aetherflow: Proc rate is way too small and the reward itself is pretty. It's a welcome passive, but too mediocre and passable at the same time. Should reward us with more or have a higher proc rate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reiryuu

I am not sure SE knows how to balance healers... I wonder if they even play healers in PVE... =/

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They most certainly do not know how to balance these classes. At the end of hw the three classes were pretty balanced with whm being slightly weaker. All they needed to do was give whm some raid utility and they would have been fine. But instead they decided to buff ast, which I haven't heard a single ast say they needed that buff, then give them the coolest toys. They then gutted sch in every department and gave whm a dumb system. I tried my whm (though it is only lvl 60) in content that with my sch it was extremely difficult to heal through and I did it with ease. Sure, sch has never been known to be the great healer, but to gut us where we are forced to heal then punish us with bad mp management? Excuse me se did you EVER play sch? One of our main things other than being a damage mitigater (now out shined by noct ast) was being the healer that had a larger mp pool. So now we have a healer class that had a buff that it did not need out doing the other two traditional healing jobs of ffxiv, and healer that can at least heal but is as useful to a raid situation as a wet rag with the added bonus of a clunky system, and a class that no one should be taking anywhere if they are sane. I at least have the added bonus of being a good healer, but my friends who love sch and playing it casually now cannot play sch. It's almost as if we're back to square one of 3.0 only instead of ast being the pos healer, its sch. So I guess come 4.4 we'll finally be balanced with the other two healers.

Yeah, I got SCH to level 70, and I'm also really disappointed by the way it handles. I'll stay with the job because I love how healers have to juggle healing, mechanics, and DPS in this game in a way that pure DPSing never appealed to me, and the Cleric Stance changes have made it a lot more fluid to play, but if I were smarter than I was stubborn, I would be switching to WHM/AST. Already, I'm hearing anecdotes of SCHs being kicked from parties because it's now so much more difficult to be a SCH that can actually get people through content. My friend and I had to kick one the other day because their Physics/Aldos weren't enough to keep my tank friend alive even with all of their CDs used, even with only one pack of mobs at a time. And then another healer friend's Susanoo Normal party had to kick another SCH to clear because they kept on running out of MP. Because the potencies are so low and the mana management is so bad, it's a lot harder for newer players to jump into content compared to AST/WHM, but because there's much less that rewards skilled players who can exploit limited healing tools to make time elsewhere, now that DoTs upkeep is trivial, pet management is less impactful, and there's no AoE. I don't understand the design motivation behind making it both more difficult to play and less rewarding once you get past that difficulty.

What I would want, and I'm trying to be reasonable about the bare minimums they could do here:
- Revert Aetherflow to 20% MP so that we can rely upon it solely instead of bringing Lucid Dreaming. This goes hand-in-hand with my next change...
- Make Break AoE. WHM and AST have no reason to take it, because they have their much better Gravity/Holy. SCH now no longer has to take Lucid Dreaming, but is forced to take Break for an AoE. Boom, balanced.
- If Bane was too much, fine. If SE doesn't want to make the drop-off 50% like almost every other strong AoE in the game, at least make the splash drop off impact duration instead of potency. Right now, there's no way for me to see which mobs received the 20% potency splash. It would be much easier if I could see that one mob got only 6 seconds of a DoT, and then reapplied the DoT as it came off. Bonus is that we can now choose to spam Bane at different burst points, in exchange for sacrificing a whole bunch of Aetherflow stacks, as the highest duration will apply.
- Revert Aldoquium to its original MP cost, or at least make it the same shield potency as AST Aspected Benefic. I don't understand why SCH shields are weaker (or just about the same when it crits) AND more expensive AND have a cast time versus AST. It's entirely inferior. For SCHs into more casual gameplay, they're going to run out of MP using it while being unable to shield big hits with it because of its long cast time. For skilled players, there's no bonus in dealing with all of these cons when a better version is just a class change away - and believe me, people are going to pressure the shit out of SCH to change our healing classes from now on, especially in statics.
- Make Succor cheaper as well, while we're at it. I don't understand why a 150 potency heal and 150 shield is the same MP cost as Cure III, which is almost double the combined potency of Succor. And unlike Cure III, you can't just spam Succor. Even during repeated raid AoEs, you have to put some thought into timing it because the shields don't stack. Again, this is the same motif we're seeing with SCH now. More work than either of the two healers, for less reward.

Honestly the issues that SCH suffer are from the fact that both SMN and SCH share the same base class and it's clear that SE is not sure how to balance one and the other.

SMN and SCH AoE was a bit much - it did need to be nerfed. I don't know if I agree with the extent of which it was nerfed. And I don't mind pressing 2-3 buttons for DPS. I mean whitemage press 3 at most - stone and 2 aero dots. For AoE - holy, aero and assize. So across the board healers don't have many buttons to pressing when doing damage. That's not a problem (imo).

In terms of actually issues - mana management and healing potencies are not where they need to be. But unlike whitemage I don't think scholars issue with healing derives with design.

If SE buffs the potencies the class should be fine for a healing role. I think the skills and class mechanics can work if they're at a place where the healing actually works.

While I don't think SCHs can't clear content (my boyfriend has sticked to Scholar and we've been100% fine throughout the dungeons and trials while I tank), I also think there's way too many negatives piled up on the job now.


The AoE damage, as everyone's said, is negligible, and the healing potency went down while the MP costs went up. Someone explain to me why Broil II is so much more expensive than Stone IV and Malefic III even when tho SCH has now the same amount of DoTs as WHM?

It also seems that the devs think Eos and Selene are a SCH's answer to Regen and Aspected Benefic, but Embrace was always a SCH's answer to both the regens and Cure II and Benefic II. By gutting Embrace (the 50 potency nerf is felt much more due to the bad relative scaling of Pet attributes), we are left with a worse regen and a worse answer for Cure II. SCH's only answer to that is now technically Adloquium, by potencies alone, ET+Adlo directly, but with the MP cost being so high it can't be relied upon, and has been one of the main reasons a lot of Scholars have found themselves lacking for MP in levelling content. It's just horrible, horrible design.

Another thing that is terrible by design: Quickened Aetherflow. I've seen a lot of people defend it, but the unpredictable CD reduction makes it so you don't even benefit from it sometimes. When you're preparing for unknown mechanics, it is common practice to save up Aetherflow stacks until the recast is almost done, so if you do this and proc the trait you get absolutely nothing out of it. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

Scholar is garbage now.