Mini Scholar Rework for 5.0 (fixes shield stacking.... probably)

First, some general game changes. Full shield stacking is allowed: two scholars, a scholar+astro, or even two astros in nocturnal stance (why?) will now be allowed to stack shields. At the same time, shield overwriting from an individual healer will only happen if the overwriting shield has more capacity left in it (that is, it's bigger) or has 2x or more duration it will last compared to the current shield (those two combined should keep things sane). This means double scholar comps are no more gimped than double astro or double whm comps and that nocturnal astro + scholar is no more gimped than diurnal astro + whm which I think is reasonable and

So, second off, Scholars lose deployment tactics. This is necessary to make it so the only way to try to cheese a mechanic is by both healers manually casting their strongest shields on everyone which is hard to do with time constraints and generally not something I think we'll need to worry about, especially if encounters are well designed.

The crux of the rework then becomes the following:
Remove dissipation and cleric stance and replace them with 'fairy' and 'solo' stance.

In fairy stance the fairy is out and can be used like normal while every CAST of a dps spell reduces the cd of the fairies abilities by an amount equal to the cast time of the spell (to encourage either regenning via eos or actually giving a reason to actually use Selene).

In solo stance the fairy is unsummoned (ala dissipation), but ALL damage (including dots so even if you're actively healing in this stance you're still getting the benefit from DoT damage) provides a stacking shield (separate from the regular shield) to a random party member equal to the damage dealt. I would tentatively say that Quickened Aetherflow needs to be buffed when in this stance or else it needs to drop the recast time of aetherflow by 10-15 seconds automatically because this stance will not have passive fairy healing (since the shields going out are random they'll be mostly usedful for aoe damage and not for tanks) and thus will either need more energy drains to sustain mana for direct healing or else more casts of sacred soil, lustrate, and indom to replace the lost fairy casts or perhaps most likely a mix of the two (with aetherflow potentially being on a 30s cd with quickened aetherflow in this stance). Heck, since the fairy gauge is being sacrificed they could even make it so you don't get a direct cd reduction in aetherflow but make it so that in this stance aetherflow generates 4 stacks so it's in a way like a ~20s reduction (~15s for a stack and then another 5s from using the stack).

Basically, one ends up with the choice between semi-passive fairy healing plus fairy gauge or 'dumb' dps healing (well, shielding) plus increased aether spell casts. At the same time, the issues with stacking shield healers is fixed through a somewhat cludgy removal of the obvious balancing issue in exchange for a slight buff to the fairy scholar stance (and the power of the solo scholar stance is thus slightly higher than I would suggest otherwise as well).

this is nice

A sch self crit buff like warrior has would be a nice unique thing to further separate its style from other healers. For a short duration, crits are guaranteed on your spells. You can set up your crit-adlo deployed for sure a couple times per fight.

Shield stacking from 2 sch probably wouldn't happen unless I'm misunderstanding something. Would make stacking shielder healers more desirable than having a regen one and fights might then be designed for bigger enemy nukes that need a double shield anyway.

Yeah. Shield stacking on that level would just be too powerful.

the whole point is to disallow deployment so that crit-adlo spreading is no longer a thing as that's the real issue with allowing stacking shield healers IMO. Like, yeah, it might make some mechanics a little easier, but there's a reason that in WoW you generally want at least one shield and regen healer..... it's just the generically best way as long as content is well-designed and nobody is too broken (e.g. crit-adlo deployment).

If they are going to allow shield stacking, WHM needs a shield like SCH and AST do. Which will ruin the healer diversity (which is bad right now). I don't think it will be happening and i don't see why it is necessary at this point (other than those ASTs who think their shields are better than SCH and refuse to change to diurnal when they encountered a SCH).

I don't see why SCH needs to lose ET either. It is a cool and useful thing and different than what other healers have. Also, i think shields are there for usage in situations that requires shielding. If you replace everything with a different kind of shield, it would take the mastery of the job, which most of the jobs hurt in SB. It would make things waay easier, which is again, already easy in %95 of the content. So adlo is enough, no more shielding necessary in my opinion.

I think dissipation needs a rework yes, i am not raiding but i didn't use that thing once in 3 years of my SCH playing. It is -%99 of the time- unnecessary. If you know how to mitigate damage and heal properly as a SCH in this game, you simply don't need to sacrifice your fairy, which is soo useful than aetherflow stacks in my opinion (again if you know how to manage it).

Apart from these, i think Selene needs tweaking. -Looks at silence ability-.

I recently started playing as AST btw after so long, and realised how OP SCH still is. Excog, fairy regen and fey union combo can heal the tank up to 2-3 stacks of enemies without you even casting a heal. Which is really distinctive than other healers. More shields, more buffs etc. would break the healers because whm has almost no utility (if we consider what AST and SCH brings), and AST heals are really weak if we compare it to others. So they need to balance things too, and if we were to get more shields etc., the others probably will too and so does the game evolve depending on these shields a.k.a harder hitting mechanics.

Anyway thank you for reading :3

Preventing the damage in the first place will always be stronger than healing it afterwards. Shield stacking is way too powerful. Removing Deployment Tactics doesn't balance it. It's funny that you mention WoW because I'm pretty sure you can't have multiple Disc priest shields up at once and they're really the only Shield-focused healer in the game. (Though WoW is a very different game, they don't just have 2 flavors of healers.) Your change would completely lock out WHM and Diurnal AST.

Allowing shields to stack could make some mechanic trivial. There's a reason why hots can stack and not shield. Hots don't prevent OS. Shields can.

So there's technically no fix here.

Do that and you'd make SCH/NocAST the best possible progression healing comp by making any raid burst trivial.

There's a reason you don't see WHM/Diurnal AST in prog. Because early during savage progression your dps just can't survive. They don't have enough ehp

You could have all the hots in the world and make everyone regen 100% of their hp per sec, if the boss does your dps max hp+1 they still die. Shields>hots when it comes to survival. And the more shields the better.

I like the idea of shield stacking, but it would require a fundamental difference in how healing is designed. Right now we have very scripted damage, often high enough to one-shot at low ilvl, and healers are expected to keep everyone topped off. Additionally, heals are incredibly powerful in this game, to the point that healers can take a full party from 1hp to full in about 5 seconds. Sylvain also correctly pointed out that preventing the damage is always better than healing it afterward (especially in this game where secondary effects of attacks are often negated when 0 damage is taken).

You would need to change it so that there are very few one-shot level damage mechanics, and replace them with lots of random low-to-mid damage hits across the party. Then you would need to alter healing (or alter HP values) so that heals are less powerful overall. This would would make shields and direct heals/HoTs more balanced and allow for stacking since both will achieve the same effect over time.

I'm not sure how well a change like that would go over with the strength of our other skills, though. It would mean healers casting more heals all the time, and may necessitate nerfing MP regeneration skills so they don't just spam their strongest stuff when crap hits the fan.

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Originally Posted by Muchmidget

I like the idea of shield stacking, but it would require a fundamental difference in how healing is designed. Right now we have very scripted damage, often high enough to one-shot at low ilvl, and healers are expected to keep everyone topped off. .

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Or that indeed

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Muchmidget

I like the idea of shield stacking, but it would require a fundamental difference in how healing is designed. Right now we have very scripted damage, often high enough to one-shot at low ilvl, and healers are expected to keep everyone topped off. Additionally, heals are incredibly powerful in this game, to the point that healers can take a full party from 1hp to full in about 5 seconds. Sylvain also correctly pointed out that preventing the damage is always better than healing it afterward (especially in this game where secondary effects of attacks are often negated when 0 damage is taken).

You would need to change it so that there are very few one-shot level damage mechanics, and replace them with lots of random low-to-mid damage hits across the party. Then you would need to alter healing (or alter HP values) so that heals are less powerful overall. This would would make shields and direct heals/HoTs more balanced and allow for stacking since both will achieve the same effect over time.

I'm not sure how well a change like that would go over with the strength of our other skills, though. It would mean healers casting more heals all the time, and may necessitate nerfing MP regeneration skills so they don't just spam their strongest stuff when crap hits the fan.

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I agree completely! I've just started raiding (only on o5s lol), but I think it's true that mechanics are a bit..... well healing and mechanics are both a bit lopsided towards an extreme intensity rigth now, especially compared to something like WoW. However, I don't see a problem with more consistent damage and if anything semi-random medium and small damage to party members is exactly what you'd want to see if my idea for dps-shielding as an alternative was added to make it actually useful.

Some mechanics wont even trigger if you take no damage like Susano-o slashing res down after TB, they would have to rework a lot of things to make stacking shield not busted.

Idk, toggling between "fairy: yes/no" doesn't feel like it'll fix anything or go in a direction of improvement. Pets are too bare-bones on SCH (and SMN) and could definitely use a considerable rework (they haven't gotten new skills since lvl 40/50) SCH could definitely follow the fairy and shield motif. Shield deployment, reinforcement, extension and maybe even dissipation trade off should be themes around SCH as a "tactician" and the fairy helping considerably to keep up with heals and light regens, SCH can keep the dot pummel and broil.

Personally, I'd say just full on allow shield stacking between multiple healers, and reduce Noct's raw shield strength. WHM could use a Ballad Troubadour-style cooldown to boost people's effective HP without giving them a shield too, effectively giving them Stoneskin II again, but in combat this time. That's a way to get overshielding without busting the current mechanics. I'd still argue to keep Adlo and Deployment too. Remove Critlo instead and give SCH CritLustrate and/or CritPhysick instead as a way to boost their raw healing. Maybe tie it to the Fairy's crits on Embrace, so you get the double healing proc on physick/Lustrate but don't have to manually fish for it.

The main reason I argue for this is so Noct could gain stance dancing cooldowns, one of which could be an ET-style cooldown that gives you the boosted shield strength of the current Noct Benefic/Helios while in Diurnal, and gives them an extended Diurnal Benefic/more powerful Diurnal Helios while in Noct, while a longer cooldown just outright swaps sects for a few seconds in a similar vein to Lightspeed, letting you then combine it with the ET-cooldown to simply get the enhanced spell in your normal sect.

In doing so SE could balance around the relative strength of shields pretty easily, as their use depends on certain damage thresholds to begin with. They're good in burst situations and against busters. They're weak to moderate amounts of damage over extended periods of time. Add more situations where the latter happens and they'll see less efficiency overall.

SCH+AST already has excellent synergy. It really doesn't need game breaking buffs.

If you want to buff noct AST, you need to make it replace SCH, not synergize with it. AST+WHM is the lowest performing healer composition, compared to SCH+AST being the top one and, with the recent AST buffs, it'll probably be highly preferred for 4.4.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Idk, toggling between "fairy: yes/no" doesn't feel like it'll fix anything or go in a direction of improvement. Pets are too bare-bones on SCH (and SMN) and could definitely use a considerable rework.

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At the very least Selene needs a complete overhaul. Right now most of her
Kit is extremely niche, and you have to give up a lot if you choose to use her. Not to mention the aoe cdr feels like garbage to use.