Scholar changes

I have mained scholar since arr its been my favorite job in the game in heavensward it got even more fun and in stormblood there were issues at launch and its been fixed, but in shadowbringers the ffxiv team seems to have stripped away every aspect that made scholar what it is and made it appeal to me
1 The pets
Embrace can no longer be controlled and you have to weave the skills like enkindle i can accept the skills needing to be weaved but if i cant control embrace why do i even have a pet now it feels like im no longer a pet healer
2 DPS
Another big appeal of scholar was its more complex dps rotation with several dots compared to the other healers and maintaining those while keeping the party alive now were the exact same as whm and ast and thats incredibly disappointing
3 aetherflow
without needing to balance the usage of aetherflow with healing and dealing damage and getting mana back the system has lost all interest it had now i have no reason to not have an excog and soil always up

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Originally Posted by tikiwiki

I have mained scholar since arr its been my favorite job in the game in heavensward it got even more fun and in stormblood there were issues at launch and its been fixed, but in shadowbringers the ffxiv team seems to have stripped away every aspect that made scholar what it is and made it appeal to me
1 The pets
Embrace can no longer be controlled and you have to weave the skills like enkindle i can accept the skills needing to be weaved but if i cant control embrace why do i even have a pet now it feels like im no longer a pet healer
2 DPS
Another big appeal of scholar was its more complex dps rotation with several dots compared to the other healers and maintaining those while keeping the party alive now were the exact same as whm and ast and thats incredibly disappointing
3 aetherflow
without needing to balance the usage of aetherflow with healing and dealing damage and getting mana back the system has lost all interest it had now i have no reason to not have an excog and soil always up

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1 - Don't forget they nerfed Embrace as well, and if the faerie scales as well as it has the past few expansions *cough*not at all*cough* it'll just be worse. But who knows, maybe they'll fix the scaling!
2 - I'm not going to comment on the DPS. I'm not a fan, and that's all I will say.
3 - Do you...Not keep Excog up on the tanks basically all the time if in combat? Have I been doing this wrong?

I didn't know that Embrace is no longer auto casted by the fairy just that the potency was nerfed. Hopefully because pets are not longer targetable and just there they don't suffer from the lowered scaling but instead all healing/dps is based off our own healing/dps.

As for Sacred Soil since Shadowflare is gone you no longer have to think about shielding vs dps for it but I personally do think it needs to be nerfed in it's healing potency. AST's CU is now lonely 50 potency and they still have to remain still to keep the shield up where SCH can plop theirs down and now with a trait get 100pot healing from it.

So something I just noticed, besides all of these threads that keep appearing, take the hint SE, anyways. Something I noticed is how SCH has the lowest single target spell until they reach level 54. Ruin is worth 100, to Malefic's 150, and Stone 2's 200. Our DoT doesnt even make up the full difference once theirs are upgraded. Truthfully, this is me just being sore about losing my DoTs, but there is something there I know it.

Seems like it could of been an oversight and so hopefully ruin get's buffed for SCH or they give back energy drain preferably with a new name and animation.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

3 - Do you...Not keep Excog up on the tanks basically all the time if in combat? Have I been doing this wrong?

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An excog per pull in dungeons makes sense but for raiding if you excog on cooldown (ish) you're pretty much doing it wrong yes. You should cycle through all your other free ogcd options before excog. Including your co healer ogcds since those don't actually have a cost (unlike excog). So that's fey union, rouse + embrace, whispering dawn if the timing is right for party heals, your cohealer's full ogcd options. If none of those are available (on cooldown / healers running a mechanic) or work for the upcoming damage pattern then excog is the go to.

Worth mentioning that by "wrong" I mean you probably have room for improvement. Excog on cooldown is going to be a waste but if you throw excog out 3-4 times in a fight instead of a potential once or twice it's not going to be a big deal. And probably not really worth your peace of mind.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

So something I just noticed, besides all of these threads that keep appearing, take the hint SE, anyways. Something I noticed is how SCH has the lowest single target spell until they reach level 54. Ruin is worth 100, to Malefic's 150, and Stone 2's 200. Our DoT doesnt even make up the full difference once theirs are upgraded. Truthfully, this is me just being sore about losing my DoTs, but there is something there I know it.

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Ruin II has been buffed to 200 potency in the media tour build. It's learned at level 38.
The only reason to use Ruin instead of Ruin II when you get it would be because Ruin II cost 200 more MP. But that shouldn't be an issue.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

1 - Don't forget they nerfed Embrace as well, and if the faerie scales as well as it has the past few expansions *cough*not at all*cough* it'll just be worse. But who knows, maybe they'll fix the scaling!
2 - I'm not going to comment on the DPS. I'm not a fan, and that's all I will say.
3 - Do you...Not keep Excog up on the tanks basically all the time if in combat? Have I been doing this wrong?

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If you have excog on all the time you are probably wasting so many of them... So yeah.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

If you have excog on all the time you are probably wasting so many of them... So yeah.

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I wouldn't say it's a waste, since it's healing something, at the worst every 45s. If the tank doesn't fall below 50%, you at least helped top them off. It's not like it does nothing anymore when the duration ends.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Ruin II has been buffed to 200 potency in the media tour build. It's learned at level 38.
The only reason to use Ruin instead of Ruin II when you get it would be because Ruin II cost 200 more MP. But that shouldn't be an issue.

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Ruin II is buffed to 200 potency at level 72, which is also when you get Broil III. Bit it was mostly about less DPSing power in low level dungeons prior to getting Broil

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Ruin II has been buffed to 200 potency in the media tour build. It's learned at level 38.
The only reason to use Ruin instead of Ruin II when you get it would be because Ruin II cost 200 more MP. But that shouldn't be an issue.

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Ruin II is now buffed by 40 potency every time Ruin/Broil gets an upgrade. So it will be 80/120/160/200 potency.
Ruin/Broil will be superior to Ruin II outside of the need for weaving oGCDs or movement.

I've just watched a video of the new SCH skills again and noticed that the faerie will cast Embrace whenever someone has lost any HP. Or is that wrong?
It was Mr. Happy's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pj8QJa-pYA (I just randomly clicked on one of the 5.0 SCH videos)
Whenever Thancred didn't have full HP, he would receive an Embrace heal (or whoever had the least HP at that time, like Alisaie).
I haven't read this anywhere yet, but I think it's kind of weird. Embrace is weaker than before, but having it heal someone as soon as they are at 99% HP? It's going to overheal A LOT.

In theory you can still force embrace to hit the right target. Overhealing isn't bad as long as it doesn't cost real resources. You always thought of old Eos as basically a superior single target regen for the MT by using macros that you could move in emergency, and in that scenario hypothetical overheal was fine. If the tank is tanking correctly, someone else taking some damage shouldn't matter until they drop lower than the tank. If that happens AND the tank is in danger, its probably time to pop an aetherflow or some mana to heal anyway.

I think the greater problem is that its really clunky. I would vastly prefer to be able to just permanently assign Eos a 'dance partner' than to have to use positioning, and if we can't have that I would prefer macros to positioning. The outcome likely will be the same or mostly the same, it will just be harder and more annoying.

I was only thinking that now that the faerie can't be targeted anymore, all aggro will directed to the SCH. Not tht it's much of a problem. I just noticed it.

A dungeon scenario (because they exist): So while before the faerie wouldn't cast Embrace while you where running when you were following the tank doing a mass-pull, she does that now and if the tank misses a target or is bad or the enemy can't be targeted yet but is already on the aggro list (like in Ghimlyt Dark), the enemies will run to the SCH. It was controllable before by not healing the tank during a pull. Now it is not.
I know it doesn't matter much, especially if the tank isn't bad and so on and so forth. It just came to mind that it MAY happen more often now, because the Faerie will probably spam Embrace on the tank all the time. Or maybe she will still not cast while moving?

I'm not doing that many raids and when I do them I'm not really going for optimal play. I'm still trying my best BUT didn't even have Embrace on my main two cross hotbars anymore. So I rarely manually used it anyway, mostly only to trigger Divine Veil without having to use a GCD heal, or things like that. So I'm really fine with not being able to control it anymore. I just wondered if it's really necessary to have it automatically cast on 99% HP.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

Ruin II is buffed to 200 potency at level 72, which is also when you get Broil III. Bit it was mostly about less DPSing power in low level dungeons prior to getting Broil

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Damn, you're right. I skipped Broil Mastery III as simply I assumed it just made Broil II into Broil III.
So yeah, SCH will definitly be weak DPS wise for most of its early leveling. I hope it's an oversight.
Good catch.

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Originally Posted by Legion88

Ruin II is now buffed by 40 potency every time Ruin/Broil gets an upgrade. So it will be 80/120/160/200 potency.
Ruin/Broil will be superior to Ruin II outside of the need for weaving oGCDs or movement.

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I quickly (might have missed something) checked gamerescape, MTQcapture, Mr.Happy, Larryzaur, Reddit media tour, and none of them went into full details about traits. I just noticed reddit mentionned the Lv.72 trait and that's about it. I had to check a french media for the full info.

Regarding the numbers you gave me, the french outlet I checked had different ones, starting with 100 at Lv.38, 140 at Lv.54 with Broil Mastery I, 170 at Lv.64 with Broil Mastery II, and finally 200 at Lv.72 with Broil Mastery III. Though it was text and not screenshots.
Would you mind sharing your source? It might be differences between the NA and EU build, which would indicate that this stuff is still being under some changes.

Edit: No, it's not differences between builds. Here's Reddit's screenshot of their video on the subject, and Ruin II does seem to start at 100 pot. It's also in their text script for their video:

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Ruin II gets buffed from 100 to 200 potency through traits, making it even better for weaving.

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Still didn't find any detail regarding the inbetween levels though.

Final Edit:

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Originally Posted by Legion88

The linked video from MTQ goes over every trait and the Broil Mastery Traits set the potency for Ruin II to 140/170/200 potency.
So yeah i had the wrong numbers in my head and i also didn't find the base potency for Ruin II.
I'm sorry.

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Yeah, it seems I skipped to quickly. It was the third one I checked and started to get impatient.
Whatever the case, the final verdict was that Eloah was right saying that SCH would be pretty weak in terms of DPS for its early leveling.

Some of you probably noticed - in gameplay footage, Alphinaud’s carbuncle deals damage, and he himself uses Tri-Disaster...as a Scholar...and he heals juuuust fine! Can we have THAT version of SCH?

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

If you have excog on all the time you are probably wasting so many of them... So yeah.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

An excog per pull in dungeons makes sense but for raiding if you excog on cooldown (ish) you're pretty much doing it wrong yes. You should cycle through all your other free ogcd options before excog. Including your co healer ogcds since those don't actually have a cost (unlike excog). So that's fey union, rouse + embrace, whispering dawn if the timing is right for party heals, your cohealer's full ogcd options. If none of those are available (on cooldown / healers running a mechanic) or work for the upcoming damage pattern then excog is the go to.

Worth mentioning that by "wrong" I mean you probably have room for improvement. Excog on cooldown is going to be a waste but if you throw excog out 3-4 times in a fight instead of a potential once or twice it's not going to be a big deal. And probably not really worth your peace of mind.

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In reply to these, I don't tend to automatically think in terms of raids since I don't run them all that actively. I was thinking dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

I quickly (might have missed something) checked gamerescape, MTQcapture, Mr.Happy, Larryzaur, Reddit media tour, and none of them went into full details about traits. I just noticed reddit mentionned the Lv.72 trait and that's about it. I had to check a french media for the full info.

Regarding the numbers you gave me, the french outlet I checked had different ones, starting with 100 at Lv.38, 140 at Lv.54 with Broil Mastery I, 170 at Lv.64 with Broil Mastery II, and finally 200 at Lv.72 with Broil Mastery III. Though it was text and not screenshots.
Would you mind sharing your source? It might be differences between the NA and EU build, which would indicate that this stuff is still being under some changes.

Edit: No, it's not differences between builds. Here's Reddit's screenshot of their video on the subject, and Ruin II does seem to start at 100 pot. It's also in their text script for their video: Still didn't find any detail regarding the inbetween levels though.

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The linked video from MTQ goes over every trait and the Broil Mastery Traits set the potency for Ruin II to 140/170/200 potency.
So yeah i had the wrong numbers in my head and i also didn't find the base potency for Ruin II.
I'm sorry.

I honestly think if they just return energy drain to sch we will be in good shape. It will just be a little boring to play.
The reason I started playing sch is because I was bored of the simplicity of whm. So much for that.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

I honestly think if they just return energy drain to sch we will be in good shape. It will just be a little boring to play.
The reason I started playing sch is because I was bored of the simplicity of whm. So much for that.

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Yeah energy drain loss was pretty large, not just for the sake of MP and small damage but the job actually had an "opportunity cost" for spending Aetherflow.

Now the hard rotation will be Soil, Excog/Indom, Soil, Soil....until your eyes bleed.

Yeah that's for sure. Debating going to play a tank or dps. They got all the fun toys this expansion while ours were taken away.

That's a factor in my decision too, as the healer exodus could be interesting. The lack of a new job in four years, then homogenizing the jobs, and if they don't uplift the healer difficulty of raids significantly it's going to be boring and bleak.

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Originally Posted by technole

Yeah energy drain loss was pretty large, not just for the sake of MP and small damage but the job actually had an "opportunity cost" for spending Aetherflow.

Now the hard rotation will be Soil, Excog/Indom, Soil, Soil....until your eyes bleed.

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Yeah, the use of GCD will become rarer than ever for the duo healers.

Why is dissipation still a thing when we're getting more fairy reliant skills and loosing out on energy drain? Slap a 20% magic damage on that sucker or something... good lord, rarely used for yet another expac...

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Why is dissipation still a thing when we're getting more fairy reliant skills and loosing out on energy drain? Slap a 20% magic damage on that sucker or something... good lord, rarely used for yet another expac...

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We lose the aetherflow trait that reduces the cooldown by 5s everytime we use an aetherflow skill. Meaning it might actually be used now, especially with the fairy coming back after it's done.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

We lose the aetherflow trait that reduces the cooldown by 5s everytime we use an aetherflow skill. Meaning it might actually be used now, especially with the fairy coming back after it's done.

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We also lose the ability to build fairie guage while it is unsummoned, yayyy :D /s oh and it doesn't affect our aetherflow spells with the healing increase as they are abilities and not magicks lmao

Actually start to think that it could be fun to solo heal more content in 5.0.
4-men dungeon are probably going to be boring but 8-men content could be a bit more exciting as a solo healer :)

Aetherflow abilities might be important enough that eating your fairy makes sense, assuming healing costs are going to be 'WoWified' and healing has a 3:4 mana percentage used-Hp percentage healed ratio outside of outliers like maintenance regens. If you internalize how little healing that gives you, you might find you seriously need to just blow through all your aetherflow, your fairy spells, and then eat that fairy for another emergency aetherflow+low manacost boosted physic spam if you miss-managed mana at any point. The piety changes have the potential to make misuse of mana significantly less forgiving.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

I honestly think if they just return energy drain to sch we will be in good shape. It will just be a little boring to play.
The reason I started playing sch is because I was bored of the simplicity of whm. So much for that.

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They can't really put it back.
The removal of Energy Drain (and Bane) goes inline with the new tools WHM received in the form of Afflatus skills. The goal was to make healers be able to heal without sacrificing DPS (or not much). Both changes to WHM and SCH achieve that.
The only difference is that in order to make it work, WHM received new stuff, while SCH got their removed. Feels bad, but in the end, both can now press more healing buttons without feeling bad about it. And, to be honest, it should've been like that a long time ago.

The only way to go forward but still keep Energy Drain would be to make it not cost Aetherflow. Just a standard oGCD for MP and DPS to weave with Biolysis/Ruin II. Because putting it back and let it cost Aetherflow would go against the idea that healers shouldn't feel bad for using their healing tools.
Could you imagine if Assize healed the enemy and cost MP instead of dealing damage and restoring MP? That's pretty much what it feels like every time you'd spend an aetherflow stack on something that wasn't Energy Drain (or Bane).

Whatever the case, now it lies within SE to tune encounter design in a way that pressing these buttons is relevant. And also to add more interesting stuff in healer's kit related to that new paradigm (probably in 6.0, and hopefuly with a new healer). SCH have to swallow the pill in the meantime.

Oh and, if you ask about AST: I don't have a clue as to what happened to them. Maybe SE thought that they were doing okay regarding "they can heal and not feel bad about it"? Like, giving ED a second stack, having ES, CU and CO might be good enough somehow. I just still don't really understand the huge CU nerf given that Asylum and more importantly Sacred Soil received buffs. But as they say "potencies may be changed" so... /schrug

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Whatever the case, now it lies within SE to tune encounter design in a way that pressing these buttons is relevant. And also to add more interesting stuff in healer's kit related to that new paradigm (probably in 6.0, and hopefuly with a new healer). SCH have to swallow the pill in the meantime.

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I feel like this isn't the type of pill we are meant to swallow.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Oh and, if you ask about AST: I don't have a clue as to what happened to them. Maybe SE thought that they were doing okay regarding "they can heal and not feel bad about it"? Like, giving ED a second stack, having ES, CU and CO might be good enough somehow. I just still don't really understand the huge CU nerf given that Asylum and more importantly Sacred Soil received buffs. But as they say "potencies may be changed" so... /schrug

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I always thought Earthly Star was AST's analogue to Asylum and Sacred Soil since it came out. I suppose the other skill (Is it CU?) from AST may fit more closely for sure now, though.

Not gonna lie, I'm a little worried about the SCH changes. It seems like WHM got more fun toys and SCH's fun toys got taken away .... I might switch back to WHM for the first time since ARR. We shall see.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

I feel like this isn't the type of pill we are meant to swallow.

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I can't help you dealing with it, I mostly play Warrior and we go in panic mode the very second we see that we aren't the best.
But I'm pretty sure we could ask a BRD, MCH or SMN to give a TED talk on "How I somehow survived big changes that almost killed my job". These guys have some experience in the field.

Edit: Soz, I forgot to include the bit about AST when it actually was the serious part of the post I made... Dunno what happened with my copy/paste.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

I always thought Earthly Star was AST's analogue to Asylum and Sacred Soil since it came out. I suppose the other skill (Is it CU?) from AST may fit more closely for sure now, though.

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Yeah, but even if AST already as the tools to achieve that "not feeling bad about healing" I was talking about, there is still some weird stuff going on there with them.
Firstly, I'm worried about are potencies and cooldowns (I know they might change, but still). Like, Collective Unconscious is 50 pot for 15s (250 total pot), and Celestial Opposition is 100 base potency with 60pot/15s regen (400 total pot including initial heal) or 150% barrier... but with a 2mn cooldown on it.
Secondly, Horoscope and Neutral sect still rely on GCDs to be effective, and they don't have some kind of Afflatus Misery mechanic to make up for it. So I'm not really sure what was the intent here.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

I can't help you dealing with it, I mostly play Warrior and we go in panic mode the very second we see that we aren't the best.
But I'm pretty sure we could ask a BRD, MCH or SMN to give a TED talk on "How I somehow survived big changes that almost killed my job". These guys have some experience in the field.

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Eh, I'm waiting to see where it goes. It's not as if I don't have leveled tanks or DPS to run with if it ends up too boring, and I'm one of the healers that has the most fun when things start going south and I still keep everyone going. There is potential for this to work out. Just...We have to hope it does, and that everything pre-Shadowbringers doesn't turn off potential new healers.