Scholar Rework Idea

A couple of months ago I got curious to see how the community is feeling about the Scholar class in general and what they hoped to see changed for 6.0. I stumbled upon a myriad of reworks and decided to make my own and share it with the community.

In-depth Rework Idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...?usp=sharing11

Brief Overview and Summary

Goals with the Rework
Give adequate weave space so the Scholar isn't punished for healing how they should
Make healer class resources for healing only without a DPS outlet
Spice up the DPS rotation slightly
Encourage the use of the entire healing kit
Improve parties with two Scholars

Remove Aetherflow System
Revamp the Fairy Gauge to replace the Aetherflow System. Aetherpact gives 60 Fairy Gauge every minute and each embrace cast gives 2 for a total of 100 every minute.
Lustrate costs 20 Fairy Gauge and Indomitability costs 40.
Fey Union costs 10 every time HP is restored.
Fey Blessing changed to an AoE channel like Fey Union that restores 125 potency every server tick. Costs 10 Fey Gauge every server tick.
Dissipation changed to remove 20 Fairy Gauge while giving 15% MP.
Sacred Soil and Excogitation no longer have any cost associated with them, but 15 second longer cooldowns.

Shielding Rework
Adloquium only shields for 700 potency. Succor only shields for 350 potency. No HP is restored. MP Costs reduced. Adlo no longer gains a bonus when crit.
Emergency Tactics available when Succor is learned. Reduced cooldown to 5 seconds.
Galvanize overwrites Nocturnal Field in every instance.

Fairy Rework
Reintroduce cast time to Embrace, and any ability interrupts the cast. (Basically revert to Stormblood)
Remove Pet Scaling
New Skill: Fey Covenant. Fairy will heal person with Fey Covenant exclusively until at 90% HP or higher. Can be used on non-party members.
Return difference between Eos and Selene. Eos has Whispering Dawn and Fey Illumination (10% increase in all healing). Selene has Fey Gift (400 potency shield on party) and Fey Illusion (AoE buff reducing damage taken by 10%)

Demolition Tactics
120 s cooldown which changes Broil to Meltdown, Bio/Biolysis to Sepsis and Art of War to Ruination
In single-target situations, worth a bonus of 600 potency at level 60, 850 potency at 70 and 1050 at 80.

Other Minor Edits
Return Miasma as an Instant-Cast DoT with potency equivalent to Broil. Gives the Scholar more free weaving space.
Recitation changes Adloquium and Succor to instant-cast abilities with no MP cost and they do not trigger the global cooldown.
Seraph has two skills with 1 charge each. Consolation which heals 500 potency and Ordination which shields for 500 potency.
Sacred Soil no longer heals, but gives a healing received bonus from all sources.

A more in-depth discussion of why I decided on these changes can be found in the link.

If some of these ideas were incorporated in 6.0, I would be one very happy Scholar. But here's to hoping towards any positive change at all!

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Originally Posted by Pandatwin

A couple of months ago I got curious to see how the community is feeling about the Scholar class in general and what they hoped to see changed for 6.0. I stumbled upon a myriad of reworks and decided to make my own and share it with the community.

Because the rework ended up being long, I typed it up and placed it in a google doc rather than span multiple forum posts.

The Rework Idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...?usp=sharing11

If some of these ideas were incorporated in 6.0, I would be one very happy Scholar. But here's to hoping towards any positive change at all!

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Disclaimer: I've only skimmed over the document.

I stopped around the Aetherflow changes and I'll explain why. Two things:
1) Aetherflow has a dps cost. If you remove ED like was the case at the start of the expansion good scholars would just not use Aetherflow at all unless they absolutely needed to (to avoid the DPS cost). Your proposed solution to replace Aetherflow with something to build gauge will be the same, actually even worse because you moved some heals to timers only so you don't even need gauge for that. In other words a "non-DPS tool to prevent overcapping" would be as useless as stormblood lilies were on whm. There are barely any scenarios where it would be optimized play to lose dps in order to hit that button. Mana is not a good reason since even with 0 piety you shouldn't run out when optimized.
2) Management of resources (DPS vs Healing) is a key component of sch gameplay. It's what makes it different from the other healers. Giving us another equivalent to lilies (albeit slightly different) is not an acceptable solution when we want healers to be more distinct, not more homogenized.

ED and aetherflow stacks are a great mechanic, we can argue about the implementation and having skills gated by timers and resources. But overall it's a good thing. It gives you something to think about and the idea that SCHs "do everything to spend it on ED" doesn't mean they spend them all on ED. There's a subtle nuance there that makes up a huge chunk of the fun factor for SCH gameplay. "do I have enough stacks for this next mechanic?" "whoops I used one stack too many, how am I going to cover the healing here", "maybe I should save a stack here for movement later", "maybe I can move healing around to keep an extra stack for ED?" etc. etc.

In addition to that, these changes can't be made for SCH in a vacuum. The most important part of healer balance is healer synergies and healing priorities (like how AST should ogcd before SCH fairy skills, and SCH should aetherflow heal before AST GCDs). Some of your changes like the additional dot is something I think would be great but it does affect the aforementioned synergies and is an idea that needs to be laid out with the context of how it affects healer combinations.

Simply solution give the dots back and make the fairy the old stormblood fairy again

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Originally Posted by Mortex

Simply solution give the dots back and make the fairy the old stormblood fairy again

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While this would already improve matters a lot, since we're talking about reworks I think Adlo needs some love as well. Outside of prog really early into the tier it barely has any uses, simply because the opportunity cost is often higher than the value you get out of it. In dungeons it's even more useless, you maybe do an adlo pre-pull on the tank and maybe a downtime adlo if there is nothing else to do mid fight.
The same can be said for Succor, feels just as weak for the GCD you have to spend but atleast it has the added benefit of giving you a predictable amount of party-wide shielding.

I think healers deserve to have at least more than double their current amount of dps skills (10-12 in number). While Squeenix and the casuals of FFXIX enjoy preaching the gospel of the pure healer, as long as this game remains as easy and as predictable as it is, there is no need for one ( pure healers should also f*** off from PvP).

As for the matter of Scholar, in my opinion, the best way to the Job interesting would be to build MORE on the pet factor, with both of them gaining access to Spirit Magic from FF: tactics ( Selene gets Dps skills and Eos gets utility and healing spells) which could be tied to the fey gauge. The Scholar himself should have on the other hand, have a proper core ability build in which i name just analysis here (placeholder name), which allows the Scholar to cast his Spells from the Fairies Position (Line of sight doesn't need to be maintained) which would last for arround 30 seconds or so (5 Min Cooldown) while having additionally spells that influence the offensive spirit magic spells from the Fairy and DoTs/debuffs for the Scholar himself.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

While this would already improve matters a lot, since we're talking about reworks I think Adlo needs some love as well. Outside of prog really early into the tier it barely has any uses, simply because the opportunity cost is often higher than the value you get out of it. In dungeons it's even more useless, you maybe do an adlo pre-pull on the tank and maybe a downtime adlo if there is nothing else to do mid fight.
The same can be said for Succor, feels just as weak for the GCD you have to spend but atleast it has the added benefit of giving you a predictable amount of party-wide shielding.

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Yeah in that regard you are right but it’s pretty sad how like 2 small changes would make the job fun again

We mostly agree EaMett, and I believe if you read more closely you'll find the rework actually does fit what you're saying.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Your proposed solution to replace Aetherflow with something to build gauge will be the same, actually even worse because you moved some heals to timers only so you don't even need gauge for that. In other words a "non-DPS tool to prevent overcapping" would be as useless as stormblood lilies were on whm. There are barely any scenarios where it would be optimized play to lose dps in order to hit that button.

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My non-DPS tool to prevent overcapping has 0 DPS cost whatsoever, and without Aetherflow to return 10% MP every minute and Energy Drain to give you 5% MP, an MP regeneration tool needed to be present. This was my solution, but there might be better ways to implement this.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

There's a subtle nuance there that makes up a huge chunk of the fun factor for SCH gameplay. "do I have enough stacks for this next mechanic?" "whoops I used one stack too many, how am I going to cover the healing here", "maybe I should save a stack here for movement later", "maybe I can move healing around to keep an extra stack for ED?"

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I believe my Fairy Gauge maintains this gameplay. Where can I spend my gauge without overhealing that will leave me with enough for when I need it? Do I have time to let the fairy channel skills heal them to full, or do I need the HP now? Planning when and where to use which healing move and best maneuver the gauge would feel like a more rewarding system rather than "How am I going to use these 3 stacks in the next minute?"

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I think Adlo needs some love as well. Outside of prog really early into the tier it barely has any uses, simply because the opportunity cost is often higher than the value you get out of it.

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The problem with shielding is general is that it's too expensive for too little and almost impossible to use 100% effectively. Removing the healing aspect and making Adlo and Succor only shield makes it so much easier to use them effectively. Take a look at Recitation, I think it would give shielding a lot of much-needed love.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

make the fairy the old stormblood fairy again

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Basically a given haha.

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Originally Posted by Pandatwin

I believe my Fairy Gauge maintains this gameplay. Where can I spend my gauge without overhealing that will leave me with enough for when I need it? Do I have time to let the fairy channel skills heal them to full, or do I need the HP now? Planning when and where to use which healing move and best maneuver the gauge would feel like a more rewarding system rather than "How am I going to use these 3 stacks in the next minute?"

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Then it's on me and I promise to take a closer look when I have time.

For the gauge, what you're describing is just resource management and not resource tradeoff. It might seem pedantic of me to make the distinction but there's an immediate and obvious risk/reward mechanic involved in the latter. It's also easily quantifiable compared to a gauge. And again, this is really not any different from just having another mana bar or something. Can't exactly say I find that engaging.
The gauge also already feels like a tacked-on afterthought. I personally think they should go the other way. The next expansion would be a great time to limited gauge generation to ED and find a fine balance where we need to decide to build fairy gauge for lesser heals or use stacks for heavier heals.

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Originally Posted by Pandatwin

The problem with shielding is general is that it's too expensive for too little and almost impossible to use 100% effectively. Removing the healing aspect and making Adlo and Succor only shield makes it so much easier to use them effectively. Take a look at Recitation, I think it would give shielding a lot of much-needed love.

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Even with Recitation you're looking at the choice of 1. using it for a big single-target shield which still requires you to actually cast it or 2. using it on a free Excogitation or Indomitability which frees up 1 extra Aetherflow stack and doesn't cost you a GCD...if you ask me there isn't even really a choice.

And I would argue that there was an interesting aspect to Adlo before, being able to spread your big single-target shield to the whole group. You would essentially be gambling with your GCDs on whether or not Adlo crit so that you could completely negate the next or even several next raid-wide aoes and therefore save healing resources and potentially GCDs in the future. Obviously this is not an option as long as Recitation guarantees a crit on Adlo.

I am actually quite fond of this revamp, as much as I love Aetherflow and Energy Drain it is unfortunately a rather degenerate design. I really appreciate the depth you went into regarding this and how you revamped the dps to allow for lossless healing without it directly competing with your ability to heal. After seeing the fallout of the discussions of the 5.4 revamp I'm in full support of systems that remove Aetherflow and put a higher emphasis on the Fae Guage.

I'm in favor of keeping aetherflow, I like the mechanic and the lore behind it. I just think there's an issue with Energy Drain and Aetherflow healing being a tradeoff because people will always try to not use aetherflow healing for more DPS. If the devs want people to use aetherflow healing more, I think the best bet is to make aetherflow healing sacrifice less DPS or cost no DPS to encourage its usage - in other words, separate Energy Drain from consuming aetherflow and Ruin II/other weave skill not a DPS loss to use constantly for healing. However, there must be a mechanic where extra aetherflow stacks will be consumed if not used for healing currently, or otherwise we would have the same issue as 5.0 Scholar where there would be times healing is not needed and scholars have aetherflow charges not being used. I don't see this issue fixed by 5.0 so maybe 6.0?

In that regard, why not just have extra Aetherflow stacks become a faerie-specific aetherflow charge? As of now, the Faerie Gauge is only used for Fey Union and Fey Blessing, which usually leads to overcapping Fey Gauge. After all, Fey Blessing is used every 60 seconds to consume 10 Gauge and Fey Union only gets benefit when you don't interrupt the tether (except you have Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Dissipation, and Summon Seraph that all interrupt the Fey Union tether). This would lead to the situation where the Fey Union skill either consume a lot of Faerie Gauge or none at all. I don't think we need more aetherflow skills that give more Faerie Gauge. In fact, I rather these two skills get removed and we get a skill that converts some Fey Gauge into a faerie specific aetherflow charge skill instead.

As for Faerie Specific Aetherflow charge skills, you can consume a charge to activate your own version of Whispering Dawn / Consolation. The key point is that this version isn't reliant on the Faerie activating this skill, but the scholar itself activating this skill. I think this change would allow Dissipation to be used more for actually healing as even though the faerie disappears, the scholar will still be able to access some strong faerie healing abilities in addition to their own aetherflow healing abilities while having more complexity in the aetherflow system for what aetherflow skill best suits the situation now.

This change however, still doesn't change the fact that scholar is lacking non-punishing weave windows and more ways to attack other than Broil III and Biolysis. After all, if it still takes a weave window to move resources around and the only option to weave is a consistent loss of DPS, people will still try to avoid using it entirely. In this regard, I hope they give some more DPS skills instead of just making Ruin II less DPS punishing.

I have a simple and great fix for Energy Drain.
Instead of costing Aetherflow stack, it should cost Fairy gauge.

So people will use all their Aetherflow stacks on healing (which should please Yoshida).
Fairy Gauge will become very useful (adjust Fey Blessing and Aetherpact to give them more weight to be competitive with Energy Drain).
SCH is rewarded by using his heal giving him an access to more dps.
Dissipation will become also more rewarding to use.

Note : Fairy gauge will appear at the same level as Energy Drain then.

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

I have a simple and great fix for Energy Drain.
Instead of costing Aetherflow stack, it should cost Fairy gauge.

So people will use all their Aetherflow stacks on healing (which should please Yoshida).
Fairy Gauge will become very useful (adjust Fey Blessing and Aetherpact to give them more weight to be competitive with Energy Drain).
SCH is rewarded by using his heal giving him an access to more dps.
Dissipation will become also more rewarding to use.

Note : Fairy gauge will appear at the same level as Energy Drain then.

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There is a very small problem with that design. If ED costs fairy gauge instead of aetherflow then you won't actually have anything to spend said aetherflow on until level 50 and therefore nothing to generate fairy gauge.

So what the devs want is for people to use Aetherflow to heal, but with how the damage patterns are designed it's inevitable that in most content that you'll need a way to dump excess aetherflow and thus not need to heal fully with it? I get loving it from the perspective of "it's fun to trade off healing for damage" because I agree that is fun, in a game with more demand thrown on their healers that's actually an engaging risk vs reward mechanic, but this isn't that kind of game. "trade off healing for damage" will always inevitably devolve into "rarely heal always damage" with how scripted fights are. At this point they might as well scrap the mechanic since the devs are never going to be happy with it because of the dissonance that exists between players and the devs.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

There is a very small problem with that design. If ED costs fairy gauge instead of aetherflow then you won't actually have anything to spend said aetherflow on until level 50 and therefore nothing to generate fairy gauge.

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Hmm, Lustrate ?

If this change happens, the potency of some healing actions should be lowered to compensate.

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Originally Posted by Ceasaria

Hmm, Lustrate ?

If this change happens, the potency of some healing actions should be lowered to compensate.

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Yeah, nevermind. I forgot that they changed all 3 skills, ED, AF and Lustrate to level 45 now.

In my opinion Aetherflow should be restored to Arcanist regardless with it and Energy Drain would be learned at level 10 for both Scholar and Summoner. I don’t see why the skill should ever be removed either. It can be indirectly nerfed by the weave tax on Ruin II, but I also feel Ruin II should also be buffed to make it more appropriate to weave Energy Drain by itself instead of clipping it as its used currently.

What I’d prefer to do is add another DPS oGCD to weave alongside heals that doesn’t consume Aetherflow but keys off of it. Something like a 30s, 3 charge, 300 potency Ability that has its Cooldown reduced by 5s every time the SCH uses a healing spell or action or spends Fey Gauge. This also indirectly nerfs Energy Drain but doesn’t discourage using it or make it feel less impactful. Between a 240 potency Ruin II and that every Energy Drain’s effectively losing 100 potency, making the initial 150 potency more justifiable.

gonna post a bit of what i wrote on another thread here:

sch is becoming my fav healer in term of how actively engage it can be. broil when standing still and ruin2 to weave and movement.
totally love art of war too, for it being an instant cast. so good in expert dungeon. since the recent 2 expert dungeon's trash mob aoe dont hit for much, i just stand in the middle of the pack without moving out of aoe and just art of war all day and use aoe heal ogcd if i ever need heals.

i really love the sch kit right now but i do have a few complains. 1st, sch mp can dip pretty low if like dps isnt doing their job and trash mobs isnt dying fast enough. thus spending alot of mp doing art of war. 2nd, death feels way more punish compare to the other 2 healers due to mp regen (i kinds been using lucid on cd to keep mp up and it might be in cd when i die making it harder to recover after res) and needing to summon fairy for using some of those ogcd heal ablilities after being res.
they need to make summoning fairy be instant like summoner instead of cast time. and make energy drain gain a bit more mp or something.
3rd, god please they need to up lustrate heal potency. its just way too weak for the amount of hp tank has now. now i just use excog for ppl that have low hp. way better use of aetherflow than lustrate.
back in 2.x, sch was my main because lustrate was a 30% hp heal. hw changed it (i switched to whm because it still got bene and also tetra), it was fine for back when hp wasnt that high. now with tanks hitting 200k hp, the lustrate potency heal is way way weak.

as many suggested, they do need to rework the fairy guage usage.
in dungeon, there is times i really dont even need to use it for fairy tether and its at 100. and when i do want to use it, it might not be full. so il say the guage resource usage/management need some rework to make better use of it.

as for 6.0, i kinda hope they have some kind of new ability that can refresh the cd of some abilities (excog or indom?? or even fey illum?). akind to summoner dreadwyrm stance refrshing tridiaster.

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Originally Posted by Komaru_Tatoro

gonna post a bit of what i wrote on another thread here:

sch is becoming my fav healer in term of how actively engage it can be. broil when standing still and ruin2 to weave and movement.
totally love art of war too, for it being an instant cast. so good in expert dungeon. since the recent 2 expert dungeon's trash mob aoe dont hit for much, i just stand in the middle of the pack without moving out of aoe and just art of war all day and use aoe heal ogcd if i ever need heals.

i really love the sch kit right now but i do have a few complains. 1st, sch mp can dip pretty low if like dps isnt doing their job and trash mobs isnt dying fast enough. thus spending alot of mp doing art of war. 2nd, death feels way more punish compare to the other 2 healers due to mp regen (i kinds been using lucid on cd to keep mp up and it might be in cd when i die making it harder to recover after res) and needing to summon fairy for using some of those ogcd heal ablilities after being res.
they need to make summoning fairy be instant like summoner instead of cast time. and make energy drain gain a bit more mp or something.
3rd, god please they need to up lustrate heal potency. its just way too weak for the amount of hp tank has now. now i just use excog for ppl that have low hp. way better use of aetherflow than lustrate.
back in 2.x, sch was my main because lustrate was a 30% hp heal. hw changed it (i switched to whm because it still got bene and also tetra), it was fine for back when hp wasnt that high. now with tanks hitting 200k hp, the lustrate potency heal is way way weak.

as many suggested, they do need to rework the fairy guage usage.
in dungeon, there is times i really dont even need to use it for fairy tether and its at 100. and when i do want to use it, it might not be full. so il say the guage resource usage/management need some rework to make better use of it.

as for 6.0, i kinda hope they have some kind of new ability that can refresh the cd of some abilities (excog or indom?? or even fey illum?). akind to summoner dreadwyrm stance refrshing tridiaster.

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Interesting, SCH is no longer my favourite healer and you just listed some of the reasons why. Some of those reasons would not even be necessarily difficult to fix , but that are very annoying (such as fairy summoning after death).

I would hope that they don't look at the summoner for inspiration - I do realize that summoner is an effective job however it fulfills a different purpose, it is definitely more complex (some would argue it's not ever well done , since it changes so much as well levelling too), and I wouldn't want most of its design principles introduced into SCH.