SCH concept changes

Continuation of my other post for AST.

• Dissipation

Just make it affect all HP recovery via healing actions, even if it means reducing it to 15%. I generally just don't like this ability to begin with in the first place tbh.

• Energy Drain

Rather than using Aetherflow, it mimics Summoner to help streamline the differences between them and free up a button;

Energy Drain (60s);
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 300 for the first enemy, and 60% less for all remaining enemies.
Additional effect: Aetherflow III
Additional effect: Restores 20% of maximum MP.

• Fey Union

Allow it to be cast on enemies to deal a little bit of damage rather than heal, or afflict a damage debuff/incoming dmg buff for allies, as to give sch more opportunities to spend fey gauge.

• Gap Closer

While it was a consideration for a while, playing Sage and having Icarus at my disposal really cemented the thought that other healers should have one too, if only for the convenience of keeping up with a running party. Nevermind the mechanical benefit.

• Recitation

Duration increased from 15s to 30s, and reduces the cast time of Adlo and Succor by 2.5s. Recast time increased from 90s to 120s and give it 2 charges.

• Selene

Separate Selene from Eos;
Fey Action 1 (60s cd) becomes Whispering Dawn for Eos, and Gentle Caress for Selene
Fey Action 2 (120s cd) becomes Fey Illumination for Eos, and Fey Wind for Selene
Seraph imitates the Fey Actions of the faerie that is active when Summon Seraph is used.

Gentle Caress;
Gradually generates a barrier around all nearby party members that lasts for 3s after Gentle Caress ends.
Potency: 50
Duration: 21s

Fey Wind;
Afflicts all nearby enemies with Paralysis.
Duration: 20s

Fey Union;
Gradually restores HP of party member with which Selene has a Fey Union.
Cure Potency: 100
Additional effect: Erects a magicked barrier which nullifies damage equaling 150% (180% at lv. 85) of the amount of HP restored.

• Tactics

Since scholar fundamentally plays around with its shields more than sage, I figured it could do with more variety. For example;

Exploitation Tactics (90s CD);
Grants Volatize with the next Galvanize status.
Duration: 15s
Volatize effect: Deal unaspected damage to attacking enemies equal to 20% of damage suffered to Galvanize effect.
Additional effect: Grants Vulcanize with the next Catalyze status.
Duration: 15s
Vulcanize effect: Deal unaspected damage to attacking enemies equal to 10% of damage suffered to Galvanize effect.

You know what, that doesn’t sound bad at all. Sacrifice a button and consolidate to energy drain with a big nuke w/ a fall off. Gets rid of the bloat.

Nah on the gap closer, expedient is good enough.

Hmm, don’t want them to change recitation. They can just change the code to make Aldo/succor instant…..but increase the MP as a trade off.

The fey union change….the shield can work, but will have to nerf the cure potency as a trade off.

just doing quick maths cos I like the sound of some of these ideas, particularly the last one, my broil does around 9.5k, and my succor does around 4.8k, making a shield of 7.7k (ish). If we were to use this move on succor, I assume it'd apply the Volatize status to every player? In which case, it'd do (7700 / 5) * 8 damage, which would be like 12k. Which is fine by me, it fully refunds the lost broil, but I guess the problem is that if it's a dps gain in any way, it'd be expected to use it on CD for logs like Earthly Star. Though, with a 30s duration on shields, I guess it's probably fine? Is the 'duration' listed under Volatize the duration of Volatize on allies, or the duration of the ability to apply Volatize? Because if it's the former, I think it should match the duration of the shield it applies, and if it's the latter I think it'd be hilarious for stuff like Curtain Call, Terminal Relativity, etc. Times where you have to shield in quick succession during week 1, as the shield would get popped every GCD and your DPS would actually increase instead of decrease. SCH is already plenty strong on DPS though, so maybe knocking it down to 10% on Volatize too, so the shields are 'damage loss but not quite as much' would be less nails in the coffin for SGE

But since it'd allow us to use succor without screaming about how awful it is to have to use succor, I support. Also, if we did Exploitation Tactics > Recitation > Adlo > Deployment Tactics, would that spread the Exploitation to everybody? With my gear, that'd mean (11800 * 1.8) = 21240, * 8 = 169920. Divide that by 5 to get the 20% and that's about 34k lmao. Then we have to add 10% of 21240 for the Catalyze, giving us a total of about 36k. Even at 10% for Volatize we'd end up at almost 19k, double that of a Broil. Usually I don't like to get too hung up on maths when ideas are being floated but like this I think it'd end up being a button we press every time we're about to do Deployment Tactics and nothing else, similar to how Zoe only ever seems to get used on Pneuma for SGE. I'll still take it though, just so SCH shields feel less jank to use. And it'd fit in the lore to explain how they fought off the blackmages so easily because that bit never made massive sense, but if the black mages blew themselves up on the SCH's barriers, that does make a lot more sense

Some general thoughts on the ideas:

Dissipation
- Dissipation has been and always will be a terrible concept. It makes no sense gimping your own sustained healing and cutting off access to several actions to increase your healing output through other methods. It's like buying a $10 bill for $15. I see no reason to try and salvage it when it should just be pruned. Making its healing impact more significant makes it slightly better, but it's a tumor that's better off excised than sterilized.

Energy Drain
- It's a simple suggestion that's been brought up before and would be totally fine. One issue not being resolved though is the constant environment where the current ED feels unhealthy to continue existing, but losing it makes Aetherflow management feel sloppy when you waste unused stacks on Lustrate or overcap on unused Aetherflow. Making ED the new Aetherflow like with SMN does actually exacerbate this issue because you're now more heavily pressured to use ED on cooldown as it's a part of your DPS rotation, essentially. A small suggestion:

New action: Energy Shock or some similar name.
- This is a GCD DPS spell that deals Broil potency damage to your target and 50% less damage to all enemies nearby the target.
- Consumes all remaining Aetherflow. For each stack of Aetherflow consumed, provides some type of stacking buff. A few ideas for this stacking buff:
1. Increases the value of your next Galvanize by 3%/6%/9% depending on Aetherflow consumed.
2. Decreases the cooldown of your next Recitation by 5/10/15 seconds upon use of Recitation.
3. Restores 4%/8%/12% of your maximum MP.
Or something along those lines.

This new action would give a way to burn Aetherflow that doesn't create an awkward priority system. The reward for using it needs to ultimately be worse than using Aetherflow on Aetherflow actions, but pushes the value forward into one future use of something so you get something out of unused stacks.

Fey Union
- I disagree here. Firstly, this creates the same issue that you're trying to resolve with removing ED as an Aetherflow spender, because now your Fey Union healing is competing with DPS. I feel the Fey Gauge should either be removed completely, or it should be reworked into SCH's healing resource gauge while Aetherflow shifts to an offensive resource gauge. I see what you're trying to do by making the Fey Gauge something worth remembering that it exists, but this isn't the right solution.

Gap Closer
- I agree with Osmond, a gap closer doesn't really need to be on SCH. SGE has it because of Phlegma, and it feels aesthetically fitting on SGE, but I don't really see a valid reason to put it on SCH, especially when SCH largely outperforms SGE as it is.

Recitation
- It's fine.

Selene
- Always in favor of giving Selene a different set of tools, and I do respect that this does not include any offensive buffs that would make Eos feel invalidated, though I think there's more room to consolidate here. I'd have Fey Illumination and Whispering Dawn merged, but remove the magic damage reduction aspect, and have Eos' two unique actions be that and Fey Blessing. For Selene, I don't necessarily think the barrier angle really fits with Selene. In most casts, the difference in whether you're applying a regen or a barrier with your faerie are two shades of the same flavor, and so it ends up feeling superfluous, generally. Instead, I'd suggest making Eos offer more healing and Selene offering more utility. Merge the removed magic damage reduction from the combined WD/Illumination over to Selene's debuff and have her inflict a debuff along with a magic damage dealt down effect so it has universal applications and isn't exclusively just a trash mob button (also I personally like the idea of having SCH inflict Toad instead of Paralyze since it's not going to work on any enemies that matter anyway). Then instead of a barrier, I'd honestly move Expedient over to Selene. I know most people would probably disagree, but I think it makes the choice between Eos and Selene far more meaningful when you're deciding between more OGCD healing or additional utility, especially considering Expedient is always a luxury, but never a requirement. Perhaps just make it the sprint and move the mitigation elsewhere to something SCH always has ready.

Exploitation Tactics
- I'm not sure if having damage based on damage taken is a good thing because it creates a lot of very cheesy situations. It should probably just be flat potency striking enemies that hit your target. That said, it's an interesting way to create incentives on barrier application, especially since it can potentially make Adloquium a DPS gain, though that also can create a weird and potentially dangerous incentive, not to mention how much damage it could deal when applied with Succor since it would supposedly affect the entire party. You'd be getting large DPS gains every 90 seconds and barriers when SCH is already a much stronger barrier applicator with its GCDs than SGE. Charges could help, but you'd probably also want it for burst windows. Honestly, I worry this might cause more harm than good even though it's an interesting idea. That's kinda the unfortunate aspect to healer DPS meta, it's very difficult to combine DPS and healing as the healing ends up being wasteful in pursuit of more DPS.

Overall
- There are a few good ideas here that could smooth out some of the clunk that SCH faces, but not all of it, and in some cases may cause different, new clunk in place of the old clunk. It also isn't going to address SCH's non-existent gameplay loop which is what all the healers really need to focus on with reworks, but I do admire some of the creativity here.

I think an other way to simplify atherflow management :

Aetherflow : grant 2 stacks of aetherflow, restore 1400PM. 40s cd, 2 charges. Max 3.

By doing this, we keep aetherflow a dynamic mechanic, but it solves the urge to use it on cd and create more opportunity to manage Aetherflow. I think we could get rid of energy drain as we would only have 2 lustrate to waste on worst scenari every 40s (which would be rare on ex and savage content)

I agree dissipation is a mess and could simply be removed. I think of something to replace it, but it was way to similar at recitation which i think is a nice ability.

I think fey union could be a classic cd which make the fairy put an huge regen on someone for a few second. It would make it usable when Seraphine is out and free the gauge, which in my opinion could be used as full offensive. My though would be for some of fairy gauge, Ruin 2 is improved to fairy broil which is a instant cast, stronger than broil with aoe decrease. As it, SCH would get a moving and double weaving spell with no dps loose. It could also help feeling wasted lustrate not so waste.

I cannot think of a good separation between Eos and Selene, the only i got in mind would be AOE vs Single target heal, but it would need both summon to be instant ability.

I don’t think that Aetherflow change fixes the issue. It makes gaining Aetherflow more flexible, sure, but it’s still not giving you a way to spend that Aetherflow, which the reality is, you don’t always need them, even in Savage.

It’s not going to help when you pull Smileton, for example, and still can’t spend them because there’s literally no one to heal for an entire boss fight.

Sage got the same issue and need to use Druochole once every 20s for MP regen and I never saw many complains on this especially. What's why i think flexibilty got more chance to happen than getting something like you proposed.

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Originally Posted by Sparkthor

Sage got the same issue and need to use Druochole once every 20s for MP regen and I never saw many complains on this especially. What's why i think flexibilty got more chance to happen than getting something like you proposed.

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It’s not a problem in the sense of it’s not a direct hinderance, but it’s very sloppy design and doesn’t feel good to use. A well-designed healer should never promote over healing, and optimized play should always result in an overhead value that is as close to 0% as possible, taking into consideration that sometimes necessary healing may bleed over slightly.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It’s not a problem in the sense of it’s not a direct hinderance, but it’s very sloppy design and doesn’t feel good to use. A well-designed healer should never promote over healing, and optimized play should always result in an overhead value that is as close to 0% as possible, taking into consideration that sometimes necessary healing may bleed over slightly.

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But on the flipside, is there actually anything 'wrong' with just overcapping eg: lilies or sageblobs? Like, if there's no healing needed for 30 sec as WHM and I'm at 3 lilies, I don't burn a lily just because I'm capped. Maybe that's incorrect because haha Misery, but lets say I'm at 2:20 in the fight and this happens, the raidbuff window isn't for 100 sec. So me burning lilies to get a Misery prepped for 3:00 doesn't seem necessary to me. The only thing it'd be useful for is keeping it lined up that 'ok I've used all the lilies for 'this minute' so I know I'll have up to 3 to use to have Misery up in time for 4:00' but I can't be bothered with all of that and just use Misery when it's ready (unless I know raidbuffs are soon and I can afford to hold it till then). I don't go out of my way to purposely blow Lilies 2 GCDs before the raidbuff window just to force a Misery, because I PF stuff and I'd rather have them available in case the Tank forgets a CD for the TB+Bleed, or a DPS stands in something they shouldn't, or someone doesn't go to their Dog Jump in time and a tank gets that horrific DOT for 30s. Maybe that's not 'optimal' but I don't play in an environment where 'optimal' is possible to achieve, and I've still had fairly ok logs despite playing so 'horribly suboptimally' so /shrug

SCH is a less good example because it's a lost Energy Drain, and 10 gauge (lol), but overcapping is not going to be the end of the world really. SGE though is just 'you get 700 mp'. So if I'm at max mp, and I'm capped on blobs, I don't use one just to use one, I leave them capped. In case I need to spare an unexpected Druochole for something. This also means my Rhizomata usage over the fight is pretty awful (because I'm capped so often), I wish Rhizo would work in a way that doesn't risk overcap as badly. Recitation doesn't suffer this problem, it's like they thought 'damn we gotta make Rhizomata feel different from the thing we blatantly copypasted over from SCH, lets make it have infinitely more chance of overcapping the player that'll make it feel different'.

Overcapping would be bad in a design where it's designed that you want to avoid overcap, but SE has designed the classes in a way where it feels more like 'ah well who cares', because losing healing resources to the void and then having a wipe because of that lost healing resource would be too stressful for the players. So they made it to where overcap doesn't matter at all. I can go through an entire savage fight with Thin Air, Divine Benison capped at 2 the whole time, and Lilies capped out at 3 for like 50% of the fight. My log will be garbo, because I'd have to cover with Medica 2 a bit more, but it's possible, because SE designed it to be possible that way. Maybe not P8S in week 1 gear (well definitely not because the HP was scaled wrong lmao), but I bet it'd work in P5S in week 1 gear

It’s true that the raw concept of over capping isn’t inherently a bad thing, such as with a cooldown like Rhizomata in your example, but both Aetherflow and Addersgall are tied to MP management, which to be fair, is not a prominent concern for healers, but forgetting or not using these resources does cause you to loose MP restored over time.

The problem with this is you don’t know if something bad will happen and you need to throw out raises to try and salvage a botched run. This isn’t a common occurrence either, but the best thing to do is to ensure you’re getting the most MP out of your kit so that you’re as prepared to handle circumstances like that, and pick up the habit of doing that always so that you’re not forgetting to do it when it matters.

If Aetherflow and Addersgall had no connection to MP management, or anything other than specific resource management, it’d be perfectly fine to let sit at cap. It wouldn’t necessarily be a beacon of exciting gameplay either but it wouldn’t feel bad to not have a spender of sorts.

Overhealing also doesn’t actually have a negative impact, so your argument makes sense. If it doesn’t really matter, what’s the problem? Well, from my perspective, it just doesn’t feel good or make me happy as a gamer to know that sometimes I’m just going to burn heals I don’t need. There’s a lot of players who want to feel that the way they’re using their tools is as tactically as possible—that nothing that’s used is going to waste, so to speak. So when you’re wasting healing just to get some MP back, it feels sloppy and defeating—that there was no way for me to make use of both sides of that action and that translates to a negative moment in my gameplay.

Not everyone feels this way, but I’d argue it’s a fairly common way to feel for a lot of gamers. In Persona games, for example, I don’t want to accept someone’s invitation to hang out if I’m already at the point of being able to advance my relationship with that character. It’d feel like wasting the points I earned because they don’t cross over to the next rank in that social link. It’s the same mentality.

Aside overcapping, having a flexible ressources for powerfull instant heal is something I think is enjoyable as healer. Even if it means to fully let them appart when going for easy duties like dungeons. And it would be hard to have Savage where theses ressources had to be managed to suceed and in the same time havong some management on dungeons where dommage takken are something like five time less.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

It’s not a problem in the sense of it’s not a direct hinderance, but it’s very sloppy design and doesn’t feel good to use. A well-designed healer should never promote over healing, and optimized play should always result in an overhead value that is as close to 0% as possible, taking into consideration that sometimes necessary healing may bleed over slightly.

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Aetherflow and Addersgall are both problematic in the sense they promote over healing. Even Energy Drain falls in the loop as it does return some HP. Very minimal but still unnecessary HP. I would say ED still edges it out ever so slightly because it still does some damage.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of either as they fall into a pet peeve I have with tying certain skils to multiple resources. Drives me absolutely batty that abilities with long CDs also require a charge of some sort. ED doesn't even feel good to use. The only benefit coming from preventing an overcap. And in low threat content its even worse having to burn up 2-3 charges on it.

What feels good imo, is building up a resource and have that skill or skills feel rewarding. Afflatus Misery, and Toxicon in an AoE scenario are great examples of this. And the resources are built up by sacrificing a GCD on healing that pays off a little later.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Afflatus Misery, and Toxicon in an AoE scenario are great examples of this. And the resources are built up by sacrificing a GCD on healing that pays off a little later.

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I wouldn't call Toxicon a good example of this, it's 330 to main target and 165 to the rest, Dyskrasia is 170 to all. So the extra damage is entirely funneled into one specific target. If we were to change the effect of E.Diagnosis to, idk 'grants Phlegmatic when barrier is fully broken, allowing the use of Phlegma without consuming a charge', that'd still not fully restore the damage lost to the application of the shield (2 330s is 660, vs the 600 of Phlegma) but it'd be a gain in AOE situations. Of course, this then brings up the issue of 'well what about 2 target fights like TEA' but that's a different can of worms

Admittedly, I was mostly just throwing down numbers as a general idea, rather than having done much actual maths behind it, but I will say I was also mostly considering potency, rather than actual numbers. In the case of Exploitation Tactics, adlo would give up to 108 potency worth of damage, succor up to 64 potency per person, critlo up to 324, and crit succor 128 potency per person.

Of course, these are pretty substantial numbers, but that is also considering that this is assuming the entire shield is consumed, which may not always be the case. Also that they require a GCD cast prior, so its hoping to cover 2 GCDs worth of damage. Unlike Afflatus Misery since its buff, I imagine that this ability would perhaps be far more feast or famine in terms of damage, where sometimes you get your moneys worth and more in damage dealt, but other times you miss out on covering the losses for having cast a GCD heal, but at least you got a little bit of damage back, rather than nothing at all. Also the general idea was mostly just an example of giving sch more interaction with their shields. Of course, if this damage looks to be too high, it can always do as you mentioned and just have both Volatize and Vulcanize only do 10% each, with the only discrepancy being what shield they affect (galvanize vs catalyze, that is).

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Is the 'duration' listed under Volatize the duration of Volatize on allies, or the duration of the ability to apply Volatize?

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I used the same phrasing as other similar abilities, so the 15s would be the duration of the buff after having cast it. That is to say; the sch would have 15 seconds to cast a shield. The actual Volatize/Vulcanize would simply last as long as the shield does, since its a direct manipulation of the shield itself.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

if we did Exploitation Tactics > Recitation > Adlo > Deployment Tactics, would that spread the Exploitation to everybody?

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I like to imagine so. Given deployment and emergency both work unconditionally with their shields, I imagine it wouldn't feel great to tag limitations onto exploitation. So in the cast of ET > Rec > Adlo > DT, looking at flat potencies, you could theoretically get up to 972 potency in a 4 man, or 1836 in an 8 man, though this again depends on everyone being in range for DT, and the shields being entirely consumed on everyone. If we made ET 10% rather than 20%, then it would be a matter of 540 potency in a 4 man, and 972 in an 8 man which would probably be much more reasonable. Could also go further and just cut the listed numbers in half, making Volatize 10% and Vulcanize 5% instead for 486 potency and 918 respectively.

Another consideration was also simply streamlining the class with Summoner, though since aetherflow isn't gained until lvl 45 they aren't exactly related but that's besides the point.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Nah on the gap closer, expedient is good enough.

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Expedient is nice, but on a 2 minute cooldown it can make things kind of awkward when that's all you have. Given scholar has to hardcast everything, it would mean keeping up with the tank during large pulls in dungeons, or getting into positions during raid mechanics would be a little bit easier on them between casting healing. The same could be said about all of the healers really, and I think that the big thing is that it would depend on what the gap closer actually is. I figured that maybe unlike Ikarus, it could be something that pushes the scholar back 15y like Bard's Repelling Shot. Another fanciful idea is to give them their own Between the Lines, where they can dash to their faerie, giving you more incentive to manage its position during a fight, and rewarding you with safety and time-saving for doing so.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

Hmm, don’t want them to change recitation. They can just change the code to make Aldo/succor instant…..but increase the MP as a trade off.

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I think the main concern there is that adlo and succor are already 1000 MP each. Given they don't have many MP management tools, it would feel kind of bad to make them permanently 200-400MP more. It would really just be a QoL matter to help with using recitation in the first place, since sometimes if you start casting too late you don't actually get to use the buff at all thanks to it timing out mid-cast.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

The fey union change….the shield can work, but will have to nerf the cure potency as a trade off.

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I'd already taken that into consideration, not to worry. Since Fey Union is normally 300 potency per tick, I'd just listed it to be lowered to 100 potency and a 150%/180% shield on top. If you used a full gauge that can be up to 1800 potency shield which would be insane of course, but that's also an entire fey gauge worth of healing wasted otherwise.

You know I thought expedient’s 2 min cooldown would be a problem, but it’s not. Most dungeons I’ve done, I barely use it. Instead I just sacred, recite/excog, protraction, and dps. As for raids…..the more I play it, the more of a good spot it’s in. It’s not like you use it for everything except instances like the dog stomp in P8S cause that hits like a truck even with succor and sacred. I don’t think they need to change or add expedient further. It’ll be too bloated..unnecessary.

If they were to buff the MP cost to instant cast adlo or succor. To compensate is to increase the shield %…….but it wouldn’t work so it’s not going to change. It’s pretty much in line with sage’s shield casting. Looks deceiving, but their cast time is the same. Sage’s animation looks like it’s not, but it is. SCH’s MP management is a bit better than sage since they aren’t forced to use their abilities to recover mp. SCH isn’t really struggling with MP issues. I guess it depends on the player.

Fey union as a mini-haima? It can work, but the potency of the shield will be very weak since you get full 10 ticks. 150 cure potency equivalent shield……..more like 100 potency to make it more enticing.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Dissipation

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Very true. While the idea was mostly just working under the assumption that the ability otherwise remained the same. If they are adamant on getting rid of the faerie, maybe they could do something like the following;

Dissipation > Assimilation
Unifies you and your faerie, granting you a full Aetherflow stack. Also increases HP recovery via healing actions 20%. In addition, allows the execution of Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Union and Fey Blessing without a faerie for the duration.
Duration: 30s
Current faerie will return once the effect expires.
Summon Eos or Summon Selene cannot be executed while under the effect of Assimilation.
Can only be executed while in combat.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Energy Drain

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I think its important to note that overcapping on aetherflow is mostly a nonissue given you can always spend it on energy drain as it currently is, but I suppose to that end consolidating them into one button kind of defeats the purposes of having energy drain as an aetherflow spender in the first place. I was also considering the alternative idea of changing how they use aetherflow and faerie gauge entirely;

Energy Drain (60s)
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional effect: Aetherflow III
Additional effect: Restores 20% of maximum MP.

Aetherflow
Now a trait rather than an ability, each stack of aetherflow is a new spender resource.

Ruin II
New effect: Action changes to Sear while under the effect of Aetherflow.

Sear / Sear II / Sear III / Sear IV
Spell, instant cast, 2.5s recast, 400 MP, 25y range, 5y radius.

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 220 / 240 / 255 / 295 (matches Ruin/Broil potency) for the first enemy, and 40% less for all nearby enemies.
Additional effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10
Aetherflow Gauge cost: 1

(Mostly just for the instant cast broil potency, Sear 4 would also be a DPS gain over AoW 2 vs multiple targets up to and including 38 targets)

Embrace, Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Blessing
New additional effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 5

Faerie Gauge
Now only increases with Sear and faerie actions. Lustrate, Sacred Soil, Indom and Excog instead use 10 faerie gauge to cast. Fey Union could perhaps cost 5 per tick instead of 10, and tick every 1s for 150 potency rather than every 3s for 300 potency.

This would all generally allow for SCH to consolidate energy drain and aetherflow without having to completely change any of its gauges or base functionality. It would give faerie gauge far more interaction, and also give sch an opportunity for better skill expression and optimization through the use of Sear to keep up time without dropping DPS. I suppose to that end, the only problem is when you don't need to use any of these fae gauge spenders, though separating it from DPS means that it isn't really a problem to not have to use them all the time.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Exploitation

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I considered making Exploitation Tactics a flat potency, having used Warrior's Vengeance as a reference, but I think the concern there is that it would be even cheesier than making it an amount of damage based on shield damage, since if it was a direct reaction for each hit, regardless of how much damage is actually dealt, you get situations such as tanks using mitigation to make a shield last for more hits, or in the case of paladin and gunbrealer - using their invuln to outright ignore damage to the shield while still getting the retaliation damage for having the shield in the first place. Having the damage tied to the shield directly simply means that its a fixed potency regardless of how quickly or where the damage is applied. That being said, I won't deny that it would basically turn into one of those burst window only buttons...

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Originally Posted by KarmaYraeon

Very true. While the idea was mostly just working under the assumption that the ability otherwise remained the same. If they are adamant on getting rid of the faerie, maybe they could do something like the following;

Dissipation > Assimilation
Unifies you and your faerie, granting you a full Aetherflow stack. Also increases HP recovery via healing actions 20%. In addition, allows the execution of Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Union and Fey Blessing without a faerie for the duration.
Duration: 30s
Current faerie will return once the effect expires.
Summon Eos or Summon Selene cannot be executed while under the effect of Assimilation.
Can only be executed while in combat.

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This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute. Deleting a chunk of your healing toolkit to get more healing just doesn't make sense no matter how you want to spin it. And I'm not trying to say you're a strong proponent of erasing the faerie; you're trying to find a way to make this idea work since SE seems hell-bent on swatting the faerie out of gameplay as frequently as possible, but it's on them to just accept that this is shitty design and no one wants it.

If you're going to yeet your faerie across the room and kill a chunk of free healing, the rewards needs to be pretty extraordinary. More healing doesn't and will not cut it. A major burst of damage might, but then you now have to gimp your own healing output at regular intervals in order to engage with your burst window, which isn't a great thing either. There's really no answer that isn't awful in some regard.

Rather than trying to bargain for a less awful Dissipation, just delete Dissipation. It's what SCH players have wanted since 3.0.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute. Deleting a chunk of your healing toolkit to get more healing just doesn't make sense no matter how you want to spin it. And I'm not trying to say you're a strong proponent of erasing the faerie; you're trying to find a way to make this idea work since SE seems hell-bent on swatting the faerie out of gameplay as frequently as possible, but it's on them to just accept that this is shitty design and no one wants it.

If you're going to yeet your faerie across the room and kill a chunk of free healing, the rewards needs to be pretty extraordinary. More healing doesn't and will not cut it. A major burst of damage might, but then you now have to gimp your own healing output at regular intervals in order to engage with your burst window, which isn't a great thing either. There's really no answer that isn't awful in some regard.

Rather than trying to bargain for a less awful Dissipation, just delete Dissipation. It's what SCH players have wanted since 3.0.

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They did write healing 'actions' here, not spells, so that 20% would presumably buff Union, W.Dawn, etc too. I like this idea as it'd bring back Rouse in a sense, being able to juice up a W.Dawn in ye olde days was always nice and rewarding feeling. The loss of Embrace for those 30s would be absolutely negligible compared to the extra healing provided to the other OGCDs by that 20%. My question is, the fairy has to stand still to channel Fey Union, and can't do any other action or the tether breaks. Does this restriction still apply to the player when Assimilation is in effect?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute.

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To be fair, ideally it would be great to just change dissipation to something else entirely like sch flavour Temperance, but the idea was that you would basically get the bulk of faerie healing but souped up while also empowering your own healing. If they basically turned you into your fairy while buffing your healing by 20%, I imagine you would be able to cover 10 casts of Embrace pretty easily. Souped up Whispering Dawn for instance would be 112 extra potency per person. In an 8-man that is already worth almost 5 casts of embrace in a single gcd. Throw in Fey Blessing for another 64 potency per person is almost 3 more Embrace casts on its own too. This is of course ignoring other healing you might do as well. For instance its more likely that as a scholar you're probably going to Dissipation/Assimilation during downtime/before a big mechanic to get the added healing on a critlo which would mean over 216 potency on everyone's shields, and 432 extra potency on the initial target. The adlo cast alone already covers the embrace healing lost and then some.

This all being said, like I started with, this is just grasping at straws for if they absolutely insist on keeping dissipation as it is with eating the faerie. Ideally it is changed to literally anything else but oh well. Working with what we can I guess. Also the aesthetic bias of being interested in the idea of sch getting wings as well...

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Does this restriction still apply to the player when Assimilation is in effect?

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Honestly I think it would be really nice if you weren't restricted like the fairy is. It would give scholar a really solid consistent heal while moving. Of course its likely that fey union wouldn't actually be available at all and the only faerie actions available would just be WD, FI and FB but those are still solid options to have +20% on.

Here's my question:

Why do we need to have moves that erase the faerie? What do we gain from having tools that cut out your access to other tools, or drop one form of healing to access another, that we wouldn't have if we just didn't have actions like Dissipation, Aetherpact, and Summon Seraph? What would we lose if we killed Dissipation and replace it with something that just increases healing potency and grants you Aetherflow without cutting the faerie out of the equation--or allowed the faerie to act during Fey Union, and allowed Summon Seraph to also use Fey Union?

I'm just genuinely interested in learning about what makes these things worth salvaging when we could just have tools that gave us benefits without dropping Eos/Selene? Why is allowing Eos/Selene to just stay out all the time, or be replaced with a Seraph that can still access everything Eos and Selene can access somehow detrimental to SCH's design? What is there to fight for?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Here's my question:

Why do we need to have moves that erase the faerie? What do we gain from having tools that cut out your access to other tools, or drop one form of healing to access another, that we wouldn't have if we just didn't have actions like Dissipation, Aetherpact, and Summon Seraph? What would we lose if we killed Dissipation and replace it with something that just increases healing potency and grants you Aetherflow without cutting the faerie out of the equation--or allowed the faerie to act during Fey Union, and allowed Summon Seraph to also use Fey Union?

I'm just genuinely interested in learning about what makes these things worth salvaging when we could just have tools that gave us benefits without dropping Eos/Selene? Why is allowing Eos/Selene to just stay out all the time, or be replaced with a Seraph that can still access everything Eos and Selene can access somehow detrimental to SCH's design? What is there to fight for?

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IMO this Assimilation idea fixes pretty much every problem that SCH has regarding the non-compatibility between Dissipation, Fey Union, and Summon Seraph, assuming that using Fey Union during it does not stop the SCH from attacking/moving. We'd be like a fairy themed Mercy Overwatch (oh wait, Mercy has a fairy skin), that'd be pretty cool and very visually different from the other healers. Ironically I had thought of a 'healing tether' idea for either SGE (because Kardia) or AST (rework Synastry), where any ally that the tether touches is healed too, but trying to coordinate positioning for that would probably suck, so this version is probably better (and simpler to implement I'd assume).

Now when I say 'pretty much every problem' I mean there's one that still lingers, and that's Seraph. But, I think that's less an issue due to this idea, and moreso a lingering issue of Seraph itself. There's not really any reason we have to 'summon Seraph' code wise. Consolation could have been an ability that the fairy itself uses, without having to have it's model change. It's like this just for the 'wow so flashy' hype in the trailer, and it comes with all kinds of baggage like ghosting abilities (still), being an extra redundant OGCD weave before we get the actual 'useful part', and locking us out of other skills for some reason, like Union and Fey Blessing. The only thing Seraph 'does', is empower Embrace to also have a 100% shield, and give access to Consolation. Perhaps it'd be better if Seraph was deleted, and Consolation was moved to be a standard OGCD with 2 charges (60s CD). This way it'd also be buffed by Assimilation's 20%. The W.Dawn and Fey Illumination reskins are, well, reskins, completely identical in effect, so those can be ignored. Then the only thing we 'lose' is Seraphic Veil. When viewed like this, it becomes apparent that Seraph is nothing more than 'Rouse, but with a pretty VFX and infinitely more jank'.

I assume the reason Dissipation still exists as it does is to keep some aspect of 'risk vs reward', or 'you need to weigh up if the short term boost of 3 aetherflow is worth the loss of fairy for 30s'. If it just gave you the 20% boost and the aetherflow, without doing anything to the fairy, it might as well just be Divine Seal from WHM or Largesse from SB role actions. WHM has a 'costless' 20% healing boost with Temperance, AST with Neutral Sect. There'd be cries of 'homogenization' from the rooftops. If Dissipation has been in the game since HW, without having it's main 'pain point' (the fairy is removed from play) removed, only addressed with QOL (the fairy now auto-returns, used to have to manually resummon), then the devs clearly want it to stay this way for whatever reason. I guess the fairy interaction is what makes it 'unique' for better or worse. At the moment, many would argue it's for the worse, I think this Assimilation idea would make it 'for the better', even without touching Seraph. You keep access to your fairy skills, but they're now centered on the SCH (so now your personal position is important), you can (maybe) use Fey Union on the move, the only thing you'd lose out on is Embrace.

This shows that the 'we didn't really know what to do with SCH' meme only applies to the people designing the class, and not the ones who play it. Which is kinda depressing in it's own right

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

This shows that the 'we didn't really know what to do with SCH' meme only applies to the people designing the class, and not the ones who play it. Which is kinda depressing in it's own right

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Seeing many people with different opinion of what to do to improve the scholar shows IMO players don't really know what to do either. I think they need to somepoint just delete some healing abilties what feel uninteressant, unwhelming or clunky to use. Dissipation is probably one what can be simply stripped away and few people would regret it.

I also get Seraphine could just be a ability what reinforce the fairy for some time, but people want flashy ability, and seraphine at least is pretty. On the other hand, i always feel fey union as e "meh" abity. It feels so clunky to use, and the fact the entire fairy gauge which deplete itself when you die is only for this skill disapoint me. But it's a very flexible tool so maybe it's just me.

About why dissipation is still here, I also suspect they are not confident about deleting last ability gain from one extension.

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Originally Posted by Sparkthor

Seeing many people with different opinion of what to do to improve the scholar shows IMO players don't really know what to do either. I think they need to somepoint just delete some healing abilties what feel uninteressant, unwhelming or clunky to use. Dissipation is probably one what can be simply stripped away and few people would regret it.

I also get Seraphine could just be a ability what reinforce the fairy for some time, but people want flashy ability, and seraphine at least is pretty. On the other hand, i always feel fey union as e "meh" abity. It feels so clunky to use, and the fact the entire fairy gauge which deplete itself when you die is only for this skill disapoint me. But it's a very flexible tool so maybe it's just me.

About why dissipation is still here, I also suspect they are not confident about deleting last ability gain from one extension.

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The devs said 'we didn't really know what to do with SCH', implying they didn't have any new ideas. While the players here do have ideas, just different ones. The point is that, despite not agreeing on one solid direction, the fact is the players can suggest multiple different directions the devs could have gone in, but didn't. Consensus on one idea isn't the point. The existence of any idea at all is the point, because it shows the devs were not as 'out of room to move SCH' as they seemed to imply they were.

I hadn't considered it before, but it's possible there's some kind of 'bias' towards keeping capstone skills (mostly as they're usually the flashiest ones). I can't think of any that have been outright deleted, only moved around in the levelling process (eg MCH Ricochet was the 60 capstone at one point, now it's 50) or reworked in effect. Well, unless you count full reworks of things, eg the card system for AST leading to Sleeve Draw being killed. It'd also serve to explain why some, frankly, not great skills have survived the chopping block for so long too, such as Tornado Kick for Monk living all the way till now, where it's actually useful (as a pre-90 version of Phantom Rush), or Dragonfire Dive (please god give it a trait upgrade it's so lame) or Sidewinder (same as DFD, it's kinda lame to hit for 300p in this world where even tanks have 900-1200p hits). If there were such a bias at work, it's more likely that a skill that is a 'crapstone' would be kept around with a reworked effect, rather than deleted outright.

And Fey Union is probably kept around because without it, there's no reason for the Fey Gauge to exist. With the cost removed from Fey Blessing, Union remains the only spender. Personally I thought partway through SHB that Blessing should have been made an AOE equivalent of Union, pulsing an AOE HOT effect for each 10 gauge it consumes. But then that'd give SCH another regen-type effect and that'd run counter to the Pure/Barrier split I didn't know they were going to go for

To me, dev got idea. Everyone got idea, but none of them was able to pass 1st discussion, or at least is solid enough to pass 1st play tests. I also think they got idea similar to our, if they consider to add more dps tools to healer, which is something we cannot be certain of (Yoshi-p wanna embrace pure heal concept back in time). On the other hand, I supposed EW was a test about shield healer and pure healer concepts. IMO, they can push the concept further, as to me, this 1st try is sucessful.

I agree with you on DFD, it's a poor ability now and could be remove/rework (I put a piece on being tied on cd with spine dive for being it's aoe counterpart). Sidewinder could get some love, but 300 potency isn't that bad as ranged potency are lower because they got a trait which increase their skill dommage by 20% (and 30% for mages). On ability cut, i cannot think about any healing ability from being removed. But it's something what will be needed at some point. It could also lead to more specification between shield and pure concepts.

I know exactly what I'd do with SCH. I see several very clear directions you could take the job that would create such a stronger identity both visually and mechanically. There would be some reworking involved in any of these examples, which is fine but would require the resources to accomplish during a new expansion, but all of them involve accepting that the current healer direction is awful and needs to change.

Hmmmm, eeeeeeeh. The more ppl think their change is better, it’s gets worse the more you think about it. Best to keep it simple than to drastically change abilities, which force to change every toolset to other healer jobs which in the end becomes a pain and a time waster.

The only thing I can see them change is fey union and permanently remove energy drain. May as well give union 2 buttons to replace energy drain, just keep the single regen and the other just a party nuke that gives all the above that sch does, small cure, shield, mitigation, and regen depending on cost. Another auto queen/soul voice tool. Simple, yet effective.

The more I play SCH, I don’t want it to be DPS focused, but more focused on shield/mitigation. Sage can be the more DPS focused.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute. Deleting a chunk of your healing toolkit to get more healing just doesn't make sense no matter how you want to spin it. And I'm not trying to say you're a strong proponent of erasing the faerie; you're trying to find a way to make this idea work since SE seems hell-bent on swatting the faerie out of gameplay as frequently as possible, but it's on them to just accept that this is shitty design and no one wants it.

If you're going to yeet your faerie across the room and kill a chunk of free healing, the rewards needs to be pretty extraordinary. More healing doesn't and will not cut it. A major burst of damage might, but then you now have to gimp your own healing output at regular intervals in order to engage with your burst window, which isn't a great thing either. There's really no answer that isn't awful in some regard.

Rather than trying to bargain for a less awful Dissipation, just delete Dissipation. It's what SCH players have wanted since 3.0.

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Not necessarily, since Assimilation boosts all healing actions, so Whispering Dawn, Aetherpact, and Fey Blessing will all receive potency changes. The added bonuses of Aetherflow returning basically creates a horizontal shift in resources (moving the power of sustained Embrace casts into Whispering Dawn, Aetherpact, Fey Blessing while simultaneously strengthening aetherflow healing + GCD shields). Provided that Aetherpact doesn't stop the Scholar from attacking on their own and is treated as a tether regen buff, it would be a good change, albeit long overdue.
At least this is much more preferable than the current Dissipation, which just eats up Embrace healing + locks you out of all your faerie skills without strengthening them in any way. It would allow a lot more flexibility in resource management and control without being useful for only DPS gain via Energy Drain spam.

I don't agree with simply deleting Dissipation. Every time they just delete a skill, they don't necessarily give anything back to replace it. IMO, it's a worse tradeoff since you don't even have ways for quick recovery afterwards if you consume all your resources, much less a replacement for what that skill can provide.

Any time someone says they want they want Energy Drain deleted, I will say it again; PLEASE go play Sage. It's there for you, stop trying to change Scholar even more. Aetherflow and Energy Drain optimization is the only thing that is interesting and offers anything close to a skill ceiling with healer DPS kits, as small as it may be. If Energy Drain bugs you so much, just don't play Scholar.

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Originally Posted by Osmond

The only thing I can see them change is fey union and permanently remove energy drain.

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But SGE exist... they don't need to throw out any 'energy drains'.

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May as well give union 2 buttons to replace energy drain, just keep the single regen and the other just a party nuke that gives all the above that sch does, small cure, shield, mitigation, and regen depending on cost. Another auto queen/soul voice tool. Simple, yet effective.

The more I play SCH, I don’t want it to be DPS focused, but more focused on shield/mitigation. Sage can be the more DPS focused.

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Why do they want even more "small cure, shield, mit, and regen" when they're already bloated with those?

I feel that a lot of these changes are misguided, they have problems as removing even more depth (ED), competition with existing tools without implementation of ways to make them coexist (Selene's kit which is basically Eos's but way worse, 120s of Recitation when Indom and Excog are 30s and 45s, Fey union...) or simply reward bad gameplay (Exploitation gives more returns the less mitigation there is when Sch and the party want to mitigate) without significantly changing the way Sch gameplay is, basically the 1 button spam, which is one of the main problems of the job

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

Any time someone says they want they want Energy Drain deleted, I will say it again; PLEASE go play Sage. It's there for you, stop trying to change Scholar even more. Aetherflow and Energy Drain optimization is the only thing that is interesting and offers anything close to a skill ceiling with healer DPS kits, as small as it may be. If Energy Drain bugs you so much, just don't play Scholar.

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I think the problem with Energy Drain is that it's a relic of the old HW design SE wants to get away from, but can't remove because every time they do people complain until it comes back. It's a skill that is supposed to, by design, 'reward the player with extra damage if they dont need the stack for healing', but because this is FFXIV and damage is everything, this has morphed over the years into 'this is a skill that you lose uses of if you are forced to heal', feeling more like a punishment than a reward. It's the same issue people have with TBN and it's 'time it right and get a refund': it feels bloody awful when you DON'T get the refund. You can do this thought experiment with a lot of different classes too, 'imagine if X skill on Y class lost you damage, but you're expected to use X to do your role'. There's a reason defensive skills don't share resources with offensive skills (with the exception of TBN and Energy Drain): When given the choice between damage and not-damage, people will choose damage. The only time they don't is when they're completely forced to (early prog) and even then some people don't want to drop the damage. If an Oath Gauge spender got added to PLD that did damage, everyone would use that instead of Sheltron. If WAR had a defensive skill that costed Wrath, it'd never get used because that's Fell Cleave juice. TBN is on very thin ice, and Energy Drain's already had the ice crack under it and fell in, twice.

I'm torn over ED as a skill, part of me wants it gone, I'm tired of seeing people grief and refuse to put a Soil down for a raidwide because they were trying to parse good, and it's been nerfed in potency so many times it's just pathetic in terms of how hard it hits. On the other hand, I can't be sure that if it were removed, SE would replace it with a different form of 'optimization' complexity. If it could be guaranteed that ED's removal would bring a new thing to optimize in it's place I think a lot of people would be on board with it. I suggested an idea where using Aetherflow skills gives resources on a new gauge, and a new button allows you to dump that gauge as one big hit, with a stack of debuff applied for each 10 gauge spent to increase the potency of the next Broil (or AOW for AOE situations). The optimization there would be similar to MCH's battery gauge, you'd want to use it at lower amounts outside of raidbuffs, to have it lined up that you'll be at 100 when you go into the raidbuff window.

I've asked in the past and I'll ask again: Energy Drain used to be 150 potency in the past. Now it's 100, having been nerfed. Say the devs decide that next expansion, it's nerfed to 50. Is it still worth it to keep it around, knowing that it's potentially the anchor around the neck of the job's design? If so, what is the lowest potency value you'd accept it going to before deciding 'okay it's kinda crap lets just axe it'? Is an Energy Drain that hits for 10 potency still 'worth it to keep', because it's 'optimization'? Because I'm already at the point where I wouldn't mind if it was removed, if it was replaced with something else. EG, if they don't want to give us the DOTs back, give us 2-3 debuff skills that do eg, Crit rate against the target increased by 1%, DHit rate by 1%, flat damage by 1%, and have us juggling the timers of those 100% uptime debuffs, to make SCH be the 'debilitation' class, with Chain Strat being the 'big burst' window. Would that count as 'optimization' tools?

Buff energy drain to 250, but make scholar take 9% extra damage from raidwides. That way soil's necessary for the scholar to parse anything other than grey.

Edit: really though, you can't just keep killing aspects of jobs because some people are incompetent.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Buff energy drain to 250, but make scholar take 9% extra damage from raidwides. That way soil's necessary for the scholar to parse anything other than grey.

Edit: really though, you can't just keep killing aspects of jobs because some people are incompetent.

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I feel like making a player take extra damage for using part of their kit would be inherently really unhealthy and a one way ticket to give it the Dissipation treatment of 'never use unless absolutely necessary' because that extra damage taken is going to almost certainly force you into more GCD healing, which really isn't compensated for. Even if you went so far as to make it something ridiculous like 400 potency.
There's also the fact that in a lot of cases that's like sticking a couple vuln stacks on yourself which, for some fights/mechanics, is just a death sentence. Bad enough if the 9% extra damage is just for a duration after using energy drain. Making a permanent debuff to the job as a whole would just feel terrible and make the job far less viable. Also trying to incentivize the use of an ability by punishing you first like that isn't really going to fix anything. It would kind of suck to feel pressured into using soil just to compensate for having pressed another button.

Somewhat unrelated I suppose, but something that might be interesting is a job that has a gimmick of taking more damage than other jobs, but using that to their advantage in some way. Like a melee raw healer that coin flips between losing health and regaining it.

I didn't mean that energy drain should debuff scholar, but that scholar should be inherently weaker to raidwides.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

snip

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Forgive me if this is a bit all over the place, I wrote this in between doing stuff at work so it's probably not replying to everything. Feel free to say if I missed something you wanted to be addressed and I'll reply to that, I'm not trying to brush anything off!

I think Energy Drain is a good barometer for the question that Square Enix has been trying to solve since Shadowbringers with healers (or maybe Stormblood with the removal of old Cleric Stance): is letting healer players fail or mess up something that should be allowed to happen when it may come at the cost of their healing?
Bad players using a skill improperly shouldn't be justification for the removal of Energy Drain or else we quickly loop into agreeing with SE on why healers had their DPS abilities removed as much as one might think they disagree with it. Yoshida's stated reason for the removal of SCH's DPS kit going into ShB was that SCH players would focus DPS and leave WHM players to heal, so therefore if we remove the skill, the bad players will now be able to focus more on healing, right? In reality though, we can see that it's not really the case; bad players remain bad regardless if they're Glarebots or Medicabots, and no amount of removal will make these kinds of players strive to truly be better.

It's the exact same logic with Energy Drain - bad players will always be bad, but that doesn't mean we need to remove skill expression even more to try and 'fix' it.

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but because this is FFXIV and damage is everything, this has morphed over the years into 'this is a skill that you lose uses of if you are forced to heal', feeling more like a punishment than a reward.

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I've written many threads and posts critiquing Scholar before, and I don't really disagree, but I think the reason it's morphed into this over the years is because Scholar has nothing left but Energy Drain. If you use your Aetherflow on healing, you have a DPS rotation of Broil Broil Broil Broil Bio for until Aetherflow is back up within a 60s time period. If you compare that to Stormblood where you had Aetherflow every 45s as long as you were spending it, Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadow Flare along with Bio II and Broil in your ST rotation, you still had more even if you needed to spend your Aetherflow on healing over damage. Not a big deal to lose out on one of your methods of dealing damage since your DoTs would still be ticking and it wouldn't be too long until you got more Aetherflow to optimize Miasma II again - you still got to have fun and had more to track even if you used Aetherflow for healing over ED. Compare that to now, where your downtime is cut from 3 buttons to 2 for a minute. I don't think it would feel like as much of a "punishment" to use Aetherflow for healing if this weren't the case.

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I've asked in the past and I'll ask again: Energy Drain used to be 150 potency in the past. Now it's 100, having been nerfed. Say the devs decide that next expansion, it's nerfed to 50. Is it still worth it to keep it around, knowing that it's potentially the anchor around the neck of the job's design? If so, what is the lowest potency value you'd accept it going to before deciding 'okay it's kinda crap lets just axe it'? Is an Energy Drain that hits for 10 potency still 'worth it to keep', because it's 'optimization'? Because I'm already at the point where I wouldn't mind if it was removed, if it was replaced with something else. EG, if they don't want to give us the DOTs back, give us 2-3 debuff skills that do eg, Crit rate against the target increased by 1%, DHit rate by 1%, flat damage by 1%, and have us juggling the timers of those 100% uptime debuffs, to make SCH be the 'debilitation' class, with Chain Strat being the 'big burst' window. Would that count as 'optimization' tools?

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Yes, even a 10 potency Energy Drain is worth keeping around, same as a 5 potency gain over a Broil cast DoT like Miasma would be worth keeping around. To me, Energy Drain is the thing that makes Scholar's healing kit actually interesting, something I do not think any other healer has. (an interesting healing kit, I mean.) Because of Energy Drain, Scholar is the only healer I like because its existence encourages Scholars to have a healing plan beyond "use your GCDs last lmao". The priority of faerie>aetherflow>gcds personally helps not bore me as much, because while you can just use your more powerful Aetherflow heals for everything, there's a good reason to find out where you can get by on maximizing your faerie in reclears that no other healer has because their heals don't have anything tied to them. This is a huge part of why I cannot stand SGE and consider it the worst job in the game; I think it's horriblly boring and I really don't think the SGE-ification of SCH is what SCH needs. SGE confirms to me that removing ED from SCH is not the ticket to making SCH better, nor is it an anchor around SCH's neck.

Removing Energy Drain permanently would, in my opinion, require a complete and total rework of Scholar, and I don't think SCH needs that even if it has "HW era design" baked into it. I think that design is why SCH shines and it's why I love SCH. If you remove Energy Drain, you remove the only thing interesting SCH has going for it, and you remove the last healer that is not incentivized to vomit heals. Fundamentally, I do not think that exchanging something that gives SCH both DPS and heal kit depth for something that offers one or the other is a great idea. I would love for SCH to get something like DoTs again or debuffs that it's juggling, but it shouldn't come at the cost of removing the thing that makes it kit flow in a way that the other healers don't. We shouldn't have to sacrifice any more for the hope that we may get something that would also be interesting, we should instead keep the interesting things we have and get more interesting things added as the job grows.

The solution to Energy Drain is pretty easy really: Make Aetherflow a resource exclusively used for DPS. If your optimization aspect is managing some combination of DPS resources, and that's the consistent expectation for every use of Aetherflow, then there's no more punishment aspect other than performing your rotation correctly, which is the same expectations every DPS job has.

But what do we do with the resources that use Aetherflow currently? Well, fortunately (or unfortunately) SCH already has a second gauge that has absolutely no uses of notable value currently and is basically just a decoration on your screen at the moment that we can just shift healing cooldowns onto.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

They did write healing 'actions' here, not spells, so that 20% would presumably buff Union, W.Dawn, etc too. I like this idea as it'd bring back Rouse in a sense, being able to juice up a W.Dawn in ye olde days was always nice and rewarding feeling. The loss of Embrace for those 30s would be absolutely negligible compared to the extra healing provided to the other OGCDs by that 20%. My question is, the fairy has to stand still to channel Fey Union, and can't do any other action or the tether breaks. Does this restriction still apply to the player when Assimilation is in effect?

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I was thinking about this question again and, while I've already responded, the question paired with the more recent comments about Seraph made me think about Assimilation acting like a situations Neutral Sect for scholar.
Allowing Assimilation to be cast regardless of what faerie is currently out would maybe make the ability more interesting as well. You can cast it at any time to consume and effectively become your faerie with a 20% healing boost to its abilities, but at the consequence of being centered on you. On the other hand, if you can get cooldowns to line up when you absolutely need it, you could consume Seraph instead of Selene or Eos to get access to Consolation over Fey Blessing. Without embrace/seraphic veil the difference between the two doesn't really matter too much, but it would be an interesting min/max option to go for. Furthermore, we could assume that consuming Seraph gives the abilities of Seraph for the full Assimilation cooldown, which in turn also means Getting 4 casts of Consolation with a single Seraph cast, rather than the usual max of 2, since you could cast seraph, and just before its timer runs out, cast Assimilation to gain its abilities for Assimilation's full 30s cooldown as well, in turn making Seraph more valuable as well.