SCH is a mess, thematically and visually, and needs streamlining

Scholar is a great concept, but the class lacks a thematic or visual identity and is too messy.

Thematically, scholar is juggling too many conflicting themes: An arcanist, a combat healer, a tactician, a book mage... with high-tech floating hologram screens, poisons (?), magical fairies, and even angels (!). Bio/Biolysis are very disconnected from the kit, unlike the SGE/WHM DoTs; angelic stuff was more appropriate for WHM's holy theme. As such, SCH ends up being an incoherent jimble jamble of arcane, magic, and holy elements mashed together - without really convincing about any of these.

Visually, SCH spells are very contradictory and all over the place: Some skills cause arcane explosions, others biohazard, but others scatter fairy dust, sparkles, and channel angels. Shields look too futuristic for a book healer, and the floating hologram screens are way over the top; not to mention the cringey hologram glasses of Broil.

Spells use the entire color spectrum: some skills are blue and red; explosions are red, but Art of War is purple; Biolysis is blue-ish, but Bio is green; fairy dust is yellow, but the angel is blue; Selene's purple boots are just.... terrible; shields are transparent, but soil is blue; and several spells hardly have any visual at all. I feel so confused by the color scheme that I don't always know which skills are supposed to be mine when there is a visual clutter.

You can actually tell about this mess from the disparity of skill icons and names. Icons are all over the place aesthetically, and names are a weird mix of Latin healing words and English tactical vocabulary. If it were more consistent, like in JP, it would sound more scholarly, but now it just sounds confused. Though these elements are unlikely to change at this point, so not worth discussing.

Compare all this to SGE, who is thematically and visually so neat and organised. All healing spells are blue, damaging spells are pink. There is a clear theme of a high-tech physician, and all skills follow a naming pattern/convention. Even skill icons blend well together. To a lesser extent, WHM and AST are also quite consistent thematically. This comparison really shows the result of a class built from level 1-90 in one go (SGE), by one team with a clear vision, versus a class that has been slowly built over 10+ years by different dev teams with very different ideas (SCH).

Simple solutions: Pick a main theme color and stick with it, apply it to several if not all skills (and icons). Yellow could work (because of the fairy) but it doesn't really matter, as long as it's consistent. The fairies and the angel should have a similar color, all shields should have a similar theme, and attack spells should be more similar. IMHO names also need an overhaul to be more consistent but this is too much to ask for. Simple solution for me: Play sage kek.

What do you mean? It’s an arcanist (poison tactician) that found a scholar (faerie tactician) job stone.

I don’t understand what you mean about the colour thing, warrior with its four buttons also uses every colour under the sun, white mage should be using brown, blue and greenish on its offensive spells alone not this bland sparkliness it’s been lumped with, ast has incredibly pretty visuals in a multitude of colours, sage is a mess on every level and it’s not like dps are any different (see samurai, dragoon, blue mage).

The mix of archaic words is probably meant to indicate that the job’s been lost since nym fell like at least 20 years before ARR.

Sage is clearly a new job that at best is copied homework and at worst an uninspired joke not even living up to how it was sold to the playerbase. It has not had time to develop any identity beyond “bad scholar” and until it gets a few expansions under its belt is not at all sensible to compare with the established healers (ast, the next most recent being added in heavensward).

Having a jobs actions only be in one colour theme sucks for people like me who have bad eyesight especially when you have to keep the hotbars a certain size so they aren't taking up half the screen. It might not matter once you have muscle memory, but for learning a job and having to glance at the hotbar every now and then, it is easier to mess up icons that have similar colours.

I'm on the fence with Scholar. I love feeling powerful because it definitely gets the job done when you need healing but I do feel like it's a bit chaotic in terms of lore. Selene doesn't have a reason to exist. Seraph likewise has zero explanation about her origin. The ridiculously high tech animations feel silly coming from a class using a book and a quill pen. It's supposed to be a battle tactician but literally attacks enemies with a skill set nearly identical to to the other healers. One nuke, one dot like all the rest doesn't sound like a healer specializing in the "Art of War." I don't mind the colors and skills icons being varied tho. The hardest thing about Sage was starting a class at level 70 with every skill having a similar icon and animation. I actually like having skills that are distinct in name, icon, and animation. Scholar could benefit from being repackaged for sure. I've always thought that both WHM and SCH needed some help with the early animations. Medica and Succor did not age well just like most of the base kit they have.

I find icons across most jobs to feel very disorganised and un-instinctive. A lot of them feel like the artwork was done at a much bigger size without consideration of how it looks shrunken down, and there's no pattern to combos or good visual cues of the effects.

It's been a while since I played Scholar, but I remember being specifically annoyed by all the faerie spell icons being slight variations of "faerie in a non-descriptive pose" on the same coloured background, with no visual or colour clues as to what they did. I don't think that much could be blamed on change over time.

Only thing that we Scholars really miss is physical attack.

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Originally Posted by Alrin

Only thing that we Scholars really miss is physical attack.

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Slap your enemy with the book. Slip a few weights inside of it for extra damage.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

What do you mean? It’s an arcanist (poison tactician) that found a scholar (faerie tactician) job stone.

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Pretty much this; before they decided to gut the DPS abilities from SCH, it had a very good spread of color coded abilities.

https://files.catbox.moe/n9g8ud.png

It was very nice - outside of a small amount of abilities like Ruin and Bio, you had a very general and uniform theme.
Purples and Reds for Attacks, and Greens for heals.

Scholar can very easily go back to this, especially now that SGE is the "high tech" healer. Make Biolysis, AoW II, Broil III/IV and Chain more in line with this and SCH doesn't have conflicting themes anymore.
SCH is also the only job in the game that switches class types, so I think it's more than fair to give it leeway where other jobs wouldn't.

Here's an idea...instead of wanting to change the class cuz you don't understand it, maybe, I dunno....don't play it and stick with Sage? Crazy concept, I know...

Actually, I think the different colors helps you identify your spells easier than if everything was melted into the same color, so I'm not exactly sure what the issue is with a colorful VFX and spell icons...

Thematically, SCH was a poison mage who chanced upon ancient magic used by tacticians accompanied with their fairy partner, like the other posts said. I think there was a good mix between the scholar, who had offensive and damage prevention abilities, and the fairy, who has supportive and pure healing abilities. It feels like two unique partners with different strengths, covering for each others' weaknesses. I think that's what solidifies SCH's identity as a battlefield strategist.

Unfortunately the poison mage stuff got nuked alongside individual control of the fairy (and one of the fairy's modes) and we're left with two entities that do the same thing, heal heal heal.

The floating holograms are a reference to FFXI SCH's Libra, which is scanning your opponent for weaknesses. It's meant to be imaginary. I don't think the shields look futuristic at all. It's hexagonal, which is the strongest structure in nature. I can understand Seraph being an issue thematically because it never really was explained where she even comes from. She's really lackluster for a fairy that you summon to raise everyone to full heal in your LB3. I agree with the Broil IV glasses, they look lame.

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Originally Posted by flowerfairy

Actually, I think the different colors helps you identify your spells easier than if everything was melted into the same color, so I'm not exactly sure what the issue is with a colorful VFX and spell icons...

Thematically, SCH was a poison mage who chanced upon ancient magic used by tacticians accompanied with their fairy partner, like the other posts said. I think there was a good mix between the scholar, who had offensive and damage prevention abilities, and the fairy, who has supportive and pure healing abilities. It feels like two unique partners with different strengths, covering for each others' weaknesses. I think that's what solidifies SCH's identity as a battlefield strategist.

Unfortunately the poison mage stuff got nuked alongside individual control of the fairy (and one of the fairy's modes) and we're left with two entities that do the same thing, heal heal heal.

The floating holograms are a reference to FFXI SCH's Libra, which is scanning your opponent for weaknesses. It's meant to be imaginary. I don't think the shields look futuristic at all. It's hexagonal, which is the strongest structure in nature. I can understand Seraph being an issue thematically because it never really was explained where she even comes from. She's really lackluster for a fairy that you summon to raise everyone to full heal in your LB3. I agree with the Broil IV glasses, they look lame.

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Agreed. Instead of listening to the (likely) intern UI designer who came up with idea of the Sage design because really - the application of contrast is one of principle is something that is learned at at fairly early stage - someone should have picked up on that. Added to the skill names - again this is my opinion- not a fan of memorizing Greek names. Add the two together, I would far prefer Scholar and its colourful palette and its names which were much more intuitive as well.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

again this is my opinion- not a fan of memorizing Greek names. Add the two together, I would far prefer Scholar and its colourful palette and its names which were much more intuitive as well.

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This is one of the reasons I don't like SAM and NIN partially, though NIN is better about it than SAM. I cannot memorize all the Japanese skill names to save my life lmao

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Originally Posted by Nizzi

This is one of the reasons I don't like SAM and NIN partially, though NIN is better about it than SAM. I cannot memorize all the Japanese skill names to save my life lmao

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I really struggle with it as well. It's an extra barrier to memorising attack effects when you can't connect them to familiar words.

If nothing else, it would be helpful to have somewhere in the game (perhaps a book in the Sharlayan library?) that lists translations of the various foreign-language-based skill names.

I find the Greek names more intuitive than the Japanese of ninja and samurai, likely because a bit of English is derived from it. On a side note, I find it strange that they went out of their way to give the garleans Latin and ancients Greek naming schemes before slapping Greek names on sage too.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I really struggle with it as well. It's an extra barrier to memorising attack effects when you can't connect them to familiar words.

If nothing else, it would be helpful to have somewhere in the game (perhaps a book in the Sharlayan library?) that lists translations of the various foreign-language-based skill names.

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Same, I honestly couldn't even tell you a single SAM skill name. Buff skills, AoE moves, OGCD stuff. I honestly don't see the harm in being able to rename something "moon slash" or "lunar slash". We have different regions and translations for a reason.

I’ve read somewhere that the Japanese player base have the same issue with RPR that English-speaking players have with SAM and NIN. All the RPR actions are the same, just spelled out in Japanese, which is interesting.

Everyone might have a different threshold of adaptability to memorizing the action names, but if you were to main SAM or NIN, I feel like it’d be picked up quickly enough. I recall most of the important cooldowns having just leveled the job and not really playing it, though ironically I don’t remember most of the rotation buttons. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you the level 1 combo starter for SAM right now, but I can tell you what Shoha, Iaijutsu, Ogi Namikiri, or Hissatsu: Shinten do for some reason.

Dev team: by streamlining you mean, removing energy drain?!

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Originally Posted by Jirah

Dev team: by streamlining you mean, removing energy drain?!

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In all honesty they simply need to remove energy drain from Aetherflow at this point. Make it it's own 2 charge system (like Phlegma / Painflare) and adjust potency accordingly.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

In all honesty they simply need to remove energy drain from Aetherflow at this point. Make it it's own 2 charge system (like Phlegma / Painflare) and adjust potency accordingly.

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That doesn’t fix the issue. ED was removed twice and Aetherflow felt like trash as a result. How many times do we need to remove and return ED before this sinks in?

You need a solution that both eliminates the DPS pressure against your healing tools while also not forcing players into a situation where they’re wasting cooldowns to avoid overcapping.

What’s the point of repairing only one side of a broken bridge?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

That doesn’t fix the issue. ED was removed twice and Aetherflow felt like trash as a result. How many times do we need to remove and return ED before this sinks in?

You need a solution that both eliminates the DPS pressure against your healing tools while also not forcing players into a situation where they’re wasting cooldowns to avoid overcapping.

What’s the point of repairing only one side of a broken bridge?

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Just replace that with a pure shield. Make it stackable like a reverse haima with a 1s recast so you can dump 1-3 AF on your tank so you can spam broil/aow in peace

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Originally Posted by Calysto

Just replace that with a pure shield. Make it stackable like a reverse haima with a 1s recast so you can dump 1-3 AF on your tank so you can spam broil/aow in peace

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So unnecessary shielding that gives you the illusion that you’re doing something of value. It’s kinda like giving a child a toy hammer and a separate plank of wood to make them feel like they’re helping.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

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 consistentd 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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So the solution is, if I understand this right, not 'remove ED so Aetherflow heals don't feel like they're competing vs damage', it's 'rework Aetherflow heals to use Fairy Gauge so that Aetherflow is ONLY spent on ED'? How is using AF then 3 ED's different from using a reworked ED that does 300p, once per min, to give you the Aetherflow stacks? They'd fulfill the same function and do the same damage. I'm not sure why we should keep designs that are clearly past their use-by date when we could replace them with fresh new design for optimization in a different way. Of course, losing it and having it replaced with nothing is not good, but I'm going to (perhaps foolishly) look at this from the point of view that SE will replace stuff with other stuff, not just remove it outright ala Kaiten. Like Fairy gauge is pretty pointless feeling atm yes, but so was Salted Earth in SHB, and in EW it honestly should have been removed. Instead they tied a 500p hit to it to keep it on life support.

There are plenty of different ways that SCH could have other 'optimizations'. We don't see PLD having an offensive Oath spender (and Shield Swipe was removed for the same reason), or WAR having a defensive for Wrath, because if there's a choice between 'not-damage' and 'damage', people choose damage, sometimes to the point of causing a wipe, and blaming others for not picking up the slack. We all remember DRKs being squishy in SB because they refused to use TBN cos 'dps loss', we've probably seen a barsing SCH or WHM in SHB who cause a wipe by not using Lily heals/Soil expecting their cohealer to pick up the slack, etc. At this point I expect SE will just be spiteful and make ED do 10 potency, so that even if someone DOES decide to dump all their 'flows on it, they're going to get like 240 potency total gain, and then crit variance means their gained damage is potentially outplayed by someone who just got lucky.

And that shielding is only 'unnecessary' if it doesn't save you a GCD. Which in prog, it probably would, and I think it'd be nice to be able to apply a shield, as the 'shield healer', that isn't a GCD, for the purpose of Deployment Tactics, especially if it can interact with Recitation or Protraction. The only OGCD option to shield atm is Consolation.

I'm astounded that people want to remove the last bit of complexity that Scholar has for more bloated and worthless oGCD heals or a token worthless damage oGCD that interacts with nothing. At some point, we have to accept that we get the job design we deserve.

I can’t quote because the response is too sling and I’m on my phone.

The solution I brought up would not be as uncharitable as Aetherflow is only used for ED and nothing else. It would be about having a selection of DPS tools including new DoTs or things like Shadowflare, not just a dinky ED.

Then you add a new way to generate Fey Gauge that is manually decided and not a consequence of cooldowns, and make that your healing resource gauge.

The proposed solution I commented on suggested a barrier action with a 1 second cooldown. So in other words Lustrate but better or Lustrate but worse. Yay. We either get to turn Lustrate into a piece of vestigial bloat, or we get a button that won’t be used seriously because it’s better to just wait for Lustrate assuming you wouldn’t just use literally any other Aetherflow, and exists purely so that you can burn it when you’re overlapped on Aetherflow, but you get to feel marginally better because it’s not considered “overhealing” even if the barrier times out because it’s duration expired, or the amount of healing you saved yourself from would have just been covered by your faerie anyway.

Surely the prog tool that will have SCH’ players sobbing in church over.

That's SCH problem.
Some people complain "oh noes, conflicting ressource, that's why SCH is broken"
Then people propose a solution (make ED a standalone ability and/or single AF gain + another AF dump that's less useless that overheal in this case)
Then it's another crowd that complain that whatever you do that isn't damage is useless as AF dump.
And it's the same the other way around when people want more damage or dots back.
You can't please anyone, so SCH is stuck as a mess.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I can’t quote because the response is too sling and I’m on my phone.

The solution I brought up would not be as uncharitable as Aetherflow is only used for ED and nothing else. It would be about having a selection of DPS tools including new DoTs or things like Shadowflare, not just a dinky ED.

Then you add a new way to generate Fey Gauge that is manually decided and not a consequence of cooldowns, and make that your healing resource gauge.

The proposed solution I commented on suggested a barrier action with a 1 second cooldown. So in other words Lustrate but better or Lustrate but worse. Yay. We either get to turn Lustrate into a piece of vestigial bloat, or we get a button that won’t be used seriously because it’s better to just wait for Lustrate assuming you wouldn’t just use literally any other Aetherflow, and exists purely so that you can burn it when you’re overlapped on Aetherflow, but you get to feel marginally better because it’s not considered “overhealing” even if the barrier times out because it’s duration expired, or the amount of healing you saved yourself from would have just been covered by your faerie anyway.

Surely the prog tool that will have SCH’ players sobbing in church over.

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The stipulation that there'd be multiple DPS Aetherflow spenders was not included in the comment I was responding to, but yeh that sounds good. Not overspending early so you have enough left for a 30s CD or such. However, since the order they come in is already kinda set in stone, would it not be easier to have Aetherflow heals stay as Aetherflow heals, and change Fey gauge into the 'DPS resource'? That way, Energy Drain can stay as the 'this is away to dump Aetherflow', perhaps give it's MP restore back (but remove it's damage) and have Fey gauge have more use than just Union. Then the issue is 'What the hell do we do with Union', since it can't really be converted over into an Aetherflow heal without it losing the ability to cancel it midchannel. Is it possible to have a 'charged action' with like, 10 charges? A 10 charge action that restores one charge per 15 seconds, and consumes a charge per tick, is that even doable in this crusty engine

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

The stipulation that there'd be multiple DPS Aetherflow spenders was not included in the comment I was responding to, but yeh that sounds good. Not overspending early so you have enough left for a 30s CD or such. However, since the order they come in is already kinda set in stone, would it not be easier to have Aetherflow heals stay as Aetherflow heals, and change Fey gauge into the 'DPS resource'? That way, Energy Drain can stay as the 'this is away to dump Aetherflow', perhaps give it's MP restore back (but remove it's damage) and have Fey gauge have more use than just Union. Then the issue is 'What the hell do we do with Union', since it can't really be converted over into an Aetherflow heal without it losing the ability to cancel it midchannel. Is it possible to have a 'charged action' with like, 10 charges? A 10 charge action that restores one charge per 15 seconds, and consumes a charge per tick, is that even doable in this crusty engine

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It makes far more sense for Aetherflow to be the DPs gauge both in lore as well as from a player experience standpoint since that’s the role it fulfills for SMN. It makes way more sense that the Fey Gauge be healing based not only because it’s associated with your faerie.

In my SCH concept over in the echo chamber, I outlined what I think feels a lot more fluid—generate fey gauge for GCD heals and utility that changes based on your current faerie, and those heals generate Aetherflow for you, but is not the only source of Aetherflow Generation. It mirrors how new SMN works in some ways which also makes the jobs connection to ACN’s leveling experience more intuitive since you currently need to break your neck turning your head upside down to make sense of SCH as a new player when you unlock the job.

The only reason I could see keeping Aetherflow as the healing resource in this example is because “it’s always been that way” which is not a valid reason, but an excuse.

The current healers are some of the shittiest game design I’ve ever seen. I see no reason to not approach these designs with a bulldozer instead of silk gloves.

isn't it annoying SMN job stone is green while SCH is blue.

The simplest change would be to shave off unnecessary heal buttons and give unique DPS buttons. With the existence of Protraction, it's clear the devs are running out of ideas for ways a Scholar can fill a health bar; they are so adamant on the "no healer dpsing" philosophy despite the hardest content in the game requiring healers to dps. As for Aetherflow, I honestly think they should just give it the hammer. Sage has a significantly better version of it so Scholar needs something else to set it apart that doesn't cause conflicting ability interaction.

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Originally Posted by Iedarus

The simplest change would be to shave off unnecessary heal buttons and give unique DPS buttons. With the existence of Protraction, it's clear the devs are running out of ideas for ways a Scholar can fill a health bar; they are so adamant on the "no healer dpsing" philosophy despite the hardest content in the game requiring healers to dps. As for Aetherflow, I honestly think they should just give it the hammer. Sage has a significantly better version of it so Scholar needs something else to set it apart that doesn't cause conflicting ability interaction.

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I actually like Protraction conceptually, however, I have a couple issues with it:

1. It doesn't last long enough. Increasing max HP can be a a really unique form of mitigation as it's essentially a refillable barrier, but that value needs time to actually benefit from that functionality.

2. I think it suites the pure healers better. As I mentioned, it's essentially a barrier in concept--one that can be refilled through regens, perhaps. I think it would feel a lot more interesting if pure healers didn't have any barriers, but could instead extend max HP and allow their regens to more effectively keep these max HP "barriers" in functionality refilled as a way to approach the issue of needing mitigation. Meanwhile, barrier healers shouldn't have max HP extension buffs, but just have their much larger barriers.

That said, I also think a concept ForsakenRoe brought up in another thread in the past about putting the healers on a scale from pure to barrier, where WHM is the dedicated pure healer, SGE is the dedicated barrier healer, SCH could be the barrier healer who could be a pinch pure healer with Eos or play more into their mitigation role as Selene, and AST balances the two roles evenly. Meanwhile Healer #5 we get in like 6 or 8 years from now would be a pure healer who could be a pinch barrier healer in some fashion, like with the SCH example of having Eos fulfill some pure healer duties. It's certainly one way the healers could develop in a more satisfying way.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

So the solution is, if I understand this right, not 'remove ED so Aetherflow heals don't feel like they're competing vs damage', it's 'rework Aetherflow heals to use Fairy Gauge so that Aetherflow is ONLY spent on ED'? How is using AF then 3 ED's different from using a reworked ED that does 300p, once per min, to give you the Aetherflow stacks? They'd fulfill the same function and do the same damage. I'm not sure why we should keep designs that are clearly past their use-by date when we could replace them with fresh new design for optimization in a different way. Of course, losing it and having it replaced with nothing is not good, but I'm going to (perhaps foolishly) look at this from the point of view that SE will replace stuff with other stuff, not just remove it outright ala Kaiten. Like Fairy gauge is pretty pointless feeling atm yes, but so was Salted Earth in SHB, and in EW it honestly should have been removed. Instead they tied a 500p hit to it to keep it on life support.

There are plenty of different ways that SCH could have other 'optimizations'. We don't see PLD having an offensive Oath spender (and Shield Swipe was removed for the same reason), or WAR having a defensive for Wrath, because if there's a choice between 'not-damage' and 'damage', people choose damage, sometimes to the point of causing a wipe, and blaming others for not picking up the slack. We all remember DRKs being squishy in SB because they refused to use TBN cos 'dps loss', we've probably seen a barsing SCH or WHM in SHB who cause a wipe by not using Lily heals/Soil expecting their cohealer to pick up the slack, etc. At this point I expect SE will just be spiteful and make ED do 10 potency, so that even if someone DOES decide to dump all their 'flows on it, they're going to get like 240 potency total gain, and then crit variance means their gained damage is potentially outplayed by someone who just got lucky.

And that shielding is only 'unnecessary' if it doesn't save you a GCD. Which in prog, it probably would, and I think it'd be nice to be able to apply a shield, as the 'shield healer', that isn't a GCD, for the purpose of Deployment Tactics, especially if it can interact with Recitation or Protraction. The only OGCD option to shield atm is Consolation.

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Hell every Broil / Bio / Ruin / Art of War cast could increase the fairy gauge by 5 points or something.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Hell every Broil / Bio / Ruin / Art of War cast could increase the fairy gauge by 5 points or something.

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nah can't have that, that'd be one step away from forcing people to do damage as a healer and we know we can't have that /s

if we go with what Taurus said, converting the Aetherflow heals into Fey gauge spenders, theoretically we could change Aetherflow into a different max count, or even into a 0-100 gauge for more granularity. Atm it's 3, for SMN it's 2, so different maximums are apparently possible. lets imagine we make it a 0-100 gauge. having 'previously AF heals' now on a 0-100 gauge also gives some leeway in changing their cost based on their strength. Fey Blessing and Indom are, functionally, identical, but one comes from the SCH and one from the Fairy, thus they could have the same Fey gauge cost. But Soil is vastly better than either (being as it heals twice as much via it's regen, and also has %mit) so it could have a different price. EG Blessing/Indom are 20, Soil 30, Lustrate 10, Excog 15, Union 5 per tick, etc. then we can have a direct conversion, without having the issue of 'well, indom is 20, soil is 30, but both generate one aetherflow so indom is better for damage'.

so once we convert fey gauge into aetherflow, we'd be able to have tools to spend it, with various CDs. ED would presumably be the 'dump' skill, so i think it'd be good if it had a cost of 'all of your aetherflow', scaling in damage based on how much is consumed. or just 10 per use so you dont misclick and waste it all works too. then there could also be stuff like, idk, 30s CD Shadowflare which costs 30 to place, bring back Bane for 20 to spread DOTs (maybe with upfront damage to keep it as a better option than ED), etc. not sure what should generate should generate Fey gauge to start all of this off though, probably not something uptime reliant like attacking, else you'd be forced into using crappy Succor during something like High Concept. 'Fairy actions' could work, since Embrace is pretty low healing it'd almost always be firing off, making it the healing equivalent of 'PLD gets gauge by autoattacking', while still being able to generate even during downtime like HC2. It'd also incentivise the idea of 'use your fairy skills first preferably', but if people are full HP then it won't work. Unless they changed Embrace to always cast, with 'target of target' (aka the maintank) being chosen if everyone is full HP, to keep it precasting in case the MT takes an autoattack and to keep generating gauge

the problem is, a design like that would still force you to spend 'healing resource' on Lustrate to get the 'damage resource' (which feels bad). The alternative is that the two systems are separate, which also feels bad because it just continues to demonstrate that the damage and healing halves of the kit are distinctly seperate from each other instead of a cohesive whole. like slicing an orange and a lemon in half, and mixmatching the halves from the two together. 'theyre both citrus fruits so what does it matter' say the devs. I wonder how much SMN has had an effect on all of this, the EW rework should have been the time to seperate the two once and for all. Make SMN a job unlocked in ARR by getting any class to 30, and change ACN to a second healer choice on the main menu so people have options when they want to start a character and be a healer, instead of instantly railroading them into CNJ by default. Seems pretty obvious to me that ACN's evolution into SCH is the lore-apt one, and SMN is the side thing, rather than the other way round, especially since the SCH job trainer is in the same city the ACN guild is in. By having SMN be it's own standalone thing, the shared concepts between the two jobs wouldn't have to be shared, like getting Aetherflow as an ACN only to lose it becoming a SCH only to get it again at 45 because it's used for Lustrate. Just remove it from SMN entirely, make Fester and Painflare be shared 2 charges, 30s CD it's not rocket science but hey i'm not a rocket scientist so maybe it is way harder than it looks to me

How I constructed the Aetherflow vs Fey Gauge mechanics, simply put, looks roughly like this:

- ACN's Aethercharge becomes Aetherflow on SCH: a GCD button that generates 1 Aetherflow and 20 Fey Gauge. It also has charges.
- Aetherflow stacks enables 1 use of Libra, an OGCD tool that converts your DPS spells into different spells.
- Miasma spells are returned to SCH as a 2nd GCD DoT with a hardcast and last 24 seconds. Under Libra, Bio spells transform into Pain, a 3rd DoT to manage which lasts 45 seconds.
- Ruin/Broil spells become Fester. In the doc, I listed Broil as being 260 potency while Fester is 500, increasing by 40 for each of the 3 DoTs on your target.
This is the basic Aetherflow gameplay loop, though there's a bit more in the doc.

Meanwhile, Fey Gauge enables two GCD spells that change based on your current Faerie.
- With Eos summoned, you can cast Protraction or Indomitability. These are spells you cast by pulling aether from your faerie. Both cost 20 fey gauge and grant 1 Aetherflow. Protraction can be spread to other party members through Deployment Tactics.
- With Selene summoned, you get Retaliation and Expedient. Same deal as above on the fey gauge cost and Aetherflow generation. Retaliation is similar to Eye for an Eye--taking physical damage reflects a physical damage down on the attacker while taking magical damage reflects a magical damage down onto the attacker. This can also be spread through Deployment Tactics. Expedient is just the sprint.

You can store up to 100 Fey Gauge so there's little concern about overcapping. Shadowflare also generates Aetherflow when used, which it has a cooldown, and Recitation causes your GCD heals to generate 1 Aetherflow as well.

This happens with White Mage too, which does have a "holy" theme but also an elemental/natural theme as well. Most of the older jobs are kind of inconsistent as things have been added and taken away over time, kind of diffusing the original identity.

It's not necessarily bad though, it gives it more flavor and nuance than the newer jobs like Sage. Maybe one day Scholar will get a rework like Summoner and it will all become more coherent again-- until the next expansion adds a few new skills with a different flavor.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

How I constructed the Aetherflow vs Fey Gauge mechanics, simply put, looks roughly like this:

- ACN's Aethercharge becomes Aetherflow on SCH: a GCD button that generates 1 Aetherflow and 20 Fey Gauge. It also has charges.
- Aetherflow stacks enables 1 use of Libra, an OGCD tool that converts your DPS spells into different spells.
- Miasma spells are returned to SCH as a 2nd GCD DoT with a hardcast and last 24 seconds. Under Libra, Bio spells transform into Pain, a 3rd DoT to manage which lasts 45 seconds.
- Ruin/Broil spells become Fester. In the doc, I listed Broil as being 260 potency while Fester is 500, increasing by 40 for each of the 3 DoTs on your target.
This is the basic Aetherflow gameplay loop, though there's a bit more in the doc.

Meanwhile, Fey Gauge enables two GCD spells that change based on your current Faerie.
- With Eos summoned, you can cast Protraction or Indomitability. These are spells you cast by pulling aether from your faerie. Both cost 20 fey gauge and grant 1 Aetherflow. Protraction can be spread to other party members through Deployment Tactics.
- With Selene summoned, you get Retaliation and Expedient. Same deal as above on the fey gauge cost and Aetherflow generation. Retaliation is similar to Eye for an Eye--taking physical damage reflects a physical damage down on the attacker while taking magical damage reflects a magical damage down onto the attacker. This can also be spread through Deployment Tactics. Expedient is just the sprint.

You can store up to 100 Fey Gauge so there's little concern about overcapping. Shadowflare also generates Aetherflow when used, which it has a cooldown, and Recitation causes your GCD heals to generate 1 Aetherflow as well.

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As good as that sounds, it's likely going to be shot down by the devs since they're trying to simplify healers. Btw I do like several of your ideas on how to work with Fae Gauge and AF, but I think we may need to cut the middle man out here and make things flow a bit better.

AF is removed, and ED becomes a 2 charge oGCD attack.
ED generates 20 Fey Gauge and gives the SCH 1000 MP. This keeps the "do damage" mentality, but also makes it a tactical decision. Make Dissipation drop 50 gauge but buff all of SCH's healing (gauge heals included), Fey Union a small healing pulse from both the SCH and fairy (while still locking out Embrace and draining gauge), and make it so the gauge goes up by 2 for every Embrace and by 20 for each Fairy ability (Fey Illumination, Whispering Dawn, Fey Blessing).

Overall that would help synergy within the job, fit SE's silly "heal centered" mindset, and gives them a base for things they can add for SCH in the future since SCH's abilities will actually synergize.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

isn't it annoying SMN job stone is green while SCH is blue.

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Yes, absolutely! I know green has been associated with SMN in past games, but it's so annoying, nothing about SCH is blue, skills are either green/red or other random colours. Adding that to the list.

Also, guys, I appreciate that the thread is getting attention, but can you please not highjack it to discuss ED and other skill reworks for SCH? We already have a thousand threads on ED, here I was only pointing out the lore and aesthetic inconsistencies of the class.

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Originally Posted by Succor

Yes, absolutely! I know green has been associated with SMN in past games, but it's so annoying, nothing about SCH is blue, skills are either green/red or other random colours. Adding that to the list.

Also, guys, I appreciate that the thread is getting attention, but can you please not highjack it to discuss ED and other skill reworks for SCH? We already have a thousand threads on ED, here I was only pointing out the lore and aesthetic inconsistencies of the class.

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Broil and Biolysis have become blue though, as well as Chain Stratagem, and that's 95% of SCH right there.

Perhaps nym being a maritime nation has something to do with it? Otherwise you may as well ask about the rationale behind half the other soul crystal colour schemes. What colour would you have chosen? Brown is generally avoided as an attention grabbing colour so that’s out.

Frankly a lot of the new jobs don’t have coherent identities, particularly when compared with the base game ones. Summoner and healers being gutted has done a huge amount of damage to the identity, but it’s still clearer than gunbreaker or sage.

I'm fine with SCH's visual direction...

But I have to say that Seraph looks completely out of place. It came in an expansion that featured fairies, they had more thing to have inspiration for an 'advanced fairy form' rather than an angel.

In all honesty, I wish instead of a Seraph, we had both aspects of Lily being manifested at once... But I suppose the game doesn't support a pet job with more than one pet entity at once.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I'm fine with SCH's visual direction...

But I have to say that Seraph looks completely out of place. It came in an expansion that featured fairies, they had more thing to have inspiration for an 'advanced fairy form' rather than an angel.

In all honesty, I wish instead of a Seraph, we had both aspects of Lily being manifested at once... But I suppose the game doesn't support a pet job with more than one pet entity at once.

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Having 2 pet entities may not be possible, but what is possible is a "twin model" with both (like twin butterfly or nouliths)