4.0 Scholar predictions

[Gemina]

1. The devs want to simplify the current combat system to narrow the skill gap between players. I know this has to do more with complex DPS rotations, but having to manually cast embrace contradicts what the devs want as it will require more skill to get the same output we currently have with SCH. They could however, lower the threshold in which the fairies automatically cast embrace.

2. I need more experience with DT to comment here. But I believe you are correct in your assessment that it wouldn't be received with a whole lot of optimism. Nerfing shields hurts the job, and it's better to increase the utility of the other healers to be more on par with SCH than the other way around.

3. I am actually wondering if arcanists are going to get Aetherflow IV. I found it strange that they get the upgrades at levels 20 and 40 respectively, and nothing happened @60. The near infinite MP pool is how SCHs make up for their overall lower heal potency. Physick spam can save an instance going south, and if you've ever made the same mistake I have while in a clutch healing situation and you forget to pop aetherflow, that MP gets sapped pretty quick. I don't really think MP management from any of the healers really needs any kind of fixing, though I can't speak for AST.

4. I think the bottlenecks the other healers have is that they don't have a fairy. With my WHM in healing situations, it's about squeezing in DPS between heals safely to bring the mob down faster. With SCH in the same situation, it is more in line with DPSing until I see that Eos can no longer keep up. It's two completely different approaches to healing while accomplishing the same thing. With that perspective, a bottleneck doesn't really exist. Just different methods to obtaining the goal.

[SaitoHikari]

I don't really see developers actually nerfing Scholar in any numerical terms. What I -do- see them doing however is making Dissipation a big part of the scholar toolkit for the future skills, essentially being a playstyle nerf.

Many say that the only way to balance Scholar is to get rid of the fairy, and I totally see the Stormblood abilities requiring the Dissipation buff being up.

[Ceasaria]

Something should be done about fairy (maybe add its own mana as suggested before which could be refill with Sustain).
Selene need to change and maybe allow a gameplay more offensive (by changing her skills), where Eos is purely defensive (and is perfect)

Cabalabob, you want to change adlo crit to become like Astro Noct ? lol
Just rework Astro already to give him a true identity.

Crit on shield is really an interesting aspect of healing based on secondary stat.
Just because of how crit is powerful on every job, SE could just lower its strength.
In that case, crit adlo would be just a bit powerful than a normal adlo.
So, Deployment Tactics could be unchanged.

MP managment don't need to be nerf. If we do that, Main healer scholar (if it's happen in 4.0) we be in trouble.

Maybe because Indomatibility is more interesting than Sacred Soil, it could get a rework. I think of a recast time more longer.
Emergency Tactic could transform all actual shields from party into HP instead to be apply to an adlo. It will allow to not have useless shield (when healing is needed) in some way. And, it will be more convenient for Scholar to use this skill than now.
Dissipation need some rework like maybe give back fairy at the end of the 30 sec.

[LadyKairi]

I don't think crit adlo needs to be changed. in my whole time playing scholar, I have never used it with the purpose of ignoring mechanics. It is my job to use my shields to make things easier on the main healer, which saves them mp. Like in a11s where the platform is on fire, dps get photon and whirlwind is right after. Crit adlo lowers the stress of healing and saves mp. And remember, you're not garunteed a crit. It's still RNG. I mean, if you were garunteed a crit adlo it would be too op, but it's not garunteed. You can try and try and try and STILL not get one no matter how high your crit is.

[Connor]

I don't think crit adlo needs to be changed. in my whole time playing scholar, I have never used it with the purpose of ignoring mechanics. It is my job to use my shields to make things easier on the main healer, which saves them mp. Like in a11s where the platform is on fire, dps get photon and whirlwind is right after. Crit adlo lowers the stress of healing and saves mp. And remember, you're not garunteed a crit. It's still RNG. I mean, if you were garunteed a crit adlo it would be too op, but it's not garunteed. You can try and try and try and STILL not get one no matter how high your crit is.

I mentioned before, but my point wasn't to remove crit adlo entirely, just to have it so it's not so easily spread to the entire party.
You're right though that critical hit rate is always going to be random and thus unreliable (to an extent), which allows it to balance itself out naturally when compared with other healing abilities.

[Feyona]

Because that is exactly the problem. Adloquium + fairy are the reason nocturnal AST is rendered useless. Crit Adloquium is too powerful, it blows aspected benefic out of the water.

Noctast has a more powerful basic heal than sch and was buffed, so not only can you shield, but you get the high heal as well, I know sch has lustrate but that relies on a cd. Cant be sustained you need the adlo crit really in some cases. Ast can do it by the shield and benefic ll which can be cast indefinitely ( bar mana restriction) . As for adlo spread crit I wouldnt nerf that either really theres quite a long cd on DT and for shielding heavy incoming damage you cant always get a crit its always a bonus

[Feyona]

I don't think crit adlo needs to be changed. in my whole time playing scholar, I have never used it with the purpose of ignoring mechanics. It is my job to use my shields to make things easier on the main healer, which saves them mp. Like in a11s where the platform is on fire, dps get photon and whirlwind is right after. Crit adlo lowers the stress of healing and saves mp. And remember, you're not garunteed a crit. It's still RNG. I mean, if you were garunteed a crit adlo it would be too op, but it's not garunteed. You can try and try and try and STILL not get one no matter how high your crit is.

Ive used it to ignore one and thats the pushback on Sophia ex. Getting a cit there stops the knock back and its damage.

[Sebazy]

As we all know by now, 4.0 is going to see some 'changes' to the battle system.
During the 3.0 series Scholar has been widely considered to be extremely powerful in PvE compared to the other two healers (though this gap is much less between SCH/AST because of Balance).

Wait what?

1) Taking embrace off autopilot goes directly against SE's goal of simplifying the same for 4.0. It simply won't happen. More likely it'll see another whopping stealth nerf akin to how it dropped off in strength as you levelled from 50 to 60. Not to mention, any progression minded SCH worth their salt will be manually spamming embrace or at the very least using macros. This would just increase the gulf between the raid community and casuals, I imagine SE are well aware of this.

2) What? I can't think of a situation where it makes a significant enough difference to make or break a run? Making the big transitions hit for 0 damage is funny for sure, but it doesn't really change anything and it certainly isn't consistent enough to build a strat around it.

3) SCH's MP is where it should be, AST has arguably too much MP regen, whilst WHM has too little. A SCH DPSing hard enough has surprisingly little spare MP to play with and it's very easy to hit empty with a raise at the wrong moment =(

4) Cleric stance doesn't stop regens for example. Yes a SCH is the most suited to it but that doesn't mean that WHM and AST can't fulfil this role, they both have quirks and caveats but they can most certainly DPS just fine in raids. This 'disparity' adds flavour to the game. WHM and AST are already tripping over each others toes as it is, the last thing we need is the healer waters getting even more muddied. Oh and again I'll disagree with your MP management comment on SCH, frankly either you don't know what you are on about or you aren't DPSing hard enough, Broil enough and you will start running out of MP unless you've stacked Piety.

SCH is fantastically balanced IMO, it's got some powerful abilities and it's fairy brings a lot to the table, but it also takes skill, effort and practice to really get the most out of it's quirky abilities as well as Eos. Don't get me wrong, I do think that SE need to address the healer 'meta' for 4.0, but nerfing SCH isn't the way to go about it.

[Rawrz]

3) SCH's MP is where it should be, AST has arguably too much MP regen, whilst WHM has too little. A SCH DPSing hard enough has surprisingly little spare MP to play with and it's very easy to hit empty with a raise at the wrong moment =(

Right?! Infinite MP died when ruin stopped being viable. That in combination to wonderfully excessive Spell Speed.

[GeekMatt]

This character limit is the insane.

Edit:
I don't understand the thinking on the main post or a number of the comments.

If you want to bring Fairys more in-line with the other healers, removing the autoheal would make it lesser than regen. If you want to force SCH to heal, either readjust the potency/frequency of the fairy heals, or require her to be repeatedly set to perform the task at a cost of your own mp.

Critlo is incredibly powerful, and being able to spread it is fantastic but because it's pure RNG-based it's not dependable. I'm sorry but I'll take AST shields over SCH any day. The real reason SCH is so great over the other 2 is because it can passively heal while pumping out good DPS. Remove either one of those things and it would require a buff elsewhere to be on par. Passive healing is good BECAUSE it enables you to DPS.

Lastly, as an Astrologian, the SCH is much more likely to need MP than I am. Obviously this varies with player ability but it's the case almost every run of any instance for me. I solo heal with a dead co-healer, throwing out rezzes and still won't need the MP, SCH isn't so easy on MP as to require a nerf to level the playing field.

SCH is definitely the closest to a "must-have", but again that's the ability to passively heal while DPSing which is critical to the job itself. If anything I'd just nerf the fairy potency and/or frequency of its auto heals OR incur an MP cost somehow (I.e you spend X MP for Eos to auto-embrace for Y amount of time) so SCH has to watch HP bars and maybe drop Cleric once in a while. But this is a very delicate thing to consider playing with as it would break the job. I'd much rather see SCH keep going as-is; I'd even consider introducing a long CD button for a guaranteed Crit, and just boost WHM potencies (DPS mostly) and give AST better management of its RNG.

Edit: WHM balancing is actually more complicated than I made it out to be there.