Anyone else feeling a hit to SCH?

[LegoTechnic]

Excogitation is interesting. It's an anti-tankbuster with a large auto-trigger heal effect (650 potency) for when a tank dips below 50%, or barring that a safety net in dungeons for if you want to switch into cleric stance an...oops, uh, I mean just want to throw a few broils while not worrying about the tank for a second.

Chain Strategem is more or less the new raid defining role for the class. Battle Litany on half the cooldown timer, but applicable to only a single target rather than a party buff. Probably the biggest reason we won't be seeing double AST parties other than that card buffs don't stack.

Fey Union is basically telling the fairy to focus heal a single target, and it's pretty high potency for a fairy (480 potency per tick currently). As much as we all love macro'ing embrace to physick, I'd just as soon do this I guess.

DPS has been neutered. Down to two dots, Bio and Miasma series, and we don't get Bio III either (SMN only), and no more using Bio I and Bio II together. Aero is gone. Bane is nerfed drastically with 20% damage decrease per next target as opposed to Holy's 10%, and Shadowflare is now on a 60 second cooldown (uuuuuugh). Miasma II is gone, and we can't cross-class Blizzard II either, so Bane and Shadowflare are the absolute full extent of our AoE. Honestly we are now probably one of the worst AoE in the game; it would probably be interesting to see if we could outperform a MNK with TP issues in this regard. The sole positive is Broil II is no longer the weakest direct damage healer spell with a potency of 230, which is 30 less than WHM's Stone IV and 20 more than AST's Malefic II (so middle road). We also retain Ruin II for instant damage on the move. However this also means DPS as a SCH will be mind-numbingly dull. Pray to whatever you worship that damage will be flying everywhere because 2-dot -> one-button spam is why I never liked WHM.

Virus is gone, as is Disable. They are now in the hands of DPS. You were an iconic spell, Virus, situational in your annoyance, and you will be missed.

Succor is still worse than Noct stance Aspected Helios. Succor is 150 potency with a shield of 100% healing done per target. AspHelios is also 150 potency with a shield 150% the healing done. Note that Noct stance confers an additional +15% to healing though, so it's actually stronger than 150 potency in effect. Easily better than Succor, but less effective than Deployment Tactics + Adloquium. Succor is 2280 mana with a 2.5 second cast time, and AspHelios is 1800 mana with a 3 second cast time, so that's alright I guess.

And speaking of Adlo, Aspected Benefic has been retooled to have 200 potency and confer a shield 300% of the amount healed. It costs 1320 mana and is instant cast. Compare to Adloquium which is a 300 potency cure that creates a 100% shield that doubles if it crits, costs 1800 mana and is a 2 second cast. When you consider this with the Noct +15% bonus, Adlo will still actually heal for more but it will create a weaker shield. AspBene has the effective benefit of landing a critical adlo shield upon every cast, so while it will heal less HP it's instant and can be chained after a standard Benefic for a big result (note that Benefic II now has a +15% crit rate trait as well). So yes, if you thought shielding mechanics defined Scholars, looks like we're sharing.

I will admit that I recall fondly the days of yore where WHM and SCH stood side by side with completely separate healing focuses, and it's weird to see the little sibling able to do both roles equally well while ALSO bringing unique party buffs to the table, BUT we still have our fairy. That is additional free healing to use as we wish, and using whatever divine seal is called we can still pump out better adlos if we really work for it since it has a greater effect on our higher potency. Emergency Tactics is still a 175% strength version of Helios on a 30 second timer, and Lustrate is still great, which is good because we're going to be using a lot of broil spam while the fairy works, and lustrate will likely be our go-to heal again. Or maybe we can energy drain more, I don't know. Scholar is still a class, and with the three new abilities we're definitely fantastic at preventing tank-busters, especially with the old toolkit remaining. AST can't take that from us, and crit trick attack makes sure everyone remembers we're team players.