Another SCH complain

[RajaVamberaux]

The huge amount of hype that I had for Stormblood was completely deflated after the media release and I didn't even think that would be possible. I never thought that SE would take one of the most complete jobs in FFXIV and bastardize it to being so mundane. Scholar was supposed to be the toolkit healer, with weaker heals but proactive abilities leading to a highly technical but satisfying gameplay. Yes the job had a high skill ceiling, but it was one the most rewarding of all classes when played optimally.

So I can understand how they wanted to take some of the best of Scholar and share that with other jobs. Addle to Ranged DPS? Fine. Eye for an Eye full strength for all healers? Cool. Only Ast was really out on that one. But what I don't like is how the gameplay itself is now no different from WHM or AST (DoT, Instant, Filler Spam).

As for the new abilities, Fey Union is just a focused Regen (which is a QoL change nothing more, for Scholars who were already mashing embrace during focused healing phases). Excog & Strategem are both cool and I'm interested to see the group coordination involving these moves but they do not make up for the AoE nerf that NO ONE was asking for. Like who ever said Scholar AoE needs to be nerfed when WHM and AST have Holy/Gravity. It's a solution seeking a problem that never existed in the first place.

I find the Quickened Aetherflow trait highly underwhelming because we can use probability to determine from the tooltip that:

Each used Stack has a 20% chance of reducing Aetherflow CD by 10s;
3 Stacks per minute means a 60% chance of Aetherflow CD reduced by 10s every minute;
Aetherflow (in the long run) has an effective cooldown of 54s (60s - [60% x 10s]).

Overall - Meh. In a ten minute fight we basically get 12 Aetherflows instead of 11. In dungeon situations I imagine this will be at best a nice to have (in those blue moon situations when all 3 Stacks reduce the timer - a 0.8% chance!), and at worse it won't even be noticed because the bonus is so negligible.

The ONE cross-class ability I was excited for, Cleric Stance, has also been made underwhelming as well. The measly 5% damage bonus means I'll be hard-pressed to take it even after progression if there's any measurable demand for Esuna or more healing. What could have been a great player differentiator has actually been made to be a slap in the face, like "Oh you actually want to DPS, here's a paltry spoonful to make you feel better about it." Imagine instead great Scholars could put themselves ahead by challenging themselves to get all 3 Energy Drains under Cleric Stance, utilizing Dissipation and Quickened Aetherflow to make all of these synergize nicely!! Right now these values are so small that I'll still do it to be optimal but who even cares - a 21% crit run versus an 18% run would make a bigger difference and that's entirely RNG.

Further, I'm hardly excited about the neutered DPS kit that is essentially DoT -> Instant -> Broil spam for 30 seconds in any situation. The only question I'll ever be asking is, "Is this pack large enough to make sense to DoT the other end and Bane again?" How exciting. /s

Part of having a "tactician toolkit" means we need to have the time to use those assets. We now have 6+ oGCDs and only ONE weaving opportunity in Bio II. Of course there's still Ruin II but that's always been suboptimal and now we'll be forced to use it for no other reason than because "they took everything else away." Like what the hell?

In addition to the WHM changes, I've become extremely disheartend about the over-emphasis on healing abilities and the ONLY WAY I could see these changes being in the right direction is if the healing requirement of ALL content is drastically INCREASED. Who cares about being able to tether the fairy if the damage output is so negligible 90% of the time I wouldn't care anyways?

Having seen some of the dungeon videos (you can check them out on Gamerescape) it's clear to me however that the healing required is the same, IF NOT LESS. The healer rarely even healed. They overhealed for half the video cus it was Satasha-normal level damage. Maybe this is all just for the PR-Promos and such, but I'm hard pressed to believe that all of these numbers (tooltips, incoming damage, outgoing heals, mob size, etc) aren't all completely done at this point.

Make no mistake, the numbers, gameplay, and playstyles we see in the media are 99% what we are getting in two weeks. Having been able to fully digest the neutered Scholar, misunderstood White Mage, and overpowered Astrologian I am highly disheartened at SE's seeming inability to bring distinguishable, balanced, and nuanced gameplay to healing in FFXIV.

[KDSilver]

I am really sad for the removal of Virus actually.
Cause Scholar as the mitgation healer, this skill was great and since it was our ROLE to do mitgation, we had "the time to use it".

What I am afraid of is that caster won't use this because focused on their rotation/dps (or don't even understand the use of this skill).
Of course, it only applies on duty finder cause in a static you will talk with your group and ask each people to use their abilites.

Won't say anything for Eye for Eye, it has been buff and for all healers, so that's cool.

[LegoTechnic]

I am really sad for the removal of Virus actually.
Cause Scholar as the mitgation healer, this skill was great and since it was our ROLE to do mitgation, we had "the time to use it".

What I am afraid of is that caster won't use this because focused on their rotation/dps (or don't even understand the use of this skill).
Of course, it only applies on duty finder cause in a static you will talk with your group and ask each people to use their abilites.

Won't say anything for Eye for Eye, it has been buff and for all healers, so that's cool.

I'm actually a little annoyed at the Virus removal since no healer has it now, and it's been given to DPS instead. This was one of the SCH/AST raid responsibilities, especially if you didn't have a SMN, and it was fun to be able to do it. I mean who else is most concerned with mitigating damage than the healer? Certainly not the rotation-focused DPS. I always figured one of the reasons healers had such uncomplicated abilities was so they could keep a better awareness of the party and fight and thus react better.

I am sure the DPS will be able to virus fine, it's not hard. I just feel like they took a bit of my job unnecessarily, and I will certainly miss my emergency safety net for when I flub an AoE timing and want a bit of insurance the next blast won't cripple my shields. >_>;

[Yorumi]

I'm actually a little annoyed at the Virus removal since no healer has it now, and it's been given to DPS instead. This was one of the SCH/AST raid responsibilities, especially if you didn't have a SMN, and it was fun to be able to do it. I mean who else is most concerned with mitigating damage than the healer?

It's weird to me cause dps arn't really concerned with paying attention to the tank buster, healers are since they need to be prepared to, well heal through it. That said I think the goal is to promote more teamwork across all classes. DPS classes picked up a lot of mitigation and interrupt abilities. Though they've basically given healers less responsibility by basically making them just spam heals, and dps more responsibility. An odd shift.

[Feidam]

It's weird to me cause dps arn't really concerned with paying attention to the tank buster, healers are since they need to be prepared to, well heal through it. That said I think the goal is to promote more teamwork across all classes. DPS classes picked up a lot of mitigation and interrupt abilities. Though they've basically given healers less responsibility by basically making them just spam heals, and dps more responsibility. An odd shift.

Yeah I am curious to see how this plays out. And why make a pure dps or healer with little utility compared to others. Especially since the other classes seem to play off the idea of synergy. Guessing the way they have design the content will hold the answer. Either that or whm, black Mage, and samurai will be getting some changes.

[Anselmet]

I don't know about you guys, but the first thing I'm doing when I reach 70 is make a hotbar dedicated to all the noct asts that will not go diurnal when paired with a sch. I remember when ast first got their shield buff, now with sb I can see this being a major issue for a couple of months. And I plan on being extremely salty with a fairy that will only heal me and me only.

I just hope their mp drain will still be below ours so I can watch their mp bar plummet like I get to now-
Oh wait we all get two mp regens.....nvm.

[LegoTechnic]

I don't know about you guys, but the first thing I'm doing when I reach 70 is make a hotbar dedicated to all the noct asts that will not go diurnal when paired with a sch. I remember when ast first got their shield buff, now with sb I can see this being a major issue for a couple of months. And I plan on being extremely salty with a fairy that will only heal me and me only.

I just hope their mp drain will still be below ours so I can watch their mp bar plummet like I get to now-
Oh wait we all get two mp regens.....nvm.

Is this where I point out that you can't use fairy beam on yourself?

[Nowakii]

I don't know about you guys, but the first thing I'm doing when I reach 70 is make a hotbar dedicated to all the noct asts that will not go diurnal when paired with a sch. I remember when ast first got their shield buff, now with sb I can see this being a major issue for a couple of months. And I plan on being extremely salty with a fairy that will only heal me and me only.

I just hope their mp drain will still be below ours so I can watch their mp bar plummet like I get to now-
Oh wait we all get two mp regens.....nvm.

Why woudl they? their shields are better anyway xD

anyway once again we got overshadowed, by our WHM friends..... im sure they will get some good changes, dont get me wrong, thats great ! .... but all the atention is on them, making it even more impossible for us to get a change...

[Littlegreen]

Honestly, SCH needed a dps nerf. I always felt like I was gaming the system doing dps 70% of the time, and often doing more than some dps. It seems like they're actually trying to make healers heal (well aside from AST...) and I'm alright with that. SCH still functions the same, just focus on single-target over AoE. Use them Energy Drains and get Aetherflow back faster, it'll be even easier with damage going off of mind now and Cleric Stance as just a straight buff to damage we can still do respectable damage while doing our job. SCH and AST were too strong and these changes feels more like how healing as SCH should be. Now we wait for AST...

[Rawrz]

Honestly, SCH needed a dps nerf. I always felt like I was gaming the system doing dps 70% of the time, and often doing more than some dps. It seems like they're actually trying to make healers heal (well aside from AST...) and I'm alright with that. SCH still functions the same, just focus on single-target over AoE. Use them Energy Drains and get Aetherflow back faster, it'll be even easier with damage going off of mind now and Cleric Stance as just a straight buff to damage we can still do respectable damage while doing our job. SCH and AST were too strong and these changes feels more like how healing as SCH should be. Now we wait for AST...

Yeah lets nerf a completely working class because they do too much dps and not enough healing. Ok. Have fun spending 70% of the time DPSing, while getting less DPS out of it.

Tom gets a job at a factory. His job is to put pencils into a machine so that they can be bundled and count them. The whole factory gets a bonus if he can get 100 bundles done an hour. He does great! 120 an hour and everyone loves Tom for being so good at his job. Janet has the same job as Tom. Shes not so good at loading up the machine. She can only do about 80 and hour. She blames the machine for being too difficult and focused too much on bundling the Pencils over her real job of just standing there. Janet complains every single day to Manager Sean. Sean decides that Janet is really obnoxious when she whines and he's tired of handing out bonuses every week. He mandates that every machine be put out of service. Every worker is to hand bundle their pencils. Tom is absolutely disgusted. Janet is completely thrilled! Now was Janet's chance! She could be good like Tom, better than Tom! Tom disdainfully bundles his pencils. 80 an hour. Janet does 60 an hour. Janet feels so accomplished. Only 20 Less than Tom for the Same amount of work she had been doing before? I must be the best she said. No one was able to reach 100 an hour and no one could even come close, but whats important is that janet feels like shes doing a good job for less work. Janet decided that, that was the important lesson.

Author's note: Tom killed himself after 3 weeks.