Save Scholar: Add one last Class to the game.

[Ariane]

Yeh, aoe break would still only be worth using at 5 targets or more (250 > 230), but that would've been the case if we kept access to blizzard 2 as well.
I don't want a 200 potency AoE like the other healers tho.. things should be more varied instead of homogenized to the point everything plays the same.. I like DoT-based classes so I want SE to focus more on that aspect for SCH.. however SE has made a decision to move away from DoTs in general.

It doesn't really have to be holy/gravity clone but with the direction they are going, it looks that's what they were suppose to do. I think the aoe nerfs was really meant to be for SMN, and then its like SE just forgot to give SCH a holy clone or something to make up for it.

[Shurrikhan]

This is the problem with everyone picking Cleric Stance in the healer role. You get screamed at, shouted down, and basically told you're a bad player if you don't have it, because maybe you wanted something else with more utility. If you don't follow the BiS guide for best rotation from some arbitrary wiki, good gawd you're a bad player, don't even play this game.

Again, that is the result of imbalanced choices given what development has weighted, by accident or intention, highly (e.g. dps) or lowly. Just like no MMO ought to allow for the choice of an instant kill spell, as per your X-zone/Death example, ideally, nothing like Cleric Stance should stand as a "choice" when it is in fact not.

That said, the ~2% DPS contribution of the 4.0 Cleric Stance may well be such an option, so long as any other skill, e.g. Rescuing a laggy East-coast-er, would provide the same advantage to clear time. But you're damn right that people would scream at you for not taking an ability that more than doubles your combined output in typical fights. The "choice" just wasn't really a choice. That's imbalance.
It does not, however, condemn the idea of choice itself, provided they are actual choices.

That's just how anything multiplayer is. Either you take the options that are actually best in a fight, given the conditions of your team, or you're performing less than maximally. Why would that not be the case? Now, hopefully your group is only looking for results, and will at least be willing to let you see if you can perform within an acceptable margin of their expectations regardless of your choices, risking the time it may take to exchange them if you cannot. (But the more people fight the idea of providing informative tools, by which to determine results, the more is assumed, and the more options are trimmed even if your skill would otherwise make up for your choices, because while results should be all that matter, how else can one boost the probability of success with only roughly known contribution?)

Class IN THIS ITERATION = Access to all the cross-class actions. That does not have to be the exact case just because a game allows for, roughly, two tiers of classes—broad/primary and focused/advanced.
Jobs IN THIS ITERATION = Access to only two related classes. That does not have to be the exact case just because a game allows for, roughly, two tiers of classes—broad/primary and focused/advanced.


My ONLY point here has only ever been that XIV is a terrible example of a two-tier system... probably because it never intended anything beyond the makeshift.
Its slipshod implementation is no representation of the concept's viability.

I am NOT saying that XIV would necessarily be improved by making classes an actual thing. Nor am I saying that XIV would be better without. Speaking in terms of enjoyment for the playerbase gained per dollar of development spent, making classes viable would not be a good path unless it was somehow the natural center for several other additions to the game experience. (That is incredibly unlikely.) But neither is there anything that starting as a Paladin from level 1, before one would have ever heard of the Paladin order or have any happenstance to connect them to it, would provide that simply forcing someone to get the job to continue on to level 31 could not. Except of course to consume money.

[KisaiTenshi]

Reminder, don't clip /s , by clipping it, you changed the tone from sarcasm to serious. I was certainly being sarcastic with the part you quoted.

Again, that is the result of imbalanced choices given what development has weighted, by accident or intention, highly (e.g. dps) or lowly. Just like no MMO ought to allow for the choice of an instant kill spell, as per your X-zone/Death example, ideally, nothing like Cleric Stance should stand as a "choice" when it is in fact not.

That said, the ~2% DPS contribution of the 4.0 Cleric Stance may well be such an option, so long as any other skill, e.g. Rescuing a laggy East-coast-er, would provide the same advantage to clear.

See this is what I pointed out. Why was Cleric Stance EVER a cross-class choice in the first place? Most of the cross-class skills come from Conjurer's list, but there is nothing from Scholar (E4E from Arcanist) and nothing at all from Astrologian. Hence the White Mage is alone in not having anything of any real use that can be pulled from another class.

But both Scholar and Astrologian want to pull Protect and Cleric stance. See the un-even problem?

This is why people feel that WHM is getting the short end of the stick, because we lose are most useful skills into the role system, that we never had to take from cross-class, and these other healer jobs lose nothing to cross-class. Sure Esuna is not Leeches, but if you've ever been level-synced as Scholar in a dungeon to below level 30, you had only the fairy to do everything except psysick. Obviously some of these changes are meant to fix imbalances like that. But why pick on WHM? Could SE have simply made Stone Skin, Protect and Esuna exclusive to WHM? Well then the other healers wouldn't have access to protect, and since it's needed all the way at level 16, something would have to be lost on AST and SCH. AST and SCH are only available at level 30.

So while I agree in principal that yes maybe these skills are needed by all healers, thus they should have been part of their skillset, it seems like these are all going to need to be changed when they drop the class system, and that likely means that Scholar loses it's entire arcanist toolkit at that point in time in favor of duplicating skills that AST and WHM already have. Maybe at that point WHM can get back some of it's skills it lost, and the levels change for Scholar's existing skills so they can be accessed at the same level as WHM.

[Shurrikhan]

Snip

Our conversation still isn't getting across.

I will repeat: the cross-class system failed to give a modicum of balance to the potential choices, not because the skills came from other classes, and certainly not because of any division between classes and jobs (the distinction of which is also arbitrary, based only on SE's intended or neglected designs), but simply because no meaningful balance was ever attempted. Classes remained only because Yoshida hadn't yet phased them out, and lore and common sense made starting as an allegedly advanced and insular sect of a particular discipline difficult; none of the mechanics linking them to their jobs was ever given a long view of interaction.

To repeat from the beginning, as shortly as possible: I get annoyed when people use XIV as an example of broad classes being, at least for some significant portion of time alongside competitors, an option, as flawed. The concept has never been meaningfully touched on in this game. So how could one possibly prove or refute its viability through XIV alone?

I am not arguing whether cross-class or role-shared skills are better systems. The first is some kind of terd, and the other a shriveled orange that unfortunately comes with a side of mold (unnecessary native or job-adaptive pruning). Neither is relevant to my first post here, which was imply to say that "done right, classes -> jobs makes a lot of sense," and that treating one implementation as all-pervasive conceptual proof is foolish.

[Felis]

See this is what I pointed out. Why was Cleric Stance EVER a cross-class choice in the first place? Most of the cross-class skills come from Conjurer's list, but there is nothing from Scholar (E4E from Arcanist) and nothing at all from Astrologian. Hence the White Mage is alone in not having anything of any real use that can be pulled from another class.

But both Scholar and Astrologian want to pull Protect and Cleric stance. See the un-even problem?

Because Cleric Stance switch mind with int. And without int no healer can do enough dmg for solo quests until in 2 weeks.