Consolidated Scholar 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Cynfael]

(Obviously no existing threads have actually been consolidated here since I am not a forum admin)

It seemed to help with providing WHM feedback, so why don't we try focusing our feedback more into one thread for the development team?

Please share your opinions and experience of playing SCH in 4.0, both positive and negative, being mindful of content spoilers this early into launch.

[Fawkes]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-your-thoughts

[RevoluXoN]

I feel SCH is really weak compared to the other 2 healers right now.

MP goes down extremely fast now since aetherflow gives only 10% MP and Adlo's MP consumption got significantly increased with absolutely no changes on potency or effects. Lucid Dreaming helps but you end up with no MP in boss fights anyway, as long as you are DPSing ofcourse.

Single target DPS is fine, i can live with the lack of DoTs, but AoE DPS is a joke now...

Excogitation is bad, i mean BAD, taking 1 aetherflow stack for a heal that only works when your ally's HP goes under 50% and only lasts 30 seconds (oh yes, you cant use it on yourself)... there is no point on casting it for a CHANCE of triggering it since it not guaranteed that the HP of your ally is going down during that time, if it doesnt you just wasted an aetherflow stack... i rather save it and use Lustrate if needed since it is instant cast and has almost the same potency.

Chain Strategem sounds good but is not that good in paper since the duration is only 15 seconds, how many GCDs is that? 4/5?, with only a 15% increased chance of crit on a SINGLE enemy.

Quickened Aetherflow (Trait) rarely procs, you only get 3 uses of aetherflow on a 20% chance of cutting the CD by only 10 seconds... it's funny since WHM users were complaining about low chances on their new Lilly mechanic and it got buffed significantly, but we keep the utterly low proc chances on our new trait.


What needs to be changed IMO:

Adloquium: Either lower the MP consumption or increase the shield potency (AST has better shielding abilities now)

Bane: Decrease the penalty on the 5th+ targets to 50% (down from 80%)

Excogitation: Make it heal if the effect is not triggered after the 30 seconds timer, allow it to be used on the caster.

Chain Strategem: Either increase its duration to 30 seconds, or increase its effect to 30%.

Quickened Aetherflow: Increase the chance of reducing the cooldown on Aetherflow from 20% to 50%.

Embrace: There was no need to nerf it... just increase its potency back to 300.

Fey Wind (Selene): I would also love to see Fey Wind buffed a bit to make it stand against AST buffs, 3% is barely noticeable...

[Cynfael]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-your-thoughts

The point is to get feedback that's been repeated in that thread and others under a thread title that mirrors the popular WHM thread....

Edit: Counting 4 SCH threads alone on the 1st page at this time. We could probably do with a clean-up and some focus to draw more attention. I'm not normally one for starting a bandwagon thread, but I'm feeling pretty strongly about SCH's issues this patch and think that we as a community underestimated the damage while we were distracted by the seemingly tone-deaf WHM design.

[MoonDream]

Excogitation is bad, i mean BAD, taking 1 aetherflow stack for a heal that only works when your ally's HP goes under 50% and only lasts 30 seconds (oh yes, you cant use it on yourself)... there is no point on casting it

Excogitation is GREAT. It is 650 heal potency compared to Lustrate, and it procs instantly. You use it when you know a boss is going to be doing a tankbuster, or any situation where you have an unknown. Heal like you normally would, use Lustrate for those big heals, but use Excogitation when you know your tank has a lot of damage incoming. It has removed so much stress for me already!!

We really do need AoE DPS, though. I miss Miasma II fiercely. Shadow Flare wasn't good enough before, and it certainly ain't cutting it now.

[LegoTechnic]

Excogitation is GREAT. It is 650 heal potency compared to Lustrate, and it procs instantly. You use it when you know a boss is going to be doing a tankbuster, or any situation where you have an unknown. Heal like you normally would, use Lustrate for those big heals, but use Excogitation when you know your tank has a lot of damage incoming. It has removed so much stress for me already!!

We really do need AoE DPS, though. I miss Miasma II fiercely. Shadow Flare wasn't good enough before, and it certainly ain't cutting it now.

"Removed" stress? Don't you mean "added"? You put it on and then you watch it not proc because either your cohealer prevents the target from hitting 50% or the tank self-heals, regens, or mitigates to prevent it. Worse yet is a fight with tank busters that come in intervals less than 60 seconds so you move to apply it and catch it on cooldown, and then there's that great moment when you crit your shield and prevent the tank from hitting 50% on your own. And in the end it really is a flat 650 potency. That is 50 potency more than a lustrate, and as an ability cannot be effected by largesse, dissipation, tank stance, convalescence, and so on.

I like excog, it's a fun idea and I intend to use it as much as possible until I get used to it, but I fully admit it's just as irritating to see it wasted as it is to completely overheal a lustrate. We'll live doing it, certainly, but it feels bad when you're in try-hard mode. Having it auto-proc after 30 seconds would be a nice QoL addition, but we'll get used to it regardless, because that's Scholar life.

[Rawrz]

What ive said I think would benefit SCH:

Remove Ruin mastery that turns ruin into Broil. Instead:

Disastrous Ruin- Ruin's mp cost raises to 1.33 times that of Broil II. 80 Potency AOE within 8 yalms of the target. 20% chance your next ruin will be instant cast. Maybe change Ruin II into broil. Bio II ticking for 9 seconds would outweigh it.

Shadowflare- Places an Aoe at a given area dealing 25 potency a second over 30 seconds. There is a 15% chance that each bio/bio ii or miasma ii tick will reset the timer. Can only be reset once every 15 seconds. While already active Shadowflare becomes a 250 potency aoe around the target, instead of a placeable field. Bane will 100% reset the cd. CD of 60 seconds.

Dissipation- Healing spells increased by 20%. Lustrate, Indomitability, Sacred Soil, Excogitation, Bane and Energy Drain have their potency increased by 20%. You gain III aetherflow stacks. If used while Fey union is tethered to a target, the target has 20% of their mp,TP and hp restored, a barrier of 20% of their max hp is added to the target. Will overide any Galvanize or Nocturnal Benefic/Helios. Cannot be overidden, except by Galvanize or Nocturnal Aspected Benefic/Helios of a higher potency. Successfully using Summon or Summon II removes the effect of Dissipation. Duration 30 seconds. Recast time of 180 seconds.

Virus- Removes the effect of Addle. Target has 15% reduced attributes for 10 seconds.

TRAIT-Brilliant Broil II (instead of just broil to broil ii upgrade)- Embrace has a 20% chance of causing your next broil II to be instant cast. Upgrades Broil to Broil II. (Opening more opportunity to weave.) Duration: 20 seconds.

Deployment tactics. spreads galvanize onto nearby party members and resets its duration. If used on an enemy, spreads Virus to surrounding enemies and resets its duration. Eye for an Eye spreading has been removed since it is a role skill.


Fey union- When used with eos, damage taken is reduced by 10% on top of a ~350 potency, realword healer potency every 3 seconds. IF selene is attached, damage done is increased by 5%, spell based healing received is increased by 50% (Selene will not heal the target.)


If you feel this is overpowered, take a good long look at AST.

If adding new fairy skills:

Selene getting a magic vuln up on a single target for 8 seconds every 90, call it Fey Charm
Eos getting a buff that she would place on a single target that would place a shield for 50% of the next spell based healing received. Call it Fey Memento.

Aetherflow may also need restored to 20% or ALL SPELLS NEED THE AST TREATMENT.

General feel of SCH 4.0:

Gutted. Nerfed. Dead Fish playstyle. Little Brother Ast can do it better.

Leaving it to rot, until some decent changes are made to address AOE and to provide solid opportunities to use OGCD. Maybe 5.0 will offer fairy swapping mechanics and more pet skills/traits?

I'm alright with the removal of Virus. I'm alright with the Eos nerf.

The overall feel though is that SCH is going to have a hard time with mp management and have a very basic dps rotation. Our effecient, low costing, DOTS are gone. More nuking means less MP. Ironic how the class with the most DOTS suddenly became the healer with the worst DoTs. They had always been weaker, but their combine strengt helped to balance the other healer's nukes. Mp wise its going to be a mess. SCH will have to elect to Energy Drain every aetherflow stack we get and pray for the crappy proc, just to not be a reincarnated 4.0's WHM mana situation. Adlo's mp going up, without an increase in utility or cast time exasperates the issue. Fairy will have a very similar potency to regen and aspected benefic. She is going to heal 20% less embrace wise. Thats potentially, 20% more healing SCHs will have to do. SCH needed a decrease in MP costs for their healing spells, not an increase. The fact that Combust II had its mp cost reduced that makes me cynically laugh.

[Gemina]

I can't speak for excog, but on paper it seems like yet another wasted ability for the reasons I have seen stated here already. Between SCH and WHM what is with these mechanics that basically force us to let players take damage in order to utilize the new abilities?

Lilies and confessions need cures instead of regens to proc, and excog seems to be better served in dungeons where the SCH has the sole healing responsibility. In 8-man a WHM or AST is going to heal that damage, especially a WHM wanting lily procs, so SCH mechanics basically completely conflict with current WHM. Are their any main healers at SE? Who's designing this stuff? Who's bright idea was it to completely nerf SCH damage into next to nothing AND also nerf the fairy? It's like the person calling the shots has a recent ex that was a SCH main. That's how bad it is.

I can't believe I've totally lost my desire to play this job. It was my first main, even before WHM. SE, fix this. Please.

[Anselmet]

Honestly, I am kinda mad that they have not given the same treatment to sch as they did whm. When sb was two weeks out from early access they addressed their outrage. I haven't seen a single dev so much as address us. I have played sch since 2.0 and never have I seen this class in such a bad state. Hell, I think smn is pretty bad as well so its not like I can just switch to smn to avoid this nightmare. So it makes me think that there were two people working on arcanist and didn't even bother to share their notes.

But when it comes to sch, it is just rife with 'what the hell were you thinking'. Why would you lower our dps and then make our healing more expensive or less effective? What the hell did my poor fairies ever do to you, especially eos? If you're going to have ast out strip us in every way, could you at least give us back our dps and fairy capabilities? Like, I'd rather go play with the clunky whm mechanics than heal another dungeon with sch. At least they can heal AND have mp.

I realize we will not get anything fixed until 4.1, but could they at least give us an acknowledging post like they did whm?

[Amenako]

Yeah having done one of the extreme right now and doing all the new 70 dungeons, I can for sure say that SCH is in a bad position right now. Our heals not getting any sort of increase to potency or the shields does not warrant using adlo as much as before, rather just regular heal the tank instead of wasting like 2k mana, i say 2k cause im not sure if its 1800 or around there. Tanks pulling large pulls is kind of annoying to heal through not without wasting all your heals on lustrate on them or something, as well as not being versatile if say the tanks want to get more adds after a few mobs die.