Consolidated Scholar 4.0 Feedback Thread

[LegoTechnic]

Weakest as in least desired. AST was buffed and then buffed again pushing WHM out. Instead of making all healers mostly equal they overbuffed AST and never buffed WHM.

They didn't need to buff WHM because it was solid. The issue is that AST was largely a carbon-copy clone of WHM playstyle with a card mechanic, so no one liked replacing SCH with it because it couldn't fill the same role as easily. Originally AST had extremely poor mana management as well, and while people suffered the class for its Balance and Arrow in the harsh DPS checks of Gordias/Midas, WHM was the goto main healer for both sets because it was simply better at the main healing role.

Creator came and by then AST had been brought up to a pretty good place alongside WHM, but Noct stance was still a poor man's SCH. SCH was strong sustained DPS with mana management that supported it with the downside of negligible burst DPS, whereas both AST and WHM were the opposite with high burst at the cost of depleting their mana very quickly. Furthermore Noct shields were at the level where they could supplant a SCH if needed, but they lacked both the utility of Eos and the off-healer friendliness of ogcd burst healing in between cleric stance applications. Again, SCH fit the off-healer role better due to its DPS nature and toolkit of powerful burst heals with cooldowns, so if you wanted cards in Creator swapping the WHM to AST was frankly a lateral move given the similarities between how the two classes played.

That's not the case now. They've made the healers "more equal" with drastic steps, giving WHM and SCH the same mana generation effects and cooldowns with only energy drain and thin air to differentiate them, with all their base DPS being the same spamming one or two DoTs and then direct damage spam. Noct AST was buffed in such a way that no one can really make the argument that they're inferior to SCH shielding, and SCH is no longer able to sustain a high level of DoT DPS to solidify their off-healer slot not thanks to AST buffs, but due to sweeping class restructures and nerfs. And it's not all one-sided, as WHM got a number of changes to bring them closer to SCH in terms of ogcds, with Benediction and Assize having shorter cooldowns and Divine Benison effectively able to turn Cure II into an Adloquium once every 30 seconds. Now all healers play more like each other than ever before, and it will likely only get worse as they build upon it.