Consolidated Scholar 4.0 Feedback Thread

[Elamys]

Can we stop comparing the chocobo and the fairies? They are not the same. It's apples and oranges.

[Feidam]

Can we stop comparing the chocobo and the fairies? They are not the same. It's apples and oranges.

Agreed. No idea why people are comparing those two. I guess because the chocobo can cast a heal.

[technole]

Can we stop comparing the chocobo and the fairies? They are not the same. It's apples and oranges.

I know right. Chocobos don't get your fairy mend traits among other things. So you can't compare raw potency.

[Deox]

The reason brining up the chocobo heals is pointless is because chocobo's do not enter dungeons or raid content. They could heal 9 million health and it still wouldnt mean anything

[technole]

Embrace nerf is just one piece of the bigger picture. It's like they targeted nerfs for one side of the Arcanist fence like Summoner, as a result they crushed something that didn't warrant it for Scholar like Bane. Now AoE damage is like taking an Astro in level 50 content. No Gravity there. Just dot/bane and well single target until your thumbs bleed. Like please we already suffered quite a bit doing solo content with Scholar. Everything is so slow to die, because you know there was some Cleric Stance "nerf" as well.

Even the media build in April looked fine, no one really complained. It was like someone gave the order afterwards 'make sure to crush every potency that's here for the Stormblood release'.

As i mentioned in the other SCH thread, one issue is that Adlo costs 1800 MP at level 70, the cost-return isn't justified with the addition of other nerfs such as Aetherflow, Fey Illumination, Embrace, etc. Like you can't just slash the major components of the mitigation kit, inflate the MP skill cost for ten more levels, and expect serious Scholars to think that is okay. Astro Noct-stance AB is cheaper, and with more return.

If their reasoning is that Adlo should cost more because SCH can use Deployment Tactics, it's not a good enough reason because of it's long cooldown and situational use. Either they boost or reverse some of these potency losses, reverse the Aetherflow nerf (which in-turn will help SMN recovery quite a bit, which is an issue because currently no other DPS job suffers more with a death), and/or cut the cost of Adlo.

[inhaledcorn]

Something I wanna add: I really don't like Fey's Union. There was a nice idea here, but the fact that our new Fairy gauge affects literally this one skill and just gives us a slightly stronger targeted fairy heal makes it incredibly underwhelming. I don't know how to fix this (I had an idea earlier of making the fairy gauge a resource for using fairy cooldowns to give SCH some on demand AoE heals and regen with Eos while Selene has on demand buffs/debuffs with a longer timer that costs fairy gauge while Union is kinda like SAM's Meditate, only the Fairy doesn't do anything rather than the SCH). It could just be an additional Rouse that only affects Embrace, but I dunno.

[Kaeoni]

I really wanted to give Sch a go again after playing Ast so long in HW. The hardest thing I had to do was stay awake. I felt like I was playing a level 30 class at lv 60.

Some thoughts:

An idea would be to update our fairy abilities, Silent wind takes too much time to go off for it to be of any use as a silence and Fey Wind is kind of a joke. Either fix these or re-invent them.

Dissipation is on a 180s timer signifying it's a powerful ability. Is it? Because I don't think it's worth even setting on my bar. Let us Swiftcast our fairy back or drop the penalty on it entirely, then drop it's CD to 60s.

I hate to go and take a page out of FFXI's book, But if you'd indulge me for a moment. Boost our maximum Aetherflow Stacks to 6 (let Aetherflow give us 6 stacks instead of 3) and allow us to consume our Aetherflow stacks like Stratagems. It doesn't need to be as complicated as FFXI's Stratagem consumption was, Just make an ability called AetherBoost (Or W/e) and state what happens when you use the ability 1-2 times. Make it fast like the use of a Mudra on Ninja. 1 time could be -75% MP consumption on the Next Heal used. For Dmging abilities it could be +50% Dmg increase for the next 1 ability. Consuming 2 Aetherflow Stacks could be the -75% MP +80% potency on next heal. For the Dmging one it could be +120% Dmg increase.


Not trying to balance anything here, not sure if this would be too powerful or under-powered. But since I'm using these numbers to illustrate a point, I hope no one takes them too out of context to crucify me.

Imo this is more fun than simply lowering MP Costs and Boosting Dmg potency. With Dissipation at 60s giving us a more frequent Heal potency increase, and additional 3 stacks on-top of our Aetherflow giving us 6 stacks instead of 3. I think this gives a lot of play time with things like extremely boosted Aldos, better Succors, among other things while giving us the utility to burn them on offensive magic if we don't need the stacks for healing. This also solves most of our MP problems without just lowering MP costs of abilities like Aldo or boosting Aetherflow from the nerfed 10%.

I like the idea of playing with Aetherflow stacks like Ast plays with cards. It's why I liked Sch so much in FFxi, Strategems made the class dynamic and fun.
I think this brings a lot more decision making into Scholar and a lot less keyboard drooling. I get that SE is trying to make classes a bit more friendly and easier to play. I'm not against that or elimination of abilities that Devs believe are convoluted chaff like Cleric Stance (all it did was switch mnd to int). This doesn't bring much to the game and our combat potential should have never been locked behind such an ability, BUT and this is a big but, it gave people something to do. You had to activate it and deactivate it + plan to use it this DOES equate to something and even though it was a stupid ability to have to use, It gave us something to do that no longer exists. Primarily that planning is what no longer exists and I miss it. I believe planning your Aetherflow stacks around DPS or Healing potential and MP conservation adds what was taken away while solving at least a few of the problems Sch's are currently facing. It's probably not perfect... But It's just a thought I had while chilling out listening to Spotify at nearly 2am when i should be sleeping before work lol.

I'm not a Scholar -main- anymore and i never will be, Ninja for Life. But I like to gear up a healer, dps and a tank as best I can to switch things up and help people out as much as I can. I want to stop looking toward the stars, put my cards away and bury myself in a good book. But I can't do that if the class bores me to tears.

But hey, maybe I'm off base. Let me know what you think.

[ZaqueXIII]

An idea would be to update our fairy abilities, Silent wind takes too much time to go off for it to be of any use as a silence and Fey Wind is kind of a joke. Either fix these or re-invent them....

Dissipation is on a 180s timer signifying it's a powerful ability...

I hate to go and take a page out of FFXI's book, But if you'd indulge me for a moment. Boost our maximum Aetherflow Stacks to 6...

(No relation to qoute)I haven't been to this thread in a while but I have to say, its amazing how many people in any thread about job balance since 4.0 have just been throwing demands around... so now ill do the same pretty much.

(Now to disscussion) So it seems to me that right now what SCH needs are three things.
1. DPS options; in this respect WHM is king currently, with AOE options and single target that put the other two to shame.
2. Heal Cost/Benefit; this is Where AST shines currently, WHM has a single target and AOE regen and SCH has a single target and AOE shield but an AST has these on quick cast and for better effective healing in most cases
3.(And this is mostly for SCH) Discordant abilities, while not to many of these exist I think most SCH are familiar with the elephant in the room (Disspation and AetherPact)

For the first one the only thing that I think the SCH and AST need is slight changes, only thing I can really think of that would help AST is gravity not being so nerfed(just like bane) And for the next expansion I think they should get more earthly star type abilities (maybe at least a single target version) I don't know how AST's feel about earthly star but I think it sounds pretty cool. SCH could use some love all around here but mostly id love to have it so that Ruin 2 and Broil 2 were made into low damage AOE burst moves (around 60-70 and 150 potency respectively and at a higher cost) and I think its no surprise that the bane damage drop off is a bit severe maybe don't have it go under 50% decreased potency, even at that it is still more worth while to have an Aero III (perhaps a spread such as this 70% percent for second and third target 50% for all additional targets and if not, at least let us use Bio as well).

On the second point there is nothing inherently wrong with the out put of SCH or WHM special heals but AST's are better and for cheaper in some cases. Either Succor needs to heal for more or the cost needs to be dropped down a bit, Adlo heals ok (i wouldn't shirk a buff to adlo potency) but should at least cost a little less. TBH I think it would be cool if AST's Special heals didn't step in the toes of the other 2 and applied minor buffs instead (perhaps a cleanse effect for diurnal and a minor crit chance buff for nocturnal). Although that said I expect them to never make such a drastic change to a class that they have already had out for an expansion.

For point number 3 Id love to see a change to either Aether pact or Dissipation (or both) in my ideal world Dissipation could instead be Fey Tactics a Stance where you sacrifice the accompaniment of a faerie and receive a 5-10% healing buff and it would change three abilities from there normal counter parts, summon I and II would cost less and have shorted cast times but would apply the fairy buffs this being a 10% healing potency buff for 20 seconds for summon I and a 3% spell/skill speed buff for 30 seconds from summon II. Aether pact would still cost fey gauge but would instead provide a raw Shield on someone for an amount equal to the fey gauge, so at max it would shield maybe a 500 potency heal of shielding but that would only be at 100 gauge(basically gauge would be the % of maximum possible shield). Of course outside of Fey tactics they would work the same(For the love of god though at least make our faerie follow the person they are tethered to).


To address the last point from what I quoted, at most we need 1 more aetherflow stack, 3 is fine but quickened aetherflow trait needs to work more like infuriate on warrior. A successful aether flow use drop the 60 second cool down by about 6 seconds, this means that if you use all your aetherflow correctly you can cut 18 seconds off the recast which I think would help as it rewards aware players for being proactive and using the aetherflow regularly and will help when you need to quickly recover MP as you can burn it with energy drain to speed it up. (also related to aetherflow, chain stratagem should be an aetherflow ability and have a shorter recast).

The best part about the forums has to be that we can all come on here and pretend that we are game developers and make suggestions like this. At the very least I cant wait to hear what they have to say about job changes in the next live letter.

[Ghishlain]

EDIT: Ofc, using Dissapation would have to wipe the gauge clean... can't just have something that uber.

Are you sure about this? I tested it last night and the accumulated amount prior to Dissipation remained after resummoning the fairy.

[Elamys]

Excogitation could use an adjustment to still go off when you cast it, that way it isn't wasted, although it's likely to be a lot overhealing, at least it still heals something. That seems like it would fit into the idea of "less good players still get a benefit, but more skilled players get more." Earthly Star still goes off after 20 seconds if you fail to manually detonate it, so it just seems fair that Excog should still pop.

Fey Union needs a much longer range and/or the ability for the fairy to follow the target.

Lastly some number adjustments could be made. That I think would make Scholar pretty solid. But it's not as "the sky is falling" as people are saying it is.