Concise Scholar 4.0 feedback

[Obsidia]

I think the MP issues are overblown or probably coming from casual healers who don't know SCH very well. Using your Aetherflows when available, an Energy Drain or two with an insta-heal, and Lucid Dreaming that you can sync every second Aetherflow there should be little to no MP issues. This also includes the MP cost of Adlo and Succor. These are shields to preemptively mitigate damage, not heals to spam. What makes SCH so great are these shields plus strong heals with no cast time. To say nothing of Rouse + Whispering Dawn once a minute plus buffed Embrace's that cost you nothing. To even suggest that Scholar is unviable sounds plainly psychotic.

Not to say SCH is the epitome of perfection. We're not very good at AoE healing and that will probably rarely/never change. I kind of like that though, along with 'expensive' shields. The point being we are the strategist of the battlefield, also...who says that Scholar healing has to be brain dead easy? I welcome a challenge where you have to decide how to work out your heals that are locked behind Aetherflow stacks, cooldowns, pet abilities, and/or high MP cost spells. A WHM/AST just has to decide whether to cast a plain AoE heal or one with a regen on it, AFTER damage has already taken place. Nobody used Shadow Flare for big dick DPS ever, so a potency increase is meaningless, maybe increase the time it remains active by 5 or 10 seconds.

Our AoE damage died, no two ways about that. I'm fine with this being lessened significantly, I'd go as far to say it should've always been this way. It's beyond selfish to assume the other healer will just do everything while you remain as basically DPS. Go SMN if you're going to be such a selfish prick. A SCH mitigates incoming damage to give better breathing room for the rest of the party to increase overall DPS. You don't ignore healing/shields for the sake of YOUR DPS and screw everybody else. Many Scholar's have gotten accustomed to playing, well...grossly incorrectly as a healer type job. Stormblood now forces this change, which I think is good. Still, AoE DPS is a tad boring so having at least a few skills to use is welcome. This starts heading into a discussion of Summoner and Scholar being removed from one another. If I had my way I'd give Scholar a different weapon, change the name and graphics of our DoT's, make Energy Drain SCH specific, and Bane SMN specific...But I doubt these things will even take place come 5.x LOL!

I'd be intrigued with an Emergency Tactics Broil II that makes it an AoE attack at a somewhat reduced potency. More strategy on how to manage your abilities, plus it fits with how SCH have to deal with everything AoE anyway. The Bane nerf is rather cruel, a 50% nerf after the 3rd enemy would be enough I would think. I've debated actually removing Bane from my hotbar because of the 80% falloff. Also a possibility in Bane no longer using an Aetherflow stack but being on cooldown like Shadow Flare. The potency values on Broil have always been odd. I'd buff the first to 200 and Broil II to 250. Chain Strategem is good, but a 90s CD is preferred. Not too strong, not too weak. Unfortunately we have to combat an AST AoE Balance. If Balance was nerfed to a 5% damage increase, things would be different. Still, RNG is a factor for AST and Strategem is guaranteed so over a prolonged fight, SCH party utility can possibly edge out. Either way, Strategem doesn't 'suck'.

My main issue comes with the blasé existence of the Fairy Gauge, like with the infamous Lilies. It's just sort of, haphazardly...there. Basically my Fairy Gauge is either at 0 or 100 and gets spent at 100 or never. Something to spend it on in between 0-100 would be...nice lol. Using Fey Union when not at 100 seems unnecessary to me. Having something more to do than a Rouse > Whispering Dawn to compensate while my fairy is 'distracted' would be more interesting. I realize I may not see changes to this for a full 2-3 years. In other words, yeah I kind of expect the Fairy Gauge to stay as what it is until the next expansion, despite this one has only just dropped. Sad but (probably) true. Still, as seems to need be reminded by so many players in this game, the sky is still not falling. Adapt to changes of a new job before claiming that the only way to play it was the 'old way' otherwise it's all garbage. I detest that kind of ignorant assumptions, and it also is not helpful for the dev's in figuring out what to change where, and why.

[Ariase]

I'd be intrigued with an Emergency Tactics Broil II that makes it an AoE attack at a somewhat reduced potency. More strategy on how to manage your abilities, plus it fits with how SCH have to deal with everything AoE anyway.

What would the point be in that? You do realize that ET sits on a cooldown, right? Are you saying you'd be fine with WHM and AST throwing around Holys and Gravitys around as much as they want while you throw out a AoE Broil II every minute or so? (I don't remember ETs CD right now.)

[Spiroglyph]

Could we have a lvl40 job skill?

Perhaps...

AoE ruin? Or miasma II?

... Please?

[Pandurah]

What would the point be in that? You do realize that ET sits on a cooldown, right? Are you saying you'd be fine with WHM and AST throwing around Holys and Gravitys around as much as they want while you throw out a AoE Broil II every minute or so? (I don't remember ETs CD right now.)

It has a 30s CD, but I feel even that would be too long for a simple AoE attack :|

[Scox]

It has a 30s CD, but I feel even that would be too long for a simple AoE attack :|

aye, way to long. We are the only healer without a proper AOE attack. Our laughable shadow flare does barely any thing, sits on a super long cool down and is stuck in place. We should have an AOE, I'll take Miasma II back over nothing. Even that isn't proper to be honest, just play AST or WHM and use Gravity, Earthly Star or Holy and you'll really feel how neglected SCH is at the moment.

[inhaledcorn]

I know how to fix our 68 trait!

"Whenever you use Physick or your pet uses Embrace, there is a 20% chance that Emergency Tactics' cooldown timer will be reset."

Now we have a more consistent AoE and single-target heal (their MP costs just have to come down by a lot).

[Riyshn]

Eh. That doesn't solve the problem that Quickened Aetherflow was supposed to help with, and also maintains the same core problem that the trait has in the first place.

Quickened Aetherflow's purpose is to mitigate how reliant we're becoming on our limited Aetherflow stacks. Why SE felt the need to give us something so unreliable as Quicken instead of just giving us Aetherdam IV is beyond me.

And your idea still has the problem of being an RNG CD on a healer, which unless SE has drastically changed the philosophy being their fight designs is basically worthless, because we're going to have to plan out when to use each cooldown. Having those abilities sometimes coming off CD earlier isn't useful, because we can never plan for it.

[sanguine777]

For lvl 68 trait, i'm thinking to replace it with an ability to convert our fairy gauge into an aetherflow stack. say... 50 fairy gauge for 1 aetherflow stack..

[inhaledcorn]

For lvl 68 trait, i'm thinking to replace it with an ability to convert our fairy gauge into an aetherflow stack. say... 50 fairy gauge for 1 aetherflow stack..

50 for one? So, every two minutes (outside the opener), since that's two Aetherflow uses, we get one extra Aetherflow?

[Ragology]

Would it be okay if SCH were be given an AOE pacify move that needs to be used in close range like White mage's holy? (AST gravity gets to be used at range since it doesn't have a status effect bonus.)

I think autoattacks work during pacification so the crowd control wouldn't be as great as Holy Stun.