SCH, Brainless Skills

[Lurkios]

Protect: Just something to remember to hit once before every dungeon - the only thing it really does for a healer is give us one more reason to be wanted in a party. It'd be exactly as useful as a passive effect and would free up a closs-class for something like Eye so we're not having to cast it and switch it out at the start of every dungeon, which is tedious as hell.

Lucid Dreaming: Like Protect, there's zero strategy to this skill. You hit it when it's up to make up for aetherflow's reduced effectiveness and drop enmity. I can't remember the last time any half-competent tank lost enmity to me outside of a leveling dungeon. Either put the effect (back) on aetherflow, or increase our mana regeneration(/lower enmity generation if you want, I don't see the point though).

I'm all for mana management and buffs that require some timing or forethought, but skills that are just there to be clicked at specified intervals are taking up hotbar space that would be better used for tail pulling emotes.

[Enla]

Honestly I feel Esuna is a far bigger offender than Protect, because at least the latter has some use in end game content. Even during leveling content I can count on one hand the instances I needed it in the SB dungeons and only one during the actual raids. I understand they were running out of ideas for the role ability list, but seriously Esuna needs to go back to being a normal learned ability.

[Lrron]

There really only is one argument for why it is a role action instead of an individual job ability. Low level content. Now, people can debate the usefulness of it in low level content, but for a time it was pretty frustrating to be on a job that couldn't esuna whereas another healer of the same level could. The good ol days of Brayflox Longstop.

[Lurkios]

Honestly I feel Esuna is a far bigger offender than Protect, because at least the latter has some use in end game content. Even during leveling content I can count on one hand the instances I needed it in the SB dungeons and only one during the actual raids. I understand they were running out of ideas for the role ability list, but seriously Esuna needs to go back to being a normal learned ability.

While I agree that Esuna is a silly thing to have as a cross-class, I would not consider it a "brainless" skill. It does take at least some, ableit absolutely minimal, level of attention to use it. I was using this thread to list abilities that could be macro'd with a timer and you'd see absolutely no downside to doing so, totally brainless skills.'

My main complaint with Esuna is the mana cost. Outside of a few specific instances it's cheaper to just throw out a physick to cover whatever damage the status effect I didn't Esuna did than to actually Esuna. (That said, rather than see Esuna go away, I'd like to see more punishing status effects so we have a reason to use it. I'd also like to be able to choose which effect to Esuna when there are multiple effects on a player.)

[Riyshn]

There really only is one argument for why it is a role action instead of an individual job ability. Low level content. Now, people can debate the usefulness of it in low level content, but for a time it was pretty frustrating to be on a job that couldn't esuna whereas another healer of the same level could. The good ol days of Brayflox Longstop.

That was already mitigated in HW when they gave Selene Fey Caress.

[KDSilver]

What are you complaining about exactly ?
What's the point with scholar having "brainless skills" ?

Mana management has never been related to a "strategy". It's knowing what spells using at what time to don't consume all your mp.
Lucid dreaming is shroud of saint, you hit it at a certain time when you're MP dropped to ~ 80% or something.

I don't understand what you are trying to say exactly.

If you are only doing dungeons then you probably don't know what mana management truly is.

[eagledorf]

Really though, it's time to delete Protect from the game. It's literally something you create a macro for:

/aaction Swiftcast off
/aaction Protect on
/action Protect <wait.3>
/aaction Protect off
/aaction Swiftcast on

Hit that button and it'll protect up the party and then remove it from your skills. Why does it even exist in that case? IMO the role actions are quite nice on DPS, but they ended up being incredibly dumb on healers and tanks.

[Serilda]

Protect is dumb now, 100% agree. Esuna grates but at least it serves a purpose most of the time.

Lucid Dreaming is a bit complicated, because I feel it is needed now but it works against the entire unique mechanic SCH is built on. It should be mandatory for AST/WHM and then only for SCHs who lack confidence, in my opinion, like how there should be skills which work the same way from the other jobs' perspectives. I would like them to rebalance AF so that we can lose Lucid Dreaming and take something more situational. Nerfing AF and putting Lucid Dreaming as a role skill has moved us closer to homogenising healer gameplay (without, for some reason, homogenising anything we actually needed balancing instead).

I don't think I have ever needed an enmity drop in my entire SCH career.

[Yuyuka3]

I'm all for mana management and buffs that require some timing or forethought, but skills that are just there to be clicked at specified intervals are taking up hotbar space that would be better used for tail pulling emotes.

Just out of curiosity, was there ever any strategy involved in getting Aetherflow stacks that I'm not aware of? Not talking about Energy Drain, because last time I checked, that stayed the same. But... to be honest, I can't see much difference in klicking Aetherflow in a certain interfall (which you still do, too) and klicking Lucid...

[loreleidiangelo]

It should be mandatory for AST/WHM and then only for SCHs who lack confidence, in my opinion, like how there should be skills which work the same way from the other jobs' perspectives. I would like them to rebalance AF so that we can lose Lucid Dreaming and take something more situational.

SCHs not being "forced" to take it like the other healers do gives them a ridiculously huge boon in not having to drop Cleric Stance, Rescue (>_>), E4E, Esuna, Swiftcast, Largesse, or Protect (lul whatever but seriously here). To be honest, I wish that they'd kept MP management actions unique across all healers, as I feel it's easier to balance things like mana costs vs potencies etc. by having each MP recovery tool be unique, but since they didn't do it like that I'd hazard it's a little unfair that SCHs want to be buffed to a point where they basically get a "free" role action by not having to take Lucid.