My thoughts on Scholar since 4.05.

[Archamgel]

Foremost, this isn't about the validity of Sch as a healer. Second, there is definitely a tl;dr at the bottom. Sch is in a much better position thanks to 4.05. They can do pretty much anything the other two can do. No, the viability of Sch, at least from me, is not in question since 4.05 dropped. This is something else entirely.

I'm going to start with the roots of Scholar in FF in XIV. 2.X was a simpler time in terms of identity. I'm talking about a time to when Warrior didn't even have that “Health will not go below 1” effect at all on Holmgang and Lustrate was a “20% of the target's total hp” heal. During this time, you always wanted to combo a Whm and a Sch for the pure throughput healing and mitigation with damage combo. Sch was the more difficult one to play than Whm, since they had to micro the fairy and they didn't have the throughput healing. This was fine, since they used shields and damaging enemies to keep damage down while fairy (which has always been a glorified regen that you have to babysit and argue with to make them work well while our overall potencies are reduced to take her into account) used her heal as a type of mitigation to prolong our dps. Whm was the perfect main healer, and Sch was the perfect off-healer. Doing damage as a healer during this time was an uncommon thing. It showed that you knew the limits of your job when stance dancing with Cleric Stance. These two were taken for their specific roles. They had concrete foundations for SE to build upon later.

Heavensward came and SE did a pretty good job at expanding their two core healers, but this is also where things started to make the lines blur. White mage got more AoE heals, making it even better at party/alliance healing. Astro...was lagging behind everywhere. Sch was changed a bit with Lustrate having a potency, getting an AoE Aether heal in Indom, and then the Emergency Tactics for those times where pure healing was needed. This is where I think it started. We were getting more and more throughput heals instead of focusing more on our core mechanic of shielding. Critlo deploys were basically our way of dealing with great amounts of damage, but I don't think it was inherently overpowered. Having to fish for it, getting everyone gathered when it happened, and Deployment Tactics being on a 1min cooldown was the price. Not too difficult to deal with in an organized group, but helped greatly with our lack of aoe throughput and even helped Whm's mp problems. I'm definitely not saying Sch didn't need the nerfs. I would have been the first to take a swing with the bat, but more on that later. Towards the end, with 3.4, Astro got up there with everyone else, and I was honestly happy to see more of them as co-healers, but they were now starting to become a problem. Their shields were getting stronger and stronger, and their cards buffing the entire raid was making them almost a necessary pick. I had a few Astros that would even refuse to use Diurnal because “My shields are stronger than yours”.

This continued into Stormblood, as well, since Astros get a bonus to healing based upon their sect, and get flat healing-to-shield percentages. Our shields are a flat 300/300 (hp/shield) unless crit, in which case it goes to 300/600. Astros shields are a flat 200/500 (230/575 once the healing bonus from being in Noct Sect is factored in). Sch's 600 (900 crit) vs Astros 805 potency shields is not a good sign for the class that has the shields as its core mechanic. Sure, when they crit, it is ~100 more potency, but crits for 100 more potency vs constant 200 more potency has a clear winner in that Astro is far better at our core class concept than us. This, along with losing some our constant dots, cleric stance (which is basically losing 10% damage), bane being (and still is) left in shambles, a loss to Blizzard II, having to use an mp refresh along the nerfed aetherflow, our shield mana costs, and the nerf to Embrace left Sch a mess. This was the healer that did damage as a form of mitigation, and now needed to spend everything in it's power to keep the tanks alive. This was pretty jarring. This basically turned us into weaker versions of the other two healers. I don't think SE thought of all of this through. It's almost like they thought nerfing our damage from multiple sources (increasing fight times), nerfing Embrace (which makes us heal more), and making our shields cost an arm and a leg (which we relied on) wasn't going to make us spend more time and resources in fights healing, while doing less damage, and basically turning each pull into a slow war of attrition.

That looks like I have a bone to pick with Astro, but I don't, really! Astros are fun to play, and they have their cards, which is a very unique and involved thing. I do really wish they had made Astro's healing style more unique instead of SE being too afraid to break the heal/shield meta. Who knows what kind of healing the Astro could have gotten if they weren't given the Sects? It could have even made them not bad at the start of Heavensward. The fact that they have the Sects, though puts them in a vacuum of “Well, they don't have the regens/shields of Whm/Sch”, which leads to further balancing issues.

Patch 4.5 arrives, and it brings us up to the other healers while trying to make things less clunky. Great, right? Well...yes and no. My problem is that these adjustments only further tuned our pure hp healing. It did nothing for the core mechanic of our job, which is using our shields to mitigate damage. This has left Sch in what some have called an “identity crisis”, and I, for one, definitely agree. Why do we need yet another healer that can just plainly heal everyone? We already have a Whm who does this extremely well, and manages to be fun while doing it. We are proactive healers, not reactive. SE has slapped a band-aid on our skills that comes in the form of making us closer to being more of hps healers like a Whm that has three resource points to spend in place of mp. That is making the lines of both of our class's blur even more. What is the fun in playing another class that functions so closely to the other of the type? That is like giving a Sam Drg's Dragon Eye, but they must spend some Kenki to activate to fix it not having any utility.

Even though someone can probably think of better examples, that isn't how class balancing should be handled. Improving upon the job's core concept is the first thing that should be done. This makes the class stand out more, which makes them excel in differing areas, which makes party compositions more fun and varied, which makes the classes more fun. I get that Yoshi is trying to bring the “skill ceiling and floor” closer together for those that are very casual, but noone wants all the classes to perform the same. Sch was always a more difficult healer to master, much like Drk was a more difficult tank to master, and Smn/Mch were more difficult dps to master (these, of course, are my opinion of them at their highest levels of play). This made them fun and rewarding. Some classes should be more difficult to master to others and feel rewarding to play when performing them to their utmost. It makes it a goal for people who really want to play the class, and a constant challenge for those who know how to play them. This has been taken away with many of the classes trying to be brought to almost the same exact levels across the board. There should be more variance in their strengths and weaknesses, but to the point of where we see people arguing about the “best” party comps and not have a definitive winner.

TL;DR: Sch is perfectly viable, but is in an “identity crisis” since it is becoming more and more of a throughput healer instead of being the mitigation/damaging healer it was since 2.0. This is making it less interesting/fun while highlighting the clunkiness that has always been present since 2.0.

[Lastelli]

Totally disagree on the "identity crisis" part. If anything the identity of the proactive healer is now more evident than it ever was, at least in nontrivial content.

[koroko220]

"identity
Crisis"

I totally agree with this. After playing SB sch for a while, I don't feel sch is the shield healer anymore. Outside critlo, the shields just feel incredibly weak. Not to mention adlo cost, I hardly even use it anymore. Whether or not people believe it's true, I, personally, don't feel sch is a shield healer anymore.

[Spiroglyph]

I think that's what he meant, though, with the identity crisis - we used to focus more on preventive healing than reactive (thanks OP, fixed! ) healing.

As for your tl;dr - yeah, the clunkiness was always there, specially with fairy AI; it's more noticeable now because the job itself isn't OP enough to hide these flaws.

[inhaledcorn]

I would argue that SCH wasn't that OP in HW, the game just existed in a way that its flaws could be easily covered up by the solidness of their kit and how Cleric Stance hurt SCH the least when compared to the other two, but that's not for this thread.

I will agree in the "identity crisis" argument. If they want us to be preventive healers, then, fine, shield potencies (not necessarily the healing potency) need to go up (and I would like to see Succor get the Crit bonus Adlo has). It seems, however, SCH can't be pure "preventive healers" since the fairy exists as a passive healing measure in a similar to Regen/DiAB on the other two. When we see that AST has a pure shield healer stance, we saw how the lack of a regen made it incredibly weak in comparison to SCH, thus AST's shields are above and beyond what SCH does most of the time.

Well, since we can't be pure shield healers due to the existence of the fairy, then we have to look elsewhere to define SCH. Do they want us to be "jack of all trades/master of none" healer (both shield and regen, but not at good as the other two who are more defined in this manner), or do they want us to be a more ability-related healer? Well, if they want us to be the former, we lack the tools to be that properly (I would say the best way to become the former would make Emergency Tactics a toggle buff). If they want us to do the latter, then Excog and Sacred Soil need to lose their Aetherflow requirements, and Indom needs its base cooldown reduced to 1s like Lustrate. All Aetherflow abilities have the same essential cooldown of 30-60s (give or take Aetherflow usage and Dissipation), so Indom having an extra 30s cooldown is kinda strange imo.

If they decide to go with the former of "jack of all heals; master of none" then a theoretical 4th healer (probably Geomancer) could be the true pure shield healer that was kinda-sorta SCH's former role.

[Archamgel]

I think that's what he meant, though, with the identity crisis - we used to focus more on preventive healing than proactive healing.

As for your tl;dr - yeah, the clunkiness was always there, specially with fairy AI; it's more noticeable now because the job itself isn't OP enough to hide these flaws.

I think you meant reactive instead of proactive, but I understand you and you understood me.

Fighting with the AI has always been a problem for these pet classes. Unless something changes with their ai, I don't see Beastmaster being a thing, either, sadly.

[IanFrench]

At this moment, whm is the only necessary pick for Omega Savage. This is unfair to SCH & AST both.

However, you wrote so much in comparing Nocturnal AST vs SCH and seems getting a conclusion " Noct.AST's shield is stronger." which I cannot agree.

Single target: Adlo is way more stronger when crits （both heal and shield）.
AOE: Sussor has a shorter cast time than aspected helios.(2.5s vs 3s), and along with it, Sch has Deployment Tactics to spread its powerful adlo while AST can only rely on its aspected helios.

Many scholars complain about the slightly lower potency, but sch have three spells that can boost their healing potency(AST only have one) and they have the strongest 0GCD and free powerful abilities among all healers.

[IanFrench]

Sch's identity is not the shields(Not anymore since there are three healers for two positions in party), but your fairy and your aetherflow abilities( increasing sch's flexibility to dps and dealing with emergencies).

AST's cards are nice to play with, but in real life, lets just face the reality that whm can bring more dps to the party no matter how lucky AST are in every single each draw they have.

Overall, Sch and Nocturnal AST have different tool kit but overall they both can do the mitigation job nicely(assistant healer), I don't think anyone is superior to the other.

[Archamgel]

-Snip-

That flat ~200 potency stronger shield is definitely more favorable than the heal it brings (along with it costing less mp and being instant cast). You don't use the shields for the healing. You have healing spells and abilities for that. As for Adlo being stronger, it is only stronger during a crit and those only happens ~15% of the time and having to fish for it will leave you oom, then you have to get everyone stacked near the guy that it popped on. All that for only a 100 potency stronger shield. Succor is roughly 25% more mana, and mitigates for less as well. Again, Noct is better at this shield as well (but only by about 50 potency).


I believe you may be downplaying the cards a bit, too. Giving a raid-wide 5% damage buff brings in 40% more damage than your team could pull otherwise. Even 10% on the right person is pretty good. Or even 10% less damage on everyone is pretty good, and 20% less on the tank is like giving them a free Bulwark that lasts longer than the real thing.

I definitely agree with you on the Whm being in a perfect spot. When I go to solo heal Susano, Whm is the only one I would take, since I run with PUGs and Whm can fix the "happy little accidents" much more easily than the other two.

I agree to an extent with "Many scholars complain about the slightly lower potency, but sch have three spells that can boost their healing potency(AST only have one) and they have the strongest 0GCD and free powerful abilities among all healers". They have powerful aetherflow abilities, but they are to planned accordingly and carefully. If you reach a point where your group has made two high damage mistakes, you better hope they don't make a third because you don't have Helios or Medica to back up the Indom and ET you had to use. I am perfectly fine with us having lower potency heals than the other two. I never had complaints until this x-pac, and my biggest is that we are more throughput healers than ever here.

As for "Sch's identity is not the shields(Not anymore since there are three healers for two positions in party)", that shouldn't be a problem. There are so many MMOs with shield healers and then have 5-10 other healer types as well, that if this is a problem, then it is a failure on the devs end.

[FateAudax]

Just cleared O3S last night, and there was a scholar in our party who did his/her job quite well at shielding all of us. So SCH is perfectly fine right now. No need to make any changes to this class.