My thoughts on Scholar since 4.05.

[inhaledcorn]

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.

There's a difference between "fine" and "good". Every healer is "fine", but I can't help feel more often than not if I was a different healer I would have an easier time with everything. SCH has to put forth a lot more effort just to achieve a similar result as the other two, and the reward for all that work isn't worth it more often than not. The skill floor wasn't raised enough, and the skill ceiling feels higher than ever, and that's turning off a lot of the lower tier SCHs from the job. I mean, sure, you can say they want an easy job which the SCH isn't, and, to be fair, it never really was. However, to have the effort so high for the reward seem so low is bad design. That's a lot of the complains that MCH and SMN are having, among other things. The other complaint is the clunkiness and how poorly the jobs feel when not at their max level, and SCH is in a similar boat, though it's not nearly as bad.

Edit: Further thoughts: I can only imagine the nerfs to the fairy were to 1) make it less broken in the hands of a good SCH and 2) make it less necessary to control in the hands of a bad one. I mean, good fairy control is the mark of a good SCH, and that's probably where they attempted to rectify the large gap between the skill floor and ceiling. That would be fine if more of the healing burden was put back on the main SCH, which it wasn't, or it was gated behind Aetherflow, which we're far too dependant on now.

[Phoenicia]

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.

Oh my friend, you over estimate those buffs WAYYYY to much.

A 5% on every member of the group isn't a total of 40% increase. It's a 5% increase to group DPS. Less so because that can only happen 30s every minute if you're lucky with EACH and EVERY Draw. So at most, it's a 2.5% total DPS increase. Much less due to how RNG works.

P.S. Bulwark is bad. The static 20% reduction you mean is Rampart.

Outside of that. I think SCH's identity is the "pet healer" who can push more throughput due to pet and oGCDs, or DPS as the pet covers for the not-so-dangerous "trash damage". SCH's only problem in my opinion is that it is outclassed in throughput, in both healing and DPS, by WHM. And outclassed as a proactive healer by Noct AST. It probably is still the best off-healer out of the three however.

~ Phoenicia ~

[Archamgel]

~ Phoenicia ~

Lol, no no no. I didn't mean, like, 40% total damage. I really did that part badly (words have never been my strong suit), but if the 4dps are pulling around 4k, the tanks about 2k, and healers about 1.5k, then it is almost like having another healer dps for 30secs at 1.3k bonus dps. But, the cards are very useful as well. Not as outrageously as I made them sound with the 40% thing, but definitely not something to scoff at.

PPS: Yep. I don't even know why I thought of Bulwark. I only just got my Drk to 70 (my only tank) and it definitely doesn't have that, so I am not sure how I confused it with Rampart. Excuse my blunder.

I could see that, but as it stands in FFXIV, having pets is more of a hindrance than anything. Even with always having Eos in Obey, she either doesn't perform the command, or takes forever to do so. And then there is poor Selene... They have also been pretty adamant with this x-pac about not wanting the fairies to be the frontload of healing, either, with the Embrace nerf. Rouse+FI+WD is an amazing regen, but I wouldn't call it (nor want it to be) a pet class because of it. That may just be my "FFXI Sch is the best iteration of it" inside me saying that, but pet AI needs quite a bit of work for it to be a pet based healer. I always just saw her as more of a means to heal up the damage that got through mitigation and prolong dps.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Wow, this feels exactly like the WHM threads back in 3.0 talking about WHMs lack of identity and basically being a worse AST...

[loreleidiangelo]

Wow, this feels exactly like the WHM threads back in 3.0 talking about WHMs lack of identity and basically being a worse AST...

And we'll continue to see threads like this as long as Astrologian remains the ugly Frankenstein's monster of a WHM/SCH healer that it is. I'm torn between which job needs a total overhaul more at this point - AST or SMN. Both are just irredeemably awful in design, IMO.

[Riyshn]

Wow, this feels exactly like the WHM threads back in 3.0 talking about WHMs lack of identity and basically being a worse AST...

It's the problem with trying to make a class that is explicitly a hybrid of of two others. There is basically only 3 states of balance that can exist: AST is weaker at both shielding and pure healing than SCH/WHM; AST is simply the best healer with both high throughput and good shielding; or it's better at one and worse at the other.

So long as it continues to be a hybrid class instead of having it's own healing identity, it will always just be "WHM/SCH but better/worse."

[Xenohart]

Scholar problems (along with summoner problems) will never ever be resolved until they remove the class-to-job system from the game (they said their goal is 5.0). Scholar isn't broke. Summoner isn't broke. What is broke is they both share Arcanist.

[ScorpiusO-Ra-E]

I think what we've not realized all along is that scholar is a single Target healer rather than a shield healer, we have an abysmal aoe shield heal, and an aoe burst heal.

Our greatest asset spell-wise is adlo a single Target shield heal, and in burst healing we've got lustrate. Fey Union is single Target and our fairies only aoe support is a Regen. The design of our class has either changed, or we never actually had a good grasp on it. Just a thought, but how could we adjust accordingly if true?

[inhaledcorn]

I think what we've not realized all along is that scholar is a single Target healer rather than a shits healer, we have an abysmal aoe shield heal, and an aoe burst heal.

Our greatest asset spell-wise is adlo a single Target shield heal, and in burst healing we've got lustrate. Fey Union is single Target and our fairies only aoe support is a Regen. The design of our class has either changed, or we never actually had a good grasp on it. Just a thought, but how could we adjust accordingly if true?

It's always been a really strong single-target healer, however, this was also during a time when the fairy was also a strong heal, and we had less Aetherflow actions competing against each other, better MP economy, cheaper shield heals, better shields in general than the AST, and less AoE damage spikes. The game changed too much around the SCH and the SCH didn't get enough tools to compensate for those changes, making it feel clunky and weak since the transition.

[RyuDragnier]

It's the problem with trying to make a class that is explicitly a hybrid of of two others. There is basically only 3 states of balance that can exist: AST is weaker at both shielding and pure healing than SCH/WHM; AST is simply the best healer with both high throughput and good shielding; or it's better at one and worse at the other.

So long as it continues to be a hybrid class instead of having it's own healing identity, it will always just be "WHM/SCH but better/worse."

When I originally heard that AST worked with cards, I always figured the cards could buff allies or adjust their healing. IMO just remove the Sects and make it so the cards can be put into a "healing stock" that will effect the next 5 Aspected casts. Bole gives shields, Balance is stronger potency heals, Spear has a higher crit rate, Arrow makes them cast faster, Ewer reduces their MP costs, and Spire gives them an HoT effect.