If I was on the development team, this is what I would have done for SCH

[inhaledcorn]

In HW, it was the popular opinion that SCH was OP. It had MP efficiency to spare with Aetherflow returning 20% of its max MP a minute. Adloqium was cheap enough to spam to fish for a Crit. Adding a Warrior and Fey's Illumination (and Dissipation if you really wanted a big number), would turn that foretold Critical Adloqium into a mechanic-ignoring monster. Indomitability was a good, "free" heal to use (it's not all that free since it uses a stack of Aetherflow which is in direct competition for use on Energy Drain, among other things). Emergency Tactics turned Succor and Aldo into straight heals. Dissipation was garbage, but no one cared since everything else was so good. SCH was largely considered one of the two perfectly crafted Jobs with the other being WAR.

So, what happened in the transition between 3.45 and 4.0?

Well, to be frank, not only did SCH get hit with a lot of nerfs, but the game itself changed around the SCH that made its strong points less strong. SCH's MP efficiency got cut in half with Aetherflow now only restoring 10% MP each time its pressed instead of 20%, and one more Aetherflow action was added. Now, you would think that adding one more action wouldn't hurt, but this is also adding to the fact that Adloquium and Succor, two of SCH's trademark spells, had their MP costs skyrocket. At lv70, SCH's Adloquium costs 1800 MP that grants a 300 heal with a shield equal to the heal (so an essential 600 potency), unless that heal is a crit in which case it equals twice of the heal (so 900 potency). WHM's Cure II costs 1400 for a potency of 700 flat (with an added chance that Cure I will make Cure II free). Succor is in a similar boat, only Succor doesn't even have the added crit bonus that Adloquium has. In addition, the fairies Embrace potency was reduced from 300 to 250, however, since this a pet action, the actual potency is around 170. WHM regen heals for 150 consistently on a target whereas the fairies must cast their Embrace on a target, and it won't always be the tank. When we compare it to the AST, it gets worse. AST's Benefic II is 1080 MP at 650+10% or 15% depending on Sect with a chance at a guaranteed crit granted by Benefic I. However, AST also has a skill known as Aspected Benefic, which is supposed to be the spell that's akin to Adloquium since its effect changes depending on the Sect. Well, Noct Sect grants the barriers, which also grants a +15% heal bonus on top. Noct Aspected Benefic has a base heal of 200, so, really, 200+15%, or 230 potency, for a cost of 1440 MP. Okay, fair enough. But, in addition, the shield has a flat potency of 250% of the heal. No crit needed. So, in most situations, the AST shields are stronger than a SCHs shields. Granted, AST does not have any passive healing like the SCH does in the fairy, but SCH's shields are balanced around the idea that you are going to Crit and double the shield potency instead of you might Crit and double the shield potency. In addition, Succor's MP value seems to be balanced around the idea that you will get the free Succor from using Sacred Soil, but, to be frank, that Aetherflow stack used on Sacred Soil would have been better spent on Indomitability. More often than not, AST's shields are just better and cheaper than the SCH's. Why did they decide that SCH's MP efficiency should go down while MP costs should go up with their essential healing being so much less than their competition?

Because of this, I am of the opinion that SCH is lacking a real identity at the moment. Other problems, aside from the high cost and low efficiency of their GCD heals, SCH's fairies are heavily imbalanced (Eos is vastly superior to Selene, and Selene's support is incredibly weak), SCH seems heavily balanced around the idea that they will have a co-healer (so much stronger in 8 man content than in 4 man content), and SCH is heavily reliant on having their oGCD heals available (which means that they are off cooldown and SCH has the Aetherflow to spend, which means death is very punishing for them).

So, my proposed changes for the SCH are thus:

1) Changes to Adloquium and Succor: These two skills lose their shield aspects and become straight heals, similar to Cure II and Medica. They will gain extra effects depending on abilities as explained in depth at a later point. Adloquium potency is set at 600. Succor’s potency is set at 300.

2) Changes to Sacred Soil: Sacred Soil no longer costs Aetherflow. Sacred Soil’s radius is reduced to 25y. Sacred Soil becomes an ability that does 50 damage to all enemies who are inside for as long as the spell persists. The spell lasts 15s (basically, it’s Shadow Flare for SCH). (Shadow Flare will be removed from the SCH’s kit and be SMN exclusive) Sacred Soil will also be affected by abilities described at length in a later point.

3) Changes to Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics: Deployment and Emergency Tactics’ cooldowns are changed to 60s and share a cooldown timer. In addition, each time an Embrace cast has a crit, the cooldown of Deployment and Emergency is reduced by 5s. Deployment Tactics turns the next Adlo, Succor, and Sacred Soil to a shield. Emergency Tactics changes those skills to regens. For each spell specifically, the following happens:

Adloquium: Emergency Tactics effect reduces MP cost by 30%, heal potency by 70%, and a regen effect is then also applied to the target (110 potency; duration 21s), but if the initial heal has a crit, the Regen potency is doubled. Deployment Tactics effect increases MP cost by 30%, reduces heal potency by 50%, adds a shield effect that protects for the amount healed, but if the initial heal has a crit, the shield’s strength is doubled.

Succor: Emergency Tactics effect increases MP cost by 30%, reduces heal potency by 40%, and adds a regen effect (35 potency; duration 30s), but if the initial heal on a player is a crit, the regen potency is doubled. Deployment Tactics effect increases MP cost by 30%, reduces heal potency by 50%, adds shield effect that protects for the amount healed, but if the initial heal on a player is a crit, the shield’s strength on that player is doubled.

Sacred Soil: Emergency Tactics effect: creates a veil of healing magicks that recovers HP of all who enter (potency 85). Deployment Tactics effect: Erects a magicked barrier that reduces the damage taken by all allies in the barrier by 15%.

With these above changes, SCH becomes a flexible healer, having both shields and regens available (and at the same time if some fancy plays are made), though not as good at either as the other two.

For the Fairies:

1) The Fairy gauge is used as a resource for the fairy cooldowns: Since a lot of the fairy cooldowns are things a SCH wants to have constant access to, turning the fairy gauge into a resource gauge, kind of like Kenki, helps with this. Aetherflow actions will still add 10 points, but each cast of fairy Embrace will add 5 points. The Fairy gauge is a trait granted at lv30 (meaning fairy skills other than Embrace are locked in low level content).

2) Fairies (and Summons in general) no longer cost MP and do not have cast times. Instead, they behave like MCH's turrets and are placed in battle, but they do still have their own cooldowns. This makes death of the player and death of the pets less punishing. (I would also like it if they didn't cause face pulls like MCH's turrets do currently). If not (and it's unlikely since it would require quite a bit of reprogramming), then the costs of Summonining needs to be reduced to fit into the amount of MP given on revival with a bit more wiggle room.

3) Changes to Eos: Whispering Dawn is brought in at lv20 instead of lv4. Instead, a single target regen, called Rising Sun, will be at lv4 (so, really, at lv30 due to the fairy gauge changes). The new Lv 40 skill will be called Sunburst which will heal the target for 25% of their total HP (the original Lustrate). Whispering Dawn costs 40 Fairy points. Rising Sun costs 20 Fairy points. Sunburst costs 50 Fairy Points.

4) Changes to Selene: Silent Dusk is instead learned at lv20. Effect is changed to: Reduces damage dealt on target by 10% and lasts for 10s (Effect is the same as AST’s former Disable to give SCH’s back their Virus, kinda-sorta). New lv4 Skill: Waxing Moon - puts a shield on the tank that protects them for 7% of their HP. Moondust, the new Lv40 skill, is an AoE spell that places shields on the party that shields for 5% of their total HP. Waxing Moon costs 20 Fairy Points. Moondust costs 40 Fairy points. Silent Dusk costs 50 Fairy points. (Edits made to lower the potency of shields due to shield stacking)

5) Dissipation: If the above changes to pets happen, then I would like to see Dissipation traded with SMN's Aetherpact/Devotion. If not, then the effect should lose the heal boost and Aetherflow bonus, have the cooldown reduced to 45s, and have the effect changed to "Dismisses the currently summoned pet and summons the other pet in its place."

6) Aetherpact (SCH)/Fey’s Union: Instead of its current effect, the pet instead tethers itself to its SCH. This enables the constant “Deployment” effect of Adlo/Succor/Sacred Soil if Selene is tethered and “Emergency” effect of those spells if Eos is tethered. The Fairy Gauge will drain by 10 for each Adloquium cast, 30 for each Succor cast, and 40 for each Sacred Soil cast while under this effect.

With these changes, the fairies are more defined with Eos as the “Regen” fairy and Selene as the “Shield” fairy. The fairy gauge is far more useful (and far more punishing for those who don’t control their pets). Aetherpact/Fey’s Union is less of a glorified regen (though it can give the SCH a constant regen cast). Dissipation is actually useful and easily opens up the ability to swap between fairies as needed without having to spend extra resources. Fey’s Union allows the SCH to more easily access the effects they need without having to worry about cooldowns, assuming they have the points to spend.

Other changes that don’t fit into the above

1) Chain Stratagem: Duration is increased to 20s. Effect can now be passed via Bane (not affected by potency falloff).

2) Excogitation: Effect activates if its threshold is met or if the effect expires.

TL;DR: These changes turn SCH into a very flexible healer, turning Adloquium, Succor, and Sacred Soil into spells that change their effects if Deployment Tactics or Emergency Tactics are used, and the fairies are redefined as Regen-focused (Eos) and Shield-focused (Selene).

[Fernosaur]

The only thing I agree with is that the fairies are imbalanced. Otherwise, SCH's identity remains the same it always was: A pet healer.

And it is this identity that makes SCH the single most efficient healer in the game, specially compared to NoctAST, which is the job people love to compare with SCH regarding this whole deal about identity. And yes, this holds even if the GCD heal MP costs on SCH are massive. The reason for this is that the rest of SCH's most powerful healing abilities are mostly free. And I'm talking about Embrace, Whispering Dawn and Fey Union. This is one of the main reasons WHM+NoctAST was popular for progression but will inevitably fall off fashion: the free-passive healing brought by SCH has no comparison.

People keep making a big fuss about Nocturnal shields being better than Scholar's, because back in ARR SCH was more oriented towards mitigation (despite Stoneskin being a CNJ native ability, which I know was trash). But what has always been the center of SCH's toolkit have been the fairies; Eos in particular has always been extremely powerful, and she still is, even after all the nerfs she has sustained throughout HW and into SB. So I personally think it's fine if Nocturnal AST gets to be the "Shield healer." Really, considering NoctAST as a unique job, that's their thing. Their only *unique* strength. Even if Noct is the best solo healer, in a standard composition it's probably the worst healer when it comes to efficiency, and parties with a NoctAST will always be held back by this.

Like you, I also kind of liked the idea of gating fairy CDs behind the Fey gauge, but given that SE wanted to simplify how the jobs play, there's no way this is ever going to happen. As it is right now, there's a massive amount of players who can't properly deal with the fairies. You'll see a lot of SCHs using Eos on Sic in Duty Finder, or simply never using her skills at all. Additionally, I believe further gating SCH's use of the more potent and central parts of the toolkit would just hold SCH back. While it would be fun, it would also add an extra layer of complexity that the other two healing jobs don't have. Even now, SCH has always been the most complex healer to use. It always, and still has the busiest DPS rotation (as pitiful as it is rn), has to manage use of gated healing, has to make constant decisions between healing or DPS, and has to micromanage a pet and mind its positioning all the time. Further extending these complexities would be a bit too much for the average player, I feel. Also, considering the pet AI is so bad, I would be seeeeriously wary of adding any single target stuff to the fairies, specially something like Virus and Disable, which usually needs precise timing, or things like shield enhancers: if the fairy does it too late and you were counting on it to save someone, kiss their butt goodbye.

Honestly? SCH is pretty much fine where it is right now. I agree we could have more interesting healing jobs, but the direction the game model is taking is going in the opposite way, for better or for worse. Implementing any of your changes would also require the other two healers to have more mechanics attached to their main role, which is healing. Neither AST nor WHM have any healing mechanics at all, which is still something vaguely unique to SCH due to the use of Aetherflow.

The only things it could use are a buff to Dissipation to make it worthwhile to use more than three times per expansion for the average/above average player, and I would definitely like to see some love for Selene, though no matter what they do to her, I don't see her overpowering or even coming close to Eos anytime soon.

[NobleWinter]

Selene needs so much help. In my dream world she would have a single target version of Fey Caress on a 15 or 20 second cool down since a party wide Esuna is just overkill ALL the time. Only 1% of the game has a need for it and even then you can get by without it easily. Fey Wind is nice in theory but no one can really tell if it's doing anything. DPS checks are not reliant on that skill for sure. Silent Dusk works sometimes but mostly not. Would much rather replace the Silent Dusk Ability with a Fairy "Medica" on a 60 second cool down to give Selene some effective use of Rouse. Rouse just feels useless when Selene is active. I think Selene is the prettier Fairy tho and that is really her one redeeming quality. Im kind of Sad Selene is not even used in any of the Scholar Cutscenes. Square might be trying to tell us something with that.

[silverlunarfox]

My problem is the fairy imbalance....and the cost of heals vs actual healing. They keep nerfing embrace on the fairy but don't touch physick or mp costs of shield abilities. It makes it extremely hard to heal. I could deal with the lesser mp regain from aetherflow and the constant embrace nerfs. if they either readjusted the heal potency of physick or costs of succor/adlo. Something needs to change. But they keep changing the wrong things.

And selene? Who is she at this point? It's sad. I remember her 2.0 form... T.T

[Shihen]

A lot of those changes do sound cool, kudos for taking the time to make them. The class theme probably doesn't need a complete redefinition though, just some improvements to help it stand out again. AST more or less occupies the flex healer spot at the moment; they just either do the shielding side of that coin a little too well or SCH doesn't do it well enough. Personally, I think it's the latter combined with a lack of presence from Selene.

A reprisal and health-based shield is probably exactly what she needs to be the standard for raid content, though an anti-tank buster might be a little too much. It would be nice to see the aoe shield stack with Succor, but be 5% and replace the dispel.

Against the turret mechanic. One of the main reasons SCH appealed to me in the beginning was the pet aspect, a little AI partner that follows you around and helps out. Only being able to place them as temporary strategic pieces would detract majorly from the class aesthetic. Perhaps being able to summon fairies for a stack of Aetherflow instead of mana and have the cast time reduced to 3 seconds to make summoning them mid-battle less costly, but anything that makes them feel more mechanical is hard to see as a positive.

Really like dissipation changed to an instant switch between fairies though. Having to burn swiftcast and a huge chunk of mana is the reason we don't see fairy swapping in combat often, but this would make it a lot easier. Also an option to get a fully healed fairy out if the current one has taken damage and is about to die to a dot or mechanic. The excog change also needs to happen and should have been the default from the start.

All that said, SCH feels pretty close to where it needs to be. It just needs more emphasis on shields, and stronger fairies. Adlo in particular needs to shield for more and heal for less, and Emergency Tactics needs to remove or severely reduce the mana cost of the next Adlo or Succor. 1440mp for a 600p single target heal that can only be cast every 20s is absolute nonsense. Physick also needs to interact with the class in some way. The other two healers have an RNG buff attached to their spammable heals, while SCH has it attached to Sacred INeedThisCooldownForMechanicsICantJustCastItWheneverFFS Soil. I wish they would get rid of it and attach a 15% chance your next Adlo will critically heal, or cost less mana, to Physick instead.

[Connor]

These changes are interesting but Scholar still has a clear identity as the offensive 'DPS' healer, barely having to use GCD healing in many situations. It's clear that they want Scholar to be an offensive healer that uses aetherflow abilities to heal while using their gcd for DPS. The pets are certainly a part of that, but ultimately they serve mostly to increase you and your co-healer's DPS by reducing healing requirements.

Whether Scholar is fun or 'well-designed' is up for debate, but at the moment the majority of people seem happy with Scholar, so it's unlikely we'll see any changes to it in the near future

[inhaledcorn]

A lot of those changes do sound cool, kudos for taking the time to make them. The class theme probably doesn't need a complete redefinition though, just some improvements to help it stand out again. AST more or less occupies the flex healer spot at the moment; they just either do the shielding side of that coin a little too well or SCH doesn't do it well enough. Personally, I think it's the latter combined with a lack of presence from Selene.

I disagree in how flexible AST really is. It's more "fill in the hole" than it is "flexible". AST can be the WHM or "SCH" if one currently isn't available, but it can't switch mid-battle. These changes would allow the SCH to switch mid-battle, having the ability to control their shields and regens by which fairy is active and what Tactic was used before their trademark spells. This would also leave the door open for a true, pure "shield" healer (the true opposite WHM, having strong shields attached to recovery spells and a large, on demand, HP-percentage based Shield that the WHM used to have, and nice oGCD healing, but almost no regens except for a cooldown or two and very little support [and probably really high personal DPS]).

These changes are interesting but Scholar still has a clear identity as the offensive 'DPS' healer, barely having to use GCD healing in many situations. It's clear that they want Scholar to be an offensive healer that uses aetherflow abilities to heal while using their gcd for DPS. The pets are certainly a part of that, but ultimately they serve mostly to increase you and your co-healer's DPS by reducing healing requirements.

Whether Scholar is fun or 'well-designed' is up for debate, but at the moment the majority of people seem happy with Scholar, so it's unlikely we'll see any changes to it in the near future

If it being the "DPS healer" is true then there are a few problems with that philosophy. 1) How much DPS vs healing do they bring that warrants their inclusion rather than a real DPS? There is no way a healer should do more damage than a DPS. It's hard to justify SCH DPS in even high-end content except v4S when a WHM can brute force most of the healing on its own. 2) If they were true DPS healers, then their DPS kit would have more interactivity with its healing kit, but it doesn't. Both WHM and AST have oGCD skills that is/can be a heal and damaging ability (Assize for WHM and Earthly Star and Minor Arcana to a lesser extent) whereas the DPS and the Healing aspects of SCH's kit are kept completely separate (except for Energy Drain, but that only heals the user unlike the other two skills I mentioned before which heal the party or target). Being the DPS healer was a lot more true when Cleric Stance existed as a Mind/Intelligence swap rather than a pathetic Raging Strikes since the fairy covered a lot of what a SCH needed to heal, allowing their DPS uptime to be really high for a healer. With the fairy being so weak now and SCH's heals so expensive and the shields are almost unnecessary except for a few cases, that's not really true anymore.

[Teraluna]

It seems to me there's a focus by the dev team on making classes more complex than they really need to be, often with gimmicky mechanics.
It should be the dungeon/raid content that adds complexity, not fiddling skills added purely to use up the skill bar.

People mention Ast as a comparison to Sch - and there's a prime example with that class and the seemingly ever increasing bar fillers just to get a bonus ability from the rng cards. The fortunate situation here is that most of that card fiddling about can be ignored and the Ast still does a good job.

Now Scholar has also started to suffer with this over concentration on it's button pushing mechanics, with the devs seemingly focused on making things more problematic - compared with the other two healers*.
Rather than focusing on the enjoyment of playing the class and making the content the direct challenge, they seem to have created a situation where it's a challenge to play the class.

So what happens? -
*people put aside the Scholar in favor of the other two classes.
If two out of the three healers are needed for a raid group, people will go with the two surest options.
At the moment Sch is seen as taking the biggest hit (for healers) in 4.0 which it has yet to recover from.

Until positive revisions are made to the class, which are generally perceived as bringing it back to where it was, Sch will be regarded as the healer the group gets only if they cannot get the other two.
Harsh? Maybe, but progression raid groups tend to focus that way, and this is a progression game.

[Shihen]

I disagree in how flexible AST really is. It's more "fill in the hole" than it is "flexible". AST can be the WHM or "SCH" if one currently isn't available, but it can't switch mid-battle.

Flexibility probably wasn't the best word for me to use. What I meant was flexible in its role, 'filling in the hole' so to speak. I was actually planning to touch on this originally but left it out for being a little too deep down the rabbit hole. I'll try to keep my thoughts on it short, but the two main issues for me were having flexibility be a class' identity and the similarity between the new spells and spells currently in the game. SCH already has a few identity issues with AST over 2 spells, but the proposed changes would also turn Adlo into Regen and Succor into Medica II on a cooldown. Not that it wouldn't be fun to do, but I think if the class focus was that it could do a little bit of everything, it would struggle to find a place over healers with defined strengths because most endgame content is designed around 2 healers that can compensate for the other's weaknesses. Groups would have to ask themselves if a WHM can heal the best, and an AST can shield the best, why bring a SCH who does a little bit of each when they can just bring the best at each style together?

This would also leave the door open for a true, pure "shield" healer (the true opposite WHM, having strong shields attached to recovery spells and a large, on demand, HP-percentage based Shield that the WHM used to have, and nice oGCD healing, but almost no regens except for a cooldown or two and very little support [and probably really high personal DPS]).

This is what I'd like to see SCH become and why I think its current strengths should be tweaked to highlight the shield aspect of their role. I'm not sure if it was intended or not, but almost everything here already applies to SCH. Adlo/Succor shield and heal, there is great oGCD healing in Lustrate and Indom, the only regen the class has is Whispering Dawn, support is fairly strong in Chain Strat, and personal dps is high. I'd argue it just needs to work out the kinks in its current kit and add a powerful health based shield that becomes the defining part of it, preferably through Selene.

In my ideal world, groups would look at a fight and say "This fight has tons of incoming damage/nukes/tight dps checks, we better make sure we bring a WHM/SCH/AST". Each healer ends up the best at something. But the problem right now is AST, just barely, is the answer to too many scenarios that SCH used to be the answer to. Their strengths need to be defined more clearly in ways that don't intersect, and I think making SCH the de facto shield class is one of the ways to do that.

[inhaledcorn]

This is what I'd like to see SCH become and why I think its current strengths should be tweaked to highlight the shield aspect of their role. I'm not sure if it was intended or not, but almost everything here already applies to SCH. Adlo/Succor shield and heal, there is great oGCD healing in Lustrate and Indom, the only regen the class has is Whispering Dawn, support is fairly strong in Chain Strat, and personal dps is high. I'd argue it just needs to work out the kinks in its current kit and add a powerful health based shield that becomes the defining part of it, preferably through Selene.

In my ideal world, groups would look at a fight and say "This fight has tons of incoming damage/nukes/tight dps checks, we better make sure we bring a WHM/SCH/AST". Each healer ends up the best at something. But the problem right now is AST, just barely, is the answer to too many scenarios that SCH used to be the answer to. Their strengths need to be defined more clearly in ways that don't intersect, and I think making SCH the de facto shield class is one of the ways to do that.

Well, no, Whispering Dawn is a Regen, but, when we compare Noct AST to SCH, SCH has a lot of passive healing in the fairy, while the AST has nothing except Celestial Opposition. When I said "Regen", I meant passive healing. SCH always had this passive healing in the fairy. Embrace is basically a slightly stronger Regen tick now to fill in the holes their base heals have, but their base heals aren't strong enough on their own. That's why I say these changes would "leave the door open for a true shield healer" since SCH, as it turned out when a true, pure shield healer emerged, wasn't a pure shield healer. That's why it was so strong. It was a mini-WHM and a mini Noct AST with amazing MP management, an absurd combination of Critlo-Deploy that could straight-up ignore mechanics, great healer Healer DPS since the downside of Cleric Stance meant almost nothing to them, and strong, passive healing because the fairy had a much higher heal potency on Embrace. These changes emphasize this idea of "Mini WHM and Noct AST" further, while not being as good as those that specialize in those roles. And, if the fairy gauge change I suggested doesn't happen (and it's highly unlikely that it would), then SCH would be further gated by cooldowns spread between itself and its fairies. This also doesn't change much from how a SCH plays currently, relying heavily on their very powerful cooldowns, but, at the moment, I would say that they're too reliant on them. This puts some healing thoughtput back into the GCD for less skilled SCHs but also greatly rewards SCHs for planning their cooldowns spread between themselves and their fairies, especially since both fairies would have very useful skills (and it would be easier to switch between them).