Troubles with Scholar

[Vyriah]

SCH always had trouble with skill bloating, and they actually merged some of their DPS skills with Stormblood changes. But as they gained new spells to use, it didn't solved anything. It comes from the fact that their base class is arcanist, wich is a DPS class.

I also think the job would work better with merged skills but not in that way. A better approach to the SCH would using fairy a stance mechanic that would change spell depending on what fairy you're currently using. That does mean fairy skills but there's a lot other skills that works in a similar way and would benefit from that, like sacred soil and shadow flare.

That would solve a lot of the problem SCH have right know. You would end up with much less keybind than currently as multiple spells would be set the only one slot, fairy balance isn't an issue anymore as using both fairy for different thing, this can also open more interesting changes to the whole fairy gauge system and dissipation and finally fairy skills would just SCH skills instead of those unresponsive pet spells. This could also clearly orient SCH identity to how it's played right know (and how it has alway been anyway) as a healer that do healing and DPS a the same time in a less restrictive way than cleric stance did as you don't need to make a all DPS/all heal division between the two fairy. You could mix healing and DPS option in both stances to make something that don't feel like you'll corner yourself for using one of the stances. A HoT/DoT orientation would be better than shield for this.

Anyway, you can't really solve SCH skill bloating without major changes. Merging fairy spell is obvious though, there may be technical limitations that prevent it from being implemented in the game as there's no reason it shouldn't have been adressed before the changes the job received the last few updates. But that alone won't do that much.

[Gokki]

I also think the job would work better with merged skills but not in that way. A better approach to the SCH would using fairy a stance mechanic that would change spell depending on what fairy you're currently using. That does mean fairy skills but there's a lot other skills that works in a similar way and would benefit from that, like sacred soil and shadow flare.

This does give me an idea, what do you think about this redesign? Cooldowns, spell potency and icons adjust automatically as needed.

• Embrace is no longer available to players, each Fey casts it on its own.
• Sacred Soil, Indomitability, Succor, Whispering Dawn and Fey Wind are merged into the same spell. Succor activates without a Fey, with Eos it becomes Indomitability and with Selene with becomes Sacred Soil. Activating Rouse also grants Rouse to the player, making the next Indomitability cast Whispering Dawn instead or the next Sacred Soil cast Fey Wind instead. Rouse is not granted to the player if the Fey is on Sic (making the fey autocast those as usual).
  
• Bio, Miasma and Miasma II functionality has been incorporated into Bio. Casting Bio/BioII deals damage over time as before. Casting it a second time on the same target applies Miasma debuff alongside Bio. Casting it a third time while both Bio and Miasma are on the target applies a Miasma II explosion to all enemies around the target.
  
• Broil also replaces Ruin II now. Broil/Broil II briefly becomes instant after spending aetherflow.
  
• Bane briefly becomes Shadow Flare after spending aetherflow.

With these changes almost all the functionality is preserved while drastically reducing the amount of buttons required. Or maybe just remove some of these spells altogether.