Scholar Speculations - Nerfs and New skills

[HyoMinPark]

the only thing useful about eos is her heal buff and magic defense buff

the magic defense is also as useless as paladin's cover being only physical was.

...so which one is it? Useful or useless?

I’d say its fairly useful, considering all raidwide AOEs are magical damage... I’m not a SCH main, nor do I play the job as often as the other two healers, but I know it’s extremely useful mitigation for Ultimate with all the magical AOE damage going out (on top of mitigating Ultima Weapon’s autos to the main tank, since they are also magical).

I’m sure it’s also fairly useful in O12S as well, considering Ion Efflux is something that has to be mitigated in some way to survive in most instances.

[EaMett]

We’ve had more info since my initial post so let me revise my prediction. I expect scholar to get more direct healing abilities. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were no longer the mitigation class and if healers were all homogenized around the board.

Faerie raking will be nerfed into the ground. Don’t expect eos to account for more than maybe 20% of your healing when highly optimized.

[Grimoire-M]

...so which one is it? Useful or useless?

I’d say its fairly useful, considering all raidwide AOEs are magical damage... I’m not a SCH main, nor do I play the job as often as the other two healers, but I know it’s extremely useful mitigation for Ultimate with all the magical AOE damage going out (on top of mitigating Ultima Weapon’s autos to the main tank, since they are also magical).

I’m sure it’s also fairly useful in O12S as well, considering Ion Efflux is something that has to be mitigated in some way to survive in most instances.

Do you remember Foresight? The MDEF buff works in a similar manner as it where the actual effect is worth maybe a third of what it's supposed to be worth in most cases because how direct defensive stat scaling works in this game. It's still good, particularly because of its duration, but it's closer to Devotion than Bole in terms of actual damage reduction.

[Dyvid]

Made this in another thread but I'll post it here too since its about SCH.

I'm surprise there aren't a lot of Scholars in FF games for reference here. FFXIV's version has three main characteristics; Shield, Fairy, ACN abilities.

Obviously Shields are what define SCH so it should be untouched with maybe tweaking mp cost.

Pet A.I. needs to be overhauled with Fairy included. Embrace should be considered as an auto attack and all spells changed to instant abilities (Sorry SMN still suffers from this plague if SCH has already been fixed). Furthermore using abilities should take priority over movement, meaning the Fairy would stop, cast ability, then continue moving. Selene's skill set also needs work; Silence and Fey Caress. If I'm wrong please correct me here but seem like trash abilities that could be used for something else.

Lastly we come to ACN and trying to move it away from what SMN has. Traits can do this with great effect. Part of me says get rid of DoT and part says keep them. Maybe change / combine them into two different spells that apply a DoT and debuff like lower attack damage? I think Aetherflow is a good tool and should stay. I would love to see Libra added but since telling a monsters weakness would be a laughable skill, have it lower defense? I also liked Chain Stratagem that makes to SCH feel more like a tactician using books.

[technole]

Obviously Shields are what define SCH so it should be untouched with maybe tweaking mp cost.

Nope, nope, and nope. Completely false. Fake news.

oGCDs define Stormblood Scholar, hence the high MP cost of GCD skills. Shields do not define the job. Aetherflow, Excog, Indom, free Whispering Dawn define the job today.


Unfortunately they put themselves in a corner making raids adaptable to mostly oGCD healing, and sometimes a Succor is a necessary evil. They kind of need to get back to the idea of actually making it worthwhile to use Succor/Adlo. Nowadays auto-attacks are more evil than tank busters.

[Daralii]

Urm... why should a summoner.... get a fairy please enlighten me wouldn't that be just salt for you scholars be limited 2 pets. and then summoner gets a fairy

Titania is the fairy queen

Titania's a primal that's considered a queen by a beast tribe- she's more like King Moggle-Mog than anything in that regard. Scholar fairies are like the anima you grow during the HW relic quests in that they're artificial souls wrapped in a shell made of aether and bound to the soul crystal. They also only have the one fairy, Lily, with Eos and Selene basically being two different stances. Doing something more with that concept(fairy stance dancing, assuming it's responsive) is a direction they could take the job that would also help give it an identity beyond shields, but we'll see.

[Mortex]

The greatest problem sch has that makes him op is sacred soil indo fairy and crit shields. Fairy is a free Regen the entire fight with extra abilities, indo on a short cd and it’s a ogcd so you can weave it in after you use ruin 2, crit shields do make a lot of abilities obsolete ( uwu is the best example when you can cheese the first ultima mechanic with a crit also spread. And you have sacred soil and yes it costs aether flow but is a 10 % dmg reduce with a short cd to and the only other healer that can do it has it on 90 sec cd.

[Hustensaft]

The greatest problem sch has that makes him op is sacred soil indo fairy and crit shields. Fairy is a free Regen the entire fight with extra abilities, indo on a short cd and it’s a ogcd so you can weave it in after you use ruin 2, crit shields do make a lot of abilities obsolete ( uwu is the best example when you can cheese the first ultima mechanic with a crit also spread. And you have sacred soil and yes it costs aether flow but is a 10 % dmg reduce with a short cd to and the only other healer that can do it has it on 90 sec cd.

Fairy being free is absolutely irrilevant, other spells (which you don't have to use) cost more mana for that reason. Fairy being a smart heal is what makes it strong - it is a hot without it's target restriction and overhealing. (though such a mechanic is vastly superior in a world where you do not have to cast healing spells)

Critshields are on average less single-target absorb then noct ASTs single-target shields (that's also the reason they buffed Succor at one point to match Helios' absorb). Deployment tactic of crit shield is what's broken - but it is still a random factor to get it when you need it. DT is the real problem (i'd bet on it being removed in ShB), random crit shield only enhances it.

Aetherflow abilities are completely balanced (on paper). You will only ever get four per minute. That's at most 2 Indoms, 1 Excog, and one Sacred Soil. The more correct statement here though is: You only ever need four Aetherflow charges per minute. There is too little healing required for you to ever meet the Aetherflow restriction. Once again, the problem arises from there being nothing to heal.

FFXIVs healer are not balanceable. WoW healers are balanced with one factor primarily: Healing Done with roughly 5-6 buttons per spec (plus "superior" raid cooldowns). FFXIVs healer are balanced around: oGCD healing, (hypothetical) GCD healing toolkit (totalling ~14 healing buttons per job), personal DPS, DPS raidbuffs. Further, DPS is tied to the healing abilties (less casted heals is more casted spells), and healing abilities are in return tied to encounter design (require more casted spells, cast less DPS spells).