5.0 leaks (that I don't believe)

[Grimoire-M]

snip

I don't particularly care about the tank mechanical issues one way or another so for the sake of brevity I'll just remind you that DRK's grit specific bonuses are fine to push down into their core gameplay aside from Bloodspiller, since that was intended to bypass the Grit penalty in the first place so you didn't need to stance dance to optimize it. PLD could get all of the free Oath gauge generation from both stances at once and be fine without an offensive spender to use it on. Likely the block generation goes but Shieldtron refunds the cost partially. We both agree WAR is the most affected by it.

For the stat issues, Direct Hit can replace Tenacity on tank gear as a secondary stat if SE does any sort of change akin to Accuracy on them again to make room for a tank damage specific main stat. SE can do a number of things to eliminate crafting gear as the best option on them, like eliminating main-stat caps and making Direct Hit DPS exclusive so you can't meld STR or Direct Hit in the first place. That would solve the problem but piss people off. I'd like SE to make tanks care about defence again but I get why that's not the case. With enough gauge related effects and enough tank damage to force the issue maybe a secondary specifically for defence and tank gauges could come back again in order to make it DPS neutral to have the stat relative to to the rest, but still useful to have on prog or optimization scenarios for that defence, instead of relying on Tank Stances.

I personally think Overmelding is bad for the game as a whole, even for crafters. It's pure RNG/Gil Sink nonsense. Give them more meld slots using another system that consumes materia and make it exclusive to DoH/L gear. Also Zhloe gives 5 materia slot crafting gear which is the true Best in Slot for crafters. Good luck getting a full set though, it's 3 bar-locked weekly content and random for each player.

I read the Raise Cap as a hard limit of 3, which even more restrictive than your interpretation. I'd be fine with either provided Healer LB3 ignored it. Not sure where you got that idea. I figured it meant the spell set only. I'd prefer it if Raises were treated as Abilities with 60-120s cooldowns but kept their MP cost and a cast time, probably 4s or so, to make it easier to react to and thus help prevent multiple-raises on one person. Doing so also lets you swiftcast for mobility purposes instead of solely holding it for raising on prog as a healer, which is somewhat beneficial to them overall.

Now, let's get to what I talked about with SCH and SMN, shall we?

Not really.

Again not really.

Off to a good start. 'No' and 'no' is not a sufficient answer.

Egi Glamours can easily be removed. Given they haven't improved on the system in like forever...

It took them two expansions to add it in the first place yet the playerbase still wanted it the entire time because the Egi look god awful. I'm loathe to assume it's easy to alter in any meaningful respect, nevermind whether they'd consider removing it.

Alphinaud and Tataru can still have attacking Carbuncles. There's no reason why playable ARC having healing Carbuncles (Emerald and Topaz) means that things like Alphinaud's unique Onyx Carbuncle can't still do damage. Or Tataru just having an offensive Carbuncle randomly, in the like 2 fights she actually participates in.

Carbuncles in the Arcanist Questline also attack people. Are you not going to change them there? I didn't touch on that aspect because I was specifically talking about content that non-arcanists would see that would color their opinions of the class. If some new player thinks Ruin III is cool (I know, a stretch), when they're playing as Alphinaud in that one instance and they find out he's not part of the class that has it because the developers were 'too lazy' to fix the discrepancies laid out in previous expansions, how do you think that colors their opinion of the developers as a whole? How do think players who pick up Arcanist are going to reconcile the differences between the carbuncles they have and those that the NPCs have? People literally blew up over Diamond and Obsidian in the past but they at least behaved like other carbuncles the players had. SMN even got Devotion which nods to some of the things Obsidian did.

Overall, it's not good for the game to seperate Carbuncles from Arcanist or Summoner, and a waste of development time. Especially when people are already angry at them for the things they do manage to do. Why create a mistake where there isn't any?

Also, nothing about the SMN questline requires Carbuncles.

You don't "Upgrade" your Carbuncles into Egi. You simply gain the ability to summon Egi.

Lorewise it's not relevant that you had Carbuncles. The only relevance is a gameplay one where your Summon I and Summon II actions are altered after completing the relevant quests. With Summon III being a completely unique skill only obtained by SMN from the relevant quest, which is why it has an Ifrit icon instead of a Carbuncle.

You do. You literally don't know how to summon Egi without Carbuncles as a reference point. You're tapping into Ifrit's remnant Aether to bring out more power from your Summon spells, which is an effect that Arcanima specifically teaches you to do in the first place. Garuda and Titan then take over the two Carbuncle slots because we don't have the aether to contain them otherwise, and we learn in the Egi-Glamour quest that the appearance of the Egi doesn't even matter, it's the intent of the abilities we want to draw out of them that does. It's part of the evolution of the class. Ifrit's not tied to any carbuncle in particular in the player's hands but Ruby exists in the game as his analogue for the Arcanist NPCs for a reason.

SCH has to have you balance out them not having Aetherflow for MP generation as well as a "CD" for their oGCD's.

It requires having to think of a new way to generate Fey Gauge.

Alright, let's try some random numbers.

All current Aetherflow abilities other than Energy Drain, Lustrate, and Indom cost 20 gauge. Indom and Lustrate cost 30. Energy Drain's removed. Embrace generates 5 gauge per cast (equates to 100 per minute as long as you keep it rolling, enough for 3 lustrates and most of an Excog). Give them a Rouse equivalent that gives them 50 Fey Gauge in addition to their normal effects and restores MP and there's your Aetherflow replacement. Dissipation makes your Fey gauge spenders cost 50% less during its duration and refills your Fey Gauge entirely. Add a hidden trait that gives them full gauge after entering a new instance or respawning after a wipe. Done.

The only thing I haven't addressed there was MP, and to me the solution to that is to reduce the MP costs of Adlo, Broil spells, and Succor, which are SCH's main problem with losing Energy Drain and Aetherflow. SMN would have similar issues if you added new GCDs that cost more MP to fix their rotation too. They certainly felt it back when they had 5 GCD DoTs to juggle and only the good version of Aetherflow to work with for sustaining them too.

If they consume Fey Gauge you have to rework Fey Union's mechanics/potency.

Good! It's another completely free heal that SCH should learn to manage better. Reduce its gauge cost per tick to 0 with the above in mind and you're fine, as it costs an effective 5 gauge per tick without actually touching the gauge bar, meaning you can use it to avoid overcapping if you're stockpiling Fey gauge for mechanics or just for safety during prog.

They would have to rework Dissipation as that gets a large portion of its power through the extra refresh of Aetherflow to allow more oGCD heals.

They would need a new set of DoT's to work with (Since Healers seem to have this DoT focus with all of them having at least 1 DoT effect to maintain while spamming their nuke)

I don't see a big deal with this as this again would be true of SMN assuming they wanted to keep the same structure intact. It's a moot point anyways because it's a feature of removing either class from Arcanist, hence, it doesn't count in either class's favor in isolation. It counts in SMN's favor specifically because other abilities reference those particular DoTs. Again, it's more work on SMN than SCH.

What people want out of the class is irrelevant. Since the same can be said about literally any change to any class. Including actually keeping SCH and SMN both branching off ARC.

That's literally part of what we're arguing about. Or is "SMN hasn't been about Summons" irrelevant to your arguments later? Pick one. Either you dismiss everything I talked about that proves SMN is tied to Arcanist by the lore, in which case I can similarly dismiss everything that proves SCH is tied to Arcanist (which, is literally the level 30 job quests) and we agree that we can't have any discussion, or you don't, and you have to argue the full lore case for why it isn't a problem.

I'm bringing up that people who say "SMN doesn't feel like SMN" because its relevant to your opinion that SMN should be removed from Arcanist. I'm being thorough by addressing that fact not ignorant of it. You can say that you prefer how certain things work on SCH over SMN and we can talk about those details, because I agree on some of those points. I could see removing Aetherflow from Arcanist and keeping it on SCH for example. But Arcanist itself should remain with Summoner for all of story reasons I discussed. It breaks some class quests but that's easy to address compared to Carbuncles across 2.0-4.x.

SMN requires DWT being put on a 1 minute CD.

Assuming the most generous interpretation of this (which is that all ties to Aetherflow are removed, which includes Aethertrail/Fester/Painflare/Energy Drain, and that Tri-disaster is reworked, as it can no longer reference Bio/Miasma), you can, yes, but you then need to build a new oGCD rotation from scratch and it needs to include Summons somehow, because, again, that's relevant to your argument. But sure, just gloss over that and say:

A new way to utilize their oGCD's.

That's it.

For SCH you only have to change the numbers of existing abilities as opposed to making anything new. Dissipation and Quickened Aetherflow are the only exceptions to this, and their primary effects (Trading the Fairy for resources and accelerating your cooldowns) are easy to replace as you have the Fey Gauge as your mechanic to work with in order to address those issues. You do realize it's less development work purely because you don't need to make new animations at all, right? Sure, we'll be generous and assume you use the current ones anyways (and piss off people who wanted Egi related animations in the process). You still have to come up with new mechanics to replace what was taken out and do your best to avoid using Arcanist (or some other DPS class) as a reference point, because we're 'trying not to copy Arcanist' here. We want to be a Summoner. Ignoring that what that entails costs more dev time than it's worth.

They don't interact with Carbuncles at all.

Can't summon Egi if you don't know how Carbuncles work. Gone over this. The Fairy is literally a seperate entity contained within the Scholar soulcrystal given to you. You're not trying to create a replica of "Lily (Extreme)". She exists independently of the player, but requires someone with sufficient aether to use the Scholar Soulcrystal in order to manifest. She's not bound to Arcanima either. They never even specify it outside of the initial quest that brings you to Alka Zolka because SE wanted to leave the option to split the two jobs apart at a later date. Literally the entire quest line is about bringing out her memories and forging a bond with her in order and in general attune your aether to her in order to unlock more abilities.

In some aesthetic sense, that's more Summoner than Summoner is, but in practical terms, it has no bearing on it. XIV Summoner's more like a D&D Warlock anyways. With Bahamut and the Primals as patrons to draw powers from.

They don't use Aetherflow for anything other than spend it > get DWT once a minute. They don't necessarily need DoTs (There isn't really a precedent for having DoTs in the Mage role) and could just get nuke potency instead (Or temporary pet buffs, or pet actions that simulate DoTs)

You're ripping out the bottom of their hierarchical structure to do so, which, yes, is a valid way to go about it. That doesn't change the fact that they're integrated more into Arcanist because Aetherflow and their DoTs sits at the bottom of that structure.

Which, SCH actually has more in common with than SMN.

SCH is more revolved around Aetherflow and DoTs than SMN (The majority of SMN's DoT application comes from Tri-Disaster which is used for Ruination moreso than actually applying the DoTs)

Not true. Especially on that DoT part. SCH has DoTs but doesn't care about DoTs any more than SMN does. In fact it cares even less. Both of them have Bane thanks to Arcanist. You can't count that in favor of SCH as a result. It literally cancels out. It's a non-factor. If anything, SMN cares about Bane more because its exclusive DoTs hit harder and Miasma II's DoT is overwritten constantly when you're using it for AoE DPS on SCH.

Similarly, Aetherflow and Energy Drain themselves are non-factors. Yes SCH uses them more, but that's not because of Aetherflow or Energy Drain specifically. It's because of the differences between SCH and SMN's aetherflow abilities, obviously. Fester and Painflare are the DPS equivalents of Lustrate/Excog and Indom. However, all of them aside from Fester care about Arcanist only because they cost Aetherflow.

So, again, treat Aetherflow itself as part of Arcanist. Any argument about what Aetherflow abilities themselves do is a trap because SCH and SMN are different roles. What's important is not how important they are to their given role, what's important is how mechanically tied each of their kits are to Aetherflow. I've laid out why Aetherflow is more important to Summoner's overall structure already. It's the foundation of their structure of their cooldown rotation, which in turn is a mirror that reflects upon their progression in their job quest lore.

SCH specifically cares more about aetherflow because more critical abilities care about it as a cost. However, that's a relatively easy thing to adjust. Quickened Aetherflow and Dissipation are the only things tied to it directly.

But SCH only cares about aetherflow.

SMN cares about everything Arcanist brings to their kit.

That's the difference.

The current set up of Carbuncles also leads into SCH more easily, given that there are 2 Fairies and 2 Carbuncles (As opposed to the 3 Egi)

Ruby (who is treated as Ifrit), Diamond, and Obsidian are tied to Arcanists in Heavensward and Stormblood, but sure, shaft them too.

None of that is relevant.

Lore isn't relevant? You heard it here first Dalamud never happened we're stuck in 1.0 forever we can go home.

Seriously if you can't see how that's important to making Summoner feel integrated into the rest of the world compared to Scholar as well as how it prevents SE from removing Summoner from Arcanist then you're missing the point of the class as it stands in XIV. Compromising the lore is what prevents us from removing from Summoner from Arcanist outright and Summoner's lore directly plays into the ability progression laid out in their job quests. If you dismiss it outright then you shouldn't be trying to fix the class in those other threads.

Just because SMN has more interaction with things that are MSQ relevant doesn't make and difference in being based off ARC, which finishes its leveling way before literally any of that stuff comes into play.

Like, the reason why we get Ifrit-Egi first is because that's the only Primal that we have slain at level 30. We haven't even gotten Hydaelyn's blessing at that point, let alone met Ascians and the Allag technology arcs...

That doesn't change that Arcanima (and thus how we learn to summon artificial entities such as Carbuncle) is equally as important to the foundation of how we learn Summoning as defeating Ifrit/Garuda/Titan themselves. You can't have one without the other. Literally Allagan Summoning is Arcanima. That is explicitly stated in the lore multiple times as we go through the questline.

The Fairy doesn't care about anything we get from Arcanist beyond vague military references as a consequence of the Scholars of Nym playing a crucial role in their defence and how that ultimately lead to their downfall, but none of that has to do with the methodology or foundations of Arcanima itself. And if that comparatively isolated and minor theming is more important to you than trying to unlock and rediscover the foundations of ancient scientific magic created by a civilisation hellbent on conquest akin to that of the Garleans in XIV's universe, I'd be asking if you were boosted to 70.

Don't get we wrong, I get where you're coming from, hell I'm fine with Arcanist being left alone and staying tied to both jobs. But as it stands, SCH is the one standing on flimsier ground here, not SMN. It's more self-contained than SMN is, it's easier to split off from Arcanist due to a minority of references that surround one mechanic with an alternative option available.

SMN and everything tied to it would need a hard combing over to properly ensure nothing gets broken along the way.

SCH is easier to split off. That's my point.

I disagree.

Again, no is not a sufficient argument.

ARC > SCH is far easier to do, given that they share the most similarities between their core gameplay structure.

I've already gone over why that's not the case multiple times. Your basis for that is that SCH maintains current Arcanist abilities, ignoring both that Summoner still calls back to them regularly as a part of its progression and that Scholar doesn't care one way or the other about those abilities specifically. SCH has DPS spells, SCH has healing spells, the only thing that it cares about is Aetherflow, and only specifically because its abilities cost aetherflow, and one trait and an ability that interact with it. It has a Gauge that could easily replace that without having to touch any of the effects or numbers their Aetherflow abilities whatsoever barring cost.

SMN is a wild-card, because for the longest time, it had literally no job gauge focused around what a SMN should be focused around... SUMMONS.

Callback to when you said "What people want out of the class is irrelevant".

In ARR it was "DoT Mage" because it's only thing separating its gameplay over BLM was it had 2 DoTs instead of one and had Fester which did more damage when you had DoTs on (With their AoE being entirely Bane because Lol-Bind is and was garbage)

It and SCH both had 5 (Bio I/II, Miasma I/II, and Shadowflare), and SMN used Blizzard II for AoE filler because of crossclass nonsense, but okay. During this period we're learning how to summon the Egi in the first place with little idea of how the hell to even utilize them. Apparently that's lost on you.

The foundation of the class's progression and how Summoner fits within the world is established right at 30. We begin looking for a way to further augment our Arcanima abilities by following a lead from Thubyrgeim (The Arcanist quest NPC. The SMN quest line literally starts from her, which is another hint that SMN's the intended progression of Arcanist btw) to Y'mhitra, who tells us she's trying to rediscover knowledge the Allagan Empire had and specifically states that Allagan Summoners are ancient Arcanists that were able to borrow the essenses of the primals in order to manifest them as Egi. She enlists our aid because of our defeat of Ifrit, yes, but the purpose of the whole ARR quest line is to establish our control over the Primal Egi. Not our mastery of them, our control. The reason we're able to summon them at all is the combination of Arcanima granting us a vessel in the form of Carbuncles, which is a basic method to summon an artificial entity into the work, defeating Ifrit/Garuda/Titan during this period grants us their essence, but it's only in the form of undergoing a ritual (where we undergo a trial by combat where we 'summon' the egi and defeat them) in order to link the two together. Inbetween those story beats we're still augmenting the Arcanist part of our kit (With Fester and Tri-Bind being the exclusive tools we get).

So yes, we're not a Summoner yet in ARR. We're an Evoker at best. We're also a neophyte that has to reverse engineer the entire subset of Arcanima related to Summoning with scraps of allagan knowledge guiding our path. Y'mithra's pulling together what she can from the Saints of Coineach from the moment we start this questline.

It's no wonder then we're a DoT mage mechanically. We're barely able to control our own Egi at this point. What are we even supposed to do with the Egi here? Well, we get led off the path when we discover another 'Summoner' is screwing things up even worse than we are and trying to Summon Belias in the form of an upgraded Ifrit Egi, and things go horribly wrong for him. But what happens when we finally deal with him?

We learn Enkindle.

It's something. It's small. Hell, it's rather meaningless at the moment, but it's a sign. We can make the Egi do more than we know right now. And that's all we got from ARR.

In HW it was "Trance Mage" because it just worked on going into DWT once per minute with an artificial 60s CD via Aetherflow.

Which I saw as a natural progression towards what we got in Stormblood even back then, but okay.

SCH gained Indom and Dissipation. Two abilities that reference Aetherflow.

Everything SMN gained cared about Arcanist. Tri-Disaster cares about DoTs, Ruin III was expensive at the time, but it and Deathflare both cared about DWT, all of which plus Painflare cared about Aetherflow. Ludonarratively speaking, this represents us using Arcanima to master our control of Bahamut's essense. The two are intrinsically linked together to reinforce the idea that Arcanima is used for this brand of Summoning.

In the quest line we learned that we couldn't summon more egi because we lacked the requisite aether and knowledge to do so. We had to learn DWT to be able to learn to channel the aether of Bahamut, which was necessary in order to better understand how to bring his Egi out (or what we assume was his Egi). In the meantime we learned how to enhance our own aether by trying to call out and use his essence, which was represented by every ability we learned in that period. So, yes, we're learning how to be a proper Summoner, but Arcanima is the tool we're using to do so.

SCH on the other hand focused on trying to unlock the potential of their Fairy by learning more about Nym's downfall and how to prevent the tonberry infection. None of which touches on any aspect of Arcanima.

Huh.

So how does SCH care more about Arcanist again?

Riiiight. Stormblood will fix it. Surely.

Now it's somewhat of a "Summoner" in SB because they finally tied Demi-Bahamut to their kit. Though, it still doesn't care about Aetherflow and just wants you to DWT twice.

It cares about Aetherflow because Aetherflow is what fuels all of those interactions in the first place, which I even acknowledged could be changed, but you're outright dismissing, but okay.

Even so, lore and theme wise this is SMN and ARC's peak. We've literally been building towards this since ARR. The powers we drew upon in Heavensward gained the attention of both the Principia and Sari-Egi. Undergoing their tests was us proving our worth for their knowledge, and as part of our independent training in preparing for those tests we improved upon various bits of our own Arcanima. Culminating in finally learning how to Summon (Not Egi) Demi Bahamut. Bio/Miasma III and Ruin IV are upgrades of Arcanima we already knew, Aetherpact is an ability that could easily see use by one of the Carbuncles, and the Enkindle proc continues to lay hints at the idea of enhancing our Egi down the road now that we've reached this point too.

The biggest problem SMN suffers from at this point is the anti-synergies baked into them as part of the Stormblood overhaul at launch, as well as no longer tying job abilities learned while levelling to job quests. The ramifications of this is the class feels monotone, and this makes everything that we've gained beforehand to feel extremely underwhelming and meaningless, as well as undercutting the progression of everything we get in Stormblood up and to Bahamut himself. The general opinion of Bahamut as a result winds up being a frustating 'FINALLY' instead of respecting how we built our way up there.

Scholar again focused on Nymian memories, and best I can recall we learned about the Fairy having a sister who was in some serious pain, helped a tonberry find some evidence of her late family by searching for some of his records (he was a scholar so we actually have some reason to be there), visited parts of Mhach in our search, and generally had some minor feel good moments with our Fairy.

Along the way we also manage to upgrade some of our scholar abilities (Excog in some sense is an upgrade to Lustrate, then there's Broil II), and again they gained two Aetherflow references. Excog is another cooldown to choose from obviously, and then there's Quickened Aetherflow, which you don't need to tell me is absolutely core to how they function now. It alone has caused the largest gameplay shift Scholar has experienced in the entirety of its existence. I would say it's more impactful than Bahamut, mechanically speaking. However, at launch? That was not the case. They absolutely shafted by Stormblood's launch, but not for the reasons you think. I've been levelling an alt to refresh my memory, and I can absolutely tell it's levelling gear bias, bad tanks, and an utter distaste for Physick that affected our opinions of it. 4.1's rework of that ability has made it utterly broken. It cements SCH's role as an oGCD mage and overcompensates for the MP nerfs that were applied to them at Stormblood's launch.

That said, Quickened Aetherflow is the main ability that impacts Aetherflow, but it's not the crux of the job's future. You know what is?

Fey Union. The ability they learn at 70 from the job quest.

SE with that one ability makes it utterly clear that they want to support more Fairy interaction going forward while simultaneously showing how clunky and difficult it is for them to add new mechanics to pets. This ability was absolute garbage at launch and it took half a raid tier to finally get it up to par, but looking back on it now? It's too much free healing. We need something else to do with Fey Gauge, badly.

Which is why I suggest we remove Aetherflow from Scholar, separate Scholar from Arcanist, and use the Fey Gauge in its place. Why? Well:

1) It's a hell of a lot easier to change SCH's abilities to support a new system mechanically speaking.
2) You don't have to throw out the foundations of SMN's own lore in order to fix SCH's problems with Arcanist. The opposite is not true.
3) SCH has more balance problems than SMN by far and Quickened Aetherflow and the Fairy are the root causes of those issues.
4) SCH's job quests and lore don't care about any abilities you gained from them. Even in Heavensward this is true. It makes them easy to edit mechanically however you want.

Literally, Summoner's entire kit could be remade without Aetherflow really easily, by simply just putting Dreadwyrm Trance on a 1 minute CD and giving them a potency boost to cover the loss of Bio/Miasma. That's it. That's all that is "Required" and you'd still play the same way, spamming Not-Ruin constantly, proccing Not-Ruin IV, using DWT once a minute and every 2 DWT's allowing you to use Demi-Bahamut. All the while, using Tri-Disaster to apply Not-Ruination for extra potency.

It's not the same. You're missing half of SMN's entire kit that you need to seriously consider how to revamp properly or you're going to piss off that entire playerbase for absolutely nothing. The things they want you replace them with require more work than leaving what's there alone and upgrading them into those new tools.

SCH by contrast loses things that don't seriously matter to them lore and gameplay if they're properly accounted for in the new system. If you're seriously that tied to Miasma II and Quickened Aetherflow you're ignoring that they worked without it just fine and that you can make them more flexible using the Fey gauge compared to what Aetherflow offers.

Personally I don't think SE's keen on leaving that much to retcon around. From my experience they try to keep NPC Arcanists as close to the pre-job version of the class as possible, but then you go through the details you see that Summoner's abilities are the ones being pulled down into it, not Scholar.

New players would find it strange and confusing to see Arcanists work differently from Summoner. And with the Egi glamours it's clear they are fine with Arcanist being tied to Summoner. Hell I'd be one of the old players yelling if they put Carbuncles on Scholar. People associate Carbuncles with Summoners already. They're a common low level Summon/Eidolon/Eon across multiple games in the series. In general, they seem fine with Summoner being the natural extension of Arcanist. But they don't make the case either way for Scholar, and intentionally make sure not to hint at Arcanists being a part of Scholar in order to preserve the option down the road, if they even decide to do it.

I don't think they're going to remove Summoner from Arcanist, ever. There's simply too much tying the two together for it to be worth it. It's why I don't think SE's going to rework the Egi until they've patched up Bahamut's AI, if they even touch Bahamut's AI at all next expansion. Yes, they can leave it around, but they'd be better off leaving Arcanist tied to both classes and not having to address that nonsense in the future. That's why I disagree that SCH is tied to Arcanist at the moment. In Shadowbringers? Probably going to cement that SCH and SMN are both part of Arcanist (Not that SMN needs it, again I've pointed out places that would need changing to support removing SMN from it, do you really want to hear SCH players asking for a proper DPS pet just because there are carbuncles that do things 'their' carbuncles don't because of SE's insistence that legacy content never gets touched?), that's the direction I'd expect them to go. Do I agree with it? Kind of. I'd be happy if Arcanist remained tied to Scholar, obviously.

But there's no way in hell I would be if they axed Summoner from Scholar.

And, truthfully, I don't think it'll happen to either of them, if they do what I think they're gonna do to Alphinaud and the SCH questline in Shadowbringers. Namely, finally give us a teacher worth a damn while Alphinaud undergoes a job change.

If SE intends to seperate Scholar from Arcanist, this is the best time to do so. They're gonna have to commit one way or the other now that we're going to see some actual Feyfolk.