GIVE SCHOLAR BANE AND FIX ART OF WAR MP AND WE'LL BE FINE

[dezzmont]

Buffing is a useful tool, to be sure, but its hard to buff other classes to match SCH because the reasons SCH was strong were more it was broadly great at everything, rather than being way too amazing comparatively at something. Like SCH didn't have fantastic healing output, but the way it healed was really helpful (mostly via oGCDs or automatic functions), and so just making another healer a stronger healer doesn't matter. WHM could have its potency buffed, but you would need to buff potency a LOT to make up for how it will need to entirely stop attacking any time it wants to use a non-oGCD heal, which it has to because its oGCD heals are very strong but limited in number.

This is a classic example of why that whole 'buffs over nerfs' mentality falls apart in real game designs. Sometimes buffing other things up to match why something is overpreforming pushes your game into silly places, compared to relatively tame potency and DPS nerfs on something. That doesn't mean the way they did SCH was good, just that it was reasonable they didn't fix the problem by doing something silly like creating a 500 potency stonega or something. Like to make up the DPS shortfall while accounting for the fact WHMs may need to heal 1 in every 5 casts, you would need to add 4000 potency per minute to the WHM, which would be... a bit much and would have extreme ramifications for things like TA windows and downtime DPS, or phases where you need to do a DPS race.

Specifically, I DO agree SCH lost a bit of its identity by losing offensive weaving, and they definitely should retool something to reintroduce it back into the kit without meaningfully increasing its potency per minute. It was legitimately fun and made the class very active. WHM is rather laid back, and Astro is very reactive. Keeps playstyles on healers versatile, and they definitely homogenized offense a LOT to the point if healing isn't reactive and tactical (AKA: They just have you spam physic instead of spamming broil) I would say healing will become VERY boring.

The ARR beta was sorta a different beast, and ARR was a very unique and unprecedented thing. However, MMOs really live or die on their ability to keep content novel as long as possible, so as to maximize the time they can spend without releasing new content without making it seem like there is a 'content drought.' How would you realistically test healers on a PTR without having players throw them at raid bosses and dungeons endgame multiple times, which would essentially be releasing the expansion way early?

Look I'll be the first to say that SCH was top tier, but it's place wasn't so much above WHM or AST; the parsings from the raid communities show this. Not to mention some things are more dependent on player skill over potential raw power. But it's better to raise the other jobs up instead of knocking one down. They tried this when SB released and we see how that went; it's looking like the ShB might be the same.

It is very clever that you purely focused on the fact their DPS isn't THAT much higher while ignoring the core issue that the top DPS job shouldn't also have as much utility as the SCH does. It fundamentally does not deserve to be the top DPS job because it brings many other benefits to the table (some extreme) that overshadow other healers, the fact it isn't significantly higher DPS than the other jobs isn't the point.

Again, it isn't that SCH is blowing everyone out of the water potency wise. It is that SCH is SLIGHTLY better at EVERYTHING (and significantly better at specific things) than the other healers besides raid DPS. To fix that, you need to remove a strength from the SCH, and DPS is a super obvious choice because making the SCH worse at oGCD healing doesn't... work due to the fairy existing.

As to MP: Mp costs on SCH are a joke. Seriously go in and test how much healing you can output with your MP. Like just stand and cast spells until you run out. It is 22 for Succor and Adloquium, roughly, before you have to start waiting 1-2 extra seconds per-cast, and you go infinite and mana positive on physic.

When have you ever needed to cast 22 succors or aqloquium in a row? The job, effectively, has infinite mana.

I am not saying the job needs to be utterly gutted. But heck no it did not need nor deserve energy drain, and I know of no-non SCH healer comfortable with the state of SCH. SCH is my main healer (though I don't main healer, healer is my favorite MMO role, but healing in FFXIV is... very different than healing in most MMOs) and when I play it I kinda feel gross because its so obvious how unnecessary how many tools it has. Like I don't need eye for an eye on everyone, a magic resist AOE, heal increase AOE, an AOE heal on an oGCD with no resource cost, a superior regen if I just macro correctly, the ability to instantly abort a DPS spell preemptively to use aetherflow as an emergency heal, infinite mana compared to the Astro's very limited pool, AND top DPS. Like... why?

This implication that it doesn't deserve nerfs and that at most other jobs should be buffed (How, exactly, would one go about effectively doing that without getting really wacky? It is hard to buff jobs to be competitive in an environment like FFXIV healing where your main goal is to minimize the primary point of differentiation between the jobs outside of DPS) just because Scholar's supremacy in one domain is slight is very silly and somewhat intellectually dishonest. This and the screaming 'I don't like you Yoshi' thread, really make it hard to empathize with the things that people SHOULD be sad SCH lost, like satisfying, non-complex, and non-toxic rotational weaving that should have been moved somewhere else. Like that was a major SCH theme, it was nice to basically always double cast your DOT and to double cast broil and energy drain, even though it wasn't difficult it just FELT good.

Like I WANT to feel bad for scholars who legitimately lost some job identity in terms of mechanics but the reaction of SCHs makes it really hard to not go celebrate with all the WHMs that SCH is now finally behind them in hypothetical potency over time.

You guys don't main SCH do you.

I main Culinarian~