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

[dezzmont]

I'd also appreciate it if you could keep your WHM problems out of SCH threads. This isn't about White Mage.

Hard pass on that fam. SCH changes exist purely in the context where they out preform other roles in ways that are difficult to balance outside of making SCH worse at DPS to compensate for their utility and the nature of their healing kit. A thread about the desire to add back in DPS skills to SCH needs to address they were removed specifically so that ShB could push WHM as the DPS healer.

There is definitely room for SCH to have a more complex rotation without going back into SB Scholar DPS+utility king, which is unarguably an unhealthy place for SCH to sit, but lets not pretend this is not a win for WHMs on some level now that they absolutely have the highest potency output of healers both due to SCH losing DPS tools and them obtaining Dia and Afflatus (it is absolutely not an accident that SCHs no longer can decide to DPS with their healer job gauge while WHMs now can). There are ways to make this win not come at the cost of a single button rotation (Again, a really easy way to do that would be to make the DOT an oGCD with a 10 second cooldown and duration so that SCHs still contain offensive weaving), but SCH getting hit really hard in DPS was... objectively a good thing for the game and for other healers? Like you can either nerf SCHs to have lower DPS so their focus is on their utility, or you can apply really wacky buffs to other healers that make them more omnipotent like scholar. Contrary to what people think overbuffing tends to create more homologous game states than nerfing specific aspects of specific kits doing things you don't want them to do. With the nerf you get really clear differences between the healers (DPS WHM who loses a lot of DPS to movement or healing windows, offensive utility Astro with a lot of anticipation moves that make up for poor mana efficiency, and SCH with a lot of strong moves to instantly pop off and apply defensive utility while not losing much at all to movement) whereas buffing WHM to have raid utility and DPS to match scholar even while they are moving makes everything... samey...

Now not only does WHM have a better claim on a healer slot (Because they can DPS faster) but WHM+Astro is a realistic comp as opposed to SCH being mandatory and AST close behind. You can't talk about major balance changes without the context of the balance they are seeking to obtain, and part of why SCH players crying en-mass about losing mechanical power (as opposed to losing fun aspects of the rotation, which I can 100% get behind) is so offensive is because of how absolutely deserved SCH nerfs are.

Like for real a lot of these threads have made me go "It is really bad these healer changes are happening because I want the healers who support me to be happy even if I don't enjoy how FFXIV handled healer" to "Wow SCHs are kinda crybabies huh?" There are definitely valid criticisms of the changes, don't get me wrong, but so many people are acting like it is entirely unwarranted for SCH to be worse than another healer at basically any aspect of the game, and to some extent one can lay the fact we didn't get another healer at the fact no SCH change has ever stuck because people freak out any time its brought to be in line with other healers. That clearly isn't the main reason, but if I were designing FFXIV I would seriously struggle to come up with a 4th healer with SCH absolutely HAVING to have a DPS rotation, instant cast mitigation utility, on demand mobile healing, a powerful pseudo-regen, and raid utility. Like what else would I make the hypothetical 4th healer do in a way that makes you want to play em over SCH without basically invalidating AST or WHM?

I think it is pretty agreed by everyone that the SCH changes are not ideal. So definitely they should be improved. But threads demanding revisions without understanding why, or even deliberately demanding that we ignore why by refusing to recognize other healer jobs exist, A change needed to happen are not endearing.