Scholar 5.0 Discussion

[charmwitch]

Hi everyone, I would like to put in my own two cents about Scholar. As a preface, I have been a Scholar since Coil and have cleared every savage except Ultimates. (No time unfortunately.)

I'll try to be succinct, so here are my points:
- My most annoying problem right now is that I have a phantom limb situation with Energy Drain. When I am unable to drop stacks in order to refresh my stacks, I feel like I'm solely wasting perfectly good stacks. I either heal, or I don't, and refresh the stacks. It's mostly very unfulfilling.

- Art of War costs a lot of MP. It is nice to use, but I do think it can be adjusted.

- The inability to reset aetherflow stacks before a tank finishes a pull and establishing aggro means you have to create the situation of being in combat first before you can quick heal the tank. This isn't a problem if you think ahead in the previous battle to save a stack, but I prefer to use my stacks and not keep them sitting around. Unfortunately, I do feel a sense of panic now in between pulls. I know this change was mostly to stop pre-pull waiting, but not having your toolkit ready at the start of a fight is a little stressful.

- The main problem I'm encountering is that in normal raids and 24-man dungeons, there isn't much to do. If your tank isn't tanking, if your party isn't taking damage, you can only use two buttons, three if you want to sacred soil on cooldown. While I understand that these changes were brought in to balance the classes out, I feel there is a lingering dissatisfaction with playing a healer. You really can't do much when you're not needed, and a good group should do their best to minimize their own input of damage. It sort of makes you feel... unhappy to heal. If that makes sense?

- I quite like recitation, I think it's neat and fun to use. Much needed for the class.


I'll be honest, I did not level Scholar first this time around because I wanted to finish the Bard Job Quest before the Scholar one, but in doing so I've noticed (for multiple reasons -- no new healers, the new changes) that healers are almost always in need, because healing at times just... feels like a chore. I feel as if I'm not contributing enough and can not keep my hands busy enough during encounters besides broiling and the occasional single dot.

Currently, I truly feel that the general healer changes have made healing un-fun and a lot of people unhappy, but I hope we can see some changes in the future to recoup the thrill of the battle.

Thank you very much for your time.

[YanderePrincess]

- My most annoying problem right now is that I have a phantom limb situation with Energy Drain. When I am unable to drop stacks in order to refresh my stacks, I feel like I'm solely wasting perfectly good stacks. I either heal, or I don't, and refresh the stacks. It's mostly very unfulfilling.

I think the most important thing here is whether or not you need to be using Aetherflow every 60 seconds to avoid running out of mp. If your MP isn't requiring the 10% restore every 60 seconds, then there's not really a reason why you should be trying to use Aetherflow as soon as it comes off cd instead of waiting until you've used up your stacks. This is what we tended to do back in 2.x where we had 0 mp problems. I know in stormblood there was much more need to aetherflow every 45 seconds for the mp, so dumping stacks around 40 seconds to drop the cooldown all the way to 45 seconds and then aetherflow again was really good, especially since your AF dump was both damage and additional mp restore. It might just be the mindset needs to shift again, but that depends heavily on how mp efficiency is atm.