Scholar 5.0 Discussion

[Brandedblade]

Waiting to use Whispering Dawn and Fey illumination under the affect of Seraph really need to be buffed because right now they're the exact same thing. Seraph needs to be STRONG. It's supposed to be a capstone ability, but Dissipation was never really strong either.

This is something people are doing? It doesn't need to do ultra mega hots when its already doing poor man succors and embraces that are more or less double the normal fairies version? I was under the impression that it would be more beneficial to cycle between Illumination and Seraph myself.

[Melorie]

Started leveling SCH since my WHM will get exp fine with MSQ and oh my god, it's so CLUNKY. Everything about this class feels bad atm. I'm not even talking about the loss our DPS skills and how boring our DPS is because I used to play as an AST so...

The aetherflow only-in-combat is garbage, seriously, what's the point of it?
I hate that my fairy skills are tied to me and I can't use it while I'm casting other stuff (such as raise, broil, succor, etc), it feels really clunky and I don't feel like a healer with a pet anymore, the fairy is basically a glamour for me. Art of war is one of the ugliest skills this game has and doesn't really feel satisfying to spam.

[Nujana]

So, I leveled my SCH to 80.
I did the MSQ as SMN, because honestly I would have been bored out of my mind spamming 2 buttons for the story quests.
I did do the dungeons and trials as a healer though. I cleared all available content, including the ex trials as a healer and my final verdict is: I will going DRK for this expansion.

Positive:
I really enjoyed our new skills. Recitation and Seraph are an awesome addition to our kit. In fact, the SCH healing-kit is stronger than ever before, even too strong one could argue.

Negative:
1. AF feels clunky!
Not only because it's only usable infight, but also because I have to either overheal or sit on my stacks because we are missing our ED dump.
2. Fairyskills: Not being able to use them while casting is annoying. On top of that they seem to be bugged when you try to use them consecutively (hope that will be fixed).
3. Healing requirements "surprisingly" haven't changed at all.
I found myself spamming broil ~90% of the time during ex trials. This is the one thing I feared most and I simply cannot accept.
4. The DPS: 12222222222222212222222...enough said.
To add insult to injury, the first role quest as a healer has you kill a high HP mob - so does the SCH job quest.

Healing on SCH is actually really fun, it is a shame that there is so little to heal.
Well, time for some breath of fresh air after healing since HW I guess. The other healer jobs just don't do it for me.
I did have my fun with SMN and DRK, so I will join the tank and DPS crowd for Shb.

[Kinks]

I really am trying to focus on the positive; I love the shields we get especially with a solid crit, but that's where my love affair with scholar kinda dies.
I've made it work, because I really hope they fix it. I came from a different game and played WHM first but I didn't really like the mechanics,
Then I tried Scholar and its what kept me playing FF14- I loved the dynamic aspect of my DoTs to assist with dps while dropping shadow flare so often and healing, too- I loved feeling so useful and engaged.

Now I feel like I am either in panic because EoS keeps glitching or being lazy on me, and I am spamming Lucid Dreaming on CD,
but the whole Aetherflow only in combat really screws up the rhythm of healing.

I am super happy for WHM getting buffed and being meta, I honestly am but I am BAFFLED why the gibbled Scholar so much;
They should have given WHM the love it needed, and left us alone. I want my dps skills back so I can actually assist while healing.

Our AoE (art of war) honestly sucks, low dps, high manacost- at least if it was some sort of CC or it gave back MP in diminishing returns (to offset our mana regen nerf).

I'm forcing myself through SB because I payed for the stupid collectors thing, but I'm kinda bummed out.
And I don't feel its right to pigeon-hole us into other classes just because they screwed up- Its kinda crap that they would make a class, let people get used to it, then kill it.

/EndQQ

[Jandor]

Can we get Alphinaud's Academician class instead?

[zeopower6]

I don't understand the issue with the "we spam Broil so much now" thing... didn't that happen already a ton in 3.0 and 4.0? I know that there were the other things like SF/dots but at the end of the day once those were on you just spammed Broil regardless. That's what WHM and AST had done after applying their dot(s) and it was never really an issue so why is it an issue here?

Hopefully they add something back though since it seems like they put WHM WAY up there so they could buff SCH/AST later appropriately after people had a chance to play it.

[EaMett]

I don't understand the issue with the "we spam Broil so much now" thing... didn't that happen already a ton in 3.0 and 4.0? I know that there were the other things like SF/dots but at the end of the day once those were on you just spammed Broil regardless. That's what WHM and AST had done after applying their dot(s) and it was never really an issue so why is it an issue here?

Hopefully they add something back though since it seems like they put WHM WAY up there so they could buff SCH/AST later appropriately after people had a chance to play it.

People had been asking for more engaging DPS gameplay on whm and ast. But at the very least ast had the card system to keep them busy alongside the meager dps rotation. Whm had nothing in comparison.

Sch has a bunch of dots and ED to weave. I don’t have the numbers in front of me but the result was something like ~30% fewer broil casts compared to now. Not so insignificant by itself, but the real difference is in APM which took a pretty big hit and the awkwardness of the weaving (or lack of). The class just feels sluggish and clunky compared to before.

[galbsadi]

Positive:
I really enjoyed our new skills. Recitation and Seraph are an awesome addition to our kit. In fact, the SCH healing-kit is stronger than ever before, even too strong one could argue.

Stronger, yes.

Too strong? Absolutely not.

The median scholar on EX trials right now averages 5,053.09 HPS, and the top parse (out of 38,917 parses) is at 9,211.76.
The median WHM on EX trials right now averages 5,207.57 HPS, and the top parse (out of 48,847 parses) is at 10,080.85.

On healing, the median scholar is objectively 3% worse than the median WHM, and the top scholar is 8% weaker than the top WHM in trials.
(Source: https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...unt&dataset=50)

Of course, there's more than healing to look at, and also damage numbers to consider.

The median scholar on ex trials right now does 3,781.64 DPS, and the top parse is at 6,465.09 DPS.
The median WHM on ex trials right now does 4,406.84 DPS, and the top parse is at 8,233.47 DPS.

On DPS, the median scholar is 14% worse than the median WHM, and the top scholar is 21% worse than the top WHM in trials.

Granted, there is raid utility to consider, and that not accounted for in the above numbers would be in the form of Chain Stratagem for scholars, which provides 10% crit for 15s every 2m, if used on cooldown. Adjusting the numbers and assuming crit works in your favor (and RNG doesn't do what it does to you in this game), we can assume that SCH provide the party with an average additional crit of 1.25% at best. To the best of my knowledge, a critical hit provides roughly 45% extra damage when it happens. Assuming that there were always 1.25% additional critical hits due to the increased crit chance (again, not likely, but lets roll the numbers in the best light possible), this means that a scholar provides a party with a maximum additional rDPS of 0.5625%. The median group on the extreme trials does approximately 55,000 DPS, meaning the SCH raid utility is adding approximately 309.38 (rounded up) DPS, at the cost of doing 625.2 less personal DPS, a net loss to the raid of 315.82 DPS for bringing the SCH over another WHM, coupled with weaker heals and worse mana management and the clunkiness.

So, I wouldn't call our heals overpowered either.

Now, what if you don't do trials? Let's look at dungeons!

Median SCH DPS in endgame dungeons is 3713.20, vs. WHM at 5055.89 (26.6% worse).
Top SCH DPS in endgame dungeons is 8,116.75, vs. WHM at 10,143.33 (20% worse).
Median SCH healing in endgame dungeons is 3339.28, vs. AST at 3374.5 (1% worse) and WHM at 3416.71 (2.3% worse).
Top SCH healing in endgame dungeons is 4754.99, vs. AST at 5013.24 (5.2% worse) and WHM at 4648.39 (2% better).

I guess if you're only looking at healing in dungeons and assuming you are among the top 1% of players, SCH are slightly okay....but of course then AST are the gods of healing too.

[Nujana]

snip

Appreciate your effort with the number run downs.
To be fair I have not leveled WHM and AST to 80 yet, since I kinda lost interest in healing atm. So I did not really get a feeling for how SCH compares to the other two, while actually playing it.

I do not feel SCH is in any danger of getting kicked out of statics though. The rDPS gap is not big enough to go without the shields. I have to agree that WHM really is a powerhouse at the moment, but they are supposed to be the pure healer with big pDPS - but no utility. So they kind of did a good job on that.

The whole argument comes down to dev design choices really:
If they nerf WHM DPS, they will be the least desired healer -again, because utility and rDPS are always preferred once progress is throgh and healing requirements are not an issue.
If they make the other two healers too weak, they cannot compete, because WHM is better at everything. Make their utility too strong and WHM will be seated - again.
This issue will stay as long as they refuse to give WHM any kind of utility outside of muh big numbers.

I have a feeling that both SCH and AST might recieve a few small buffs in the coming balance patch. We'll have to wait and see.

On a personal note:
Buffing the potencies does not help eliminate the inherent issue of SCH right now which for me is - boredom.
They could buff my Broil potency to 500, (making SCH laughably OP) I would still not touch it, because they sucked the fun out of the job.

[EaMett]

snip

You can’t really compare a 5 ogcd healing kit with a 9 ogcd kit (+embrace) in the way you did. Especially not with the current content.

“Median/average” is also a bit tricky to handle because it’s often the result of people who haven’t optimized. You really need to go into higher tiers of play to see the job potential.

Anyways what I’m trying to say is that FFXIV is a game where optimized play means healing as little as possible. There’s little value in comparing players to see who parsed the highest HPS

The overall picture is however telling of how high current whm dps is.