Scholar 5.0 Discussion

[Rubiss]

I remember back in Heavensward I used to rant to my friends (in trying to convince them to sign up) “I have 30 moves keybound and I use all of them!” Those were the days. Admittedly I haven’t levelled my SCH to 80 yet, but it feels so hollow now. WHM feels a little better, and I think I’ll be switching to that for this expansion (pending further updates to healing). Lilies seem much less clunky than Aetherflow, and small things like weaving assize into your rotation, and actually having dps utility in the form of a stun, make it feel slightly better. Plus, you can use presence of mind as a dps spam or a heal spam, which represents an actual decision.

I think the thing that bothers me most about these changes is the stripping back of decisions. Cleric stance used to do that really well. You want to dps? Well, you’ve got to commit to it, because being in it at the wrong time can cost you. Energy drain, too. If you use that Aetherflow stack for some dps and mana, that’s one stack that’s not available for healing. Giving us choices like that allow us to actually think about what we’re doing, rather than just learning how to optimise our healing then spamming broil.

(Admittedly, there’s still some decision making. If I put up this sacred soil now, I won’t have an emergency lustrate up my sleeve, etc. But given the way Aetherflow stacks are working at the moment worrying about running out doesn’t really seem like a thing)

Also, what they did to Selene is just insulting.

What they did with Selene was the very definition of lazy. To think they actually have the nerve to say that they spent extra time on the healers. Their solution to balancing was so terrible, even to this day I am mystified. Like they took the healer with the easiest and lowest APM (in terms of DPS) rotation and copied and pasted it across the entire role and called it balanced.

This would be like if Square copied and pasted Black Mage's rotation onto every magical DPS, made them within 30 potency of each other and called it balanced. How come SMN gets three unique egi? Why not give them a base egi and simply have Titan, Garuda and Ifrit be a glamour?

[Hatstand]

What they did with Selene was the very definition of lazy. To think they actually have the nerve to say that they spent extra time on the healers. Their solution to balancing was so terrible, even to this day I am mystified. Like they took the healer with the easiest and lowest APM (in terms of DPS) rotation and copied and pasted it across the entire role and called it balanced.

This would be like if Square copied and pasted Black Mage's rotation onto every magical DPS, made them within 30 potency of each other and called it balanced. How come SMN gets three unique egi? Why not give them a base egi and simply have Titan, Garuda and Ifrit be a glamour?

I would imagine that summoners still have 3 unique egi (which each have 3 moves plus the autoattack) for the same reason that they’re balancing the number of melee DPS, ranged physical DPS, and magical DPS jobs, when I haven’t heard any plans to buff out the completely empty categories of melee healer and physical ranged healer.

Also, on the topic of summoners, since scholar loses almost everything from arcanist, running low level content on a scholar is now pretty much a bio/ruin spam. The fairy can pretty much manage the healing on its own at that level, so you don’t have much else to do. If they wanted to differentiate us from summoners they could at least replace the 5 moves we lose with more than the one new move we get. I can only imagine it must be a pretty lousy feeling for a new summoner to finish their level 30 arcanist quest to get bane only to lose it as soon as they finish their level 30 scholar quest and equip their job stone.

[Rubiss]

I would imagine that summoners still have 3 unique egi (which each have 3 moves plus the autoattack) for the same reason that they’re balancing the number of melee DPS, ranged physical DPS, and magical DPS jobs, when I haven’t heard any plans to buff out the completely empty categories of melee healer and physical ranged healer.

Also, on the topic of summoners, since scholar loses almost everything from arcanist, running low level content on a scholar is now pretty much a bio/ruin spam. The fairy can pretty much manage the healing on its own at that level, so you don’t have much else to do. If they wanted to differentiate us from summoners they could at least replace the 5 moves we lose with more than the one new move we get. I can only imagine it must be a pretty lousy feeling for a new summoner to finish their level 30 arcanist quest to get bane only to lose it as soon as they finish their level 30 scholar quest and equip their job stone.

Uh, not to disillusion you, but running any content as Scholar is Biolysis/Broil 2 spam. This isn't going to change in Savage, nor will it change in Ultimate.

[Hatstand]

Uh, not to disillusion you, but running any content as Scholar is Biolysis/Broil 2 spam. This isn't going to change in Savage, nor will it change in Ultimate.

Depressing, but not surprising. Reading over the skills I’m due to get leveling up isn’t exactly inspiring at the moment. I hope that SE gets the message that they need to do something to fix this. And that that something will involve giving scholars more non-healing buttons to press. And I hope that we, as players, won’t let them move the goalposts to the point that we’ll praise them for returning just a portion of what they gutted from us (say, just energy drain).