Have we given up on SCH?

[Semirhage]

And hey, I defended WHM when people started saying it was fine when it was doing so much better than SCH and AST in new content, because I knew there was stuff career WHM's wanted changed, were unhappy with and were a little shadowed by the fact AST and SCH got immediate big changes, when WHM's was gradual...

if any WHM's lurking they may chime in with their own thoughts and feedback.

I can only speak for myself as a (former) WHM main, but I suspect a lot of fatigue is partly behind the lack of WHM threads. Not to derail the thread too much, but we've been complaining ourselves hoarse about this for years. We had a several hundred page thread last expansion and got nothing for our troubles. It's reached the point where I've quit healing because I'm sick of being in dead last place for design consideration. I can't help but grump and roll my eyes when encouraged to leave feedback at this point, because AST and SCH actually get fixes implemented during expansions, and we don't. Then I read AST and SCH suggestion threads rife with pleas to just parcel out what little attention the healer role gets and leave Chopped Liver Mage in the easy boring baby healer trashcan while the two cool kid healers get good design if SE really doesn't have time for all three, and then I remember the "me first" attitude ASTs and SCHs get into and just don't care anymore. WHM will have to wait for 6.0. And 7.0. And 8.0. And we'll have ASTs and SCHs telling us that we just need to "leave feedback" and "we defend you guys all the time!", until you guys get nerfed, then suddenly it's "NO WAIT, WHM is the horrible bare bones healer with no niche or identity, gimme my fixes first and leave WHM in the lurch if it gets me mine!"

And we go forward and back, and then forward and back, and then go forward and back until next ex-pan-sion.

[Saefinn]

snip

I get fatigue is part of it, you guys had bigger issues for longer, which have yet to be addressed. And I think on top of job-specific issues, there is an overall problem with healing, which mostly ties to it not being so engaging any more. This I don't think become fully apparent until we lost more of what we do in our downtime. SCH arguably has a great toolkit that works well for the job's theme and lore. But for how well it heals against 95% of the content, you don't get to utilise it. From what I hear from my WHM co-healer, it's the same situation with WHM, though with some extra things that need fixing with such as lilies.

I'd rather see all 3 addressed at the same time and if in some parallel universe they decided to address WHM first, then actually great, because I know they've had the bigger problems longest. And I'd figure our love would follow. Though I doubt they'd communicate it, so we'd probably still have complaints until they do. But so far, we've not really had any communication, so we kinda in limbo as to whether SE even recognises any of the core problems as problems. Last expansion they recognised WHM had issues and as I understood it they were supposed to be addressing it this time around from what I heard at the time (gonna admit through the grapevine, so I'd be screwed if asked for a source), but it seemed their idea was to bring SCH and AST down with it, rather than bring WHM up.

With that all said, I think it is fairly normal for people to see a problem with the job they play and then make complaints about the job they play and provide their comments and thoughts on the job they play. I don't think that's necessarily out of thinking they deserve attention more than the next job or believing it's fine for other jobs to get worse. As ultimately, I think everybody wants to like the job they play. I don't think that is a snub by any means to other jobs. And at the same time, I've seen effort too to include WHM in discussions that aren't on job-specific issues. And in fairness, I realise it's not everyone, because I've also seen some say "WHM is fine" because if you look at the numbers then one would deduce that WHM is fine. But if the complaint was over numbers and balance then it'd be accurate.

And if SCH and AST are kicking up a fuss, I guess my earlier point is that I'd like to see WHM representation as they still have problems, so the assumption isn't "WHM must be fine if they're not complaining". We see inclusiveness more in the some of the generalised threads. But there's a lack of WHM threads and in the first few pages of browsing, the only one I see is of a white mage being very toxic, and despite that, it did open discourse about how WHM is not doing fine.

I figure the best people to represent WHM's would be WHM's. But I might be tempted to create a WHM thread to collect some of the problems. I know feedback is a shot in the dark. But we know at least they read the forums.

[Sloprano]

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By the sounds of it your favorite healer have had issues far longer than my own favorite. Know a lot a responses I was considering was all of the variation of "NO U". Then I realized I have no idea how WHMs currently are, or how've they've been on the account of never leveling one. And from reading up some stories, have had this already happend back with the 4.0 Media Tour: Incoming changes don't smell good a mile away and one get nothing in ways of reassurance or changes in the aftermath. On that part at least I know how you feel. The longer SE aswell just glosses over Healers, seemingly just seeing that they are mechanically sound, makes one just start theorising why that is.

What I would love to see is the Community Managers making a separate thread for each Healer Job and to let them know the concerns we have with them. That they then go back and design them first in a vacuum, making them fun to play first and foremost.

This whole thing smacks of the 2.0 warrior, only now for an entire Role. Was anyone around then and know how they got their point across to bring about changes?

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Keep seeing community managers in the Dev Tracker, but don't think I've seen them post in any Role forums. Just any kind "We had no idea all healers were in such a un-fun rut, we'll get this adressed to the developers posthaste" or just "We read these forums and are not planing any changes at this moment."

[Hysterior]

I personally feel like SCH is in a pretty good place, can do some tweaking for sure but no major overhaul needed.

[Metsonm]

I've picked Scholar up for this Savage, coming from a White Mage main, and other than Eos still feeling a little slow in some points the job doesn't feel all that bad. I'm pretty comfortable with where it is right now.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

SCH is in no way in such a bad shape that it needs constant threads like AST right now. The reason you don't see threads made for it is because, just like WHM, our issues are more about the feel of the job or QoL. That really doesn't need more than 1 or 2 threads talking about it.

Energy Drain fixed most of the SCH complaints, the only thing I see left is Bane wanting to be brought back, which probably just won't happen since they'd have to do the same thing for WHM and AST.

[Hatstand]

SCH is in no way in such a bad shape that it needs constant threads like AST right now. The reason you don't see threads made for it is because, just like WHM, our issues are more about the feel of the job or QoL. That really doesn't need more than 1 or 2 threads talking about it.

Energy Drain fixed most of the SCH complaints, the only thing I see left is Bane wanting to be brought back, which probably just won't happen since they'd have to do the same thing for WHM and AST.

I agree that AST is in desperate need of help, but... why would SCH getting bane back mean that WHM and AST would need to get the same? SCH’s old dps rotation was something I loved but it wasn’t for everyone. And for people like me for whom the joy of healing is about balancing offence and defence, variety in dps skills is as important (though not more important) as variety in heals. You could balance bane against the other healers. It only affects their aoe so nerf art of war and that’s that. And then, if the other healers want something more interesting to do with their dps they could have something different.

Also, while having bane back would be an improvement, it wouldn’t be a significant one unless we also got miasma back (spreading DoTs isn’t that great unless applying the DoTs is a significant investment in the first place). Ideally bio 1 as a seperate DoT as well, that way you have to actually consider whether it’s worth fully DoTting up an enemy and spreading it, or whether you should just put your strongest DoT on them manually, or just nuke spam.

And I’d like shadow flare back, too. Now that sacred soil is so much more potent it might actually be worth considering whether to sacred soil or shadow flare, assuming you have to choose between the two.

I’d like cleric stance back on all healers. I like the idea of buffing my own dps, and lining that up to benefit from it the most.

And I’d like Selene back as more than a skin.

I’d like all the skills back that we lost when we didn’t need to. We’re dpsing as much as we ever did. We gained no new dps skills from 71 to 80 so to keep the ratio we shouldn’t have lost any dps skills. That’s not button bloat, that’s parity.

Dpsing on all healers is boring now (to me, at least). That means that trying to balance offence and defence is only going to get you more time being bored. And yes, that’s awful for WHMs, too (or for some of them, anyway. I’ve always kind of suspected that a lot of people who liked WHM enjoyed its simple dps style. And that’s fine. Different tastes and all), and it’s horrible that SE has been ignoring WHM feedback for years, but there was no reason for them to do this to SCH. No reason for them to drag the one healer with an interesting set of dps skills down (in that aspect) to meet the others. (Or more realistically to meet WHM, since AST had interesting cards back then to make up for the lack of interesting dps).

[Sloprano]

TL;DR: Keep bringing up Scholar because I know much fun it used to be and want to be as wild again.

To add in to Hatstand's voice with this being a Scholar thread: Scholar is functional in all things, it's fine, boilerplate, run of the mill, but extremely boring and unsatisfying. I say this because I have experience to juxtaposition a regular pull or fight in 5.0 with 3.0 and the contrast is staggering. The fights are exactly the same thing with new paint (lovely and finely crafted paint I may add that plays you good music and tells you good stories), but instead of considering which of the vast number of possibilities I have considering the remaing health of a mob, what attacks are incoming, the state and health of the party which debuff to apply, what I want Lily to do, is it safe to Cleric Stance, wonder where my Ruin button is I spam one of the many instant health-restorers and Broil III.

I keep holding up 3.0 because that was the last iteration I was spoilt for choice, each dungeon run an attempt to see how much more of the arsenal I could make effective use of. Two expansions now and it seems SE keeps going the safe and secure route instead of the wild and chaotic approach to this role. Like they did with MCH. "How can we improve this job? Give them a massive Drill that looks and sounds cool!" Want them to gather around and go "How about an attack where Lily picks up the Scholars book and slaps the enemy with it? Or let WHMs drop entire mountains on mobs? And AST creates a tiny galaxy that collapse on a target" and all that stuff and more available as soon as you unlock the job. Hell, now I want a tank job based off Arcanist just to make it a trinity class. I would prefer not to assume but until they tell us the healers were balanced by a person and not a computer that loves numbers and hates fun I keep making up more outlandish theories.

With this being discussion if people have given up on SCH, not a platform to scheme on how best to sabotage the other healers. I don't want to believe the only way to balance healers is by leaving one of them out in the cold, or throwing them all out in the snow as of it seems right now. Hell, I want to go back old cross-class (or make it cross-job you have to level for) wherein each healer gets a cool thing (Virus, E4E, Cleric Stance, Stoneskin, Aero) and the other healers can cross-job that with an albeit weaker, untraited version only to let you have some more choice. Want them to make every job have a hook to them that is both inconvenient you have to work around for satisfying results while fittig the lore theme and that is unique to just that job, but most of all I want Scholar feel as untamed and fun it once was again.

Until there is anything official we run the risk of antagonizing each other for our favorite healer jobs, that only one job will recieve it's fun upgrade. Which is why I'm really imploring any community manager reading this to make themselves known. A lot of this assumption here could be dispelled by SE making a visit here, but we have yet to see neither hair or hide from anyone to let us know what is going on or if anything is going on at all.

[Osmond]

I SCH main for savage, I can say it's much better to manage. Some said that it needs bane back and such and I say heck no. Just give me 1 DoT that has a high potency tick for 30secs and i'm good. Seraph is....how I should say it...wished the team gives you a version of a union tether-somewhat ability that just gives a person a big shield based on duration of its time. It felt like it's missing that to give it something else to do. Thought that energy drain isn't needed, but the more I use it, the more better it feels so now I can find a reason to use union on the tanks for more free heals. Recitation is so good for huge aoe attacks, if they were to buff the CD to 60secs, it'll be one of the most OP abilites in a healing arsenal. I do enjoy using dissipation now on certain points, but I wish they put the CD of it to 120sec instead.

Pretty or not sure I digressed on the question of if people giving up on sch. I think people just jumping the gun, that it wants to be hard hitting as WHM, but I don't think they need to imo. I want SCH to be more focused into mitigation so I would like them to have some abilities like deployment or illumination CD to be lowered, succor cure potency buffed just slightly for mitigation or double heals via emergency. I don't think people given up on SCH now that they understand what it's supposed to do.

[Saefinn]

snip

From my understanding and the impressions I get, healing at a savage level is enjoyable and I get the impression how jobs were adjusted was with savage in mind. But the big problem is that it accounts for a very small part of the content and not content everybody does. Everything else I’ve just found SCH to be boring simply because most of the time I’m using broil or art of war. And the healing takes little to no thought. The actual healing toolkit is great when I get to utilise it properly, but that doesn’t happen often.

I’m starting to think maybe the answer is to have raid specific balance and tune the jobs differently outside of it. That said, there was never an issue when I used to do Coils and 2.0 extremes.