Have we given up on SCH?

[Gemina]

Historically SE have left any major changes to expansions rather than in the patch cycles. Meaning if we are looking at meaningful changes after "wiping the slate clean" then we'd expect to see them in 6.0.

Well yeah. If major overhauls is what qualifies as "meaningful changes", then you're going to be waiting a long time. When I speak of historic in terms of SE, I'm talking about how some jobs are horrendous when a new expansion is released, but SE will take in player feedback and make changes within reason. This expansion has already seen SCH getting Energy Drain back, Hagakure was returned to SAM, healing potencies were fixed for AST, damage potencies adjusted for NIN, among others. These 'less than meaningful' changes have improved these four jobs greatly.

I don't mean to come off as rude when I say this, but people keep moving the goalpost on this one. At the media tour it was like "wait and see until you get to actually play it", we play it and then it's like "wait until you try it in Shadowbringers content", we play it in Shadowbringers content, "wait until end game, that's where the jobs are balanced", we play it at endgame, "it's a clean slate, wait for later patches". I've tried to enjoy Scholar, because it is my baby, but I've struggled.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but goal post moving is the way of things. It doesn't mean we should be content with it, but goal post moving at the very least means that the issue is still being addressed and worked on, instead of being complacent. It's better that the goal posts move, than stay in the same position. This is true even for jobs that players are happy with. Just because something is good, doesn't mean it can't be improved; and just because something is 'bad', doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

But I don't think homogenisation is a clean slate, but a way of dumbing the roles down and making balance easier and also approachable to new players.

This is exactly how I would define a "clean slate" in terms of mmos.

If we need to look at SE's history, we only need to look at White Mage, who have had problems for a long time in terms of how the job plays and over-and-over they've not addressed the issues, we're talking over -years- and with over that time they've taken away more and more from WHM at first mostly, but all healers overall. And in that time, they've not really taken on people's feedback with WHM. Even now, we have silence and no acknowledgement that they consider the problems with healers as problems.

There was next to nothing wrong with WHM until AST was implemented into the game. The over-tuning of AST to make it viable and kick WHM right out of the meta was probably the biggest indicator of the devs not knowing what they were doing when it came to healers. We can keep revisiting this for the sake of having something to talk about, or we can move forward to the here and now. The devs nuked SoTL2, got rid of CD reduction that was the previous lily system, and made WHM better. By all accounts, I would say they listened. However, if players were saying, "Please don't take away SCH DPS skills!" Then they most certainly did not. SCH as far as being able to meet healing requirements while keeping up steady damage really has not changed (this is how the devs see things). You just have less buttons to push to accomplish this now (this is how players see things).

They've acknowledged problems with the DPS jobs and said they were going to do something and are delivering on them in 5.1. Historically MNK and MCH were DPS's that they ignored for ages, so fairdoes, they have addressed them in 5.0, but they also acknowledged issues with both prior to this.

Again with the ignored. Listen, nothing gets ignored in this business. Consumer demand is what drives sales and that is what pays their bills. It's a daunting task to create something from your vision and shape it in a way that is marketable. Now even though nothing gets ignored, not everything gets heard. That is something to really take in. The dev team is not obligated to share information. What is actually communicated between a developer and consumer is serious business. That seriously needs to be understood. If you were to actually know what we hear in comparison to what is going on over there, you would likely be blown away.

Patience.