Playing SCH is so awkward and bad

[Shougun]

You've just gotten too used to WHM, play SCH some more and most things you get accustomed to over time.

I found playing SCH like playing MNK...

At first you just look at the job and go what in Thals name is going on here? Seriously this is just a huge mess. Meanwhile all the people who love those jobs are going: " . . . it's simple, seriously what's the problem? Stop hating on my job".

Bunch of tools that are niche, very helpful but niche and that feels a little bit different than the other jobs where they either don't have those tools or they're way more obvious when and where you should use it (like sleep or anti-knockback stuff). Once you learn where what is supposed to go suddenly the jobs become a lot more straight forward and things lay into place. These two jobs, imo, could do with a personal job tutorial lol. Especially when most jobs are super straight forward, these two jobs come with some twists that not all the other jobs have- not saying they're hard but it's like if you don't get when you're supposed to use what then it feels really weird. Also of course SCH is way more preemptive so that feels quite different if you're used to being more reactive.

So yeah I'd agree it's not super intuitive (compared to other jobs like the massively straight forward WHM lol), but starts to make sense after a while if you rub your face against the mechanics enough or if someone just straight up tells you what x and y are good for lol.

[SpiritualOcean]

I found playing SCH like playing MNK...

At first you just look at the job and go what in Thals name is going on here? Seriously this is just a huge mess. Meanwhile all the people who love those jobs are going: " . . . it's simple, seriously what's the problem? Stop hating on my job".

Bunch of tools that are niche, very helpful but niche and that feels a little bit different than the other jobs where they either don't have those tools or they're way more obvious when and where you should use it (like sleep or anti-knockback stuff). Once you learn where what is supposed to go suddenly the jobs become a lot more straight forward and things lay into place. These two jobs, imo, could do with a personal job tutorial lol. Especially when most jobs are super straight forward, these two jobs come with some twists that not all the other jobs have- not saying they're hard but it's like if you don't get when you're supposed to use what then it feels really weird. Also of course SCH is way more preemptive so that feels quite different if you're used to being more reactive.

So yeah I'd agree it's not super intuitive (compared to other jobs like the massively straight forward WHM lol), but starts to make sense after a while if you rub your face against the mechanics enough or if someone just straight up tells you what x and y are good for lol.

Ok. What are X and Y good for?

[Shougun]

Ok. What are X and Y good for?

To catch Z before 7 8 9.

Just in case you were being serious and not joking like I assume lol- X and Y are just fill in the blank variables because I was talking about two jobs and multiple abilities. Sort of a create your own example structure. So like what's Form Shift good for (and not good for), what's Tornado Kick all about, how do I properly use Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics, Recitation, Dissipation? Etc. . :P

[HyoMinPark]

...until she is blown all over the place. Being in camouflage mode (not clickable from the party member list and disappearing nametags) it can be ridiculously stressful to see where she is, which leads me to simply send her to the middle blindly - even if she would be there already, which should not be a thing.

This is frankly the worst bit. Sometimes I don’t even realize that she got desummoned somehow and end up halfway through a fight without realizing she’s not there because I’m so used to her being in the party list. Not to mention the fact that I can’t keep track of her. They are adding them back to the party list at least, but I hope they also add in their name tags to be visible at least to the owner of the fairy.

[Nemmar]

Since i didn't play previous versions, to me it feels perfectly fine.

Sure, i wouldn't say no to a lower CD on the aetherflow skill, but it's not preventing me from enjoying the class.

The damage skills are indeed limited. Not very fun to spam the same nuke over and over.

Honestly, i think that the problem is not that Scholar and Astrologist have weak aspects or positional requirements, but rather that perhaps White mage might be too powerful in comparison.

[Billythepancake]

Since i didn't play previous versions, to me it feels perfectly fine.

Sure, i wouldn't say no to a lower CD on the aetherflow skill, but it's not preventing me from enjoying the class.

The damage skills are indeed limited. Not very fun to spam the same nuke over and over.

Honestly, i think that the problem is not that Scholar and Astrologist have weak aspects or positional requirements, but rather that perhaps White mage might be too powerful in comparison.

I wouldn't say SCH is weak compared to WHM, I think it's in the best spot on healers currently, but I find SCH more boring than anything. They took away everything and just turned scholar into "spam broil x times, reapply your 1 dot, then back to spaming. Sometimes you stop to throw and oGCD on the tank, then back to spamming" fairy has been made so weak and unresponsive that she's only good for dissipation fodder. Not to mention poor Selene.

[Melichoir]

I wouldn't say SCH is weak compared to WHM, I think it's in the best spot on healers currently, but I find SCH more boring than anything. They took away everything and just turned scholar into "spam broil x times, reapply your 1 dot, then back to spaming. Sometimes you stop to throw and oGCD on the tank, then back to spamming" fairy has been made so weak and unresponsive that she's only good for dissipation fodder. Not to mention poor Selene.

I want someone to explain to me how its so much more boring now with some of the changes:


-Miasma II and Shadowflare. So two dots pretty much with one of them being on a 60 second CD. Mind you one of the dots you lose was on a different timer than Bio, so that seemed like itd be great to manage.
-Sustain is irrelevant now that your pet is more or less invincible
-Bane is your dot spreader, so I guess that might hurt a little bit in pack pulls, but I do wonder if AoW maths out to better damage anyways
-Rouse to buff your pet output, but again, some changes to pet meant that this was gonna get thrown under the bus. Its still an oGCD with a 60 Second CD.
-The "Poor Selene" point I never understood. Selene only had 2 skills that were of note: an AoE Esuna and a small buff to AA/Cast/Recast. AoE esuna is a moot point now because most bosses dont apply a debuff to multiple members unless people mess up mechanics, and the recast buff is a raw damage booster which makes Selene in this case a more optimal pick if DPS is the key. I guess it does have the advantage of providing an Esuna off GCD for an extra broil or something. But the more of these small little differences start shifting the class into being very optimal for savage compared to other healers, something the devs were actively trying to account for. For balancing sake, this probably wouldve been a problem. Oh and she gets a silence. Guess thats cool too? Yeah I suppose that since both are now essentially just cosmetic skins of one another that does suck, but Im not recalling a thing where people were actually using both fairies in equal sums. IIRC it was just use one of the two, and considering that DPS was king, I would think it was Selene who got picked most often between the two. Afterall, its the fairy that gets complained about being gutted.

The old SCH still had Broil spam. You just had to manage a regular dot and one on CD a bit more in your dps rotation. Theres a few oGCDs like cleric stance being gone, but I wonder if it matters now damage wise. So Im not seeing where this great difference is coming from that says "Oh its super boring now, but back in SB, oh that was super fun!"

So could someone explain it to me? Cause Im struggling to understand how just having 'more skills' = more fun.

[AbelArchaniEA]

In summation: Pets need a re work in responsive output. You’re welcome ...

[HyoMinPark]

]So could someone explain it to me? Cause Im struggling to understand how just having 'more skills' = more fun.

It’s the idea of having more to do. Reapplying 1 DoT every 30 seconds and filling in the other non-healing GCDs with Broil is a lot less interesting than:
—keeping up with 2~3 DoTs each with their own separate timer (4.0 SCH had 3 DoTs to manage—Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II; 3.0 SCH had even more than that),
—managing mana to have as many Miasma II casts as possible (because it was pretty hard on the MP),
—making sure Shadow Flare remains on CD/optimizing its usage around things like raid buffs that would occur around the time it would come off CD,
—using Ruin II for this weaving,
—and then using Broil as a filler.

Being active and having more timers to pay attention to can make a job feel far more interesting. It’s why I miss Straight Shot on BRD: I like things like self-buffs that require upkeep. Having more oGCDs to engage you keeps gameplay interesting (so long as these oGCDs are able to be handled in a non-cumbersome way—see: 5.0 AST cards and Sleeve Draw for the definition of cumbersome).

[Billythepancake]

I want someone to explain to me how its so much more boring now with some of the changes:


-Miasma II and Shadowflare. So two dots pretty much with one of them being on a 60 second CD. Mind you one of the dots you lose was on a different timer than Bio, so that seemed like itd be great to manage.
-Sustain is irrelevant now that your pet is more or less invincible
-Bane is your dot spreader, so I guess that might hurt a little bit in pack pulls, but I do wonder if AoW maths out to better damage anyways
-Rouse to buff your pet output, but again, some changes to pet meant that this was gonna get thrown under the bus. Its still an oGCD with a 60 Second CD.
-The "Poor Selene" point I never understood. Selene only had 2 skills that were of note: an AoE Esuna and a small buff to AA/Cast/Recast. AoE esuna is a moot point now because most bosses dont apply a debuff to multiple members unless people mess up mechanics, and the recast buff is a raw damage booster which makes Selene in this case a more optimal pick if DPS is the key. For balancing sake, this probably wouldve been a problem. Oh and she gets a silence. Guess thats cool too. Yeah I suppose that since both are now essentially just cosmetic skins of one another that does suck, but Im not recalling a thing where people were actually using both fairies in equal sums. IIRC it was just use one of the two.

The old SCH still had Broil spam. You just had to manage a regular dot and one on CD a bit more in your dps rotation. Theres a few oGCDs like cleric stance being gone, but I wonder if it matters now damage wise. So Im not seeing where this great difference is coming from that says "Oh its super boring now, but back in SB, oh that was super fun!"

So could someone explain it to me? Cause Im struggling to understand how just having 'more skills' = more fun.

I dunno man, if 1 button spam was still fun, why would we have ever stopped playing on an Atari, or on an NES? But, let's go down these points in order.

Miasma II and Shadowflare: for Miasma II I miss that because of what AoW lacks, usefulness no matter the situation. Miasma II was a better weaving tool than ruin II, at the cost of MP and the cost of having to get close to the boss, you had to be careful in it's use or you would regret it, as well as, yes, being good for AoE and Single target, unlike AoW which may as well not even be on your hotbar while you're in a single target situation. And Shadowflare, I'll be real, I don't miss it THAT much because it was a pain in the ass to use, either placing it down manually or using a macro that didn't work half the time, still, I'll take anything that breaks the monotony.
As for Bane being more or less damage than AoW, I don't care either way, if you're curious, yes I do believe AoW does more damage, but SCH's damage is not my problem, give Broil and AoW potencies of 500 each, making SCH laughably OP, and it would not fix my issue, because spamming 1 button is not as interesting as miasma -> bio -> shadow flare -> bane -> miasma II, and I genuinely refuse to believe otherwise. Numbers are numbers, I don't care how high those numbers are, I just want to feel like I worked for them, not sat here and spammed the one button.
I never said anything about rouse, it was hardly useful, funnily enough, didn't stop them from making that my capstone ability under a different name. Shame about that too, because I love the idea of Seraph, but she is just rouse with 2 oGCD succors. Sure, she's slightly better than rouse, but nothing to write home about.
as for the "Nobody used selene anyway" thing, in savage I'd be inclined to agree, EOS was better 99.9 percent of the time. Unless you were shooting for that 99th/100th percentile parse, Selene was not worth it, but there's more to the game than just savage content isn't there? In the rest of the game, where healing was so lax, I found Selene to be the preferable fairy in the vast majority of situations, especially in POTD and HoH when a silence trap hit the team. And the ability to just speed things up with fey wind was always nice for normal content. Even if EOS was better the vast majority of the time, it comes off as extremely lazy that, instead of doing the better solution of making Selene better and more competitive with EOS, they just outright gut her and make her a skin, because actually working on fairies and making them balanced with each other, or at least attempting to, is too much effort, and healers are just not worth the effort in SE's eyes.

Yes, old SCH had broil spam, I cannot deny that, and we all told the joke of "spam broil to win" etc, but it seems SE was not in on the joke, because there was more to it than that. I'm not asking for a complex DPS rotation, if that was all I wanted I would genuinely just play a DPS, as many have suggested, I do enjoy the responsibility of healing, but I feel with the current system I am punished for effective healing because I have nothing interesting to do in that down time. I have no risks to take outside of maybe using 1 too many energy drains (which they even attempted to take THAT away at launch, and I have 0 doubt come 6.0 they'll do it again, mark my words.) I have no pet to manage because it cannot die and because it doesn't heal, I have to weave in every ability now on top of the other 10000 other healing abilities I have to weave in, just for them to not work half the damn time, I have no pet to choose, I have no timers to watch besides 1 30 second dot, I have nothing that rewards me for good aetherflow usage (quickened aetherflow) I have very little reason to use abilities like deployment tactics anymore. They even went and made healing easier, despite them trying to make it harder, in savage? this tier was soo much easier than the last, the only genuinely hard part was the very last phase of Titan, so I don't even have THAT to fall back on. Can SCH do its job and do it well? Sure, but if I were not obligated by my friends and by my static to raid with them, I'd be unsubbing and finding something else to do with my time.