I am stuck in a Scholar midlife crisis!

[Brandedblade]

SCH: A bunch of disjointed CDs you can use whenever which actually lock you out of other interesting abilities.
Dissipation> No fairy skills or fey gauge
Fairy tether> No fairy skills
Seraph>No tether or veil
Fey gauge is used for 2 mildly potent things, one of wich locks your fairy out of her strongest skills.

I gather that the idea is that SCH's gameplay loop is supposed to be Build Fairy Guage -> Spend Fairy Guage. But when there's only two options for spending fairy Gauge, one of which is a cooldown, then the loop is lost.

In my little delusions of grandeur of how I would've design SCH, it's always been "increase fairy guage generation, increase the number of skills fueled by it."

[Crushnight]

Scholar is the only class whose gameplay doesn't build up.

WHM: Slowly generate lillies. When you spend them you unlock a new powerful skill. Using it feels satisfying. A reward for keeping an eye on your resources and spending them. (Though arguably not that efficient to do so.)

AST: Collect seals by buffing allies. While buffing doesn't interact with healing, it still builds up to a strong CD ability. The animation is beautiful and its satisfying to fish for the seals to unleash the most potent version of divination. (Though AST lost much of its flavour and support by making every card a flat dps increase.)

SCH: A bunch of disjointed CDs you can use whenever which actually lock you out of other interesting abilities.
Dissipation> No fairy skills or fey gauge
Fairy tether> No fairy skills
Seraph>No tether or veil
Fey gauge is used for 2 mildly potent things, one of wich locks your fairy out of her strongest skills.

You had me with whm, you had me with sch, but man you lost me with ast there.

Whm is certainly alright keyword alright, you aren't punished for needing to gcd heal, it is just the need to gcd heal diminishes with level, skill, and gear. To also have 4x glares be better off on single target than to interact with your lily resources unless pressed for it feels off to say the least.

Sch has had this wonkyness with its capstone abilities for awhile now (basically since Dissipation in HW) and i think the devs need to take a hard look at all these abilties and try to figure a way to make them interact better. Random idea what if dissipation just locks out fairy abilities but doesn't despawn it and you gain twice the fairy gauge under Dissipation's effect, allow access to still tether the fairy to a party member, this tether then gives a fairy stack per tick (up to 5) which increases healing received, this could increase shields effectiveness from both sch and Seraph .

Not going to go into Ast i have done it so much recently but i legit lol'd when you said it was rewarding to fish for seals for max divination buff to which i'll just say to each their own XD

[Eloah]

The issue with the healers, and with "most" of the jobs as a whole is SE seems to only view them in the vacuum of endgame. But when there are various endgame, the skills can easily become disjointed. Very few jobs actually focus on the interim and how things feel at each interval once a reset occurs. SE seems to be trying to adjust this, as we get more expansions. Just look at the MCH rework, and BLM is still the poster child for a finely tuned job. Hopefully, SE will continue to listen to our feedback.

As a SCH specific example, all of the cap-stone skill, past 50, fight against each other. You can't use any of them at the same time, and each one locks something out of use. We know SE is "comfortable" with rearranging skills, like Aetherflow, Lustrate, and Sacred Soil, but they need to do another to smooth things out, for most jobs.

[GrimGale]

Oh, ofc AST is not perfect. But I think my point about the "building up" nature of the class design still stands. ( Which served to point out SCH as an outlier.)

Feelings of satisfaction are subjective after all. Numbers could be tweaked and "seal fishing" could be adjusted to be less reliant on RNG but in essence you still need to draw cards and play the appropriate ones to maximize the potency of Divination.

[Sloprano]

In my little delusions of grandeur of how I would've design SCH, it's always been "increase fairy guage generation, increase the number of skills fueled by it."

Compared to other job gauges that would work swimmingly. I'm also averse to having to build it up as slow as we do: Gauges seem to be central for managing resources so have been thinking either:

1. More things to spend gauge on and more things build gauge: Like Embrace, dot ticks build 5 each. ED/Ruin 2/Adlo/Lustrate/Excog/Indom build 20 for each. Ruin/Broil/Broil II/Broil III build 10/15/20/25 respectively. So we can quickly gain it, have skills gotten from early on that let's use it tactically or dump it for buffs or offensive skill. Basiclly a more fancy Aetherflow applications and Energy Drain.

2. We start with full gauge and it always builds up like 5 per tick. So the same applies: We can gain gauge fast and get more to spend it on that carries at least the same weighty options like Lustrate/Bane/Sacred Soil/Energy Drain.

Currently it works if you know you will need a full gauge ten Energy Drains into the fight, but instead of cooldowns you have the resource give you access to powerful skills, but can only use a couple until it recharges. That kind of decision making I think feels better for Scholar like how you decided on Lustrate/Sacred Soil/Bane/Energy Drain instead always using Excog when it's off CD.

[Saefinn]

Hey I'd be more for stuff playing off of the faerie gauge, as MP feels less like a resource to manage, I think it'd add more in terms of resource management as a dynamic, whilst not putting as much of a penalty as running out of MP might. It'd feel like we'd get more out of the gauge too

[Crushnight]

Oh, ofc AST is not perfect. But I think my point about the "building up" nature of the class design still stands. ( Which served to point out SCH as an outlier.)

Feelings of satisfaction are subjective after all. Numbers could be tweaked and "seal fishing" could be adjusted to be less reliant on RNG but in essence you still need to draw cards and play the appropriate ones to maximize the potency of Divination.

It is essientially this,

Whm: good in writing, less so in practice. You get rewarded some damage back for gcd healing, in a game where your discouraged from doing so as much as possible, oops. It functions perfectly fine it is just battle design has not accommodated such a class design and likely never will because it would require an overall from ARR onwards which is just not worthwhile thus class design needs to be looked at more.

Ast: good on paper, not so in execution. 3 seals prevent going after a single card, buffs are not so worthwhile and a mega chore for controller players which is a healthy chunk of your playerbase, yikes. It would take a hefty rework on a few skills or/as well as, the targeting system to make this more manageable for controller users, there needs to be some sort of work done to Ast the problem is the devs are too hesistant to do so due to who like it now(ignoring the bigger population Ast had throughout SB now being more unhappy).

Sch: what idea just fling at wall we'll make it stick. It works but no flow even to outright contradict each other in use, absolutely needs to be looked at as a basic design flaw. Plenty was stripped from Sch, the fact it escaped the devs notice how stupid it was not having something like Energy Drain with a resource mechanic that required you to spend a resource to generate another is laughably baffling and highlights the devs need to actually buckle down and pay attention to healers.