Healing is now a state of permanent hatred.

[KDSilver]

Scholar always had to trade one energy drain for Indom or Excog. But it was always worth him sacrificing 150 potency that your other healer on gcd heal (Stone IV 240/Malefic III 220).
How is that different in Shadowbringer..?

[Semirhage]

As someone who loathes the direction healing has gone in the last few expansions, I'm all for fun gameplay loops and impactful management on healers. A direction I've wanted for WHM for several expansions.

As a former WHM enthusiast, I'm with part of the main thrust of Branded's argument here. Let's get healer fun back! The Scholar gravitational singularity around which the rest of the healer design space merely orbited? I could do without. There are tons of ways we could go toward adding some pizzazz to healer kits. Merely reverting a bunch of changes to SCH would also restore its throne. That (former) throne I suspect is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

[GrimGale]

As someone who loathes the direction healing has gone in the last few expansions, I'm all for fun gameplay loops and impactful management on healers. A direction I've wanted for WHM for several expansions.

As a former WHM enthusiast, I'm with part of the main thrust of Branded's argument here. Let's get healer fun back! The Scholar gravitational singularity around which the rest of the healer design space merely orbited? I could do without. There are tons of ways we could go toward adding some pizzazz to healer kits. Merely reverting a bunch of changes to SCH would also restore its throne. That (former) throne I suspect is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

SCH was always a bunch of uncohesive CDs and oGCDs stuck together, which ironically gave the Job the versatility to reign supreme in the meta.

I am all for moving forward in terms of design and actually giving SCH a cohesive set of skills that fit mechanically and thematically together.

Mainly I'd want a debuff system powered by AF and a heal system powered by Fairy Gauge, held together by core skills that enable the production of both resources.

Imagine a skill akin to SMN Energy Drain that would grant you charges of AF allowing you to put strong debuffs on the target. Those debuffs would then generate Fairy Gauge to unlock potent oGCDs.

[Sloprano]

What makes you enjoy healing in FFXIV?

Just enjoy the sensation of being the backbone of a party. Despite having met some overzealous players since playing as medic Return to Castle Wolfenstein mp and every other class-based game. Having had an affinity for enchanters, druids, tacticians, bards, medics, engineers, saboterous. Act of aiding my team in different ways than just killing the opposition. While of course enjoying the occasional carnage of a massive miningun- og hammer-wielding fighter, I always default to the support job, preferably one that lets me keep everyone alive and disrupt the enemy in unconvential ways while under stress. A fun memory is from a Fighter soul in Rift called "No permission to die" buff you could place on a party member, did exactly as it said.

And despite outbursts that the best 24-man is the kind where every other alliance is dead because of the memorable moments, I do not hold disdain over my fellow players. Call it parental instinct, but I will rarely "let them die" because they might not show same understanding of fight than of those that've run it a thousand times.

And it's only for how incredibly unique 3.0 Scholar was in my big book of "Support classes" and how eye-rollingly-face-palmingly bad 5.0 was that I persist on trying to make SE aware of what good thing that had to either bring it back or give us an actual evolvement of the job.

As a former WHM enthusiast, I'm with part of the main thrust of Branded's argument here. Let's get healer fun back! The Scholar gravitational singularity around which the rest of the healer design space merely orbited? I could do without. There are tons of ways we could go toward adding some pizzazz to healer kits. Merely reverting a bunch of changes to SCH would also restore its throne. That (former) throne I suspect is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place.

As someone who loved SCH of old and have no idea what the other green iconed jobs went through, please know I don't want 3.0 back so I can skip some queue or feel smug because some shcmuck on the internet said it's meta and some even bigger shcmucks treat it as canon.

An evolvement before SE got high on job gauges and numbers would be preferable, but since they are a tiny studio operating out of a closet in a bicycle repair shop in eastern Illinois who only get electicity power every second tuesday it might just be easier and affordable for them to just rollback the job version to 3.5.

I can see that SCH being the root of the issues, or rather SCH is the tree and ACN is the root. In a sense where both WHM and AST could've benefitted, both in support and also offensively, from a dps class to bring unique mechanics that blend with a healing job. Just trying make us forget that classes were a thing is an oversight on SE's part. And another leaf in the grimoire of "SE does not play AST, WHM or SCH."

I would like my fun gameplay back, and they could slice a quart of potencies of everything for all I care about numbers. In best case scenario, every job gets fun, additictive unique overpowered skillsets and gameplay that just looks and feels good to play from the moment you step into a Guildhest, to getting your job stone, every cornerstone at 50, 60, 70 and beyond and just as fun wrecking an overworld mob, to keeping a party alive in a dungeon to contemplating every GCD in Deep Dungeons.

[Kewitt]

I like healing in ffxiv, but that's becuase I can spam dps spells once I pop a regen and media 2

[Brandedblade]

The only healing ability in SB's SCH that was truly lossless was Eos' Whispering Dawn. Everything else costed a weaving slot and/or Aetherflow.
In ShB, everything costs weave slots (and there are less of them available) but there are more Aetherflow-free healing abilities: Fey Blessing, Recitation and Seraph.

Comparing the two, the only net loss would be on Whispering Dawn, which now costs at worst 80 potency to weave. Everything else seems strictly better resource-wise.

Targetable Embrace that was about double the potency of current embrace was an IMMENSE amount of free healing even factoring in what was said about Indom and excog. Even saying that the point I'm trying to make is that technically all healing on scholar has a cost now irregardless of how weak or how powerful is. And as far as I'm concerned that's a good tradeoff. The only truly free healing sch has now is a very weak random embrace spam that I'm honestly surprised they didnt remove out right.

Also Fey Blessing isnt free. It technically costs an aetherflow to activate. While the aetherflow can be any ability yes. You still have to use a stack to even activate it and a weave slot to command your fairy to use it.

[Brandedblade]

Scholar always had to trade one energy drain for Indom or Excog. But it was always worth him sacrificing 150 potency that your other healer on gcd heal (Stone IV 240/Malefic III 220).
How is that different in Shadowbringer..?

That's the point, from a healing standpoint Scholar is still functionally the same as it was with SB, just with a simpler dps rotation and some of the fairy's former free power moved to ogcd space.

[Volkaj]

Targetable Embrace that was about double the potency of current embrace was an IMMENSE amount of free healing even factoring in what was said about Indom and excog. Even saying that the point I'm trying to make is that technically all healing on scholar has a cost now irregardless of how weak or how powerful is. And as far as I'm concerned that's a good tradeoff. The only truly free healing sch has now is a very weak random embrace spam that I'm honestly surprised they didnt remove out right.

Also Fey Blessing isnt free. It technically costs an aetherflow to activate. While the aetherflow can be any ability yes. You still have to use a stack to even activate it and a weave slot to command your fairy to use it.

My assessment did not include Embrace, and you are correct that it did an immense amount of free (lossless) healing. The Embrace nerf does not, however, change the playstyle much, since it will only make you use your other healing abilities more often to compensate. Just like the boss dealing more damage would.

Another cost to consider is opportunity cost. Even if SB's Whispering Dawn was lossless, it still had a cooldown. You needed to time it right for maximum efficiency. This is very similar to AST's OGCD heals, which are all lossless since AST can weave for free. Not having a DPS cost isn't necessarily a bad thing.

You get 3 Aetherflow charges per minute and Fey Blessing has a cooldown of one minute. The only other healing ability using Fairy Gauge is Fey Union, which is 50 fairy potency higher than Fey Blessing (inconsequential). It still costs a weave slot, but realistically you will always have the Fairy Gauge you need to use it.

[Volkaj]

That's the point, from a healing standpoint Scholar is still functionally the same as it was with SB, just with a simpler dps rotation and some of the fairy's former free power moved to ogcd space.

But how this simpler rotation and OGCD space have been implemented changes the full picture quite a bit, making it feel a lot more like SB's WHM: spam Broil III (Stone IV) until you have to use a healing OGCD, weaved with Ruin II (Aero II or clip) which will be a DPS loss.

Only if you look just at the healing skills and the healing skills alone, with a marginal consideration for DPS costs, then yes the fairy's free power has been moved to AoE OGCDs (adding weaving requirement) with some mitigation thrown in.

Considering that outside ultimate we're still spending only ~10-30% of our time healing, the worse meshing of DPS + healing kit hurts a lot more than just adding weaving requirements would suggest.

[Brandedblade]

But how this simpler rotation and OGCD space have been implemented changes the full picture quite a bit, making it feel a lot more like SB's WHM: spam Broil III (Stone IV) until you have to use a healing OGCD, weaved with Ruin II (Aero II or clip) which will be a DPS loss.

Only if you look just at the healing skills and the healing skills alone, with a marginal consideration for DPS costs, then yes the fairy's free power has been moved to AoE OGCDs (adding weaving requirement) with some mitigation thrown in.

Considering that outside ultimate we're still spending only ~10-30% of our time healing, the worse meshing of DPS + healing kit hurts a lot more than just adding weaving requirements would suggest.

The only issue I'm seeing here is a personal preference issue. I understand and even agree to an extent, I personally would be content to have Miasma and Bane back myself. (I still want to keep Ruin II and AoW over Miasma II however.)

Where I disagree is that those two changes you bolded out are significant to changing how it fundamentally plays, the only difference in single target dps is that you cast an extra Broil every 18 seconds instead of a Miasma and you use Ruin II to weave and handle mobility mechanics instead of Miasma II. And the only difference in AoE is that you skip the first two gcds setting up dots and go straight into the filler. And for both pressing an ogcd once a minute to plop a Shadow Flare.

The only change in the healing department is that you lose more by forcing more weave slots since the fairy's power was redistributed. Which I consider a positive change since the big thing that made scholar too strong was the power that was on the fairy.

These changes are changes but looking at them I dont find them significant enough to change what my perception of scholar is and plays like? Would I like more dot spread back? Yeah sure? But I don't find the lack of them enough to loose my enjoyment of playing scholar.