Dev team, please consider bringing back SCH's Fey Wind.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

Snip

To add on to your thoughts I honestly think the devs should rework all the healers, especially if a 4th healer is on the way in 6.0.

WHM should primarily rely on GCD healing while its DPS primarily comes from cooldowns and/or DoTs, this could potentially make WHM more exciting to play or more hard to play. (WHM would still have a few cooldown heals for emergencies and would still have a single target dps spell for when healing isn't needed)

SCH should primarily rely on cooldown healing while its DPS is primarily from GCDs. They could give SCH 3 GCD dps spells that work like ninja's mudras, depending on if you did 123 or 321 or 312 etc etc, it would change the effect of the 3rd spell in the combo. They could even do something like the 1st spell used has a 2 second cast time, the 2nd spell used has a 1.25 second cast time and the 3rd spell is instant cast and you can't use the same spell twice in a row. This would allow SCH to remain interesting to play for those that like playing scholar for its dpsing (SCH would still have a few GCD healing spells for emergencies but would lose its shields. Preventing damage is always better than healing it, so shields should be removed for balance reasons)

AST should be rebooted, a rework just won't be enough to balance this abomination, and primarily rely on HoTs and its DPS is primarily from GCDs and it would have a few cooldowns that would pop the remaining ticks of the HoTs for emergency healing. AST would still have its card system and still remain interesting to play. (AST would still have a few direct healing heals for emergencies)

New healer should be like discipline priest from wow, healing through damage done and have a few on demand GCD heals for emergencies or when the target is untargetable or invulnerable. Afterall, there are only so many ways to restore someones health.

It would distinguish all the healers apart from each other and would cement WHM and SCH into distinct roles they should have been from the beginning, GCD healer for WHM and oGCD healer for SCH, while actually giving AST an identity instead of being this weird chimeric healer. And would also allow all the healers to continue dpsing while healing or healing while dpsing. WHM's AoE GCD heals would have their cast times reduced from 2.5 to 1.5 seconds and SCH and AST's dps GCDs would be 1.5 seconds, as to allow ample time to weave dps, healing and buff cooldowns.

[Allegor]

While I agree healers need to be less homogenized and have a more solid identity, the debatable part is that all jobs need to stay somewhat competent, so such thing as an "off healer" would be weak in situations where they're the only healer (dungeons) or DF puts 2 of them together. Designing a job for a specific, rather niche piece of content, instead of the opposite, is exactly why AST became such a dumpster fire.

[ty_taurus]

While I agree healers need to be less homogenized and have a more solid identity, the debatable part is that all jobs need to stay somewhat competent, so such thing as an "off healer" would be weak in situations where they're the only healer (dungeons) or DF puts 2 of them together. Designing a job for a specific, rather niche piece of content, instead of the opposite, is exactly why AST became such a dumpster fire.

The idea with the off-healer isn't that their healing should be bad, but that their primary way of healing is through oGCDs while they lack support options. oGCDs give you more opportunities to GCD DPS since you don't need to stop to cast Physick/Adloquium/Succor. They'd still be able to heal, just that their rDPS contribution would be directly from them. In contrast, the idea I mentioned would have almost none of AST's rDPS contribution come from selfish DPS. Ideally, Malefic would never get used in groups as the GCD support would outperform it, thus giving the healers who don't want to DPS at all an avenue that works for them.

[EaMett]

Because it allows you to have full stacks before and get an extra set of stacks in a single fight, not only that but it allows you to keep the cooldown going constantly thus maximizing on capabilities and resources.

Why do you need full stacks before going into an encounter? What does the extra set of stacks do for you, really? Not like you need the healing power. The dps angle would be nonsensical as well.
In a vacuum, keeping the cooldown going is a decent reason. In reality this applies only to content that typically isn't min/maxed, and if you manage your stacks properly (aka don't get caught off guard at the end of a pull) you should almost always be able to refresh your stacks before moving out of combat, either with AF or dissipation.

It changes how you optimize, sure. But that's all it is. It's neither better or worse, you still have way more stacks than you need, and you still only run out of stacks if you made a mistake. Just requires a bit more attention.

IIRC One tip in dungeons is to use Aldo+Ecog prepull, something that is impossible for the first pull without being late because the latter is tied to Aetherflow.

Though that could be changed by simply not tying it to Aetherflow

At higher levels you have recitation that you should use on excog anyways and allows you to cast it out of combat. And regardless of that, you have 50% of your tank's HP to cast it anyways and plenty of ogcd windows to do so. So both time and opportunity

You also generally only need one excog per pull, and you can still get two off if you use recitation pre pull. Basically, instead of using AF back to back on cooldown without any thought, you need to plan a little more. You also need to pay attention to enemy HP and expend your stacks faster/slower to align your dissipation. Gives you something to do while you spam your 1 button on the badies.

Like, I understand it's slightly more work than just hitting a button on CD, but it's not like it flows terribly, and it's really not like sch needs to be any simpler to play.

[OvernightSiren]

Agree 10000%. I've said since the start of ShB that I want Fey Wind back.

It just made SCH feel special. With how dumbed down the pets are now SCH just doesn't feel special at all so I wish we had at least some unique party buffs not provided by WHM or AST.

[FoxCh40s]

Why do you need full stacks before going into an encounter? What does the extra set of stacks do for you, really? Not like you need the healing power. The dps angle would be nonsensical as well.
In a vacuum, keeping the cooldown going is a decent reason. In reality this applies only to content that typically isn't min/maxed, and if you manage your stacks properly (aka don't get caught off guard at the end of a pull) you should almost always be able to refresh your stacks before moving out of combat, either with AF or dissipation.

It changes how you optimize, sure. But that's all it is. It's neither better or worse, you still have way more stacks than you need, and you still only run out of stacks if you made a mistake. Just requires a bit more attention.


At higher levels you have recitation that you should use on excog anyways and allows you to cast it out of combat. And regardless of that, you have 50% of your tank's HP to cast it anyways and plenty of ogcd windows to do so. So both time and opportunity

You also generally only need one excog per pull, and you can still get two off if you use recitation pre pull. Basically, instead of using AF back to back on cooldown without any thought, you need to plan a little more. You also need to pay attention to enemy HP and expend your stacks faster/slower to align your dissipation. Gives you something to do while you spam your 1 button on the badies.

Like, I understand it's slightly more work than just hitting a button on CD, but it's not like it flows terribly, and it's really not like sch needs to be any simpler to play.

Back before we were overgeared to hell, Scholars needed those stacks for Lustrate, we used Recitation for a free Excog out of combat. We NEEDED that, because Tanks would pull wall to wall like they do now, but it was SO much harder at the beginning of the expansion. We need the Lustrates so we could contribute DPS to kill the packs of mobs fast enough so we didnt wipe (because it's not like you can stop the tank from pulling wall to wall, you rescue them back and they keep running).

People forget how damn hard it is to heal with Scholar at level while undergeared.

You're questioning of the stacks necessity shows me you havent been healing on Scholar long, nor pushing large pulls.

[AduroT]

I just wanna glamour the fairy into a carbuncle...

[Seoulstar]

Can they also give us AST's our cards back?

[EaMett]

Back before we were over-geared to hell, Scholars needed those stacks for Lustrate, we used Recitation for a free Excog out of combat. We NEEDED that, because Tanks would pull wall to wall like they do now, but it was SO much harder at the beginning of the expansion. We need the Lustrates so we could contribute DPS to kill the packs of mobs fast enough so we didn't wipe (because it's not like you can stop the tank from pulling wall to wall, you rescue them back and they keep running).

People forget how damn hard it is to heal with Scholar at level while under-geared.

You're questioning of the stacks necessity shows me you haven't been healing on Scholar long, nor pushing large pulls.

- Let's be very pragmatic about this and just take a second to acknowledge that any CD withholding of AF is at most going to be the duration of out of combat phases (aka time between pulls, which happens once per boss in large pull scenarios). This amount of time, let's be honest, is going to be less than the duration of the cooldown. So, in essence, this means you wouldn't get more stacks during your trash pulls anyways. It'll just delay your stacks on the boss which is not a big deal, even under-geared.
- Secondly, if this was still an issue to you then you're talking about some serious min/maxing of content that isn't typically min/maxed AND, might I add, if you're min/maxing properly you wouldn't need those extra stacks in the first place. There's also the fact min/maxing isn't so much about improving your kit as it is improving your usage of the existing kit.
- Thirdly, if you take offense in the leveling phases then it's even less of an issue. You can't fully balance around leveling anyways, and during these phases you can just take the gcd, it's not a big deal. Not to mention that this "leveling" experience phase is basically limited to 3 dungeons over the past two expansions. Bardam's, and then everything pre recitation during ShB. And to reiterate, you wouldn't get more stacks from having out of combat AF (first point), at best you would get your refresh earlier, but again proper use of dissipation has you covered.
- Lastly, like I said before, there are drawbacks to AF out of combat. Namely having to wait for the AF cooldown before pulling in raid settings.

I haven't forgotten the leveling process, I actually have an alt that I leveled about two weeks in (so tanks weren't geared yet). So I got to experience the leveling process twice, once with no hands-on experience of the kit and once with. Even the leveling experience isn't that hard when you use your kit properly.


I've been trying to avoid addressing the ad hominem, I just want to point out that I've been playing sch for years and have cleared almost every piece of content on it at this point. I loath small pulls but will deal with them for the sake of newer tanks taking it slow. I'm not flawless, far from it, but if anything a (potentially valid) argument could be made that I have too much experience and am not representative of the sch player base as a whole. Which could very well be true (or not), but I already acknowledged that although nobody realistically needs AF out of combat, it does make stack management a little more involved. Again, not a bad thing. We don't need sch dumbed down more than it already has been at this point.

[FoxCh40s]

I've played Scholar since 2.3; have just as much experience. There is just no flat out way that you can say you could get through the larger pulls without eating your fairy and needing the extra 3 stacks of Lustrate.

I'm not trying to be mean, but in AF gear, it just wasnt possible while GCD casting and not doing DPS via Art of War and six stacks of Aetherflow for Lustrate, even using one of those stacks for SS (which you should as it was Damage reduction and regen).

Regardless.