"job adjustsments" from the live letter speculations

[Shurrikhan]

That won't happen or else people can't progress with MSQ.
A big takeaway for jobs is that they have to be playable for the MSQ - if it's remade solely into a job that supports raiding/party - play without any form of DPS only then the job's going to suffer because it won't be feasible in the open world.

If that actually did get implemented though, rather than people complaining, I'm pretty sure people are just going to directly quit.

But why limit changes to what makes common sense in one area when you can just pretend the two are at least as fundamentally different as PvE and PvP.

Out of instances: Spam button 1 (no CD added).
In instances: Hit button 1 on CD. GCD Heal when necessary (which is still rarely). Sleep the rest of the time. (Damage intake will still not have been increased.)

[Payotz]

I always thought back in SB that they would expand on EoS being the healing Fairy and Selene being the DPS fairy, like reworking Selene's tether as Dragoon tether that boosts dps.
And maybe giving SCH a stance where both faries can be out simulataneously.

[Sloprano]

What is wrong with the Fairy for SCH?

I could feel passion guide my keys once again, but then I thought: What IS wrong with the fairy SCH. And I had another thought.

Take a look at the job page:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/scholar/

Without scrolling down to the gallery of lackluster, what does one see? There, gaily swinging it's feet on the Scholar's shoulders who look genuinly happy to see them? Adlo? Aetherflows? Energy Drain (after we got it back)? Excog? Deployment Tactics maybe? Fucking Chain Stratagem? A tonberry? Seraph? Our most used spells, Art of War or Broil fucking III? No, it's Eos! And do you know what barely even is a footnote in the core functions and part of the moment to moment decision making of the SCH job? Eos!

The one that pops out at you when looking at Scholar first time, except the handsome mortarboard of course, is the fucking fairy. It's Eos. It's Selene. It's Lily. It's what really seperates it from any other healer in the game. Our fairy is with us all the way and unlike most other summons, persists, to really drive it home you're part of each other.

What is wrong the fairy is she has no weight, agency or gravitas. At the writing moment Eos, Selene, our Lily is suffering from:

* Being immortal
* Has two unique summons, but makes no difference.
* Each summon has five, together TEN, hotbar slots that currently goes unused and is locked
* Untargetable for heals and shield spread
* Cannot be used in stack mechanics
* Has to play second-fiddle to SE's whimsical SMN pet changes
* Embrace is really weak.
* Like really weak, heals 5000 when tanks are now over 150 000?
* Embrace cannot be manually targeted for that one BLM that refuse to move from the boss entrance.
* Is relegate to being a flying container for cooldowns, lowest being 60s.
* Fey Union, Dissipation and Summon Seraph all just removes her from the gameboard for their duration. And these are all end-of-expansion skills we are supposed to be excited for.
* Some serious delay and eating skills when using Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination and Fey Blessing, all that SE fixed in StB.

It is such a unique thing that transcends gimmick: Lily was part of the job. I found it completely obtuse people calling her "free heals" back in ARR because she was an extension of the job to make up for your mortarboard-wearing ass was crap at filling up healthbars. It flowed and worked really well. With how slow and clunky the new pet action system is, I am so deeply saddended that is what she turned into: Free heals. Because I cannot depend on her reacting in time and need to plan that Fey Illumination will be cast sometime the next decade and is just happy when the action actually triggers.

What's wrong with the Fairy for SCH is that SE took an unqiue approach to doing a healing job, being responsible for an additional healtbar and a hotbar you could use whenever, and just removed it leaving us with incredibly blue-scholarly-balls.

Fuck, looking at the Job page one would even think we'd be doing some bonding or even have some unique animation that makes us grow to love her even more with her perching on our shoulder, sleeping on the mortarboard, taking her out for treats after a long battle or doing a little high-five after a hypothetical Fey Gauge Beam dump blaster or LB3, which of course the lazy sod Seraph steals the show from out of nowhere and Lily gets put in the backseat for Tonberry melodrama two expansions straight.

What drips ink on my codex is we even have a zone full of fairies, a dungeon full of fairies, a fucking massive fairy boss, a fairy tribe and a fucking MSQ main character is a sassy fairy, that at no single point during the massive story even points to our flying fairy friend hoovering next to us who's been there all the time going "Oh hey, you have a fairy too. Maybe we'd explore this unique theme if our creators had known this job existed and wasn't trying to design it into grey goo so dense not even sunlight can escape its blandness."

It's small grudges to be sure. But when you keep making a million tiny mistakes that turns into a fucking gargantuar mistake both in core gameplay and story that just weighs you down psychologically for daring to be invested in the job. So I surprise myself to find I had even more room for resent of SE's apathy and super-safe approach toward the job.

What's wrong with the Fairy is that it's micro-management gameplay has wholly been replaced by pressing Broil III.

Hang on.

There we go, that's a better representation of what the job entails. "This could be you! One day you'll look at Broil III the same way this Scholar looks at it because we'll make you press it until you scream for mercy."

Me an my little Broil III, together we'll broil wildlife, broil dungeons, broil Ifrit, broil Ultimate, broil Nidhogg, broil future Tataru's Broilers in Twinning and finally broil the thrilling conclusion of six years worths worth of storytelling. We'll broil more broiler than ever broiled before. Im gonna keep it up until the word becomes as meaningless as "balance."

[Limonia]

I thought Selene should be your offensive fairy.

I would've made silent dusk also an AoE attack, nothing huge maybe 60 potency or so
Made her AoE esuna also be an AoE heal, kind of like you suggested, so she'd have some sort of healing (though I would make it do less than WD over time to keep it balanced and such)
and then either kept fey wind, or make it some other sort of offensive spell (since SS screws up a lot of classes now, including SCH)

And keep EOS the way she was so that was Eos = defensive/prog fairy and Selene = offensive/farm fairy.

I think your suggestion is exactly what doesn't work though.
It's again something only very good healers can handle properly.
You can't force a bad player to use Eos during progression or similar content where players struggle (it could even be a new normal mode trial or new alliance raid with a lot of first-timers). Back when we still had her, I saw so many players use Selene because they read she's better for dps, even though the group was struggling.

I'd rather have either both of them useful for healing, or at least a system a little similar to SMN where changing pets is an oGCD, so you can switch between the faeries according to what you need.

[Heilstos]

Hey together,

What is wrong the fairy is she has no weight, agency or gravitas. At the writing moment Eos, Selene, our Lily is suffering from:

* Being immortal
That was an important change! Despite the increased resistance of the pets (Egi, Eos), they have turned in fights. These changes should benefit a scholar rather than being drawn into the negative.

* Has two unique summons, but makes no difference.
You can call this a fairy outfit. But have fun aside; This is purely about the story that the fairy is no longer the leftover box on CD from the scholar and the scholar ACTIVE commands the fairy, which is the case with the summoner.

* Each summon has five, together TEN, hotbar slots that currently goes unused and is locked
The fairy controls must unfortunately get for a point that I will address below. In my understanding, the CDs ACTIVE by the scholar should give the focus on the scholar rather than the fairy.

* Untargetable for heals and shield spread
This is a point that we as a community got involved with. Because "smart" scholars have deliberately exploited the fairy's weak vulnerability to maintain the power of the shields. This Forum des Chesses has been fixed and the scholar can distribute his shield himself. What is an innovation in SHB.

* Cannot be used in stack mechanics
It should be understandable that I do not take advantage of the fairy's weak vulnerability in order to see the fairy as a "new man". The magic word here is balance. The fairy is your extended arm and no longer with players.

* Has to play second-fiddle to SE's whimsical SMN pet changes
Mhhh the second violin is by no means the scholar. The difference to the old skillset is that you have to try to heal actively with the fairy and not to let the fairy as slave of your own decadence do everything and to cut Indum out every 30 seconds.
* Embrace is really weak.
Mhhh to call the fairy for 200 mana and then the good one only heals with "ONLY" 150 Hp all the time. What should the WHM and AST say, who have to renew their 200 hot for every 500 mana for every 18-21 sec. So if you had to transfer constant mana to the fairy mana, I would understand this point. So it is really great for the scholar to have hots all the time for cutting 50 HP. In addition, Aetherpact from 70 is an improved form of heal with 400 HP.

* Like really weak, heals 5000 when tanks are now over 150 000?
Every healer is doing that right now. However, SE has given every healer enough tools to heal this damage. Yes, you can also use a physick with a lustrate as a staple
* Embrace cannot be manually targeted for that one BLM that refuse to move from the boss entrance.
And that is absolutely not true here. Because the fairy has a priority system. The fairy always heals the target that is closest and hurts! So you have to give the fairy ACTIVE the command to move to the destination. It is quite understandable and if said BLM bothers you every time, then heal the fix fully then the fairy heals the tank again. Here, as a scholar, you have to make an ACTIVE decision as to which goal should be healed without using the Embrace + Broil Macro. These types of students also existed. ^^

* Is relegate to being a flying container for cooldowns, lowest being 60s.
I don't understand that this is considered a negative. Most Heiler CDs are not badly recorded at 60 sec. And the fairy is no longer a remnant because the commands are given ACTIVE by you.

* Fey Union, Dissipation and Summon Seraph all just removes her from the gameboard for their duration. And these are all end-of-expansion skills we are supposed to be excited for.
I do find that aspect. How far can I get by without the fairy? Although I would not pay Aetherpact here because it is actively seen in the. The Seraph does a good job properly.

* Some serious delay and eating skills when using Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination and Fey Blessing, all that SE fixed in StB.
I agree with you on this point. When the crafters can keep their buff food until the craft is done. Then the seraph should remain until the CD has been awarded.

All in all, the scholar feels more ACTIVE than ever before, because the fairy is a sidekick and not the active actor. That you only cast Broil is logical. Because these skills are gap sensors unless you level. ^^ I understand many players who have enjoyed passive decadence thanks to the strength of the fairy. However, one must now consider that the proportion of personal responsibility is now greater than in the event that an AI decreases its main competence. Doesn't that make it appealing to say "hey, I did it" as "hey you're in our raid because you only have Eos!"? And think of "Bring the Player" as "Bring Eos" because otherwise SE and could make any content possible with "trust".

[Recon1o6]

My experience was people never used selene because her silence was pitiful at best in sb and her other ability didn't make up for eos freeing up healing for the scholar so they could bring their significant dps. It wasn't top tier, but it was comfortable

heavensward and arr the fairies were a little bit more mixed usage. But it wouldn't be forcing players to use selene- that would be the player forcing themselves to push out more dps before they had learnt the fight which is the player's fault not the mechanics.

[Payotz]

The fairy controls must unfortunately get for a point that I will address below. In my understanding, the CDs ACTIVE by the scholar should give the focus on the scholar rather than the fairy.
I don't understand that this is considered a negative. Most Heiler CDs are not badly recorded at 60 sec. And the fairy is no longer a remnant because the commands are given ACTIVE by you.
All in all, the scholar feels more ACTIVE than ever before

Yeah no. SCH was a lot more engaging back in SB due to the fact that the Fairy was on its own GCD. It's a lot more "Active" due to the fact that the Fairy and the Scholar does not hinder each other.
In the previous expansions, you could micromanage the living hell out of the Fairy. You move it here and cast Whispering Dawn while you're casting shields. You can Illumination WHILE you're casting shields.
You can use Embrace manually to trigger the PLD's Veil, you can use Embrace to top up that out of range manually. You had CONTROL over the fairy.

In ShB, guess what. All of the Fairy skills are on your OWN GCD. If that's not bad enough, your Fairy skills GCDs are literally MACROS. Literally every Fairy skill GCD is coded like this:

/micon "Whispering Dawn"
/bread
/wait 3
/petanimation bread
/petaction "Whispering Dawn"

It literally takes a LONG ASS TIME to get the fairy to cast ANYTHING. They added needless clunk to the class, replaced all the pet actions with GCD macros (that does not work 100% of the time) when the old system of literally just using the fairy skills is SO MUCH BETTER.

Like they trust their Pet AI SO MUCH that they pretty much took away the control from the Fairy (the auto embraces, the GCD macros) and put it into the mercy of the GC Squadron AI.

God I had hoped to actually switch to Scholar this expansion because I missed the micro management aspect of the Fairy, where you had to think of two GCD systems rather than one.

I want old Scholar back.

[Gemina]

I'm not sure why anyone would expect anything. The underlying issues with healers is too vast to be taken care of with a mid-expansion patch. I wouldn't expect anything like that until 6.0, and even then it feels like the devs have the healers right where they want them.

Until they come out with a formal statement saying that they know about and want to address these issues, I would keep your hopes at a very reasonable expectation. Mentioning anything you would like to see them do is basically setting yourself up for disappointment. Save yourself the trouble.

[SpiralMask]

@Payotz As well as seraph (and frey and queen turret) having unskippable entry animations that cut their listed time by about a quarter of what's advertised in the description (leading to issues of them not getting all their casts if you're on the wrong server tick and other weirdness)

[Adventica6]

Make embrace heal more than a non hq potion would be a start.