Want healers to be more accessible? Add "Quickened Aetherflow" back in + more

[Allegor]

i agree the game should reward good play. i kinda wish they moved the freecure and enhanced benefic procs to the dps spells

That'd be nice, they're pretty worthless traits past ARR/mid HW levels.

[MorganG]

The fact that people view Dissipation as a DPS gain when it locks us out of our healing kit should be proof enough that it's a badly designed skill.

NO OTHER HEALER is locked out of half their kit for any of their abilities (let alone their "healing buff" abilities). It's an obvious coincidence how we're both last in DPS and HPS.

ED isn't good design, but having ED is better than not having a DPS sink for AF. If the dev team are set on their current course of action they need to give all healers DPS incentives to heal. Scholar choosing DPS or Heal is a flaw in the current design that can only be mended by either reverting SCH design or reverting encounter design.

[Billythepancake]

The fact that people view Dissipation as a DPS gain when it locks us out of our healing kit should be proof enough that it's a badly designed skill.

NO OTHER HEALER is locked out of half their kit for any of their abilities (let alone their "healing buff" abilities). It's an obvious coincidence how we're both last in DPS and HPS.

ED isn't good design, but having ED is better than not having a DPS sink for AF. If the dev team are set on their current course of action they need to give all healers DPS incentives to heal. Scholar choosing DPS or Heal is a flaw in the current design that can only be mended by either reverting SCH design or reverting encounter design.

I disagree. Don't get me wrong ShB SCH is a disaster, 100%, but the risk factor is not why it's a disaster. SB SCH was fun because Selene had a risk, Miasma II had a risk, bane had a risk, energy drain had a risk. SCH having a risk/reward gameplay isn't a bad thing, in fact I'd argue the worst part about dissipation is that there isn't enough risk tied to it. The fairy is so useless that getting rid of her for 20 seconds doesn't hurt you. I have never used dissipation and then regret using it because I couldn't use a fairy heal, because the only fairy heal worth using at this point is seraph, the rest, sure, have uses, but they don't have any sort of impact. The fairy should be more useful and actively make a difference so using dissipation has some sort of cost.

ED being tied to aetherflow is a great thing and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. It makes you think. You have to actually think "is this heal worth using, can I get away with using ED here" you are punished for being too greedy but you are rewarded for using your resources smartly. I'd argue aetherflow on SCH is better than on SMN because it actually has a purpose for SCH. SMN will never not spend aetherflow on fester, I don't even know why they have it, just give fester stacks that they need to dump instead of aetherflow and their gameplay would not change.

again, ShB SCH is a mess, but it's not because it has risk/reward design. It's because it's had too much stripped away from it because SE doesn't know how to balance healers in any other way.

[PondHollow]

Agreed with OP, and Scholar would be both busier and more fun with more cooldown flexibility and interactions as well

• Let Aetherflow take 15s off pet abilities, and let them accumulate 2 charges
• Let Eos'/Selene's abilities take 18s off Dissipation and 12s off Summon Seraph

[bundythenoob]

I actually think bringing back this perk would fix most of SCHs current problems with downtime, as well as its weaker healing potencies.

STB SCH could get away with having weaker healing due to its strong DPS, allowing for increased mitigation via offence.
SHB SCH doesn't have much (if any) offence left, and none of its healing spells were strengthened to match the lowered offence, which leaves it feeling weaker compared to WHM and AST when looking at their lv 1-70 kits.

With this perk back, SCH will have more access to healing abilities, as well as more EDs to deal damage with, bringing it a little closer in line with the other 2 healers. this would be a quick and easy fix that SE could implement before 6.0, in which I would hope they bring back the glory of battle medics.

[MorganG]

I disagree. Don't get me wrong ShB SCH is a disaster, 100%, but the risk factor is not why it's a disaster. SB SCH was fun because Selene had a risk, Miasma II had a risk, bane had a risk, energy drain had a risk. SCH having a risk/reward gameplay isn't a bad thing, in fact I'd argue the worst part about dissipation is that there isn't enough risk tied to it. The fairy is so useless that getting rid of her for 20 seconds doesn't hurt you. I have never used dissipation and then regret using it because I couldn't use a fairy heal, because the only fairy heal worth using at this point is seraph, the rest, sure, have uses, but they don't have any sort of impact. The fairy should be more useful and actively make a difference so using dissipation has some sort of cost.

On this we definitely agree. Lily is the core of our class identity, and while I feel like I get a lot of mileage out of Fey Illumination and Whispering Dawn as well as Seraph, the skills tied to the Faerie Gauge are mostly trash. Fey Union is never the AoE heal you worry is up, that's Indom. Aetherpact is Regen that costs Faerie Gauge and Embrace casts, and unless you're really worried about your tank you almost never use it.

Risk/Reward I can get behind. I mean, Healer Greed is practically a meme for a reason. But when an ability literally just locks you out of what's supposedly the core feature of your class it feels gross and unintuitive. If Dissipation and Seraph were tied together, as I've seen other posters suggest, the ability would feel better. If Dissipation ended early if you used all stacks before the timer ran out it would feel better. If SE made Lily more powerful , even, it would feel better.

[Eloah]

I like how in ShB they tried to bake the faerie more into our kit, but she mostly feels very disjointed. I mean when this expansion started, there were times you didn't even notice if she desummoned, because she was removed from the party list. Yeah smart move SE, that goes to show you how much she's needed.

And her skills, while useful, at times feel niche. The Fey gauge was a "decent" addition, I guess, it fit in better than the initial lily system. But using the skills can feel clunky at times, because of the delay. Additionally, too often I find myself with too much gauge, or too little, because of how little it can actually heal when needed, or how little healing is actually required. And at those points it's either a Broil spam or an Adlo/Physick spam. And neither of those is fun.

If you ask me SE needs to focus on what makes a SCH, the faerie and shields. Make the faerie mean something, make her skills worth it. Make the Fey gauge not feel like an all or nothing gauge. Learn from the Egi-Assaults, lol. And give us more shielding options. We finally got stackable shields and SCH can only really use one. Give us ways to pile on the shields.

And please rework Dissipation. It's a bad skill in both design and execution. Turn that into a stackable shielding skill maybe.

[YusiKha]

I like how in ShB they tried to bake the faerie more into our kit

Personally I feel like they went the opposite way. Her actions being independent of your casts made her feel more like she was a pet that you commanded.
Now she just feels like oGCDs with an unknown delay and chance to ghost. Yeah, her skills are now forced onto our hotbars, but we could still put them on our hotbars before too.

If you ask me SE needs to focus on what makes a SCH, the faerie and shields.
give us more shielding options. We finally got stackable shields and SCH can only really use one. Give us ways to pile on the shields.

SCH isn't really a 'shield healer'. Not only are its shields weaker & less frequent than AST's (Noct Opposition is waay better than Consolation), but are completely detrimental to the way that the game is currently played (casting shields for anything other than lethal damge is a 100% waste with 0 damage return).
If you want shielding options so badly, how's about instead of just increasing a health buffer (which square wants us to avoid doing - see the Critlo change), we get skills that are more tactical and interesting.
How about status effects that reduce incoming damage instead, a strong single target effect that we can spread with Deployment. How about a defensive boost that breaks if the target's HP drops too low.
Just- Something that you need to put thought or planning into using over just 'bbbrr hit points go up, status goes on'.

[Absurdity]

Personally I feel like they went the opposite way. Her actions being independent of your casts made her feel more like she was a pet that you commanded.
Now she just feels like oGCDs with an unknown delay and chance to ghost. Yeah, her skills are now forced onto our hotbars, but we could still put them on our hotbars before too.

Not only did the SB fairy feel more responsive, she also required no weaving windows to execute her abilities because she was a separate entity which made using her a lot more flexible. It's almost hilarious how they "improved" the SCH fairy by undoing all the fixes they made to it in SB.

SCH isn't really a 'shield healer'. Not only are its shields weaker & less frequent than AST's (Noct Opposition is waay better than Consolation), but are completely detrimental to the way that the game is currently played (casting shields for anything other than lethal damge is a 100% waste with 0 damage return).
If you want shielding options so badly, how's about instead of just increasing a health buffer (which square wants us to avoid doing - see the Critlo change), we get skills that are more tactical and interesting.

That's why I don't really see the reason they nerfed critlo spread. Sure it was powerful but that was the WHOLE POINT. You gambled on a potential crit adlo to completely negate the next damage to the party which meant no healing was required at all. Now your shields are so weak that you will have to spend resources or gcds to heal anyway so you might as well not bother.

[Semirhage]

That's why I don't really see the reason they nerfed critlo spread. Sure it was powerful but that was the WHOLE POINT.

Recitation.
1) The SCH community had been asking for a guaranteed-crit ability for years
2) The community was (with fair regularity) abusing critlo spread to ignore mechanics
3) Squeenix doesn't like it when their mechanics get foiled

Put those three together, and you get nerfed, guaranteed critlo.