Scholar feels kinda wonky

[Deceptus]

SCH is clunky because every single thing about it contradicts itself.

Its lore is supposed to be this tactician healer that relies on it's fairy for support. Yet it's Adlo has been nerfed, it's fairy has been nerfed, it's dps abilities have been nerfed in favor of reactive healing.

Then, it's capstone skills directly contradict each other and aren't even needed in 90% of content.

Atherpact locks it out of doing anything else.
Dissipate removes the fairy entirely and it's +healing affects all of 2 SCH Spells. Spells most people say you shouldn't be using anyway. But Deceptus, You can use those stacks to Energy Drain! Great, a 450 Potency attack on a 3 minute CD. Not exactly strong. But Deceptus, You can use those stacks to Lustrate! If you're in a situation where Lustrate is needed that badly, you failed as a SCH.
Seraph has been a clunky mess since it was implemented. You'd think that the abilities under it would somehow be stronger because the fairy becomes stronger right? WRONG.

Whispering Dawn turns into Angel's Whisper and is exactly the same.
Fey Illumination turns into Seraphic Illumination and is exactly the same.

[Jonnycbad]

SCH DPS is objectively higher than its ever been. Baning Bio/Bio 2/Miasma is still weaker than Art of War spam since there's no longer any drop off. Those dots were 20-30 potency each, Art of War is 160 potency. Ruin II is 200 potency now, up from 100 from SB, Dissipation doesn't kill your fairy, so you no longer waste a GCD re-summoning her.

[Absurdity]

SCH DPS is objectively higher than its ever been. Baning Bio/Bio 2/Miasma is still weaker than Art of War spam since there's no longer any drop off. Those dots were 20-30 potency each, Art of War is 160 potency. Ruin II is 200 potency now, up from 100 from SB, Dissipation doesn't kill your fairy, so you no longer waste a GCD re-summoning her.

Well, duh. Of course it's higher than it's ever been, we're lvl 80 now. Bio and Misma spread is only weaker than AoW if you don't factor in Miasma 2 which was 100 potency + another 100 potency over time and Shadowflare.

Ruin 2's buff is nice but it only brings it up to the same potency as Miasma 2 was in StB which was always the superior option for weaving back then. Combine that with it only being a 70 potency gain over Broil 3 if you weave in an Energy Drain and an 80 potency loss without ED + the fact that we have less Aetherflow over the course of a fight than we did in StB and you can see the issue.


This isn't to say that SCH is godawful, it's just incredibly uninteresting to play. A lot of it's kit is rarely ever even utilized and spending 5 minutes out of an 8 minutes fight spamming Broil isn't exactly engaging.

[Jonnycbad]

A lot of it's kit is rarely ever even utilized and spending 5 minutes out of an 8 minutes fight spamming Broil isn't exactly engaging.

I'd argue the same can be said for WHM. SCH barely uses Adlo/Succor/Physick/Fey Illumination, Fey Union, Seraph. WHM barely uses Cure, Cure 2, Medica 1, Regen, Fluid Aura, and also spends 5minutes out of an 8 minute fight spamming Glare.

[Absurdity]

I'd argue the same can be said for WHM. SCH barely uses Adlo/Succor/Physick/Fey Illumination, Fey Union, Seraph. WHM barely uses Cure, Cure 2, Medica 1, Regen, Fluid Aura, and also spends 5minutes out of an 8 minute fight spamming Glare.

You use Seraph rather frequently because it has the only actually useful shield, an oGCD. But that's exactly the problem, it isn't just SCH that's affected by the current healer design. The only reason it's even more noticeable on SCH is because, unlike WHM, it never had this kind of atrocious gameplay before...also doesn't help that they made the fairy worse with ShB, both in ai behaviour and effectiveness.

[Jonnycbad]

I disagree with your second point. Now that the fairy skills are oGCD, they respond much more readily than ever before, within 1-2 seconds (assuming you didn't queue more than 1 fey skill back-to-back). Before, when Fey skills were just Pet Commands, the fairy might be in the middle of casting Embrace when you used Whispering Dawn. Because the skill wasn't really queued with high priority, often times the fairy would just continue to cast Embrace and you had to tap your pet command multiple times or a macro with multiple instances of the command to force it to the top of her priority. Along with making Embrace an instant cast on anyone <100% HP (previously it was a 2s cast on anyone below 80?%), the skills always activate when pressed, assuming the fairy is not removed from the battlefield (using a Fey skill followed by Dissipation will cause the fairy to be dismissed before the fey skill is used since there's a 1.5s delay, and also if you use Consolation or otherwise when Seraph has < 3s remaining since she uses Seraphic Veil every GCD.

[EaMett]

I disagree with your second point. Now that the fairy skills are oGCD, they respond much more readily than ever before, within 1-2 seconds (assuming you didn't queue more than 1 fey skill back-to-back). Before, when Fey skills were just Pet Commands, the fairy might be in the middle of casting Embrace when you used Whispering Dawn. Because the skill wasn't really queued with high priority, often times the fairy would just continue to cast Embrace and you had to tap your pet command multiple times or a macro with multiple instances of the command to force it to the top of her priority. Along with making Embrace an instant cast on anyone <100% HP (previously it was a 2s cast on anyone below 80?%), the skills always activate when pressed, assuming the fairy is not removed from the battlefield (using a Fey skill followed by Dissipation will cause the fairy to be dismissed before the fey skill is used since there's a 1.5s delay, and also if you use Consolation or otherwise when Seraph has < 3s remaining since she uses Seraphic Veil every GCD.

First off, Faerie skills at the end of SB were fixed and super responsive (at least as responsive as now if you ignore consolation) since the faerie would stop what she was doing to run your skills. There was no delay and the skills weren't on your own gcd. So saying we had to wait and stuff, although correct for a portion of the expansion, was NOT where SCH was when the expansion hit.

Secondly, embrace used to be something you could factor into your healing because it was powerful enough to carry some healing (some will, rightfully so, argue too powerful). Not only that but you could use it outside of your GCD to proc divine veil for instance or target heal a specific person. Currently, embrace mitigates a bit of tank healing but that's about it and you cannot take it into account at all. That is to say that you ignore it. That's a huge downgrade in both efficacy and gameplay, HUGE. It's akin to the old lily system that you didn't even need to have on your hotbar. If it does something, that's cool, if it doesn't, not a problem since you never factored it in.

Thirdly, consolation is horribly clunky, the fact you say you have to use it within 3s of the end of seraph just shows how long that order takes to execute. And that isn't even approaching the topic of the almost FULL GCD delay before you can even use the skill when summoning seraph or all the ghosting that goes on. And all this with the added constraint of having to use your faerie skills within your weaving windows.

No matter how you spin it, it was better before, by a mile.

Also SCH dps being higher than ever before means absolutely nothing. We're lvl 80, of course it'll be higher. What's important is how SCH dps compares to other healers, and how fun SCH dps is compared to before (it's not).

And while I'm in full rant mode. They didn't even get Ruin II/Broil III potencies right. The Ruin II weaving window potency cost is in the weirdest place, where clipping one oGCD could be a dps gain on using Ruin II depending on your ping.... Or how galvanize gets eaten before catalyze which totally ruins it's synergy with recitation and deployment tactics. In other words, clunky af. It's not like we gave SE this feedback before the expansion launched or anything /s.

[Absurdity]

Along with making Embrace an instant cast on anyone <100% HP (previously it was a 2s cast on anyone below 80?%)

Since EaMett already said most of what I was going to say I'm just gonna add this. Yes Eos uses Embrace at <100% HP now but it's not only irrelevant but actually a nerf.

Before ShB Eos would only use it on someone below 80% HP but it did not matter since you had 100% full control over Embrace itself. You were the one who could at any point decide that Eos should cast it on a specific target, regardless of it's HP and regardless of whether you or your fairy were currently casting something else.

Now you not only have absolutely no control over Embrace, so Eos can just randomly cast it on a dps when you want her to heal the tank and there's nothing you can do about it, but the amount it heals is also pitiful compared to it's old version.


And then there are the little intricacies we lost from Stormblood, like knowing that your fairy doesn't get hit by most mechanics. So you could put a crit adlo on your fairy, wait for an aoe to go off and then deploy your adlo from the fairy at 100% strength for the next mechanic.

[EaMett]

And then there are the little intricacies we lost from Stormblood, like knowing that your fairy doesn't get hit by most mechanics. So you could put a crit adlo on your fairy, wait for an aoe to go off and then deploy your adlo from the fairy at 100% strength for the next mechanic.

Double succor deploy was the best. First time I understood that you could succor the group, get hit by the raid-wide, then deploy the untouched shield off of your faerie to cover a second raid-wide felt great. Like I had crossed a clear line in my skill tier. Looking back at it, it also really highlights how little an upgrade seraph and consolation were for the class since you already basically had half a seraph in stormblood.

While we're on the topic of SCH gameplay, I really regret losing the "melee healer" feel sch had from it's miasma II weaving windows. I feel like that and the absolute slashing of timers to keep track of was what did SCH in. Moreso than the faerie woes.

[KDSilver]

I disagree with your second point. Now that the fairy skills are oGCD, they respond much more readily than ever before

My SB fairy disagree with you.
They fixed the issue and it was fine.