Scholar Rework Idea

[AnotherPerson]

I'm in favor of keeping aetherflow, I like the mechanic and the lore behind it. I just think there's an issue with Energy Drain and Aetherflow healing being a tradeoff because people will always try to not use aetherflow healing for more DPS. If the devs want people to use aetherflow healing more, I think the best bet is to make aetherflow healing sacrifice less DPS or cost no DPS to encourage its usage - in other words, separate Energy Drain from consuming aetherflow and Ruin II/other weave skill not a DPS loss to use constantly for healing. However, there must be a mechanic where extra aetherflow stacks will be consumed if not used for healing currently, or otherwise we would have the same issue as 5.0 Scholar where there would be times healing is not needed and scholars have aetherflow charges not being used. I don't see this issue fixed by 5.0 so maybe 6.0?

In that regard, why not just have extra Aetherflow stacks become a faerie-specific aetherflow charge? As of now, the Faerie Gauge is only used for Fey Union and Fey Blessing, which usually leads to overcapping Fey Gauge. After all, Fey Blessing is used every 60 seconds to consume 10 Gauge and Fey Union only gets benefit when you don't interrupt the tether (except you have Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Dissipation, and Summon Seraph that all interrupt the Fey Union tether). This would lead to the situation where the Fey Union skill either consume a lot of Faerie Gauge or none at all. I don't think we need more aetherflow skills that give more Faerie Gauge. In fact, I rather these two skills get removed and we get a skill that converts some Fey Gauge into a faerie specific aetherflow charge skill instead.

As for Faerie Specific Aetherflow charge skills, you can consume a charge to activate your own version of Whispering Dawn / Consolation. The key point is that this version isn't reliant on the Faerie activating this skill, but the scholar itself activating this skill. I think this change would allow Dissipation to be used more for actually healing as even though the faerie disappears, the scholar will still be able to access some strong faerie healing abilities in addition to their own aetherflow healing abilities while having more complexity in the aetherflow system for what aetherflow skill best suits the situation now.

This change however, still doesn't change the fact that scholar is lacking non-punishing weave windows and more ways to attack other than Broil III and Biolysis. After all, if it still takes a weave window to move resources around and the only option to weave is a consistent loss of DPS, people will still try to avoid using it entirely. In this regard, I hope they give some more DPS skills instead of just making Ruin II less DPS punishing.

[Ceasaria]

I have a simple and great fix for Energy Drain.
Instead of costing Aetherflow stack, it should cost Fairy gauge.

So people will use all their Aetherflow stacks on healing (which should please Yoshida).
Fairy Gauge will become very useful (adjust Fey Blessing and Aetherpact to give them more weight to be competitive with Energy Drain).
SCH is rewarded by using his heal giving him an access to more dps.
Dissipation will become also more rewarding to use.

Note : Fairy gauge will appear at the same level as Energy Drain then.

[Absurdity]

I have a simple and great fix for Energy Drain.
Instead of costing Aetherflow stack, it should cost Fairy gauge.

So people will use all their Aetherflow stacks on healing (which should please Yoshida).
Fairy Gauge will become very useful (adjust Fey Blessing and Aetherpact to give them more weight to be competitive with Energy Drain).
SCH is rewarded by using his heal giving him an access to more dps.
Dissipation will become also more rewarding to use.

Note : Fairy gauge will appear at the same level as Energy Drain then.

There is a very small problem with that design. If ED costs fairy gauge instead of aetherflow then you won't actually have anything to spend said aetherflow on until level 50 and therefore nothing to generate fairy gauge.

[Brandedblade]

So what the devs want is for people to use Aetherflow to heal, but with how the damage patterns are designed it's inevitable that in most content that you'll need a way to dump excess aetherflow and thus not need to heal fully with it? I get loving it from the perspective of "it's fun to trade off healing for damage" because I agree that is fun, in a game with more demand thrown on their healers that's actually an engaging risk vs reward mechanic, but this isn't that kind of game. "trade off healing for damage" will always inevitably devolve into "rarely heal always damage" with how scripted fights are. At this point they might as well scrap the mechanic since the devs are never going to be happy with it because of the dissonance that exists between players and the devs.

[Ceasaria]

There is a very small problem with that design. If ED costs fairy gauge instead of aetherflow then you won't actually have anything to spend said aetherflow on until level 50 and therefore nothing to generate fairy gauge.

Hmm, Lustrate ?

If this change happens, the potency of some healing actions should be lowered to compensate.

[Absurdity]

Hmm, Lustrate ?

If this change happens, the potency of some healing actions should be lowered to compensate.

Yeah, nevermind. I forgot that they changed all 3 skills, ED, AF and Lustrate to level 45 now.

[Grimoire-M]

In my opinion Aetherflow should be restored to Arcanist regardless with it and Energy Drain would be learned at level 10 for both Scholar and Summoner. I don’t see why the skill should ever be removed either. It can be indirectly nerfed by the weave tax on Ruin II, but I also feel Ruin II should also be buffed to make it more appropriate to weave Energy Drain by itself instead of clipping it as its used currently.

What I’d prefer to do is add another DPS oGCD to weave alongside heals that doesn’t consume Aetherflow but keys off of it. Something like a 30s, 3 charge, 300 potency Ability that has its Cooldown reduced by 5s every time the SCH uses a healing spell or action or spends Fey Gauge. This also indirectly nerfs Energy Drain but doesn’t discourage using it or make it feel less impactful. Between a 240 potency Ruin II and that every Energy Drain’s effectively losing 100 potency, making the initial 150 potency more justifiable.

[Komaru_Tatoro]

gonna post a bit of what i wrote on another thread here:

sch is becoming my fav healer in term of how actively engage it can be. broil when standing still and ruin2 to weave and movement.
totally love art of war too, for it being an instant cast. so good in expert dungeon. since the recent 2 expert dungeon's trash mob aoe dont hit for much, i just stand in the middle of the pack without moving out of aoe and just art of war all day and use aoe heal ogcd if i ever need heals.

i really love the sch kit right now but i do have a few complains. 1st, sch mp can dip pretty low if like dps isnt doing their job and trash mobs isnt dying fast enough. thus spending alot of mp doing art of war. 2nd, death feels way more punish compare to the other 2 healers due to mp regen (i kinds been using lucid on cd to keep mp up and it might be in cd when i die making it harder to recover after res) and needing to summon fairy for using some of those ogcd heal ablilities after being res.
they need to make summoning fairy be instant like summoner instead of cast time. and make energy drain gain a bit more mp or something.
3rd, god please they need to up lustrate heal potency. its just way too weak for the amount of hp tank has now. now i just use excog for ppl that have low hp. way better use of aetherflow than lustrate.
back in 2.x, sch was my main because lustrate was a 30% hp heal. hw changed it (i switched to whm because it still got bene and also tetra), it was fine for back when hp wasnt that high. now with tanks hitting 200k hp, the lustrate potency heal is way way weak.

as many suggested, they do need to rework the fairy guage usage.
in dungeon, there is times i really dont even need to use it for fairy tether and its at 100. and when i do want to use it, it might not be full. so il say the guage resource usage/management need some rework to make better use of it.

as for 6.0, i kinda hope they have some kind of new ability that can refresh the cd of some abilities (excog or indom?? or even fey illum?). akind to summoner dreadwyrm stance refrshing tridiaster.

[IDontPetLalas]

gonna post a bit of what i wrote on another thread here:

sch is becoming my fav healer in term of how actively engage it can be. broil when standing still and ruin2 to weave and movement.
totally love art of war too, for it being an instant cast. so good in expert dungeon. since the recent 2 expert dungeon's trash mob aoe dont hit for much, i just stand in the middle of the pack without moving out of aoe and just art of war all day and use aoe heal ogcd if i ever need heals.

i really love the sch kit right now but i do have a few complains. 1st, sch mp can dip pretty low if like dps isnt doing their job and trash mobs isnt dying fast enough. thus spending alot of mp doing art of war. 2nd, death feels way more punish compare to the other 2 healers due to mp regen (i kinds been using lucid on cd to keep mp up and it might be in cd when i die making it harder to recover after res) and needing to summon fairy for using some of those ogcd heal ablilities after being res.
they need to make summoning fairy be instant like summoner instead of cast time. and make energy drain gain a bit more mp or something.
3rd, god please they need to up lustrate heal potency. its just way too weak for the amount of hp tank has now. now i just use excog for ppl that have low hp. way better use of aetherflow than lustrate.
back in 2.x, sch was my main because lustrate was a 30% hp heal. hw changed it (i switched to whm because it still got bene and also tetra), it was fine for back when hp wasnt that high. now with tanks hitting 200k hp, the lustrate potency heal is way way weak.

as many suggested, they do need to rework the fairy guage usage.
in dungeon, there is times i really dont even need to use it for fairy tether and its at 100. and when i do want to use it, it might not be full. so il say the guage resource usage/management need some rework to make better use of it.

as for 6.0, i kinda hope they have some kind of new ability that can refresh the cd of some abilities (excog or indom?? or even fey illum?). akind to summoner dreadwyrm stance refrshing tridiaster.

Interesting, SCH is no longer my favourite healer and you just listed some of the reasons why. Some of those reasons would not even be necessarily difficult to fix , but that are very annoying (such as fairy summoning after death).

I would hope that they don't look at the summoner for inspiration - I do realize that summoner is an effective job however it fulfills a different purpose, it is definitely more complex (some would argue it's not ever well done , since it changes so much as well levelling too), and I wouldn't want most of its design principles introduced into SCH.