SCH, Energy Drain, and 6.0

[SweetPete]

I've always liked the idea of SCH having two modes from FFXI, one grimmoire for Enfeebling/Damage, the other for Buffing/Healing. In FFXIV we had the fairies that acted in that way, kinda. Hopefully we go back to our summon being meaningful and being tied to significant abilities now that the final opportunity has come to detach ACN/SMN from SCH.

I actually hope scholar turns out to be more support oriented like astrologian. It would suck if Astro is the only buffer of the healers then it will basically secure its spot in raid groups for sure. I hope they make Selene relevant again. Just make the faeries in general very powerful at the cost of the scholars own power being nerfed a bit so it’s not op as it was in ARR and HW. There are 4 healers now. So I can’t totally see to bigger types and two selfish dps types. More stratagems will be amazing. We haven’t gotten a new one since HW.

[Anhra]

Not going to happen as pets being targetable/damageable causes more problems than they are worth design side. Tankbusters, Raidwides, and Shared damage attacks have had problematic interactions with pets since 2.0 requiring pet interaction exceptions to be added to pretty much every individual action. Them being non-targets makes things less problematic and easier for the designers.

That's the Point, to make things more difficult. This Game clearly needs more spices into its gameplay, especially on the Healer side.

[Ultimatecalibur]

That's the Point, to make things more difficult. This Game clearly needs more spices into its gameplay, especially on the Healer side.

There is a difference between mechanics being difficult with pets and annoying/cheeseable/breaking with pets. Targetable pets led to the later rather than the former. Multiple consecutive Raidwides in high end fights would often kill Egis and Fairies due to Sustain being unable to keep up forcing resummons (which took 6s to cast then) which heavily impacted both SCH and SMN ability to do their jobs, Ramuh EX for a time did not require tanks to clear due to the Egi/Fairy mercy mitigation (added to help with the former problem) also applying to tankbusters, AoEs that required stacking to survive often ended up weaker than intended due to having 1 or 2 more targets than they were designed for, as targetable entities they caused rendering and targeting issues during large player gatherings such as World Boss FATEs and S-rank hunts, and the Turrets could break fights such as Ifrit EX if they managed to be placed in the wrong place and gained aggro. All of the above and more are why targetable pets are not worth the hassle for mainline jobs*.

*Limited Jobs such as Beastmaster or Puppetmaster having targetable pets wouldn't be as problematic as limited jobs can be allowed to break the game more.

[Anhra]

There is a difference between mechanics being difficult with pets and annoying/cheeseable/breaking with pets. Targetable pets led to the later rather than the former. Multiple consecutive Raidwides in high end fights would often kill Egis and Fairies due to Sustain being unable to keep up forcing resummons (which took 6s to cast then) which heavily impacted both SCH and SMN ability to do their jobs, Ramuh EX for a time did not require tanks to clear due to the Egi/Fairy mercy mitigation (added to help with the former problem) also applying to tankbusters, AoEs that required stacking to survive often ended up weaker than intended due to having 1 or 2 more targets than they were designed for, as targetable entities they caused rendering and targeting issues during large player gatherings such as World Boss FATEs and S-rank hunts, and the Turrets could break fights such as Ifrit EX if they managed to be placed in the wrong place and gained aggro. All of the above and more are why targetable pets are not worth the hassle for mainline jobs*.

*Limited Jobs such as Beastmaster or Puppetmaster having targetable pets wouldn't be as problematic as limited jobs can be allowed to break the game more.

The matter of Summons was from my point of view only dropped because the developers were lazy to give it more attention thab the matter deserved from their perspective. If Pets had decent defense values that dont result into them being oneshotted, and ways to properly heal them (like being affected by AoE Heals and turning SMN Physick skill into a Healing skill for Egi's) it always could have been manageable for anyone with half a brain.

Saying nonsense like "theyre not worth the hassle" only shows how ignorant and little people like you care about the game having a properly functioning and complex combat system, which is why Healers are in their current situation in the first place.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The matter of Summons was from my point of view only dropped because the developers were lazy to give it more attention thab the matter deserved from their perspective. If Pets had decent defense values that dont result into them being oneshotted, and ways to properly heal them (like being affected by AoE Heals and turning SMN Physick skill into a Healing skill for Egi's) it always could have been manageable for anyone with half a brain.

This post more showcases how little players like you understand the difficulties of game design and balance and fail to understand that the ability to bring additional persistent entities to combat has been one of the most difficult things to balance since the RPG came into existence 47 years ago in 1974. Thousands of game designers during those 47 years have run into similar problems and pretty much all of them have had similar troubles and many of them gave up far less time than the 6 years of work the ffxiv devs put into SMN, SCH and MCH.

You also seem to lack a sense of history and are unaware that most of your suggestions were attempted and failed. It is not lazy to fight to get something to work for 6 years, determine that the current system is untenable and then seek alternative methods to implement.

Saying nonsense like "theyre not worth the hassle" only shows how ignorant and little people like you care about the game having a properly functioning and complex combat system, which is why Healers are in their current situation in the first place.

Actually I seem to care and understand more about how the game functions than you do. I understand that the boredom both Tanks and Healers currently experience in content comes mostly from their kits being incongruous with what fights are design to do. Targetable and damageable pets will not fix any problems and are more likely to reintroduce or create new problems.

[EaMett]

This post more showcases how little players like you understand the difficulties of game design and balance and fail to understand that the ability to bring additional persistent entities to combat has been one of the most difficult things to balance since the RPG came into existence 47 years ago in 1974. Thousands of game designers during those 47 years have run into similar problems and pretty much all of them have had similar troubles and many of them gave up far less time than the 6 years of work the ffxiv devs put into SMN, SCH and MCH.

I'm interested in hearing more about this because I also fail to see the difficulties here. At the very least in balancing. It's a pretty simple affair to duplicate the owner's stats and then balance around the pair as a single entity with a lower gcd. Things do get a little more complicated when you need to factor in pet survivability but nothing keeps them from making the pet invulnerable.
Hell, I've made programmable spreadsheets to test this against different encounter designs and I don't have a tenth of SE's resources (including potential pet swaps, that added mobility, etc.).
I just assumed that SE never built tools for balancing (balancing healers at least) and that's why their game design efforts fell short.

Of course, I'm aware that I was at liberty of testing whichever design encounters I wanted. Whereas SE are stuck with their narrow definition.. But that sounds more like it's part of the problem.

[Anhra]

This post more showcases how little players like you understand the difficulties of game design and balance and fail to understand that the ability to bring additional persistent entities to combat has been one of the most difficult things to balance since the RPG came into existence 47 years ago in 1974. Thousands of game designers during those 47 years have run into similar problems and pretty much all of them have had similar troubles and many of them gave up far less time than the 6 years of work the ffxiv devs put into SMN, SCH and MCH.

You also seem to lack a sense of history and are unaware that most of your suggestions were attempted and failed. It is not lazy to fight to get something to work for 6 years, determine that the current system is untenable and then seek alternative methods to implement.

Actually I seem to care and understand more about how the game functions than you do. I understand that the boredom both Tanks and Healers currently experience in content comes mostly from their kits being incongruous with what fights are design to do. Targetable and damageable pets will not fix any problems and are more likely to reintroduce or create new problems.

There are plenty of other MMOs outside of FFXIV which successfully inplimented Summoners and Pet based Jobs, some to which persist even to this day. Hell my very first MMO (Rappelz Online, launched in 2006) was one that had pet-based combat as its core feature (every Class could have a summoned creature)and even had summoner-based Classes run two creatures at the same time where every Creature had their own Stats, Skills and could even be equiped with Armor and Weapons and balance worked out just fine.

But back on the matter at hand, just because a idea has been dropped at some point, doesn't necessarily mean that the Idea itself is bad. Developers are capable of making mistakes as well, PvP in its current state is a prime example of that, allow me to remind you, since you seem to be quite understanding, that the changes which made PvP to what it is today, killed off 90% of the former PvP community.

More importantly, just because it is a technical issue on their part, it shouldn't mean that a idea should be shot off just because it causes "inconveniences" on the developers side, its their Job to keep things interesting to their Playerbase after all.

[Hellstorm]

The problem I fear is how do the balance the jobs. Ast is still going be a buffer and whm is the king of heals and dmg. Which means in order to balance you need sage and sch to fill these 2 roles for barrier; one being superior in dmg and heals over the other being more party support. I feel as it stand now sch does not fill either of the boxes.

[Grimoire-M]

The problem I fear is how do the balance the jobs. Ast is still going be a buffer and whm is the king of heals and dmg. Which means in order to balance you need sage and sch to fill these 2 roles for barrier; one being superior in dmg and heals over the other being more party support. I feel as it stand now sch does not fill either of the boxes.

The way I see it SCH and SAG will convert to full potency GCD shields ala Divine Benison, and they should be tuned to be the strongest singular form of mitigation against single hits. Currently the strongest form of mitigation across any role is Addle. Mostly due to rate and applicability. Its sole weakness is when the boss jumps or when untargetable adds are the sources of a mechanic. Tactician/Reprisal are equally as good as Sacred Soil, which is also better than Succor on single hits currently. Even Veil/Shake it off are stronger in some situations.

[Liam_Harper]

The problem I fear is how do the balance the jobs. Ast is still going be a buffer and whm is the king of heals and dmg.

I imagine this impression is one reason why WHM remains popular to this day, but I'm baffled where it comes from. WHM is rarely ever the king of heals and damage. It even has to lose a lot of damage to do strong healing and vice versa. AST is the king of everything right now compared to WHM. Both SCH and WHM will need a viable niche going into Endwalker.