Scholar has the worst design of any job in the game, and here's why.

[Roeshel]

I honestly prefer SCH to WHM. It is more complicated to heal a lot of dmg like WHM but it is possible while you are dps-ing on top of that. SCH doesn't have a lot of burst healing but it is the role with the highest oGCD healing party-wide and single target per minute. If only Energy Drain wasn't tied to consuming an aether stack. Then we wouldn't have been forced to choose between heal or dps in savage.

Dissipation and Energy drain should be revamped. But otherwise, I think sch is nice compared to whm.

Seraph locking you out from Fey Union is not a big deal. It heals the exact same amount distributed half in heal and half in shield. And usually, I think by the time you decide to use seraph, Fey Blessing would already be on CD. You want seraph because you need AoE healing and your ogcds are all used.

I personally would like it more if we had something like a personal seraph buff instead of Dissipation which augments our healing spells and abilities together with the fairy commands, the cure potency is higher while under the effect, and around half of it is applied as a shield. Something that is instant and reactive. Imagine smth like excog gets 800 shield potency upfront and 500 cure potency when hp drops below 50% while under the effect. Indom gets 400 shield potency and 600 cure potency, and Sacred Soil gets changed into Blessed Soil and converts x% of the cure potency of pure healing spells into a shield stacking up to 720 shield potency. Fey Blessing becomes Consolation while under the effect of the buff and Fey Union increases max hp of the target with each tick. WD applies the effect of rejuvenation which further increases WD regen timer by 5s-10s every time another fairy command is cast. Fey Illumination when executed under the seraph effect gives haste.

Emergency tactics is changed into transforming all shields cast by you into pure heals while under the effect.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

I was thinking, DT kinda feels a bit…meh in usage. It’s essentially a 2 min replace Succor…usually(?). It’s a difference of 60pot if you hit the whole party and not overheal (for full 3300pot Spreadlo, 3240 Succor, both 1000mp and 1 gcd).

For some cheap, simple buff: drop the recast time to 90 sec so it lines up with Recitation. Or make it refresh the timer on all Galvanize when it spreads. Or…I don’t know, add a 5% magic damage reduction buff for the same time limit as the Galvanize effect?

ET feels fun even though it’s not really a potency difference. DT feels like it should be a counterpart to it changing how a spell functions to address a Scholar weakness without really adding potency diffference. Right now, it’s more of a “oh. I guess it’s off cooldown, guess I’ll push it after an Adlo”.

But maybe I just don’t get it.

[Absurdity]

You don't really want to push Adlo when damage can just be healed with oGCDs and even when you actually need shields on the entire party you're generally better off just spending a GCD on Succor instead of a GCD and a weave on spreading Adlo for a slightly bigger shield, so yes DT is nowadays just an underwhelming cooldown. Even if it lined up with Recitation, you're better off using that ability for a free crit Indom or Excog instead of a crit Adlo.

[EaMett]

Not being able to deploy from the fairy was a huge nerf that hit DT pretty hard. Succor > damage > DT from the fairy (who still had the shield) was fun optimization.
But with that said, spreadlo is still a thing. In ex/savage content, The only times you would need to addlo would be with recitation. So they are very much attached at the hip. The way catalyze works just makes it really clunky. And by clunky, I mean that they could remove Catalyze from the game and it wouldn't change anything.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

Ah, just curious, how often is Recit+Spreadlo better than Recit+Excog or Recit+Indom?

[Roeshel]

Ah, just curious, how often is Recit+Spreadlo better than Recit+Excog or Recit+Indom?

In every savage pre-pull where you couldn't get a crit aldo in time. Usually you have the time to fish for a crit aldo so most probably you will end up using recit to use excog on the MT before the fight has started. Use fey illumination for the extra 10% increase for healing spells and seraph for one consolation. You won't have to heal anything when the actual AoE hits so you can continue broiling.

[EaMett]

Recit addlo + deploy is mostly a cheesing setup. Something you would use when the extra crit potency would save you either movement or a gcd down the line (think e10s orb cheese). These tend to be on the higher end of optimization plans. I don't think there are many scenarios where addlo + deploy without recitation is used in place of a simple succor. Off the top of my head, it might be a requirement in 2 spots in the game (older ultimate fights: golden bahamut and UWU orbs mechanic depending on your strat) but that's about it. Not to say that it can't be a comfort/consistency setup in other parts but it's not required per-se, so you always have a more optimized option that doesn't involve spreading a non crit addlo.

All that to say that deployment tactics and recitation tend to go hand in hand but the non-existent synergy means that players have no reason to use it other than very niche cases. If you could cast off of the MT you would see it used more often in place of succor.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Ah, just curious, how often is Recit+Spreadlo better than Recit+Excog or Recit+Indom?

Not so often, it’s actually quite niche and done by communicating with your group. They are mostly to cheese certain mechanic or to provide huge mitigation against opening raidwide so that both healers may omit healing that first wave.

While technically recit+adlo has more potency than recit+excog, the former requires you to eat the loss of not casting Broil III twice. (one from casting the adlo, another in opening the weave window with Ruin II). & does not generate fae gauge.

[WaxSw]

In every savage pre-pull where you couldn't get a crit aldo in time. Usually you have the time to fish for a crit aldo so most probably you will end up using recit to use excog on the MT before the fight has started. Use fey illumination for the extra 10% increase for healing spells and seraph for one consolation. You won't have to heal anything when the actual AoE hits so you can continue broiling.

You DON'T use recitation with Adlo in the prepull because the initial damage is never enough to kill the party with proper mitigation, its better to save it to be used with either excog in the prepull for the MT (If needed) or to heal raidwides that may come early in the fight so that way you save 1 AE charge to be used with energy drain.

Reciadlo+DT is mostly used for cheesing strats only where the benefit from keeping uptime offset the dps loss of the 2 broil casts missed (i.e E10s)

[GrimGale]

So far, my biggest gripe with SCH, after Prog the three tiers and TEA, also being a very average player, is the incessant, ad nauseam Broil spam.

But that's not a problem exclusive to SCH rather the three healers. (AST to a somewhat lesser extent)

I recall E3s specifically, the goddam flock of birds boss. There is like a long minute of no raid damage at all. Just chain Broil casts, over and over. It really makes patent how dull and completely uninspired the design for healing downtime is.