A Modest SCH Adjustment Suggestion - Chain Stratagem

[ToodlesElNoodles]

!!!Going to preface this with me being a ShB baby, so you can ignore any opinion I have about SCH!!!

I hear that older SCH players prefer AST due to it being more interactive (due to cards and a lot of weaving).

We have the situation in EW where SCH will be able to weave with Broil, the dev team doesn’t want to go back to pre-ShB SCH, and the dev team kinda likes the design direction of SCH. We also seem to have a distinction of pure vs. barrier and utility vs. power.

So, with that my suggestion. Make SCH more of a counter to AST with Chain Stratagem.

New Chain Stratagem (Ability)
Instant cast, 30 sec recast
Increases critical hit chance on target by 3% for 12 sec (actually 3.125% under the hood, but might need to be adjust upwards)

Reasons:

1. We’ll have a little more to do. A constant complaint of SCH (and healers in general, though I hear it more on WHM and less on AST)

2. We get to use that awesome Chain Stratagem animation more often (the computer sci-fi effects are awesome, props to whoever designed that).

3. It brings the SCH’s closer to its traditional FF identity of identifying something about an enemy to boost the party’s damage into a more regular/accessible action. AKA, we get Libra!

4. Very little work for the dev team, as it doesn’t have to change much. Tweak the numbers and change the text.

5. Reinforces SCH’s focus on utility dps and not personal dps.

6. If that’s not good enough, maybe add a trait to upgrade it to Chain Stratagem II. If CS II is used on an enemy afflicted with Biolysis, Biolysis explodes and debuffs nearby enemies with a 30 pot/12 sec DoT called Autolysis. This’ll sorta bring back Bane and makes Chain Stratagem still useful against packs of enemies and not just single enemies without causing too much button bloat.

Anyway, hopefully this is a nice simple adjustment that can add some fun, flavor, flash, and effectiveness in! It doesn’t solve other problems with SCH, but maybe this is a small thing we can have.


(Math Justification
Each CS lasts 15 sec for 10% increased crit hit chance. So, multiplied together creates 150%sec. So we have 120 sec = 150%sec_effective. Divide by 4 and we get 30sec = 37.5%sec_effective.

Now we just need some good numbers for what makes 37.5%sec. I settled on trying to find a duration that’s meaningful that’s a multiple of 3 to match server ticks. Obvious choices seemed to be 15 sec (which would match up with cards) or 12 sec. 15 sec at 2.5% might look small to the eye and the decimal makes it look…to nit-picky so it might be misconstrued as boring to players. At 12 sec, could have it at 3.125% (which can be shown as 3% in the ability text, but actually 3.125% in the programming). 3% might look a little bit better, so I settled for 3(.125)% at 12 sec.)

[GrimGale]

Anyway, hopefully this is a nice simple adjustment that can add some fun, flavor, flash, and effectiveness in! It doesn’t solve other problems with SCH, but maybe this is a small thing we can have.

I would love a more Tactical/Debuffer approach to SCH in a mirror way to AST. Spending more time managing debuffs, focusing our attention on the enemy while our fairy helps us heal.

But rather than make CS a more useable ability, I'd build an actual system upon it. (Somewhat like cards on AST)

[FoxCh40s]

I would love a more Tactical/Debuffer approach to SCH in a mirror way to AST. Spending more time managing debuffs, focusing our attention on the enemy while our fairy helps us heal.

But rather than make CS a more useable ability, I'd build an actual system upon it. (Somewhat like cards on AST)

Except they won't. I don't know why people put ideas on the Healer forums anymore. They've been ignored for literally 8 to 9 years.

They. Do. Not. Care.

[ToodlesElNoodles]

I would love a more Tactical/Debuffer approach to SCH in a mirror way to AST. Spending more time managing debuffs, focusing our attention on the enemy while our fairy helps us heal.

But rather than make CS a more useable ability, I'd build an actual system upon it. (Somewhat like cards on AST)

Indeed. There’s no short supply of ideas or rework suggestions. Though the more I think of it, sometimes I feel a rework is necessary as SCH bloat will become a problem.

I suggested a few weeks back on Reddit before the LL dropped on maybe they should reduce WHM/SCH gcd cast times similar to AST. This would fix clipping and make things a little more dynamic for WHM/SCH. They ended up changing the GCDs for Broil/Glare.

So, I’m kinda curious on seeing where else we can get small changes that can be very impactful.

I do think there’s a lotta design space now for the SCH to go down their route as a pet/utility barrier healer. I don’t see why AST can be buffing version and the SCH can be the debuff.

Though, I’m not surprised they’re taking baby steps with the healers.

[FoxCh40s]

Indeed. There’s no short supply of ideas or rework suggestions. Though the more I think of it, sometimes I feel a rework is necessary as SCH bloat will become a problem.

I suggested a few weeks back on Reddit before the LL dropped on maybe they should reduce WHM/SCH gcd cast times similar to AST. This would fix clipping and make things a little more dynamic for WHM/SCH. They ended up changing the GCDs for Broil/Glare.

So, I’m kinda curious on seeing where else we can get small changes that can be very impactful.

I do think there’s a lotta design space now for the SCH to go down their route as a pet/utility barrier healer. I don’t see why AST can be buffing version and the SCH can be the debuff.

Though, I’m not surprised they’re taking baby steps with the healers.

They're not taking baby steps, they just have no clue what they are doing, and have admitted to it even!

They do not want to fix healers, because it is a zero issue for them.

THEY. DO. NOT. CARE.

[KDSilver]

They're not taking baby steps, they just have no clue what they are doing, and have admitted to it even!

Look, I'm as disappointed as you and a lot of people here.
But the simple existence of Cardia and how it works shows that they "know". (don't get it wrong, I don't say Cardia and Sage is the ultimate best answer to all of this)
But for some reason they just don't tell us why thert're not pushing that philosophy further or why healer are the least priority for them.

Everything in healers aren't 100% bad either. So that's the proof they know the least.
But it's so underdevelopped...

[FoxCh40s]

Look, I'm as disappointed as you and a lot of people here.
But the simple existence of Cardia and how it works shows that they "know". (don't get it wrong, I don't say Cardia and Sage is the ultimate best answer to all of this)
But for some reason they just don't tell us why thert're not pushing that philosophy further or why healer are the least priority for them.

Everything in healers aren't 100% bad either. So that's the proof they know the least.
But it's so underdevelopped...

Because THEY. DO. NOT. CARE.

They have decided not to communicate with us, constantly. It is an active choice to ignore Healer questions, to continually ignore advice on the forums, to continually not respond to any of our pleas. They acknowledged the feedback on the LL, and then promptly told the veteran community to fuck off.

It IS that bad, THEY. DO. NOT. CARE

[ToodlesElNoodles]

Because THEY. DO. NOT. CARE.

They have decided not to communicate with us, constantly. It is an active choice to ignore Healer questions, to continually ignore advice on the forums, to continually not respond to any of our pleas. They acknowledged the feedback on the LL, and then promptly told the veteran community to fuck off.

It IS that bad, THEY. DO. NOT. CARE

Ahh…I’ve only played the game for a few months, but I was told that this game had amazing developers. I guess that’s a lie then. I came from…a game…that had disingenuous developers and would like to not invest time into something like that again.

Also have some friends who were intrigued I was playing and were thinking of jumping in, but I guess I’ll warn them to save their time/money and we’ll find something else to play together.

[Shurrikhan]

Ahh…I’ve only played the game for a few months, but I was told that this game had amazing developers. I guess that’s a lie then. I came from…a game…that had disingenuous developers and would like to not invest time into something like that again.

Also have some friends who were intrigued I was playing and were thinking of jumping in, but I guess I’ll warn them to save their time/money and we’ll find something else to play together.

Sadly, you'll find this one far worse in that regard. That... one tends to make unnecessary shifts in emphasis that are only explainable by certain interactions in certain settings that arguably were significant issues. Here, though, almost any suggestion made has a sizable chance of being followed only in the most twisted sense (a Monkey's Paw outcome, if you will), while pervasive issues (such as the dumbing down of jobs or loss of identity, versatility, variety, etc.) are so pervasive that at best you get to hold onto X for an expansion longer than others.

To be clear, though, there are always improvements somewhere. As NIN was gutted, it at least got a great change to Ten-Chi-Jin. As DRG gets deeper and deeper into the realms of combo-based button-bloat, it has at least noticed that BotD is a non-mechanic and has no business needing a once per instance cast, etc., etc. In part, this is what makes things more difficult, as there's no purely worse period by which to point out that the current direction isn't working, and, unfortunately, developer-player discourse doesn't seem too capable of such fine differentiation as in, say, "We like being less punished by ping, but do not like the loss to fluidity."

If on the axis of some quality, scaling from 1 to 10, the playerbase says they want less than 8 and more than 3, what communication comes down from the devs here will often seem to call us utterly unappeasable instead of noting that we simply want anything between 4 and 7.

[Aword3213]

Because THEY. DO. NOT. CARE.

They have decided not to communicate with us, constantly. It is an active choice to ignore Healer questions, to continually ignore advice on the forums, to continually not respond to any of our pleas. They acknowledged the feedback on the LL, and then promptly told the veteran community to fuck off.

It IS that bad, THEY. DO. NOT. CARE

Quote from other thread

"We don't agree" and "we don't care" don't mean the same thing. Game developers are allowed to disagree with you. If you don't like it, you are allowed to stop playing. If it were actually the case that they thought that it was harming the game to follow the direction they are following, they wouldn't have decided to go in that direction.

Despite the shouting and screaming on the forum, something has lead them to the decision that they like the current paradigm more than the one you wish you had. I promise, anyone spending any amount of time here knows full well the loud opinions of forum goers; it hasn't gone unseen. The question is really, how many times do they have to prove that before you realize that you're fighting a battle you simply aren't going to win, and find something else to do that you actually do enjoy?

There is no way for them to present the information they are presenting to you which you wouldn't interpret as PR speak, because you can't fathom that they don't want to take the game in the direction that you think it should go. Nothing they say short of the answer that you want is going to change the way you respond to it. It has very little to do with what they say, and everything to do with what you think.