Endwalker Scholar

[Chyro]

Haven't played it much yet, but the thing that stood out to me.. the sound of the new Broil skill. I feel its very noticeable to a irritating extent. Sounds like a horse galopping each time the spell hits. Listening to the spam of that throughout a boss fight .. not pleasant, at least on my ears. Anyone else feel like that? I know spell sfx are highly subjective, what sounds impactful and cool to one may sound annoying to another.

[rewd]

Haven't played it much yet, but the thing that stood out to me.. the sound of the new Broil skill. I feel its very noticeable to a irritating extent. Sounds like a horse galopping each time the spell hits. Listening to the spam of that throughout a boss fight .. not pleasant, at least on my ears. Anyone else feel like that? I know spell sfx are highly subjective, what sounds impactful and cool to one may sound annoying to another.

I love the sound because it feels impactful (+ cool animation). That alone fulfills the pew pew fantasy better than SGE does (because its sfx are eeeeh...) for me.

[NobleWinter]

One thing that used to be okay but now feels horrible is how we apply shielding. In dungeons you want to place a shield on the tank before he reaches each mob but the cast time means you either swiftcast the spell while chasing the tank or watch mobs of enemies carefully so that your last cast in each pull is a shield for the next pull. Playing Sage and being able to run freely while shielding both in single target and aoe really drives home how constrained and immobile Scholar is. Scholar has three spells: Physick, Adlo, and Succor and none of them are as mobile as Sages Eukrasia Shields. It just feels unfair that both healers specialized in shielding are treated so differently. Sage gets a gap closer and tons of mobility in their healing kit while Scholar doesn't even get their speed buff until level 90. A cast time reduction or instant cast on the shielding for Scholar would be very welcome. At the very least Physick should be instant cast since it's the weakest tool in our kit by far so that we have an option for healing on the move that isn't restricted by Swiftcast or Aetherflow. Every healer except Scholar can heal while being mobile without some special resource. Regen, Aspected Benefic, and Eukrasia are all useable before hitting level 50. Embrace being untargetable now really doesn't compare to any of those. Astro can use Lightspeed and Essential Dignity from their first dungeon onward giving them burst healing and instant casts as a standard. Scholar (and WHM) could benefit from some serious consideration given to making parts of their kit instant. The long cast times serve absolutely no benefit when Sage and Astro are living their best life as extremely mobile better versions of the other two classes.

[EaMett]

My biggest gripe with SCH was that we didn't have enough to do. It was monotonous, and I was hoping for the ceiling to be raised. But as expected before the expansion hit, they dumbed it down even more. I had made a comment about how the 1.5s cast time would be a gameplay nerf and boy oh boy, I didn't expect it to be THIS jarring. Running around without having to decide when and what to double-weave into my windows left me very empty. Broil Broil Broil, someone needs healing? Broil + ogcd. Can't make the gameplay anymore braindead. And because of the ED payoff, you still wouldn't expect SCH to ogcd much. Here's to hoping SCH doesn't allow for cheese strats this expansion because I would hate to get stuck on it.
The QoL updates didn't impress me much. Most of it was stuff we had before ShB anyways.

I have a lot riding on Sage staying fun past the honeymoon phase. Fingers crossed.

[PaulH]

How are people coping with scholar death in a fight. I find it more of a panic now if Aetherflow, lucid dreaming or recitation are down and then getting selene back too but then I suppose we have dissipation.

[Kabzy]

How are people coping with scholar death in a fight. I find it more of a panic now if Aetherflow, lucid dreaming or recitation are down and then getting selene back too but then I suppose we have dissipation.

It doesn't feel any worse than it has done since 2.x tbh.

[PaulH]

It doesn't feel any worse than it has done since 2.x tbh.

Fair <3, ARR Scholar those were the days haha. I suppose energy drain dump with dissipation is what I found useful.

[AceofRains]

Assessing Scholar, I have gripes that boil down to a few abilities that somehow were not thought well about. And honestly I love every aspect of Summoner rework, but it ties in here.

Aetherflow, and Energy Drain. One or the other at this point- not both.

Energy Drain had its MP restoration gutted and is now purely an off global spender.

Conversely on Summoner, energy drain GIVES you stacks instead of spending them. Some may also say Summoner is lacking in things to do while you’re pressing your one attack button 6 times.

My Solution:

1) Gut Aetherflow from Scholar and roll it on to energy drain. You have to be in combat to use Aetherflow anyways.

2) Differentiate Scholar’s energy drain via trait. The arguement that would likely be had about rolling Aetherflow on to Energy Drain is that you can’t get your Aetherflow Stratagems if you’re in combat but the target disappears [such as when a boss casts ult.] This adjustment should make it so “Energy Drain” is useable perhaps even on a friendly target as “Energy Gift/Sync”.

3) Give Summoner 3 stacks. Period.

4) Lastly but this dead horse needs its ass beat back to life. Make Selene Great Again. Like the Cleric Stance of Eld, I feel from a thematic perspective, stance dancing your Fairies would contribute to a more solid tactical identity for Scholar. Selene would come out to be the fairy that adds to your Supportive/DPS rotation instead of only Broil spam. I could see this iteration of Selene getting the effect of Bane to help spread Biolysis to many targets. (But people are bad and can’t stance dance) No, just shut up. People who are bad are just bad regardless. If you can’t use a 1 second cast to switch fairies quickly, it’s not the job design that’s problematic. Scholar IMO needs Bane. As someone pointed out, you don’t have the mobility like Sage to barrier while Tank is pulling. With Scholar since you can instant cast it, you want to be applying Biolysis as much as possible before the pull settles and you need to jump on healing.

5) I just want to say that Expedience is awesome, anyone who nagged at its unveil should reconsider. Very clutch.

[Szylver]

After playing with all the healers IMHO SCH feels the best, a few things that still bothers me and boring dps but overall i like it.

[Anhra]

Endwanker SCH is still the same mess since ShB. The reduced cast time on dps spells is just a meme that grants the illusion of the job being faster, but makes hardly a difference in spamming Broilccoli, since youre tied to 2,5sec GCD anyway.
Speaking of which, Broilccoli IV is literally Broilccoli III (both have 295 Potency) from ShB with a new animation.

Squeenix should really ask the FFXI team for some Job design advice, it cant be that we have to deal with this mess for another 2-3 years at least until we get another useless QoL package of worthless passives and stacks on already existing Skills.

I wonder if SCH will ever be a actual SCH, instead of generic Healer #4.