Genuine Scholar feedback

[Tobias_Azuryon]

Very confused on where you get this idea that SCH's pet AI is somehow worse when I played it all last expac and it feels noticeably better than it did in Shadowbringers.

Anecdotal feedback is what it is, but I'd rather have reliable snappy skills than fairy skills oriented on its positioning and movement any day of the week. For every single piece of opinion information there will always be a counter. That's why it's not the full crux of my argument but just a single aspect.

Also we're not talking about the entire kit becoming like SGE's, we're talking about ED and small adjustments to the class and/or its fairy/ogcd kit that will make it feel better to use (which again is player preference sure).

I'm not saying copy everything from SGE's kit but there has to be some middle ground between "Fuck it make them all the same" and "LEAVE IT HOW IT IS" and I'm looking for that. Instead of just saying "That sucks because it's like SGE" why not spitball other options or maybe go back and forth on further iterations to the kit? Why not provide feedback on what you'd like to do with ED that makes it worth leaving on AF when everyone will always choose damage over heals when/where they can for the most part?

I love SGE and will continue to play SGE but it doesn't mean I want SCH's to kick rocks and screw themselves. I want to discuss the kits after seeing SGE and new SMN and I think there's room to grow the kit that isn't some outdated premise of "Aetherflow needs to be on AF so I don't cap" or something new could be done with Aetherflow in general.

As for AF heals, I'm totally fine with SCH having a buff to its AF heals as one of my preferred changes would be to have a skill or skills on AF that actually provide shielding so they're slinging barriers more often (not OP but just more than one GCD worth/Seraph).

tl;dr We can do more with ED than keep it on AF "Just cuz" despite some weird idea of it being "rewarding" gameplay to that person, and the fairy and fey skills can be used to better add distance between SCH's kit and SGE's.

EDIT: To add some context, perhaps if the fairy were more responsive/snappier like the summons you could seamlessly transition between Selene and Eos to provide differing buffs and utility to the party like the SCH used to. I'm just saying we have options we could explore.

[Nizzi]

-snip-

I think that's fair. Obviously if they could make the faerie lossless I'd love that but I've noticed such an improvement with EW that I haven't had the annoyances with it that I did in ShB. Anecdotal evidence aside, I was really thinking they'd completely gut it in EW and I'm happy they worked towards improving it as well. The faerie is the reason I love playing Scholar and I would likely quit the job entirely if they did away with it or made Lily not do anything/just animations. I really don't like how Carbuncle just stands there with a dopey look on his face for SMN

As it stands with ED I'm someone who does like it, but I'm also not against getting rid of ED in a scenario where they replace it with something that does offer something interesting to SCH's kit that isn't just another 45s oGCD or something, and I think if the developers did that, they'd absolutely just make it "not-Phlegma".
As it stands though I definitely do understand the complaints about ED feeling underwhelming/irritating in comparison to SGE; especially with the 1.5s cast times in EW and the MP changes to SCH, Energy Drain is not as much of an integral component to SCH's kit as it was in ShB, as it was needed back then to prevent DPS losses on weaving faerie heals. In optimized environments its usage hasn't changed much, but for someone like myself who isn't "optimal", but tries to play to the best of my ability, I have found that I don't have as much of a need to "save it" for healing and movement like I did in ShB, and instead I can just burst it away.

Personally, I think buffing SCH's AF heals, or slightly nerfing SGEs, would do a lot to make the impact of ED feel less like a pain in the ass to some. The criticisms of AST/SGE being better at healing because WHM/SCH have to lose damage to heal definitely are true, so why not make the heal itself actually feel worthwhile to use and not just "let my AST/SGE cohealer handle it?" The developers seem to think that WHM is a monster of a healer, so why not actually make WHM and SCH monsters of healers? They seemingly understood this a bit with SCH and made Adlo better than SGE's equivalent, so this is definitely a direction I think they can head in with SCH without removing systems that are already in place.

In regard to your point about Selene/Eos, I definitely think they should! It's an easy way to save on button space and while I wasn't around for it, I would love to see it come back. Seraph has a 1 second delay from being summoned now to being able to do any actions, but outside of that in my experience she comes out pretty snappily, so I see no reason why they couldn't lean into Selene and Eos being distinct entities again. Just turn one of their buttons into a "Summon Eos/Selene" instant cast button like Summon Seraph works and go from there!