Nerfing Expedience is bad for scholar

[Deceptus]

I'm trying to figure out what weird situation caused them to nerf it. As far as I'm aware, no mechanic was being trivialized because Scholoton lasted too long. Maybe someone in one of the devs' raid teams ran into a wall because they forgot they had sprint speed and nerfed it because any inconvenience healers cause DPS, no matter how small, must be immediately removed?

It'd explain why the speed duration went down and not, oh, I don't know, Macrocosmos deleting an entire heal check mechanic.

Seriously, how often were raid wides or multi hit attacks happening in multiples? But I guess it's ok for Panhaima, Liturgy, Macrocosmos to be able to deal with those but not Expedient.

[HyonaCookie]

The nerf is more a flavour/fun one rather than one that seriously affects the healer balance

Sure it doesn't affect job balance, but it affects the uniqueness the ability has and gives to scholar. It gave ppl a reason to want to have SCH around.

And I'll admit to being overdramatic about its healing capacity. Though it does feel limited, I do think SCH has a good healing. It just doesn't bring anything different to the table, and less so when Expedience gets nerfed.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

Just appreciate this for the lulz
Before EW people memed Expedience, SCH dead guys game over man game over!

...

*4 months later*

SCH is too good we gotta nerf Expedience

Honestly though would be nice if they left the speed at 20s at least, or is sprint overpowered now?

[Azuri]

I'm trying to figure out what weird situation caused them to nerf it. As far as I'm aware, no mechanic was being trivialized because Scholoton lasted too long. Maybe someone in one of the devs' raid teams ran into a wall because they forgot they had sprint speed and nerfed it because any inconvenience healers cause DPS, no matter how small, must be immediately removed?

It'd explain why the speed duration went down and not, oh, I don't know, Macrocosmos deleting an entire heal check mechanic.

The answer seems pretty obvious. Pinax and Act 2. 20 seconds of sprint covered majority of both. It would also explain why the nerf was specifically to duration. The movement heavy part comes in the later half of both mechanics.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

M-m-maybe they nerf’ed the sprint because I forced too many tanks in Expert Roulette to sprint against their will…

[Mapleine]

20 seconds of sprint is far too much to tune around, it sucks to have to push it back but this should happen now before it can become a problem. Movement is the most powerful ability in most video games and it's more powerful than most here.

They could compensate by letting you use it while casting though, IMO. I would be happy with that. Out of combat being 20 seconds is fine too.

[elioaiko]

I'd mind that finger twitching on the monkey's paw. Scholar is boring and competitive. You could be boring and weak, like WHM.

Sad but true. Though the competitiveness of SCH rn will only indicate to the devs that people are happy/content with SCH.

But at least it's not rotting like WHM. No real change to design, GCD healing focused but punished with MP issues.

SCH and WHM are suffering badly from the aging designs they had starting out.

[rewd]

M-m-maybe they nerf’ed the sprint because I forced too many tanks in Expert Roulette to sprint against their will…

Making a tank sprint AND mitigate?

Calm down, Satan.

[EaMett]

I still don't know how I feel about the 10s nerf. It seems to go against their healer design of catering to the lowest denominator. I'm happy to see this, it's just weird.. but then again when have their changes made any sense?

[ty_taurus]

I still don't know how I feel about the 10s nerf. It seems to go against their healer design of catering to the lowest denominator. I'm happy to see this, it's just weird.. but then again when have their changes made any sense?

I mean they did this when they ruined Thin Air too. They want healing to be easy, yet they also gutted the weakest healer's greatest asset. Not to mention that weakest healer is meant to be the token healer for inexperienced players.

My honest belief is that they have a very shallow understanding of how healers actually play both at a high skill range and a low skill range, but don't understand enough to be able to break down what healer gameplay is actually like and what makes the role easier or harder. Of all the things they've done to make healing "easier," the only part that I think was actually successful for the low skill range of healers was the removal of Cleric Stance. Everything else actually doesn't really affect the experience that new or learning healers have.

I have seen low skill healers in action. I know how they approach healing. I remember how I used to heal back in the old days when I was a shitty healer. Low skill healers rely heavily on GCD healing like Cure/Cure II, Medica, and the like, but these are not good healing tools. They chew through your MP, cost you damage, and don't even heal very much. My friend who's a very casual player that likes Scholar started EW recently, and when going through Tower of Zot, she would very quickly resort to Physick spamming on the tank to try and keep them alive during big pulls which failed because Physick is useless and doesn't heal for shit. She did no DPS at all and still the tank died. Half her cooldowns were still available, and she couldn't even remember that Emergency Tactics was a thing.

There's also a lot of pressure on healers to get mechanics down right because if they die, that's often a run-ender since only 2 other jobs in the game can revive a healer in 4-man content.

If you really want to make healing easier for low-skill players, basic GCD healing should be cheaper, faster, and more powerful. This will never make these GCD heals optimal because you still lose damage when using them, so skilled players will still ignore them so long as that level of healing isn't required, but low skill players would have far stronger clutch heals to keep their heads above the water. You would additionally want to introduce more ways that healers can be revived. Make Phoenix Downs usable in battle with a 5 minute CD or something, and make them cheap and stackable. Or add something like the Revive role action for tanks or something which could have a long cooldown as an OGCD revive. Buff the tools they are quick to rely on rather than give them more tools they're likely to forget in a high stress situation.