SCH as a poison-themed healer

[ty_taurus]

Something I've brought up before is that, in order to help SCH carve out a stronger identity away from WHM and SGE, I'd like to see it embrace its arcane magic/poison magic roots as an ACN. Additionally, I'd like to see SCH's resource system revamped and made more meaningful. I want to share some of the updated ideas I've been working on to see what others think. This is not every action available to SCH, just some core elements I want to go over that convey an idea of how this can work.

Inspiration on some of the action names comes from FFVIII and FFXII spells. Links on the spell names are references to the animations.

Eos and Selene

I'd like to see more identity restored to the SCH's faeries and revamp the tools associated with them. In this concept, the faerie no longer casts Embrace. Both Summon Eos and Summon Selene remain as GCD spells.

Aetherpact: OGCD - Potency is decreased to 150 and no longer consumes your Fey Gauge. Your Faerie will follow the ally she's tethered to unless manually placed. Aetherpact replaces Summon Eos or Summon Selene on your hotbar depending on which is summoned.

This change to Aetherpact means your faerie will be idle most of the time in combat, like with Carbuncle, allowing her to be more responsive to when pet actions are used.

Dissipation: OGCD - Swaps your Faerie from Eos to Selene or vice versa. Has a 90 second cooldown.

Fey Blessing: OGCD - Is now an upgrade of Whispering Dawn. Applies a 150 potency HoT on the party for 15 seconds. While Eos is summoned, increases healing received by 10% for 10 seconds. While Selene is summoned, decreases damage taken by 10% for 10 seconds.

Fey Blessing has 2 charges and a cooldown of 30 seconds.

Fey Spark: OGCD - Deals damage with a potency of 80 to one enemy and applies a Fey Mark to the target for 10 seconds. Fey Spark also has 2 charges and a cooldown of 30 seconds.

Fey Marks will become important when we discuss DPS buttons. It is a unique debuff that should create a visual overlay atop the enemy while in effect similarly to the purple "3"s from this screenshot of Genshin Impact:


Fey Light: GCD - While Eos is summoned, this action becomes Protraction, increasing your target's max HP and healing received for 15 seconds. While Selene is summoned, this action becomes Retaliation, decreasing damage taken by 5% and inflicting a 10% physical damage down or a 10% magical damage down on enemies that attack this target respective to the damage received. The buff effect lasts 15 seconds, and enemies are affected by the damage reduction for 10 seconds.

Both Protraction and Retaliation do not have cooldowns. They cost 20 Fey Gauge and generate 1 Aetherflow when used (more on that below). These are cast by the SCH, not the faerie. Both Protraction and Retaliation can be spread to nearby allies with Deployment Tactics.

Fey Brilliance: GCD - While Eos is summoned, this action becomes Indomitability, restoring HP with a potency of 400 to self and all nearby allies. While Selene is summoned, this action becomes Expedient, granting a 10 second sprint to self and all nearby allies.

Both Indomitability and Expedient also do not have cooldowns, cost 20 Fey Gauge, generate 1 Aetherflow, and are cast by the SCH.

Aetherflow and DPS Actions

I'll be using some temp potencies for the sake of communicating the concept, but these are easily changeable as needed for proper balance.

Aetherflow: This becomes a GCD action that generates 3 Aetherflow, restores 15% of your MP, and gives you 20 Fey Gauge. It has a 60 second cooldown on the GCD. I'll go over specific Aetherflow actions after the standard DPS actions.

Shock: GCD - Since Broil IV will be upgraded to some new-named ability in the next expansion, I'm referring to it as "Shock". Your standard DPS filler with a potency of 260 in this example. It returns to having a 2 second cast time.

Bio III: GCD - Replaces Biolysis, but it otherwise the same. 70 potency DoT for 30 seconds, instant cast. Each tic has a 3% chance of applying a Fey Mark.

Miasma III: GCD - Single target spell with a potency of 100 and applies a 60 potency DoT for 30 seconds. 2 second cast time. Each tic also has a 3% chance to apply a Fey Mark.

Ardor: GCD - Replaces Art of War and is now a ranged spell with a 2 seccond cast time, making it more like Gravity. It has a potency of 130 and always scales to be 50% of your Ruin/Broil/Shock casts. When cast, grants a 5% critical hit rate to the SCH for 45 seconds. Potency is doubled against targets with a Fey Mark, and consumes the Fey Mark.

Pain: GCD - Replaces Ruin II. It has a potency of 260 and always scales to be equal to Ruin/Broil/Shock. It is instant cast with an MP cost of 1000, making it your weave tool at a cost. If cast on a target with a Fey Mark, restores 15% of your MP and increases your Fey Gauge by 10, refunding and restoring its cost and granting more potential healing/support and consuming the mark.

Shadowflare: GCD - Returns with a 60 second cooldown. Deals 100 potency as a DoT to all enemies in the field effect over 15 seconds.

Scourge: OGCD - Deals damage with a potency of 130 to 1 enemy. Instant Cast. potency scales to always be the half your Ruin/Broil/Shock. Applies a 60 potency DoT that lasts 30 seconds. Each tic of Scourge's DoT also has a 3% chance to apply a Fey Mark to the target. Costs 1 Aetherflow and has a 15 second cooldown.

Meltdown: OGCD - Deals damage with a potency of 260 with 50% falloff damage to all enemies in a straight line before you. Potency scales to always be the same as your Ruin/Broil/Shock. Costs 1 Aetherflow and has a 15 second cooldown.

Bane: OGCD - Spreads your Bio, Miasma, and Scourge DoTs to nearby enemies for the full duration of each DoT. Potency of spread DoTs is reduced by 60%. Also inflicts Toad on all enemies in range for 6 seconds. Costs 1 Aetherflow and has a 15 second cooldown.

Summary
Not all SCH actions are listed here but that doesn't mean things unmentioned would not or could not still exist in this concept, I'm just not entirely sure how I'd handle those. Otherwise, the main takeaways are the identities of Eos being the burst healing pet and Selene being the utility pet as well as the revamping of the Fey Gauge as a healing/utility resource and Aetherflow as a DPS/DPS refund resource.

What I'm most interested in hearing would be thoughts on the concept of Fey Mark as a way to more actively engage with your rotation, and what adjustments might improve this concept. Do you think this works?

EDIT: A quick thing to note is this is still a work in progress idea I've been ruminating on, and I want to expand on it more. I have the DoTs all at 30 seconds for now and am also curious about making them all different, but also want to gauge how it feels with everything else first, if that feels like enough for others or if the staggered DoT timers would be better and not too much for the idea.

[Sebazy]

I like it a lot, it reminds me a little of my concept with less of a focus on pet positioning but a much more fleshed out downtime kit. Good work!

Some thoughts:

I think it's worth clarifying the situation with Aetherflow out of combat or at the start of a duty? I'm still convinced that blocking Aetherflow out of combat was a spiteful change that could have been made more reasonable if the SCH zoned/reset with full Aetherflow charges to compensate for it. Where do you think this sits with your concept?

On multiple dots, I'm of the mindset that SE deliberately trimmed everyone's dots down and moved away from dot centric classes to ease server load and make it harder to hit debuff limits in certain situations, so whilst I do like the thought of multiple dots again (Especially with offset durations) I don't think it's something that's likely to happen at this point. As an alternative, what about granting Bio increased potency when cast on a target that is fey marked instead of bringing back Miasma? Scourge's additional resource usage and duration difference is already a plenty decent improvement I think?

I'd expand on the above by having a thundercloud style effect on Bio's Fey Mark application chance so that when it procs, it leaves a short duration (Say 6 seconds?) debuff on the target that does additional damage if you refresh your dot on that target in that window. That alone will stop your dots always being refreshed at a content 30 second cadence, introducing some variance at all levels of play which is only a good thing if you ask me.

Ardor and Pain are good stuff. Same with Scourge and Meltdown (Especially if the range is fairly short). Bane's return is something I'll always be onside with although I'm not really sure about Toad?

Instead I wonder if it'd be more interesting to make Bane spread Fey Marks as well, then switch to having 2 AoEs, one having Ardor's bonuses and the other being regular filler. With Fey Mark's charges and short cooldown, you're like to be able to use Ardor 3 times in a trash pull. Shortening the crit buff to say 12-15 seconds would reward savvy spacing of Marks as well with a pretty tangible benefit.

Overall though, great work, it's a neat concept and has some real potential IMO.

[Connor]

This seems like a whole lot of redesigning to make Scholar fit into the ‘poison Mage’ hole.

Why not suggest a new healer class at this point? Doesn’t it make more sense for a new healer to be specifically designed around such a playstyle than to take an existing healer and change/remove almost everything in it’s toolkit until it looks the way you want it to?

[Sebazy]

This seems like a whole lot of redesigning to make Scholar fit into the ‘poison Mage’ hole.

Why not suggest a new healer class at this point? Doesn’t it make more sense for a new healer to be specifically designed around such a playstyle than to take an existing healer and change/remove almost everything in it’s toolkit until it looks the way you want it to?

It's more akin to taking it back to it's roots no? SE certainly didn't rebrand it as a new job when they murdered it with 4.0's release and frankly, for better or worse stuff needs to be changed and revamped from time to time to stop things from stagnating like they arguable have already.

[Connor]

It's more akin to taking it back to it's roots no? SE certainly didn't rebrand it as a new job when they murdered it with 4.0's release and frankly, for better or worse stuff needs to be changed and revamped from time to time to stop things from stagnating like they arguable have already.

If it’s roots are ‘Old Summoner’ then sure I guess?
The thing is, if SE really wanted to reinforce the ‘poison’ theme of the job (which, to be pedantic, isn’t even literal poison lol), wouldn’t they have already done that?

Also, I think saying ‘they’ve already reworked it from the group up’ is a little disingenuous. Seems to me they took the Arcanist toolkit, slapped some healing spells on it to get a second healer out for release, then realized after the fact that they’d inadvertently made some kind of damage dealing healer hybrid. Basically, to SE, Scholar is defined by ‘shield, a fairy and more ability heals than any job will ever need’. It was never defined by its ability to deal damage; or at least it wasn’t supposed to be. Every expansion since then has been them desperately trying to do damage control to make Scholar what it was intended to be (I.e removing the excess Arcanist skills).

Before every expansion release there are always posts begging for Scholar to become old Summoner. Give it Tri-Disaster, give it Fester and Bane, give it a dps fairy, more DoTs. It still hasn’t happened. Personally I don’t imagine they’d do a full U-Turn away from what they have planned for it currently.

Scholar is like Bard in that if you don’t like the current identity basically you’re out of luck. Regardless of whether you were perfectly happy with a previous iteration . I don’t mean to sound harsh or that the suggestions are bad in and of themselves, but at the same time I feel like we need to start tempering expectations. Scholar is as likely to go back to being a DoT fiend as Bard is to go back to singing during battle (i.e the prospects are not good lol) or casting arrow strikes

[Sebazy]

Also, I think saying ‘they’ve already reworked it from the group up’ is a little disingenuous.

It really isn't though, compare footage of a 3.5 SCH vs 4.0 in a dungeon. The gameplay is completely different. It might not have intended to have been a rework, but it absolutely played like one at all levels of play.

Dismissing a well written post because you don't think it's realistic also defeats the point of making these sorts of suggestions at all. I certainly didn't expect SE to implement my ideas when I wrote them, I just had an idea, thought it was neat and decided to dunk it down on a discussion forum. I'd much rather chew over stuff like this than pondering if the next primal is going to raidwide 10 or 15 seconds into the fight

Sticking to purely 'realistic' suggestions for healers is going to be dull as ditchwater at this point.

[ty_taurus]

This seems like a whole lot of redesigning to make Scholar fit into the ‘poison Mage’ hole.

Why not suggest a new healer class at this point? Doesn’t it make more sense for a new healer to be specifically designed around such a playstyle than to take an existing healer and change/remove almost everything in it’s toolkit until it looks the way you want it to?

Once upon a time, SCH had 7 DoTs including cross-class actions: Bio, Bio II, Miasma, Miasma II (AoE only), Shadowflare, Aero, and Thunder. It's a job that stems from ACN, a class that originally was something of a poison mage. And it currently has a very lukewarm identity that is stepped on by both WHM and SGE currently in different ways, so what exactly are we losing? A healer with an identity crisis that's playstyle revolves around taking a nap during non-savage content because your faerie does all your healing for you?

Additionally, jobs have been reworked in the past. Saying that it's impossible for a job to be reworked is silly because it has happened many times and will continue to happen (whether we like it or not). It's also not impossible that they may back petal toward old SCH's identity either because they've also back petaled before on specifically HW's bow mage. They reworked the physical ranged role to be casters in HW, most people hated that, and they took that away. I'm not saying that this concept as I have written it is specifically a guarantee or anything, but it's a concept that follows the rules of FFXIV's job design.

While my faith in seeing a change of this magnitude for the healers is slim, there is way more scrutiny regarding job design as a whole as of EW than we have ever seen before, and I'm inclined to believe there will be some amount of reevaluation going into 7.0 because of that criticism. I do believe this will affect the healers as well, I just can't say exactly how.

I like it a lot, it reminds me a little of my concept with less of a focus on pet positioning but a much more fleshed out downtime kit. Good work!

Some thoughts:

I think it's worth clarifying the situation with Aetherflow out of combat or at the start of a duty? I'm still convinced that blocking Aetherflow out of combat was a spiteful change that could have been made more reasonable if the SCH zoned/reset with full Aetherflow charges to compensate for it. Where do you think this sits with your concept?

On multiple dots, I'm of the mindset that SE deliberately trimmed everyone's dots down and moved away from dot centric classes to ease server load and make it harder to hit debuff limits in certain situations, so whilst I do like the thought of multiple dots again (Especially with offset durations) I don't think it's something that's likely to happen at this point. As an alternative, what about granting Bio increased potency when cast on a target that is fey marked instead of bringing back Miasma? Scourge's additional resource usage and duration difference is already a plenty decent improvement I think?

I'd expand on the above by having a thundercloud style effect on Bio's Fey Mark application chance so that when it procs, it leaves a short duration (Say 6 seconds?) debuff on the target that does additional damage if you refresh your dot on that target in that window. That alone will stop your dots always being refreshed at a content 30 second cadence, introducing some variance at all levels of play which is only a good thing if you ask me.

Ardor and Pain are good stuff. Same with Scourge and Meltdown (Especially if the range is fairly short). Bane's return is something I'll always be onside with although I'm not really sure about Toad?

Instead I wonder if it'd be more interesting to make Bane spread Fey Marks as well, then switch to having 2 AoEs, one having Ardor's bonuses and the other being regular filler. With Fey Mark's charges and short cooldown, you're like to be able to use Ardor 3 times in a trash pull. Shortening the crit buff to say 12-15 seconds would reward savvy spacing of Marks as well with a pretty tangible benefit.

Overall though, great work, it's a neat concept and has some real potential IMO.

Thank you for the feedback. Having full Aetherflow for the start of the duty does make sense, and that's probably a good addition. I'm trying to picture the opener with the build as-is, and it's a bit detailed, but I think that' a good thing. Personally, on the topic of multiple DoTs, I see that reasoning. I think there needs to be more solutions regarding the buff/debuff limit, but I think the game deserves a dedicated DoT job in some capacity and finding ways to try and allow that to work is more ideal than saying it can't exist. Regardless of where SE stands on the same issue. One way I can think of a solution while still having Bio, Miasma, and Scourge in this concept is to redesign how the DoT works a little. Instead of each spell applying a different DoT... what if we do something like this. Bio and Miasma apply 1 stack of Virus each that has no duration; only 1 stack can be applied by each spell. When used on a target with Virus, Scourge increases the stack count by 1 and turns it into a DoT of 50 potency per stack for 30 seconds. This condenses all 3 DoTs into 1 debuff. It makes the application more rigid since you need Scourge to trigger the effect, but it would address that problem. What do you think?

As for Toad, it's really there more for Flavor and wouldn't work on anything that wasn't trash mobs, but could be really great for SCH in deep dungeons. It doesn't work on bosses of course, and has more limited application than WHM's stun, but I would like to see each healer have a different flavor of a more fun disabling debuff like Stun that are applied in different ways. By attaching it to something that has a consistently valuable effect elsewhere, it doesn't create a Repose like situation where the button has no purpose 99% of the time.

I like making Fey Marks stack. It also prevents any situations where two DoTs trigger it at the same time causes 1 to go unused, and shortening the crit buff could also make the job more engaging consistently since there are no varied DoT timers, especially with the debuff suggestion above. If needed, you could also give it the Storm's Eye treatment and have the crit buff extendable to a certain point. I'm not sure if that would be necessary or not, but it would make Ardor usage more flexible. That said, I don't think we need a filler AoE button separate from Ardor. I know it makes AoE scenarios slightly less engaging than single target, but I'm really not a fan of buttons that are designed exclusively for AoE because it just makes them dead buttons in single target, which is a significantly more prominent and important format in this game. It was more about trying to give a reason for the AoE button to exist in single target environments.

[Nizzi]

If it’s roots are ‘Old Summoner’ then sure I guess?
The thing is, if SE really wanted to reinforce the ‘poison’ theme of the job (which, to be pedantic, isn’t even literal poison lol), wouldn’t they have already done that?

I mean, if we go off of PvP, which most people seem to agree on how PvP does the job fantasies better than PvE, that's literally what they've made Scholar by having it be the only job with an AoE DoT and its entire offensive gameplay loop feeding into debuffing and DoTting enemies?

Also, I think saying ‘they’ve already reworked it from the group up’ is a little disingenuous. Seems to me they took the Arcanist toolkit, slapped some healing spells on it to get a second healer out for release, then realized after the fact that they’d inadvertently made some kind of damage dealing healer hybrid. Basically, to SE, Scholar is defined by ‘shield, a fairy and more ability heals than any job will ever need’. It was never defined by its ability to deal damage; or at least it wasn’t supposed to be. Every expansion since then has been them desperately trying to do damage control to make Scholar what it was intended to be (I.e removing the excess Arcanist skills).

I'm fairly confident it's the other way around and I believe there's a misconception from a lot of people in this community that Scholar wasn't planned or that it was the one that was tacked on, rather than Summoner. Old Arcanist is way closer to what Scholar was in FFXI than what Summoner was in any Final Fantasy game. Scholar used books in attack animations, had a White and Black Grimoire for healing/offensive based spells, Aetherflow is basically discount Wal-Mart brand Stratagems, FFXI Scholar's offensive spells were weather based DoTs called Helixes, this one is kind of a stretch but Energy Drain is combining two spells Scholar could use in FFXI, Aspir (steals an enemy's HP) and Drain (steals an enemy's MP) and FFXI Scholar had a 'hybrid' healer/dps style with how your White/Black grimoires worked. Why else would Arcanist use books, Scholar's staple, if they had intended for it to be for Summoner first, a job that traditionally doesn't use books?

Everything stacks up that Arcanist was designed around Scholar first and then Summoner was slapped onto it, not the other way around. I really don't think anything about Scholar was "inadvertently" created or that SCH was 'never supposed to be defined by its ability to deal damage', I believe that was the plan until they started to realize how broken of a job it was when it could outdamage the other healers and outheal them as well. PVE healer job changes have always been about fitting things into a balance and meta, not about enforcing how SE sees a job or how they define it. There's a reason all healers have the exact same DPS rotational loop, and it's not because of "job identity" as being defined by SE.

Scholar is like Bard in that if you don’t like the current identity basically you’re out of luck. Regardless of whether you were perfectly happy with a previous iteration . I don’t mean to sound harsh or that the suggestions are bad in and of themselves, but at the same time I feel like we need to start tempering expectations. Scholar is as likely to go back to being a DoT fiend as Bard is to go back to singing during battle (i.e the prospects are not good lol) or casting arrow strikes

No offense, I don't mean this to sound harsh either but... who cares what SE wants? What is the point of saying this? If people are unhappy with the current direction of jobs they should absolutely continue to tell Square Enix that they're unhappy with it. "Tempering expectations" just leads to SE hearing that what they're doing is great and nobody has a problem with it. It took people 8 years of complaining to finally get a "Summoner with summons that isn't a DoT mage" and regardless of how braindead the job is, people in general seem to be happy that the job fantasy fits what they've been asking for. It's better for SE to see a bunch of reasons why people aren't happy with a job rather than just complaining about minor stuff within SE's defined boundaries. It's a game we pay for, after all.

[ForsakenRoe]

Cool and good

Just wondering, would you be able to go Miasma, Bio (weave Scourge), Miasma reapply, Bio reapply (weave Bane) and spread fully empowered Scourge, Miasma and Bio to all enemies because that sounds great

[Rilifane]

How about something that shortens the duration of a dot by 1 tick per cast but deals additional potency? Could also work with a cooldown if you want to trim down the amount of dots although I'd personally like for SCH to work more with dots again.
After playing Disc in WoW for a while I found this a pretty interesting solution to rigid rotations, dots (or generic potency on a cooldown skills) having no interaction and the problem of doing less the better you get. It's basically a mechanic that scales the level of engagement to your current level of gameplay. The better you get as in the less GCD heals you use, the more often you'll have to refresh your dot - you do a different kind of "more" the better you eget. The beginner healer will have to worry less about frequent dot refreshing (or cooldown use) since they don't spam the dot/ cooldown reduction skill as much.
Another benefit is that it's more dynamic. A single SC ress will alter your GCD mapping from then on, making fights less predictable. With a 30s dot, it doesn't matter if you SC ress at the 2nd or 5th GCD after refreshing it. Nothing changes, you still refresh your dot at the exact same time. But with damage spells reducing dot duration for additional potency, an emergency GCD heal or a ress will mean fights don't play the same in terms of dps GCD mapping and instead can greatly vary depending on how many non-dps GCDs you used and when.
And, as I said, this could of course work with a cooldown as well.

I suspect not everyone will like it as some people have gotten used to every pull playing out exactly the same in terms of GCD mapping and treat everything that deviates from their ideal mapping and perfect alignment as a nuisance but I think it would overall be better if we get away from this obsession of always having perfectly predictable and gameplay with naturally aligned skills and everything that throws a wench into our plan is a nuisance, punishment etc.
Not directed at your ideas, ty, just a general observation.
Sometimes it feels like people have forgotten how things can be and are wearing blinkers because FFXIV sledgehammered into their minds that using a different GCD than they planned is punishment and things have to be scripted and predictable.