Would SCH's SB kit be "good enough" now?

[Mortex]

Job would miss a decent number of tools we had but in return we would get a pet ai that isn’t dumb as bricks plus aoe esuna and 3 % gcd buff. And eos having 20 % increase heal and 10 % magic reduce on 2 separate abilities.

[Mortex]

Job would miss a decent number of tools we had but in return we would get a pet ai that isn’t dumb as bricks plus aoe esuna and 3 % gcd buff. And eos having 20 % increase heal and 10 % magic reduce on 2 separate abilities.

Also I’m on handy so I’m forced too reply too myself. Cleric stance every 90 sec plus shadowflare miasma 2 and dots. And energy drain giving mana so we don’t starve all the time. Plus the most important quickening aetherflow so we have 3 stacks every 45 seconds.

[Shikiseki]

reading all those replies reminds me how fun SCH actually used to be compared to the current design which I'm not touching unless I have a glamour to show off >_>
Their decline started the moment they lost bane and manual embrace, it was really fun to play as you felt like you could easily carry as solo healer even in tight situations

I think reworking deployment tactics to work like the PvP iteration on a low cd would be a good start - granted it might be rather strong with crit adlo but let's be honest, how often do you actually want to waste a gcd cast adlo in most if not all casual content anymore - this button could be used to spread your dot instead of being useful for 5% of the time

[Renathras]

And you can see from the first page alone that the answer is yes because everyone immediately started getting misty eyed reminiscing about everything that got gutted from the job.

I don't think this answer is yes. People get misty eyed about a lot of things that they might not want back. I get misty eyed thinking about my time in the military, and while there were things I enjoyed about it at the time, I wouldn't want to be doing it/them RIGHT NOW (or, in some cases, ever again). Rose-tinted goggles make people misty eyed about things, but that doesn't mean that the thing they're reminiscing on stands up to the test of time.

...or even if it does, that they would want it again NOW. Nostalgia vs reality, "You can never truly go home"; these things are real.

It would be better than it is now, but also bittersweet because it would mean we spent 5 years driving around in a circle only to arrive back at our starting point.

Right...but that's also not the question. I guess what I'm getting at is if people would praise it and say "This is great, don't ever touch SCH again, please, this is perfection!" or if they'd be like "Well.......this is a START. But we need more/changes/some of it's very dated/unfun, how about..." kind of stuff. Like, was it truly good, to the point getting it now would satisfy from now on, or was it not REALLY good, people just have rose-tinted feelings about it, but if it was directly ported into 6.4/6.5, people would notice it not having stood up to the test of time?

And before anyone says that's somehow impossible; Many 5.5 SMNs would be perfectly happy having 5.5 SMN back EXACTLY as it was with no changes. Many DRGs right now want no changes at all made to it, as the Job is, to many, effectively perfect as it is, and changes would be downgrades, not upgrades, with a likely rework being perceived as likely also a downgrade. What I'm curious about is if SB SCH was truly the peak of the mountain it's often presented as here, or something imperfect itself with nostalgia just clouding people's judgement in the matter.

Imagine waiting for 5 years of no update to your job or ANY job for that matter. That's basically what you are saying. Playing a Lv 70 toolkit at lv 100.

Firstly; many Jobs have fewer abilities and less complexity at 100 than they did at 70. So that's not really saying a lot.

Secondly; there are cases people would take that offer. SMNs, for example. DRGs think their Job is pretty close to perfect already. SAM's might prefer their SB kit to their EW ones in some cases. So that isn't a tall ask.

It's more trying to see if SCH's SB kit really holds up to the test of time and would be fun and work in the current game or not. Being evasive doesn't change any of that.

Why is the assumption that Sch wouldn't have their 80-90 skills too? They should just have the ones from SB as well.

I think this depends some on the changes. For example, Aetherpact and Faerie Gauge would almost certainly go, since Fey Union was added to the game almost entirely to make up for Embrace macros no longer working. So it would depend on the thing.

Losing ALL of that would be fairly significant in presence of Sage.

This...I think was a good answer.

I think a lot of people don't quite get how much has been gained nor how much has changed in encounter design, among other things. Personally, I'm not sure it would be terrible, it would just be...different. Though that's more my take. That is, I'm not actually negative on it. I just think a lot of people that incessantly praise SB's SCH design might not appreciate it as much if it were actually implemented. I personally still think it should be, but I think people should be more sober-minded about it than they are. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, often more powerful even than fear of change. The extreme version of fear of change is not opposition to any change; it's seeking to return to a past perceived glory state of "the good old days" which weren't always so good...

It would be far from enough, it would be stagnant at best. They need to bring back some of HW's kit with visual and gameplay tweaks. More interactions with the fairy, which I'd like to see function a bit like summoner, where you can command her to also do damage like applying one of the dots that was removed. Or for example, summoning Seraph gives you access to an empowered dot that you can keep and use at will so that it's just not a 2min dps cd, etc...

Understand. Another good answer: It wouldn't end the complaints, it would just engender new ones.

Personally I think it would be welcome. A kit that's good if stale to some vs the current appalling ones.

If you gave everyone in this thread a choice between being stuck with the shb kit for 4 years or the sb kit for 4 years, most would choose the latter.

Also another good answer, and a fair one.

Again, I'm in favor of it myself. I just think people need to be sober-minded about what it would entail.

[ty_taurus]

Right...but that's also not the question. I guess what I'm getting at is if people would praise it and say "This is great, don't ever touch SCH again, please, this is perfection!" or if they'd be like "Well.......this is a START. But we need more/changes/some of it's very dated/unfun, how about..." kind of stuff. Like, was it truly good, to the point getting it now would satisfy from now on, or was it not REALLY good, people just have rose-tinted feelings about it, but if it was directly ported into 6.4/6.5, people would notice it not having stood up to the test of time?

And before anyone says that's somehow impossible; Many 5.5 SMNs would be perfectly happy having 5.5 SMN back EXACTLY as it was with no changes. Many DRGs right now want no changes at all made to it, as the Job is, to many, effectively perfect as it is, and changes would be downgrades, not upgrades, with a likely rework being perceived as likely also a downgrade. What I'm curious about is if SB SCH was truly the peak of the mountain it's often presented as here, or something imperfect itself with nostalgia just clouding people's judgement in the matter.

But, I did answer your question in the first part of the sentence you quoted. I just needed to expand on my answer because it isn't as simple as a "yes" or "no." There's nuance to it, and trying to elaborate on that context is important if you're trying to have a conversation about what people want in Scholar.

People want to see growth and development in a live service game. One of the most exciting moments before a new expansion is the job actions trailer teasing players about what's new and different about their favorite jobs. It would feel sour to see that all they could manage to do to improve on Scholar would be to go back to the exact state it was in two expansions ago and not expand on that in any way. People would probably be excited to see the return of spells like Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadow Flare, but there would be a feeling of defeat seeing that the job has effectively been in a 6 year state of stagnation in a game that's supposed to grow and change.

You gave examples of jobs where players want those jobs to be reverted or to be left alone, but you're ignoring the context of why people feel that way. It's because many players have lost faith in Square's ability to rework jobs and are afraid of the outcome. If the direction of job design were universally more positive, and the result of new jobs and reworks was largely acknowledged as a good thing, Dragoon players would likely be excited for the Dawntrail rework.

[Post]

The job actions trailer is a poor venue for prioritizing and promoting meaningful changes to jobs for the developers cuz it rewards flashy things regardless of if they have substance.

Compare the gut reactions to Living Shadow, Automaton Queen, EW SMN actions (hell even smaller things like Stardiver, Enlightenment and Hissatsu: Senei) to Expedient, and yet Expedient among those is the thing that affected its respective job's play the most, even the party's.

They're like relic weapons, they keep just adding shinier and shinier spell effects to the actions but the gameplay doesn't change, or it gets simpler. Meanwhile, more people have to turn off other player spell effects so the boss's telegraphs don't drown in them.

Hell, that's probably half the reason telegraphs have gotten so friggin huge, too.

[Connor]

I’m sorry to say I simply do not understand the obsession with Miasma / Miasma II / Bane as a Scholar. This is as someone who played Scholar a lot in Stormblood

Miasma would literally just be a second button to press every X seconds, but it wouldn’t actually add anything to the gameplay. You wouldn’t suddenly be calculating some complex DoT reapplication plan just because you had to reapply Miasma 6 seconds earlier (and in fact it just makes it even more ‘conveyor belt style’ dps because you just repeat the pattern over and over again). Even back in Stormblood / Heavensward it wasn’t particularly engaging or taxing to have to manage varied DoT durations, because you just develop a ‘rotation’ (Miasma - Bio II - Bio, Bio, Miasma, Bio II I think it was for maximum uptime, or some variation thereof). If ‘Miasma’ comes back it needs to do something more than just being an extraneous dps step.

Miasma II would be functionally redundant in current content. The whole ‘thing’ was that it could be ‘leveraged as a dps gain at an MP cost’, but in current content it’s nigh-impossible to run out of MP, even more so as a Scholar if you’re managing Aetherflow properly. They’d literally have to make Miasma II cost equal to or more than actual Raise for it to put a dent in our MP, and even then it wouldn’t really be a ‘tactical decision’, it would be ‘I have to use this or everyone will say I suck’, because there’d be no logical justification to not maximise its effect (all reward no risk)

Bane again wouldn’t make sense in current content. In literally any scenario where there’s 2+ enemies Bane’s value would skyrocket far above any other Aetherflow skill, so your Aetherflow gauge would just become ‘Bane’ gauge. If there’s not 2+ enemies, it goes the complete opposite direction and may as well cease to exist.

Also as an aside, aren’t we all conveniently forgetting that by Stormblood both DoT DPS has an instant-cast easily accessible way to reapply both DoTs? Iron Jaws was one expansion old and Tri-Disaster was morphed into the oGCD version that applied all of Summoners DoTs at once (for some reason I want to say it had three at Stormblood but it may have been 2, not counting Shadow Flare) . Even by Stormblood it wasn’t exactly a dev expectation that players be managing long lists of DoTs - not for the jobs that were designed specifically around DoTs anyway.

I like the idea of Deployment spreading DoTs but it falls into the same issue as above. The moment there’s more than a single target, anything other than DoT spread would be completely valueless. The moment it becomes a single target, the DoT spread becomes completely valueless (and there’s so little incentive to spread shields that you’d just continue to never use it outside of downtime lol)

Personally I think using the Stormblood version of Scholar would cause nothing but issues and ultimately just hold the class back for no real reason. Obviously it needs more than what it has now, but going backwards won’t actually solve anything. I won’t go too much into it because I know nobody will ever agree but I think the belief that Stormblood Scholar was some beautifully crafted complex healer dps combo, and not just an accidental mess because of the SMN/SCH separation issues that people just happened to like, is mostly down to people having trouble resolving in their mind that the devs really did just mess up that bad with things and had absolutely no idea how to deal with it. (Hence heavy handed changes like Quickened Aetherflow but no Energy Drain, full deletion of extraneous DoTs, significantly reduced pet capabilities, etc). I also believe that SE see DoTs as inherently problematic - particularly on healers - because as far as they’re concerned it lets you deal damage where jobs without otherwise wouldn’t. Like that time on Leviathan in 2.0 where Bards / Summoners / Scholars could do disproportionate amounts of damage by DoT’ing both Head and Tail, which then ticked whilst he was ‘untargetable’. Which, I get is ridiculous, but I think that’s their belief when it comes to balancing them which is why they’ve become so much more subdued over time. Plus there’s things to consider like enemy debuff limits

I’m all for Scholar getting more offensive actions, but they should be ones that have actual tactical application beyond ‘hurts things’. Whether that’s debuffs, interactions, mutual exclusivity on DoTs / Debuffs, etc, I just don’t see the appeal of filler DoTs to pad out the dps rotation if they don’t have their own purpose.

Edit: used spoiler markers for each point as I wrote quite a lot

[Pandurah]

Mate. The answer is yes. Stormblood SCH with the new additions such as I mentioned (Recitation, Protraction, Expedient, Seraph) would satisfy many SCH mains. I've been playing SCH for 10 years, it's my main, it's all I play. So I've had 10yrs job experience. The answer is yes. You're just being obtuse and/or contrarian because you're bored. Or trolling. Or both.

Fairy gauge isn't tied to Seraph in and of itself, and no longer is required for Fey Wind. So if people had to sacrifice the tether for directed Embrace casts, so be it. I'm indifferent. The gauge goes to waste a lot of the time, especially with a coheal popping off, and the amount of self-care tanks have now. I only see good use of it in Savage, and on party members when I don't have any stacks for Lustrate. If it had to be one (the tether) or the other (directing the fairy to use embrace) I really don't mind either way. I want my core kit back; dots, s'flare, my Quickened Aetherflow trait, and my new tools since SB.

[Silver-Strider]

I’m sorry to say I simply do not understand the obsession with Miasma / Miasma II / Bane as a Scholar. This is as someone who played Scholar a lot in Stormblood

The "obsession" is because current SCH is boring AF. The main avenue of skill expression is pretty much Energy Drain optimization and to a lesser extent Deployment optimization (but that falls off once content is on farm and people are properly geared). Sure, Bane has little to no use in Raids/Ultimates outside of the exceptionally rare add phase, it would at least make casual content more engaging, which would go a long way to making the entire game more engaging for healers rather than just confinding all enjoyment to end game only. Not to mention that the argument that Bane is useless in Raids would also apply to our AoE nukes making it a moot point. Having more options is never a bad thing. Finally, if SE does decide to give Healers more interaction within their toolkit, having only about 4 offensive skills total doesn't really leave a lot of room to branch out for skill expression. They aren't going to increase healing requirements so locking interaction to the healing side of the tool is pretty pointless when we already have plenty of tools on that end but trying to tie healing to feed into DPS or vice versa would make a handful of small interactions at best unless they overhaul the entire toolkit, which is even less likely then them just returning Miasma/Miasma 2/Bane.

[Sebazy]

I’m sorry to say I simply do not understand the obsession with Miasma / Miasma II / Bane as a Scholar. This is as someone who played Scholar a lot in Stormblood

Bane was at it's peak in HW. Between that, Blizzard II and Shadowflare a SCH could actually out AoE a WHM, often by a pretty significant margin at times. You were walking a knife edge balancing your Cleric uptime vs the lack of a stun ala WHM, it was way way more exhilarating DPSing as SCH back then as the pay offs was doing literal top tier DPS level damage (~1000 DPS in Neverreap, a figure which many actual DPS jobs struggled to hit). Stormblood relegated it back behind WHM, doing less damage, losing the risk vs reward dopamine hit and just never quite being the same really.