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

[Renathras]

My "bad track record" seems to be imagined, but I can't convince anyone who's trapped in that illusion to break it, so it doesn't matter.

Honestly, for my part, I'd be fine with SB SCH. /shrug

I do think the less janky pet is an improvement, and I was never a fan of the pet macroing. The main changes I think that SCH should have from the SB base would be Expedient (a generally well regarded improvement), Rouse to upgrade to Seraph/Consolation, Aetherpact to be a toggle with no gauge that just does targeted Embraces like Kardia (which...was supposedly the original point of it, to make up for not being able to macro Embrace). I do think streamlining the Faerie abilities was a good idea, and I don't think the Eos/Selene split was a thing worth going back to, personally (remember: It's okay to disagree)

And I hate Dissipation. I think it should be changed to just give Aetherflow and boost all healing, not just magic. Everyone always says Eos being gone during the time isn't much healing, so then by that token, there's no reason for her to go away since it makes so little difference.

I do think there'd be a button bloat problem, though...

[5trange]

I was writing a slightly peepoangy post. It's relevant, but, whatever, I'll put it in spoiler tags and call it a day so people don't have to read it if they don't want to.

1) «Some were evasive in their answer, as if they feared I might attack them for saying yes or no directly.»

None were "evasive" though, unless we want to reinvent the meaning of the word. They would have been "evasive" if the inclination of their answer had been unclear; which, it wasn't — at all. Everyone pretty much answered "yes" and then added nuance and context to their response. That is NOT "being evasive", that is expressing one's own reasons for choosing.

2) «Others think it's a meant to be artificially limiting to get people to admit the current state in EW is better somehow or something.»

Your thread IS artificial, there is no denying it. As for Shadowbringers and Endwalker, no one ever — ever! — said they brought absolutely nothing good. The general sentiment is that the bad outweighs the good SO MUCH, that people would rather go back to a Lvl. 70 Job instead of what they have now, even though it sucks to lose certain options.

3) «Others want to talk about more nuanced things that were left out of the initial question NOT to constrain it, but to prevent getting lost in the weeds (for example, assuming we went straight back to 4.5 SCH, then we had ShB and EW from there, it would have potency increases so that its nuke/DoTs/AOE would be competitive with the other healers now, I'm not talking about going back to 200 potency Broil II), which then derails and sidetracks from the point.»

But that's just it: the abstraction you propose, in the extreme form you propose it, is of no advantage to the healer situation in general and to the scholar one in particular. And despite that, if you had taken the time to understand — not just skim — the responses you received, you would have realized you had the answers right there in plain sight, with no room for doubt.

4) «The point was to see if people really do think SB SCH was a solid kit that, even if it was transferred to now (with normalized upgrades and whatnot), would stand the test of time. That if we had 4.5 SCH (with potency upgrades) in the game right now as another Job, it would be good and they'd want to play it more or less as is, or if they recognize/believe that it was lacking in various ways. In other words, to get people to take it off the pedestal and look at both its downsides and its upsides, not the upsides alone, and seriously consider it. It's easy - and this is the "rose tinted goggles" effect - to forget about how sucky the sucky parts of the past are, as we Humans tend to forget a lot of the downsides of things for whatever reason (maybe our brains evolved to not want to dwell on the negative, I dunno, but it's a thing).»

That is exactly why people were giving you nuanced answers, which you dismissed several times with your "off-topic" rationale. So why are you changing the cards on the table now? You were told numerous times, in other threads as well, that nobody ever thought Scholar was impeccable — so perfect that nothing of note could be added to it without compromising it. What people told you is that Staormblood was the perfect iteration to which things could get added without anything being removed really (this last part is debatable ofc).
Also, remember the what the lazy players call "jank" is usually what gives room to player skill expression. Of course there is BAD jank (like Dissipation, which was not good in HW and SB, was slightly redeemed in ShB, and then ruined again in EW by removing the MP regain from Energy Drain). You seem to have this weird perception of Scholar players as monkeys who cannot admit to any flaw of their Job. Yes they can. Indeed, there were talks of fixing aspects of Scholar already in Stormblood and not only to make it better, but to balance it as well — for example, many top players felt that a 500 potency Indomitability was too strong and wanted it reduced, which indeed ended up happening and nobody lamented anything.
I repeat: it's like you read the answers you receive, but don't really make an effort to understand them, while also ignoring the wealth of feedback from the past. You tell me what we are to make of that.

5) «And so the goal here was to have a serious discussion about both the upsides AND downsides of SB SCH, the downsides AND the upsides of EW SCH, and from there, consider what would best merge the most upsides while incurring the least downsides; as well as to get people to realize they have SB SCH on a pedestal it doesn't deserve and shouldn't be sitting in, as seeing it that way prevents seriously considering the negatives of the design that shouldn't be carried forward.»

I thought you wanted people to give a yes/no answer? Didn't you chastise people for actually discussing and argumenting their points? And now you say you wanted to discuss the upsides and downsides of SB Scholar? Ok. Anyway. Stop it with expressions like "get people to realize they have SB SCH on a pedestal it doesn't deserve and shouldn't be sitting in". People don't need to realize anything — you, on the other hand, need to realize that, while not perfect (as no Job outright is) Scholar is probably the epitome of healer design and deserves to be on a pedestal, with golden medals and a divine halo besides. Who do you think you are? Some sort of messiah? Do you really think all these people who have so eloquently discussed with you are fools, and you're the only enlightened one who "has to make people realize things". Not even Napoleon had such a strong delirium of omnipotence!

What I actually want to do now is two things:

First, ask Renathras a genuine question: do you think the fact that 98% of the people here disagree with you has no meaning? Do you think the number of upovotes to the posts has no meaning? Has it crossed your mind that the reason people argue against your poor takes is not because of some witch-hunting, but because they are poor takes? Ever since you started filling these sections with your threads, you've been met with a united and cohesive front, arguing more or less in harmony of understanding and intent. Has this never given you the suspicion that you had to second guess yourself and that you were indeed defending in debatable fashion a debatable opinion? Maybe it's time to push away the mirror and start reflecting. We are not the obstacles that the Almighty has put on your path to test the strength of your resolve and crown you a hero — it's perfectly possible that you are just... wrong. I'm not trying to provoke here and the questions have no intent to be ironic. It just puzzles me too much that you never had a sincere epiphany, despite all the occasions you had. Instead you shuffle the elements on the table and continue arguing or decide to ignore 100 lines of a well-written post to focus on the 2 lines that might slightly irk you.

Anyway, moving on from this unpleasant stuff. Since it now looks like we have been given permission to discuss our takes on Scholar, I shall go ahead and post a number of things I do not like about it and see what people think of them, without stopping at the usual "Capstone skills are at odds with each other" or "Fairy gauge is bad" (both of which are true, mind you).

• Dissipation: this Skill was kinda meh throughout HW and SB, and was slightly redeemed in ShB when they made the Fairy actually come back by itself. It still sucked cause the healing boost didn't work on Abilities, only Spells, and locked you out of many other tools, but it was something. In EW, however, they removed the 500MP recovery from Energy Drain, which all but turned this "Capstone Skill" into a pure and sad DPS button, which retains all of its other problems. I'd like to think Dissipation can easily be fixed in a number of ways, but since SE seems hellbent on not fixing it, I wouldn't mind just seeing it go for good and leave room for something else.

• Seraph: I love Consolation, I "hate" Seraph. There was no need to have a Fairy transition sequence, if all we would get from it is a slightly stronger Embrace (mostly irrelevant and still untargettable) and an extra Fairy skill, while 1) not receiving any improvement on Whispering Dawn and Fey Illumination, and 2) being locked out of Dissipation, Fey Union and Fey Blessing. Like... why? Just have Consolation be a normal Fairy ability with 2 charges and 120s CD and call it a day (that makes even more sense now that they have consolidated the buttons). Make it have a Fey Gauge cost, to limit its added flexibility. Can we instead have Rouse back for a stronger Fairy? Now that didn't lock us out of anything and only had a 60s CD.

• Expedient: Was great when both the mitigation and the zoomies were 20s (doing Act 2 in P4S with this felt so good). Now, with the different timers, it just sucks to have those together. They absolutely need to be decoupled somehow. Also, this Skill is 100% fairy-themed, with the green wind and butterflies, so... why the heck is this NOT a Fairy Skill? Only because it has a stratagem-like name? That's kind of a bad reason tbh. Or maybe they were afraid it would contrast with — you guessed it — Dissipation and Seraph making you unable to use it. Smh.

• Fey Blessing: Eh... I like the animation for this, but I kinda dislike its effect. Outside of hyper-optimized environments, it's too weak to heal anything by itself so you always have to pair it with something else and it's not going to save you any resource. There were talks in late ShB about reducing its cooldown or increasing its potency but nothing ended up happening. Remember how Holos was literally a copy-paste of this, and then got changed for the better (twice)? I'd say making Fey Blessing a 120s CD and putting the Sprint or the mitigation from Expedient here wouldn't be so bad, provided we remove the Seraph, so you can't be locked out of it. Or something else entirely, I don't know lol.

• Fey Illumination: I like multi-purpose skills, but not all multi-purpose skills are good the way they are (see Expedient above). Mostly, it's DPS skills like Miasma II from Stormblood that can be considered excellent and nuanced multi-purpose Skills. When it comes to support, overlapping effects on a long CD skill means more often than not that you'll have to sacrifice one aspect for the other. That being said, I'd like to see Fey Covenant return as a proper 10% magic mitigation on a 120s CD (not a Magic Def. buff, like in SB), and Fey Illumination to be a 120s CD 10% healing buff for GCDs (or maybe 5% for both GCDs and oGCDs?).

• Energy Drain: other than making it MP-relevant and not spammable again (which would force people not to burn every stack during burst), I'd like to see it be a 100 potency AoE skill with fall-off damage, so it would actually be useful during trash packs in dungeons. It feels terrible to burn extra Aetherflow stack on a 100 potency single target ability when there are 12 mobs scurrying about. This would have no impact on single target, obviously.

• Protraction: This feels unimpactful and, despite a lot of theorycrafting, 99% of the times it's used to buff Critlo-Deploy (or for Recitation+Excog in dungeons, but considering the damage it's hardly needed) — in which case, it's just an inferior Krasis. I'm sure all Scholars could lose this button overnight and not even notice the morning after.

• The 1.5s cast time: Not sure how popular this is, but it's not my cup of tea. I'd rather have Miasma II back and actually have to think and optimize my weaves alongside DoT refreshes and minimal (possibly none) Ruin II usage.

Wait... omg... I can actually criticize Scholar despite loving it to death? Unfathomable.

[Post]

I think the 1.5 sec cast time just sort of became the singularity for healers as they all started getting more and more oGCDs, it's why AST got it first.

SCH had half its oGCDs on its Faerie become actual, weave required oGCDs instead of pet skills you could order while casting, and SGE just copied new SCH.

Even WHM with extra Benison charges and Aquaveil now, probably getting more Assize and Tetragrammaton in the future when they shrug and don't know what else to add.

The 1.5 sec GCD is like how every tank now has 'finish 123 and charge a BIG HIT!' rotation.

It sounds fine if you approach everything with optimal DPS brain, but in my experience it just makes them all the more bland to play. Like, they chose to make certain dps jobs play with a faster GCD to differentiate them, and for a time so did DRK and AST, but for whatever reason that was removed in favor of just copying other jobs of the same role.

MMOs are always in some kinda state of flux I guess, but man does it feel like the devs are okay with jobs being undercooked these days.

"As long as it's edible, what does it matter?"

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I think the 1.5 sec cast time just sort of became the singularity for healers as they all started getting more and more oGCDs, it's why AST got it first.

SCH had half its oGCDs on its Faerie become actual, weave required oGCDs instead of pet skills you could order while casting, and SGE just copied new SCH.

Even WHM with extra Benison charges and Aquaveil now, probably getting more Assize and Tetragrammaton in the future when they shrug and don't know what else to add.

The 1.5 sec GCD is like how every tank now has 'finish 123 and charge a BIG HIT!' rotation.

It sounds fine if you approach everything with optimal DPS brain, but in my experience it just makes them all the more bland to play. Like, they chose to make certain dps jobs play with a faster GCD to differentiate them, and for a time so did DRK and AST, but for whatever reason that was removed in favor of just copying other jobs of the same role.

MMOs are always in some kinda state of flux I guess, but man does it feel like the devs are okay with jobs being undercooked these days.

"As long as it's edible, what does it matter?"

I feel like the "Astrolofication" of GCD nuke cast time is an entirely missed opportunity to make a different flavor for all healers in some part.

Back when people were anticipating (or should I say, doomsaying lol) the 6.0 EW Healers in late ShB, I had this vague idea of how a smart of use of tools to create those weaving spaces. Something like:

• WHM can stick to their Lily being their majority of their instants to create those weaving space & movement window they need. They certainly could use more than just Solace & Rapture, though.
• SCH can have a couple more DoTs, preferably to have at least one short duration DoT that is DPS neutral with a single Broil cast and other two 'mandatory DoT' with two different timers. "Need to move & weave a quick Soil? Use this hypothetical DoT! Oh no, need more movement? Well I guess time to bite the minor loss of Ruin II(s)? Gotta plan better next time!" Bonus point if said hypothetical DoT will also interact with something else within their own kits. But these all were bare minimum.
• I think AST should just stay at 1.5s. It was one of the thing that remind me in ShB "Oh right I'm playing Yu-Gi-Oh!"

But hey uh, it's easier to just slap 1.5s cast time on everybody and call it a day, right? lmao. No wonder I felt the fast cast time sort of garbage on WHM who has the least amount of weaving to do. They could've just leave it at 2.00s/2.50s cast time and that would've made me think more carefully where, when, and how I want to use the lilies.

Don't have anything to say for SGE cause obviously these were old vague ideas that came up before its release.

[ForsakenRoe]

"As long as it's edible, what does it matter?"

You make me realize that the devs made an Archon Loaf of the healer role: has all the 'essential nutrition', but as a result of it's assembly (and it's ingredients) it's borderline unpalatable

Ironic that it's one of the staple dishes of Sharlayan researchers, given that Sharlayan itself is home to two of the four healing disciplines (SGE and 'the real AST')