Preparing Scholar for 7.0

[5trange]

-snip-

So you've been playing for a while. Ok, I was wrong about that and maybe I overreacted in my answer. Surely you can see why, when after I make an effort to explain myself I'm met with a "lol, credibility" response. I must confess, however, I don't know if you saying you've been playing since coil ultimately goes in your favor or not. You tell me not to look at a "third party site" but that contains a visual for how people interact with the game, wether you like it or not. And that is true for you as well, no matter how long you've played.
Regardless, none of the actual responses you gave are very strong.

1) Certainly you read the rules for the decisions I made. They were the premise of the post. That in itself should tell you why removing Protraction is not the same as removing Miasma, Miasma II and Shadowflare. Fun, usefulness, prevention of button bloat. Protraction achieves none of these, as its impact in gameplay is minimal at best. Miasma, Miasma II — with a 2.5s Broil — and Shadowflare on the other hand make downtime less repetitive. If you cannot see this, I have no other way of explaining it.
Besides, it's not like I have anything particular against Protraction, other than finding it "meh". The main reason for removing, other than its lack of weight, was to assure Scholar would still have an OK number of buttons for controller players (I play on M&KB, but still it was a concern of mine).

2) It's not just "adding a bunch of DoTs". If it's true you've been around since ARR, you certainly know how Scholar used to be played in Stormblood. I could link yo to videos, both from a "hardcore" Raid environment and a "casual" Dungeon environment. You can watch them and tell me if Stormblood Scholar ever looked "spammy". Again, the answer is no, especially if compared to what it is now. I wish I had access to old Stormblood logs to show you how much lower the % of Broil was and, incidentally, how much higher the % of Succor was, since you had less healing tools — on average, not talking about parsers. If this does not break the monotony, alongside more careful planning of Aetherflow due to Quickened Aetherflow, what will?
Furthermore, two issues: a) add more to do or more complex interactions, and people will complain healers are "too hard" — I wanted to avoid that; b) rule 4 states, in the name of realism, I can propose only changes that don't change the traditional FFXIV formula too much — this is not a SCH theorycraft thread per se, even if I've left a little section at the end for that;

3) MP economy is a non issue? True and not true, especially as it's dependent on the Content you play and the people you play with.
But aside from that, for the first time in my playtime, this Tier I've used 0 Piety full SpS on my healers. I had 0 trouble with AST even when things were bad, but I assure you Scholar can get scary. Sure, that's an extreme example and not everyone will run that. But consider this: according to my Spell list, you have to use Miasma II — which I've set at 1000MP cost — whenever you have to weave anything, unless you want to lose a lot of DPS with Ruin II. That's a lot of MP over the course of, say, 8 minutes. I assure, again, if you consider how often Miasma II would be used, that MP economy would not be so irrelevant and the 500MP from Energy Drain would become meaningful. Besides, what about prog? What about post-death recovery? It's not like you'll always play in a vacuum of perfection and you might need the extra MP.

4) You can argue wether or not Expedient was "too strong" in its original form. It couldn't really make you cheese a mechanic, unlike hyper-shields and mitigations can — both of which Holos can provide. Expedient might make certain things comfy, but it's not gonna break the game. Otherwise we should immediately remove En Avant, Icarus and all gap-closers in general!
Also, can we stop saying "you removing Expedient" etc.? Even if the button is removed, both of its effects are still there, except they are not at odds with each other — why do you find a reason to complain about that?

5) I don't see how this version fo Scholar is "less flexible". On the contrary, I've strived to remove the contradictions between its kit to allow more freedom of use. Could you point out what exactly feels less flexible? Also, let not be disingenuous: Bard is a DPS Job, so I don't think it's bad for its players to expect interaction in its DPS kit — cause... you know... that's its Role. Not like a Bard has 12 mitigation/healing cooldowns to map during a fight.

As an addendum, which I wish you would make an effort to understand:
When I wrote down the list of Spells and Abilities, I had in mind all levels of Scholar players, that they could enjoy the Job to its fullest despite their competence. Beginners would be glad not to see their hotbars empty when they unlock the Job at Lvl. 30; casual players can still go about playing the Job however they like and will still clear the content they interact with; normal players might find some extra enjoyment when trying to push themselves a little bit; good players might find they are not so bored when they run the same fight for the 200th time. I've thought about controller players and KB&M players. Would you tell me how that dissatisfies you? Did you, in your answers, try to follow the rulesI set out at the start? Or, if you think they are bad rules, would you tell me which and why?

[Renathras]

OP: Personally, I'd combine Fey Blessing with Whispering Dawn (Medica 2, the oGCD) and have said that for a while now, even before SGE stole the idea.

Expedient is powerful and extremely useful as it is. It's one of my favorite abilities in SCH's toolkit because it has so many uses. You can use it for movement, for mitigation, or for movement AND mitigation depending on your needs, and its CD is long enough to not be spammed but short enough to be up frequently when needed (contrast Lilybell, which is 1 min too long, severely limiting its use and somehow also never being up when you need it a second time).

It's the one truly good thing I think has happened to SCH in recent memory, and I don't get why so many people want to axe it or do something else with it. It's already got the defensive ability tacked on, so it doesn't need to be tacked onto something else.

[EDIT: Oh, I do want to say clearly, I always like seeing new ideas and you put a lot of thought into this, so I don't want to shoot you down. There are just a few things I feel somewhat strongly on myself is all. :ENDEDIT]

Why does everyone hate Protraction?

I honestly can't figure this one out, either. Personally I don't like it much since I like more straightforward tools, but I think it's not a bad ability, and while Aquaveil, Exaltation, and Taurocole are basically three takes on the same idea, Protraction is actually pretty distinct from them. This goes back to that whole thing about people complaining about homogenization...but then supporting homogenization by accident.

First of all, if any of the dps mechanics is going to change for SCH, it has to be for all healers.

It really really doesn't.

Indeed, my propensity for "4 Healers Model" aside, this thinking is what leads to homogenization. What are the least homogenized roles in the game right now? Caster and ARGUABLY Ranged. Casters all have wildly different playstyles between BLM, SMN, and RDM, as well as different levels of party utility, rotational complexity, damage output, and even healing output. It's also probably the best role in the game right now in terms of not being homogenized, as not one of the three feels like the other two when playing it.

Ranged is sorta in a similar boat, and we see a similar thing there with their rotations being different, differing levels of utility, complexity, damage output, even healing output.

Granted, you're also promoting Expedience being a role action/being on other Healer Jobs, so I suppose you support homogenization. But I don't think it's the best course, and I don't think I'm alone in that, at least.

[ForsakenRoe]

I honestly can't figure this one out, either. Personally I don't like it much since I like more straightforward tools, but I think it's not a bad ability, and while Aquaveil, Exaltation, and Taurocole are basically three takes on the same idea, Protraction is actually pretty distinct from them. This goes back to that whole thing about people complaining about homogenization...but then supporting homogenization by accident.

Personally, my issue with Protraction is that it IS homogenization. Look at the 86 skills:

Protraction: 10% increased healing, 10% increased max HP, heal for same amount as increased
Exaltation: 10% mit, 500p heal after 8 seconds
Aquaveil: 15% mit
Krasis: 20% increased healing

Effectively, Protraction is Exaltation + Krasis, but worse than either at the things they each do. The 10% bonus HP is effectively 10% EHP, it's nice that it's a different 'style' from regular % mits so it doesn't suffer diminishing returns I'll give it that. But most of the time, you don't even need to use those skills. Tanks can live without Exaltation or Aquaveil, using their own kit, so this effect largely goes un-used for me. The increased healing is very similar to Krasis, and like Krasis, given that it's a single target buff, the best thing I can think to use it on would be Deploy-Adlo (which sucks, because you would want to Protraction the tank, but that'd lead to your Adlo taking an auto and weakening before Deployment), or what I use Krasis for on SGE, comboing with Soteria (or in the SCH's case, Union tether).

Lastly, the heal is 10% of your max HP. On a tank, that's about 12k right now. Physick heals for about that much for me (BIS gear, 645 weapon). Effectively making the healing portion be 'a Physick, OGCD, once per minute'. Which is one of the most boring things I've ever heard, but when we have Fey Blessing as 'Indom 2' I guess it makes sense. Either way, that's where I'm at with Protraction: It's trying to do the job of Exaltation and Krasis together, and doing neither of them well. The first thing to do, to make it more interesting, is to make it Deployable

Oh, and for full disclosure, I don't think Expedience is good because of the sprint. The sprint could be reduced again to 5s duration and I wouldn't care. The fact it's a 20s mit that sticks to the player, instead of requiring standing in a bubble, is the reason it's so good. There's plenty of mechanics that force the players to be spread far from one another such that Soil cannot catch everyone. Expedient patches that hole in the kit of SCH

[AnotherPerson]

Protraction isn't a bad skill because it's unique in terms of raising maximum HP, it's a bad skill because the effects doesn't provide anything substantial to differentiate its usage. I'm just saying... If you have Adlo apply a secondary effect being Protraction, you basically lose nothing other than the skill animation. That's how minimal Protraction feels as a skill. It's far weaker than Krasis in terms of buffing your oGCDs, doesn't last very long, and really gets benefit in AoE when you just use it to slightly buff your Adlo to spread a bigger shield using Deployment Tactics. It's not a substantial increase (being 10% as opposed to Krasis 20%) so it's very limited in effect. If it could be deployed, that would at least be more utility in its design.