Scholars used to be awesome; I hope 7.0 goes back to the basics.

[TheDustyOne]

I don't know what responses you're reading, but everyone there seems to be saying "yes, it'd be nice to have back, but with a few ShB and EW additions to let it keep up the same amount of healing it can do currently" and a few going slightly off topic about how it can be further improved. SB SCH was made in the context of SB, so the healing kit was also made in the context of SB, otherwise most responses seem to be reminiscence over what was lost and wanting it back.

After I made my comment saying that I'd also like it back, you responded and promptly got chewed out because it felt like you were ignoring all the positive yes comments and nostalgic reminiscences before mine and saying that you were "surprised by how many people didn't say that".

[Renathras]

Well, setting this canard straight first: I got "chewed out" by people not wanting to go on record saying they'd be happy with that and who kept trying to change the question rather than stick to the question asked because they felt something else would be more advantageous to their desired position.

Now then, moving on:

That's what I said?

People seemed to be saying "If that's all we get...fine, it's still better than what we have" while also saying "But we should get more than that/I want more than that". That's...what I said. For examples:

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

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.
...
Expedient, Quickened Aetherflow, Reasons to use Energy Drain, etc. etc. would definitely feel better than it is now though. Seraph would probably be more responsive with SB SCH as well.

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...

Those aren't all exactly ringing endorsements of the idea or "noone would complain".

I wasn't saying people wouldn't be happy...er.

I suspect many would. I'm just saying the idea of just planting SB SCH back into the game as it was now would still generate complaints. AND even just adding their DPS kit back but leaving their current kit otherwise unchanged would have some complaints. I was contesting the idea that there would be no complaints. No more and no less.

EDIT:

And recall what I said myself in that very thread:

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

[TheDustyOne]

I think you're taking "no one would complain" too literally here. Again, hyperbole, not everything is literal. Everyone will always have some pain points and things they want improved, I even listed my own problems with SB SCH on my comment, but that still doesn't stop the fact that what was said in that thread was still highly enthusiastic about Scholars old playstyle, about how they'd happily play it again, and would prefer to be stuck with that for 4+ years compared to ShB/EW kit. The bittersweet comments are mostly around the fact that we would've spent 4 years going in a circle, that SCH effectively wouldn't have progressed beyond lvl 70 in a game soon reaching lvl 100. They want more because FFXIV should've offered more after 4+ years. SB SCH would be better than now sure, but we should've evolved off of that into something greater and instead became a broilspammer with a fairy.

[ty_taurus]

Imagine this: While you're driving on the way home from a long road trip where you still have several hours left to drive, you swerve to avoid a deer, but drive down into a muddy ditch in a rainstorm. Your car is partially stuck, you have no phone signal, it's dark out, and its pouring rain. You get and start doing everything you can to push or pull your car out of the muddy pit where your wheels are stuck. It takes hours, you're soaking wet, cold, and exhausted, but you're able to un-stuck your car, and drive it back up to the road. There is an unquestioning sense of victory in getting out the mud pit, but at the same time, you're tired, cold, dirty, and sore from the labor, and you still have several hours before you can get home, shower, and get some well-needed rest.

That is the emotional experience I was trying to explain. Yes, it would feel amazing to finally break free of the mud pit, but that doesn't mean you don't also feel the fatigue, the stress, and the the dread of seeing the several hour drive you still have to make. And the thing is, this is something that would be exacerbated with Scholar, because unlike the muddy ditch example where there's no way to get around needing to drive home, freeing Scholar from its simplicity prison doesn't mean we have to set it back exactly where it was before the damage was done. Why can't we go "alright, here's where Scholar was before Shadowbringers gutted it. If we were to progress from that point along this new line of thinking, where would Scholar be by Dawntrail?" And design that job, rather than just time travel to 2018.

[Renathras]

I think you're taking "no one would complain" too literally here.

...yet another point in the "hyperbole is bad, stop using it" bucket?

Regardless, I was just pointing out that some people would.

...

...which is fine. Did I say it wasn't?

I just said people would be complaining just the same. One of the problems with all the DPS pitches are that most don't move the needle a lot. An extra DoT every 15 sec and some gimmick use on CD ability are going to be entertaining for a few weeks...but then what? Then they won't be, and we'll be back in this same position again, just with the needle moved to more DPS, so people will ask for even more. Another new ability or mechanic, entertained for a few more months, then back to the same.

It's why I think any real solution HAS to include encounter design changes.

Otherwise, we'll be back in this same position. Because I fully believe WHM having a 15 sec use on CD GCD and a 15 sec duration Dia would get just as boring to the people bored now after a few weeks with it. There's no way 2 more presses of Dia per minute and 3-4 presses of some other button is going to be vastly more entertaining in the long run.

At some point, we end up with a branching path of "just delete healers from the game and have all DPSers have Vercure and Verraise", or we go the other way where encounters are designed to deal more consistent general damage and healing kits adjusted to actually need to be used to respond to it. And the former of those paths is just not good. Mainly, because it probably won't happen - I can't see Yoshi P's old school "healers should heal" mindset giving way to ARPG "everyone's a healer" gameplay, especially with this netcode, and that would require redesigning every fight in the game's history anyway.

We're going to have to address encounter design at some point. Putting it off will just make doing so worse and worse when we eventually have to do it.

Remember, for all the talk of SCH's HW kit being challenging, it wasn't JUST more damage. Those fights DID do random damage to people, have boss autos that crit, etc. They DID have a different encounter design - one our kits are more than capable of dealing with, but which modern encounters don't use, which is the reason for the kit vs encounter disconnect. Cleric stance "dancing" would be meaningless if you were able to do all your healing with oGCDs like we do now. It only existed because you needed GCD healing.

Encounter design HAS to happen. The only question is when.

Do you really think I'm wrong about that?

[ForsakenRoe]

I just said people would be complaining just the same. One of the problems with all the DPS pitches are that most don't move the needle a lot. An extra DoT every 15 sec and some gimmick use on CD ability are going to be entertaining for a few weeks...but then what? Then they won't be, and we'll be back in this same position again, just with the needle moved to more DPS, so people will ask for even more. Another new ability or mechanic, entertained for a few more months, then back to the same.

It's why I think any real solution HAS to include encounter design changes.

Otherwise, we'll be back in this same position. Because I fully believe WHM having a 15 sec use on CD GCD and a 15 sec duration Dia would get just as boring to the people bored now after a few weeks with it. There's no way 2 more presses of Dia per minute and 3-4 presses of some other button is going to be vastly more entertaining in the long run.

12s duration Dia, 3 more presses a minute. You'd be surprised how much staying power something perceived as 'there's no way this would work' would have. I thought I'd be able to nail it first try when I made those demo videos of me 'playing' it in Bozja, using Lost Banish as a proxy of sorts. And while I did, it came at the cost of focusing on it so hard to 'get it right for the video', I did not use a single OGCD (so I did not use any in the demo of 'our current rotation' for fairness). After a few weeks of playing it, maybe it becomes second nature to people. But after playing NIN or DRG or RPR or whatever other job, their rotations have become second nature to the 'mains' of that respective job. But they still have fun with the job, regardless. Learning a rotation isn't like 'end of the line, fun's over', because depending on the 'depth' available to master, the encounter can force you to be unable to stick to 'the plan' and have to adapt somewhat.

I would cautiously agree that the encounter design needs to change somewhat. However, it's a lot easier to change a job to better suit the encounter design, than it is to change the encounter design to suit the job. Mostly because you have to adjust it with 19 jobs (soon to be 21) in mind, and what might be good for one job might screw another one over. So if they want to change encounter design, it's probably going to require they decide how encounter design should be going forward, and then redesign all the jobs to fit that new encounter design, because the old designs might not fit it so well

Cleric stance "dancing" would be meaningless if you were able to do all your healing with oGCDs like we do now. It only existed because you needed GCD healing.

'Able to do all your healing with OGCDs' was mostly because of ARR Lustrate healing a % of max HP, instead of a flat potency amount, surely? By HW when I got back into the game, it was a flat potency. Indom, Lustrate, Sacred Soil's regen effect, Excog, they'd all snapshot the Cleric stance 'scuffed healing rating' and deal almost no healing, were old Cleric to come back. The only thing AST has that would be 'unaffected' by Cleric, for example, would be Macrocosmos. I'm not even sure if SGE's Kardia heals would be increased, decreased, or if it'd equal out. At least with WHM's Lilybell being 'not the WHM' it'd probably be exempt. Asylum/Assize wouldn't though. Or Benison. Old Cleric was a product of it's time, and it can stay there thank you. I miss HW's complexity, sure, but I'd prefer that level of complexity in a more... 'player-friendly' form, a more 'intuitive' form. Can't have HW though, Mr. P said so, so I'm settling for SB

[Renathras]

So I'm curious, what from HW or SB do people want back? Specifics, I mean.

I started a threat specifically to get at that - for example, do people genuinely want WHM to have to cast Cure 1/Cure 2 on people to generate Lilies...which decrease the CD on Benison by 2/3/6 seconds? Is that what people want back from SB? Surely not... - and see what exactly people want from SB (not "rotations were more fun", no WHAT specific abilities/traits?) and what they might want to keep that we've gotten since in ShB/EW (EW Lilies/Misery? EW Expedience? ShB Temprance?), what they might merge (HW Divine Seal which upgrades to ShB Temperance), etc.

Thread here, but I'm genuinely curious what specifics there: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined...

When people say "I want SB healers back", and then propose a WHM with a healing gauge and new GCD on a CD or say they think WHM should be like BLM with big, slow cast nukes...I'm confused since WHM didn't have those things in SB or HW. So what from SB/HW are people asking for back, specifically. Hence the thread.

[ty_taurus]

So I'm curious, what from HW or SB do people want back? Specifics, I mean.

I started a threat specifically to get at that - for example, do people genuinely want WHM to have to cast Cure 1/Cure 2 on people to generate Lilies...which decrease the CD on Benison by 2/3/6 seconds? Is that what people want back from SB? Surely not... - and see what exactly people want from SB (not "rotations were more fun", no WHAT specific abilities/traits?) and what they might want to keep that we've gotten since in ShB/EW (EW Lilies/Misery? EW Expedience? ShB Temprance?), what they might merge (HW Divine Seal which upgrades to ShB Temperance), etc.

Thread here, but I'm genuinely curious what specifics there: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ld-be-combined...

When people say "I want SB healers back", and then propose a WHM with a healing gauge and new GCD on a CD or say they think WHM should be like BLM with big, slow cast nukes...I'm confused since WHM didn't have those things in SB or HW. So what from SB/HW are people asking for back, specifically. Hence the thread.

Are you being intentionally tone deaf? Are you intentionally ignoring the probably hundreds of times White Mage was called out for being an exception to the rule when someone brings up the strong points of Stormblood, and how literally no one, not a single human soul in the Solar System is advocating for White Mage to return to Stormblood days, just that the general level of job complexity was a happy medium between the more punishing elements of Heavensward and the hyper relaxed elements of Stormblood/Endwalker?

Like, if there was ever a horse that has been so far beaten to death that there's not even an atom remaining of that horse's corpse, that would be it. And yet you're asking this question as if you haven't been an active participant in those discussions for literally two years at this point. Like, did you hit your head and now you have amnesia? I have to wonder if maybe I tripped into a wormhole and gone back in time, because the whiplash I just experienced nearly snapped my neck wondering how that hasn't been made obvious at this point. I'm sorry if that's all harsh-sounding, but literally I've never been so confused on these forums. Am I being Rick Rolled? Is this a weird joke or something? If I had a dollar for the amount of times someone specified that White Mage is not what they were talking about when praising Stormblood, I could pay off my student loans in full.

EDIT: This is exactly how I feel right now.

[Renathras]

Are you being...

No, I'm asking a question and trying to pin down specifics.

Note every time I say how bad SB WHM was and how EW is better, people insist that there are things from SB WHM they want. So I'm trying to pin down EXACTLY what that is.

And, likewise, with SCH and AST.

And outside of that, what specific ShB and EW additions - if any - they would want to see retained in any new designs.

.

Many people have made many statements, but specifics are what I'm asking for.

For all it was a big thing to people, Quickened Aetherflow is mentioned in passing somewhat rarely, and SB is made out as the height of healer design despite WHM sucking.

When I've said before "So how about EW WHM + Aero 3?" or "EW WHM + Aero 3 + 18 sec Dia?" people say no. Was there any OTHER good part of SB WHM that people are wanting back that's missing from that? What aside from 18 sec Dia/Aero 2 and 24 sec AOE Aero 3 are people wanting from SB WHM?

[NobleWinter]

This is a Scholar thread. Why are we talking about Stormblood White Mage? It's almost universally agreed that Stormblood was a dark time for WHM. Renathras has a thread on the subject of Stormblood Scholar already but since you asked so earnestly for me to repeat myself I'll say I personally miss the Quicked Aetherflow Trait, having more DPS actions like Shadow Flare, Bane, multiple Dots, 2 distinct fairies with their own abilities, Adloquium creating a singular shield on crit which could be deployed with Eye for an Eye, Rouse which didn't dismiss the fairy for the power boost it provided and cause skill ghosting in the process like Seraph, the fairy was targetable for deployment, and the fairy had it's own GCD so pet skills could be commanded while casting instead of weaved like currently. I miss all the choices and optimization of Stormblood Scholar.