Stormblood Scholar could be back in 8.0

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Scholar threads and arbitrary gatekeeping, name a more iconic duo[...]

Hey if that counts as gatekeeping, sure whatever lol. I just dislike how SE have wasted years for an entire design space to appeal players who dislike Energy Drains only to end up with some people still screaming about the same button. Not that I agree on their method, mind you. They could've just steeled themselves and tell SCHs who hates ED to just take it off from their hotbar and pretend it never exist. Oops, suddenly they've created the proto-SGE (a.k.a. SCH 5.0 lol, just missing 10% more MP recovery).

[Connor]

I just dislike how SE have wasted years for an entire design space to appeal players who dislike Energy Drains only to end up with some people still screaming about the same button

If anything havent they made it easier and easier to use Energy Drain with no consequences though? Again, with how much ‘free heal estate’ Scholar gets you can pretty easily just siphon of the entirety of your Aetherflow into Energy Drain and still use Aetherflow heals anyway lol. And I mean, they could’ve also steeled themselves for the absolute outrage when they tried to remove it lol. Instead they just haven’t picked any lane at all and now they’re holding up traffic.

As for Sage, maybe just me, but I’d like to think it can be something better than ‘SCH but not SCH’. I don’t think ‘people who want old(new?) SCH with/without Energy Drain should just go play SGE’ really means anything because they shouldn’t be so identical in the first place lol. I mean, personally I’d say it’s just as (in)valid to say ‘if you want to dps as a healer play a dps healer WHM/SGE’.

Lastly, frankly, I have not seen a single post on the forums in a hell of a long time ever asking for Energy Drain to literally be removed lol. Even I’m not that stupid. So I’m really not sure where all these ‘people screaming about the button it’ are in the first place. Twitter or something? Seems to me like, as usual, SE actually catering to literally nobody but a conveniently invisible, silent majority that only exists in their head. Not ‘people who want to play SCH but should be Sages’.

[Supersnow845]

If anything havent they made it [/i] easier and easier [/i] to use Energy Drain with no consequences though? Again, with how much ‘free heal estate’ Scholar gets you can pretty easily just siphon of the entirety of your Aetherflow into Energy Drain and still use Aetherflow heals anyway lol. And I mean, they could’ve also steeled themselves for the absolute outrage when they tried to remove it lol. Instead they just haven’t picked any lane at all and now they’re holding up traffic.

As for Sage, maybe just me, but I’d like to think it can be something better than ‘SCH but not SCH’. I don’t think ‘people who want old(new?) SCH with/without Energy Drain should just go play SGE’ really means anything because they shouldn’t be so identical in the first place lol. I mean, personally I’d say it’s just as (in)valid to say ‘if you want to dps as a healer play a dps healer WHM/SGE’.

Lastly, frankly, I have not seen a single post on the forums in a hell of a long time ever asking for Energy Drain to literally be removed lol. Even I’m not that stupid. So I’m really not sure where all these ‘people screaming about the button it’ are. Twitter or something?

Is energy drain as a button being physically deleted different to leaving the button in place but removing its choice effect and just making it 3 free charges you get with every aetherflow. If you don’t consider them different (which is don’t) the person on the previous page has espoused a desire to remove the choice element on energy drain literally on the last page

[Connor]

Is energy drain as a button being physically deleted different to leaving the button in place but removing its choice effect and just making it 3 free charges you get with every aetherflow. If you don’t consider them different (which is don’t) the person on the previous page has espoused a desire to remove the choice element on energy drain literally on the last page

You mean the same guy who argues Scholar should be literally incapable of healing without using ‘poison stacks’. I appreciate his effort but there’s clearly been a major misunderstanding of the battle system here.

That doesn’t really change my point about ‘the extent to which there’s any meaningful choice’ given the vast amount of free use ogcd heals we can substitute Aetherflow with, or the fact Recitation is 60s and almost every AoE comes out at either the 60s or 120s mark. Can ‘decision making’ be lost when the decision boils down to ‘do I want to play the right way or the wrong way?’

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

If anything havent they made it easier and easier to use Energy Drain with no consequences though? Again, with how much ‘free heal estate’ Scholar gets you can pretty easily just siphon of the entirety of your Aetherflow into Energy Drain and still use Aetherflow heals anyway lol. And I mean, they could’ve also steeled themselves for the absolute outrage when they tried to remove it lol. Instead they just haven’t picked any lane at all and now they’re holding up traffic.

As for Sage, maybe just me, but I’d like to think it can be something better than ‘SCH but not SCH’. I don’t think ‘people who want old(new?) SCH with/without Energy Drain should just go play SGE’ really means anything because they shouldn’t be so identical in the first place lol. I mean, personally I’d say it’s just as (in)valid to say ‘if you want to dps as a healer play a dps healer WHM/SGE’.[...]

In spirit I agree. But we know these are the same job dev team that's very likely suffering from a crippling phobia of pissing a subset of playerbase lol. "Try to please everybody and you end up pleasing no one" as people have said it.

Maybe if they left SCH as the 'proto-SGE' since then, SGE could've been something else entirely today. But one can dream. I'd wager they'd just create a 1:1 copy of this 'proto-SGE', probably for an easier balancing that they also can never get it right.

[...]Lastly, frankly, I have not seen a single post on the forums in a hell of a long time ever asking for Energy Drain to literally be removed lol. Even I’m not that stupid. So I’m really not sure where all these ‘people screaming about the button it’ are in the first place. Twitter or something? Seems to me like, as usual, SE actually catering to literally nobody but a conveniently invisible, silent majority that only exists in their head. Not ‘people who want to play SCH but should be Sages’.

A quick type of "Energy Drain" into the advanced search within Healer subforum and you'll see some of them popping in first 5 pages, and they're all dating back to as recent as this year's late May. Interestingly, I also glimpsed somebody mentioning people from JP side wanting to axe its existence as well but I haven't bothered to try to confirm that myself so take that as a grain of salt.

The only time I wouldn't have any issue with the idea of Energy Drain removal is when said nuance of an equivalent degree are implemented elsewhere within the job kit, which we know SE rarely does so.

[AmiableApkallu]

Re Energy Drain: I don't understand the hate.

Far worse is the fact that as a Sage, my MP economy is tied to actually using Aetherflow Addersgall heals, whether or not those heals actually serve any useful purpose at the time.

As a healer, pushing a button that "heals" when that "heals" will be completely wasted is surely the most unintuitive, least satisfying button push ever, yes?

Whereas as a (causal) Scholar, I can sit on Aetherflow stacks, and when I notice that there are maybe ~10 seconds left on its recast, I can start weaving in some Energy Drains. Is that optimal? :shrug: But at least it makes some sense.

[Connor]

In spirit I agree. But we know these are the same job dev team that\\\\\\\\'s very likely suffering from a crippling phobia of pissing a subset of playerbase lol. "Try to please everybody and you end up pleasing no one" as people have said it.

I mean, if anything I’d say it’s not actually players being pissed at devs they’re afraid of. It’s players being pissed at each other they’re absolutely terrified of (for reasons no Astrologian could ever divine). I mean, look at their original justification for removing it in Stormblood; ‘there were rumours SCHs were gigachadding Energy Drain in raids and making the WHM heal more so we deleted it from existence’. Or the Viper thing they removed idk Noxious Gas whatever it was, essentially the same reason (people might lose uptime = lower dps = player friction?). And I mean, as I said I genuinely don’t think they’re doing this to cater to any specific ‘group’ of people at this point, they just want rid of anything that could potentially cause an argument.

A quick type of "Energy Drain" into the advanced search within Healer subforum…

The only time I wouldn\\\\\\\\'t have any issue with the idea of Energy Drain removal is when said nuance…

I tried doing this, and while admittedly I only got to page 3, I couldn’t find any references to ‘removing Energy Drain’ in any real capacity. In fact, a lot of the posts about it were literally me lol. Talk of it sure, but if anything the posts all gave the impression people love it infinitely more than those who dislike it. Not saying ‘I looked and didn’t see thus this cannot possibly exist’ lol, just that I had a different impression from the (limited) posts I saw.

Frankly I’d say I’m neutral on whether Energy Drain stays or goes. In a world where damage vs healing was a much more involved balancing act I’d totally get behind it. But with things the way they are it’s less ‘balancing act’ and more ‘scales with an anvil on one side and a feather on the other’ lol. Personally I would like to see it be more interesting though, even if there was things to actually heal. Like a Shadow Flare Aetherflow spender that does a crappy DoT and slows target(s), or a short duration crit buff for a single target, or maybe like a ‘fairy steroids’ Rouse ability that makes the fairy do Fey Wind (lol) or some other minor buff. Obviously those are just spitball ideas that would have many issues in practice but I’m thinking more concept than concrete implementation lol.
Or at least a visual upgrade considering we’re still using a level 10 Arcanist ability as level 100 Scholars.

That said, I don’t think Scholar’s identity should be determined by a single ability. Like, it has the capacity to choose healing over damage sure, but that’s not all the job is/should be about.
I just worry that the devs will read feedback about it and in their usual ridiculous way will react by immediately trying to cater a single, easily adjusted aspect of it, and we ultimately get ‘SCH but it’s just a recycled 3.0 SMN

snip for space

Replying to this on same post for post limit, but I feel like it’s not really right to say ‘these guys have it worse so let’s just keep it as it is’. Like, yeah, they (Sages) absolutely do have it worse with Addersgall, but that doesn’t mean Aetherflow doesn’t have its own issues. As I said my problem with Energy Drain relative to current design is that they’ve designed encounters and toolkits to remove any and all weight from ‘should I heal or damage’ which has heavily diminished the intended downsides of just putting all your Aetherflow into Energy Drains (since you can still do all your healing anyway with Recitation Excogitation/Indomitability/etc). Resulting in, either focusing all your energy on Energy Drain because there’s nothing else to use Aetherflow on anyway and if you need it for an Emergency there’s always Dissipation, or it just sits there doing nothing until Aetherflow is coming off cd and it’s like ‘oh yeah that’ lol. The skill itself or having to make a choice between ‘heal/dps’ doesn’t really bother me, but I just feel like content design has really diminished how much of a choice that really is.

[Tunda]

Letting Scholar have the option of choosing healing or dps we will have one of 3 consequences:

1- SCH dps will be lower than other average healers but have higher healing.
2- SCH healing lower than other average healers but higher damage than other healer.
3- SCH healing power is higher than average and dmg is balance.

making option and give a solution of the option isn't an option..

the real thing is SCH healing and shielding capability is the highest in the game.. and graphs are accurate..

if we have for example SCH use all their energy drain in aetherflow AND still having the same healing capability.. then there is a problem.. why this job can have both worlds even when they choose damage over healing?

White mage have to waste 7.5 s to use their big attack.. 7.5 of non-combat actions.

then the issue is the illusion of choice.. and if both options are positive for healing/shielding side and damage side.. do not matter then we have balance issue.. either we have scholar who is better than average healer job or worst than average healer job.

[Tunda]

Re Energy Drain: I don't understand the hate.

Far worse is the fact that as a Sage, my MP economy is tied to actually using Aetherflow Addersgall heals, whether or not those heals actually serve any useful purpose at the time.

As a healer, pushing a button that "heals" when that "heals" will be completely wasted is surely the most unintuitive, least satisfying button push ever, yes?

Whereas as a (causal) Scholar, I can sit on Aetherflow stacks, and when I notice that there are maybe ~10 seconds left on its recast, I can start weaving in some Energy Drains. Is that optimal? :shrug: But at least it makes some sense.

the mechanic of aetherflow in scholar kit is in it's form is bad.. and even SE double down when they give free action on spells that uses aetherflow.

have 3 stacks that can be consume isn't a bad idea but it is bad when they give the option or other people say "illusion of choice" that doesn't make sense.

[Supersnow845]

Letting Scholar have the option of choosing healing or dps we will have one of 3 consequences:

1- SCH dps will be lower than other average healers but have higher healing.
2- SCH healing lower than other average healers but higher damage than other healer.
3- SCH healing power is higher than average and dmg is balance.

making option and give a solution of the option isn't an option..

the real thing is SCH healing and shielding capability is the highest in the game.. and graphs are accurate..

if we have for example SCH use all their energy drain in aetherflow AND still having the same healing capability.. then there is a problem.. why this job can have both worlds even when they choose damage over healing?

White mage have to waste 7.5 s to use their big attack.. 7.5 of non-combat actions.

then the issue is the illusion of choice.. and if both options are positive for healing/shielding side and damage side.. do not matter then we have balance issue.. either we have scholar who is better than average healer job or worst than average healer job.

So you don’t like that it forces choice but then you………….also don’t like that both its healing and damage are well balanced amongst the healers despite having this choice