Quote Originally Posted by Duelle View Post
I've given SE a pass on a lot of things because of the amount of time spent on developing ARR. This is where it was nearing the breaking point for me.

This said, I don't think the whole of ACN (all 18 abilities) need a complete remake. For example, Bio and Bio II could have become HoTs under the effect of the SCH crystal. Bane could have become a way to spread HoTs to other party members. Sacred Soil could have become the "alternate" version of Shadow Flare. When Yoshida talked about SCH being focused on healing over time, that's what I was expecting, not a singular HoT cast via the Fairy and a bunch of shields.
At this point though, WHM would require Geomancer to strip away nearly all its dps abilities, and all three would likely be scratching their heads wondering why they only have significantly fewer abilities than every other job in the game. ...Would have to nuke AST dps too... And with healer off-role participation being so demolished, tanks would probably use tank stance even more sparingly.

I'm all for making SCH more different from its counterpart, but stripping away SCH dps to make an already high-control healer even better tooled in its healing does not sound like the solution. (Admittedly even the loss of Bio I and Bio II would not 'utterly condemn' SCH dps outside of raid settings, and their further improved control may then make them the dedicated main healer -- but that kind of re-balance would then need to be made on every healer job, not just the dual-job SCH.) It won't change that if you want their to be any variance in damage taken rates there will be downtime during which dedicated healing output is mostly wasted. I like being able to contribute during periods of less intensive healing. I don't like to be a role that essentially exists/acts only two-thirds or less of the time with almost nothing else to offer. I like to be a SCH/WHM/AST, with every tool they have at their disposal, non-healing included. If not dps, then support.

Take all this with a grain of salt though. To be honest, I'd probably have a lot more ideas for how to pull off a uniquely SCH skillset if the ACN skillset and its contribution to SMN didn't already seem to come so far out of left field. What little lore it has (a certain NPC's obsession with tactics, etc.) doesn't actually seem to fit its abilities, and connects only to the vague lore of SCH (especially via Japanese ability names), hardly if at all to SMN. That makes it really hard to form ideas on for me. I know how I would like ARC to split for the most part, given some revisions to how XIV handles job-splitting, but ACN/SCH...