Thread: Consolidated Scholar 4.0 Feedback Thread

Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

I know this is not my place to say this, but a spammable Indom?
I know SCH is weak now, but let's not kill the only thing WHM does even slightly better than others: AOE healing.

Indom is already extremely powerful, don't need it available three times in quick succession.

And why not? if your only argument is that it would infringe on what the other two healers already do so well then its pretty weak. we only have THREE atherstacks at most times in a fight save for the pull in the very beginning, after that we are managing what stacks to use on healing while also considering what stacks would serve better used to dps. Mind you these very same THREE stacks are our primary source of burst heals aside from a god awful Succor AOE that should absolutely not be spammed. currently a sch in an emergency raid situation without any atherflow most likely cannot save the raid as Succor alone will not suffice to keep the party alive while their main healer gets a rez

Making indom and excog like lustrate would only help Sch since our big heals are tied to a resource that is not always available to us depending on when big heals are needed. Its not like a situation where we would need to use indom in quick succession is likely to happen much in the first place as we should be mitigating most big damage, but should the time arise and its all on the sch having more AOE options then just "spam succor" would be nice!

I wanna know why they had to remove one/two of our built in DoTs, when they kept 4 different Fires/Blizzards. Each DoT did a different thing, so why merge the?

I’ve been leveling my scholar now so here are my thoughts on the class. I’m going to be doing some comparisons to Astrologian since that seems to be the strongest healing class right now. While scholar does get the job done in the content I have played it somehow feels hollow. Mana is a big issue when there is a lot of group healing and I often find myself starved for Atherflow trying to keep up in these situations. I understand that Atherflow heals are good heals with no mana but they are gated behind Atherflows and cooldowns which make them only viable for burst healing. I think SE intended for emergency tactics to fill in as the Benfic II (with Aldo) and Helios (with Succor) but emergency tactics is also gated behind a cooldown. Both of these spells also cost a significant amount of mana over their Astrologian counterpart spells (more than what is made up by Atherflow). On top of this succor is significantly worse than Aspected Helios (150 potency + 22.5 potency from Nocturnal Sect + 150% shield against 150 potency + 100% shield for Succor). How is this even possible? Scholar IS the shield healer, it’s their only option. It’s not like they can go regen healer like Astrologian can to fit the content. Outside of healing, scholar’s aoe dps is also significantly behind Astrologians. This one was a bit harder to figure out with the way bane and gravity work and the differences between them. I think the easiest way to demonstrate the differences is to work out each aoe dps in potency per second using 3 mobs. For scholar things work out like this:

Bio II + Miasma + Bane + Broil II Spam (I’m not counting shadow flare as it is very situational now)

For Bio II and Miasma we have a 35 potency tick every ~2s or so. We also have a 20 potency DD with Miasma that hits the first target on spell cast. This works out to:

Bio II (potency/s) = 35/2 = 17.5 potency/s (on the first mob)
Bio II (potency/s) mob 2 = 17.5 * .80 = 14 potency/s (on the second mob)
Bio II (potency/s) mob 3= 17.5 * .60 = 10.5 potency/s (on the third mob)
Bio II (potency/s) mob 4= 17.5 * .40 = 7 potency/s (on the third mob)
Bio II (potency/s) mob 5= 17.5 * .20 = 3.5 potency/s (on the third mob)
Bio II (potency/s) mob 6= 17.5 * .20 = 3.5 potency/s (on the third mob)

Miasma (potency/s) = 35/2 = 17.5 + 20 / 24s = 18.3 potency/s (on the first mob)
Miasma (potency/s) mob 2 = 17.5 * .80 = 14 potency/s (on the second mob)
Miasma (potency/s) mob 3= 17.5 * .60 = 10.5 potency/s (on the third mob)
Miasma (potency/s) mob 4= 17.5 * .40 = 7 potency/s (on the third mob)
Miasma (potency/s) mob 5= 17.5 * .20 = 3.5 potency/s (on the third mob)
Miasma (potency/s) mob 6= 17.5 * .20 = 3.5 potency/s (on the third mob)

Now let’s assume you are also spamming Broil II on a mob:
Broil II (potency/s) = 230 / 2.35s = 97.87

This gives a total of:
Scholar total potency/s (3 mobs) = 17.5 + 14 + 10.5 + 18.3 + 14 + 10.5 + 97.87 = 182.84 potency/s
Scholar total potency/s (4 mobs) = 182.84 + 7 + 7 = 196.4 potency/s
Scholar total potency/s (5 mobs) = 196.4 + 3.5 + 3.5 = 203.4 potency/s
Scholar total potency/s (6 mobs) = 203.4 + 3.5 + 3.5 = 210.4 potency/s

Now for Astrologian I’m just going assume they are doing normal gravity spam without using Lightspeed:

Gravity (potency/s) = 200 / 2.74s = 73 potency/s
Gravity (potency/s) mob 2 = 73 * .90 = 65.7 potency/s
Gravity (potency/s) mob 3 = 73 * .80 = 58.4 potency/s
Gravity (potency/s) mob 4 = 73 * .70 = 51.1 potency/s
Gravity (potency/s) mob 5 = 73 * .60 = 43.8 potency/s
Gravity (potency/s) mob 6 = 73 * .50 = 36.5 potency/s

This gives us a total of:
Astrologian total potency/s (3 mobs) = 73 + 65.7 + 58.4 = 197.1 potency/s
Astrologian total potency/s (4 mobs) = 197.1 + 51.1= 248.2 potency/s
Astrologian total potency/s (5 mobs) = 248.2 + 43.8 = 292 potency/s
Astrologian total potency/s (6 mobs) = 292 + 36.5 = 328.5 potency/s

Now for the mana cost of each (just calculating the mana cost vs the base potency for the spell. I’m using the total potency/s * the length of the dot for the two dots), Scholar comes in at about 4.64mp per potency vs Astrologian at 7.07mp per potency. Scholar has a 34% mana reduction when compared to a 8% at 3 mobs and 35% at 6 mobs reduction in potency vs an Astrologian. This is in no way balanced with packs more than 3. So how do you fix these issues, here my thoughts about that. First Aldo and Succor mp needs to be brought down to about the same as Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios with about a 2 – 3% increase to account for Atherflow. Emergency Tactics recast time needs to go away (or at the very least reduce it to about 10s to account for atherflow heals) and it needs to reduce the mp cost of Aldo and Succor to about the same level as Benefic II and Helios (probably about a 20 - 25% or so decrease over base Aldo and Succor). Succor needs to have the same crit effect as Aldo has. This will make Scholar’s crit succor shields better than Astrologian’s while being a bit behind for non crit shields. This will also keep in line with the Scholar theme of being a crit dependent healer. For the aoe dps, bane needs to be brought into line with how gravity and holy works for multiple mobs. Even that is probably not going to be enough to bring Scholars in balance with Astrologian’s. We probably need a 3rd dot that is baneable to accomplish this. These are my 2gil pieces on the changes needed for scholar. Take them as you will.

P.S. Seriously, what is the point of Dissipation? I don’t think I have ever used this spell in the history that I have had it (I mained a Scholar for a good part of 3.X). With the way that fairy work at 70 it seems like there is even less on an incentive for me to use it. Please SE, just change it something useful or fun or something. Just not that…. Please…. Pretty Please. There might be a cookie in it for you.

<edit> I messed up on my orginal aoe calculations. I made corrections to reflect the correct calculations.