Thread: Consolidated Scholar 4.0 Feedback Thread

Originally Posted by Deceptus

-snip-

I love this idea. For this to really work, I think Dissipation's cooldown would need to come down by a lot for this to really work and not generate Aetherflow, but this would be great for giving SCH's much needed AoE healing help.

Originally Posted by Deceptus

Eos needs to be the single target fairy and Selene needs to be the AOE healing fairy (much like the MCH turrents). Currently Selene is very underused, as the only buff she really provides is a weaker version of Arrow. When Fey Union is used, Selene should pulse aoe, and Eos can tick single target. Again, must like a promoted MCH turret. The model is already there to be used. SE needs to pull this trigger (pun intended)

Disspiation needs to remove your current fairy and swap to the other one. This would allow for more skillful fairy play.

This is actually an interesting idea, and I am trying to think of how it'd work in regards to all the other skills. Assuming Fey Union stays the same, obviously. Going to have to think on this a bit.

One other change I would like to see is a slight reduction to the Chain Strategem recast. 2 minutes seems fairly steep for something that only gives a 15% CHANCE to crit for 15 seconds.

Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

One other change I would like to see is a slight reduction to the Chain Strategem recast. 2 minutes seems fairly steep for something that only gives a 15% CHANCE to crit for 15 seconds.

It's already a minute shorter than battle litany so I can't seem them really cutting the cooldown shorter unless they lower the % on it.

I'd be down for a 60 second cooldown version so it can line up with Trick Attack at 10% crit, though this might be a bit much on the balance end of things.

Originally Posted by Deox

It's already a minute shorter than battle litany so I can't seem them really cutting the cooldown shorter unless they lower the % on it.

I'd be down for a 60 second cooldown version so it can line up with Trick Attack at 10% crit, though this might be a bit much on the balance end of things.

Oh, didn't know. I don't play DRG.

Personally, I would prefer a slightly toned down version (10% in your example) that you could use more frequently vs. a slightly higher chance (15%) that has a longer CD.

I've been somewhat keeping tabs with various feedback threads, and after having just run the level 65 dungeon with a slightly undergeared tank (he seemed to think that i270 shire was just fine for tanking large pulls in that dungeon. I pointed out to him the nearly 30% defense increase that i276 armor gives, 480 vs. 610 for the body alone, and being level 66, he could have been wearing HQ crafted gear for 674 defense). Prior to SB, an under-geared tank attempting big pulls just meant I had to heal more, but not exactly 100% emergency. With SCH DPS having been simplified to 2 main DOTs and an off-GCD shadowflare meaning that we can get off the bulk of our DPS in just 2 GCDs vs. the 4-5 it used to take, it should mean that I can more safely/easily get the DPS combo off, but so far that seems to only happen with properly/over-geared tanks.

With Physick having always been, and still is SCH's strongest 100% uptime spammable heal, I'm used to having to heal tanks bit by bit mostly with Physick (with some help from Embrace), and in situations where the tank was under-geared and took more damage than what Physick spam could heal, there was always Lustrate, and if no stacks, mixing in some Adloquium casts. With the insane cost Adloquium has now, though, I'm left with practically no good options as Physick spam alone will eventually drain MP in a leveling dungeon and throwing in Adloquium every 2nd or 3rd cast, while it always burned MP faster than Physick alone, now burns MP so fast as to be no good in such situations.

Overall, it feels like SCH is in a weird place. Here's my thoughts on specific abilities:

Adloquium - As is, it costs too much for too little. Either put the MP cost back to what it was before -or- simply make it always shield for 200%. Personally, I think the always shield 200% might be the better route as it eliminates the 'must stack crit' mentality for gearing up and gives SCH reliable, powerful shields (and if that's not enough to top AST shielding, maybe AST needs a slight nerf in that department to give SCH that one thing that makes it shine). WHM would still have top reliable raw healing power and regens and AST would still have card utility + insta-cast heals + lesser regen/shield.

Dissipation - It came in handy the times I used it during HW, but now I'm very much disinclined to use it. While the skill itself hasn't directly been changed, the higher drain on SCH MP from Adloquium paired with the weaker Aetherflow MP restoration means that MP cost to re-summon the fairy at the end hurts way more than it used to. I feel like currently if I'm backed into a situation where I really need to dissipate for 3 stacks that I would probably use on Lustrate, that I'm probably throwing out so much healing that by the end of the 30 seconds I may not have the MP to re-summon her putting me in a really bad place healing-wise when that 20% healing potency buff drops off. Perhaps it should be changed to restore your MP by the amount it costs to summon the fairy when the buff drops off because if you were at 100% MP at the end of the Dissipation buff, you probably did something really wrong.

Excogitation - It seems to be pretty clear that this is meant for tank busters. I've attempted to use it in dungeons to see what utility I could get from it, and found that half the time it would fall off because the tank was good and took more than 30 seconds to drop to below half health or it would trigger and not seem to have a very visible impact. From what I can tell, it doesn't tend to have a high priority for being displayed in the team buff display and looks way too similar to WAR's Thrill of Battle buff making it very hard to know if it is still active or not, additionally, when it does go off, instead of seeing the Tank's HP jump like I would see with Lustrate, it seems to heal for the 650 potency minus the damage that triggered it making it even harder to notice the healing amount. Lastly, if the target is below 50% and you use it (I thought about this for dungeons as a +50 potency option over Lustrate), it doesn't seem to trigger until the tank takes an additional hit... assuming such a hit occurs while the tank is still below 50%. At this point, I've pretty much given up using it in leveling dungeons as it is just too unreliable to justify the aetherflow stack use for a possible +50 potency over Lustrate. I'll just save myself the trouble and just always use Lustrate until I get to something that has an actual tankbuster. In conclusion, level 62 SCH gets to rejoice in the fact that their first SB skill is next to worthless until level 70. I'm not so sure I'm sold on the "convert to shield after 30 seconds" idea, instead, I'd say bump the potency to 800 so that Lustrate doesn't look like a great alternative and make it the level 70 skill (swap it with Aetherpact so that SCH gets the leveling dungeons to get used to how to use it).

Quickened Aetherflow - I don't have it yet, but the idea of RNG here doesn't appeal to me. I guess the point of this trait was to help make up for the hit that SCH took to MP regen when Aetherflow was nerfed (which affects SMN as well). Why not just make this simply reduce the cool-down of Aetherflow from 60 seconds to 45 seconds or something instead of tying it to the use of Aetherflow-powered abilities? If it always proced, then the fact that it has a 60 second base cooldown would really be an illusion for simply having a shorter cooldown to begin with.

Aetherpact - Another skill I don't have yet, but I've seen plenty of complaints about the short range + immobile fairy = Tank doesn't actually get healed or Fairy gets cleaved.

DPS skills - Having played with it a bit, having only two GCD DoTs + one non-GCD DoT to distract me from healing has made DPSing less cumbersome than it used to, but the loss of Aero for a second, insta-cast DoT means that in single-target situations, I'm left with no real optimal way to use all three atherflow stacks on Energy Drain in the 60 second window of the Aetherflow cooldown which will be compounded by the fact that Aetherflow can have it's CD reduced by Energy Drain spam. Because of the vast difference in potency of Broil II vs. Ruin II, it seems better to simply interrupt my GCD to cast Energy Drain, but that just feels very clunky. Due to how infrequently I hit an instant-cast GCD now, I find that I sometimes completely forget to Energy Drain at all and end up hitting Aetherflow when I'm still at 1-2 stacks.

Ruin, Broil, & Broil II - Reduce the cast time from 2.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds. My my experience with RDM, 2.0 cast times for DPS skills is just quick enough that you can squeeze in an ability without much interruption to the GCD. That would help SCH in the mobility department while DPSing to help make up for the loss of Aero while simultaneously giving back windows for Energy Drain. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to extend this to all healers as it would put DPS skill cast times in line with healing skill cast times.

Miasma, Bio II, & Bane - The difference in duration between Miasma and Bio II feels really clunky now, please, please, please make them have the same duration. I know prior to 4.0 SCH had a bunch of different duration for DoTs, but if you used in the right order, it almost felt like an elegant dance of DoTs kind of like a DPS rotation of sorts. That rotation is no more, so the relic of the 24 second Miasma vs. 30 second Bio II now feels very awkward. I get why Bane was nerfed, because if it wasn't, in the 5 seconds it now takes to Bane out those two DoTs would allow SCH to spend only two GCDs doing an amount of damage that other healers would have to spam more GCDs on to match in overall damage. The problem is, if after the 5 seconds are up we still have time for DPSing, Broil II just feels kind of inferior to Holy/Gravity spam. Why not replace the slot that used to be Leeches with an AoE that deals a flat 80-100 potency damage? Also, please fix Bane... with how quickly I sometimes need to switch back to healing from DPSing (see under-geared tank), having to mentally pause to ensure Bane actually spreads Bio II is the kind of pause that can get a tank killed if you realize they need a Lustrate to handle that unexpected spike in damage.

Fairies - Want to nerf Embrace's potency? Fine, but at least fix the issues with Fairies. First, they seem to wait until a potential target is at less than 75% of their health before healing at all. Try asking WHM to deal with a regen that stops healing if the target has more than 75% HP (make sure to bring a fire extinguisher). With as fast as Tanks lose HP, waiting until 75% to *start* casting means the tank will get even further down before the first embrace reaches them. In combination with the lower embrace potency, it feels like Eos simply can't help tanks at all. I would suggest changing it such that the Embrace will auto-cast starting at 90% HP. Second, Getting the most out of Eos means putting her on Obey so that you can line up her AoE regen with Rouse and use it when it's actually needed, but when possible, I like to try to do Fey Illumination -> Rouse -> Whispering Dawn to maximize the effects. The problem? Eos will prioritize casting Embrace over Whispering Dawn simply because pet actions apparently don't have a queue like normal actions (in other words, trying to command the pet to do something feels a lot like having my heals locked behind macros), if we can't have a decent pet action queue, at least make it such that when I click on an ability that she interrupts any auto-casted Embrace to do what I want her to do right then... not when/if she feels like it. My arguments with Eos over Teamspeak has become something of a running joke with my FC and it has entirely to do with how often she'll ignore my wish to use Whispering Dawn even when I hammer the button several times (I think that distraction has even caused a wipe or two). One last thing, pets need to get back the insane AoE damage reduction they've had with most AoEs. It feels like my fairy dies way more than it ever has before meaning I'm burning up swiftcast and MP on summoning way more than before which hurts a lot with our reduced MP regen and increased MP costs.

More speficially:

Fey Covenant - I almost never use this (I know I probably should). Why? Because how do I know what does magic damage and what doesn't? If it were a simple 20% damage reduction, that'd be great, but it would probably then be OP. It used to make sense back before whatever patch made it such that all healers had access to the version of protect that buffed both defenses. Before then, Fey Covenant was sort of a way to ensure that, with protect, your team would be protected by whatever attack you were wanting to make sure was blocked. Now, it doesn't feel very needed since protect always covers both defenses. If I want damage mitigation, I just use Sacred Soil most of the time because I'll take 10% damage reduction from all types vs. gambling that some attack is actually magic-based. Perhaps a good option here would be to give Eos an AoE heal on a 30-60 second cooldown. It would make for a nice alternative for times when Indomitability is down.

Silent Dusk - This really needs to be replaced. I think only once or twice have I ever actually gotten it to work when it was needed. The main problem is that if I try to use it manually, she'll often delay using it until after she's finished Embrace, and by then, it's probably too late. It can work wonders in Sic mode, but only really if the enemy has one silence-able ability worth having it used on. Now that all tanks and ranged DPS have access to a silence role ability, this serves even less of a purpose as I'm probably not going to try to solo anything where a silence will make much of a difference. Since Selene is supposed to be 'support-type' maybe she should have an aoe damage reduction skill, say 10% for 15 seconds with 60 second cooldown (basically, Fey Covenant, but for both defenses) and give Eos the Aoe heal I suggested so that you can have a choice between pure heal fairy vs. heal + support fairy.

Fey Caress - When I first saw this, I really liked it, but having tried to make use of it, I found it rather lacking. It either needs a dramatic cooldown reduction (perhaps 30 seconds), or be changed to a single-target skill that removes *all* removable debuffs from the target. Either way I'd be happy with it as AoE-Esuna is cool, but a potential counter to bad-breath type mechanics would also have its uses (especially in solo where Selene seems to be more useful anyway).

Fey Wind - A 3% reduction in GCD for the team is kind of nice, but far from powerful enough to justify using Selene as-is. If my suggestions for Silent Dusk and Fey Caress taken, then Fey Wind probably wouldn't need much of a change, if at all since at that point it would serve as a nice bonus on top of the other kinds of support Selene would then bring. Currently, though, this is Selene's main support skill for a team due to how unreliable Silent Dusk is and how infrequently Fey Caress can make a real difference. If her other skills don't get changed, the only way Selene would likely see the light of day on a team again is if this got a serious buff. Again, I have to emphasize that this skill would probably be just fine if her other two skills weren't so bad making her overall a competitive choice against EoS.