Thread: Concise Scholar 4.0 feedback

I've noticed a lot of the feedback thread's often turn into game design and suggestion threads, I've posted my fair share of suggestions and after the release of 4.01 and the message from yoshi-p and Foxclon I feel like its time That I put aside the bullshit of What I want them to do and provide actual feedback.(That said, keep the suggestions rolling, some ideas are genuinely well thought out while others are broken, but, the names of suggested abilities are always fantastic)

its a long one

Preface: My Initial Thoughts

So far I have cleared most of the stormblood content with the exception of the two extreme primals(mostly cause i waited so long on finishing the story and only just recently hit Ilvl 300). I can say without a shadow of a doubt that all healers are viable and scholar is not exception. Scholar still has a fantastic kit that allows it to operate within most dungeons and raids with little to no issue and I find that I can keep pace with many tanks who pull large mobs and still find time to DPS. Overall the changes to scholar in stormblood have changed one major thing about how I play Scholar and that is I now find my self casting my own healing spells more often than I used to.

The Pro's
-Scholar's single target burst damage has gone up just like it has with the other healers with the removal of lower damaging single target moves
-My kit's healing capability is still roughly the same meaning that I don't need to learn a how to weave different abilities into my healing and mitigation
-Surecast is now sick rad hella cool and lets me cheese out positioning in most fights allowing me to impress my teammates and win the love and adoration of inferior non-surecast using magic scrubs who have to deal with knock back.

The Con's
-Mp management can be an Issue when learning a fight and I have yet to attempt a piece of 8-man content where after the first attempt, even if I didn't die until wipe, I had enough Mp to keep up
-The cross role system is different from the cross class system in that It makes certain things mandatory, while this isn't necessarily a bad thing it does mean that most healers that you ask will actually only have 1-2 choices of abilities they want and everything else is mandatory meaning we lose out on unique healer builds
-I feel that as a scholar in 8-man content I lack a place of importance if I'm paired with a Strictly Nocturnal stance AST, while it is their responsibility to choose what stance they are in and I feel they should switch depending on who their off healer is, I cannot blame them for wanting better mitigation through shielding and therefore overwriting half if not more of all the healing that I do. This basically reduces me to being their faerie while they essentially solo heal the content and I hope to make a point by doing meager DPS. An important note, I believe an AST shield will always overwrite adlo regardless of which is more powerful meaning that my crit adlo's just get white washed by even a aspected helios.

Final Thoughts/Skill critique
I have still enjoyed SCH as it has for the most part in terms of its skills remained unchanged, that being said here is some more individualized feedback on certain things.
physick/broil(a.k.a. bread and butter); our basic attack and basic heal are just under that of a WHM...This is fine since we have shields to turn to, a faerie to assit and DOT's to use.
Bane and Shadow flare(SCH in regards to AOE); Bane feels a bit underwhelming(Not really useful but I still have to use it since its my only option) and Shadow flare feels a bit clunky, It's not terrible but I find that Shadow flare is more of my "oh crap I cant deal damage right now" ability when it should only be my "let's get this done faster" ability.
Adlo and Succor(The defining factor); These two abilities are what sold me on SCH and now it feels like i'm being punished for using them, not to mention there is another job that does these better than I can and for Less investment all around.
Deployment and Emergency tactics; Holy Shit I love these, this type of stuff is what has kept me aorund on SCH. More of this, Thats all that needs to be said, Just give us tactics till forever because these skills are incredibly useful.
Aetherflow and its rewards; Right now the way Aether flow works is okay, really good scholars can manage with their 3 stacks till the ability is back, the trait is not working as intended because it does nothing to encourage proactive aetherflow use as it can potentially do nothing in terms of reducing the cool down.
Chain Strategem; This skill has potential but right now between the length of the cooldown and the limit of its ability, it only kinda has a use in raids and other boss fights, its OK but could be better, very weak in dungeons.
The AetherFlow abilties; Excog exists as a way of ignoring healing to do damage, is a waste of a heal if anyone does actual healing during this time(perhaps this should be looked at, not useless but also can be stepped on by other healers). Sacred Soil, Feels good to use, I use this now more than I should because of how badly people are affected by big hits in boss fights could stand to do more but is fine how it is. Indom, feels good and makes up for SCH's missing AOE heal game if they SCH is smart. Lustrate, Its an ok heal and at this point exists as an "Oh shit" burst ability or a smug "I dont feel like wasitng a GCD on healing" button. Energy drain is energy drain, hard to make any assement as it fits its niche incredibly well. this is the perfect example of making an ability that you dont use all the time but will look at occasionally and go "oh yeah right, that works!"
Aether pact Dissipation and How SE feels about SCH and SMN; So I personally have never been a fan of pet jobs as I don't like the concept of my job revolving around controlling another thing to do what I should be doing. The job additions in 3.x to both SCH and Summoner seemed to Hint at this idea of Relying less on the pet and bringing out the players strengths instead (ex. Dissipation and Dreadwyrm trance). However when 4.x came along The changes went in the opposite direction, Now we have moves like aether pact(for both jobs) Which are exclusive to the pet and not to mention the only use for the fairy guage(This is a gauge that usually will either sit at 100 for the whole fight or 0 if I find an ok opportunity). and where as SMN has reason to start bringing out bigger and badder summons which work perfectly in terms of the theme of the job(TBH after dreadwyrm trance I either wanted actual summons or for SMN to just replace all egi's with trance buffs) SCH seems to have now two skills which are against each other, one that is okay and has some benefits and no drawbacks(Aether pact) and one which has Massive benefit but also massive drawbacks(Dissipation). Basically where Summoner has some how received this nice flow and is now more of a burst job with DOT's, SCH is still the same but with a useless meter and an ability that removes the meter all together. The fey theme behind SCH exists as a way of explaining power, and yet we are more often brought down by it as our pet makes up for our healing deficit and raid utility deficit. So what do you want out of SCH, Will we be the Faerie pet healer based around pet management or Will we be the Tactical shield healer with fey origins? Either both of these abilities need serious reworks or should basically be replaced as they say to me as a player "um use the fairy and then don't use the fairy... oh but wait you should totally use the fairy though... but I mean look at all these aetherflow". Its important to remember that our origins in arcanima and strategy are just as important as the Fey assistance but we should be one not both and in my opinion arcanima and strategy seems to be more prevalent(So many good ability names).

Originally Posted by Vyriah

It's pointless to just make Selene do something completly different so that someone play with it.

If you can do without Eos heals, Selene is a damage boost no matter what now that cleric stance is out of the picture. it wouldn't take too much for it to go into the "wouldn't Selene be a DPS gain given how much we know this fight by now ?" territories.

It's really not, especially since all you'd need to do is replace Silent Dawn with something actually useful to increase Selene's use in the current meta. Let's be honest. When has that skill EVER been useful outside of very niche circumstances. I use it less than Dissipation and I've clicked that skill maybe five times in my entire career as SCH. There simply aren't enough enemies who can be silenced in the end game meta which is where Selene is at her greatest use due to Eos' lack of scaling. Add something, even just another buff to keep in line with Selene's gimmick, would go a long way in making her useful again. Hells, since Balance is such a contentious issue give her a raid wide damage increase to contrast with Eos' defense buff. (Give one to WHM too honestly...) Or hell, a skill that buffs our shields. Anything is better than a long cooldown silence spell.

I love Scholar, but I worry about its future with its current toolkit. Sorry, wasn't sure if I needed to make a new thread or not, and put off by the 1000 character limit (that I just found out how to bypass; thanks RyuDragnier!)


Fairies seem slower to react than ever. Selene's utility is weak. Fey Union takes too long to cast. The heals from Embrace go almost unnoticed.

Excogitation needs some work. Either; higher potency, longer/removed duration, the ability to 'detonate' early, or to do something as it expires (%based heal like Essential Dignity?).

Adlo/Succor should have their costs reverted, or potencies buffed. NoctAst's shield outshines Adlo - cheaper/stronger/instant.

Buff Chain Strat to 20% for 30s, or reduce cooldown.

Lack of AoE DPS is noticeable in dungeons, especially amongst players who like doing it. Give us a Holy/Gravity equivalent.

Yeah Scholars can clear current content, they're 'viable'. But it's a chore now, when it used to be fun. It almost feels like the devs don't want SCH in the game anymore.

In raid environments though, their AoE dps doesn't really matter at all. I do like that there's more emphasis on healing this time around, but their new tools are iffy. Mana isn't a problem for me but Adlo compared to AspBene is irksome, fairy or not.