Scholar Feedback

[AbstractLemons]

Hi I main Scholar since a realm reborn. I have noticed a lot negativity surrounding the class at least on the forums while leveling through stormblood content.

I have hit 70 completed the main scenario and have ran the expert dungeons a few times and currently working on gearing up to get into the casual deltascape raid.

So now that background is out of the way lets move on to real feedback.

What I like about the job is the variety of tasks scholar can do and the different ways they can heal. Excogitation is one of my new favorite skills and the Aetherpact skill is pretty dandy unfortunately that is all the gauge is for.

My gripes with Scholars current state are as follows. There seems to be no longer any situation in which our basic tools are able to accomplish basic healing tasks. I'm talking about the use of Physick, Adloquium etc.

Running stormblood content in order to heal and keep people alive your basic healing tools must always be accompanied with aetherflow skills do to how hard enemies hit and fairy cooldowns like whispering dawn will be thrown in as well to try put out enough healing to where the tank is having an actual net gain in health instead of just dying slower.

I have been playing through stormblood content as tank and have noticed my non scholar healers appear to be way less skills in order to accomplish the task of basic healing and this where it hit me scholar could use a look at.

Simply put healing as scholar as of right now feels very hectic and stressful as it takes multiple resources to do the job the other healers can perform with way less buttons. Which means playing as scholar is like playing on a higher difficulty level and explains a lot of the discontent with the class as of right now.

From what I understand the purpose of the stormblood expansion was to reduce button bloat and de-emphasize cooldowns etc. Basically making jobs feel less convoluted to perform at a competent level. Scholar feels like it has gone in the opposite direction since multiple resources are being used to accomplish one task creating the problem of too much work too little pay.

I understand scholar got nerfed in the expansion one of the nerfs being in fairy healing potency so I would like to suggest instead of just outright removing that heling from eos, instead take that healing and roll it back into some of scholar's basic healing tools so it doesn't feel as frantic and stressfull while also making it so the fairy has less 'carry' potential.

Other issues would be dissipation works against the fey gauge mechanic.

While we're on the topic of the fey gauge and aetherflow abilities Scholar seems a tad too reliant on aetherflow usage as of right now our basic healing kit has been demoted to MP expensive form of damage mitigation while aetherflow is where the real healing is at making our basic skills feel like trash.

To add to this Aetherflow skills add to the fey gauge to make use Aetherpact which would in all honesty would an amazing tool for freeing up the scholar to provide dps for a time, but I often hang on to it as an extra source of emergency healing in the even I run out aetherflow and not enemies are dead yet for whatever reason.

The bigger issue I see with the fey gauge is it encourages or teaches inefficient use of aetherflow abilities since for example you can cast bane on a boss with no adds around solely for the sake of building fey gauge or casting sacred soil which actually has a cooldown again for the sake of earning fey gauge points.

So they fey gauge in a way can be argued that it actually takes the main purpose of the aetherflow abilities away instead of being skills that need to be well timed and are amazingly rewarding for doing so they have been somewhat reduced to 'point generators' rather than valuable tools that should be used wisely yet I'm using them nearly all the time now so they don't feel as great or rewarding to use because ALL the time is the time to use them.

So my suggestions for when SE does eventually look over scholar again are:
Take the potency you took from eos and find a way to roll that in back into scholar's main healing tools to make the job less stressful and frantic to play, this could be done via a trait that increases physic potency for example.

Then check to see how this affects aetherflow usage and make adjustments to the fey gauge gain per aetherflow skill or even adjust how the fey gauge gets built up say for example dabbling with eos/fairy skills adding to the fey gauge instead.

In short basic healing tools in my opinion would need to be bumped up in effectiveness and Aetherflow/Fey Gauge interaction could be rebalanced accordingly if deemed necessary after potency adjustments.

Hope this was constructive until next time.

[Vyriah]

inb4 everybody calls OP a bad healer.

SCH is a mess, but there's pretty great chances that changes will happen at 4.1. The best thing to do right is to deal with. The DPS part of the job works quite, even though it's really different to what it was before. It's more about including healing in DPS.
But then a part of your skill set does feel like it belong to another job.

BTW, if you want to spend a charge : use energy drain. It's better than everything if you have nothing to do. It does damage and give mana, there's never a moment to not cast that ability.

[Penthea]

The bigger issue I see with the fey gauge is it encourages or teaches inefficient use of aetherflow abilities since for example you can cast bane on a boss with no adds around solely for the sake of building fey gauge or casting sacred soil which actually has a cooldown again for the sake of earning fey gauge points.

While I agree that the fairy gauge does make players use their Aetherflow stacks more, it's also to take advantage of Quickened Aetherflow. And really there are better ways to burn through stacks than on a Bane that won't spread anything. There is usually some degree of healing to do and if nothing else there's Energy Drain.

So they fey gauge in a way can be argued that it actually takes the main purpose of the aetherflow abilities away instead of being skills that need to be well timed and are amazingly rewarding for doing so they have been somewhat reduced to 'point generators' rather than valuable tools that should be used wisely

There appears to be some debate about this now. Some players are suggesting using Aetherflow stacks for free heals as a form of mana management, which is a valid argument but in my opinion it's not when this deprives the party of, as you say, well timed skills.

yet I'm using them nearly all the time now so they don't feel as great or rewarding to use because ALL the time is the time to use them.

It can certainly feel that way with chain pulling tanks as some do not use defensive cds properly or if you're unlucky with poor dps making chain pull fights last very long. Depending on the circumstances I sometimes feel like sch runs out of options too quickly. However this doesn't happen to me as much in raid content as it's much more difficult to do those encounters in ways that were not originally intended, so in that environment sch to me feels more balanced and rewarding.

So my suggestions for when SE does eventually look over scholar again are:
Take the potency you took from eos and find a way to roll that in back into scholar's main healing tools to make the job less stressful and frantic to play, this could be done via a trait that increases physic potency for example.

I was at first very salty about the Embrace nerf, but I think I'd prefer a different fairy adjustment instead. I really want fairies to cast abilities when I tell them to, not after they finish whatever they're doing. That being said I still won't say no to a little buff to Embrace.

even adjust how the fey gauge gets built up say for example dabbling with eos/fairy skills adding to the fey gauge instead.

I think one of the biggest issues with Fey Union is that unless there's trash before the boss, you won't have it on the pull. Which basically means in any ex or savage content you're never going to have it on the pull. Although it's a pretty damn powerful spell so maybe this was intentional by SE. Maybe they want to avoid scenarios where players use Fey Union on the pull directly after Fey Wind so they can go full on dps instead of using it as a tool during periods where there is a heavy demand on healing.

Personally it seems that right now sch suffers mostly in 4-mans. The majority of sch dps are dots and mobs frequently die before they are finished ticking, spreading dots uses an Aetherflow stack and with chain pulling being so common there are scenarios where you need stacks so much more for a Lustrate/Excog than dps, the fairy is pretty clunky at times because after the running part of a chain pull you need to wait for it to position itself correctly before commanding it to use cds or risk half the party not being in range, and there are times (once again chain pulls highlighting the cons of sch) where I would love a Fey Union near the beginning of a dungeon but the gauge lacks enough charges from Aetherflow use to be actually beneficial.

Sch is still very much viable in raid content and it feels far more balanced there, but it's still in need of some tweaking. I really think Aldo could do with a small potency boost and Excog should have a mechanic in which upon expiring it casts a heal of some sort on the target. I have had scenarios in which the tank dropped to nearly below 50%...but not less than 50% so that was an Aetherflow stack that went to waste. And yes I even abstained from healing with the intent of making Exog pop but other factors like the other healer and the tank's own self healing still kept them above 50%. It's best used on a mechanic that you know for sure is going to bring the target to below 50%, like Charybidis (I probably spelled that wrong) on os1 savage.

[jstamos]

The bigger issue I see with the fey gauge is it encourages or teaches inefficient use of aetherflow abilities since for example you can cast bane on a boss with no adds around solely for the sake of building fey gauge or casting sacred soil which actually has a cooldown again for the sake of earning fey gauge points.

Nope. Use Energy Drain. If you're casting Bane on single target or using Sacred Soil, you are being a bad SCH.

[technole]

Should always Energy Drain, even if you need a filler that's more MP, and you are keeping the Aetherflow clock down.

The only reason they added that Aetherflow zero effect adding to the fairy gauge was if you made a mistake (Bane single target) or it somehow did no heal/damage to the target (Excog expiration). It wasn't encouraging bad use.

It's the same with Summoner, someone could fat finger Fester with no DoTs up, but they allow it to still build Dreadwyrm stacks. It's a substantial DPS loss if you mess up Aetherflow with the job, so they made it more forgiving.

[Sebazy]

Two things really worth pointing out so they don't get buried in the wall o text:

BTW, if you want to spend a charge : use energy drain. It's better than everything if you have nothing to do. It does damage and give mana, there's never a moment to not cast that ability.

Pretty much this.

I was at first very salty about the Embrace nerf, but I think I'd prefer a different fairy adjustment instead. I really want fairies to cast abilities when I tell them to, not after they finish whatever they're doing. That being said I still won't say no to a little buff to Embrace.

Also, this. Trying to fire off WDs felt like a coin toss half the time. A simple option within character config to make hotkeyed pet abilities interrupt the current cast AND prioritise said ability over another auto embrace would do wonders IMHO!

[AbstractLemons]

I am aware that energy drain is the better go to choice I experimented with bane/sacredsoil to see or fully understand the mechanic.

I used bane as an example to because I thought it at least feel I shouldn't be rewarded for bad scholar ay or be incentivised to use skills like sacredsoil in situations it's not needed.

I'm short my opinion on the subject was that bad sch play shouldn't be rewarded. Which is why i made that complaint as an issue I saw with how the mechanic currently works, and suggested they try dabbling with how fey gauge is generated like make it so all support abilities generate gauge but in small amounts so we can include actions like physic, adloquium etc instead of putting that much emphasis on aetherflow only.

[NobleWinter]

I used bane as an example to because I thought it at least feel I shouldn't be rewarded for bad scholar ay or be incentivised to use skills like sacredsoil in situations it's not needed.

I'm short my opinion on the subject was that bad sch play shouldn't be rewarded.

Using an Aetherflow Stack incorrectly carries its own punishment since you wasted a precious resource to do nothing. There is also the fact that both Bane and Sacred Soil can be used properly and still effectively do nothing. If a mob dies before the damage ticks from Miasma and Bio have a chance to be effective you have still lost an Aetherflow stacknand the same applies if no one enters the effect of Sacred Soil since it takes a few seconds for other players to even realize it is active. Since Aetherflow abilities require such careful management it would seem almost cruel to add another level of consideration on when and how to use them.

[technole]

The thing is since the beginning of ARR it was always possible to screw up your Aetherflow and get no return. Then there was healer accuracy in end-game content where energy drain could miss quite often without proper melds and food.

But now that there are gauge skills that adds another skill layer to current skills to build that up, so they obviously wanted to make things easier to build the gauge. If anything the Excog timer was the biggest issue myself and many people had . You'd be doing your job just fine throwing it on a Paladin expecting the damage, but you'd get some really bad player that couldn't stand their HP being barely dented they Clemency themselves out of the Excog proc. So at no fault of your own that was Aetherflow likely wasted. It's good this was addressed.

[AlphaSonic]

Call me crazy, but blowing your Aetherflow stacks before you had it available again was the norm in AR and HW, what's different in SB?