Giving back scholar dps skills?

[gman1311]

I don’t know too much about the whole scholar situation but from what I heard from most scholars, they want some of their dps skills back.

My question is, can’t the devs simply give back some of these lost dps skills or would this cause a balance problem?

Again, I don’t know too much, just asking.

[Lagomorph]

It seems that the dev's goal was to homogenize all the healers for balance purposes and to remove some of the dps focus from the jobs. While this is a cause that I can respect because it was done with the intent to balance classes, I feel like it was gone about in a very bad way. For example, AST had one dps spell and one DoT, while SCH and WHM had multiple of each. Instead of giving AST more tools, then pruned tools from SCH and WHM to bring them in line with AST. Another example was the deletion of energy drain. Clearly the devs wanted to remove the choice that players had to make between using aetherflow for healing vs using aetherflow for dps. Again this is a problem that I respect them for trying to solve, but the solution of just pruning a skill was not a good one, and it brings up other problems in the process. Basically there were a lot of things that needed fixing/rebalancing in stormblood, and the dev's primary solution to balancing issues was to delete unbalnced skills instead of trying to balance them. This led to many skills being pruned without suitable replacements being introduced. To sch players who have been playing the class for a long time, the class kind of just feels empty now.

[IanFrench]

I think expecting the dev team to completely undo what has already been released is probably too much. Just hope they could fix here and there and make things move towards better direction.

Why healer balance is so difficult?? 3.0, 4.0, 5.0...so many times...

[CaesarCV]

I would say that they can't necessarily just restore the old skills without causing balancing problems. But they could definitely be accompanied with other balance changes (IE nerfing Broil/Art of War) in order to accommodate that.

But balance is kind of missing the point here. The issue for SCH isn't that they're ineffective, even when it comes to DPS. They're plenty effective, and are predicted to be among the most powerful Healers in Shadowbringers. The real issue is that they're boring and have clunky mechanics. Between having no way to utilize Aetherflow stacks in Solo Content, an exceedingly boring DPS rotation even featuring a horrible animation, terrible feeling things like having to find a way to get into the fight before one can Exog the Tank and everything else they just feel awful.

The other DPS skills and DoT focus also gave their DPS an identity, and was personally very fun. I loved putting DoTs out on enemies so then I could focus on healing for a bit and then switch in and out as needed. I think they need to try and bring some of that back just to make the class feel less homogeneous with the other two.

The lapine poster above me makes a very accurate point as well. The changes this expansion were definitely made to 'balance' healers, but were done in the simplest most brute force method imaginable. I was a little bit of a sucker and thought maybe they would actually be putting in extra effort and thought given how that was their excuse for not putting in a new Healer. But instead it feels like they chose the simplest route in every situation. It might have been hard to figure out how to balance the Cards, so they just said screw it and made them all do the same thing. It was hard to balance Eos and Selene so they just said screw it and made them do the same thing. It was hard to balance Healer DPS so they just said screw it and made them all do the same thing. For whatever Reason Healers are a HUGE blindspot for the battle team of this game, and something probably needs to change.

[whiskeybravo]

SCH dps is fine, easily capable of putting out as much damage as tanks right now. WHM is even better. Not sure about AST since they seem to be non-existent.

[Clicked]

The only skill I really miss a lot is Energy Drain. Fixes the Aetherflow dump issue and adds something else to do when you don't need to heal as much. Even remove the MP drain part if you have to for balance.

[gman1311]

Alright, so putting back energy drain (might!) fix the problem? But I never understood the aoe change, why art of war?

[fogboundturtle]

When you have been privileged, equality feels like oppression. This seems to be the case with SCH now.

[Enla]

When you have been privileged, equality feels like oppression. This seems to be the case with SCH now.

We're not equal though. You'd be hard pressed to find a SCH who wasn't completely fine of the nerfs we knew were coming or that hadn't spoken out at the over-buffing we received back after they murdered our class at the start of Stormblood. We were in a decent spot with the first round of buffs during that expansion and then someone on the dev team decided to go hog wild and go too far. SCH right now isn't as bad as it was in 4.0 but it's a damn sight close to it. Our Aetherflow cannot be cast out of combat, we have MP issues for days that facilitate outright stopping of any casting for a few seconds to remain solvent. Our faerie's AI got /worse/ sometimes outright eating spells and generally taking even longer to cast what few spells it has left. Said faerie also sometimes just randomly unsummons itself when logging into dungeons, and I for one can't find the rhyme or reason for it. She's just sometimes gone. That isn't equality. That's someone on the Dev team not doing their job.

Also I find it funny that people are preaching about equality when what they could have done is brought classes like WHM /up/ to the level of AST and SCH instead of bringing the other two /down/. But complexity and fun seem to be dirty words for this dev team that seems to not even have a healer main amongst them.

[LegoTechnic]

Alright, so putting back energy drain (might!) fix the problem? But I never understood the aoe change, why art of war?

Because Bane was removed. Miasma II was a 100 potency AoE direct with an additional DoT. If spamming in an AoE setting, a 100 potency AoE was about half the strength of the other healer AoEs and was pretty garbage, but it complimented the Bane-spread Miasma and Bio DoT ticks very well, so all together you had great AoE damage. The DoT was just an extra bit for meaties and bosses or for when you stopped spamming when it actually got the chance to tick.

Without the full package of Bane-DoTs, Miasma II as it was before isn't very good. Art of War is basically just it frontloaded as direct damage.