Selene

[Hatstand]

Mechanically, the loss of Selene wasn't really that significant at this point. She'd already been nerfed to the point of being very niche. Many of the other losses that SCH suffer hurt more, practically speaking, but I find Selene's loss upsetting none the less. Back in heavensward, feeling comfortable pulling out Selene felt like a graduation. The choice between more healing capability and more offensive capability was exactly the kind of risk/reward decision making I loved (and which has been pretty systematically removed). As such, alongside many other changes SCH sorely needs right now, I'd love to see Selene return in some form.

I'd be interested to hear what other healers think of her removal and any ideas people have about alternate sets of abilities for her.

(Yes, I know you can still summon a pink fairy. The imposter is not very convincing, when push comes to shove.)

I'd like to see the aoe esuna return. It was a niche skill, but when you needed it you really needed it. Perpahs she could also have some other crowd control abilities, if they don't want to give her buffs, like an aoe slow, or an interrupt (I don't think we have one right now. At least holy can interrupt if timed correctly.)

[LariaKirin]

Selene does not need to "return", she is still here. She's fulfilling her role as a reskin perfectly, leave her be.

[Brandedblade]

Personally? I was lowkey hoping we'd keep Silent Dusk between the improved pet responsiveness and their attempt to make interrupts more important. I think giving a sch the ability to interrupt would be a fun way to make them stand out and provide some sort of cc for them. While rarer then a blue moon, the paltry moments I managed to land a Selene silence felt good.

Fey Wind could also have some value, with how weak 3% skill/spell speed is that would actually make for a decent aetherflow option, especially gated on a cooldown like sacred soil .and Indom.

As for Fae Caress...I lowkey would give this to whm over sch, since it's a "healing" utility and would fit WHM's toolkit well.

[Impurrrsive]

I for one did miss selene, the speed buff... The aoe esuna...
When another SCH use eos, i will use selene. Its the old way of double SCH
Before SHB i tot they will diminish they difference between the faery, instead the totally diminish selene skill... Its sad

[Seraphor]

I do wish there were two different Faeries still, even if their effects were different.

Given that they breaking the regen/shield dichotomy a bit, it would've been nice if Eos was the regen faerie and Selene was the shield faerie.

Personally I think this should've been what Catalyse was, a regen/shield depending on the faerie, and then Eos could have Whispering Dawn, and Selene has Whispering Dusk, which is just a pure heal.

[LegoTechnic]

As someone who played since ARR, the slow and eventual death of Selene still irritates me. Originally she was a "buff" fairy, alternating between a spell speed and skill speed buff, each up alternatingly for half a minute. This was pretty powerful, but skewed more towards some classes than others (benefit to BLM greatly outweighed that to melee, who could even experience TP issues). Thus they reworked it to a haste that not only benefited everyone about the same, but worked for auto-attacks as well. The problem though was the dynamic with the new AST and the pure-heal WHM, because the third healer (AST) was the "buff" healer, which Selene's kit had always hinted at. In essence, Eos kept its identity as the "WHM fairy", and Selene was now the "AST fairy", but then the balance issue of trying to make it so that AST's buffs didn't inherently outweigh the benefit of the pure-healer WHM came about, and they proceeded to struggle to somehow even out the three healers while for some reason keeping WHM selfish. For whatever reason, despite AST having its sects and SCH its fairy options, they never gave WHM any kind of role switch option beyond the shared CNJ cleric stance, and kept it rigid and locked as a pure healer without party synergy buffs. Eventually after trying for years to someone balance party buffs to this playstyle, they just threw in the towel with ShB and said "whatever, buffing sucks!" and squashed the whole system. AST got flattened and Selene was killed in the spirit of making card party synergy somehow equate in value against the personal potential of WHM and the new heal-focused SCH. They want all healers to perform as similar as possible without having to change the initial WHM focus of "no party buffs", and I'll never understand why.

All they had to do was give WHM a mode-change that would change spells that applied regen effects into ones that applied haste or something (I choose haste as a lore staple spell), and then they could be free to let healers buff and try to balance those benefits against one another rather than try to balance party synergy benefits against a class without them. They had already completely removed SCH and AST's debuff utilities because they didn't want to give WHM mitigation debuffs for some reason (miss you Virus/Disable), and the classes just become more and more focused on their recover mechanics, so I begin to wonder if they feel having healers be responsible for more than that is too hard during progression. Certainly healing progression is often one of the hardest things you can do in this game, but unlike other classes the difficulty of healing scales drastically down as mechanics are learned and gear is obtained, which is why many progression groups still started with comfortable, high-heal WHMs and then switched to smaller-heal, buffing ASTs once they were good with the fights.

But you know what the devious mastermind in me thinks? I think they did this so they'll have more options to give to the 4th healer, because I suspect they honestly have no idea what to do for it, so they will make it a bag of things removed from the other healers.

[EaMett]

Am I the only one who's not feeling the pet "responsiveness"? Am I just forgetting exactly how bad it used to be? Or maybe it's just more obvious now that I need to weave them into the gcd. It's actually been pretty obnoxious. I need to cast consolation a good 5s before seraph leaves or it never hits my party. Same if I ask my fairy to do something I need to wait a good 5s before calling seraph out.

[Rivxkobe]

Meh. I'm just happy I can use Selene now without feeling like I'm straight just giving myself a nerf to show off how "good" I am. Other than very specific situations Selene was just worse than Eos. Not to mention she was basically one ability short (Silent Dusk was trash and useless. Change my mind.)

It just makes me think of how using Eos during ARR was looked down upon because Selene's haste effects were, more or less, demanded and WHM + SCH was more than enough healing. Then they changed things and... well here we are. Eos outshined Selene since HW and now Selene is just a shadow of her sister.

She's still a better Fairy skin than Eos so I'm happy. /shrug

But you know what the devious mastermind in me thinks? I think they did this so they'll have more options to give to the 4th healer, because I suspect they honestly have no idea what to do for it, so they will make it a bag of things removed from the other healers.

Probably.

[NobleWinter]

I really enjoyed having Selene out in almost all content. It wasn't optimal but it was fun to heal more and get usage out of all my spells. Timing things to land right and mitigating damage were more impactful without Eos overpowered healing. After Fey Union got added Selene gained a powerful heal and Rouse picked up a surprising amount of slack too. I was more than devastated when Selene got banished to the glamour realm. I really want my party wide haste back. Even if it got reduced to a person buff for the Scholar alone I would understand but doing solo content without automatic haste, silence, and free esunas feels horrible.

[Sloprano]

All for bringing back Selene. For when playing solo and having a fifth party member full of tools in Deep Dungeons. Wouldn't mind if her skills was the same as in 4.0, just the manner of having the choice again I think would be good.

From their perspective I can see why they felt the need to remove Selene, and I'm sure balance wise their numbers in tests all align. I think It just turned out to be the most heavy-handed way to attempt to create the most inoffensive skillset that it looped around and started to bother me. My reason for really enjoying Scholar wasn't one defining aspect, it was all the little choices you had that came togehter as you played. And one of those choices was Selene that is now removed.