Letter from the Producer LIVE 53: Ask Your Shadowbringers Questions!

[Taika]

Until Shadowbringers, Scholar was the healer with the largest variety of DPS abilities, and their play style was largely focused on maintaining several DoT abilities (Miasma, Bio, Miasma II, Shadowflare, even Aero in the past) and casting as many Broils (or Ruins before Broil) as possible, while their healing was focused on well-timed pre-emptive shields, off-cooldown healing abilities weaved between damage spell casts, and managing the fairy abilities, including manually targeted Embrace, while at the same time casting other abilities. While Scholar was not difficult to approach as a beginner, mastering it was perhaps a greater challenge than the other two healer jobs, and many Scholar players, myself included, embraced (excuse the pun) all these elements of strategic Scholar gameplay and enjoyed being rewarded for their tactically skillful gameplay with significant contribution to the group DPS. The pre-Shadowbringers Scholar playstyle also went hand-in-hand with the job's lore and theme as a military tactician, as well as the job's background in Arcanist.


In Shadowbringers, Scholar lost a significant amount of its strategic gameplay elements: its ability to control the fairy while performing other actions (and completely losing the ability to control Embrace) and its variety of DPS moves especially in 8 person content (in Stormblood, we could use Miasma, Bio, Miasma II, Shadowflare, Energy Drain, Ruin II and Broil in 8 person content with one target, in Shadowbringers only Biolysis, Broil, Ruin II and Energy Drain - the last only because it was hastily brought back after so many complaints). While Scholar used to have two different fairies with different skill sets to choose from, now Eos and Selene are nothing but two different skins of the same pet, and even Seraph only has one individual ability.


As it currently stands, the job feels like a hollow shell of its previous iterations, with so many abilities and gameplay elements completely removed without adding anything interesting to replace them. With how healing even the most difficult battles of this game is designed, Scholars playing the most difficult content of the game are finding themselves using the majority of their time spamming one ability (Broil) and refreshing Biolysis twice a minute. Many experienced Scholars, who fell in love with its previously versatile and strategic gameplay, are either turning their backs on the job or being forced to keep playing it through gritted teeth because it is still considered being 'required' for the optimal Savage group composition.


Finally, after this long introduction, my question is: Are you aware of the large number of Scholars extremely disappointed in the current 5.05 Scholar gameplay, almost completely stripped from its previous focus on DoT management, pre-emptive healing through damage mitigation and managing a variety of fairy skills, and what is your vision and action plan to make Scholar more engaging in the future?

[Crushnight]

Nocturnal still forces aspected benefic to be 1k mp yet Diurnal is 500 mp this does not change when Neutral sect is activated and aspected benefic provides the same effect regardless, what is the process behind this decision?

[Crushnight]

Collective Unconsiousness is still vastly inferior to Sacred soil any chance for buffs?

[Jestigeress]

Any plans to fix, rework or revert Ast, because the current iteration of the Shadowbringers Ast. Is largely considered un-fun to the player base and thus is a failure on the Dev team?

[kidalutz]

As it currently stands, the job feels like a hollow shell of its previous iterations, with so many abilities and gameplay elements completely removed without adding anything interesting to replace them. With how healing even the most difficult battles of this game is designed, Scholars playing the most difficult content of the game are finding themselves using the majority of their time spamming one ability (Broil) and refreshing Biolysis twice a minute. Many experienced Scholars, who fell in love with its previously versatile and strategic gameplay, are either turning their backs on the job or being forced to keep playing it through gritted teeth because it is still considered being 'required' for the optimal Savage group composition.


Finally, after this long introduction, my question is: Are you aware of the large number of Scholars extremely disappointed in the current 5.05 Scholar gameplay, almost completely stripped from its previous focus on DoT management, pre-emptive healing through damage mitigation and managing a variety of fairy skills, and what is your vision and action plan to make Scholar more engaging in the future?

its not just scholars but ALL Healers that need to be engaging AST had thier cards appearently. WHM has had nothing engaging for three expansions just more heals tacked on.

[Listrella]

Are we going to see something similar to Doman Enclave Restoration in Shadowbringers? I Initially thought Ishgard Restoration would be this but that appears to be something quite different. I would be nice to rebuild one of the places devastated by the flood.

[Teranuh]

As the stated goal of the Shadowbringers healing changes was to make healers heal more, is there any chance of healing itself being made more engaging either through more complex spell interactions or more random encounter damage (especially outside of Savage)?

[Sloprano]

In order to for healers have something fun to do when healing is not needed can you rework damage and tool skillset so that it not only feels interesting but also unique to each jobs identity?

This has been asked several times before and I post again to make it known should any of the other questions be missed.

Something like having a DPS class as part of the base (secondary and tertiary classes) and adding healing job tools on top. See how Arcanist->Scholar worked in 3.0 for example.

[Karatecatgrl]

Will Shadowbringers be available on the PS5?
Are there any plans to develop or support the PS5 when it comes out.

[Chista]

Is there any chance that the furniture cap for mansions will be increased? It's quite difficult to make a mansion look really good with the relatively low slots to size ratio.