Have we given up on SCH?

[Saefinn]

Well that's nice and dandy except for the fact that this is a forum. -snip-

I still feel shifting the goal post is a fair description, maybe not put such a heavy weight on individuals, because that's unfair, but the point I was making, at each goal post we hit, somebody else comes along and then they set it somewhere else. I don't point it out for the sake of trying to illustrate a logical fallacy, but to highlight "this is not the first time".

Hence my point about Sisyphus, whilst we can go for a "wait and see" ad infinitum, but there becomes a point when you're pushing a rock for eternity. Hence why I am vocal about the issues, rather than just "hoping" stuff gets fixed.

And I have tried it out. But what we said during the media tour was not wrong. A lot of people will say "wait and see before you complain". But we play our jobs a lot, they're out mains, we've played them for a long time and we've played the game for a long time. The media tour gave us tonnes of information about the job changes and skills, so people can look at them and deduce what it means in terms of play. For people to have been wrong would have meant SE pulled something really unexpected.

In some cases, it's fair comment, like with Blue Mage, where we didn't know much about what Limited Jobs would entail - granted, Blue Mage had problems anyway, but I think in cases like that "wait and see" with a hint of scepticism is still a fair argument.

But there are things we did know and plenty of people who knew what they were talking about when it came to the media tour.

Regardless, I still gave it a chance on the off chance SE did do something different with the encounters (though it wouldn't have made a different for anything pre-ShB) and wanted to enjoy it, I found things that I did like and I could see the potential, but it still felt boring overall.


As for being in the minority. I've already accepted that my vision of Scholar could well be in the minority. I've discussed with Scholars who have differing opinions, I've spoken to ones who agree. I am totally okay with that. My vision of Scholar is the 2.0 one, but as an example I have a guy in my FC who fell in love with the 3.0 version, which already had some differences in how it played - at least in terms of what I got from it and what he got from it as we had some different ideas on how Scholar should be designed. There will be people who also fell in love with SCH at 4.0 and even 5.0. However, where I've compromised at is "don't make it monotonous".

If I have a lot of down time and my only options are to spam Broil or Art of War with the occasional Energy Drain or Biolysis then that's monotonous. I've even gone as far as suggesting instead of weaving DPS moves why don't we weave in debuffs instead or buffs - a little like AST already does. That's not my vision of Scholar, but I figured it'd be a compromise as SE seemed to want to give a simpler DPS rotation. So I offered something more supporty.

[Schan]

I still feel shifting the goal post is a fair description, maybe not put such a heavy weight on individuals, because that's unfair, but the point I was making, at each goal post we hit, somebody else comes along and then they set it somewhere else. I don't point it out for the sake of trying to illustrate a logical fallacy, but to highlight "this is not the first time".

So... generalizing an entire forum with different people who have different expectations is fair? From my point of view that is what is unfair, but I see your point. I just don't like the way you generalize it. Not everyone changed their minds and kept postponing their opinion.

I agree with everything else especially regarding the media. Doesn't really help that most "influencers" do not play Healer. Only Momo comes and mind aaaand he's a min-maxer so... he's doesn't really cut it for several people.

With that said I am advocating for people to complain and voice their concerns so keep doing a good job.

[WaxSw]

I dont believe they are going to do significant changes, for the devs healers are (like balance) an afterthought and something that they do not know how it is played. I'm starting to doubt they even read this forum because the lack of communication is incredible, and honestly I would prefer that to the other option that is that the devs are actively ignoring healers because for them we are a minority of second class players.

[Lodi]

And that's just the changes from SB to ShB. I still miss the days when SCH had 3 single target DoT's, their DPS moves had status effects on them and we had better handicaps to better differentiate how healers felt to play and WHM being the healiest healer actually meant something. And I even miss stance dancing with Cleric Stance.

Only thing we've got back is Energy Drain.

Indeed, I forgot to add "And all in a day's work". Because not only it's probably the time it took them to design those changes, it's also how the changes happened.

"We're gonna do this and too bad if you don't like it, also don't ask us why we did that because we don't know."

If anything, the SB changes feel less insulting to me because they're for a good part tied to the removal of cross class skills, and not targeted dumbing down of an entire role like we have now.

And yes, Energy Drain. The thing you have to learn as ACN, unlearn upon equipping your class stone, and then relearn as a completely different system at level 45-ish. Seriously, can the healer changes look any more half-assed?


I honestly can't tell who has it worse right now. Between SCH who lost the entire ACN kit, AST who lost the entire AST kit (these are not cards, it's a slot machine now), and WHM who lost the right to complain because it's overpowered...

[Sloprano]

Indeed, I forgot to add "And all in a day's work". Because not only it's probably the time it took them to design those changes, it's also how the changes happened.

"We're gonna do this and too bad if you don't like it, also don't ask us why we did that because we don't know."

If anything, the SB changes feel less insulting to me because they're for a good part tied to the removal of cross class skills, and not targeted dumbing down of an entire role like we have now.

And yes, Energy Drain. The thing you have to learn as ACN, unlearn upon equipping your class stone, and then relearn as a completely different system at level 45-ish. Seriously, can the healer changes look any more half-assed?


I honestly can't tell who has it worse right now. Between SCH who lost the entire ACN kit, AST who lost the entire AST kit (these are not cards, it's a slot machine now), and WHM who lost the right to complain because it's overpowered...

I notice I end up repeating myself a lot as it has been said before by me and others. There doesn't seem to be any content where all this healing will remain necessary. It came at handy the first few times freshly arriving at level 80 in the first pull of Anyder and in the Extremes, but as gear has increased, less healing was needed. What is left to do is one spell and one dot. Not to mention low-level dungeons became even less interesting as they remained unchanged, but SCH got even less skills available seemingly so they could adhere to the strict "one skill every two level after 50". Skill bloat could be the issue, but the hotbars have even more holes than ever. Moving Aetherflow and ED is still baffling.

Suppose I keep posting my displeasure in hopes SE will at some point interact with the us across all the Healer subforums in different languages (who I can only guess wonder about these changes as much as we do) and ask why we aren't happy with current iteration.

Wow you people are getting pretty jaded now o.o

Sorry if I come across as bitter about current SCH, as with jade this attitude didn't come over night.

[Gemina]

I have not given up in SCH, and the reason is because the level I'm affected by the changes is next to zero. I miss Bane and Shadow Flare as much as anyone else, but these are DPS skills tied to a healer class. At the end of the day, what matters to me with SCH and what makes it fun is that I feel engaged during combat. What I need for that is players needing to be healed.

The only thing making me frown currently is Art of War. I think SCH needs an AoE that is casted like Holy and Gravity. They can take AoW away to give SCH this. It's a bit more on the homogenization side of things, but the skill feels like it isn't doing anything.

[Dogempire]

I don't get why nobody is excited about the new healer changes. I mean you get to choose between white mage, white mage with pet, and white mage with yu-gi-oh cards.

What's not to love? Now no matter what healing job you play, you won't go "Man.. I sure wish I was playing WHM right now.." because you can enjoy the benefits of playing a white mage as a SCH and as an AST with the occasional card or shield thrown in to spice things up.

[CrimsonGunner]

tbh i don't like that homogenization making all the healers the same, it makes me feel there is only one healer and 2 healer skins to choose from.
the point of different classes is different play style not have all be identical up to the last skill. balance shouldn't come at the expense of turning all identical but rather have 1 healer kit complete the other.

maybe they will show healers a glimpse of hope in October but until then lets rant and give our feedback so it will be taken into account for 5.1 and beyond(hope not beyond).

[tesni_g]

I'm not down with the "clean slate" theory because that basically means we're just a beta test over the course of years to develop the role so that in 7.x it might feel complete.

The problems we warned about when 5.0 previews were released are still... there. We saw it then by reading tooltips. We said "these new kits don't work with current encounter mechanics and damage patterns".

The developers don't need to collect data in the next two years of ShB to define a role they created six years ago, in order to "gut everything in order to rebuild." The gutting and rebuilding should not happen in gametime, leaving healers a work in progress for at least two years. It should have begun a while ago and happened completely inside of development/testing.

I am a patient person but healers are playing an inferior version of the game and whenever I switch roles I'm reminded how absolutely fun and full the other classes are. There's no comparing the feel of a DPS class to healers--one is a complete, well-greased machine and the other is... a nuke and a dot.

Our requests are fairly reasonable. Healing, tanking, and dps are all pivotal roles in the game, from the first level 11 guildhest to Savage. Healing as a role is required and makes up about 25% of multiplayer content in a game with millions of players. We shouldn't be beta testing at this point, not in the slightest. Developers need to do that on their own time, like they do with all other classes.

[ArenWalter]

I do miss the DOTs but its not stopping me from playing SCH. The true essence of the job is still there. I do think the job was more engaging when you could manage all of those DPS abilities, I do agree that it is a bit dumbed down now.