Have we given up on SCH?

[EaMett]

I'm usually not very vocal on forums like these, but my frustrations with scholar are usually the only things that actually get me to speak up. The class has just become really boring to play and the fairy feels so clunky. I gave it a go for a few levels (and I'll probably get around to getting it to 80 through MSQ roullette...) but in actual content I just can't play it without feeling frustrated. With the strange lack of feedback from the devs about scholar (or any healer for that matter) and people seemingly getting quieter about scholars issues, I have sort of given up on it. I'm still upset about all of the healers feeling sort of...bad to play, but especially scholar. My disapproval is just quiet. It's my silent refusal to ever touch the class for actual content ever again—unless it's changed, of course.

People got quieter because in the last letter the devs pretty much dismissed sch having any issues. It’s crazy how a team that has done such a good job comlunicating with players on all manner of topics can drop the ball so bad with healers. I suspect that they’re getting frustrated not knowing how to balance healers and please players and it’s showing as just total apathy for the role. They really need to get some fresh blood on the team.

[Dzian]

People got quieter because in the last letter the devs pretty much dismissed sch having any issues. It’s crazy how a team that has done such a good job comlunicating with players on all manner of topics can drop the ball so bad with healers. I suspect that they’re getting frustrated not knowing how to balance healers and please players and it’s showing as just total apathy for the role. They really need to get some fresh blood on the team.

It's been obvious even since beta though. every design choice they've made since 2.0 has slowly backed them further and further into this dps corner they're in and now they have no room to do anything to set classes apart. thats why all the tanks and dps have been so heavily homogenized and everything is the same. they really can't do very much with anything unless they make some radical changes and push themselves out of the corner they're trapped in. this obsession with balance needs to be f*d off and bring back some diversity in jobs mechanics bosses and encounters in general.

There's a reason why people say every trial, raid, or boss fight in the game is exactly the same thing.
and the same reason every job is exactly the samee...

also why isnt my fairy named or in the party list so people can at least see where it is in the myriad of flashy effects. whispering dawn booom noone gets it cos theyre waaaayyyyy over there

[Saefinn]

It's been obvious even since beta though. every design choice they've made since 2.0 has slowly backed them further and further into this dps corner they're in and now they have no room to do anything to set classes apart. thats why all the tanks and dps have been so heavily homogenized and everything is the same. they really can't do very much with anything unless they make some radical changes and push themselves out of the corner they're trapped in. this obsession with balance needs to be f*d off and bring back some diversity in jobs mechanics bosses and encounters in general.

also why isnt my fairy named or in the party list so people can at least see where it is in the myriad of flashy effects. whispering dawn booom noone gets it cos theyre waaaayyyyy over there

I'm starting to think SE should perhaps look at a new "mode" to the game.

As you put it they've worked themselves in a corner and they got two problems to solve that are arguably at odds with each other. It also sounds like WoW found themselves in the same position.

On the one hand you've got balance.
On the other you've got a unique and fun gameplay experience.

Those who are most concerned with balance tend to be higher-end raiders who are playing with a competitive edge to try and get the best results and hit the top percentile of players. And those who aspire to be such. And people who may be more focused on content and clearing it, rather than the window by which they interact with it. So homogenisation in favour of balance may work for them as balance is more important here.
Then there's those who love RPG's, having job fantasy and variety of jobs to play to offer different interactions and experiences and varying play styles. For us the more variety there is and the more interesting the job is to play is more suitable here and balance is less important as long as we're not gimp to the point we're useless or that people with the wrong attitude kick us from runs.
I think a leaf could be taken out of PvP's book. Have a "Raider" 'mode' so to speak. Maybe it'll be the jobs more or less as they currently are. I think they could do two options here, make it only active for Savage and possibily extremes. Then all the balance focus could be isolated to certain content where you're still having fun. Outside of this, they could be a little more lax in terms of balance in favour of having the jobs work better for people to play.

When PvP did it, they only had to worry about PvP balance away from PvE balanced and I think created a better, more streamlined and fun experience for PvP without it impacting anything else. But in this case, I don't think a Raid PvE mode would need to remove anything from the current system, as it appears to be already be designed with PvE balance in mind and nobody would lose anything.

[Dzian]

I'm starting to think SE should perhaps look at a new "mode" to the game.

As you put it they've worked themselves in a corner and they got two problems to solve that are arguably at odds with each other. It also sounds like WoW found themselves in the same position.

On the one hand you've got balance.
On the other you've got a unique and fun gameplay experience.

I think the issue is how they try and attain balance. Instead of attain balance through diversity and uniquness they insist on making every job be strong at everything and that's why they corner themselves. If you give jobs some actual distinct differences you can attain alevel of baalnce through variety and weaknesses.

To borrow from a recent thread, When you look at tanks back in Alex you had Paladin which was your solid physical damage tank but pretty lame at tanking magic damage. You had dark which was a solid magic tank but weak physical tank. And Warrior which was kinda of in between both. All distinctly different strengths and weakness and yet reasonbly balanced in terms of tanking capabilities. What then tipped the scales and got paladin screwed wasn't the way the jobs were designed but rather the way an entire tier of content was almost exclusively magic damage orientated. So instead of fix the content design they just went and made every job strong at everything and pushed themselves even further into the corner they're in.

Tanks happen to highlight this so well because they're at the front line of every encounter and it was obvious the direction the game was going in right back in early ARR when tanks started dropping fending gear for striking gear because staying alive was a joke and later swapping shield oath for sword oath. Later still completely laughing at the idea of the new tenacity stat. They can change jobs a thousand times but they wont get anywhere unless they sort the encounter designs out.

Same is true for healers. healing will forever be a joke as long as encounters are scripted and predictable and players know to the exact second when they will need to press Lustrate or ED or whatever.

and has even been true for dps where ogcd stuns, silences and even mobility tools like triple cast got spammed on cool down just for a minor dps increase. because they were rarely ever needed for there intended purposes.

making every job the same and every job strong at everything has all but cemented them into a corner which is again why so many people say every fight in the game is exactly the same thing..

[Semirhage]

And hey, I defended WHM when people started saying it was fine when it was doing so much better than SCH and AST in new content, because I knew there was stuff career WHM's wanted changed, were unhappy with and were a little shadowed by the fact AST and SCH got immediate big changes, when WHM's was gradual...

if any WHM's lurking they may chime in with their own thoughts and feedback.

I can only speak for myself as a (former) WHM main, but I suspect a lot of fatigue is partly behind the lack of WHM threads. Not to derail the thread too much, but we've been complaining ourselves hoarse about this for years. We had a several hundred page thread last expansion and got nothing for our troubles. It's reached the point where I've quit healing because I'm sick of being in dead last place for design consideration. I can't help but grump and roll my eyes when encouraged to leave feedback at this point, because AST and SCH actually get fixes implemented during expansions, and we don't. Then I read AST and SCH suggestion threads rife with pleas to just parcel out what little attention the healer role gets and leave Chopped Liver Mage in the easy boring baby healer trashcan while the two cool kid healers get good design if SE really doesn't have time for all three, and then I remember the "me first" attitude ASTs and SCHs get into and just don't care anymore. WHM will have to wait for 6.0. And 7.0. And 8.0. And we'll have ASTs and SCHs telling us that we just need to "leave feedback" and "we defend you guys all the time!", until you guys get nerfed, then suddenly it's "NO WAIT, WHM is the horrible bare bones healer with no niche or identity, gimme my fixes first and leave WHM in the lurch if it gets me mine!"

And we go forward and back, and then forward and back, and then go forward and back until next ex-pan-sion.

[Saefinn]

snip

I get fatigue is part of it, you guys had bigger issues for longer, which have yet to be addressed. And I think on top of job-specific issues, there is an overall problem with healing, which mostly ties to it not being so engaging any more. This I don't think become fully apparent until we lost more of what we do in our downtime. SCH arguably has a great toolkit that works well for the job's theme and lore. But for how well it heals against 95% of the content, you don't get to utilise it. From what I hear from my WHM co-healer, it's the same situation with WHM, though with some extra things that need fixing with such as lilies.

I'd rather see all 3 addressed at the same time and if in some parallel universe they decided to address WHM first, then actually great, because I know they've had the bigger problems longest. And I'd figure our love would follow. Though I doubt they'd communicate it, so we'd probably still have complaints until they do. But so far, we've not really had any communication, so we kinda in limbo as to whether SE even recognises any of the core problems as problems. Last expansion they recognised WHM had issues and as I understood it they were supposed to be addressing it this time around from what I heard at the time (gonna admit through the grapevine, so I'd be screwed if asked for a source), but it seemed their idea was to bring SCH and AST down with it, rather than bring WHM up.

With that all said, I think it is fairly normal for people to see a problem with the job they play and then make complaints about the job they play and provide their comments and thoughts on the job they play. I don't think that's necessarily out of thinking they deserve attention more than the next job or believing it's fine for other jobs to get worse. As ultimately, I think everybody wants to like the job they play. I don't think that is a snub by any means to other jobs. And at the same time, I've seen effort too to include WHM in discussions that aren't on job-specific issues. And in fairness, I realise it's not everyone, because I've also seen some say "WHM is fine" because if you look at the numbers then one would deduce that WHM is fine. But if the complaint was over numbers and balance then it'd be accurate.

And if SCH and AST are kicking up a fuss, I guess my earlier point is that I'd like to see WHM representation as they still have problems, so the assumption isn't "WHM must be fine if they're not complaining". We see inclusiveness more in the some of the generalised threads. But there's a lack of WHM threads and in the first few pages of browsing, the only one I see is of a white mage being very toxic, and despite that, it did open discourse about how WHM is not doing fine.

I figure the best people to represent WHM's would be WHM's. But I might be tempted to create a WHM thread to collect some of the problems. I know feedback is a shot in the dark. But we know at least they read the forums.

[Sloprano]

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By the sounds of it your favorite healer have had issues far longer than my own favorite. Know a lot a responses I was considering was all of the variation of "NO U". Then I realized I have no idea how WHMs currently are, or how've they've been on the account of never leveling one. And from reading up some stories, have had this already happend back with the 4.0 Media Tour: Incoming changes don't smell good a mile away and one get nothing in ways of reassurance or changes in the aftermath. On that part at least I know how you feel. The longer SE aswell just glosses over Healers, seemingly just seeing that they are mechanically sound, makes one just start theorising why that is.

What I would love to see is the Community Managers making a separate thread for each Healer Job and to let them know the concerns we have with them. That they then go back and design them first in a vacuum, making them fun to play first and foremost.

This whole thing smacks of the 2.0 warrior, only now for an entire Role. Was anyone around then and know how they got their point across to bring about changes?

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Keep seeing community managers in the Dev Tracker, but don't think I've seen them post in any Role forums. Just any kind "We had no idea all healers were in such a un-fun rut, we'll get this adressed to the developers posthaste" or just "We read these forums and are not planing any changes at this moment."

[Hysterior]

I personally feel like SCH is in a pretty good place, can do some tweaking for sure but no major overhaul needed.

[Metsonm]

I've picked Scholar up for this Savage, coming from a White Mage main, and other than Eos still feeling a little slow in some points the job doesn't feel all that bad. I'm pretty comfortable with where it is right now.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

SCH is in no way in such a bad shape that it needs constant threads like AST right now. The reason you don't see threads made for it is because, just like WHM, our issues are more about the feel of the job or QoL. That really doesn't need more than 1 or 2 threads talking about it.

Energy Drain fixed most of the SCH complaints, the only thing I see left is Bane wanting to be brought back, which probably just won't happen since they'd have to do the same thing for WHM and AST.