Playing SCH is so awkward and bad

[Brandedblade]

I do hope 5.1 reworks SCH in PvP so it actually feels similar to how it does in PvE because Aetherflow only being able to be generated by using a defensive ability that requires you to be in melee range of your targets is ridiculously counter-intuitive.

You generate more with Broil III, each cast gives 1 aetherflow stack and 10 fae guage. You're not wrong that sch needs the actual AF cooldown in pvp, it's just that aura blast is not the only way to generate them.

[Shougun]

I think these are fun ideas to tinker around with. Expanding the scope of how current skills operate or interact might help make it more interesting, particularly if you start creating player judgement situations where theres either risk reward or trades.

Yee and I think it would help that we don't gain too many buttons to do it (saving it for healing and trying to avoid button bloat, technically none were added in the pustule example), since I think people's controllers and keyboards are going to start to buckle to the pressure lol. "Keys I've never used before are getting touched, they don't like it SE they don't - save my keyboard!!" :P

That's what I was hoping for from the pustule concept, the whole engagement of using different spells you'd normally not use based on situation, gaining more positional awareness in the trash packs, and a general sense of questions vs "just use it on cd". Like if we gave a healer a new spell every 30 seconds that did damage, the question is "can I use it?" and if yes then you use it. But here, hopefully lol, the question would far more thoughtful, how many are up, where am I standing, whats the time remaining, did outbreak trigger? Yet you didn't have any new spells to bother with, just using more of the kit and more particularly more "different parts" of the kit depending on the situation presented.

To quickly touch on the "More heal intensive fights", to be clear with what I was talking about, Im not suggesting that healers only heal. I expect there to be down times where healers contribute to damage dealt. But having hte fights a bit more healer intensive OR more mechanically demanding so that there is less emphasis on 'downtime' where you will notice your dps usage and its limited options.

To go from
Broil>Broil>Broil>Broil some more> dot/RuinII with Energy Drain, some more broil, Adlo or Lustrate, back to Broil, etc

to

Broil>Adlo>broil>Broil> Lustrate> Ruin II> Lustrate> Bio>EDrain>Broil> Adlo>Succor> etc.

You jam in Broil, Bio, etc when you can and healing when necessary. I know Im not using like 90% of the skills but Im just trying to illustrate that increasing the healing load and incorporating mechanics which prevent you from sitting there and straight casting Broil would probably help mitigate against how boring it is to play the class. Heck, some of these things can be spruced up by having bosses cast mini tank busters. Busters that do % based damage that can be mitigated by shields/CDs, or have the boss do raid buster followed by tank buster followed by raid buster at a point where you cant LB3 it. I am obviously not a genius at encounter design, but there's a lot they can do to modify difficulty without overhauling every last aspect if people are willing to go for a different play style. If all healers want to do at the end of the day is manage dps skills and toss in heals or let their fairy do that work, then this wont work.

If they wanted to add more to the DPS (which I think is the wrong direction IMO but oh well - devs choices), then I would say it should not be by adding in the old skills but by adding complexity to how damage is dealt. Possibly up management of the fairy so that it does have DPS some skills attached to your gauge or where your fairy deals damage for you so itd be more optimal for a burst window for you to use healing while your fairy damages for you. Im more opposed to "put a dot on here, use an oGCD on CD there and bam - thats complex and engaging!", and that for the sake of class identity, if were gonna debate about that AST is about using cards to buff and RNG matters, then it would also be appropriate to say that SCH needs more fairy management, and not damage skills.

Yeah sorry if you felt like I was addressing you directly on the heal more, I was just talking in a general sense that we can lean more into healing but if we go too hard I think we'd create some really tough dungeons on accident (because it would increase the bar of responsibility lol). Compounded by that fact everyone likes to mass pull haha. Just that people would riot hard if we went from doing mass pulls fairly often to frequently getting groups of people that couldn't mass pull and sometimes even have trouble making it past the first trash because the game was tuned to the tank and healer doing their job well. I know that's probably a bit sad sounding, but just how I feel it would negatively have an impact on the game if we went too tuned to "are both you and your healing/tank partner using cd frequently? no? you're now dead". Now of course you can do that more for harder content, especially savage / ultimate but I just imagine most people don't do that so I just talk like we're discussing normal dungeons lol.

Also to be clear I didn't want to suggest that's what you meant. There is clearly room between going 1 mile an hour to going over 9,000 miles an hour, so we could lean more into heals being important just that I felt having an interactive damage section could also be fun and important since going too hard into heals could cause a lot of issues (which is what I was trying to do without adding any new spells ).

[Melichoir]

Yeah sorry if you felt like I was addressing you directly on the heal more, I was just talking in a general sense that we can lean more into healing but if we go too hard I think we'd create some really tough dungeons on accident (because it would increase the bar of responsibility lol). Compounded by that fact everyone likes to mass pull haha. Just that people would riot hard if we went from doing mass pulls fairly often to frequently getting groups of people that couldn't mass pull and sometimes even have trouble making it past the first trash because the game was tuned to the tank and healer doing their job well. I know that's probably a bit sad sounding, but just how I feel it would negatively have an impact on the game if we went too tuned to "are both you and your healing/tank partner using cd frequently? no? you're now dead". Now of course you can do that more for harder content, especially savage / ultimate but I just imagine most people don't do that so I just talk like we're discussing normal dungeons lol.

Also to be clear I didn't want to suggest that's what you meant. There is clearly room between going 1 mile an hour to going over 9,000 miles an hour, so we could lean more into heals being important just that I felt having an interactive damage section could also be fun and important since going too hard into heals could cause a lot of issues (which is what I was trying to do without adding any new spells ).

Nah I didnt think you were addressing me directly, just had my thoughts on what you said. I get the impression the mass pulling is gonna get addressed by the devs eventually. Again, it doesnt feel like theyre designing these dungeons for that but due to class and player skill, its happening. Either theyll lean into it and just make it a long mass trash pull fest, or theyll lean out and incorporate mobs thatll make mass pulling a bad idea. I feel the latter because were seeing mobs like this in Amaurot already that specifically target players to require single target damage, along with a few harder hitting super mobs in other dungeons. It's one thing to mass pull when you are overgeared and good with your skills, but its another if the default state of play is to mass pull. But I digress, thats a whole separate issue.

In any case,yeah people would get mad if changes happened over night. If they want to course correct, they will have to start implementing some of these changes slowly and train the player base into it. It may take a whole xpac to do it but it could be done without the player base catching on to quickly.

[Sloprano]

I'm just gonna point out that for PvE if scholar was as bad as its being made out to be, then why do people try to avoid white mage + astrologian for raiding? 8D

I'm not saying that it has no issues as some of the fairy problems have existed since 2.0, but scholar is still the best healer of the 3.

It's a fair point and myself have had no trouble healing or killing anything so far in Shadowbringers, it's completely functional and probably more powerful than ever. The giant pickle I have to pick with 5.0 Scholar is that it's boring, uninteresting and just not fun to play anymore. In short: The pruning and combining of a lot of offensive flexible skills and dots, removal of Arcanist tools, even weaker and less impactful fairy and no tandem potential, introduction of powerful skills on long cooldown and the removal Cleric stance among others. There's a lot in each of these points for as they we been gradually removed and replaced over the course of two expansions.

What's with the nostalgia over Miasma II? That spells' ShB incarnation was literally shoehorned in to give sch an aoe filler for dps. Some people might argue that it was an awesome optimization tool but all I could see out of it was a poorly designed skill that took away from another skills (Ruin II's) function. The Ruin II buff and AoW implementation are one of my favorite changes precisely because it gave the two spells a distinct purpose as opposed to ignoring one of them in favor of a mana inefficient spam.

I can hopefully answer that because I loved 3.0's Miasma II. It had a very weak initial hit, then around 90% of it's damage ticked in the dots it spread, it was also melee so you had to leave the safe comfort of a ranged position to use it. When Miasma II returned in 4.0 I was really happy, but there was something strange going on. Instead of having the inital hit/dot ratio being around 10/90, it was now 50/50, or 100/100 potency. Found this incredibly weird as I started just spamming this since there was so little else going on in huge packs. Then when 5.0 hit I realized why it was so weird: It was the second stage of evolution of SE's trademark "Fillerspell" and as it's third form it blossomed into Art of War until I read it's description before it withered into something so polished, bland, unimaginative and started to smell.

Saw this same thing on Paladin with Total Eclipse in 4.0. Not only did this made me think SE was fully aware people just pulled wall to wall in dungeons for aoe, but now fully endorsed it by adding one button to press over and over and over and over and over. That too evovled in 5.0 and now they have TWO buttons to spam press in huge pulls. PLD, almost like SCH, stood out for me as instead of having damage-based aoe emnity skill like war and drk they had Flash, a non-damage skill with Blind debuff. It meant having to find other ways of dealing damage in lieu of an aoe skill, which I found it made up for with it's impressive array of cooldowns and tools right at it's fingertips. But like with SCH, it got the SE treatment, it's got offence for days and now Cover costs 50 gauge for seemingly no other reason than to justify having a gauge among other things. But Im going on a tangent.

Miamsa II 3.0 was great because it was one of the Little Ones, temporary nickname for all the lost SCH skills, and like the rest of the Little Ones wasn't great on it's own. It was when they came togethere it worked so fantastically. Miasma II 3.0 was great because it wasn't spammable, you had better things to do than stand in melee and press one button over and over again. Unlike now, where Broil III and Art of War are the most used buttons on my Scholar.

Nah I didnt think you were addressing me directly, just had my thoughts on what you said. I get the impression the mass pulling is gonna get addressed by the devs eventually. Again, it doesnt feel like theyre designing these dungeons for that but due to class and player skill, its happening. Either theyll lean into it and just make it a long mass trash pull fest, or theyll lean out and incorporate mobs thatll make mass pulling a bad idea. I feel the latter because were seeing mobs like this in Amaurot already that specifically target players to require single target damage, along with a few harder hitting super mobs in other dungeons. It's one thing to mass pull when you are overgeared and good with your skills, but its another if the default state of play is to mass pull. But I digress, thats a whole separate issue.

This is something that already exists in the game, in the upper tiers of Palace of the Dead and Heaven on High you got mobs that hit hard, do random patrols and often have a deadly aoe or mechanic you have to deal with because you can't kill them fast enough. And pulling more than one is risky. Add in random traps, rewards and a one hour timer and you need to do running decision about slowly pulling and killing mobs in safe areas to open the portal or run past mobs hoping they don't turn around at the wrong moment. It's really fun, but you need to put in 3-4 hours to get there. Been wishing for a long time they introduce something like it inbetween MSQ dungeons and Extreme/Savage. 4-man content with hypertuned mobs, random elements and copious amount of loot. Because tense moments as you hug the wall to avoid a roaming chimera juxtaposed with standing outside the Deep Dungeon going through looted sacks is the kind of relaxing downtime I find is sorely missing from this game's fast-paced dailiy tomestone roulettes.

[PondHollow]

I have to agree with the OP that now Scholar is awkward and often times feels poorly put together, having mained it for years [it's not 'bad' in effectiveness] and also, for other reasons, boring, but I do wonder whether there will be any fixes before 6.0.

The developers seem to be mostly ignoring the healers and their complaints.

[KageTokage]

You generate more with Broil III, each cast gives 1 aetherflow stack and 10 fae guage. You're not wrong that sch needs the actual AF cooldown in pvp, it's just that aura blast is not the only way to generate them.

I'm not sure why I never noticed that part of its tooltip...

SCH actually sounds kind of appealing in PvP now...though it's still kind of a joke compared to AST.

[Brandedblade]

snip

I get what you mean. I can concede that having more buttons for aoe might make things feel alittle more engaging. But I just dont want 4.0 Miasma II back. I think 3.0 Miasma II + Art of War might be a fun combo tho, is it bad that I lowkey wish they would bring back Miasma II as a SCH-themed Aero III? WHM could ofc have their Aero III back as well in this fantastical scenario. I dont mind AoW as it is since it is decently potent for a spam and the free weaving space during it is great for keeping tanks up with Lustrates, but I suppose an extra button to press would be a decent compromise.

I\\'m not sure why I never noticed that part of its tooltip...

SCH actually sounds kind of appealing in PvP now...though it\\'s still kind of a joke compared to AST.

It\\'s very fun. But the fact it needs to much more actively participate in the fight then other healers to do its job right means it\\'s very high risk for little reward. Hopefully 5.1 expanding their toolkits will fix that in a way that doesn\\'t make them stupidly op. It\\'s ironic that what makes it feel so fun to play is exactly why it doesn\\'t work well in pvp.

[Ksenia]

As someone who did the exact same thing, I understand but as someone else pointed out, you are in Whm mode.



In the end when they are both 80 and I am left with the decision, Whm or Sch, it's going to be Whm that gets picked but I'm still glad I am leveling Scholar. It lets me see what the other healer is taking care of when I end up in an 8 man with one, on Whm.

[Melichoir]

This is something that already exists in the game, in the upper tiers of Palace of the Dead and Heaven on High you got mobs that hit hard, do random patrols and often have a deadly aoe or mechanic you have to deal with because you can't kill them fast enough. And pulling more than one is risky. Add in random traps, rewards and a one hour timer and you need to do running decision about slowly pulling and killing mobs in safe areas to open the portal or run past mobs hoping they don't turn around at the wrong moment. It's really fun, but you need to put in 3-4 hours to get there. Been wishing for a long time they introduce something like it inbetween MSQ dungeons and Extreme/Savage. 4-man content with hypertuned mobs, random elements and copious amount of loot. Because tense moments as you hug the wall to avoid a roaming chimera juxtaposed with standing outside the Deep Dungeon going through looted sacks is the kind of relaxing downtime I find is sorely missing from this game's fast-paced dailiy tomestone roulettes.

I actually forgot about POTD when I said this. Ive gotten to the top of places like HoH and dabbled a small small bit on the post 100 floors in potd. But yeah, they dont wantt you to mass pull in those. Its suicide at higher levels. They could (and maybe should depending your PoV on mass pulling) incorporate some of those mechanics into dungeons. I think itd be a welcome change of pace from how dungeons are handled now. Itd take some tweaking though, as I dont htink anyone wants to spend 40 minutes in a dungeon, but if they managed to balance a dungeon experience where you cant mass pull and have to work your way around things and still do it in 20 minutes, thatd be cool.

Could be set up in a way that there are ultra hard mobs that are a pain in the ass to kill but you can avoid if youre careful, and a few small groups of mobs to cut your way through, and the focus is simply get to the boss fights themselves and not clear everything out of the way. Could have it that killing the big mobs can award bonus drops or something if you want to kill them or something. Would be interesting though.

[Sloprano]

I actually forgot about POTD when I said this. Ive gotten to the top of places like HoH and dabbled a small small bit on the post 100 floors in potd. But yeah, they dont wantt you to mass pull in those. Its suicide at higher levels. They could (and maybe should depending your PoV on mass pulling) incorporate some of those mechanics into dungeons. I think itd be a welcome change of pace from how dungeons are handled now. Itd take some tweaking though, as I dont htink anyone wants to spend 40 minutes in a dungeon, but if they managed to balance a dungeon experience where you cant mass pull and have to work your way around things and still do it in 20 minutes, thatd be cool.

Could be set up in a way that there are ultra hard mobs that are a pain in the ass to kill but you can avoid if youre careful, and a few small groups of mobs to cut your way through, and the focus is simply get to the boss fights themselves and not clear everything out of the way. Could have it that killing the big mobs can award bonus drops or something if you want to kill them or something. Would be interesting though.

I don't think it would require much work either, I said daringly only having development experience in Hammer. Just simply add in spawn points that may or may not spawn, and like rogue-lites, have a mob budget that just randomly fills up when you spawn in. So you spawn into Tam-Tara and see a Garula trying to navigate the tunnels as a patrol. You can avoid it, but also heard somewhere the garlal can drop rare crafting mats or glamour items. Hidden caches that you can find by collecting clues around the dungeon. Hypertuned mobs you only want to fight one of at a time before because they got new abilities like voice of the Ram. A whole bunch of pain and rewards that sets the pace, and not about clearing it fast as possible, because it'd have no particular reward for getting to the exit, and going too fast will only end the run quicker. Tangent tanget.

Getting out of hand again, but it has a point to this thread. Deep Dungeons was were 3.0 Scholar and Selene shined like the brightest sun. Because while damage is more valuable than ever to kill things fast enough before timer runs out you barely had time to put up even one dot before tank's hp disappeared under a Sasquatch's critting fists, and Cleric Stance wasn't the default stance you wanted to be in because it's reduced healing was incredibly detrimental. It's also the kind of dungeon Selene was made for. Embrace, Silence, Aoe Esuna and haste every 30s. It all helped immensly and for all her hard work she was taken behind the shed and her dress given to Eos. Which is just the top of the iceberg of the mountain of issues I have with it's pruning. It had the skillset made for a sprawling open-ended dungeon where you can't predict everything and need to quickly adapt to traps debuffs and respawning mobs to prioritize healing, mitigating and Ruin II blind, Fey wind, Virus, dare to use Shadowflare for slow in a huge risk since a mob might walk into it before it's over etc. Deep Dungeons got around 80 floors where this fit right in and endless potential everywhere else, but SE keeps sandblasting Scholar until it's a spotless blob with a book that really wants to do Savage.