SCH need buffs

[Videra]

Now take your long term main player, envision their repeats ad nauseam and you have the rationale behind none of my SCH friends even playing the game anymore. Ain't it fun.

It's me but I only play Scholar because I don't trust anyone else to heal and WHM's aesthetic is trash.

[Mindiori]

Well I'm certainly no career healer (more like the slave of a few lol) but even I found SCH fun once. A big stress on the 'once'. Can't even really bring myself to bother anymore. Sure, some will find me melodramatic on that front but what can I say. I'm easily bored by things that are shallow, even if that depth can be considered superfluous sometimes, its still a whole lot better than the thumb twiddling, might as well just watch netflix set up, that we seem to have now.

I could say against myself, that as a non-heals main that I simply happen to clash with the new 'heals only' ideal. But then I look around, see so many who seem to share the idea that eliminating DPS fails to address the fact that full healing isn't even close to realized here yet and shake my head. I have this feeling that either they revert the simplification to an extent, or lose too many subs the next time before they manage to get this new system going. The design just isn't built into the game well enough to warrant heal strain. If it was, we'd just have a whole new gen of accessibility complaints until the only heals on offer was like it is in those 'other' titles. A odd passive heal here and there and using pots. No trinity needed.

[Videra]

To put it into perspective for non-Scholar players, most of us want our old playstyle back. And what this entails is thusly.

1) Faerie management, Eos and Selene used to have different abilities and their own GCD that we had to manage in tandem with our own for maximum effectiveness. Targeted embraces were a thing of beauty, and Whispering Dawn/Fey Illumination were much more responsive at the time because of this. We also used to have neat utility once upon a time in the form of Fey Covenant, which was raid-wide magic mitigation via Eos.

2) Our dots were an integral part of our playstyle and a huge part of what kept Scholar interesting in the ridiculous amount of downtime this game promoted: It was a game of managing multiple timers for various different iterations of dots. I was personally fondest of this in Heavensward when we had everything from Thunder and Aero to Miasma 2 and could spread our dots with Bane. Though I will say points in Stormblood's favour, because using miasma 2 for weaving in Stormblood was probably an unintentional stroke of brilliance on SE's part. I think I speak for everyone when I say that the majority of Scholar players want this back the most.

3) Shields used to scale much higher. This is just a consequence of how big numbers have gotten and kind of overlaps with Astro, but shielding, in general, has become a lot less valuable with each expansion. We also can't spread Critlos anymore, which sucks - and SE knows that it sucks. This was only changed because of shield to get LB cheese on fights like Omega Savage.

If I forgot anything, feel free to tack it on. I just know my major pain points with the class. In all, it's fair to say that Old Scholar was a deep, complex animal - and it was considered one of the best-designed jobs in the game for a reason.

[AbelArchaniEA]

People who cry for buffs usually haven’t dedicated the time to study and actually learn that jobs full capabilities. I’m sure it felt good to rant though. Forum therapy ftw

[Billythepancake]

People who cry for buffs usually haven’t dedicated the time to study and actually learn that jobs full capabilities. I’m sure it felt good to rant though. Forum therapy ftw

Most of the people on the thread and on the healer forums in general, aren't even asking for buffs, they're just asking to not be bored out of their skull with a class that has nothing to do but spam 1 button.

[Grimoire-M]

People who cry for buffs usually haven’t dedicated the time to study and actually learn that jobs full capabilities. I’m sure it felt good to rant though. Forum therapy ftw

This forum is complaining about gameplay. Every single one of these threads has been purely about the regression healers have gone through in the name of balance. Healers are perfectly balanced right now. That isn’t the problem. Numbers are easy to adjust anyways. The problem, through and through, is healers are bored, and leaving because of it.

[Mindiori]

People who cry for buffs usually haven’t dedicated the time to study and actually learn that jobs full capabilities. I’m sure it felt good to rant though. Forum therapy ftw

Has to be amongst the most hilarious drivel I've read lately sheesh. What 'full capabilities' would someone need to learn and study exactly? The job is so gutted its about as difficult as wiping your nose. If you need to dedicate time to the current SCH or most of the other dumbed down classes in any capacity at all, then you are simply cognitively impaired or heavily agenda biased. We are talking about MMO roles in a game for goodness sakes, not composing for the philharmonic. I've had friends who played scholar from the start truly 'rant' (and justly so I believe) and they would be in place to know it inside and out. Not maining something, isn't quite the same as being out in the real world and not having the same academic degree someone else does lol. Sorry but do keep some perspective. Even the better games of this generation are pretty tame compared to the effort involved and muscle memory of the pre-naga generation. I mean I had to effectively touch type with no global cooldown 10 years ago. A far more 'hardcore' experience if we must resort to that, than the laughing stock you call difficult today.

[Videra]

People who cry for buffs usually haven’t dedicated the time to study and actually learn that jobs full capabilities. I’m sure it felt good to rant though. Forum therapy ftw

I can't tell if you're responding to me, so I'll simply ask - did you even read the majority of posts from dedicated scholar players? Because if you did, your reading comprehension needs work.

[Jirah]

They at the very least need a better AOE. Shadow Flare or Miasma II (maybe renamed) are miles better than Art of War which is underwhelming compared to Distant Casting Gravity or Stunning Holy, and healers being that close to trash isn’t good.

For real give us shadow flare back

[Mhaeric]

Shadow Flare or Miasma II (maybe renamed) are miles better than Art of War

I see this quite a bit and it's not really true.

Miasma II - 100 potency instant damage plus 4 ticks of 25 potency damage over time totaling 200 potency per target but only the 100 potency can be spammed. It's effectively 125 potency per cast if spammed (slightly less due to GCD and server tick being not quite equal.) Combined with Shadowflare at 50 potency per tick for 5 ticks it bumps it up to 175 effective potency per tick (again, slightly less due to server tick vs. GCD.)
Art of War - 160 potency instant damage that is 100% spammable.

Art of War is objectively better than Miasma II on its own. The combination of Shadowflare and Miasma II is better than Art of War dps-wise, but only barely and the main advantage to the two old spells being that there's a ticking 75 potency that keeps going if you take a GCD to heal. Miles better they are not, however. When you add in Bane is when it becomes miles better (which frankly was what made Scholars OP in all previous expansions.) That said, I definitely miss the Bane/Miasma/Shadowflare days because it was interesting to play. The actual issue with Art of War (and all healer DPS kits these days) is that it is the only GCD button we press during AoE barring the very occasional GCD heal that needs to go out. Single target adds in Biolysis but that's a single button press once every 30s and it's back to Broil spam. It's boring. We're not asking for a full rotation kit like a DPS or even like a tank, but something more than one spell to spam and one DoT would be nice. Energy Drain sort of helps, but while ideally it gets used as a DPS ability it's often spent on healing instead.

P.S. they already did rename Miasma II: it's called Art of War now. If they brought Miasma II back in some form it would likely just be Art of War with an added DoT and reduced up-front potency.

P.P.S. Art of War isn't that bad compared to the other healer versions. It has more potency (they only do 140) and is instant cast allowing for very easy use of all the oGCD abilities that Scholar has. AST with all of it's oGCDs can only do that for 25% of the time and WHM will always clip oGCDs when Holy spamming even when using their haste buff since it reduces both the cast and recast equally.