Just feels like bad design

[Crushnight]

This is just stuff that bothers me as it feels like SE's intended way of doing things baffles me.

So;
-Miasma, learned at lv6 on Arcanist use for 24 levels become Scholar and forget it ever existed, so dumb down things the moment you become a healer something you should have already fully gotten used to long before being a Scholar. I might've been ok if this was added later to not overwhelm people on the initial switch from dps to healer but full removal just feels bad.
-Fester, while originally a Summoner skill is now an Arcanist skill at lv 18 to teach spending aetherflow stacks, so for 12 levels you learn to gain stacks and spend them, then you go Scholar forget everything about aetherflow stacks for 15 levels, like what?!, that just looks silly a player has learned about a core mechanic of the job already but you with old it for 15 levels, why?
-Bane, you literally get this just before being able to become a Scholar, why is not available, is spreading 1 DoT really that bad for Scholars to do come on SE.
-Diurnal Sect, why is this glorified button bloat for 4 levels, why isn't it tied with Aspected Benefic or Aspected Benefic tied to it, 4 levels of a do nothing stance looks stupid and sounds stupid.
-Undraw, with the current card system this is just button bloat for the sake of it, no one in their right mind would Undraw ever now, this may have had a niche pre Minor Arcana in Stormblood now though get rid of it it is functionally worthless or give it an extra effect.


The above just really really baffles me with their job design team and highlights to me that they did not put as much effort as they should have when designing the healers for Shadowbringers.

[Seraphor]

SCH issues: This is because they regret their decision to tie two jobs to one class, making it difficult to balance them as two distinct jobs. You should really just consider SCH an entirely seperate job that you simply unlock via the SMN questline. After all, you don't remember all your black magic spells when you switch to WHM, so why would you remember anything from SMN when you switch to SCH?

Diurnal Sect: I'm not sure what you mean. The sects are tied to Aspected Benefic/Helios. But there's another topic on this page discussion turning Diurnal into an 'always on' sect or a trait to reduce button bloat.
EDIT: Oh I see, it is odd that you get Diurnal sect 4 levels before anything that it interacts with. I'm guessing they shifted Aspected Benefic to 34 for some balancing reasons, but the level 30 job quest had already established sects so they couldn't simply shift that up with it.

Undraw: Yes everyone knows this. You can just leave it off your hotbars and forget about it.

[Mimilu]

Diurnal Sect: I'm not sure what you mean. The sects are tied to Aspected Benefic/Helios. But there's another topic on this page discussion turning Diurnal into an 'always on' sect or a trait to reduce button bloat.
EDIT: Oh I see, it is odd that you get Diurnal sect 4 levels before anything that it interacts with. I'm guessing they shifted Aspected Benefic to 34 for some balancing reasons, but the level 30 job quest had already established sects so they couldn't simply shift that up with it.

It's probably because back in HW and SB the Sects had additional buffs on them. In HW Diurnal increased your Attack Speed by 5% and Nocturnal increased your Healing Potency by 10%, while in SB they both increased Healing Potency and decreased Enmity.
They probably left it because you get Diurnal Sect from the level 30 Job-quest, and while I can't remember what happens in that quest, I'm sure Diurnal Sect is important to it.

[Sloprano]

Just feels like bad design.

That which had no preview of confidence, glossed over in presentation, felled on deaf ears as inquiries began, confusing answering, unrealistic statements, no attempts to defend a creative visiion, hemming and hawing as they remove and then re-add skills, seemed made in five minutes by the fruit deliveryman who comes around every second tuesday (who's excellency in delivery is only eclipsed by his inability to make games) and finally a work of design by commitee that shows not a single shred of conviction behind it.

If it feels like bad design, smells like bad design, plays like bad design, then it definitly is bad game design.

Seriously the Scholar stuff gets me more baffled due to it feels like as you put the sch stone around your neck/wrist/wherever Lily is behind you with demon eyes and a giant hammer ready to beat the tar outta you to make you forget your skills and afterwards your like thx Lily I needed that.

SCH issues: This is because they regret their decision to tie two jobs to one class, making it difficult to balance them as two distinct jobs. You should really just consider SCH an entirely seperate job that you simply unlock via the SMN questline. After all, you don't remember all your black magic spells when you switch to WHM, so why would you remember anything from SMN when you switch to SCH?

The SMN and SCH myth has been busted: It was a grand idea to have two jobs share one class. This understandably took a lot of time to make skills and attribute points that would work on both, time they didnt have when making ARR. This relationship has really not been a problem since HW and when they got rid of the attribute points: SCH and SMN have both been getting 100% exclusive skills and Arcanist none over the years. The only thing left has been shared xp for arcanist.

Which haven't stopped SE fucking over SCH with a scorching diesel rod every single expansion as SMN changes took precedence and they flat out keep forgetting the skills read "ACN SMN SCH": The untraited Ruin upgrade; the loss of debuffs; Miasma 2; Shadowflare is a use-on-cooldown; Energy Drain; the pet changes. What the fuck does SE think I've been doing since HW? Pressing Broil? Then manually replacing it with Ruin and press that at <52?

Oddly enough, Ressurection STILL is ACN. Something my money is down on being they saw how much of bleeding effort it was to write the three letters "S", "C" and "H" back onto (old) Energy Drain. Because, let's not forget there exists two Energy Drains in this game with exact same icon and name but completely different description. Chrust, what a mess.

You know, I could take all the hand-waving, lore destroying and poorly-thought-up excuses, even re-leveling, for 5.0 SCH with one single thing: Had the end result been good. They wanted to finally put the money where their mouth is and divorce SCH and SMN? Fine. Any organism possessing more than one cell would have the common decency to then treat Scholar as it's own thing, take a drive down the Aisle of History, see how it has largely worked for over HALF A DECADE, maybe even see my comments in HW saying "I'm good for leveling other jobs thanks, SCH is just so much fun even if we get Sastasha" and then come up with some unique, but retains the busy, engaging and rewarding feeling of from early levels being a dot-, debuff-, Aetherflow- and pet-management job that attracted people to it in the first place.

And they did nothing of the sort.

Come 6.0, I will personally make and deliver a five-hundred feet trophy in pure platinum if they somehow manage to NOT butterfingers-delete Bio, Ruin 2, Summon Selene and Energy Drain (again) while dislodging an eyeball with a drinking straw and the screams of pain is heard as "I'm balancing healers!"

[Vyrerus]

Undraw was added in Stormblood, and it was added due to no longer having a way to just throw away a card you didn't want, when they tied cards to the, "card gauge."

Diurnal Sect used to add 5% haste to your casting, which it no longer does, and that is why it was introduced prior to allowing Astrologian to have Regen... a full level earlier than WHM gets it.

Nocturnal used to add +15% healing.

The SCH /SMN thing is SE trying to separate the classes from one another, because they deem it too powerful to be able to level two roles at once, and claim that it is hard to balance. Nevermind the fact that SCH was never out DPSing DPS, and has been weaker than WHM DPS wise for quite a long time now. The 15 level difference is because at first in SHB they made it so SCH couldn't use Aetherflow for DPS, meaning it was pointless to have until 45. Bane used to be available, but no longer.

[Maltothoris]

Nevermind the fact that SCH was never out DPSing DPS, and has been weaker than WHM DPS wise for quite a long time now. The 15 level difference is because at first in SHB they made it so SCH couldn't use Aetherflow for DPS, meaning it was pointless to have until 45. Bane used to be available, but no longer.

For shadowbringers yes. But during all of stormblood and heavensward, sch was the highest dps of the three healers on average. Astro was next when the 3.3 change to their cast time happend and then whm was the lowest til 4.5 when they got the buff to Assize in potency and lower recast time but it was still on par with astro dps.

Also the astro haste bonus was changed from that to 10 percent healing back in stormblood and noct sect when from 5 to 10 to 15 percent over heavensward and stayed at 15 in stormblood.

[Billythepancake]

SCH: smartest job in the game
Also SCH: Is the only job in the game to straight up forget spells from its previous job.

It's really dumb. I fell in love with SCH because it was the closest thing this game had to a true healer/dps hybrid. Now I have nothing of the sort, all of the healers are just "stand in your corner and spam 1 button until someone gets a booboo so you can kiss it away"

[Saefinn]

SCH: smartest job in the game
Also SCH: Is the only job in the game to straight up forget spells from its previous job.

It's really dumb. I fell in love with SCH because it was the closest thing this game had to a true healer/dps hybrid. Now I have nothing of the sort, all of the healers are just "stand in your corner and spam 1 button until someone gets a booboo so you can kiss it away"

And honestly, feeling like a healer/DPS hybrid is probably the best way they can do the job justice versus it in previous FF titles. Although /all/ healers technically DPS, but I see what you mean because it felt like it had a DPS rotation to it.

SCH issues: This is because they regret their decision to tie two jobs to one class, making it difficult to balance them as two distinct jobs. You should really just consider SCH an entirely seperate job that you simply unlock via the SMN questline. After all, you don't remember all your black magic spells when you switch to WHM, so why would you remember anything from SMN when you switch to SCH?

But I don't think it was a bad decision to have two jobs in one class. I see they're trying to separate them further to avoid many crossover abilities between them, however, it was fine TBH. Though what bugs me with it is that SMN is getting to keep its DoT aspect whilst it is taken away from SCH. The DoT mage aspect really suited SCH and not only that, but I think suited SCH better thematically than SMN, at least SCH has a history of DoT management (with FFXI's SCH, it was in helix spells and the abilities to enhance them) and this was a good throwback. Not only that, but there is a certain plague/disease element to SCH in XIV, obviously with leeches being a former spell, the Nymian plague in the SCH storyline, whereas SMN doesn't reference disease if I recall, rather it is inherited from Arcanist. I guess if they wanted to create any kinda of thematic and balance differences between SCH and SMN's versions, give SMN upgrades on their DoT's (might be cool to exploit a couple of Primal abilities in their upgrades) when they diverge, which we know they can do, because Biolysis is a SCH upgrade of Bio and SCH's Ruin upgrade is Broil whilst SMN gets another Ruin tier. It means they can keep SCH's versions weaker.

And even then, they've been moving away from a DoT focus on SMN anyway. Even then, why can't SMN and SCH remain counter parts to each other? After all they are separate roles.

[einschwartz]

Nah, it's just devs and their lack of care for healers.

[Recon1o6]

I have never heard of anybody anywhere use Undraw, or Undraw spread before the latter was removed

That aside yup, here's to more SE idiocy