Thread: The 5.2 Scholar -- Thoughts from a Returning Player

Hey fam.

So I'll probably only end up reiterating what others have said, but I still want to at least voice my own opinion about the current job situation of my favourite job, Scholar, in hopes that it might matter for something.
This post is meant to provide one player's perspective regarding thoughts about Scholar as it is right now. Whether you agree/disagree, I welcome anyone to comment. I recognise that my point of view is far from infallible, and is, in the end, only my own opinion.

For context, I am a returning player who has not played for a total of four years -- since Heavensward. I decided to put education before gaming, and thus I have been away for some time. Until now. Because of the pandemic situation, I suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands. So I though: why not jump back into ffxiv for the summer? Apparently, things have changed significantly since last I played.

Back then, I was a frequent Warrior, Scholar, and Machinist player, and one of my favourite game mechanics to mess around with was the pet mechanic of the latter two. Now, this seems to have been "reworked," or, rather, removed entirely in some aspects. Selene is now just a... re-skin of Eos? What? Why?! To me, this just seems like such an odd design choice. Regardless of whether or not the majority found Selene as useful as Eos, I think just outright removing her is doing her an major injustice.
Similarly, suddenly finding myself without the majority of my dps toolkit is depressing. Part of the fun -- for me, I should emphasize -- of playing Scholar was the DoT management during our downtime. When no healing was necessary, or during easier duties (or solo duties), throwing out my DoTs, Shadow Flare, utilising Miasma II in close quarters, all the while topping if off with a satisfying Bane to spread the hurt, was sooo immensely fulfilling. I felt like I actually contributed to the party in more ways than just healing. Today, this entire toolkit seems to have just been tossed out the window and reduced to a feeble push-one-button-to-do-damage scenario, and I find it excruxiatingly dull. Overall, levelling Scholar up to 80 this summer was a pretty unenganging experience in all solo content. I admit, I enjoy the healing toolkit a ton, but having my dps toolkit forcefully ousted just makes me feel robbed.

[cont.]

welcome back mate. Here's some advice, iif you edit your poost you can bypass word limit

Unfortunately evrything you said was completely true and whats more they actually removed energy drain from your scholar at the start of 5.0
They added it back in, begrudgingly I might add when it made scholar unplayable, and healers haven't had any gameplay changes since with the devs saying "get used to it"
The healer homogenisation and toolkit destruction has REALLY not gone down well with most people. Second only to monks

These forums full of angry healers (a 60 page quit thread and my own summary of healer issues) and a constant healer in need in duty finder or party finder. savage and ultimate isn't much better with most needing shield healers

Welcome back.

And I think you have eloquently put exactly what the issues with SCH are. You hit on the crux of the complaints really.

And you are right the game is designed to favour DPS from healers in their downtime.

And I agree SCH's healing kit is good, aside from sacrificing Selene.

And you are right if they want a healing focus, it is the content that must be adjusted not the healer DPS rotation, which is a huuuuuuge job to achieve, but something they can adjust for future content and let us keep our DPS rotations, it is not the DPS rotation that determines my DPS focus after all.

With all that said, yes there are differing opinions on what healers should be, but I argue this is the advantage of a multiple job system. Each healer can appeal to different healing philsophies and the question should never be "how should healers play?"
It should be: how should SCH play? How should WHM play? how should AST play?

Sounds about right.

They removed the pet (lets be real the goal was to make the game play exactly like if it weren't handling a pet)
They removed the melee aspect of sch gameplay
They removed the dps aspect of sch
They balanced some skills really weirdly, ruin II and broil III balance is off. the entire galvanize gets used before catalyze thing.. It's just weird
They made what's left of the pet nonresponsive and clunky with plenty of bugs in the form of ability ghosting.
They haven't even mentioned SCH in live letters and patch notes for close to a year now. Since ED was added back in IIRC

For a company that has a great track record communicating and listening to it's player base it's an incredibly frustrating (almost insulting) time for healers.

I completely feel you on this. I used to play PLD SCH and MNK back in 2.0 and when 3.0 dropped, i picked up DRK and DRG before quitting due to school. when i came back in STB (around 4.5 or so) I had to relearn how to play the majority of those jobs, but it was a completely different experience than before. I had an EXTREMELY fun time with all of those jobs, so much to the point that I made 2 separate alts JUST to have an excuse to do more dailies and relive the MSQ as different jobs. I was so excited for the changes that SHB was going to bring. excited for the story beats, the job complexity that would be added, the potential new skill ceilings to be reached...

and then I saw the butchering of my favourite jobs. I saw the neutering of the once glorious battle medic SCH, the destruction of the high octane MP management tank DRK, and the regression of the once flexible MNK. Even though PLD and DRG somehow managed to evolve, I couldn't bring myself to love them, for the price was too steep. the worst part is that I strongly believe that the emnity changes were a step in the RIGHT direction in terms of accessibility, and that a few tweaks to the jobs could have further solidified the balance they were searching for, but I couldn't get over the fact that the gameplay identities of my once beloved jobs had been all but stripped away, leaving empty husks of their former powerful yet fun selves.

I still love the story of FFXIV. it was my first FF game and I will always cherish the story, the characters, the setting, the memories i made with my friends as we played through the story, learned how to get better at our respective jobs, and even brought other friends into Eorzea over the years; however, I no longer love the gameplay, and that always haunts me when I log in to play with them.

Welcome back to the salt mines!


You are not crazy, my dude. It has been a year since the dark days of our kits being gutted, and we're looking at a year or more of this crap before there's a small CHANCE of change... But even then, the player-dev trust is in such a sorry, tattered state that many of us are more worried about things getting worse, rather than being hopeful for improvements. Scholar, in particular (like others mentioned) was even worse than the empty husk it was before you came back. And what's being done about it...? Just giving AST attention and buffs... AST, currently the superlative healer in almost every aspect, needs more buffs, the devs think. Not Scholar, who has a fairy no better than an oGCD in a kit already bloated with oGCDs, who got more skills just completely axed with zero replacements than any other job in any other patch.


Many healers have been commenting, ever since the first job adjustment reveal prior to Shadowbringers, that the state of those jobs will be unacceptably terrible. We were told "Just wait and see." Between us, 100ks, if not millions, of collective healing experience, and we get talked down to like we've never even played Scholar before, like we don't know the first thing about it... Like we need to actually play it to know that removing, of all the twelve-blessed abilities borne from the facets of our job crystal, ENERGY DRAIN would make Scholar BETTER.


It's beyond my comprehension how anybody on that team thought they were helping us.