Is it really too much to ask SE to buff Ruin II and tune around it?

[Grimoire-M]

Seriously, I feel like that was the only thing we needed. It lowers the skill floor, ups Scholar's personal DPS, and doesn't encourage counter-intuitive gameplay for optimization. Admittedly it's not as impactful as '10 potency on Broil III' but I think buffing it to 250 potency and simply not doing the Broil III buff would have been enough to get the numbers right without changing much. Their stated issue with ED ("You're casting it too much, heal more") is purely due to their fight design to begin with so I fail to see how it helps. Seeing more and more Energy Drains per fight is a sign that SCH has mastered said fight. There's nothing wrong with that.

Just in case someone at SE is not familiar: The problem with Ruin II is that it deals too little damage relative to Broil III right now. Specifically to the point that it's better to force Energy Drain between your Broil IIIs (ie. clipping) if you don't have to heal. In order to fix this problem, Ruin II must have a relative potency of at least 5/6th's of whatever hardcast spell (Ruin/Broil/Broil II/Broil III) you're using. Shadowbringers changed Ruin Mastery to make Ruin II at 80 potency less than Broil at each Broil rank respectively, which is absolutely awful to play with. In 5.3 with Broil III at 280 potency, the number Ruin II needed to sit at was 240. At 290 come 5.4, Ruin II needs to be at least 250. And the higher that is without going over, the less of a penalty it is overall (but clearly SE wants it to be a tax, so it should be slightly over 5/6 but they can err towards the maximum penalty). Admittedly this means Ruin II is also less useful as a movement tax, but that is generally fine because being a movement -and- weaving tax means you can reliably account for more Ruin IIs being cast in the first place, and therefore see it tune down SCH's maximum DPS threshold accordingly. The other changes would also make sense if this change had been implemented. You're losing a tiny bit less than before (100 ED + 40 Ruin II vs 150 ED) for using a single Aetherflow heal out of place, but it feels better to play overall. Broil III hits harder and still pushes SCH's overall DPS higher across all skill levels because you're getting more casts in at the low to average skill range, and the DoT changes compensate for the potency lost on Energy Drains which brings up the skill floor.

I'm not saying these changes are bad (to some extent they might be necessary regardless, but because of this oversight they fail to hit the mark), but seeing Ruin II sitting untouched this long makes it hard to see the argument for why SE did so many of the other changes in Shadowbringers. To me, it's necessary just to bring those other changes in alignment with their overall goals. Quality of Life can depend purely on numbers being tuned appropriately to facilitate your ideal gameplay. This one's easy to do, and likely would have made the Broil III buff unnecessary in the first place.

[Anhra]

Personally, i would prefer it if they would give SCH miasma and shadowflare back, along with at least 2-3 new Dps skills. Oh and make the two Fairies have unique sets of utility while were at it.

[Enla]

Personally, i would prefer it if they would give SCH miasma and shadowflare back, along with at least 2-3 new Dps skills. Oh and make the two Fairies have unique sets of utility while were at it.

This. I'd be a lot more accepting of the current status quo if you at least had a fulfilling DPS kit again.

[Semirhage]

Squeenix has zero intention to make healer damage fun, intuitive, or rewarding. They still think skilled healing means spamming healing as much as possible, and that dealing damage means you're "not doing your job correctly". Any skilled veteran healer would tell you the exact opposite, but that's the attitude they've communicated every single time they've adjusted healers in the last four years. Strap in kids, your ideas for improving healer downtime fun are gonna get ignored. They ground all three healers down to their most simplistic they've ever been, and learned absolutely nothing from doing it. Your purpose is to facilitate the fun of DPS players. Eat that gruel and like it.

[Grimoire-M]

Keep in mind I'm talking from the perspective of "This can be done within a single patch" rather than "I'd like this new/old ability". I don't see SE doing anything more extensive than number tweaks like the ones we have coming in 5.4 until 6.0 at this point. I get where people are coming from, but just so people don't let it devolve into expansion suggestions, try to work with what we have, cause I really hope SE knows by now that healers want more than two or three button DPS rotations, and that they should look into implementing that in the future.

[Absurdity]

cause I really hope SE knows by now that healers want more than two or three button DPS rotations, and that they should look into implementing that in the future.

They probably do know and just don't care, because you play your role like the mindless healing bot they want you to be and you're gonna damn well like it, or they live in some kind of pixie dream world where their healer design actually makes sense.

[_Winters_]

We should make an FC/linkshell in protest, "No more heals to give" with just ppl refusing to go healers. Its already dreadful queues in DF for any but healers.
I think the best message and the thing that SE will notice if anything is if a massive amount of healers drop from DF. This is what happened to tanks in stormblood which lead to resources being immediately put into a rework for tanks.

[Brandedblade]

We should make an FC/linkshell in protest, "No more heals to give" with just ppl refusing to go healers. Its already dreadful queues in DF for any but healers.
I think the best message and the thing that SE will notice if anything is if a massive amount of healers drop from DF. This is what happened to tanks in stormblood which lead to resources being immediately put into a rework for tanks.

Everytime someone suggests a healer boycott nothing changes my dude.

[Irenia]

I think there may be a significant amount of healers happy with the current status quo... which is worrying.

[Teno]

This is funny how this is the definition of our old kit.