Scholar Rework Idea

[EaMett]

A couple of months ago I got curious to see how the community is feeling about the Scholar class in general and what they hoped to see changed for 6.0. I stumbled upon a myriad of reworks and decided to make my own and share it with the community.

Because the rework ended up being long, I typed it up and placed it in a google doc rather than span multiple forum posts.

The Rework Idea: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...?usp=sharing11

If some of these ideas were incorporated in 6.0, I would be one very happy Scholar. But here's to hoping towards any positive change at all!

Disclaimer: I've only skimmed over the document.

I stopped around the Aetherflow changes and I'll explain why. Two things:
1) Aetherflow has a dps cost. If you remove ED like was the case at the start of the expansion good scholars would just not use Aetherflow at all unless they absolutely needed to (to avoid the DPS cost). Your proposed solution to replace Aetherflow with something to build gauge will be the same, actually even worse because you moved some heals to timers only so you don't even need gauge for that. In other words a "non-DPS tool to prevent overcapping" would be as useless as stormblood lilies were on whm. There are barely any scenarios where it would be optimized play to lose dps in order to hit that button. Mana is not a good reason since even with 0 piety you shouldn't run out when optimized.
2) Management of resources (DPS vs Healing) is a key component of sch gameplay. It's what makes it different from the other healers. Giving us another equivalent to lilies (albeit slightly different) is not an acceptable solution when we want healers to be more distinct, not more homogenized.

ED and aetherflow stacks are a great mechanic, we can argue about the implementation and having skills gated by timers and resources. But overall it's a good thing. It gives you something to think about and the idea that SCHs "do everything to spend it on ED" doesn't mean they spend them all on ED. There's a subtle nuance there that makes up a huge chunk of the fun factor for SCH gameplay. "do I have enough stacks for this next mechanic?" "whoops I used one stack too many, how am I going to cover the healing here", "maybe I should save a stack here for movement later", "maybe I can move healing around to keep an extra stack for ED?" etc. etc.

In addition to that, these changes can't be made for SCH in a vacuum. The most important part of healer balance is healer synergies and healing priorities (like how AST should ogcd before SCH fairy skills, and SCH should aetherflow heal before AST GCDs). Some of your changes like the additional dot is something I think would be great but it does affect the aforementioned synergies and is an idea that needs to be laid out with the context of how it affects healer combinations.