Scholar Rework Idea

[Pandatwin]

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.

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

Brief Overview and Summary

Goals with the Rework
Give adequate weave space so the Scholar isn't punished for healing how they should
Make healer class resources for healing only without a DPS outlet
Spice up the DPS rotation slightly
Encourage the use of the entire healing kit
Improve parties with two Scholars

Remove Aetherflow System
Revamp the Fairy Gauge to replace the Aetherflow System. Aetherpact gives 60 Fairy Gauge every minute and each embrace cast gives 2 for a total of 100 every minute.
Lustrate costs 20 Fairy Gauge and Indomitability costs 40.
Fey Union costs 10 every time HP is restored.
Fey Blessing changed to an AoE channel like Fey Union that restores 125 potency every server tick. Costs 10 Fey Gauge every server tick.
Dissipation changed to remove 20 Fairy Gauge while giving 15% MP.
Sacred Soil and Excogitation no longer have any cost associated with them, but 15 second longer cooldowns.

Shielding Rework
Adloquium only shields for 700 potency. Succor only shields for 350 potency. No HP is restored. MP Costs reduced. Adlo no longer gains a bonus when crit.
Emergency Tactics available when Succor is learned. Reduced cooldown to 5 seconds.
Galvanize overwrites Nocturnal Field in every instance.

Fairy Rework
Reintroduce cast time to Embrace, and any ability interrupts the cast. (Basically revert to Stormblood)
Remove Pet Scaling
New Skill: Fey Covenant. Fairy will heal person with Fey Covenant exclusively until at 90% HP or higher. Can be used on non-party members.
Return difference between Eos and Selene. Eos has Whispering Dawn and Fey Illumination (10% increase in all healing). Selene has Fey Gift (400 potency shield on party) and Fey Illusion (AoE buff reducing damage taken by 10%)

Demolition Tactics
120 s cooldown which changes Broil to Meltdown, Bio/Biolysis to Sepsis and Art of War to Ruination
In single-target situations, worth a bonus of 600 potency at level 60, 850 potency at 70 and 1050 at 80.

Other Minor Edits
Return Miasma as an Instant-Cast DoT with potency equivalent to Broil. Gives the Scholar more free weaving space.
Recitation changes Adloquium and Succor to instant-cast abilities with no MP cost and they do not trigger the global cooldown.
Seraph has two skills with 1 charge each. Consolation which heals 500 potency and Ordination which shields for 500 potency.
Sacred Soil no longer heals, but gives a healing received bonus from all sources.

A more in-depth discussion of why I decided on these changes can be found in the link.

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!

[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.

[Mortex]

Simply solution give the dots back and make the fairy the old stormblood fairy again

[Absurdity]

Simply solution give the dots back and make the fairy the old stormblood fairy again

While this would already improve matters a lot, since we're talking about reworks I think Adlo needs some love as well. Outside of prog really early into the tier it barely has any uses, simply because the opportunity cost is often higher than the value you get out of it. In dungeons it's even more useless, you maybe do an adlo pre-pull on the tank and maybe a downtime adlo if there is nothing else to do mid fight.
The same can be said for Succor, feels just as weak for the GCD you have to spend but atleast it has the added benefit of giving you a predictable amount of party-wide shielding.

[Anhra]

I think healers deserve to have at least more than double their current amount of dps skills (10-12 in number). While Squeenix and the casuals of FFXIX enjoy preaching the gospel of the pure healer, as long as this game remains as easy and as predictable as it is, there is no need for one ( pure healers should also f*** off from PvP).

As for the matter of Scholar, in my opinion, the best way to the Job interesting would be to build MORE on the pet factor, with both of them gaining access to Spirit Magic from FF: tactics ( Selene gets Dps skills and Eos gets utility and healing spells) which could be tied to the fey gauge. The Scholar himself should have on the other hand, have a proper core ability build in which i name just analysis here (placeholder name), which allows the Scholar to cast his Spells from the Fairies Position (Line of sight doesn't need to be maintained) which would last for arround 30 seconds or so (5 Min Cooldown) while having additionally spells that influence the offensive spirit magic spells from the Fairy and DoTs/debuffs for the Scholar himself.

[Mortex]

While this would already improve matters a lot, since we're talking about reworks I think Adlo needs some love as well. Outside of prog really early into the tier it barely has any uses, simply because the opportunity cost is often higher than the value you get out of it. In dungeons it's even more useless, you maybe do an adlo pre-pull on the tank and maybe a downtime adlo if there is nothing else to do mid fight.
The same can be said for Succor, feels just as weak for the GCD you have to spend but atleast it has the added benefit of giving you a predictable amount of party-wide shielding.

Yeah in that regard you are right but it’s pretty sad how like 2 small changes would make the job fun again

[Pandatwin]

We mostly agree EaMett, and I believe if you read more closely you'll find the rework actually does fit what you're saying.

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.

My non-DPS tool to prevent overcapping has 0 DPS cost whatsoever, and without Aetherflow to return 10% MP every minute and Energy Drain to give you 5% MP, an MP regeneration tool needed to be present. This was my solution, but there might be better ways to implement this.

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?"

I believe my Fairy Gauge maintains this gameplay. Where can I spend my gauge without overhealing that will leave me with enough for when I need it? Do I have time to let the fairy channel skills heal them to full, or do I need the HP now? Planning when and where to use which healing move and best maneuver the gauge would feel like a more rewarding system rather than "How am I going to use these 3 stacks in the next minute?"

I think Adlo needs some love as well. Outside of prog really early into the tier it barely has any uses, simply because the opportunity cost is often higher than the value you get out of it.

The problem with shielding is general is that it's too expensive for too little and almost impossible to use 100% effectively. Removing the healing aspect and making Adlo and Succor only shield makes it so much easier to use them effectively. Take a look at Recitation, I think it would give shielding a lot of much-needed love.

make the fairy the old stormblood fairy again

Basically a given haha.

[EaMett]

I believe my Fairy Gauge maintains this gameplay. Where can I spend my gauge without overhealing that will leave me with enough for when I need it? Do I have time to let the fairy channel skills heal them to full, or do I need the HP now? Planning when and where to use which healing move and best maneuver the gauge would feel like a more rewarding system rather than "How am I going to use these 3 stacks in the next minute?"

Then it's on me and I promise to take a closer look when I have time.

For the gauge, what you're describing is just resource management and not resource tradeoff. It might seem pedantic of me to make the distinction but there's an immediate and obvious risk/reward mechanic involved in the latter. It's also easily quantifiable compared to a gauge. And again, this is really not any different from just having another mana bar or something. Can't exactly say I find that engaging.
The gauge also already feels like a tacked-on afterthought. I personally think they should go the other way. The next expansion would be a great time to limited gauge generation to ED and find a fine balance where we need to decide to build fairy gauge for lesser heals or use stacks for heavier heals.

[Absurdity]

The problem with shielding is general is that it's too expensive for too little and almost impossible to use 100% effectively. Removing the healing aspect and making Adlo and Succor only shield makes it so much easier to use them effectively. Take a look at Recitation, I think it would give shielding a lot of much-needed love.

Even with Recitation you're looking at the choice of 1. using it for a big single-target shield which still requires you to actually cast it or 2. using it on a free Excogitation or Indomitability which frees up 1 extra Aetherflow stack and doesn't cost you a GCD...if you ask me there isn't even really a choice.

And I would argue that there was an interesting aspect to Adlo before, being able to spread your big single-target shield to the whole group. You would essentially be gambling with your GCDs on whether or not Adlo crit so that you could completely negate the next or even several next raid-wide aoes and therefore save healing resources and potentially GCDs in the future. Obviously this is not an option as long as Recitation guarantees a crit on Adlo.

[Brandedblade]

I am actually quite fond of this revamp, as much as I love Aetherflow and Energy Drain it is unfortunately a rather degenerate design. I really appreciate the depth you went into regarding this and how you revamped the dps to allow for lossless healing without it directly competing with your ability to heal. After seeing the fallout of the discussions of the 5.4 revamp I'm in full support of systems that remove Aetherflow and put a higher emphasis on the Fae Guage.