Making Eos and Selene Different Again

[ty_taurus]

What differences do you want to see between Eos and Selene?

[VentVanitas]

I would like to see it exactly how it was before being butchered in Shadowbringers. Eos for healing cooldowns, Selene for utility cooldowns. Above all else, I just want Embrace to be usable and good again. I liked being rewarded for my faerie management to keep the tank healed by giving myself more time to attack.

[EaMett]

Above all else, I just want Embrace to be usable and good again.

Please please please please please.

[SweetPete]

Why have a healing pet if you as their master still need to heal that same target? Makes no sense. I do hope they give embrace back its amazing power. Right now it’s not even worth it.

[ty_taurus]

I definitely want them to have their own identities again, though I think there are some issues with old Selene. As a Dancer, for example, I'd much prefer you didn't give me Fey Wind. I don't want any Skill Speed because it could hurt my rotation, which is a pretty big issue with Skill Speed in general for almost every job (BLM being a notable exclusion to the rule). I do think there are things about the old Selene that would need to be changed.

Something I had in mind was making it so that you actually want to swap between Selene and Eos mid-battle frequently. First, make Summon Eos and Summon Selene Abilities rather than spells, instant cast, and with a 15 second recast, then, their main tools could be like this:

Eos
- Embrace: 250 Potency, 2.5 seconds cast time, and make it cost 5 Faerie Gauge
- Fey Blessing: 400 Potency, instant cast, and make it cost 20 Faerie Gauge
- Fey Illumination: No major change

Selene
- Fey Spark: 4 second Stun, 2.5 seconds cast time, and it adds 5 to the Faerie Gauge
- Fey Tricks: Bane effect when you target enemies and Fey Caress effect when you target allies, and it costs 20 Faerie Gauge
- Dusk Glow: Restores your MP

The idea here would be if SCH could get some new DPS tools that are high DPS but also high MP costs, and Selene's support is about batterying your MP to allow for those powerful DPS spells. Meanwhile, she can't actually heal, but can build your Faerie Gauge for you for when you need to swap to Eos for healing, and also being good for starting big pulls.

I'd also like to change Dissipation into something that swaps Selene and Eos and grants you 50 Faerie Gauge for when you need Eos' healing.

Also, can we return the ability to manually cast Embrace? I don't really understand why we got rid of it when auto casting was always an option to begin with. Let the people who want to micromanage her do that. Just make the auto casting command apply to only Embrace so that it works the way it does now.

[Saefinn]

Eos:
- Keep as is except allow us to cast "Embrace" again. I used to use this strategically.

Selene:
- I'd like to see Fey Wind back. But if they aren't keen on its haste effect maybe make it a damage boost instead. I expect when latency is involved too much skill speed could be a problem for balance.
- I agree we could use Selene for some kind of return of Bane. This would add it without adding new buttons.
- Maybe something with the same effect as Miasma II, I'd say "Shadowflare" but Shadowflare required a ground target placement, Miasma II would be a DoT exuding from where your faerie is placed. (Maybe this could worked in as a Selene specific aetherpact ability if giving Selene 3 skills is too much with the current ability set)
- Of course, the ability to cast Embrace manually

I'd also see Selene change how Fey Blessing works too. Maybe this could be a shield instead of a heal.

I'd definitely want a Selene that's used for utility. This might actually help with SCH's issue of it healing too well and help restore some of SCH's balance with its own abilities.

Eos's use I'd see being for newer and less confident players and also for progression runs.

For experienced players and for better optimised runs I see Selene being more useful. This is how I used to see the Eos/Selene balance before. Because you have the tools to be efficient without Eos and could put some more emphasis on using shields (especially if Selene gets one via Fey Blessing) because you've self nerfed your healing efficiency.

This keeps it beginner friendly too and is a way of raising the skill ceiling without raising the skill floor and doesn't add extra buttons.

My argument for Embrace is that it was a part of the toolkit I used to use when SCH's pure heals were weaker. I would weave its usage during casts AND use it in combination with Physick. I get that micromanaging was fiddly, but it was an aspect I liked that when done well could boost your efficiency and most importantly: optional. You still had an AI to handle it if you preferred.

I realise these suggestions will increase SCH's rDPS. But that's fine, because I think if anything, that gives room for WHM and AST to get more love they need too.


With regards to a stun, I think we'd run into the same problem we had with Silence on Selene is that Stuns generally need to be quick as what you're trying to stun relies on your reaction time and even without a delay it can still fall prey to the pet action stack. This is why Silent Dusk got a niche use, it was harder to ensure that it goes off in time.
And with MP, I feel SCH is already MP efficient enough, with Aetherflow, Energy Drain and Lucid Dreaming all being ways to restore MP, whilst conceptually I think a good idea, I don't think it's needed. The only healer that would found themselves thinking about MP management in ShB was AST and they patched that.

[ty_taurus]

Regarding Eos:

One thing about Embrace and returning it to a cast time instead of being instant cast is that it will help with ghosting issues. These are an issue now because when you try to input commands within her GCD window after she's Embraced an ally, she can't cast. By restoring Embrace to a cast time, we can mitigate if not eliminate that issue. Additionally, if we give it a small Faerie Gauge cost, we can not only make the Faerie Gauge more impactful, but also restore a lot of power to Embrace as a higher source of healing outside of your kit. Absolutely, though, we do need to restore the option to allow for manual Embrace usage. There's no reason to take that option away when it was never required to begin with.

Regarding Selene:

Fey Spark Idea: The difference between Stun and Silence is Stun isn't exclusively used as an interrupt and can be useful for pulled enemies to enable you more time to DPS. When you're not fighting stunnable enemies, it instead acts solely as a Faerie Gauge battery, preparing you to use Eos when needed. It also creates a more pressing need to switch between the two rather than just sit on one or the other if one can heal and the other can't.
Dusk Glow Idea: So the reason why I think adding a self MP restore to Selene would be a good replacement for Fey Wind is because we can redirect that DPS support identity into something that works for the Scholar's benefit instead. I imagine with this concept that the Scholar could have 2 additional spells:

Meltdown
Unaspected Damage with a potency of 400
- MP Cost 1000

Drown
Unaspected damage over time with a potency of 200
- Duration 15 seconds
- MP Cost 1000

The numbers here are placeholder, but get the point across. You can up your DPS by using these in place of Broil, but doing so will chew through your MP quickly. This is where Selene comes in: giving you more opportunities to make decisions with your resources. This would give the Scholar more DPS engagement as they need to decide when Meltdown and Drown are too costly to use.

Something I want to note though regarding Fey Wind is that the more DPS utility we give to Scholar, the less selfish DPS Scholar can reasonably be allowed to have. Scholar is the only healer to originate from a DPS, and one of its biggest charms from 2.0 and 3.0 were that it was a high-offense healer to contrast against White Mage's more passive nature, and that's something I strongly want to see restored to Scholar. In order to accomplish that, I don't think we can afford to give any more utility to Scholar, and I even question whether or not giving it Chain Stratagem was more harmful than good in that regard.

[Dogempire]

They could always make it so that the pet skills you have to assign to your hotbar change depending on whether you have Eos or Selene out, with Eos having the same AoE regen and incoming healing boost, and Selene having the old skill speed buff but not really sure about the second skill.

Since Selene is utility focused maybe she can extend the duration of chain stratagem, or offer something similar to a chargeable swiftcast where the next spell is instant to make SCH able to mass rez easier like RDM can. They could also make the pet casts instant like summoner and have separate charges so that pet switching according to what's happening in the fight will be something high end scholars will be doing on the regular.

[Ultaniku]

I did always like the option of using the fairies for different encounters etc and them having some variety of them. The fact that now it’s just a preference of which I like to look at more kind of upset me. I mean I’m used to it now but I wouldn’t be mad if they made them diverse again.

[MmcFly]

I would love to have an identity separation for both Eos and Selene. I doubt they would ever make the fairies SUPER different like it was pre ShB again. So these suggestions has no MAJOR skill changes and reworks, rather instead having more subtle changes but also a level of new dynamic for SCH given the situation. And some of these skill suggestions are in preparation of endwalker and SCH being part of the shield healer category. The big change overall is taking out Regen from whisper. Regen on Sacred Soil would still be there though. Embrace has no changes. Cooldowns not included, that would be up to balancing.

Fairy Skill Changes

Summon fairy is now an OGCD
This is a big one. And it would be relevant to some changes i made to certain skills.

Whisper:
Selene/Eos: Group Heal.
Seraph: Group Heal with increased potency
Would be what blessing is now, and seraph would just increase the potency

Blessing:
Selene/Eos: Group Shield (two stacks).
Seraph: Group Shield with increased potency
This would just add on to the shield niche SCH would be put into for Endwalker and would help
SCH have more shield options other than Succor

Illuminate:
Salene: Increase dmg potency to party.
Eos: Increase healing potency to party.
Seraph: Increased dmg and healing potency to party.
This is where one of the difference would be for each fairy. Eos would be used for "progression" while Selene would be used for "speed runs/clearing".

Dissipation:
Selene: increased healing potency to self.
Eos: increased damage potency to self
The secondary skill that differentiates Eos and Selene. However, while whatever chosen fairy is used for illuminate for group buffs, the opposite effect occurs to self buffs when using dissipation. This adds a level of dynamic especially when weaving in fairy summon which mentioned earlier would be an OGCD. If you want both group dmg buff and self dmg buffs, you will need to weave in a summon between the two. This would also give SCH a "DPS burst phase" that isnt just using swiftcast for Broils like how it is now LOL

Aetherpact: Fairy tethers to selected target. The tethered player receives a reactive Heal that heals target after taking damage.
Skill only usable when gauge reaches 100. Uses 60 fairy gauge per reactive heal. 10 Second CD after first reactive heal before a second reactive heal can occur. SCH must increase gauge to 60 (using two aether skills) within the 10 second CD for the second reactive heal. If not the tether breaks ending Aetherpact.
Didnt want to make this super overpowered. Puts aetherflow usage on the SCH and whatever situation they are in. This would really push some unique Aetherflow combos.

Consolation: When Seraph reverts back to Eos/Selene, the SCH will receive one stack of blessing.
Adds resource. This would just further define SCH as a shield healer.