Thread: Scholar 6.0 Rework

Originally Posted by dezzmont

No, you don't understand. Aetherflow doesn't intrinsicly need a dump, and the 'dump' isn't actually a dump. It completely changes your relationship with aetherflow because now using Aetherflow for heals is a DPS loss.

This is, low key, why I am starting to level WHM. The fact you don't need to think about Lilies as anything but a healing resource is a feature, not a flaw.

Imagine if Aetherflow DIDN'T have a dump. You only used it on heals. Suddenly if you had aetherflow but no oGCD heals, the choice between using an aetherflow heal and a non-aetherflow heal is a no brainer, just use the aetherflow heal you dummy: they don't cost MP, they heal more, they have shorter recast timers.

But with a dump, suddenly every heal you use aetherflow on is a loss of an extra 100 potency, so your not just dumping aetherflow you didn't have, the entire class plays differently... Now you only use aetherflow to heal if it is actually required to keep someone alive. It is actually a pretty substantial change to the job to have it or not have it. Having a 'resource dump' is a non-issue, like you don't need a resource dump for say... MP or HP if your capped out from your regens. But ED makes it so you view the entire resource as a different type of resource, its now a DPS resource you can burn for emergency heals, and that reminds people that healers are green DPS in most content in a way that can make people feel weird, even though it is actually interesting and a good way to differentiate good SCH and bad SCH by how much they can ride that line and maximize ED usage.

This is also why they keep removing and adding ED back in: They don't like that it isn't a pure healing resource but its also super interesting and SCHs love it and it makes the job feel distinct, so any time they remove it people get upset. There is a lot more going on than just 'Oh I can spend my aetherflow to hit the button again and get more mana back.'

The problem is, the healing requirement is low and SCH's toolkit is so efficient that you're just sitting on Aetherflow stacks for a long time, so for a lot of content it ends up an unused resource. And it is also used to build up a secondary resource. By not having a dump for a lot of content it means you don't get very much use out of two of your resources. This if anything is also a general healer issue: 70% of the time you have a non-healing focus and very few skills that you have available to make that gap interesting. For the remaining 30% you have a huge plethora of healing abilities, of which you're not getting near full use out of, so stuff ends up feeling redundant.

So the outcome is that you just don't feel like you've got much to do. And thats dull and monotonous.

Energy Drain is an ability that at least somewhat alleviates that and makes use of something you're not using.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

Fun and powerful mechanics, tactics (as a scholar should be about), and putting more control and decision back into the player's hand.

You can't say you're giving SCH more control and then strip them of their secondary form of MP recovery, and also take virtually all their AOE mitigation options of Soil + Deployment Tactics, Fey Illumination. You even nerfed Consolation and turned it into Seraphic Veil 2.0 just to relegate the resources behind a gated seraph phase which ALSO now costs resources to use it's abilities, even the current dissipation penalty isn't so extreme and offers you a slight potency boost to your GCD heals during the fairy downtime.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

REMOVE: Deployment tactics

This reduces the value of Adloquium by quite an amount, a deployed Adloquium is a much more potent shield & slightly cheaper than casting a Succor, plus it having a lengthy cooldown means that it cannot be spammed and can be used in anticipation of a stronger raid-wide damage. The removal of Deployment tactics would also make it undesirable to use Adlo in combination with Recitation since the other options are far more valuable.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

REMOVE: Sacred Soil

For what reason? Soil is one of the best mitigation tools across the healing role. Sure Noct.AST/WHM still have damage migitation baked into their Collective Unconcious & Temperance, but those skills are not available to deal with as many raid-wide hits as Sacred Soil is.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

BUFF: Broil 3: Additionally Broil will Stack a debuff that causes the enemy hit to take an additional 1% damage from all sources for 15 seconds, this debuff can stack a maximum of 4.

I don't think this is a good idea, it's giving me blunt/slashing/piercing resistance flashbacks from Stormblood and they were removed for good reason.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

ADD: Angelic Warden:While this barrier is active, the selected ally will not be able to take damage or die, however they also will not be able to receive any outside healing. Seraph will continue to follow the target, channeling the barrier until instructed to do otherwise, or the Scholar runs out of fairy gauge.

Interesting idea, but way too strong unless the faerie gauge expires much faster than currently.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

Fairy gauge

Tbh, I'd hope that the faerie gauge resouce is removed entirely and that the skills such as Fey Blessing + Aetherpact just have fixed cooldowns & Durations instead of being tied to a gated resource, then they could look into adjusting skill bloating we have with our oGCDs.
The Fey Blessing + Consolation skills could be combined into one keybind, as currently you can't use Fey Blesing during Seraph's summoning state and vice versa for Consolation.

Overall you have proposed to remove or nerf so many protective tactics that scholar currently provides, I would definitely have to pass on this iteration of scholar.

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

The thats one way to see it, but when you look at it objectively, i only removed 3 abilities, but gave back 12, and made 4 (give or take 1) better, , but i believe i did more than just change stuff around, i gave scholars a much bigger distinction in gameplay style and purpose from the other 2 healers, and they not only now have better things to do on thier down time, but i gave them more fairy control, and a more potent and engaging dps rotation -- and any blind spots that were created by taking away thoes 3 spells are covered by the fairies and their abilities.

All you did was make SCH complex for the sake of being complex. Complex doesn't automatically make it good. If it's healing and damage output is comparable to the other healers while being overly complex, people aren't going to play it. Why put in so much effort to just hit a baseline?

Originally Posted by P0W3RK1D

Aside from a few of the fairy mechanics there is not much "complexity", relatively easy to understand and it dosent waste an ENTIRE CORE OF ITS MECHANIC on what feels like nothing *Astrologin, im looking at you here* it just takes a higher skill cieling to optimize masterfully, but when you do youll find you feel a lot more powerful, and your role as a scholar is much more defined.

You:

Make one of SCH's main draws, the free healing from fairies, something that needs MP to maintain.

Made one of the fairies a "dps stance", which means that people generally aren't going to use the healing one or else they'd miss out on the damage. Sure, you could summon the other one as well, but you're taking a large mp hit to do so.

Removed 2 of SCH's best mitigation and healing tools and removed the extra resource spender to prevent the resource waste

Added a melee attack with a positional on a caster

100% uptime Trick Attack

Party GCD loss via fairy teleportation

This isn't interesting. These things just don't work in this game. I almost want to say you want to make XIV's SCH XI's SCH. XI and XIV are two very different games. You can do whatever you want in XI since jobs aren't quite as restricted to certain roles. Here? You can't do that. Jobs have very clearly defined roles in this game, and healers are getting further split into Regen Healers and Mitigation Healers. What you're proposing flies in the face of what this game is. If SCH was a dps, these things could be interesting. However, remember Foe's Requiem? How that needed MP to maintain? I don't know about other people, but I never liked Foe's. It felt clunky to use, and I never knew when was the right moment to use it again in a fight. What you did is basically make a job with a mechanic that people are already bemoaning for being clunky and decided, "Okay, but what if I could make it even more clunky and annoying to interact with?"

That's not good game design. "Complex" doesn't mean "good".