Some Ideas for Scholar

[Iedarus]

Disclaimer: As someone who has only played this game post ShB, I may not have the most accurate input when it comes to fixing this job as I am only going off of forum posts and wikis of its old kit.

To start off this list of ideas, I'm going to address the elephant in the room: One button DPS. To remedy this issue, I have a solution that could make SCH DPS more fun without over complicating its kit, as Yoshi-P is concerned about. Damage numbers will of course have to be changed, but for the sake of simplicity, I'm simply going to give a mechanical change.

First, delete Art of Bore War and give back Miasma II, Shadow Flare, and Bane. How a Scholar's damage rotation would work is much like how it used to be: Apply the two DoTs, bane them, then drop Shadow Flare. However Shadow Flare could be just a tad different:

Shadow Flare: Create an area on the ground that causes damage over time. Subsequent enemies also standing in the area along with the initial target of direct damage spells (Broil III, Ruin II, Energy Drain) will take a fraction of the damage depending on the amount of DoTs they (the subsequent targets) have:
75% less damage: No DoTs
50% less damage: One DoT
25% less damage: Both DoTs

Again, I'm not sure if this is already exactly how SCH used to play, but as a job that initially revolved around DoTs, I wanted a system that rewarded proper DoT management.


Second idea: To further help revive Scholar's identity, I was also pondering at the idea of deleting Succor while drastically reducing the cooldown of Deployment Tactics. This would involve strengthening Adlo shields on top of making the spell instant cast and having the barrier last for a shorter duration, all while reeling in all of the job's healing. A much simpler change but I figured this would encourage Scholar to use their GCDs more and truly make them feel like a tactical shield healer.

Third idea, and another elephant in the room: Selene. That one second silence she had I'm sure everyone knew was garbage, but I wondered at the possibility of giving her back cc in the form of an AoE slow that, at the very least, lasted longer than one second. Her second ability, which should definitely help her compete with Eos, would be an AoE damage debuff. She could still use Embrace as to still feel like a support pet. Not sure what her Fey Gauge abilities would be, though.

So those are just my thoughts on how to make Scholar feel more rewarding/fun without "over complicating" it. I'm happy to hear anyone else's thoughts as well.

[Truen]

Fairies in general needs a dramatic buff to healing efficiency. They went from being pretty potent little healers to very weak and inconsequential random heal over time bots. And, the way they just deleted Selene was pretty lazy design too.

[Semirhage]

Embrace is two thousand healing potency per minute. It requires neither MP, nor GCD, nor weave slot to keep it going. Being able to target it again would be a big help, but a dramatic buff to potency? It's got almost double the healing efficiency that Excog does. It's 2.5 Excogs per minute. Embrace isn't weak by any stretch of the imagination. It's just not hilariously, unbelievably overpowered like it was in previous expansions. Just because the individual numbers look small, doesn't mean it's "weak".

[Roeshel]

Fairies in general needs a dramatic buff to healing efficiency. They went from being pretty potent little healers to very weak and inconsequential random heal over time bots. And, the way they just deleted Selene was pretty lazy design too.

I think we need more fairy-related abilities. A buff to healing potencies is just asking for sch to be broken, idk how it was before but right now SCH wins when it comes to oGCD healing per minute in terms of ST and partywide heal.

[Sebazy]

If there's something we've learned over the years with healers, it's that potency behind RNG doesn't go down well.

If SE don't want to go back to allowing us to manually direct embrace, then it should at least give a more significant priority to targets within a small radius.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

I'm going to address the elephant in the room: One button DPS.

This I can agree, 11-12 Broil III into Biolysis refresh gets old pretty quick. Though I'm not sure if your Miasma II, Shadowflare, and Bane also balanced to work against boss encounters? I kinda like Art of War personally. It's one button that does almost everything old SCH's AiE kits do in StB, and giving them superior mobility and flexibility to dish damage while weaving in healing oGCD whenever needed; their iconic trademark. I'm not sure if I want more button to flood my hotbar just for a dungeon situation cases. I do like your Shadowflare's damage scaling based on currently active DoTs, though I don't know how exactly that will work in real practice.

As for boss encounters, I would very much like a DPS neutral DoT (to fit in their poison theme) that you use instead of Broil III when you do need to create additional weave slot because as of now SCH's only way to weave healing oGCD is to weave them under Biolysis neutral refresh, or eat the damage loss by casting Ruin II. This DPS neutral DoT would be an instant cast for shorter duration than Biolysis with same potency per MP cost as Broil III but causing a dps loss if players decide to spam it before the DoT ticks for its full duration. I'd like to see Ruin II increase in both their potency (not as strong as Broil III) AND MP cost as well.

I was also pondering at the idea of deleting Succor while drastically reducing the cooldown of Deployment Tactics. This would involve strengthening Adlo shields on top of making the spell instant cast and having the barrier last for a shorter duration, all while reeling in all of the job's healing. A much simpler change but I figured this would encourage Scholar to use their GCDs more and truly make them feel like a tactical shield healer.

I like the instant cast Adlo (part of the reason I prefer Noct Asp Benefic over Adlo), but I'm pretty sure I don't want to see SCH relying more on their GCD. They're iconic for their powerful healing oGCDs.

No comment on your 3rd idea though. I do want to add that Fey Gauge really need something more interesting in them. Perhaps the AoE damage damage debuff (aka pseudo-Reprisal) can be fey gauge locked? Or perhaps adding more oGCD shields utilizing the fey gauge because as of now it's really funny that being the only 'Barrier Healer' but having to fight over casting Broil III or Adlo/Succor (to shield) doesn't feel good. Ironically, both the other two 'Regen Healers', WHM (Divine Benison) and AST (Celestial Intersection, Collective Unconsciousness, Celestial Opposition) does the shielding more often simply because they can be done without damage loss and doesn't have obnoxiously long cooldown (looking at you seraph 2m cooldown and pet ghosting issue).

[rewd]

Disclaimer: As someone who has only played this game post

First, delete Art of Bore War and give back Miasma II, Shadow Flare, and Bane. How a Scholar's damage rotation would work is much like how it used to be: Apply the two DoTs, bane them, then drop Shadow Flare. However Shadow Flare could be just a tad different:

This would be terrible. Not only Art of War is a great skill, but you would make SCH's entire AoE arsenal revolve about damage over time when WHM exists with Holy, Assize and Afflatus Misery. Competent groups already kill mobs quickly, SCH's damage output would pale in comparison especially when you can't get the most out of your DoTs.

We can have AoW AND at least one more DoT and Bane, they don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Second idea: To further help revive Scholar's identity, I was also pondering at the idea of deleting Succor while drastically reducing the cooldown of Deployment Tactics. This would involve strengthening Adlo shields on top of making the spell instant cast and having the barrier last for a shorter duration, all while reeling in all of the job's healing. A much simpler change but I figured this would encourage Scholar to use their GCDs more and truly make them feel like a tactical shield healer.

This would further kill SCH's identity. No healer needs an incentive to use GCD heals with the current battle design, and SCH's strength has always been its wide arsenal of oGCDs heals.

If you want to make SCH feel like a tactical shield healer, you can add one or more oGCDs shields or rework some existing skills to provide shields too.

[Grimoire-M]

Shadowflare, while neat, doesn’t really add that much. I get the general purpose behind it though. If Ruin II weren’t so horribly tuned I might actually like it. That said, one of the actually nice things about Art of War is that weaving with it is effectively lossless. I don’t really want to trade that away without removing hard clipping first. Otherwise this is technically a nerf.

Succor doesn’t need to be removed either. It’s Scholar’s only AoE spell and while they don’t need more I’d rather tune it up than nerf it.

[Liam_Harper]

It's 2.5 Excogs per minute. Embrace isn't weak by any stretch of the imagination.

To be fair, heals you have no control over are significantly weaker than heals you can map or plan. A lot of Embrace healing is unnecessary or wasted. That said, SCH healing and fairy heals are generally fine. Fey blessing is similar to Plenary or plain Horoscope and Aetherpact is a reasonable tank heal. The issue is that SCH pays high tax for weaves and has several abilities that require multiple weave slots to utilize, on top of Fairy abilities being tied to the downsides of pet AI and Dissipation, so those small supplemental heals lose a lot of value.

For SCH the fairy is simply a hindrance, when for a pet class your pet should ideally be your strength.

[Iedarus]

Hm, maybe my proposed DPS change is a bit drastic and not as well thought out as I had hoped. Perhaps we should focus on simply getting SCH back to it's ACN roots? They could give back Miasma II and Bane and maybeeee give Fester? It would still reward DoT management while keeping the weaving potental of Art of War since Fester is an oGCD. It would also help to fix Dissipation as to actually synergize with oGCDs so Scholar has a second mean of regaining Aetherflow without feeling naked while the fairy is away. This way Scholar can feel tactical by having a more meaningful choice of using those stacks offensively or defensively while having two DPS dumps for when Aetherflow is about to come off cooldown.

Same realization goes for Succor. A much easier solution would be to make the fairy targetable again so the Scholar can Adlo her prepull then weave in Deployment Tactics later. It'd also be nice if Catalyze was hit before Galvanize since Galvanize is the shield that's shared.