"There wasn't much we could really do with SCH"

[Punslinger]

I'm glad I'm not the only one getting this vibe from the Live Letter. It really does feel like "we'd rather you didn't play Scholar."

Also for those who didn't play WoW at the time, Demonology Warlock was in a great spot design-wise but they deliberately nerfed the absolute hell out of its potencies so that people wouldn't feel any attachment to it, because the very next expansion it got a lot of its kit gutted to make way for Demon Hunter, the new class that got a lot of Demonology's old flavor and came right out of the gate being OP as hell.

If that sounds familiar, it should.

This points to a disturbing trend I've seen in FF14's job design. The fewer expansions a job has been around for, the better a state it's in. New jobs are generally well-designed and have integrated kits that are fun to play, but lessons learned from designing those new jobs are not applied when updating the existing jobs. Older jobs get changes that break their mechanical identity (gun-mage and bow-mage in HW), or which gut the class fantasy (AST card rework in 5.0, sect loss in 6.0, and BRD losing songs), or which leave them in a clunky un-fun state (MCH during SB). SGE got what appears to be a DPS kit with more than two buttons, but nobody on the dev team figured out that maybe other healers should too?

Looking at ShB jobs, my biggest complaints about DNC and GNB are the lack of primal weapons for glamour (seriously, guys, you've had two damn years to add them in). For the SB jobs, SAM is okay, but the addition of Tsubame-gaeshi turned what was a relatively free-flowing rotation into a strict "don't drift by even a millisecond" rotation. RDM is still fun. Then the HW jobs have clearly suffered: MCH is okay now after being clunky for the first four years of its life, DRK continues to be turned into "WAR but emo," and AST is the friggin' Giving Tree with how much class lore and mechanical complexity it's given up. (3.0/4.0 cards = actual decision tree, even if you usually wanted Spread Balance. 5.0 cards = bland +damage buff, collect stickers. 6.0 cards = self-buff only.)

And then you have the ARR jobs. Some are okay, only because they're clearly mained by people on the dev team (*cough* BLM *cough*). Others are an absolute shambles. WHM and SCH most notably, but even NIN was so badly done in 5.0 that Square gave it an emergency rework in 5.1. Some of this is hopefully being fixed in 6.0, but the team's track record does not inspire confidence.

[Aeliott]

I'm probably prodding a wasp nest with a stick here, but it's a free forum...

I don't think every job people are disatisfied with needs to be razed to the ground like SMN and MCH. I know its showing in the trailer sucked, but all the big money shots are just "extra combo finisher" at the end of the day. You're not likely to get a real feel from healers from these trailers without playing them. With the clear cut healer dichotomy of "main healer / shield healer" being (re)introduced...that tells me that SCH, while not getting a wealth of new tools, is having all of its old ones tweaked around that. ARR was glorious synergy between WHM and SCH. Surely the announcement of that should be a positive sign? Of course all existing skills will be reconfigured around that in addition to the stat squish; and it already has countless forms of healing, if they didn't think they could do much with it it's probably in relation to that. I mean what else could it get, single target ogcd shield? That's probably the new skill. Fairy response was instant, no guarantee its fixed since she's idle but it did look a little snappier than usual. That's something people wanted right? If the issue is wanting more dps buttons then, that's a healer issue in general. Was having 1 extra dot really that exciting? I know Bane and Shadow Flare were more interesting than Art of War, for sure, but...eh. I know the trailer was rubbish for them but I'm waiting for the media tour tooltips. You may now call me an apologist who never played SCH in my life. Maybe it will be crap, but...I'm saving my energy for the media tour info.

[Roeshel]

So no. They made their stance firm. They do not want to bring the classes back to heavensward level complexity. What scholar was shown to get may not be what you personally wanted, but other then the vagueness of the adjustments and whether or not sch will provide more rdps then sage means that they are absolutely improving from 5.0.

HS and SB healer gameplay was not complex one bit. The devs think the same way they just don't want to argue with people exaggerating every single thing. Their damage was also extremely irrelevant in raids and it was common to heal with GCD even in speedruns. If healers are popular for getting a free carry into harder content, the previous expansions were the most suitable for that type of player.

[Niadissa]

the thing with sch movement speed buff. If it's needed, sch will be required (which SE is never going to do again) if it's not needed, then it's practically useless, so what was the point of wasting dev time on it (lets be honest here, they slapped a new icon on sprint and changed a line or two of code to make it AOE). I'm a WHM main, but even I can see they did Sch's dirty.

[Rubiss]

HS and SB healer gameplay was not complex one bit. The devs think the same way they just don't want to argue with people exaggerating every single thing. Their damage was also extremely irrelevant in raids and it was common to heal with GCD even in speedruns. If healers are popular for getting a free carry into harder content, the previous expansions were the most suitable for that type of player.

Their damage was literally needed for week one clears in Gordias, I don't know what you're smoking bro. It wasn't only about numbers too, it was about having something to keep you busy during downtime and engage you on another level. We also had way less oGCD heals back then so using our heals was also more meaningful.

[Crushnight]

I see the Sch's movement speed buff the same way I saw Whm's powerful healing kit in Stormblood.

Nice to have but really not needed for anything and most certainly won't be designed around having in the party.

I know this for a certainty because all healers in Shadowbringers had access to Respose(which was cruelly ripped from Whm for the sake of a single role quest at lv80) which made every raid group have access to Sleep, every single one, now please tell me what fight in the entire expansion required Sleep.

If they ain't going to design around something we will have what makes you think they'll design around something only 1 job will have. They ain't so it falls under "nice to have but unnecessary" and that was what they spent most time on Sch and highlighted as a bullet point, I am sorry Sch mains were treated that way.

[Xio_Dio]

Yeah it really illustrated how out of touch the devs are with healer players. Sure SCH is strong, it's also clunky and has conflicting core mechanics. They could have addressed that with a rework to Aether flow and a removal of dissipation, yet they don't/can't/won't.

[Sebazy]

snip

Oh come on now, this is just dross =(

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that HW (What is HS supposed to be btw?) was some hyper brain gameplay, but it was leagues beyond what we have now. It's fairly obvious from some of your posts in the past that you didn't play to a high standard if at all back then, instead I can only assume you're blindly drawing figures from logs and such. So allow me to educate you a little bit:

HS and SB healer gameplay was not complex one bit.

First up, complexity. Even the most consistently simplistic healer that is WHM had to manage both their MP and Enmity. SCH had two distinct GCDs to manage and players with prog aspirations would use all kinds of crazy methods to min max this. Pedals, mouse wheels, macro keypads etc. The list goes on. I've already stated my thoughts on AST's old card system so I've got no need to repeat myself there, but even if you discount the old cards, all 3 healers had a good chunk of extra complexity through getting value out of 3 weak dots vs the current setup with 1 strong dot. Watch my dot uptime in the A12S AST pug I linked. I'm not being lazy and letting dots drop, rather that's what I had to do to ensure the boss didn't go immune and my weak dot turned into a net DPS loss. Lastly, scanning logs will never be able to show just how insane early world prog was for day 1 ASTs in Gordias. Oh and this is before I point out all the gimmicks that Alex had (and SEB to a lesser extent as well), Gobwalkers, vial mixing, throttles, etc etc. You genuinely have no idea what you missed out on.

The devs think the same way they just don't want to argue with people exaggerating every single thing.

Their damage was also extremely irrelevant in raids and it was common to heal with GCD even in speedruns.

This is bait right? You take a pop about people exaggerating things and then do exactly that in the very next line? Pls =(

Also as far as damage goes, it wasn't extreme irrelevant at all. Gordias basically required it. I was chasing world progression in Gordias and I can promise you that even with my crummy low DPS, I still had to pitch in at certain points on fights like A3S or we simply wouldn't beat that phases check. My guess is that you're looking at the logs and seeing a low overall average of healer contribution? This was down to a combination of people still carrying their mentality of healers not needing to DPS over from ARR and much more limited healer resources coupled with the double whammy of more punishing fights and weaker healing kits overall which made early progression on Gordias and Midas pretty crazy compared to anything we see now.

As far as raw numbers go, you're still wrong. In Gordias, healer DPS with two prog tier healers was roughly that of a tank. By the time Creator was done, two prog healers were doing around the same damage combined as a 5th DPS. Far from irrelevant, it was actually pretty significant for pushing phases at the correct time on Cruise Chaser. Skipping the fountains at the end of Alex Prime was also a huge boon.

If healers are popular for getting a free carry into harder content, the previous expansions were the most suitable for that type of player.

Lol =(

I'd love to see you say that to an AST that tried to do world prog on Gordias. WRU Fiery Tail =(

[Deceptus]

the thing with sch movement speed buff. If it's needed, sch will be required (which SE is never going to do again) if it's not needed, then it's practically useless, so what was the point of wasting dev time on it (lets be honest here, they slapped a new icon on sprint and changed a line or two of code to make it AOE). I'm a WHM main, but even I can see they did Sch's dirty.

I said this on another thread.

That movement speed buff? It's literally not needed. Players have a better option in sprint that is free and on a short CD.

But just like other "utility" abilities (feint, addle, shield samba, tactician etc etc), most players never touch them.

[RyuDragnier]

Yeah it really illustrated how out of touch the devs are with healer players. Sure SCH is strong, it's also clunky and has conflicting core mechanics. They could have addressed that with a rework to Aether flow and a removal of dissipation, yet they don't/can't/won't.

A rework of Dissipation and Fey Blessing alone would fix it. Make Dissipation work like the current Fey Union, except AoE. The fairy pulses out an AoE heal every few seconds that hits a large area and uses the Fae Gauge. Make Fey Blessing give 50 Gauge and 3 AF stacks. There, the kit no longer fights with itself.