What they should have done with fairies:

[Iedarus]

-Remove Aetherpact and Fey Blessing because they're both kind of memes (Outside of Aetherpact in trash pulls)
-Eos's two abilities are Whispering Dawn and Fey Illumination (Illumination defends against all damage types and boosts all healing abilities)
-Selene gets two new abilities called Whispering Dusk and Fey Consecration
-Whispering Dusk is a targeted AoE (Just like Gravity) which inflicts all enemies in the area with Whispering Dusk that does damage over time. If the initial target is already afflicted with Bio/Bio II/Biolysis, spread that DoT to the surrounding targets, as well. Basically Bane and Miasma in one.
-Fey Consecration is Shadow Flare (Minus the slow)
-Essentially Selene possesses the three missing Scholar abilities which made it fun, but in a much more streamlined fashion
-None of the fairy abilities deplete Fae Gauge
-Embrace is targetable by having the ability in the ability hotbar and pressing (toggling) it while targeting the desired person

-Fey Gauge has a new mechanic where filling it up to 100 unlocks the ability Summon Seraph
-Summon Seraph functions as an ability where she is summoned briefly and casts a spell that functions as a beefed up Consolation and an AoE DoT called Condemnation (To prevent ability lockout). This would essentially be Assize/Afflatus Misery but with a DoT and more impact.
-Seraphic Veil is called Consolation for name synergy

I'd also love if they remodeled Seraph to make her look bigger and grander (Bahamut size) to really look like an ultimate summon, but that's just me.

Edit: Changed Whispering Dusk idea, Swapped Illumination and Blessing, and cleaned up the Seraph portion

[inhaledcorn]

Uh.... Illumination is actually kinda good? Even if the extra healing isn't, the extra defense is nice.

It's Blessing that's the meme, being a weaker Indom on a longer cooldown that (previously) essentially costed the same. I don't know why you'd delete Indom just to put it on the fairy, making it weaker by default because of pet tax.

If the Fairy Gauge was like Battery and using it on Seraph just made Seraph last longer, then, y'know, I'd be fine with it. Whispering Dusk is... not great. Sure, it has uses in trash packs, but that's it. Besides, the tank should already be using Arm's Length at some point for that extra slow, so Whispering Dusk probably won't be that effective anyway.

[Iedarus]

Uh.... Illumination is actually kinda good? Even if the extra healing isn't, the extra defense is nice.

It's Blessing that's the meme, being a weaker Indom on a longer cooldown that (previously) essentially costed the same. I don't know why you'd delete Indom just to put it on the fairy, making it weaker by default because of pet tax.

If the Fairy Gauge was like Battery and using it on Seraph just made Seraph last longer, then, y'know, I'd be fine with it. Whispering Dusk is... not great. Sure, it has uses in trash packs, but that's it. Besides, the tank should already be using Arm's Length at some point for that extra slow, so Whispering Dusk probably won't be that effective anyway.

*Sigh* I guess there really isn't much hope for Scholar then if it has to go through this many obstacles to make it feel compelling and balanced.

[Gemina]

*Sigh* I guess there really isn't much hope for Scholar then if it has to go through this many obstacles to make it feel compelling and balanced.

At least you're thinking a bit outside the box and not just asking for 3.x SCH back. I actually like your suggestion about needing to fill the Fey Gauge in order to summon Seraph. That was actually how I thought it was going to work when I saw the ability trailer for ShB. But nahhh, She's just a CD. And that is one of the biggest problem with SCH, so many interesting things they can do mechanically with the job, and they just give you a button that does it while the Fey Gauge doesn't do anything that the SCH can actually use in a wide variety of content.

This dev team says they are not sure what SCH needs, and it should be clear as day. It needs a complete overhaul. What they need to realize is that even though functionally the job is just fine, they are dismissing the enjoyable factor. For a lot of players, it just isn't fun to play.

[Iedarus]

At least you're thinking a bit outside the box and not just asking for 3.x SCH back. I actually like your suggestion about needing to fill the Fey Gauge in order to summon Seraph. That was actually how I thought it was going to work when I saw the ability trailer for ShB. But nahhh, She's just a CD. And that is one of the biggest problem with SCH, so many interesting things they can do mechanically with the job, and they just give you a button that does it while the Fey Gauge doesn't do anything that the SCH can actually use in a wide variety of content.

This dev team says they are not sure what SCH needs, and it should be clear as day. It needs a complete overhaul. What they need to realize is that even though functionally the job is just fine, they are dismissing the enjoyable factor. For a lot of players, it just isn't fun to play.

I did this with the devs' desire in mind to keep healers simple. I didn't account for Arm's length and thought that Indom was the issue based on discussions in previous patches, Lol. Regardless, if Selene could have some sort of notable debuff that worked on both trash packs and bosses, as well as have Fey Illumination work with all healing abilities, it would really help bring back Scholar's identity in a way that keeps it accessible.

[MellowMink]

I would like to see the fairies do different things again.

[GrimGale]

I wouldn't mind merging the Tactical Approach with the Faerie.

I liked FFXI's Scholar's sytem: Where you had a Black Grimmoire and a White Grimmoire. Two stances that would increase debuffs and elemental offensive magic or buffs and healing magic.

We had two fairies that could have become "living" embodiements of the two grimmoire system, Grimmoire of Dusk for Selene, and Grimmoire of Dawn for Eos.

Switching from one to the other, juggling Debuffing and Healing could have made for a very fun interactive system.
It would have probably made SCH very powerful too, versatility being a very valuable asset.

[WaxSw]

The idea is interesting however there is the problem that if Selene is the offensive one Eos will fade out of existence, we would be in the same scenario of Sb where one fairy was generally better than the other but even more ciritcal as now more dps is tied to that, imo this is what they should do

-For Aetherpact: For idk 10 fairy gauge, select a party member and the sch instantly gains 10 stacks of "insert name of the buff", effect ends upon reuse, each embrace would consume 1 of those stacks, said buff would do the following:
1st: The fairy will only heal that selected party member
2nd: Fairy spells gain 50% potency (would be weaker than today's but would be compensated with being able to cast fairy skills during its duration + lesser cost), since embrace/seraphic veil would be the only spells it only affect those
3rd: If the effect end and remaining stacks are left the recast time is reduced by 10% of the max recast time (12s if the cd is 120 for example) for each cast (so basically Aetherpact's version of quickened aetherflow)
That way you would have a fairy skill that doesnt lock you out of anything, can be used under seraph and is completely impossible to ghost, if you ghost it you'd end its effect with 10 stacks which would make it ready to be used again.

Imo the idea of Selene being the mitigation/defensive fairy and Eos being the regen/heal up fairy would fit much more, just give the dps actions to sch

[Sorzai]

I wouldn't mind merging the Tactical Approach with the Faerie.

I liked FFXI's Scholar's sytem: Where you had a Black Grimmoire and a White Grimmoire. Two stances that would increase debuffs and elemental offensive magic or buffs and healing magic.

We had two fairies that could have become "living" embodiements of the two grimmoire system, Grimmoire of Dusk for Selene, and Grimmoire of Dawn for Eos.

Switching from one to the other, juggling Debuffing and Healing could have made for a very fun interactive system.
It would have probably made SCH very powerful too, versatility being a very valuable asset.

I like the concept, especially because in lore the faeries are playful like we saw in shb, though I don't think they're the same types of faeries.

I always enjoyed having to stance dance, like back when WHM had cleric stance, with monk now having fist of fire/wind/earth. If they were able to do something like you mentioned that would be pretty cool.

Though i would prefer if they remove the faerie as a pet altogether, I find it rather ridiculous having a pet cast the spells instead of the scholar. I mean I'm a freaking scholar, they read books for a living. Scholars should be able to learn how to cast these spells themselves.
Let me be able to transform into a big ass faerie, like the faerie queen lol

[GrimGale]

I like the concept, especially because in lore the faeries are playful like we saw in shb, though I don't think they're the same types of faeries.

I always enjoyed having to stance dance, like back when WHM had cleric stance, with monk now having fist of fire/wind/earth. If they were able to do something like you mentioned that would be pretty cool.

Though i would prefer if they remove the faerie as a pet altogether, I find it rather ridiculous having a pet cast the spells instead of the scholar. I mean I'm a freaking scholar, they read books for a living. Scholars should be able to learn how to cast these spells themselves.
Let me be able to transform into a big ass faerie, like the faerie queen lol

Scholar spell lore is rather interesting. It's almost closer to Necromancy than it is to Nature or Healing magic. The idea is that through complex geometrical patterns and symbols, Arcanists can "program" aether to create facsimiles of life. Our fairy is essentially a homunculus, an artificial life-form made out of the SCH's aether that grows as the SCH grows in power.