Can Ruin II have a different name for Scholar?

[MellowMink]

First, having looked even more closely at the newest Scholar tooltips now, there are now five versions of Ruin, three versions of Bio, and finally more than one version of Art of War... but still only one version of Ruin II. I really don't understand Square Enix's mentality with expressing regret toward tying Summoner and Scholar together with the same base class while they keep insisting on reusing this particular spell despite its description constantly getting changed.

Can someone from the development team please explain why Ruin II doesn't get any upgrades despite other jobs being treated differently? I truly don't get it.

Second, looking at Summoner's updated tooltips as well, it looks like Ruin II is now doing something different for that separate job too: It'll no longer be an instant-cast spell, and it won't automatically be replaced with Ruin IV in certain cases either.

That's another argument against Ruin II not getting any future name and animation upgrades for Scholar now, since it now has even less in common with the base class than before. If Square Enix didn't want to replace Ruin II for Scholar with newer spells over time because they thought that might somehow confuse newer players who wanted the ability to be more consistent with its Arcanist counterpart, well... there's even less of an initial correlation now.

[MellowMink]

I’m kind of disappointed that it’s months after Endwalker’s launch and this still isn’t a change that’s being considered; it just seems logical and simple to me if the goal is to gradually separate Scholar’s identity further away from Summoner, especially since the Ruin II spells don’t even mechanically do the same thing anymore.

[RinaShinomiya]

I’m kind of disappointed that it’s months after Endwalker’s launch and this still isn’t a change that’s being considered; it just seems logical and simple to me if the goal is to gradually separate Scholar’s identity further away from Summoner, especially since the Ruin II spells don’t even mechanically do the same thing anymore.

I remember in 5.0 when ED came back someone made a comment that they should probably rename & re-animate Energy Drain in 6.0 because its just complete nonsense to have a new player learn ED at level 10, lose the skill at level 30 when unlocking Scholar, and then get a completely different skill called Energy Drain at level 45 that works as a AF spender rather than AF builder. They couldn't be even bothered to do that so ofc they'll not consider updating Ruin II.

[MellowMink]

I remember in 5.0 when ED came back someone made a comment that they should probably rename & re-animate Energy Drain in 6.0 because its just complete nonsense to have a new player learn ED at level 10, lose the skill at level 30 when unlocking Scholar, and then get a completely different skill called Energy Drain at level 45 that works as a AF spender rather than AF builder. They couldn't be even bothered to do that so ofc they'll not consider updating Ruin II.

I agree that they should give that a new name too since it does a totally different thing; Square Enix needs to better separate Scholar from Summoner in general, which is something that I thought they expressed interest doing in the past, but Energy Drain and Ruin II not being changed into totally new actions kind of contradicts that.

[HyonaCookie]

Ruin II might as well be button bloat at this point. It is near useless as a movement tool and does nothing interesting. While having new animations and names for ED and Ruin II would be welcome, I think they need to be removed from the mold of resembling ACN actions and be given their own identity.

Slightly off topic but with SCH still sharing some action names with ACN/SMN and their PvP limit breaks being very similar to each other makes me wonder if they do still plan on separating scholar and summoner. I still hope they move SCH away from SMN rather than closer to it.

[Raiya]

Ruin 2 should have been taken out of SCH's kit and replaced with something like Spirit Dart. If anything Id argue that Broil should replace Ruin at lvl30 as well with Broil 2 being lowered to the mid 50s.

[Deceptus]

Ruin 2 should have been taken out of SCH's kit and replaced with something like Spirit Dart. If anything Id argue that Broil should replace Ruin at lvl30 as well with Broil 2 being lowered to the mid 50s.

Ruin 2 is a measly 10 potency loss vs Ruin 1 from lvl 38 to 54 while giving you instant cast mobility. Yes. Broil definitely needs to come sooner.

[MellowMink]

Ruin 2 should have been taken out of SCH's kit and replaced with something like Spirit Dart. If anything Id argue that Broil should replace Ruin at lvl30 as well with Broil 2 being lowered to the mid 50s.

I like this idea, although I’d go even further and not have a Ruin spell for Scholar to begin with, since I’m still hoping that Scholar is eventually completely delinked from Arcanist altogether.

[Shurrikhan]

I’m still hoping that Scholar is eventually completely delinked from Arcanist altogether.

Experience sharing aside, I'm hoping for the opposite, as the ACN thematic roots are what gave SCH most of its uniqueness relative to other healers. DoTs, effect manipulations, building off of metamagics. That was ACN at work, just via a way of capitalizing upon those roots that mirrored, opposite, the means SMN took.

I'd rather see a revised Bane, a more interesting Energy Drain (rather than just a barrel-scraping means of trading out excess healing potential for at least something), and other things centered around Aetherflow than just more Seraph bs. By all means, let's actually do something with Stratagems, too, but the ACN base to SCH was a good one.