Top Tier Scholar Fix for Endwalker

[PaulH]

So if we execute sacred soil and the expedient whilst still standing. Isn’t stacking 10% damage reduction and only receiving upto 90% of incoming damage inflicted useful?

I am assuming these are stackable.

[ty_taurus]

I'm also in the camp of viewing the sprint effect as a good one; however, there are several factors at play here that just make Expedient feel like a slap in the face.

1. Sprint and Damage Reduction clash with one another. The point of sprint is to create more room for error. Mechanics shouldn't enforce sprint, but there can be tighter dodge windows on certain mechanics that sprint can make easier especially during prog--not to mention it can help players catch themselves if they're in the wrong place during prog as well. It essentially is invalidating the point of damage reduction in many cases. It basically narrows Expedient's full value down to something where there's unavoidable damage at the same time which doesn't really happen.

Know what would pair really well with Expedient? A raid-wide Lightspeed effect--reduce the cast times for casters (but not the recast time). That concept synergizes with casters giving them increased mobility as well since making their casts instant or 1 second helps them dodge mechanics more easily, especially since sprint has the secondary effect of helping melee return to attack range more quickly.

2. It doesn't feel like a great capstone. I feel like this is an issue with healers as a whole in that SE doesn't really understand what makes a healer ability "good" or not and thus has multiple instances of capstones that just don't feel impactful or are outshined by abilities acquired earlier. Assize is the star of WHM's 50-60 span, not Tetragrammaton. Penary Indulgence was a joke when it was first released and even now is a relatively tepid OGCD. Temperance is literally a buffed Divine Seal 40 levels later than it was obtained prior to Shadowbringers. Need I even bring up Dissipation and Fey Union? At least Summon Seraph doesn't negate all of SCH's faerie interactions and feels like it's offering a genuine value. They only ever seem to get AST right. At least during those expansions, Celestial Opposition and Sleeve Draw were interesting and useful, core abilities, and Neutral Sect is just powerful.

To get back on topic, Expedient has niche value, but that's not what we really want in a capstone.

3. SCH's playstyle was torn apart when transitioning into Shadowbringers and got nothing of value to compensate. Regardless of their stance on healers, I cannot fathom how anyone would look at how much they wanted to gut from SCH and thought that Recitation, Fey Blessing, and Summon Seraph would make up for that. Not to mention the pet system was botched to add more salt to the wound. Moving forward, none of that shredded identity issue was addressed, and "have a team sprint" really isn't the answer that any SCH player wanted to see regardless of how affected they were from the Shadowbringers changes, particularly when 2 of the other actions its getting for the expansion are just mild potency boosts for Broil and Art of War.

I just don't think there's anyone genuinely thinking about what SCH players would want to see or feel good about receiving. If there was, we wouldn't see SCH getting nothing but a brief max HP increase buff and a poorly-thought-out team-wide sprint.

[Nizzi]

I completely agree that Expedient is an underwhelming capstone skill, I think it begs the question: barring a Scholar rework, what would've been a satisfying capstone skill for Scholar in Endwalker? I think at this point there's very little Scholar could receive that people would be happy with, outside of the return of old removed abilities. Granted, this is definitely due to Square Enix's decisions with how they're designing Scholar and healers in general and not the playerbase's perception of the job, but I really do struggle to think of anything they could've presented that I personally would've been very pleased to see. Even if it was a new DPS ability, it wouldn't change the way Scholar plays from level 30-89.

[PaulH]

I'm also in the camp of viewing the sprint effect as a good one; however, there are several factors at play here that just make Expedient feel like a slap in the face.

To get back on topic, Expedient has niche value, but that's not what we really want in a capstone.

3. SCH's playstyle was torn apart when transitioning into Shadowbringers and got nothing of value to compensate. Regardless of their stance on healers, I cannot fathom how anyone would look at how much they wanted to gut from SCH and thought that Recitation, Fey Blessing, and Summon Seraph would make up for that. Not to mention the pet system was botched to add more salt to the wound. Moving forward, none of that shredded identity issue was addressed, and "have a team sprint" really isn't the answer that any SCH player wanted to see regardless of how affected they were from the Shadowbringers changes, particularly when 2 of the other actions its getting for the expansion are just mild potency boosts for Broil and Art of War.

I just don't think there's anyone genuinely thinking about what SCH players would want to see or feel good about receiving. If there was, we wouldn't see SCH getting nothing but a brief max HP increase buff and a poorly-thought-out team-wide sprint.

Always like your posts Ty_Taurus and have agreed with many over the years. I wish people like yourself had a role on the ffxiv job design team for healers.

[FoxCh40s]

I completely agree that Expedient is an underwhelming capstone skill, I think it begs the question: barring a Scholar rework, what would've been a satisfying capstone skill for Scholar in Endwalker? I think at this point there's very little Scholar could receive that people would be happy with, outside of the return of old removed abilities. Granted, this is definitely due to Square Enix's decisions with how they're designing Scholar and healers in general and not the playerbase's perception of the job, but I really do struggle to think of anything they could've presented that I personally would've been very pleased to see. Even if it was a new DPS ability, it wouldn't change the way Scholar plays from level 30-89.

Fusion with Fairy, making all Healing and DPS Skills upgrade.

[ty_taurus]

Such as? As far as I remember, Sprint was up for most of the mechanics where you needed it. It's basically only going to see use where someone reacts late and would have been fractionally too slow to reach a safe spot, which is situational. The damage reduction on the other hand is always useful, so I'd expect that to be the sole use for Expedient.

I feel the sprint is really overrated. Content is designed to be perfectly doable without it. People just want to believe there's a high IQ usage to it that they see and others don't.

If you look at a sprint buff in the light of “well what content will demand it?” Then you’re not going to get anywhere.

What I believe the goal is for Expedient is to create a buffer of room for error, which will make it potentially quite valuable during prog more than anything else. It helps your party correct themselves more effectively and potentially avoid AoEs they might’ve otherwise been hit by. A great example in my mind would be right and left facing AoEs or “run behind the boss” mechanics. I can think of several examples in 24-mans where it could be helpful.

Like I said before I don’t really think that buff in and of itself is the problem.

[Grimoire-M]

That's exactly what Dissipation SHOULD have been.

Agreed, if it only applies to spells. The reason I say that is because I feel the 90 capstone should of been a DPS oGCD that rewarded you for healing well. Either take the TBN concept and run with it, or give out DPS for using Aetherflow on everything but Energy Drain. Regardless, I wouldn’t want it to necessarily be forced into the same window given how much aetherflow you get from Dissipation already. And that way Dissipation can remain weirdly synced.

I do think Dissipation should alternate itself with Seraph too ala Summoner’s Demi rotation. Then you could make both a charge action and flex them since they’re both awkward cooldowns as is.

[Truen]

I know what you are about to say, just hear me out. All this blowback about such a great scholar skill. That AOE uptime beast of a skill. It fell flat on its face due to presentation. So let's fix this as a community. If enough people agree with it.

Rename the sprint skill to "OOOOOO! MY LITTLE SAPLINGS!" then have it make a bright Eos/Selina color pallet explosion. Then for the big win, it enchants each player that is subject to the sprint speed bonus small fairy wings like Eos/Selene for the duration of the buff. This way it not only lets me know intuitively I have the sprint speed bonus as a player receiving it by seeing it on my back as run but now everyone will be losing their minds over being able to /gpose with the wings, giving random people invites and winging them in Limsa, or just making your dance team at the Club in Balmung way more fly with those wings and custom emotes to bust out the moves! If anyone has some artwork from their mind of how it would look feel free to post! Lets get down, get down, get down for Scholars!

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Screw the happy feet fluff spell--the fundamental problem with SCH is that it's boring to play. Being able to cast FASTER Broils isn't a positive, and I could care less about a little burst of speed that doesn't stack with sprint.