Veteran opinions on Scholar?

[LitheSuxman]

As you are doubtless already aware that I'm inclined to try out the class, but some of these statements/ "rumors" as I saw as well as the meme going around the class makes me think the class to be seemingly in a state of neglect as we go into Endwalker:

1. Certain fights punish tremendously with two SCH in the party. (which what the other healer player plays is out of my control)
2. Choice of fairies are purely cosmetic and their AI is not the best.
3. Sage overshadows Scholar as shield-healer.

To summarize, the impression I'm having is that playing the class may cause inconvenience for others, keeping up your pet is a pain in the butt and there will be a better alternative.

What is actually happening on a daily basis as a scholar main or just healing in different content in general? When and what does the class excel at? Much appreciated.

[BaconBits]

Watching Scholar "mains" spam succor and Physick nonstop while simultaneously ignoring the existence of their fairy and hoarding Aetherflow stacks more ferociously than a dragon hoards it's treasure. Never activating Chain Stratagem, and on the rare occasion they do, never using it again when it comes off cooldown. Capped off with an absolute refusal to use Dissipation for any reason whatsoever.

DF healers are wild man.

[LittleImp]

1. Certain fights punish tremendously with two SCH in the party. (which what the other healer player plays is out of my control)

This is by design and part of the dev's vision for the game. This vision should (hopefully) become more clear in EW.

2. Choice of fairies are purely cosmetic and their AI is not the best.

Fairy responsiveness is crap and something you just kind of have to learn to live with if you really want to play SCH.

3. Sage overshadows Scholar as shield-healer.

This will be hard to really guage until the jobs have been out for a while, and a significant amount of fight data is collected.

To summarize, the impression I'm having is that playing the class may cause inconvenience for others, keeping up your pet is a pain in the butt and there will be a better alternative.

What is actually happening on a daily basis as a scholar main or just healing in different content in general? When and what does the class excel at? Much appreciated.

In the current state of the game, the only people I've really heard complain about SCH are SCH players. If anything, SCH is currently (generally) favored over WHM in a raid setting. This is all going to change in a few weeks, and we won't really have a solid final picture of where things stand for a few weeks to come after that.

The bottom line is, the job will be viable in all content, and if you enjoy it you should play it. Meta is an incredibly niche thing in this game, and is something 99.9 percent of players will never meaningfully interact with.

[Sani2341]

First of a lot of the 'SCH is Dead' meme's and discusssion springs from a place of disapointment from long time sch players, as they cut out a lot of the things SCh had before ShB, with the justification that 'they needed to cut them down to then build them back up'. Which now isn't happening.

What is actually happening on a daily basis as a scholar main or just healing in different content in general? When and what does the class excel at? Much appreciated.

To put it shortly: spamming your nuke and weaving oGCD Heals.

unless you are in a learning party where people make lots of mistakes, you'll rarely have to touch your GCD healing, outside puting up some shields during phase transitions because you got nothing else to do at those times.

[Jeeqbit]

Scholar is my preferred healer and I love it. It's full of instant heals to a point that I almost never need to cast a heal and can DPS the entire time while still healing.

From the look of Sage, it won't be much different than what Scholar is because the fairy heals about the same as what Sage's attacks do.

1. Certain fights punish tremendously with two SCH in the party. (which what the other healer player plays is out of my control)

Fights do not really punish two SCH. You can both stack the Whispering Dawn regens. A scholar can use Emergency Tactics to convert succor into a pure heal and both of them can use Indomitability.

[Alpheus]

SCH excels at cheating out survivability in situations where you probably should have died (cuz that's just how shields work in terms of their function) the reliance of which goes down as ilvl goes up so more room for nuking is an eventuality, but that ilvl also allows for those shields to withstand more damage as DEF and CRIT rate DET values go up, If I'm in a group prone to mistakes I heal more often than I probably should but like with the rest of the healers, you only feel like a god if your party is playing poorly/unacclimated to the battle in question. In this regard the fulfillment the healer role can offer (compared to other roles) is directly at odds with the win condition of any given fight (don't mess up) XD. This is one of the things that compound that hollow feeling that healers feel in this game, AST currently suffers this the least cuz you play Solitaire between heals but SCH and WHM don't have any such busy work.

This next bit is only half serious: WHMs might get some of this in EW when they have to pop a poison potion to proc Lilybell healing waves (only for a helpful BRD or co healer to esuna it right off, or a co healer shielding through the poison ticks) when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Assuming that even works to trigger it. SCH in EW will get....corralling the fairy? Minding their MP cuz Energy Drain lost it's MP restore and they don't wanna easily forget they can't bail themselves out of a death MP-wise anymore (basically get loads of MP after rezzing yourself due to Aetherflow + ED + Lucid + Dissipation EDs) and popping sprint for everyone.

All that said I can't wait to play SCH in EW, SCH main since FFXI and that's not changing anytime soon, though I do miss Embrava and Kaustra /cry

[Risvertasashi]

As you are doubtless already aware that I'm inclined to try out the class, but some of these statements/ "rumors" as I saw as well as the meme going around the class makes me think the class to be seemingly in a state of neglect as we go into Endwalker:

1. Certain fights punish tremendously with two SCH in the party. (which what the other healer player plays is out of my control)
2. Choice of fairies are purely cosmetic and their AI is not the best.
3. Sage overshadows Scholar as shield-healer.

To summarize, the impression I'm having is that playing the class may cause inconvenience for others, keeping up your pet is a pain in the butt and there will be a better alternative.

What is actually happening on a daily basis as a scholar main or just healing in different content in general? When and what does the class excel at? Much appreciated.

So the devs claim have to improved pet responsiveness, and from the videos I've seen, it looks like they did - you pretty much push Whispering Dawn, for instance, and it goes off as responsively as if you'd just hit Indom. Of course, those videos were under very controlled conditions so "out in the wild" it may be a bit slower. But even these days it's much better than compared to, say, ARR.

You'll still have to position the pet for optimal use, though. But this kind of comes with playing a pet job - if such doesn't appeal, well, SCH might not be the job for you.

Re #1:
I wouldn't say fights punish a SCH. Rather, lack of planning and forethough punish playing SCH. SCH works best in the hands of a player that intimately knows all the nuances of how their skills interact and who knows the fight (or can pick up mechanics quickly on day 1).

Let's use indom as an example again. Very powerful skill, 30s CD. That CD means if you pop it a little too soon or too late, well, you can't just pop off another one the way WHM or AST could spam medica or helios if they mess up. But in the hands of a skilled user, it's off-global which those others are not, so it's really great.

And then many scholars seem to forget Fey Union even exists, or use it when the tank is full. This is the most powerful regen in the game. But most often, from my observation, it goes largely to waste. But it's there... for skilled players that can remember it exists and know when it leverage it.

-

Lastly, I want to make a note regarding healer metas. From someone that's been playing off meta most of the game (Pre-buff heavensward AST, WHM quite often, with a little SCH here and there too, all in raid settings).

I've always been able to get a party. Maybe not a speedkill party - those willing to tolerate off-meta healers probably means they aren't building a meta DPS comp either. And at times it's been harder than others. But even so, it's enough to farm all the high end gear you might need. Unless there's a sudden surfeit of healers in the raid setting, I don't expect this to change.

So, play what you want. Unless you insist on getting in a speedkill or world-first-attempt group, but for those, you need all healers leveled and ready to go anyways.

[dustdjinn]

So I'm not gonna lie based on at title. I thought this was gonna be the thoughts on scholar from that of a retired war vet and how they believe a military based tactician should be portrayed. Oh boy is there egg yolk on my face.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

1. Certain fights punish tremendously with two SCH in the party. (which what the other healer player plays is out of my control)

The only instance where I can remember being more challenging to have double SCH composition is the "heal to full or die"-mechanics, which is also not a common mechanic to see & fairly easy to pull off with however limited SCH's options is for extended burst healing potential.

2. Choice of fairies are purely cosmetic and their AI is not the best.

They used to bring a different kits but yes, nowadays they're simply 'glamour'. Currently their AI is pretty unresponsive but like LittleImp has mentioned, it's really something that we have to deal with and/or learn to anticipate if we really want to play SCH.

Interestingly though, based on Media Tour videos, the AI might get some QoL improvement but this is something that everybody will know for sure when EW drops.

3. Sage overshadows Scholar as shield-healer.

Depends on what you mean by 'overshadow as shield-healer'. Again, until more data is collected via testing, 'science'(lol) and stuffs, not much can be said but as far as toolkit reveals, they're mostly clone of one another.

What is actually happening on a daily basis as a scholar main or just healing in different content in general? When and what does the class excel at? Much appreciated.

Ummm... Glaroilfisis (Glare/Broil/Malefix/Dosis) spams... Dialybust (Dia/Biolysis/Combust) upkeep... oh.. somebody hurt a bit? Here.. a spot healing with an oGCD.. or just let the fairy heal them slowly and... go back 1 2 1 1 1 1 1... lol

On rarer occasion sometimes DF matches us with an interesting group of individuals that continuously make mistakes and suddenly all those healing spells (Cure II/Adlo/Succor/Asp Helios) finally gets their use instead of collecting dusts... again, rare... but happens. But even then there's a lot of... 1 2 1 1 1 1 1... lol

As far as content clearing, any healers will work just fine. Obviously it's a lot easier if you're aware & understand how to use each of their toolkits effectively. Reading tooltip, guides, and practice makes perfect.

EDIT: I accidentally deleted a paragraph lol

To summarize, the impression I'm having is that playing the class may cause inconvenience for others, keeping up your pet is a pain in the butt and there will be a better alternative.

At the very least the fairy actually heals a disgusting portion of your total healing. Dupe or not, they're great at supporting their cohealers. Fairies are also unaffected by raise weakness so there's that as well. Resummoning upon death is a hassle though.

[Anhra]

I think theres more wrong than right with SCH in its current state and in Endwanker as well, if the Skills get inplimented as they have been revealed to us.

- First of all, Aetherflow, and everything thats attached to it. It is more a fluff "mechanic" than it has its actual use. You could remove it entirely, give all related Spells to it multiple charges at 30+ Seconds CD and you wouldnt even realize its gone.

- SMN has 5 Summons with unique Phases and Skills, SCH has 3 Fairies and they all do the same.

- BLU got Libra before SCH did.

- Do i even need to mention the bland and boring Dpskit?

- You cant use Aetherpact with Seraph.

- the Peloton 2.0 Skill is a complete Joke, not only is it as a lv90 Skill completely worthless (not being avaiable for the basegame, 3 expansions worth of content AND a good part of Endwanker itself), it also has unnecessary Mitigation and a speed bonus that doesnt even stack with anything.

- Despite being considered as a Combat Steategist, the only winning formula you know is Broilccoli.

- Take a good Luck at FFXI's SCH Design and then look back at your Skills in FFXIV.


Tl;dr: I wish SCH was more like FFXI SCH instead of generic Healer #2.