For SE: Scholar with Dots and Bane.

[Szylver]

I know most players don't read the forum, but this is more or less to have an idea if people are happy with current scholar or want the old one back.

Yes/No

[Sebazy]

I'd welcome 3.x's SCH downtime gameplay back with open arms.

2.x SCH would have a hard time keeping up now though.

[Jonathan_Clover]

While I personally was not around for ARR/HW healers, I HAVE done a lot of reading.
I'd be very okay with 3.x SCH, because being a Broil Master 5000 is tiring.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Can't speak for 3.x, but 4.4/4.5 Scholar I sorely miss. Balancing 2-3 Dots and handling AOE dotting with Bane and Shadow Flare was the apex of engaging damage rotation on a healer for me. That and the fact I had the ability to use the main Faerie skills while casting. 4.5 were the days man...

I can't fathom why having single 30s DOTs became the standard. All it did was massively increase monotony and make clipping DOTs worse than ever.

[Recon1o6]

bring back dots, bane, shadowflare and perhaps fester could be added as a cd instead of an aetherflow attack
they could then have ruin 4 be gained from using healing actions from the fairy adding a bit of synergy there between the healing and damage kits

[Risvertasashi]

I know most players don't read the forum, but this is more or less to have an idea if people are happy with current scholar or want the old one back.

Yes/No

I think giving SCH more dots and Bane back would make a lot of people happy with minimal cost. Potencies would have to be pretty low compared to other healers that have their damage output consolidated into (mostly) 1 nuke and 1 dot, but if the point is to just make things more interesting, I don't think that's really a problem.

So, in short, I think it's a good idea.

-

But as an aside, I do not think ideas like a Ruin 4 mechanic are a good idea unless all healers get them. That's far less of a "just make SCH/healer dps interesting" and more of a hard power buff that would deeply favor whichever healer got it.

[Sebazy]

I was thinking about a return of Fester as well tbh. That’s be a great addition.

And yes 100% this would have to be tuned relative to other jobs as well. The beauty is that the other jobs really aren’t too far off the mark. AST can have it’s cards and buffs tweaked. Sage is still new and can have it’s potency and resulting healing looked at once we are a tier in. WHM could be bought up swiftly and easily with some simple tweaks to the return from Misery.

[Recon1o6]

when it comes to adding/returning buttons, we can always assume that it will be tuned in line with its cohorts
though that doesnt excuse the fact healers and tanks were deliberately weakened in shb to make dps players seem like they contribute more

I've said it numerous times in different threads: sch should get dots, shadowflare, bane back, ruin 4 would be a good addition too for healing synergy.
but the other healers should get equivalent additions. Equivalent NOT identical

there are lots of avenues to diversify and more importantly, improve the healers if SE put the effort in

[Brandedblade]

2.0 and 3.0 SCH are needlessly convoluted, however I do strongly believe an adjusted version of the 4.0 rotation would be the best compromise between complexity and accessibility. My sore point of 4.0 SCH was how Miasma II stepped on Ruin II's toes of being the mobility/weaving tool in single target, but now that single weaving on the main healer nuke is a thing that would put even less value on Miasma II weaving. Still my personal biggest deviation from 4.0 SCH would be replacing Miasma II with Art of War to keep the distinction of "This is your AoE filler." and "This is your movement tool" intact.

There is also the matter of the button bloat, which is a major point of contention for me and reverting to 2.0/3.0 era. From other perspectives here the solution would be to cull the healing tools but that's frankly unrealistic with how the devs set their foot down on the matter. This for me and my speculation mainly affects Bane and how to handle it. Bane is something that can theoretically be handled by a different button already within the toolkit.

In past speculations I handled this by tying it to Art of War. Although another possible solution would be to tie it to Miasma and it's potential upgrades itself. Turn it into a SCH-version of Aero III (Before you WHMs get your pantaloons all knotted up, yes, I do agree WHM should get Aero III back but I'm talking about SCH right now) with the additional effect of spreading your Bio spells. The only real problem I'm finding with that thought is that traditionally the flow of going cast Miasma into an Instant Bio always felt satisfying, and this change would necessitate reversing that flow.

Onto Shadowflare, something I have noticed is how AST and SGE both have spells that are GCDs on a cooldown that are DPS neutral (in single target) and then provide additional benefits.
I do believe this could actually be a potential role for a reworked Shadowflare, make it a GCD cooldown that for example, deals a small amount of damage to the target upfront and drops an AoE on the mobs' feet that causes them to take damage over time, causes allies to heal overtime, and reduces the damage the enemy deals (Basically make it a Dot/Debuff version of Pneuma). Ofc make it stack with Sacred Soil even if it means that the healing part of Shadow Flare needs to be reduced to balance against it.

So Tl;dr, Bring back Miasma for single target Dot maintenance, tie Bane into either Miasma or Art of War to allow dot spread without unnecessary button bloat. and use shadowflare as a potential inspiration for SCH's "DPS neutral GCD cooldown" spell.

[ItMe]

but this is more or less to have an idea if people are happy with current scholar or want the old one back.

This isn't really an "either or" situation though.

I'm not happy with current scholar, but I also really don't want the old one back.