A lot of the main issues with SCH are not being addressed with Endwalker

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

If you are referring to Energy drain then they already tried to remove it at 5.0 and the community begged for it back. So they nerfed our damage and gave it back

I am. I am aware of that action's history, although what I was implying was if this is their plan to continuously nerfing the button so much that it becomes redundant so that they can finally remove it entirely (like WHM's Fluid Aura), except for 2nd time.

[Deceptus]

If you are referring to Energy drain then they already tried to remove it at 5.0 and the community begged for it back. So they nerfed our damage and gave it back

The community begged for it back because

1) It had a resource tied to it (MP gain). That really helped if you died and needed some MP back quickly.

2) We had no way to dump excess stacks that weren't on healing. Problem is, since they nerfed it into oblivion the opportunity cost of the substantial healing vs the extremely limited dps just don't equal out at all.

WTB back the Quickened Aetherflow trait. It actually incentivized us to use our stacks.

[Doragan]

WTB back the Quickened Aetherflow trait. It actually incentivized us to use our stacks.

More than that,it actually felt really good to pull off the opener and gave us mana a lot faster than just waiting on the AF/Lucid Dream CD. That trait really just felt good. God I miss it. SB SCH was so good to play.

I do agree Energy Drain is DPS gain ( I mean ofc it is ), the meager potency feels like you're running for scraps of damage. It's probably not true though numberswise, but that's how it feels to me.

[-BlueGreen-]

I miss HW SCH (except cleric stance, that can stay deleted). The healing toolkit was much smaller, but also far more manageable, and there were usually plenty of things to do during healing downtime. SB messed all that up with an expansion of the healing toolkit to include redundant and conflicting skills, and they've only double/triple downed on that approach to healers since.

There's really only so much creativity you can apply to skill effects. Much of the time, you have things that make numbers go up/down, apply/remove (de)buffs, or some sort of movement. When you simplify it that much, this applies to every role/skill in the game. I mean, just look at a DPS's toolkit, you have skills that do damage, other skills that do more damage, and hey, a skill that does a lot of damage! Of course, you don't hear them complain "____ is boring because all 90% of the skills just do damage". It's sort of expected that if you're playing DPS, you do... damage. What makes them interesting and engaging are the rotations and the in-the-moment decisions you have to make to try to keep them going as accurately as possible. For instance, is your target about to die? Would it be better if you switch between targets? Is this a good time to switch from AoE attacks to single target attacks? And so on all while navigating the chain of skills for the best output.

Healers don't have combos. They get 2-3 buttons most of the time to deal damage with and that's about it. Is your tank able to keep themselves alive for the whole run? Wake me when it's over. You spend your time hitting those few buttons doing damage and maybe wondering "should I toss out a heal?" Meanwhile your entire toolkit is screaming "use me", but it's all just a waste. If you try to do savage/ultimate, you find out it's basically more of the same except that you are using your healing toolkit... at prescribed times according to the script. There's no real decision-making going on there, it's just "follow the script." After all, if someone screws up, much of the time that leads to a wipe somehow, if anything due to eventually failing a DPS check.

About the only times healers get to wake up and really make decisions on the fly about how to best deploy their healing toolkits are:

• You're on a team aiming for a world first clear of savage/ultimate and you're having to discover where to use your heals without the benefit of a guide (possibly because you're writing the guide).
• You're running the latest 24-man raid during release week. The DPS checks are usually pretty tame on those, but there's plenty of stuff to kill off your team giving you, as the healer, a rare time to shine and prove your worth by carrying those floor tanks through that content. Since you can't predict who is going to screw up and how, you can't pre-plan every heal like you would in savage/ultimate meaning the pressures on to make real time decisions and see if you can save the day.

I miss the days of when Weeping City and Dun Scaith were new. I know the same can generally be had with each new 24 main raid after that, but I feel like the problem is there's not a whole lot of opportunity to actually apply these massive healing toolkits in real battle. There are far too many redundant and conflicting skill combinations, and you need to have a good sense of the healing power of each one as well as how best to prioritize them for unpredictable circumstances. Most content just isn't challenging enough for it (dungeons) or are too predictable (savage/ultimate) to practice that kind of gameplay.

I suppose EX trials might be the closest thing. Running those with random PF teams adds a lot of uncertainty even if you know the boss like the back of your own hand, but they're also more forgiving compared to savage/ultimate that there is some wiggle room to be a heroic healer. Granted, if I'm being totally honest, I probably started leaning more towards tanking/healing in SB because it was tiring seeing team, after team, after team fail even the EX level DPS checks and being helpless to do anything about that as healer (people weren't dying and I was DPSing). Once you're keeping the team alive, healers have much more limited impact on the overall fight than other roles.

Healers only puts out 50% of the DPS they can? You might notice it, but your team usually carries on just fine.
DPS only puts out 50% of the DPS they can? You're probably going to hit enrage.

[Liam_Harper]

I like the idea of making Ruin II a dps neutral Aetherflow spender instead of ED. Then you can use stacks for mobility. They could even make it aoe like Toxicon if they wanted.

[rewd]

I like the idea of making Ruin II a dps neutral Aetherflow spender instead of ED. Then you can use stacks for mobility. They could even make it aoe like Toxicon if they wanted.

If you make it AoE then you are not fixing the problem, but only giving it another shape. It wouldn't be used as much as ED, but it would still have higher priority over healing as soon as two targets show up.

[Liam_Harper]

Fair. I think the thought was more that dungeons have no enrage timers where dps min max is a concern and Toxicon's 50% fall off means it's only a tiny gain over Sages regular aoe anyway. If it was a single target GCD it'd be a straight loss as a spare aether spender on dungeon pulls. But it doesn't have to be aoe.

[Grimoire-M]

Quickened Aetherflow was bad for Scholar’s overall health so I don’t want it back…in that form. I am, however, okay with using that effect on a new oGCD that helps offset the cost of Energy Drain’s tax (and more), by proccing on healing actions that consume resources like Aetherflow, MP and/or Fey Gauge. Ignoring Recitation is kind of a hidden upside there too since QA would kinda turn that into a DPS action whose impact is rivalled only by a couple Blood Drains from a tank BLU or a single auto attack from a DoW job.

[NobleWinter]

Quickened Aetherflow was not bad for Scholar's overall health. You're really going to have to explain the logic on that. Having more access to healing charges and more uses of Energy Drain sounds like a good thing. Recitation is also the same with and without Quickened Aetherflow. It can only be used to heal and no trait for amassing Aetherflow would change how we use it to heal to the greatest effect. Quickened Aetherflow made Scholar a little more busy and now that we have space to weave Energy Drain with Broil it would fit even better.