Genuine Scholar feedback

[Semirhage]

Only if you're concerned about your personal DPS to the exclusion of all else. As a healer, you spend resources healing because you expect that the party's overall DPS will be better for it in the long run. The alternative is letting people tank the floor, which is a far greater loss to the party than the measly 85 potency you personally "lost" because you didn't cast four Glares instead.

When your class's only unique contribution to the party is your personal DPS, the fact that your job gauge is horribly designed to reduce your ability to provide that thing is even more ridiculous.

[RinaShinomiya]

Only if you're concerned about your personal DPS to the exclusion of all else. As a healer, you spend resources healing because you expect that the party's overall DPS will be better for it in the long run. The alternative is letting people tank the floor, which is a far greater loss to the party than the measly 85 potency you personally "lost" because you didn't cast four Glares instead.

And We have two healers who can do both. Healing party without sacraficing DPS. AST is out-DPS'ing WHM right now because WHM is undertuned as hell.

[Nizzi]

So what makes Energy Drain different? Because I've seen a large number of SCH mains who cling to this ability and love it, while over on WHM we're begging for heal tax to be thrown out the window. Just curious.

It's more fun to me than lilies. ED gives me the option of damage or healing up front, and SCH's kit also gives a lot of options that you can generally use before having to dip into Aetherflow (your faerie and recitation) so it doesn't feel as bad to me, along with the fact that I tend to save my stacks for needed healing in newer content until I can burn it with ED because Aetherflow is about to be off CD. ED also contributes to Fey Union healing, so it doesn't feel like a total loss of healing to use it on DPS because it's "refunded" in some way.

Granted, I completely agree that with AST and SGE being able to heal freely, this ends up being punishing to SCH for no benefit, and ED feels worse to use at 100 potency than when it was 150 potency before 5.4. Obviously, if they want Scholar to be using Aetherflow on heals more than damage, they should change the content to reflect the fact that there's basically nothing you need to use all 3 stacks on healing every 60 seconds when you've got Recitation and your Faerie to also cover your healing needs. It's amazing that they're blind to the fact that the root problem of Energy Drain is that healing is typically unnecessary, so if they want Scholar to heal more, they need to make it necessary. So instead, we're at a place where removing ED makes SCH have 0 oGCD dps options, gives it 0 ability to manage Aetherflow and the Faerie Gauge outside of spamming lustrate, and removes any sort of optimization left within the job (because it's only ST DPS options would be Biolysis and Broil IV with Ruin II always being a loss now) however slight that may be. Removing it from Aetherflow and putting it on charges would just turn it into a Phlegma clone, and remove what little "depth" Aetherflow vestigially has left.

Why not change ED into Shadowflare? This would keep an offensive way to dump stacks for SCH, and if it's on a 15s duration 30s CD, this makes 1 Aetherflow always available for a "free heal" every 60s, as it would be impossible to use it all on DPS before Aetherflow was available again. It would give Scholar a 2nd AoE option to use, as they're the only healer with a singular AoE DPS ability at the moment while retaining the ability to dump stacks for damage, while also not being so restrictive on only using Indom/Excog with Recitation during optimization anymore.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

As someone that swapped from AST main in ShB to SCH main now in EW I can say my only gripe with sch is energy drain costing aetherflow, make it another charged based ogcd or something that gives mana and it's fine. I do hope they fix my astro cards and astrodyne to feel less horrible to play and I can pick up my fave job again though

[Gemina]

Chiming in to the OP back on the first page, what I can say about Energy Drain is that SCH resources in general need to be looked at. How they are acquired and spent. The skills tied to their resources, etc. It's difficult for me to see ED as a problem by itself, when it really is just part of SCH's overall janky gameplay.

Right now, I use ED because there is nothing else for me to spend my resources on while Soil and Excog are on CD. It most certainly isn't for damage as another healer with just a couple of lucky crits will easily beat that out. It's still free damage though. This in itself is an outdated concept because SCH has an ability [aetherflow] which takes up real-estate on their hotbar, and adds to their APM that gives them three charges that could be redesigned into a resource they earn instead. Better yet, put Aetherflow on a 120s CD that grants them three quick charges to this resource they otherwise earn. Again I will point out how outdated this job is, despite being a functioning car that just won't break down, and will still keep going even after newer models end up in the heap.

Most jobs have to be mindful if they have charges and may not have the luxury to use them leisurely. SCH doesn't even have that. Blowing your charges has a two fold benefit that should appease both healer camps because this forces the SCH to dip further into their kits if healing is needed. Some SCH's might advise to hold onto at least one charge in case someone needs a quick lustrate, but yeah... no. Not if you want to avoid whack-a-mole healing while playing SCH. Others will tell me it is more optimal to favor using a charge of aetherflow instead of a GCD to top up someone, and they are not wrong at all. But the incorrigible black sheep in me will always resort to using emergency tactics along with adlo to get a player out of crit HP if I feel active regens and their own sustainability won't do the trick.

Ah SCH. FFXIV's relic job. Y'all know this job will get reworked, right? And when it does, it will receive what seems to be commonly perceived as the 'style over substance' treatment. When this happens, this toolshed of a job will lose this aforementioned gameplay.

[Silver-Strider]

Ah SCH. FFXIV's relic job. Y'all know this job will get reworked, right? And when it does, it will receive what seems to be commonly perceived as the 'style over substance' treatment. When this happens, this toolshed of a job will lose this aforementioned gameplay.

Oh please. The fact they doubled down on ShB healer design means that no healer is getting a rework any time soon. The Devs don't want to touch healers because, despite how absolutely mind numbingly boring healers currently are, the fact is they believe that healers are perfectly fine. They don't know what to do with healers and have said as much already so at this point, SCH will forever be stuck with its jank outdated mechanics until either SE gets someone to actually work on healers or the servers shut down.

[Anhra]

What really bothers me on SCH, as well as the rest of the Healers, is that they all have "a little bit of everything" without actual flaws in design. All of them have potent raw AoE Healing, HoTs, Shielding, Mitigation, Heal modifiers and so on. What they really lack, is personality. We dont have SCH, WHM, AST and Sadge, we just have Healer A, B, C and D thats it.

But back to SCH, what i really would like to see on SCH in terms of Gameplay, is that it has powerful, but few Healing abilities, and most of them, having a really short Range. Im talking about Midare Setsugekka kind of Range.

As for the Skills imagine it kind of like this:

Your only Healing Abilities will be Adlo, Sacred Soil, Physick (with Esuna effect), Fey Link, Ressurect. Thats it. the rest of your Skills, will be Skills that influence those few on a rather frequent, but limited use (like having up to 3 charges but like 30-45 seconds recharge time). the few existing skills will, alongside with the rather short range, have really powerful potencies, like 1200 or more. Physick could also be something like a channeling Skill (like the one you sometimes see in cutscenes when a Healer NPC heals a injured one from closeup, like Alphinaud) that channels for like up to 5seconds and grows in potency with every second.

Anything else in terms of Support that does not involve influencing your own Abilities, comes from Eos, while Selene gets a Toolkit that supports Dps Abilities. Both Fairies however, should have one Skill in common, which allows casting one Healing (Eos) or DPS spell (selene) from their position, as well as allow them being targetable by Skills such as deployment tactics.

The Idea behind this, allows more room not only for more Dps Abilities, but also support based ones.
It would also be great, if we could get improved and maybe even multiple Res Skills which work different for each Healer. Like having a Res Skill that can res someone with Full HP/MP the moment he dies during its duration, but at the cost of it having a really really long CD, like 5-10 Minutes, or a AoE Res Skill with the Same CD (not on the same Healer ofc).

[Grimoire-M]

SCH is fine.

It can be better but I would rather remove and consolidate their actions than outright rework their systems. Their systems finally work to a tolerable degree. The problem is player perception and kit bloat. I will happily trade in potential damage for additional comfort and enjoy finding ways to shave heals I thought were necessary with Energy Drain. What’s not fine is Deployment Tactics, Protraction, and the sheer number of buttons the Fairy takes up while providing minimal support. Even expedient feels redundant, and it’s not a bad skill. We just don’t need it.

I’d much rather take measures to make Dissipation and Seraph more interesting than outright remove them too. I can see how they could be universally positive with some forethought put into them. It’s just not worth their current bloat. But they’re far from the only bloat.

[ty_taurus]

SCH is fine.

It can be better but I would rather remove and consolidate their actions than outright rework their systems. Their systems finally work to a tolerable degree. The problem is player perception and kit bloat. I will happily trade in potential damage for additional comfort and enjoy finding ways to shave heals I thought were necessary with Energy Drain. What’s not fine is Deployment Tactics, Protraction, and the sheer number of buttons the Fairy takes up while providing minimal support. Even expedient feels redundant, and it’s not a bad skill. We just don’t need it.

I’d much rather take measures to make Dissipation and Seraph more interesting than outright remove them too. I can see how they could be universally positive with some forethought put into them. It’s just not worth their current bloat. But they’re far from the only bloat.

Seraph I'm on board for, but I've been wanting Dissipation to get sacked since the day it was introduced. Sure, it functions now unlike when it was originally added to the game, but it has never felt good to use and continues to present itself as a blatant contradiction of sacrificing your healing to get more healing. It just doesn't make sense. Fey Union too I'd like to see removed or changed drastically. At best, SCH's identity of sacking your healing for more healing is buying a $10 bill for $5, and at worst it's buying a $5 bill for $10.

[Grimoire-M]

-snip-

That feeling I stopped agreeing with once I started pressing Dissipation consistently to get a feel for it. If we still were in Stormblood where we had to resummon the fairy after I might agree with you still because that was annoying in practice and shown to be almost mathematically not worth it (still did it back then in dungeons because QA was a mechanic). I haven't since Shadowbringers, where I was more annoyed at clipping Energy Drains than anything Dissipation did directly. And I think anyone who says it feels bad doesn't really get how it works, developers included.

Since Endwalker I've viewed Dissipation as a straight up DPS cooldown rather than a healing one, though it has use in emergencies, I agree it isn't practical to use it in that manner most of the time. To me a simple duration nerf to 15-20s instead of the 30s it is at now and changing the healing spell potency increase to a generic Spell Potency increase sets more appropriate expectations out of its use, while also removing enough of the downside to actually clean up the problems people have with it. Most times I ever encounter frustration with the skill anymore come from it taking far too long to give the fairy back when I am trying to make use of it mid-fight, even when I've planned for it, and those mostly come down to the duration it lasts. That last 5-10s is all that really should go. The only reason to make it shorter than that is to lower the DPS gain that making it generic spell potency represents. The Fey Gauge shouldn't rely on the fairy being out either but wouldn't change much without first giving the Fey Gauge more use.

The only other reason I want to merge it with Seraph is because you frankly will never run into a situation where you want to use both back to back. They're already mutually exclusive so it's a free button. There's very little downside to merging them as long as we do something about Consolation (like put it on Fey Blessing), put Dissipation first (having access to it in the opener gives you more control over both in the actual encounter than Seraph first), and give them charges (so 60 or 90s CD, alternate between both, grant the cooldown change and charges when you unlock Seraph so Dissipation doesn't wind up in the same spot Bahamut did on Summoner), which allows you to use both to a better degree of flexibility than now as not only does it still allow for back to back use of both but it lets you adjust Dissipation AND Seraph into specific windows losslessly if that's what you're after. It's an extra affordance that I consider reasonable to again shave a potential disadvantage of using the skill, even though I don't think it's necessary beyond killing button bloat, which is a greater problem with Scholar's kit than 'healing taxes'.

Energy Drain and Dissipation's respective places in Scholar's kit gives you a tangible reason to care about how you optimize your healing and DPS in the first place. Frankly, I think Sage and Astrologian should play by the same rules, with cards getting healing/mitigation alternatives while we shave off bad cooldowns from its kit, while Sage gets a second pass on Toxikon and Phlegma (Maybe if you have full Addersgall the bar begins to charge up Addersting and Toxikon refunds MP on use, while Phlegma gets a slight cooldown refund if you use an Addersgall heal). They're stylistically different ways of achieving the same goal of "Make Healer DPS interesting" as far as I'm concerned. I'm more okay with tradeoffs because they signal to players "Hey, care about this!" way better than straight up refunds do, which is where your feel-bad moment comes from. And they're a better balancing lever against gearing, as they allow for additional power to the casual and progression meta where it's needed while giving the speedkill players something to actively shave and juggle based on your composition, which again tells the design team 'Hey we don't need this much healing in X context' which helps them tune them better in the long run. And they're less clunky to implement in most cases as it's often just adding a choice based on manipulating a resource tied to a subset of your kit. Dissipation just happens to be a pet cooldown and that's why it sucked for as long as it did.

It's pretty clear to see that it adds the kind of gameplay I actively want to see more of in healers. It's like playing a black deck from Magic the Gathering in an MMO for me. Only the last life point matters. Here's a powerful ability, but you have to play with its drawbacks if you want to get the most out of it. It simply looks like it sucks until you learn how to use it and see the rewards pan out. I want it to be good rather than 'eh, fine', and it really doesn't take much to get it there from where it is now if you've been using it. That's how little the flaws matter.