Healers need an overhaul

[RyuDragnier]

Energy Drain makes YoshiP roll his eyes, for those who forgot, he called it out in an interview on changes before Eden's Promise saying he preferred scholars to use aetherflow for healing, hence the potency nerf and upping bio/broil. It's probably gone by 7.0 when they actually spend some time on the job and give up the 'but Sage new' excuse. Better yet just remove Aetherflow and re-do the gauge.

If he really doesn't like ED, then yes, drop AF and ED from SCH and just use the Fairy Gauge for everything instead. Rework Dissipation so it doesn't dismiss the fairy (but still costs gauge so it's a gauge dump move with a short cooldown to avoid overcapping), make Fey Union focus target the fairy onto a single person for X seconds for higher potency embraces (but she cannot aim at anybody else with Embrace, fairy skills still useable), and just make Seraph the permanent upgrade of the fairy. Make it so SCH has less jank, and make everything flow better.

[Shurrikhan]

If he really doesn't like ED, then yes, drop AF and ED from SCH and just use the Fairy Gauge for everything instead. Rework Dissipation so it doesn't dismiss the fairy (but still costs gauge so it's a gauge dump move with a short cooldown to avoid overcapping), make Fey Union focus target the fairy onto a single person for X seconds for higher potency embraces (but she cannot aim at anybody else with Embrace, fairy skills still useable), and just make Seraph the permanent upgrade of the fairy. Make it so SCH has less jank, and make everything flow better.

That is just a net negative. No part of the Fairy Gauge is able to replicate the rewarded prediction even of ED, and Excog, Soil, Lustrate, and the like would not be improved by being stripped of what bankability they previously possessed.

Dissipation can be improved without nuking SCH's core resource system. Fey Union can be fixed without nuking SCH's core resource system.

Making Seraph a permanent upgrade, instead of just applying the obvious solutions to/against button bloat, would only make SCH even less eventful.

[RyuDragnier]

That is just a net negative. No part of the Fairy Gauge is able to replicate the rewarded prediction even of ED, and Excog, Soil, Lustrate, and the like would not be improved by being stripped of what bankability they previously possessed.

Dissipation can be improved without nuking SCH's core resource system. Fey Union can be fixed without nuking SCH's core resource system.

Making Seraph a permanent upgrade, instead of just applying the obvious solutions to/against button bloat, would only make SCH even less eventful.

Aetherflow is an antiquated relic that does not need to exist anymore on SCH. We just sit on AF most of the time to use with ED. It may as well not even exist at this point. Hell, the Fairy Gauge as it stands right now may as well not even exist unless it is given more to do. Personally, I despise ED even existing, and I'm wishing they'd remove it and give us one of our old DoTs back to compensate. Right now SCH is pretty janky, and practically fights itself to do anything. They need to remove the jank, and that means removing Aetherflow and Energy Drain.

[Shurrikhan]

Aetherflow is an antiquated relic that does not need to exist anymore on SCH.

In its means of generation (3 per 60 via ability cast instead of a passive 1 per 20, etc.), sure. In the sense of having a 3x-bankable shared resource system, it is still valuable and I see no reason whatsoever to remove it.

We just sit on AF most of the time to use with ED. It may as well not even exist at this point.

That's because the majority of most healer kits need not exist at this point, much like healers in general in dungeons with a non-DRK tank. That's not an ED problem. That's a damage taken problem.

You don't destroy systems just because they made clearer a problem elsewhere while uniquely giving your job a way to at least mitigate that issue (that to use your whole kit, even without touching a GCD heal, will overheal).

Hell, the Fairy Gauge as it stands right now may as well not even exist unless it is given more to do.

Yes, which makes it the bloated waste. You could literally just have Fey Union warm up to a flexible duration instead of having a gauge and cooldown. Its means of generation is awful and its only uses would be to constrain actions --ones which previously could be performed even while casting, with no animation lock-- that we used to have direct and frequent control over.

I'd far rather have, say... pet MP, a couple animation-lock-less/simultaneously-castable 'pet' actions distinct between Eos and Selene (and combined or separate again under Seraph), and the ability to transfer MP over to that pet, ideally interworking that a bit with AF spenders and Dissipation. At least then we're not slowly building up to having access to what we used to access immediately --only building up to Seraph, at most-- and our pets could have actual, distinct, and burstier utility/value.

Personally, I despise ED even existing, and I'm wishing they'd remove it and give us one of our old DoTs back to compensate.

You realize we had 5 DoTs when not we not only had only ED, but other offensive spenders, too? They're not mutually exclusive.

You needn't remove SCH's unique means of managing healer-kit bloat just to spread its GCD ppm over more buttons that will, without Bane, still go to waste in favor of loudly slapping the ground as soon as we're at 3+ targets.

Right now SCH is pretty janky, and practically fights itself to do anything. They need to remove the jank, and that means removing Aetherflow and Energy Drain.

How much of that is really SCH "fighting itself," though, rather than your simply not managing it well? Not all or even most, certainly, but I'd have to guess at least a fair portion.

There is jank, but not to the degree that the remainder of SCH's affordances or unique capacities need to be ripped out root and stem.

[RyuDragnier]

You Dissipate, all fairy skills are locked. You Fey Union, you cannot use any other fairy skill or it shuts off. Seraph is the only one of the 3 moves that feels usable to an extent, but it likes to ghost moves, something that can be caused by server ticks, something completely out of your control.

You die with Dissipate and Aetherflow on cooldown, and you have no stacks. Meaning no Excog, no Lustrate, no Sacred Soil, no Indom, until it comes back. You're effectively dead in the water for up to 50 seconds. No other healer deals with that for resources. Sage and WHM will get a resource back every 20s, AST has no resources. Hell, SCH has to choose between healing or doing damage with its resource, something no other healer has to deal with! SCH is the only one that gets screwed over in these departments.

I've been playing SCH since 2.0, and while I remember how much fun I had with SCH back in the day, I'm also aware at how much the job's design has essentially changed due to the devs many attempts to "balance" it, almost always leading to AF and ED being nerfed or removed. The devs don't like ED, they want us to just heal with our resources. So the only logical answer is to remove AF and make our healing resources part of the Fairy Gauge, with our missing DPS put elsewhere (preferably into a new DoT or attack so we have something else to use).

They could have Embrace give 5 points to the Fairy Gauge each cast, with the various fairy heals giving 10-20 gauge. Fey Union could be making the fairy focus target a single person for X seconds with an increased healing potency, allowing for other fairy skills to still be used (you just lose an increased potency Embrace in the deal, no big deal). Dissipation could be a 50 gauge dump that could power up all our healing for X seconds or even our damage (thus making this a possible location for the missing DPS to go to). Seraph could be a permanent upgrade, making balance a tiny bit easier on the fairy healing (shields are easier to balance than pure healing). They could even add a move that gives 50 fairy gauge (perhaps called Fey Gift?), that replaces the normal AF usage and essentially allows for a quick Dissipation to push out the DPS (should they make it a damage buff).

All of that sounds like a much better kit, and is easier to come back from. You died, you resummon your fairy, you have 0 gauge. The fairy casts Embrace, you get 5 gauge. You make her cast another move, you get 10-20 gauge. You bounce back much faster and there's far less punishment, putting us on equal ground to the other healers.

[Nizzi]

You die with Dissipate and Aetherflow on cooldown, and you have no stacks. Meaning no Excog, no Lustrate, no Sacred Soil, no Indom, until it comes back. You're effectively dead in the water for up to 50 seconds. No other healer deals with that for resources. Sage and WHM will get a resource back every 20s, AST has no resources. Hell, SCH has to choose between healing or doing damage with its resource, something no other healer has to deal with! SCH is the only one that gets screwed over in these departments.

I have an entire thread in the healer forum about how Scholar is probably one of the worst designed jobs in the game. It's in major need of some help, however I really don't want to see Aetherflow taken away, nor Energy Drain. They're genuinely the only management left in SCH's kit that is unique to SCH and SCH alone and they're actually probably the best parts of its kit. If Aetherflow/ED were yanked out of SCH, I would almost assuredly quit this game entirely - I do not want SCH becoming "gets resource every 20s" like WHM and SGE. I hate those jobs, and I don't have fun playing them. SGE reveals how worthless these buttons feel to hit without having Energy Drain - at least to me, it's because there's a DPS cost attached to it that I know I'm making the better decision in the moment to spend it on Soil or Excog while Recitation is on CD, or a needed Indom because too many people screwed something up, etc. Every other healer doesn't have any sort of management, they're all "I hit button and do heal!" and wow that's great for them but man I really, really hate the fact that they all play the same in regards to their DPS. Can we please leave at least one healer somewhat different at least in how it manages its heals?

I see everyone wanting them to do more with the Fey Gauge. Why? The fact that they have consistently failed to do anything interesting with it should show that they're incapable of doing so and I'd much prefer they remove it entirely than try their best at maybe accomplishing making it interesting after 4 expacs (because they won't do it in EW) while yanking out the only interesting thing left in SCH's kit to do so. Scholar needs MORE management, not less. SCH doesn't need passive resources that it gets for existing and being a good little boy, it needs things its watching and managing because it is a strategist tactician. This is why DoTs work for SCH, because SCH is a timer management job even though they've removed Miasma, Miasma II and Shadow Flare. Aetherflow and Energy Drain are management skills. They don't need to go. They can readd Miasma and Bane without yanking out the core dopamine button of Scholar.

[Hezhi]

I see everyone wanting them to do more with the Fey Gauge. Why?

By now the game has had job bars for longer than it didn't. People have been conditioned to expect a job bar on every job because that's what SE enforced in SB, and frankly they wouldn't be wrong because it seems that SE will stubbornly keep these meme bars even when they're nothing more than a Sheltron counter and they have no fucking idea what to do with it for half the jobs' bars.
No really the devs don't have a clue what they're doing, they probably never played a healer on a higher level than Brayfloxs Longstop with trusts. Fuck your fairy, its now on your GCD. Say goodbye to your DoTs forever, you're a white mage (shield form) now. Can't get rid of that useless fairy bar tho!!

[Shurrikhan]

You Dissipate, all fairy skills are locked.

I'm fine with that. I just don't think the debuff should be as long or the GCD buff as long-but-impotent.

You Fey Union, you cannot use any other fairy skill or it shuts off.

I'm fine with that. It's a channel. That is how channels work. It just needs to feel better in itself (a bit more potent, more responsive, no waste-due-to-oversights).

You die with Dissipate and Aetherflow on cooldown, and you have no stacks.

Which is why I'd be fine with replacing the 60s CD ability means of generation, as I said just above. It offers no affordances relative to SGE's version. Aetherflow, the ability, is badly designed. Aetherflow, the stacks, are not.

Hell, SCH has to choose between healing or doing damage with its resource, something no other healer has to deal with! SCH is the only one that gets screwed over in these departments.

Every mechanic is "something you have to deal with." Being able to trade otherwise excess healing for damage is not a bad thing.

We deal up to 10,647 relative potency of damage per minute before Chain Strategem. Up to 3 EDs of that is not huge, nor is our rDPS balanced around spending all those heals on ED (from 95th percentile averages, it'd tie for 2nd place at just over 3 EDs per 2m raid cycle).

Yes, SCH's offensive throughput should be a bit higher such that only 1 or so EDs per raid cycle are expected of us for competitive rDPS, but that's a matter of tuning, not an issue with uniquely being unable to waste otherwise excess healing (trading it for a mild potency gain).

The devs don't like ED, they want us to just heal with our resources.

Which can't be done anyways when there is nothing to heal. You're asking that SCH replace a way to actually do something in that situation with... absolutely nothing.

And let's face it: The devs are out of touch. What they prefer is no indicator of quality design.

with our missing DPS put elsewhere (preferably into a new DoT or attack so we have something else to use).

Internal balance (how much X skill is worth relative to Y skill in the same kit, or what portion of a job's dps is done through skills A, B, and C) is not inseparable from the job's overall tuning. You can adjust a job's tuning without adding or subtracting skills. You can siphon Broil potency into a new DoT without removing tools from SCH.

Each ED per minute is worth less than 5 Broil potency. The addition of Biolysis is still only worth about 17 Broil potency. (i.e., if every GCD were Broil, you'd need only 17 more potency to make up for Biolysis no longer being in SCH's kit).

There's plenty to take from there if you want to siphon some of SCH's per-GCD potency floor for 3-target cleave and reduced loss per GCD of healing via more DoTs. And, as mentioned before, SCH should probably be doing about 100 more raw potency per minute regardless. You do not need to remove existing affordances to accomplish that.

[LeonKeyh]

I see everyone wanting them to do more with the Fey Gauge. Why? The fact that they have consistently failed to do anything interesting with it should show that they're incapable of doing so and I'd much prefer they remove it entirely than try their best at maybe accomplishing making it interesting after 4 expacs (because they won't do it in EW) while yanking out the only interesting thing left in SCH's kit to do so.

I don't think that removing it is in people's minds, that's all. I think that their train of thought is just "There's only one ability that uses the Fey Gauge, there should be more than 1 ability that uses the Fey Gauge." Removing the Fey Gauge entirely is somewhat lateral thinking which isn't something that a lot of people do.

I agree that it is unlikely that they would be able to do anything exciting with it though. Getting rid of it makes much more sense.

[Nethereal]

I don't think that removing it is in people's minds, that's all. I think that their train of thought is just "There's only one ability that uses the Fey Gauge, there should be more than 1 ability that uses the Fey Gauge." Removing the Fey Gauge entirely is somewhat lateral thinking which isn't something that a lot of people do.

I agree that it is unlikely that they would be able to do anything exciting with it though. Getting rid of it makes much more sense.

In hindsight I do find it kind of sad that the bar is placed so low that a singular function that effectively works in a 2 action loop warranted a gauge.

Any other game and it would simply be a charging type skill, no gauge just some numbers at ontop of the skill icon to represent the value of your current stacks.

Kinda feels like the devs want to be patted on the back for rediscovering charging skills.