Fixing Every Healer Job

[Nizzi]

This entire thread is fighting against the perception that "Healers don't want to heal!". Yes we do, we just want to do it while having meaningful ways to spend our time outside of 1 button rotations. I would rather not regulate the faerie gauge to just another healing resource.

Ah, I meant more of how the existence of Aetherflow creates a scenario where Scholars hypothetically "do not want to heal" because of Energy Drain existing and healing with Aetherflow being a DPS loss. While we know this isn't true because of the huge amounts of healing we get from your faerie/protraction/recitation before having to dip into any Aetherflow, the perception remains within a lot of players, nonhealers especially that SCH just wants to be "green DPS for fast queues." Personally, because I like the opportunities and affordances that Energy Drain optimization gives Scholar, I think leaving your faerie as your first source of entirely free healing should be how it stays. I think this is why they ended up scrapping Selene entirely; if you have one fairy that has DPS buffs/utility skills but has no healing outside of Embrace, while also having a system with Aetherflow/Energy Drain in which you can spend your healing resources on DPSing, how is Scholar supposed to heal?

I'm not saying I agree with that nor do I like getting rid of Selene, but I think that's what the intention behind it was and why I think she'll unfortunately never come back with unique skills, unless they're slight differences to Eos's like a shield instead of regen, etc.

The problem with keeping the faerie gauge as strictly healing is that Scholars don't really need more healing. I'm in a bit of a bind... What would you like to see the faerie gauge used? More supportive options like buffs/debuffs? If you wanted to get rid of it, what would you do with Fey Union and what would you suggest as Scholar's bread and butter rotation if I scrapped using the gauge as a personal DPS spender? I'd love to hear your ideas!

I'm honestly of the opinion that we just can't expand upon the gauge. Fey Union is very bad in its implementation and the gauge at this point would require a complete rework IMO to be anything interesting, and I believe that SE is incapable of doing so as they've consistently failed to do anything interesting with the gauge for 3 expansions now, which is why it's still stuck to one level 70 ability and why they removed Fey Blessing from it. If you give gauge abilities CDs, they might as well not be tied to the gauge at all, and if you don't give them CDs, you might as well just spam the best ability. The gauge is very flawed and just doesn't work well, and I think it's pretty much never going to. If we tie anything offensive to it, why would you want to use Fey Union at all? Fey Union is already probably the most unintuitive skill in SCH's kit - it locks you out of using other fairy abilities unless you want to continually retarget and reapply Fey Union, Embrace is unable to be cast, and if the person your faerie is tether to moves out of range, Eos/Selene will just sit there doing nothing until they move back into range or you cancel the union. They could remove gauge entirely and make it a 2m ST Regen applied by your faerie and pretty much nothing would change except there would be less annoyance in its usage.

In terms of what I want Scholar's bread and butter rotation to be, I think the return of Miasma and Bane alone would help the job immensely. In an ideal world, it'd be a return to having Miasma, Miasma II, Shadow Flare, Bane, and if they were feeling very generous, potentially even Bio III on another separate timer, but I am entirely willing to settle for just having Miasma and Bane return with Scholar currently as it is. I really, REALLY want those two to return this expansion, even though I know they're not generally ones for giving more things to a job mid expac.

I wanted to ask for your opinion... What do you think should be done to fix the Energy Drain problem?

I'm unsure if I'm stockholmed myself into liking Energy Drain because SCH has nothing else to do or optimize, but I think Aetherflow/Energy Drain is one of the best and most interesting things about Scholar's kit and is pretty much the only interesting thing any healer has DPS wise. Scholar is the only healer with anything like Energy Drain and the existence of Energy Drain forces a healing prioritization where you want to use Protraction, Recitation, and all of your faerie heals before you start dipping into your Aetherflow. Energy Drain can also be a DPS loss if it forces you to end up using a GCD heal later (though I know with the huge amount of oGCD healing bloat and the existence of a WHM/SGE/AST cohealer not losing DPS to use their heals this scenario is very unlikely anymore) so to me personally it offers something interesting to each encounter that the other healers do not offer anymore. I've played a lot of Sage and it just doesn't have that level of "feel good dopamine" that making sure Aetherflow doesn't drift and healing as much as possible without sacrificing Energy Drains does.

I know a lot of people don't like Energy Drain and consider it a problem, but there are 3 other healers that don't have this. I'm really not sure how people can say that we have too much oGCD healing bloat for the amount of healing we have, and then also say that Energy Drain needs to be removed so Scholar can use more of its oGCDs. I think we can leave Scholar alone and let it keep this optimization skill, while also returning fun things to its kit DPS wise.

[Rilifane]

I'm unsure if I'm stockholmed myself into liking Energy Drain because SCH has nothing else to do or optimize, but I think Aetherflow/Energy Drain is one of the best and most interesting things about Scholar's kit and is pretty much the only interesting thing any healer has DPS wise. Scholar is the only healer with anything like Energy Drain and the existence of Energy Drain forces a healing prioritization where you want to use Protraction, Recitation, and all of your faerie heals before you start dipping into your Aetherflow. Energy Drain can also be a DPS loss if it forces you to end up using a GCD heal later (though I know with the huge amount of oGCD healing bloat and the existence of a WHM/SGE/AST cohealer not losing DPS to use their heals this scenario is very unlikely anymore) so to me personally it offers something interesting to each encounter that the other healers do not offer anymore. I've played a lot of Sage and it just doesn't have that level of "feel good dopamine" that making sure Aetherflow doesn't drift and healing as much as possible without sacrificing Energy Drains does.

I know a lot of people don't like Energy Drain and consider it a problem, but there are 3 other healers that don't have this. I'm really not sure how people can say that we have too much oGCD healing bloat for the amount of healing we have, and then also say that Energy Drain needs to be removed so Scholar can use more of its oGCDs. I think we can leave Scholar alone and let it keep this optimization skill, while also returning fun things to its kit DPS wise.

I think the biggest issue many people have with ED is that SCH is the only healer that deals with dps loss if dipping into their class gimmick.

Lilies were a dps loss and that was problematic not because of the existence of healing tied to a smaller dps loss than GCD heals but bigger than oGCDs but because WHM had nothing else.
If WHM had a stronger baseline kit then Lilies would've been a secondary healing resource with enough other tools to fall back on but they had almost nothing to fall back on during ShB and only got Lilybell in EW which has a high cooldown. Asylum and Assize for aoe, that was it. And Assize is still highly unflexible, making it basically unavailable for anything that requires very specific heal timing like certain heal checks.
So you didn't ever had the same room to optimize as SCH had; SCH had an actual chance at avoiding AF heals without chadding their co heal or waiting until everyone was overgeared. WHM didn't. Making Lilies dps neutral was necessary but now it's even more obvious for SCH just how much their own job gimmick stands out. It's now literally the only gimmick you are discouraged from using to fulfill your role.

But I certainly don't want to see it gone especially since I don't trust SE to give us anything remotely meaningful in return. They'll just remove it like in the past and that's it. However it's not a particularly interesting skill either with the flat potency. I'd prefer if they added some nuance to it by giving it an additional effect.
If it also increased healing through all sources (including your fairy) for a certain amount of time, it could now also make a difference for how you time and map your other oGCDs and when exactly you use ED. Timing it well may make the difference between having to use an AF heal or not and thus easily mitigating the dps loss from using it ouside raid buffs/ pots and adds another layer to using it instead of "dump as much as possible during raid buffs" or "wait until AF is about to come off cooldown, then dump it all".
It would also make it useful during short-ish heal checks where you use SS & Indom but are left with 1 (or even 2 if Recit is used on Indom) leftover stacks and nothing meaningful to use them on because they don't last long enough for another SS/ Indom.
It would also be great to use before downtime as you can now snapshot the added healing for a stronger Spreadlo and the stronger Spreadlo may again make the difference between having to use an AF heal or not after the downtime, especially when paired with other heal increases like a nom nom'd fairy or Protraction.

Fairly small things all in all but another layer instead of a "dump for flat potency" skill.
I'll also admit that I've definitely stockholmed myself a little bit into liking it

RE: White mage - do you think having a full GCD cast time on its attacks would help it feel more distinct again? prior to 6.0 I thought the hardcasting made it feel much more a counterpart to black mage in a way that's since been slightly eroded.

I'm generally all in favour for doubling down on the low APM with strong, powerful, impactful GCDs identity for many reasons. It doesn't have to have a 3 page essay in every tooltip. Give it a couple of straightforward but strong nukes that are not too rhythmical (as in everything on a 30s timer) so you have a constantly changing rotation from different timers but overall slower but powerful gameplay... like it's darker counterpart.

But SE would need to give it some tools to offset the heavy loss of mobility and weaving windows from losing 1,5s casts.
One of the biggest issues with ShB WHM was the severe lack of mobility and weaving windows, way behind even BLM. If it should be more of a counterpart to BLM it should get similar tools to deal with movement and having to weave at very specific times.
BLM had fast casts, Swiftcast as a pure dps/ movement tool unlike healers that may need to keep it for Raise, Triple, Xeno, Thundercloud/ Firestarter procs and Sharpcast to force them in addition to the natural proc chance. That's a buttload of mobility for a supposed turret. And in EW they also added Amplifier, a 2nd Triple charge and Icedox.

WHM would need an instant that is not in any way tied directly to healing to make things like weaving PI or Temperance in advance possible. Diacloud comes to mind but it also needs something more reliable, preferably on demand. A dps Lily skill would lead to a similar problem we had in ShB so that's out of question. A secondary resource that is available at the start of a duty and accumulated through offensive gameplay could work.
Glare casts could accumulate stacks while you get a stack spender that has a potency gain over Glare to discourage you from constantly overcapping and you can spend 4-5 stacks on an instant - Seraph Strike already exists and fits this theme extremely well. In niche cases it may be actually better to overcap so you start with max stacks into heavy movement if Lilies have to be used on healing and can't cover the gaps. But overall it's available often enough to avoid being a "dump all during raid buffs" skill although it also offers some potential for optimization during them; it encourages offensive gameplay without building so slowly it's virtually unavailable during heal checks; it also fits the WHM theme of the powerhouse well as it would feel like the WHM slowly "overcharging" with gathered power and unleashing it with a particularly strong instant; and it already breaks the 11111 monotony nicely while also more than offsetting the slight dps loss from having to pay caster tax again with full GCD casts.