Fixing Every Healer Job

[WaxSw]

This is pretty much the reasoning that led to SCH's DPS kit being gutted in the first place, and I don't think the existence of bad players or greedy players should be even more of a reason to homogenize and neuter whats left of distinct differences between jobs that aren't base level paint jobs at this point. Don't get me wrong though; I don't really disagree on that either - but I think we both know that SE will absolutely not replace Energy Drain with anything that is more interesting; considering they seem to have a fear of even giving Ruin II or Energy Drain new animations, I sincerely believe they would make Energy Drain a 2 charge 30s oGCD with a potency of 150, separate it from Aetherflow and call it a day. That sounds exactly like the level of work they'd be willing to do if they didn't decide to just outright remove it and replace it with a fat whopping nothing like in the past.

I mean the whole "Sch does not heal so we gut its dps" was just an excuse they threw around to justify an unnecesary gutting, and a wrong one too as the logs showed how Sch were healing as much if not more as its cohealer in the top runs of the last floors of savage back then, while right now that argument holds true as the top Sch runs of both P4s p1 and p2 show Sch that are healing significantly less than its cohealer (and generally less too in the rest of floors but not that much, we know how the healing requirements are there after all...)

I completely agree on the whole SE does not give a fuck argument tho, that's why a lot of times I say that Aetherflow needs a rework but highly doubt SE is able to do a proper one.

Energy Drain is a non significant DPS gain to focus on purely, and I think Scholars who focus on ED, something that amounts to an 5% DPS gain if totally optimal in coordinated environments above healing are just bad players; I don't think this is a reason to remove it. It wasn't a reason to remove Miasma, Shadow Flare, Bane and Miasma II either even though there were Scholars that focused on that above healing as well.

Maybe its my parsing Sch talking but they are significant and to be fair if you don't focus on getting the most out of them you may as well be playing Sage at that point as ED optimization is the only remaining bit of complexity Sch has. The reason to remove is not because the damage they deal but because they are a tax for healing, the game is moving to a place where every healer has loads of free tools and Sch remains as the only one who has to pay to interact with part of its kit which feels weird and obsolete and even if its not much potency just the mere payment you have to do feels like much by mere comparision.

There woudn't be a problem if every healer had to pay some tax but the problem is that the payment is only for Sch and if they are goint to go that route I'd rather see them make the healing free and giving back all the lost dps tools and new ones so the depth increases without hurting the healing part.

Sorry if this comes off as just total Scholar apologism, I just really love the job. I don't want to see one of the things I find fun about it reworked with current job design in mind, because that spells nothing but death for things anyone likes

Its your opinion, for me the job died after SB when it got gutted so much that its dps healer identity was lost and EW put the last nail in the coffin when the ruin 2 optimizations for weaving were lost and actions that do not give/interact with shields, interact with the fairy or aetherflow were added, so thats why I want it to go back to its former glory even if it means changing some stuff to fit the new gameplay because Shb/EW Sch is not Sch.

[Nizzi]

I completely agree on the whole SE does not give a fuck argument tho, that's why a lot of times I say that Aetherflow needs a rework but highly doubt SE is able to do a proper one.

There woudn't be a problem if every healer had to pay some tax but the problem is that the payment is only for Sch and if they are goint to go that route I'd rather see them make the healing free and giving back all the lost dps tools and new ones so the depth increases without hurting the healing part.

Its your opinion, for me the job died after SB when it got gutted so much that its dps healer identity was lost and EW put the last nail in the coffin when the ruin 2 optimizations for weaving were lost and actions that do not give/interact with shields, interact with the fairy or aetherflow were added, so thats why I want it to go back to its former glory even if it means changing some stuff to fit the new gameplay because Shb/EW Sch is not Sch.

I think we're generally in agreement, if SE came back today and said "hey we're going to give back all your old DPS stuff back but we're taking away Energy Drain, cool?" it'd be cool, but unfortunately that's not the type of devs they are. I think I really only defend it so much because like you said, SCH pretty much has nothing left in complexity outside of it. That's generally why I don't like all the free healing too now, because outside of it our kits are just "spam your nuke and hit your 1 non DoT attack off CD" and it becomes a bit boring. SCH at least gives me the ability to have something of a healing plan even in casual content, and the other healers don't really have that because of their huge amounts of free healing.

There are a lot of ways that SE could rework Energy Drain while still keeping it in as a stack dump; they could make it a combo action that can only be used when you hit Ruin II and adjust potencies so its a 10 DPS gain like in ShB again or DPS neutral with Broil IV, they could make it a DPS neutral GCD, they could even even figure out a way to add a trait to Aetherflow that does something with excess stacks. For the sake of argument, it could be called "Conversion Tactics" and it could just give MP and Fey Gauge based on the level of stacks you had left.

It's just a shame that the most likely reality for Aetherflow and Energy Drain is what we got at 5.0 launch; they will remove Energy Drain and replace it with nothing.