Disappointed Dragoon.

[Nizzi]

As said, I have so little knowledge about SCH that I have little to no input on it. While id guess that square will probably just keep doing stuff to try and make it more appealing to others, I can also see the argument of just letting you guys have your thing since most people are uninterested anyways. Healers in general seems to be in an odd state, and even with more popular ones, I cant say I think any of them are in a good state. My whole "hope you get a new one" wasent meant to be mean or sarcastic. I just dont really see square giving old scholar back, so id say a new dot focused class may be the best situation. While I dont enjoy dots, I do genuinely hope you get something. Either scholar being given them back, or something new all together. Maybe we will see the kaiten changes be revoked, which will give perhaps some hope to square reverting certain changes.

SCH went from being the most DoT centric job in the game in Stormblood (and having that as the entire DPS identity, it was even more DoT centric than SMN was at this point) to having everything DPS wise gutted in ShB because of their design philosophy being "healers need to heal and not focus on DPS" despite them not giving anything more to heal than before. One of the reasons healers are in this odd state is because they continually bloat us with these superfluous oGCDs that invalidate our GCDs while making healer DPS mandatory - making us have nothing to do other than spam our 1 Glare/Broil etc while using our super powerful oGCDs to cover all of our healing which creates an incredibly boring gameplay loop because they've removed everything we had in the past that broke the monotony of spamming our 1 nuke. DoTs are a fix for this, and while I don't recommend every healer just get shoved full of DoTs because I do understand some people don't like them, if an entire role is struggling with the monotony of 1 button DPS spam - why not give back SCH's DoTs and let it be different again? SCHs would be so happy if Miasma, Bane, Shadow Flare, Miasma II, etc were returned. There's a reason SCH's DoTs are consistently talked about with SCH suggestions not only here, but on other websites like Reddit, Youtube, Twitter etc. Because SCH players loved them and want them back. Conversely, this is also the reason you don't see many other jobs asking for them back like NIN with Shadow Fang, because to other jobs the DoTs weren't apart of the fun nor a defining feature of the gameplay loop.

SCH from its inception in ARR was *the* DoT job, which is why SCH players would feel like it was a slap in the face for SE to come out with a new DoT caster when that's the SCH so many people fell in love with. I can understand and see the viewpoint of people who didn't like DoTs on SMN, especially in ShB the DoTs felt like they were just there and they had little to do with the job fantasy (this is something that the new SMN does well IMO and I don't think many disagree) - but this is what SCH players liked about SCH, outside of pet changes that they're very unlikely to move backwards on at this point. What people might not have liked about SMN was what people considered a strong suit of Scholar, and now that gameplay style is completely gone from the game when Scholar players didn't want it removed. There's a reason SCH players talk about the ARR/HW glory years of having 6+ DoTs and managing all of the timers while also healing and doing mechanics. It's what they found fun and what drew them to SCH.

This is why I can't buy the idea that SE somehow knows that people don't like DoTs, because if we look at 5.0 SMN where they tied Bio and Miasma to Ruin's potency and everyone said "this is awful change it" and then 5.0 SCH where they removed all of SCH's DoTs and everyone said "this is awful change it back" it's very clear that they're designing with their ideas of what these jobs should be first and not what the players who play them want. If they had been on the pulse there, SMN wouldn't have launched with more DoT integration and SCH wouldn't have been launched with all of its DoTs save Bio completely gutted. Who was asking for these changes to SCH? Nobody.

Adding the DoTs back to SCH in EW would've been an easy win for the developers, SCH players get Miasma and Bane back and they could say to SMN players who liked the DoTs "hey well SCH levels free with SMN, why not try that out if you enjoyed DoTs and pets" but instead we get the state that we're in. SCH still doesn't appeal to people who like White Mage or who don't like healers, we're having less fun than we were having before, and people who enjoyed a "DoT caster" playstyle have had what they've enjoyed completely taken away from them with no other jobs they can jump to for anything similar. Even if they come out with a DoT caster DPS job, it doesn't change what SCH has lost, because SCH players also enjoy healing. I don't believe we should continue down the path of "healers heal and if you want to DPS, go play a DPS job" to necessitate the addition of a DoT job when they can restore SCH's DoTs tomorrow if they wanted to with minimal work. Why work hard creating new icons, weapons, animations, skills, etc when Miasma, Bane, etc are all finished work that still exists within the game?

I didn't think you were being mean or sarcastic btw, I just think it's a bit pointless to want something 'new' that plays like the old thing when they could just give back the old thing to the people who want it back, considering they've failed in whatever they tried to do for the healers in Shadowbringers.

[Treesus]

I didn't think you were being mean or sarcastic btw, I just think it's a bit pointless to want something 'new' that plays like the old thing when they could just give back the old thing to the people who want it back, considering they've failed in whatever they tried to do for the healers in Shadowbringers.

Fair points on basically all of it. I fully agree that current healer design is...just kinda bad. The weird dance square is doing between "healer need to heal" while doing stuff like making warrior basically be healer, but with ax is pretty ridiculous. And as stated while I have no love for DOTs, there is obviously a portion who do enjoy that gameplay. With the complete rework of summoner, I do think it would have been a good idea to make SCH dot heavy again to give some sort of new home for those who disliked it. I guess from my standpoint, and admittedly its based around personal experience, ive almost always seen people dislike dots outside of bard. Which is why I tend to lean twords the "people dont like dots" comment. The handful of summoner players ive ever known almost always complained about disliking dots, and when the rework happened the majority of anything I saw on it was praise, so to me it seemed like a logical jump. I think as things currently stand, almost every healer needs...something. Personal opinion is that I think most could use an actual damage rotation. Which would give a perfect place to reintroduce scholar dots. I just dont think current healers are fun in the slightest. Im not here to defend all of squares changes, I do think forms go a little to hard on changes that were liked, painting them as disliked, but I also see that some changes while praised elsewhere are not as beloved on here. Outside of a complete rework of how healers overall are, I dont really see square doing...alot. But I also think they realize theres something wrong there. I feel like working in a full damage rotation into most of the healers kits wouldnt be THAT hard. I also jumped to the "ooo new dot class" since they seem to have a habit of trimming features from one class and smashing them into another. Along side that, its been a fair while since a new caster class, and at least in my mind id think a caster would be prime for making it into a dot heavy class if any role was to be made into one. I know things may have come off perhaps a bit hostile at times, but I do see where your coming from. In the end, unsure what comes next for you guys. I do hope healers get something, and soon, since the people who main them seem to be the ones asking for changes the most, and hydaelyn knows we need you guys around. My que times are long enough as is. While I agree that just giving you guys dots back may be the easiest way to improve things, squares not always so good at picking the obvious answer. If we can get kaiten changed back, maybe theres some hope to get square to give back other aspects. Here hoping at least