Scholar redesign idea

[benji42]

Sooooo this might be a long one. Let me just preface by saying I'm a casual player, and I don't have any experience in savage content so my idea for these changes aren't really coming from there. If anyone has objections from that viewpoint, I welcome them. I'm also new, so I haven't experienced scholar in SB.

With this, I was really just trying to make healing a bit more engaging in dungeons and other casual content (I think this is clear by me not changing how energy drain works in my redesign), so I don't think it's something everyone would enjoy. I also wanted scholar to have an identity more closely linked to it's faeries, and be a bit more clearly linked to summoner because I really like how both jobs are related in the lore.

A quick overview of my changes would be:
Removed abilities: Protraction, Aetherpact
Merged into other abilities: Expedience, Fey Blessing, Dissipation, Physick
Added buttons: Miasma, Shadow Flare
Added abilities that aren't a new button: Bane, Energy Siphon, Fey Ruin

Another very large change is that your faeries are now entirely oGCD, which should make it easier to switch between them in combat. This will be important later on.

All my changes are listed on this spreadsheet here! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

So -5 healing buttons, and +2 DPS buttons. But even with just 2 added, I believe the rotation is a lot more interesting than what we have now, and still not punishing to new players who need to focus on healing more.

I’ve also tried to improve the experience while leveling. Instead of the way it was before, where you learn your single target rotation by lvl 4, and multi-target at 46, I aimed to change that a bit. With my changes, here are the levels you gain DPS abilities at.
lvl 1 - Ruin
lvl 4 - Bio
lvl 10 - Miasma
lvl 30 - Bane
lvl 45 - Energy Drain
lvl 46 - Art of War
lvl 54 - Fey Ruin
lvl 70 - Energy Siphon (kind of)
lvl 72 - Miasma III
lvl 80 - Summon Seraph
I will adit, this doesn't completely fix the problem, with your only real DPS rotation changes coming at 54, 72 (AoE only), and 80, but it's still better than what we had before. Unfortunately I can't do any playtesting .
These new dots- Miasma and Shadow Flare- basically work how you would expect. The only difference is Miasma has a 24s time instead of 30s, because I think this is a bit more interesting than both dots needing to be reapplied at the same time. 24s also fits neatly into two minutes, while it will still come up at interesting times. Hopefully. Miasma III also becomes AoE at lvl 72.

Bane is back! This will spread a dot to nearby enemies with a decreased potency. In addition, this becomes deployment tactics at lvl 56.

pt 1/2

[benji42]

The Faerie Gauge has been completely reworked, with it being completely disconnected from healing now. The way this gauge now works, is after every Broil usage it increases by 10. I do understand this is boring and basically passive gain, but I do believe this is kinda interesting, and it also will reward new healers for using their GCD attack instead of a cure, which may help new healers understand the way the job works better. The way the gauge now works is when the amount is above 40, Ruin II will be replaced with the ability Fey Ruin. Fey Ruin will order Eos/Selene to use an attack slightly more powerful than the normal ruin spell- Sapphire Ruin and Amethyst Ruin respectively. In addition, the DoT time is slightly longer than the time it takes to regain this spell, and both faeries have a different DoT. I hope that this will encourage players to switch between faeries more often.

Once seraph is unlocked, you also gain Moonstone Ruin. This works like the other two, but instead of being a dot, it’s just a big damage spell. It also only costs 10 faerie gauge to use, instead of 40 like the other two. With the addition of this, scholar kind of gains a burst window which I think is pretty cool. If you don’t care about healing, a scholar opener/rotation at lvl 90 might look like this with these changes:


Personally, I think this is way more engaging than broil spam.
Because some healing buttons have been removed, I changed some other actions to account for that. Indomitability now has 2 stacks instead of 1, and Aetherflow grants you Aetherflow IV instead of III to replace fey blessing. Shadow Flare also gains +10% slow at level 76, so this should somewhat replace protraction. The +10% increased incoming healing was nice, but it just felt like they needed to give scholar a new button and just copied sage. I don’t think it’s necessary.

I think the way I combined actions might be a bit more interesting. The biggest change is definitely how seraph and dissipation have been combined. Basically, seraph now just gives you III aetherflow when she goes away and the healing increase happens while seraph is summoned. I hope this makes her a bit more useful and fun to use. I really like how some abilities have delayed rewards; earthly star is one of my favorites. This pretty much just gives scholar free Energy Siphons (upgraded version of Energy Drain), but without the annoying part of your faerie disappearing if you want this benefit.

I also combined expedience and fey illumination, but to be honest I don’t think this is necessary and doesn’t really add much. I’d like to know what other people think about this.

Well, there’s a lot of other small differences, but I think that’s pretty much everything. Unless I missed something important which I wouldn’t doubt. Even though this might seem like complaining, I do really like scholar and I just wish I could have experienced what it was like back in SB.

[benji42]

Please let me know what you think! Of course, this is all for fun (Square obviously doesn’t care about us healers), so I’d like to hear why my ideas would work, wouldn’t work, or more interesting changes that could be done to the scholar kit.

I probably should have proofread this before posting but ehhhhhhhh

[Nizzi]

Thanks for sharing your Scholar ideas! I like a lot of your ideas, and would love to get Miasma, Bane, and Shadow Flare back on SCH. One thing I don't agree with is your faerie getting an attack at all, and instead I think she should remain purely healing/supportive. One of the issues with Dissipation that people have is that it does take away 30s of Embrace healing (which adds up to like 1800 cure potency I believe?) and giving Eos/Selene the ability to attack as well would result in that trade off every time.

I like the idea of getting Aetherflow IV and having 2 charges of Indom to replace Fey Blessing - I think this is a logical conclusion to reducing oGCD bloat, the same with getting rid of Physick and Protraction as well.

Miasma III becoming AoE would be a bit strange though, as Miasma II was the AoE Miasma spell, maybe you meant Miasma upgrading into Miasma II?

Over all, this Scholar would definitely be more fun to play in current content than the Scholar we have at the moment. Good work!

[benji42]

Thanks for sharing your Scholar ideas! I like a lot of your ideas, and would love to get Miasma, Bane, and Shadow Flare back on SCH. One thing I don't agree with is your faerie getting an attack at all, and instead I think she should remain purely healing/supportive. One of the issues with Dissipation that people have is that it does take away 30s of Embrace healing (which adds up to like 1800 cure potency I believe?) and giving Eos/Selene the ability to attack as well would result in that trade off every time.

I like the idea of getting Aetherflow IV and having 2 charges of Indom to replace Fey Blessing - I think this is a logical conclusion to reducing oGCD bloat, the same with getting rid of Physick and Protraction as well.

Miasma III becoming AoE would be a bit strange though, as Miasma II was the AoE Miasma spell, maybe you meant Miasma upgrading into Miasma II?

Over all, this Scholar would definitely be more fun to play in current content than the Scholar we have at the moment. Good work!

Hello! Thanks for responding to my thread, I've read what you've posted in the past and I think you've very knowledgeable about job design.

Your worries about my idea of giving the faeries attacks is valid, but I did modify how the new dissipation-like ability would work so it doesn't remove your faerie after it's used anymore. It's in my spreadsheet but I forgot to notate that in my post. I do think this could be overpowered, but eh, it was just frustrating before. Maybe the healing buff could be reduced to 10% or smth.

And yeah, Miasma III was just a typo since I've gone through a few revisions and forgot to change that, thank you for pointing it out!

[SweetPete]

Thanks for sharing your Scholar ideas! I like a lot of your ideas, and would love to get Miasma, Bane, and Shadow Flare back on SCH. One thing I don't agree with is your faerie getting an attack at all, and instead I think she should remain purely healing/supportive. One of the issues with Dissipation that people have is that it does take away 30s of Embrace healing (which adds up to like 1800 cure potency I believe?) and giving Eos/Selene the ability to attack as well would result in that trade off every time.

I like the idea of getting Aetherflow IV and having 2 charges of Indom to replace Fey Blessing - I think this is a logical conclusion to reducing oGCD bloat, the same with getting rid of Physick and Protraction as well.

Miasma III becoming AoE would be a bit strange though, as Miasma II was the AoE Miasma spell, maybe you meant Miasma upgrading into Miasma II?

Over all, this Scholar would definitely be more fun to play in current content than the Scholar we have at the moment. Good work!

There could be a toggle skill that switches the faeries between healing and damage. That could be cool. Need healing? Toggle on the heal. No healing needed? Toggle it off for damage.