SCH concept changes

[ty_taurus]

Some general thoughts on the ideas:

Dissipation
- Dissipation has been and always will be a terrible concept. It makes no sense gimping your own sustained healing and cutting off access to several actions to increase your healing output through other methods. It's like buying a $10 bill for $15. I see no reason to try and salvage it when it should just be pruned. Making its healing impact more significant makes it slightly better, but it's a tumor that's better off excised than sterilized.

Energy Drain
- It's a simple suggestion that's been brought up before and would be totally fine. One issue not being resolved though is the constant environment where the current ED feels unhealthy to continue existing, but losing it makes Aetherflow management feel sloppy when you waste unused stacks on Lustrate or overcap on unused Aetherflow. Making ED the new Aetherflow like with SMN does actually exacerbate this issue because you're now more heavily pressured to use ED on cooldown as it's a part of your DPS rotation, essentially. A small suggestion:

New action: Energy Shock or some similar name.
- This is a GCD DPS spell that deals Broil potency damage to your target and 50% less damage to all enemies nearby the target.
- Consumes all remaining Aetherflow. For each stack of Aetherflow consumed, provides some type of stacking buff. A few ideas for this stacking buff:
1. Increases the value of your next Galvanize by 3%/6%/9% depending on Aetherflow consumed.
2. Decreases the cooldown of your next Recitation by 5/10/15 seconds upon use of Recitation.
3. Restores 4%/8%/12% of your maximum MP.
Or something along those lines.

This new action would give a way to burn Aetherflow that doesn't create an awkward priority system. The reward for using it needs to ultimately be worse than using Aetherflow on Aetherflow actions, but pushes the value forward into one future use of something so you get something out of unused stacks.

Fey Union
- I disagree here. Firstly, this creates the same issue that you're trying to resolve with removing ED as an Aetherflow spender, because now your Fey Union healing is competing with DPS. I feel the Fey Gauge should either be removed completely, or it should be reworked into SCH's healing resource gauge while Aetherflow shifts to an offensive resource gauge. I see what you're trying to do by making the Fey Gauge something worth remembering that it exists, but this isn't the right solution.

Gap Closer
- I agree with Osmond, a gap closer doesn't really need to be on SCH. SGE has it because of Phlegma, and it feels aesthetically fitting on SGE, but I don't really see a valid reason to put it on SCH, especially when SCH largely outperforms SGE as it is.

Recitation
- It's fine.

Selene
- Always in favor of giving Selene a different set of tools, and I do respect that this does not include any offensive buffs that would make Eos feel invalidated, though I think there's more room to consolidate here. I'd have Fey Illumination and Whispering Dawn merged, but remove the magic damage reduction aspect, and have Eos' two unique actions be that and Fey Blessing. For Selene, I don't necessarily think the barrier angle really fits with Selene. In most casts, the difference in whether you're applying a regen or a barrier with your faerie are two shades of the same flavor, and so it ends up feeling superfluous, generally. Instead, I'd suggest making Eos offer more healing and Selene offering more utility. Merge the removed magic damage reduction from the combined WD/Illumination over to Selene's debuff and have her inflict a debuff along with a magic damage dealt down effect so it has universal applications and isn't exclusively just a trash mob button (also I personally like the idea of having SCH inflict Toad instead of Paralyze since it's not going to work on any enemies that matter anyway). Then instead of a barrier, I'd honestly move Expedient over to Selene. I know most people would probably disagree, but I think it makes the choice between Eos and Selene far more meaningful when you're deciding between more OGCD healing or additional utility, especially considering Expedient is always a luxury, but never a requirement. Perhaps just make it the sprint and move the mitigation elsewhere to something SCH always has ready.

Exploitation Tactics
- I'm not sure if having damage based on damage taken is a good thing because it creates a lot of very cheesy situations. It should probably just be flat potency striking enemies that hit your target. That said, it's an interesting way to create incentives on barrier application, especially since it can potentially make Adloquium a DPS gain, though that also can create a weird and potentially dangerous incentive, not to mention how much damage it could deal when applied with Succor since it would supposedly affect the entire party. You'd be getting large DPS gains every 90 seconds and barriers when SCH is already a much stronger barrier applicator with its GCDs than SGE. Charges could help, but you'd probably also want it for burst windows. Honestly, I worry this might cause more harm than good even though it's an interesting idea. That's kinda the unfortunate aspect to healer DPS meta, it's very difficult to combine DPS and healing as the healing ends up being wasteful in pursuit of more DPS.

Overall
- There are a few good ideas here that could smooth out some of the clunk that SCH faces, but not all of it, and in some cases may cause different, new clunk in place of the old clunk. It also isn't going to address SCH's non-existent gameplay loop which is what all the healers really need to focus on with reworks, but I do admire some of the creativity here.

[KarmaYraeon]

Dissipation

Very true. While the idea was mostly just working under the assumption that the ability otherwise remained the same. If they are adamant on getting rid of the faerie, maybe they could do something like the following;

Dissipation > Assimilation
Unifies you and your faerie, granting you a full Aetherflow stack. Also increases HP recovery via healing actions 20%. In addition, allows the execution of Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Union and Fey Blessing without a faerie for the duration.
Duration: 30s
Current faerie will return once the effect expires.
Summon Eos or Summon Selene cannot be executed while under the effect of Assimilation.
Can only be executed while in combat.

Energy Drain

I think its important to note that overcapping on aetherflow is mostly a nonissue given you can always spend it on energy drain as it currently is, but I suppose to that end consolidating them into one button kind of defeats the purposes of having energy drain as an aetherflow spender in the first place. I was also considering the alternative idea of changing how they use aetherflow and faerie gauge entirely;

Energy Drain (60s)
Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it with a potency of 100 to target and all enemies nearby it.
Additional effect: Aetherflow III
Additional effect: Restores 20% of maximum MP.

Aetherflow
Now a trait rather than an ability, each stack of aetherflow is a new spender resource.

Ruin II
New effect: Action changes to Sear while under the effect of Aetherflow.

Sear / Sear II / Sear III / Sear IV
Spell, instant cast, 2.5s recast, 400 MP, 25y range, 5y radius.

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 220 / 240 / 255 / 295 (matches Ruin/Broil potency) for the first enemy, and 40% less for all nearby enemies.
Additional effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10
Aetherflow Gauge cost: 1

(Mostly just for the instant cast broil potency, Sear 4 would also be a DPS gain over AoW 2 vs multiple targets up to and including 38 targets)

Embrace, Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Blessing
New additional effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 5

Faerie Gauge
Now only increases with Sear and faerie actions. Lustrate, Sacred Soil, Indom and Excog instead use 10 faerie gauge to cast. Fey Union could perhaps cost 5 per tick instead of 10, and tick every 1s for 150 potency rather than every 3s for 300 potency.

This would all generally allow for SCH to consolidate energy drain and aetherflow without having to completely change any of its gauges or base functionality. It would give faerie gauge far more interaction, and also give sch an opportunity for better skill expression and optimization through the use of Sear to keep up time without dropping DPS. I suppose to that end, the only problem is when you don't need to use any of these fae gauge spenders, though separating it from DPS means that it isn't really a problem to not have to use them all the time.

[ty_taurus]

Very true. While the idea was mostly just working under the assumption that the ability otherwise remained the same. If they are adamant on getting rid of the faerie, maybe they could do something like the following;

Dissipation > Assimilation
Unifies you and your faerie, granting you a full Aetherflow stack. Also increases HP recovery via healing actions 20%. In addition, allows the execution of Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination, Fey Union and Fey Blessing without a faerie for the duration.
Duration: 30s
Current faerie will return once the effect expires.
Summon Eos or Summon Selene cannot be executed while under the effect of Assimilation.
Can only be executed while in combat.

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute. Deleting a chunk of your healing toolkit to get more healing just doesn't make sense no matter how you want to spin it. And I'm not trying to say you're a strong proponent of erasing the faerie; you're trying to find a way to make this idea work since SE seems hell-bent on swatting the faerie out of gameplay as frequently as possible, but it's on them to just accept that this is shitty design and no one wants it.

If you're going to yeet your faerie across the room and kill a chunk of free healing, the rewards needs to be pretty extraordinary. More healing doesn't and will not cut it. A major burst of damage might, but then you now have to gimp your own healing output at regular intervals in order to engage with your burst window, which isn't a great thing either. There's really no answer that isn't awful in some regard.

Rather than trying to bargain for a less awful Dissipation, just delete Dissipation. It's what SCH players have wanted since 3.0.

[ForsakenRoe]

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute. Deleting a chunk of your healing toolkit to get more healing just doesn't make sense no matter how you want to spin it. And I'm not trying to say you're a strong proponent of erasing the faerie; you're trying to find a way to make this idea work since SE seems hell-bent on swatting the faerie out of gameplay as frequently as possible, but it's on them to just accept that this is shitty design and no one wants it.

If you're going to yeet your faerie across the room and kill a chunk of free healing, the rewards needs to be pretty extraordinary. More healing doesn't and will not cut it. A major burst of damage might, but then you now have to gimp your own healing output at regular intervals in order to engage with your burst window, which isn't a great thing either. There's really no answer that isn't awful in some regard.

Rather than trying to bargain for a less awful Dissipation, just delete Dissipation. It's what SCH players have wanted since 3.0.

They did write healing 'actions' here, not spells, so that 20% would presumably buff Union, W.Dawn, etc too. I like this idea as it'd bring back Rouse in a sense, being able to juice up a W.Dawn in ye olde days was always nice and rewarding feeling. The loss of Embrace for those 30s would be absolutely negligible compared to the extra healing provided to the other OGCDs by that 20%. My question is, the fairy has to stand still to channel Fey Union, and can't do any other action or the tether breaks. Does this restriction still apply to the player when Assimilation is in effect?

[KarmaYraeon]

Does this restriction still apply to the player when Assimilation is in effect?

Honestly I think it would be really nice if you weren't restricted like the fairy is. It would give scholar a really solid consistent heal while moving. Of course its likely that fey union wouldn't actually be available at all and the only faerie actions available would just be WD, FI and FB but those are still solid options to have +20% on.

[KarmaYraeon]

They did write healing 'actions' here, not spells, so that 20% would presumably buff Union, W.Dawn, etc too. I like this idea as it'd bring back Rouse in a sense, being able to juice up a W.Dawn in ye olde days was always nice and rewarding feeling. The loss of Embrace for those 30s would be absolutely negligible compared to the extra healing provided to the other OGCDs by that 20%. My question is, the fairy has to stand still to channel Fey Union, and can't do any other action or the tether breaks. Does this restriction still apply to the player when Assimilation is in effect?

I was thinking about this question again and, while I've already responded, the question paired with the more recent comments about Seraph made me think about Assimilation acting like a situations Neutral Sect for scholar.
Allowing Assimilation to be cast regardless of what faerie is currently out would maybe make the ability more interesting as well. You can cast it at any time to consume and effectively become your faerie with a 20% healing boost to its abilities, but at the consequence of being centered on you. On the other hand, if you can get cooldowns to line up when you absolutely need it, you could consume Seraph instead of Selene or Eos to get access to Consolation over Fey Blessing. Without embrace/seraphic veil the difference between the two doesn't really matter too much, but it would be an interesting min/max option to go for. Furthermore, we could assume that consuming Seraph gives the abilities of Seraph for the full Assimilation cooldown, which in turn also means Getting 4 casts of Consolation with a single Seraph cast, rather than the usual max of 2, since you could cast seraph, and just before its timer runs out, cast Assimilation to gain its abilities for Assimilation's full 30s cooldown as well, in turn making Seraph more valuable as well.

[KarmaYraeon]

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute.

To be fair, ideally it would be great to just change dissipation to something else entirely like sch flavour Temperance, but the idea was that you would basically get the bulk of faerie healing but souped up while also empowering your own healing. If they basically turned you into your fairy while buffing your healing by 20%, I imagine you would be able to cover 10 casts of Embrace pretty easily. Souped up Whispering Dawn for instance would be 112 extra potency per person. In an 8-man that is already worth almost 5 casts of embrace in a single gcd. Throw in Fey Blessing for another 64 potency per person is almost 3 more Embrace casts on its own too. This is of course ignoring other healing you might do as well. For instance its more likely that as a scholar you're probably going to Dissipation/Assimilation during downtime/before a big mechanic to get the added healing on a critlo which would mean over 216 potency on everyone's shields, and 432 extra potency on the initial target. The adlo cast alone already covers the embrace healing lost and then some.

This all being said, like I started with, this is just grasping at straws for if they absolutely insist on keeping dissipation as it is with eating the faerie. Ideally it is changed to literally anything else but oh well. Working with what we can I guess. Also the aesthetic bias of being interested in the idea of sch getting wings as well...

[AnotherPerson]

This still doesn't work because you're losing all the free healing you get from your faerie for half a minute. Deleting a chunk of your healing toolkit to get more healing just doesn't make sense no matter how you want to spin it. And I'm not trying to say you're a strong proponent of erasing the faerie; you're trying to find a way to make this idea work since SE seems hell-bent on swatting the faerie out of gameplay as frequently as possible, but it's on them to just accept that this is shitty design and no one wants it.

If you're going to yeet your faerie across the room and kill a chunk of free healing, the rewards needs to be pretty extraordinary. More healing doesn't and will not cut it. A major burst of damage might, but then you now have to gimp your own healing output at regular intervals in order to engage with your burst window, which isn't a great thing either. There's really no answer that isn't awful in some regard.

Rather than trying to bargain for a less awful Dissipation, just delete Dissipation. It's what SCH players have wanted since 3.0.

Not necessarily, since Assimilation boosts all healing actions, so Whispering Dawn, Aetherpact, and Fey Blessing will all receive potency changes. The added bonuses of Aetherflow returning basically creates a horizontal shift in resources (moving the power of sustained Embrace casts into Whispering Dawn, Aetherpact, Fey Blessing while simultaneously strengthening aetherflow healing + GCD shields). Provided that Aetherpact doesn't stop the Scholar from attacking on their own and is treated as a tether regen buff, it would be a good change, albeit long overdue.
At least this is much more preferable than the current Dissipation, which just eats up Embrace healing + locks you out of all your faerie skills without strengthening them in any way. It would allow a lot more flexibility in resource management and control without being useful for only DPS gain via Energy Drain spam.

I don't agree with simply deleting Dissipation. Every time they just delete a skill, they don't necessarily give anything back to replace it. IMO, it's a worse tradeoff since you don't even have ways for quick recovery afterwards if you consume all your resources, much less a replacement for what that skill can provide.

[KarmaYraeon]

Exploitation

I considered making Exploitation Tactics a flat potency, having used Warrior's Vengeance as a reference, but I think the concern there is that it would be even cheesier than making it an amount of damage based on shield damage, since if it was a direct reaction for each hit, regardless of how much damage is actually dealt, you get situations such as tanks using mitigation to make a shield last for more hits, or in the case of paladin and gunbrealer - using their invuln to outright ignore damage to the shield while still getting the retaliation damage for having the shield in the first place. Having the damage tied to the shield directly simply means that its a fixed potency regardless of how quickly or where the damage is applied. That being said, I won't deny that it would basically turn into one of those burst window only buttons...