SCH is a mess, thematically and visually, and needs streamlining

[ty_taurus]

Just replace that with a pure shield. Make it stackable like a reverse haima with a 1s recast so you can dump 1-3 AF on your tank so you can spam broil/aow in peace

So unnecessary shielding that gives you the illusion that you’re doing something of value. It’s kinda like giving a child a toy hammer and a separate plank of wood to make them feel like they’re helping.

The solution to Energy Drain is pretty easy really: Make Aetherflow a resource exclusively used for DPS. If your optimization aspect is managing some combination of DPS resources, and that\\'s the consistentd expectation for every use of Aetherflow, then there\\'s no more punishment aspect other than performing your rotation correctly, which is the same expectations every DPS job has.

But what do we do with the resources that use Aetherflow currently? Well, fortunately (or unfortunately) SCH already has a second gauge that has absolutely no uses of notable value currently and is basically just a decoration on your screen at the moment that we can just shift healing cooldowns onto.

[ForsakenRoe]

So the solution is, if I understand this right, not 'remove ED so Aetherflow heals don't feel like they're competing vs damage', it's 'rework Aetherflow heals to use Fairy Gauge so that Aetherflow is ONLY spent on ED'? How is using AF then 3 ED's different from using a reworked ED that does 300p, once per min, to give you the Aetherflow stacks? They'd fulfill the same function and do the same damage. I'm not sure why we should keep designs that are clearly past their use-by date when we could replace them with fresh new design for optimization in a different way. Of course, losing it and having it replaced with nothing is not good, but I'm going to (perhaps foolishly) look at this from the point of view that SE will replace stuff with other stuff, not just remove it outright ala Kaiten. Like Fairy gauge is pretty pointless feeling atm yes, but so was Salted Earth in SHB, and in EW it honestly should have been removed. Instead they tied a 500p hit to it to keep it on life support.

There are plenty of different ways that SCH could have other 'optimizations'. We don't see PLD having an offensive Oath spender (and Shield Swipe was removed for the same reason), or WAR having a defensive for Wrath, because if there's a choice between 'not-damage' and 'damage', people choose damage, sometimes to the point of causing a wipe, and blaming others for not picking up the slack. We all remember DRKs being squishy in SB because they refused to use TBN cos 'dps loss', we've probably seen a barsing SCH or WHM in SHB who cause a wipe by not using Lily heals/Soil expecting their cohealer to pick up the slack, etc. At this point I expect SE will just be spiteful and make ED do 10 potency, so that even if someone DOES decide to dump all their 'flows on it, they're going to get like 240 potency total gain, and then crit variance means their gained damage is potentially outplayed by someone who just got lucky.

And that shielding is only 'unnecessary' if it doesn't save you a GCD. Which in prog, it probably would, and I think it'd be nice to be able to apply a shield, as the 'shield healer', that isn't a GCD, for the purpose of Deployment Tactics, especially if it can interact with Recitation or Protraction. The only OGCD option to shield atm is Consolation.

[Nizzi]

I'm astounded that people want to remove the last bit of complexity that Scholar has for more bloated and worthless oGCD heals or a token worthless damage oGCD that interacts with nothing. At some point, we have to accept that we get the job design we deserve.

[ty_taurus]

I can’t quote because the response is too sling and I’m on my phone.

The solution I brought up would not be as uncharitable as Aetherflow is only used for ED and nothing else. It would be about having a selection of DPS tools including new DoTs or things like Shadowflare, not just a dinky ED.

Then you add a new way to generate Fey Gauge that is manually decided and not a consequence of cooldowns, and make that your healing resource gauge.

The proposed solution I commented on suggested a barrier action with a 1 second cooldown. So in other words Lustrate but better or Lustrate but worse. Yay. We either get to turn Lustrate into a piece of vestigial bloat, or we get a button that won’t be used seriously because it’s better to just wait for Lustrate assuming you wouldn’t just use literally any other Aetherflow, and exists purely so that you can burn it when you’re overlapped on Aetherflow, but you get to feel marginally better because it’s not considered “overhealing” even if the barrier times out because it’s duration expired, or the amount of healing you saved yourself from would have just been covered by your faerie anyway.

Surely the prog tool that will have SCH’ players sobbing in church over.

[Calysto]

That's SCH problem.
Some people complain "oh noes, conflicting ressource, that's why SCH is broken"
Then people propose a solution (make ED a standalone ability and/or single AF gain + another AF dump that's less useless that overheal in this case)
Then it's another crowd that complain that whatever you do that isn't damage is useless as AF dump.
And it's the same the other way around when people want more damage or dots back.
You can't please anyone, so SCH is stuck as a mess.

[ForsakenRoe]

I can’t quote because the response is too sling and I’m on my phone.

The solution I brought up would not be as uncharitable as Aetherflow is only used for ED and nothing else. It would be about having a selection of DPS tools including new DoTs or things like Shadowflare, not just a dinky ED.

Then you add a new way to generate Fey Gauge that is manually decided and not a consequence of cooldowns, and make that your healing resource gauge.

The proposed solution I commented on suggested a barrier action with a 1 second cooldown. So in other words Lustrate but better or Lustrate but worse. Yay. We either get to turn Lustrate into a piece of vestigial bloat, or we get a button that won’t be used seriously because it’s better to just wait for Lustrate assuming you wouldn’t just use literally any other Aetherflow, and exists purely so that you can burn it when you’re overlapped on Aetherflow, but you get to feel marginally better because it’s not considered “overhealing” even if the barrier times out because it’s duration expired, or the amount of healing you saved yourself from would have just been covered by your faerie anyway.

Surely the prog tool that will have SCH’ players sobbing in church over.

The stipulation that there'd be multiple DPS Aetherflow spenders was not included in the comment I was responding to, but yeh that sounds good. Not overspending early so you have enough left for a 30s CD or such. However, since the order they come in is already kinda set in stone, would it not be easier to have Aetherflow heals stay as Aetherflow heals, and change Fey gauge into the 'DPS resource'? That way, Energy Drain can stay as the 'this is away to dump Aetherflow', perhaps give it's MP restore back (but remove it's damage) and have Fey gauge have more use than just Union. Then the issue is 'What the hell do we do with Union', since it can't really be converted over into an Aetherflow heal without it losing the ability to cancel it midchannel. Is it possible to have a 'charged action' with like, 10 charges? A 10 charge action that restores one charge per 15 seconds, and consumes a charge per tick, is that even doable in this crusty engine

[ty_taurus]

The stipulation that there'd be multiple DPS Aetherflow spenders was not included in the comment I was responding to, but yeh that sounds good. Not overspending early so you have enough left for a 30s CD or such. However, since the order they come in is already kinda set in stone, would it not be easier to have Aetherflow heals stay as Aetherflow heals, and change Fey gauge into the 'DPS resource'? That way, Energy Drain can stay as the 'this is away to dump Aetherflow', perhaps give it's MP restore back (but remove it's damage) and have Fey gauge have more use than just Union. Then the issue is 'What the hell do we do with Union', since it can't really be converted over into an Aetherflow heal without it losing the ability to cancel it midchannel. Is it possible to have a 'charged action' with like, 10 charges? A 10 charge action that restores one charge per 15 seconds, and consumes a charge per tick, is that even doable in this crusty engine

It makes far more sense for Aetherflow to be the DPs gauge both in lore as well as from a player experience standpoint since that’s the role it fulfills for SMN. It makes way more sense that the Fey Gauge be healing based not only because it’s associated with your faerie.

In my SCH concept over in the echo chamber, I outlined what I think feels a lot more fluid—generate fey gauge for GCD heals and utility that changes based on your current faerie, and those heals generate Aetherflow for you, but is not the only source of Aetherflow Generation. It mirrors how new SMN works in some ways which also makes the jobs connection to ACN’s leveling experience more intuitive since you currently need to break your neck turning your head upside down to make sense of SCH as a new player when you unlock the job.

The only reason I could see keeping Aetherflow as the healing resource in this example is because “it’s always been that way” which is not a valid reason, but an excuse.

The current healers are some of the shittiest game design I’ve ever seen. I see no reason to not approach these designs with a bulldozer instead of silk gloves.

[Duskane]

isn't it annoying SMN job stone is green while SCH is blue.

[Iedarus]

The simplest change would be to shave off unnecessary heal buttons and give unique DPS buttons. With the existence of Protraction, it's clear the devs are running out of ideas for ways a Scholar can fill a health bar; they are so adamant on the "no healer dpsing" philosophy despite the hardest content in the game requiring healers to dps. As for Aetherflow, I honestly think they should just give it the hammer. Sage has a significantly better version of it so Scholar needs something else to set it apart that doesn't cause conflicting ability interaction.

[ty_taurus]

The simplest change would be to shave off unnecessary heal buttons and give unique DPS buttons. With the existence of Protraction, it's clear the devs are running out of ideas for ways a Scholar can fill a health bar; they are so adamant on the "no healer dpsing" philosophy despite the hardest content in the game requiring healers to dps. As for Aetherflow, I honestly think they should just give it the hammer. Sage has a significantly better version of it so Scholar needs something else to set it apart that doesn't cause conflicting ability interaction.

I actually like Protraction conceptually, however, I have a couple issues with it:

1. It doesn't last long enough. Increasing max HP can be a a really unique form of mitigation as it's essentially a refillable barrier, but that value needs time to actually benefit from that functionality.

2. I think it suites the pure healers better. As I mentioned, it's essentially a barrier in concept--one that can be refilled through regens, perhaps. I think it would feel a lot more interesting if pure healers didn't have any barriers, but could instead extend max HP and allow their regens to more effectively keep these max HP "barriers" in functionality refilled as a way to approach the issue of needing mitigation. Meanwhile, barrier healers shouldn't have max HP extension buffs, but just have their much larger barriers.

That said, I also think a concept ForsakenRoe brought up in another thread in the past about putting the healers on a scale from pure to barrier, where WHM is the dedicated pure healer, SGE is the dedicated barrier healer, SCH could be the barrier healer who could be a pinch pure healer with Eos or play more into their mitigation role as Selene, and AST balances the two roles evenly. Meanwhile Healer #5 we get in like 6 or 8 years from now would be a pure healer who could be a pinch barrier healer in some fashion, like with the SCH example of having Eos fulfill some pure healer duties. It's certainly one way the healers could develop in a more satisfying way.