Because why not: A Moderate Proposal - SCH

[Sebazy]

For the most part the changes seem agreeable, I've got a few niggles with it but I don't think there's anything that couldn't be tweaked out.

The only real oversight I can see is upgrading Lustrate into Excog. That leaves SCH in a bit of a unique position where it doesn't really have a dependable single target instant cast heal with good reach to get someone topped if they still need more HP for an incoming hit but are over 50% so Excog won't fire in time. It's not that uncommon for people to dodge AoE heals in Savage so I could see this being a bit annoying.

Personally I think you should be bolder with Dissipation, make it detonate or even refresh existing shields or something as a burst of healing or damage so that the name still makes sense.

As for Energy Drain, IMO I think the ability is beyond cursed at this point. A measly 100 potency 'nuke' shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as abilities as powerful as Soil and Indom, yet here we are. Aetherflow as a whole is damned if you do and damned if you don't right now because we shouldn't be in a situation where we can recommend shelving our most powerful healing tools for such a trite amount of DPS. But yet remove the spender and what else are you left with in casual content besides wild amounts of overhealing. Honestly, if SE are happy with healing requirements to be as low as they are now, the entire Aetherflow system needs a ground up rethink IMO.

Merging Blessing and Whispering Dawn makes a ton of sense, Blessing in it's current form is pretty worthless if you ask me, but adding it's up front HPS to WD and sidestepping the

Lastly, Broil IV spreading dots? Yeah I can get behind that. Good idea and a nice homage to Bane.

[Renathras]

Hmmmm.......

They're also moving away from the Ruin name (for SCH), and Miasma would mean they could have Ruin 2 just be shared with ACN (not in a game backend sense, as SCH's are based on Mind, but in a "conceptual for new player" sense of going from ACN to SCH). In fact, I suspect if they do a major rework of SCH, it will start by making levels 1-30 line up CLOSER to ACN (or splitting them completely, though I dislike that idea FAR more). Giving SCH Outburst and having it become Art of War (which...would be ranged at that point and have an icky cast time... <_<) or making Energy Drain the Aetherflow button and having Fester be what Energy Drain is...but that's a whole other hassle. I don't think they're going to do that (even though making it more intuitive would probably not be BAD for newer players) since they split SCH completely from ACN back when ShB launched/5.0.

At some point they may make the base cures straight upgrades other than for SGE, since it has Eukrasia. Not saying it's a sure thing, but notice how none of the PvP kits on ANY of the Healers have Cure 1/Benefic 1/Physic. If they're relatively MP neutral vs the lower level spells, and have the same cast times (Benefic II already does this), then there's no reason to retain the lower level one in a world of "fighting button bloat".

How would Lustrate being Excog without a CD change how you heal?

They removed ED in ShB, and that IS possible. But my point with this was an olive branch to the people here I'm constantly butting heads with because they want all the Healer Jobs to be DPS Jobs. I'm trying to see if some kind of neutral ground can exist, and I honestly kind of like a lot of these changes.

Just leaving the pet out during Dissipation would effectively fix ALL the problems people have with Dissipation. And it's not like it's a hard thing for them to do mechanically to make it NOT remove the pet and resummon it. It should actually be easier for the game's backend to handle, honestly.

Energy drain is still the core of scholar’s mp management, inflicting sage’s peculiarities upon scholar doesn’t help there. If there are people who can’t see this, frankly their opinion should be discarded.

Wait, it is? I thought they changed that?

Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100.
Additional Effect: Absorbs a portion of damage dealt as HP
Additional Effect: Increases Faerie Gauge by 10
Aetherflow Gauge Cost: 1

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/scholar/

How is ED related to MP management, as it neither consumes nor generates MP?

I'm also curious how shunting Energy Drain to compete with Aetherpact is "inflicting sage" onto SCH? I don't think any other Job has a spamable oGCD to burn 2-4 times from its gauge 0-100 resource that can ALSO alternatively be used for healing and which they generate by DoT upkeep and primary resource consumption. That would be unique across all Jobs in the game right now, wouldn't it?

For the most part the changes seem agreeable, I've got a few niggles with it but I don't think there's anything that couldn't be tweaked out.

Genuinely glad to hear it.

The only real oversight I can see is upgrading Lustrate into Excog. That leaves SCH in a bit of a unique position where it doesn't really have a dependable single target instant cast heal with good reach to get someone topped if they still need more HP for an incoming hit but are over 50% so Excog won't fire in time. It's not that uncommon for people to dodge AoE heals in Savage so I could see this being a bit annoying.

Ah, but that's the beauty of the Aetherpact change. Since it's a micro-Lustrate, it covers that gap. Consider that Lustrate is 600 Potency. If Aetherpact is 300, that means you could use it (and it's an oGCD weave) to heal half of that. Unless someone needs MORE than half the Lustrate heal, then Aetherpact is your go-to. And costing only 10 Gauge means even with liberal Energy Drain use, you should always have enough to throw out an Aetherpact or two in a pinch. We could remove the internal GCD on it and just make it an oGCD for Eos (I think that's how that works mechanically, anyway), but it more or less should patch that problem. If the person needed more healing than that, you could use an Adlo instead, I suppose, but this shouldn't happen often.

You also can use your AF tools more liberally, so you COULD use an Indom (less good option) or Soil (better option), which you might be doing anyway if expecting a big spike of damage. Likewise, you could use the new Fey Dawn/Blessing to top that person off and apply a HoT to the party. Blessing's up front 350 heal + Aetherpact's 300 is around the same potency as Lustrate's 600 now (given pet potencies and all that.)

Granted, we'd want to give Aetherpact at a much lower level.

I mean, we could also just put a heal on the front end of Excog, but I'm trying not to make it MORE powerful.

Personally I think you should be bolder with Dissipation, make it detonate or even refresh existing shields or something as a burst of healing or damage so that the name still makes sense.

Maybe, but I'm more just thinking something that doesn't rock the boat too much but makes it feel less bad to use.

As for Energy Drain, IMO I think the ability is beyond cursed at this point.

Maybe, but I (the anti-DPS person I am) like ED existing. I just don't like it fighting with all these great healing tools. Fighting with Aetherpact is a much more fair fight. As you note, we shouldn't even be mentioning it with Soil and Indom, so this change addresses that. It's also why it's important to me that there BE a spender. In ShB, before they gave ED back, I suggested Lustrate being given a shield like Divine Benison - it made sense to me that the OG shield healer should have a...shield...using its main healing resource. And shields are VERY rarely wasted, so it would make a good AF dump. Excog makes a good alternative as its heal is also rarely wasted (especially on a tank/off-tank), but the CD gets in the way of that. Without the CD, not only is Excog more flexible, it ensures we have an AF dump without needing the cursed fight with ED.

Merging Blessing and Whispering Dawn makes a ton of sense, Blessing in it's current form is pretty worthless if you ask me, but adding it's up front HPS to WD and sidestepping the

Your sentence got clipped there, but yeah, glad we agree.

Lastly, Broil IV spreading dots? Yeah I can get behind that. Good idea and a nice homage to Bane.

Wow! Thank you! Genuinely mean that. I'm trying to keep the idea that it costs SOMEthing to use (foregone Art damage on the other enemies + short cast time vs Art's instant), but fulfills the old Bane's objective while not adding to button bloat nor adding to Aetherflow competition. This was what came to mind. Glad you appreciate it.

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Honestly, even though I'm not a gung-ho DPS guy, I think these changes I could live with. It's CLOSE-ISH to leaving SCH alone (an objective you guys know I've had), but does make the DPS a bit more involved and engaging, raises the skill cap some, and mainly smooths over a lot of SCH's clunk/rough edges/anti-synergies.

If SCH could be like this, I would find it agreeable. Glad some of you feel that way, too.

[Osmond]

Unless you have something explain if upgrading lustrate to excog, with it's current effects plus lustrate's cure potency on top of that, with the removal of the CD hence useable x 3, in the dev's eyes is a good idea in the long term w/o making a immediate patch to nerf the crap out of it for being extremely strong single person use?

[Renathras]

Oh right! I was going to compare to SB SCH:

So, in SB, SCH had the following collection of abilities:

Bio (2? 3?) - Instant cast DoT, shortish duration. (4-5 refreshes per min)
Miasma - Cast time DoT, moderate duration. (2-3 refreshes per min)
Ruin 2 - Instant nuke. (Movement and weave tool, 1-3 casts per min)
Bane - Instant oGCD AF spender that spread DoTs. (1 cast every ~20-30 sec in AOE combat, so 2-3x per min)
Shadow Flare - Instant oGCD, 60 sec CD, field effect DoT.
Energy Drain - Instant oGCD AF spender that did damage and gave the SCH a small amount of HP and MP. (1-3x per min, MP regen is now baked into Aetherflow and HP remains on ED)
Miasma 2 - Instant cast GCD AOE + DoT. Movement tool in boss fights if near the boss, spam "nuke" for AOE situations after spreading other DoTs with Bane. (Situational in single targets, spam filler in AOE)
Broil 2 - 2.5 sec cast GCD filler spam nuke.

I think that's all of them, though tell me if I'm forgetting any.

Out of the standard-ish 24 casts per minute, 4-5 were Bio, 2-3 were Miasma, 1-2 were Ruin 2 (or Miasma 2), and the remainder were Broil. So roughly 14 Broils per min vs the alternatives, when you were using the rest at a high rate.

Under this proposal, it's not at all that, mind you, but out of 24 casts per minute, 6 would be Biolysis/Miasma (vs 2 Biolysis now), with Miasma situationally being used more for additional movement or weaving. So that would be 18 Broils per minute, which isn't too far from 14 and is far better than the current situation of 22 Broils per minute.

Moreover, depending on what we make the Energy Drain cost, there will be a lot more ED weaving than now, AND this will be done alongside more AF heal weaving (Excog/Soil/Indom) since ED won't be stealing their resources. Miasma 2 generates 25 Faerie Gauge every 15 sec, or 100 per minute, and AF spenders (not counting Dissipation) generate 30 more, for 130 total under full Miasma uptime. That's going to be between 4 and 6 (again, depending on cost) Energy Drains (if you're not needing to heal with Aetherpact, and for the purpose of this target dummy napkin math, we're assuming your AF + Faerie oGCDs are up to the task so you don't need Aetherpact in this scenario), which is up to twice as many EDs as you use now, AND this is alongside 3x more AF oGCD heal weaves. So that's a lot of oGCD presence, calling back to SCH's historical nature as a heavily oGCD based healer, and extending that to an oGCD damage playstyle as well.

You also get a lot of decision points, such as maybe wanting to use Miasma even before the DoT is done so that you can use an AF/Eos oGCD and double weave in an ED to prevent overcapping (or just get in a bit more damage as refreshing Miasma early isn't going to be a huge DPS loss, especially if you're weaving ED for additional damage if you don't need the Faerie Gauge for Aetherpact healing).

So even though your Broil casts are a few more per minute than SB, you also have a lot going on on the oGCD side of the house and more decision points (not as in depth, but akin to how people describe BLM) on how to use your resources. NOT doing this, of course, won't destroy your gameplay, but it gives you additional room to optimize if you are a high achieving player or doing extra easy content. And while the rotation is more in depth than it is now, the gap in damage output isn't HUGE for those not fully engaging with it, and Miasma allows for a good deal of flexibility with the bulk of the damage being up front, making it less punitive if you need to use it as a movement tool. While it IS a loss, it's not a HUGE loss either, allowing both people who want to optimize to do so and those who can't for whatever reason to still be viable, if a bit less optimal.

SB SCH would press 14 Broils, ~10 non-Broil GCDs, 3 AF oGCDs, and 1 Shadow Flare per minute. Total: 28 damage buttons per minute.

This SCH would press 18 Broils, ~6 non-Broil GCDs (with potential additional Miasma situational uses), 3 AF oGCDs, and ~6 Energy Drains (when using all gauge for it) per minute. Total: 33 damage buttons per minute.

I dunno, it's not identical but it seems fairly comparable.

[GrimGale]

As for Energy Drain, IMO I think the ability is beyond cursed at this point. A measly 100 potency 'nuke' shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as abilities as powerful as Soil and Indom, yet here we are.

Before the adjustment to Misery's potency (900 + aoe) , WHM didn't want to interact with its lillies because it lost 340 potency a minute in exchange for instant MP free healing.

300 potency a minute for 3 energy drains a minute (more if you include dissipation in burst windows) in exchange for Soil or Indom is definitely not as flagrant (Or maybe it is, I don't know anymore), but its still a DPS loss to use, especially when SCH has AF free abilities: Seraph, Whispering Dawn, Fey llumination, Protraction, Fey Blessing, and Recitation.

ED is a tactical choice of course. On the dwindling rare occassions where Soil would
save your co-healer a GCD heal, its probably better to use AF for healing. It gives SCH a certain tactical flair, but its in this weird spot where its potency isn't that significant to feel wasteful, yet its still remains as a potency loss over other more efficient options.

I personally would remove its damage and simply make it give back MP as a call back to the Syphon spell from classic FF. It would still retain its AF dump use, it would just not conflict with Dissipation anymore and AF usage to heal.

It would also make SCH less clunky, but definitely more boring to play.

[ForsakenRoe]

Ruin II replaced with Miasma: Very nice

Physic upgrades to Adlo: I agree enough that I've also suggested this

Lustrate upgrades into Excogitation, Excogitation CD removed: I agree enough that I've also suggested this

Dissipation: Good start, there's plenty of other stuff that I'd look at. Like that 3min CD, dividing everything by 3 was a potential idea iirc (so, 60s CD, 10s duration, generate 1 aetherflow), it's not often we need 30 whole seconds of buffing our 'spell based healing' specifically, but a quick 10s boost for a couple of well placed shields could get a lot more uses found I think

Aetherpact: Interesting, and solves the 'Excog cannot top someone who's between 51% and 100% HP' issue. Rather than being 10 gauge, I assume it'd function better if it were stronger/costed 20 so it feels chunkier, maybe like 500p/25 gauge?

Energy Drain decoupled from Aetehrflow: Possibly interesting way to make it feel less bad to have to use a Soil, but it introduces the classic issue of 'what if I don't need the healing, what do I spend aetherflow on'. Personally I'm not too stressed about overcapping and just using AF CD when I still have 'more than zero' flows left but others are not me

Whispering Dawn upgrades to Fey Blessing: We're trying to make SCH and SGE feel more different, not more similar. This is just Physis 2... 2. Blessing's issue I think is that it doesn't cost gauge anymore. Giving it a gauge cost again would allow for the relative strength of the skill to be increased to feel good to use again

Broil IV now spreads DoTs from its target to enemy targets within 5y: indifferent

All in all, pretty agreeable

edit: an idea, one which will not be received well: Energy drain is changed from 'deals X potency damage' to 'Requires Bio or Miasma to be on the target. Reduces the remaining duration of one of those effects, chosen at random, by 3 seconds, and deals damage equal to the potency of the damage over time that was consumed'. Or some such wording. Basically, put DOTs up, get more EDs. Use EDs, speed DOT ticks up. Potentially the game chooses the same one multiple times compared to the other, now you have to refresh Miasma while Bio is at 6 seconds instead of the expected 12. It's less punishing to 'not use ED' in this case because it's not losing 100p, but instead 'one DOT tick' which is, what, 70 for Bio nowadays?

[fulminating]

Keep aetherflow’s 20% mp thing and add 5% to a 150-250 potency energy drain. Enough to bail you out if your whole party’s colossally misstepped but under normal conditions you’d be fine with lucid + aetherflow on cool-down. Also remove party buffs from all non-healers except maybe physical ranged.

[fulminating]

It could probably be 10%, I was on the fence about it eclipsing aetherflow. I think it's important to have a way to dump aetherflow productively because encouraging overcapping is at odds with the design for all the other jobs - you don't want to overcap mp on drk, you don't want to overcap beast gauge on war or cartridges or samurai stickers or whatever.

I think your maths is off. I'll go and test it myself, but from looking at a couple of parses it seems that energy drain's closer to 3-4% contribution even without exclusive use on ED. According to some calculations on the yedlihlad beach, energy drain is about 4.8% of my damage if I burn all aetherflow + dissipations on it and use it under chain. Energy drain doing 3149-6494 (3426 median), which was about 267dps/5525dps or 4.8..%. I did forget to use dissipation toward the end, so should probably have had marginally more.
Sorry for the delay, took ages to add up all those numbers from the flying text

[Renathras]

One nice thing this has shown is that we can find points of agreement and compromise, and even a workable system that makes (probably?) most people happy.

Contrary to popular belief, my issue isn't inherently with complexity, it's with things that I feel are needless (more steps to get to the same end) and clunky (unintuitive to understand and/or optimize, mechanically fighting the game's engine to achieve things, roundabout ways of doing things, and outright anti-synergies where the kit fights against ITSELF). It's one reason I do like the PvP kits, even the more attack focsued ones like SGE (though I don't like not having any kind of usable/spamable heal outside of combat...), because they condense things rather than having them be roundabout or convoluted to use.

As I've said before, I don't COMPLETELY hate DoTs, I don't like DoTs that don't do anything other than "you put it on the target...then wait for it to fall of...then put it on the target again", so things like Miasma ticks feeding into Energy Drain/Aetherpact use I don't mind, and Miasma doubling as a movement tool like Ruin 2 or Enchanted Reprise (RDM) I'm good with. I also like fewer, but more meaningful and useful buttons (the Physic upgrading to a slightly quicker cast, slightly less MP expensive Adlo; Fey Blessing being combined with Whispering Dawn; Lustrate upgrading into Excogitation; Miasma having Ruin 2's movement and weaving tool functionality but also a DoT and Gauge generator) as opposed to a bunch of random excess buttons that do the same thing (Tetra, Cure 2, Solace - while having individual use cases - are FAR less interesting than this SCH build's Aetherpact, Adlo, and Excog; having several DoTs that are...just flat DoTs and don't do anything other than exist to be a few buttons to push other than Broil IV that do slightly more damage).

Indeed, contrast this build's Aetherpact, Adlo, and Excog to WHM's Tetra, Cure 2, and Solace. We have a slightly weaker oGCD heal, but that consumes a secondary resource and is spamable, a weaker direct heal with a barrier attached, and a 3 per min limited resource spending heal (just like Solace) that has a strong heal contingent on the target's damage (or the buff expiring). Meanwhile, Tetra, Cure 2, and Solace work the same way, as an oGCD (with a CD), spamable heal that heals...for basically the same amount, and resource spender heal that heals...for basically the same amount.

One of the things that got me thinking about SCH as a base is that it's ALREADY somewhat complex, but more the diversity of its kit. Despite it suffering from button bloat, most of the buttons actually DO something useful. While half of WHM's kit may go unused, there's nothing in SCH's kit that goes unused or doesn't really have SOME use or is a carbon copy of something else in the kit, and a lot of its abilities work together like Recitation and Adlo or Excog, or Protraction with Adlo (and Recitation) and Deployment Tactics. So there's not a lot of fat to really trim to begin with, other than combining a few things that are less used (like Physic and Blessing) or things with potentially similar use cases (Lustrate and Excog) while modifying other abilities (like Aetherpact) to fill in any minor gaps created.

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Regardless, from my side, it's removing clunk and making abilities that are more useful and a bit more interesting, and removing the anti-synergies of the kit as a whole.

This concept is proof that can dovetail with increasing DPS complexity and engagement, simultaneously raising the skill ceiling, but not to the point that people are being terribly left behind, and without needing busywork or unintuitive optimizations.

Thus, an example of a case where everyone wins at the same time...which well meets the definition of a good compromise, I think.

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I think if SCH was made like this, people that like simple-ish things and healing focus still get that, and people that like optimizing damage and more skill expression get that, so it works for everyone even though the changes are RELATIVELY minor on the whole. Further, since this would be (MORE or less) a Healer being "left the same...ish", it would free up altering the other three Healer Jobs while keeping one with a more familiar style.

...while SCH was the last one I would have picked to keep more or less the same, it...honestly works.

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EDIT:

I think your maths is off. I'll go and test it myself, but from looking at a couple of parses it seems that energy drain's closer to 3-4% contribution even without exclusive use on ED. According to some calculations on the yedlihlad beach, energy drain is about 4.8% of my damage if I burn all aetherflow + dissipations on it and use it under chain. Energy drain doing 3149-6494 (3426 median), which was about 267dps/5525dps or 4.8..%. I did forget to use dissipation toward the end, so should probably have had marginally more.
Sorry for the delay, took ages to add up all those numbers from the flying text

I was comparing Energy Drain to the PARTY'S damage output/boss's health pool to determine how much faster the fight would be. ~3% of a Healers' DPS would be around 0.6% of the party's total DPS, wouldn't it?

I should note: It would probably be a bit higher than that (due to the +5% party buff, foods, tinctures, etc), but we're still talking in the ballpark of 10-20 seconds, maybe, for the average fight, and something like 1%ish of the party's total DPS? And that's if you use AF for nothing other than Energy Drains, meaning presumably the fight is going well and your DPS know what they're doing so that 10 or even 30 seconds shorter of a fight is still RELATIVELY inconsequential.

It could probably be 10%, I was on the fence about it eclipsing aetherflow. I think it's important to have a way to dump aetherflow productively because encouraging overcapping is at odds with the design for all the other jobs - you don't want to overcap mp on drk, you don't want to overcap beast gauge on war or cartridges or samurai stickers or whatever.

While I don't think that's strictly NECESSARY - we don't worry, for example, about overcapping MP (we don't aim to do it, but no one's going to blow a gasket if you aren't consuming MP faster than you're generating it) - that was the reason for the Excog change, as it gives you something to dump excess AF on that isn't (outright) overhealing. Moreover, by spending AF on Excogs, you get a LITTLE of the old WoW Druid "rolling HoT" feel (that, unlike rolling HoTs, actually WORKS with FFXIV's combat model...), and it generates Faerie Gauge when you can expend on Energy Drains, but also on Aetherpacts if you need those instead.

So you have your overcap protection there, and you have your Energy Drain optimization on the side, and you get both of those things while not discouraging Soil/Indom/Excog use. In fact, it encourages their use (and Miasma uptime) as it unlocks yet more healing resources (Aetherpact) if you need it AND more damage (Energy Drains) if you do not.

You can argue it isn't perfect - nothing is and I'm sure we could come up with something that would always be useful (for example, if Lustrate/Excog was a barrier instead of a heal and lasted for 10 minutes meaning AT SOME POINT it will be useful) - but it allows for most of the same optimization stuff you have now while fixing the clunky/"feels bad" of having Energy Drain fight with Soil/Indom/Excog, and burning AF stacks on Excog probably won't feel bad to most people.

[Osmond]

It would be fine if yes, energy drain is separated from the aetherflow stack, become a 30sec, CD single use that does 100 potency, but gives a dmg buff for the SCH. Sure, a DoT can work as well. A weaker dot with the same duration as biolysis, yet it’s free dmg. If want to be AoE Energy drain, with potency fall off, but the DoT is the key, I’m ok with it. Don’t want to be to where 40+ EDs is what makes or breaks a run. When I hear that, I’m my head, “can we do less of that? Giving me flashbacks of ppl complaining of 111111111111 spam.”