G-give it Back T---T; !! (Scholar Edition)

[IDontPetLalas]

So when's the wedding and am I invited?

There shouldn't be a wedding in this case, unless you would expect to go to a country where minors are allowed to wed, because that's how low some of these posts have sunk. Fully expecting the next ones to go full uwu .

[Connor]

Isn’t this thread about Scholar?

Remember Eye for an Eye? It felt like a ‘staple’ Scholar ability but I guess it got thrown into the ‘fluff skill’ bin.

It’s sad that so many of Scholars indirect healing methods have been replaced with a bunch of super powered direct healing abilities.. It felt more unique leaning into the ‘buffs party to reduce damage so it doesn’t need to heal’. They could’ve fed into that with DoTs also having debuff effects. Basically PvP Scholar lol.

I don’t get why Shadow Flare was removed either, since when you think about it wasn’t it kinda helpful for healing as well as damage?

Slowing enemy attack frequency naturally leads to the party taking less damage overall, so doesn’t replacing it with Art of War just adds more pressure to healers instead of less? Like, they kinda went against their own designs lol. Then again, it’s not like it was ever ‘spammable’, and it got the cool-down treatment in like Stormblood anyway. Plus there’s the whole ‘one ground effect per person’ thing so then you have to choose between that or Sacred Soil (or rotate them between cooldowns so one is always up lol)

I think they’d please more people if Scholar was designed around that idea of ‘buffs / debuffs to reduce damage for less healing’. Offensive spells that debuff enemies to weaken would still serve the purpose of being supportive and ‘new healer friendly’, and they’d also give the job more offensive spells to use when not healing (i.e 80% of the time lol). Like, using PvP Biolysis as an example, a new healer could use it just to reduce damage dealt by the enemy whenever they feel they need it,, whilst a more experienced player could maximise uptime for more dps. I think Scholar should have actual buff spells too, but that’s a lot more controversial so I won’t get into it lol

Lastly while we’re on the topic of Scholar’s offensive actions, what’s up with Ruin II still being, well…Ruin II lol. I may be mistaken but no other job in the game is still using an attack animation from 2.0, so why does Scholar still have to fling magic pebbles like it’s 2.0 instead of having something cool and thematic

[Shurrikhan]

Isn’t this thread about Scholar?

Remember Eye for an Eye? It felt like a ‘staple’ Scholar ability but I guess it got thrown into the ‘fluff skill’ bin.

To be fair, it was kinda garbage. It was Reprisal applied in the style of Arm's Length's slow, but with only a 20% chance of activating each time an enemy hit you... and on a 3-minute cooldown. Against slower-attacking enemies, you could go the full duration without it activating. Boss both AAs slow and you popped E4E before a long cast? Wasted.

But, sure, they could have done something more/else with that theme of reactive/retributive barrier tech.

I don’t get why Shadow Flare was removed either, since when you think about it wasn’t it kinda helpful for healing as well as damage?

Similar story here. It was 1-minute-CD Salted Earth lasting 15s per cast at 50p/tick... with a 5% slow. Across the whole of a 7-minute fight, it wouldn't likely save you a single GCD of healing.

attack frequency naturally leads to the party taking less damage overall

That only really applies to the tank, as iirc the slow only affects AAs and AAs are single target... and directed at the tank.

so doesn’t replacing it with Art of War just adds more pressure to healers instead of less? Like, they kinda went against their own designs lol.

Similarly, that depends. If it was a substantial sustain nerf for which SCH wasn't compensated and if SCH would otherwise have been balanced, then its removal would have been bad since it would leave SCH undertuned. But... there was compensation, so it isn't really "against" any particular design.

It just traded out percentile sustain only useful proportionately to incoming tank AA damage (and likely to be anti-synergetic with tank defensive CDs) for flat sustain that can be used on anyone (and better synergizes with tank defensive CDs).

[Connor]

snip

I do get what you’re saying - I mean, using either ability wasn’t exactly the epitome of ‘turning the tables’ on the enemy. I guess it’s more the concept that I think could’ve stayed (and been heavily adjusted lol), like a ‘shield that weakens enemy’ as a contrast to Adloquium or ‘bad dome that weakens enemy’ to contrast with Sacred Soil.

Plus, I feel like it can be a bit of a slippery slope to look at things purely in terms of optimisations. Of course all things needs to be strictly balanced, but at the same time I feel like devs have slid all the way to the bottom of that slope.
Especially when it comes to things like offensive options for healers; ‘why give healers 2 DoTs when they can just have one stronger one?’, ‘why not put all their attack potency into the one skill’, etc. It’s perfectly optimised and balanced, but I’d say it’s also less ‘fulfilling’ really. I guess the real problem is them deciding for themselves where and how people optimise, rather than giving players the option themselves. It’s like, they took away all the indirect / non-healing options from healers then were like ‘look, now you can optimise healing so much!’. Which, is nice, but also means 200+ Broil casts per encounter lol.

Surely there can be a balance between ‘optimal’ and ‘flavourful’ (for want of a better word lol). Personally, I think some fluff is fine as long as it still has a purpose and fits thematically. Of course nobody wants to see an overgrown sheep, but I don’t imagine they’d want to see a bald one either lol.

[Aravell]

Surely there can be a balance between ‘optimal’ and ‘flavourful’ (for want of a better word lol).

I do think the dev team has gone so far into making everything balanced and nothing better than anything else that they all but removed all unique aspects and flavour of the jobs. I'd like to see them lean back into the tactician aspect of SCH, bring back Shadowflare and make it delete Sacred Soil again, gives us more decisions to make, I want to feel like a battlefield tactician. SCH is the one job that really should lean into inter-kit dependencies and restrictions because it fits their identity as a tactician.

As a side note, I'd love a second ability tied to the fairy gauge, doesn't strictly have to do damage. Maybe a tether to the enemy that reduces their damage output by 5% that is refreshed every tick and costs 20 gauge per tick, so 15s duration max.

[ForsakenRoe]

Thinking about the whole 'was SB SCH stronger/weaker than now', I completely overlooked something: Fey Illumination (the magic resist thing) is 5% now, but was a whopping 20% previously



So vs magic, SCH actually got weaker in terms of mitigations. Expedient doesn't patch the hole left by the removal of this insane 20% mitigation tool. Against Physical, however, SCH got stronger, because this wouldn't affect Physical.

Which means that, SE could have made 'swap fairy' into an OGCD, and changed the haste buff of Selene to a movespeed buff (the sprint part of Expedient) and we'd have the same as what we have now in terms of 'utilities available to the player', but they'd be accessed via a much more thematic method (as compared to 'hit 2min CD'). Requiring some foresight to swap fairy in advance sounds like a very 'battlefield tactician' thing, but it removes opportunity for bad players to 'play reactively' (implying that any healer job plays 'reactively') and that's not good. SE should just let the people who want more planning in their playstyle have it, and for the people who cannot 'plan ahead' whether by choice or because they're newer, idk remove the CD on Indom so they can just smash it whenever I guess

Worked for Aravell.

I'll wait with baited breath for you to make a snarky comment to her for doing so.

I don't remember them having a pattern of saying 'I'm out' and then immediately being 'back in' the very next day, but sure, if they make a habit of it then I'll try to remember to say 'see you tomorrow' to them too

[ty_taurus]

Thinking about the whole 'was SB SCH stronger/weaker than now', I completely overlooked something: Fey Illumination (the magic resist thing) is 5% now, but was a whopping 20% previously

I'm not actually sure if that's true. The tooltip reads "increases magic defense" and not "reduces magic damage taken." I could be wrong because I didn't fact check this, but the wording leads me to believe Covenant used to increase the player's magic defense stat, and if that's true, I have no idea what that actually equates to in terms of how much damage is actually mitigated.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm not actually sure if that's true. The tooltip reads "increases magic defense" and not "reduces magic damage taken." I could be wrong because I didn't fact check this, but the wording leads me to believe Covenant used to increase the player's magic defense stat, and if that's true, I have no idea what that actually equates to in terms of how much damage is actually mitigated.

Oh my brain didn't even parse it like that, yeh in that case it'd have worked like old Foresight for WAR, which was widely regarded to be 'quite shit compared to Rampart'. And it'd have had different effectiveness based on roles, thanks to differing magic resistance levels on gear. No wonder it got changed then. This changes things, and EW SCH would definitely be more 'mitigative' in that case, my mistake

[Maltothoris]

I believe someone tried to map it out how much damage was reduced with old Fey Covenant, I think it was about 4 percent for the physical classes(melee and physrange) 7 percent for casters and healers and 12 percent for tanks.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not actually sure if that's true. The tooltip reads "increases magic defense" and not "reduces magic damage taken." I could be wrong because I didn't fact check this, but the wording leads me to believe Covenant used to increase the player's magic defense stat, and if that's true, I have no idea what that actually equates to in terms of how much damage is actually mitigated.

Aye. And so you'd have to look at what 20% of Magic Defense's %mitigation would be for the given gear class and ilvl to see if it was actually stronger or weaker. (It was, iirc, weaker on non-tanks at least until roughly the expansion's final BiS.)

I believe someone tried to map it out how much damage was reduced with old Fey Covenant, I think it was about 4 percent for the physical classes(melee and physrange) 7 percent for casters and healers and 12 percent for tanks.

This, though I could have sworn it was more like 4%, 5%, and 7% (and that only by end of expansion).

(Fending gear has ~82% more M. Def than Maiming, Scouting, Striking, and Aiming, and Casters and Healers have only ~27% more M. Defense.)