Thread: Preparing Scholar for 7.0

How... just HOW is this the one thing you took away from my post? Is your ego at the same time so big and yet so frail? I swear, it's impossible with you people...
Like, did you despise your teachers in school because it was obvious they knew more than you? Ignorance is not a sin you know, it is the premise of learning and we should all be trying to learn. Your ilk may accuse many of us of being arrogant, but nothing compares to your arrogance in thinking you have nothing to learn.

I've never studied astrophysics. If I go to someone who has for many years and presume to teach him his stuff and disregard all the contents of the subject, they will inevitably scoff at me, shrug their shoulders, and ask me to come back when I have taken a few lessons to back up my "opinions" and have an educated discussion. The situation here is the same — except I answered you with perfect civility.

Regardless, if you think your reasons are so very strong compared to mine, why don't you respond to me point-by-point, instead of finding an excuse and an easy way out? Do you think sentences such as "Way to lose any credibility you may have had lol" make you the winner of the argument? Or perhaps you have nothing else to say?
It's not like my claim was groundless or simply based on your hypothetical inexperience: it was based on my explanations. So answer reason with reason — if you can.
Also, I say "hypothetical inexperience"? It is not hypothetical:
1) Your arguments show you have no idea how Scholar was in the past;
2) It is objectively true (as it can be confirmed) you have no pre-Shadowbringers experience of the game — which is fine: I don't either, but at least I informed myself carefully before offering my take;

If you believe I am wrong, tell where and why. Otherwise what even is the point of posting?

Originally Posted by 5trange

quote

Are you seriously trying to say I started playing in Shadowbringers because that’s when my logs start? I literally did every coil as a Scholar, it just wasn’t logged. How exactly is it an ‘objective truth’ that I didn’t experience the game? Based on what, misremembering Aetherflow?

Is this entirely based on information from a third party website? What a bizarre thing to say

As to your arguments…

Your argument about Protraction can apply to literally every heal in the game. I mean, Savage and Ultimates have been done without healers, so by that logic aren’t all heals pointless and should just be deleted. I could see the point of having it replace something or act as an upgrade, but what benefit is there to deleting it? It’s literally ‘deleting excess abilities’ that’s got healers into the state they are, because SE decided Miasma, Miasma II, and Shadow Flare were ‘excess abilities’, ‘pointless abilities’, or whatever you want to call them. I just don’t see how removing it is going to make anything better besides limiting our healing options even more to ‘flavourless direct heals’.

As for DPS’ing the point I was making is that there’s no point in having 5 different DoTs if they’re just a conveyor belt rotation and don’t actually add anything to how the job is played (namely Miasma and Bio II). If they actually do something, interact with abilities, procs, debuffs, whatever, then sure. But just throwing a bunch of DoTs back into the job won’t make it feel any less like it’s spamming the same thing every fight, it’d just make them feel like they’re spamming the same thing with different buttons. Which is the biggest complaint about current Summoner - plenty of different buttons, all (mostly) do the exact same thing. Outside of managing MP economy and Miasma II the extra DoTs didn’t actually add any decision making to the job. Staggered times are still rotational, you just shorter one first on recast for 100% uptime instead of doing the same pattern every time.

That’s not to mention the issues with ‘porting’ that to the current version of Scholar. MP economy is practically non-existent now, so how do they make Miasma II an actual decision and not just something you use all the time every time?

Then with Expedient, you say the Sprint is the ‘least necessary’ aspect, yet it had to be nerfed. Which doesn’t usually happen to ‘unnecessary’/‘useless’ effects. Expedient is also one of the few recently added Scholar skills to actually be received positively; removing it just hurts the job because it gives you less control over when you can gain the effects.

None of what you’re saying would really achieve anything except limiting the options Scholar has. DoTs aren’t going to make the job suddenly require foresight or understanding, and in my opinion don’t make the job any more fun unless they exist for some reason other than just being buttons you press to damage an enemy. I mean, look at how much people complain about Bard’s DoTs being entirely divorced from the rest of their kit now.

Originally Posted by Connor

-snip-

So you've been playing for a while. Ok, I was wrong about that and maybe I overreacted in my answer. Surely you can see why, when after I make an effort to explain myself I'm met with a "lol, credibility" response. I must confess, however, I don't know if you saying you've been playing since coil ultimately goes in your favor or not. You tell me not to look at a "third party site" but that contains a visual for how people interact with the game, wether you like it or not. And that is true for you as well, no matter how long you've played.
Regardless, none of the actual responses you gave are very strong.

1) Certainly you read the rules for the decisions I made. They were the premise of the post. That in itself should tell you why removing Protraction is not the same as removing Miasma, Miasma II and Shadowflare. Fun, usefulness, prevention of button bloat. Protraction achieves none of these, as its impact in gameplay is minimal at best. Miasma, Miasma II — with a 2.5s Broil — and Shadowflare on the other hand make downtime less repetitive. If you cannot see this, I have no other way of explaining it.
Besides, it's not like I have anything particular against Protraction, other than finding it "meh". The main reason for removing, other than its lack of weight, was to assure Scholar would still have an OK number of buttons for controller players (I play on M&KB, but still it was a concern of mine).

2) It's not just "adding a bunch of DoTs". If it's true you've been around since ARR, you certainly know how Scholar used to be played in Stormblood. I could link yo to videos, both from a "hardcore" Raid environment and a "casual" Dungeon environment. You can watch them and tell me if Stormblood Scholar ever looked "spammy". Again, the answer is no, especially if compared to what it is now. I wish I had access to old Stormblood logs to show you how much lower the % of Broil was and, incidentally, how much higher the % of Succor was, since you had less healing tools — on average, not talking about parsers. If this does not break the monotony, alongside more careful planning of Aetherflow due to Quickened Aetherflow, what will?
Furthermore, two issues: a) add more to do or more complex interactions, and people will complain healers are "too hard" — I wanted to avoid that; b) rule 4 states, in the name of realism, I can propose only changes that don't change the traditional FFXIV formula too much — this is not a SCH theorycraft thread per se, even if I've left a little section at the end for that;

3) MP economy is a non issue? True and not true, especially as it's dependent on the Content you play and the people you play with.
But aside from that, for the first time in my playtime, this Tier I've used 0 Piety full SpS on my healers. I had 0 trouble with AST even when things were bad, but I assure you Scholar can get scary. Sure, that's an extreme example and not everyone will run that. But consider this: according to my Spell list, you have to use Miasma II — which I've set at 1000MP cost — whenever you have to weave anything, unless you want to lose a lot of DPS with Ruin II. That's a lot of MP over the course of, say, 8 minutes. I assure, again, if you consider how often Miasma II would be used, that MP economy would not be so irrelevant and the 500MP from Energy Drain would become meaningful. Besides, what about prog? What about post-death recovery? It's not like you'll always play in a vacuum of perfection and you might need the extra MP.

4) You can argue wether or not Expedient was "too strong" in its original form. It couldn't really make you cheese a mechanic, unlike hyper-shields and mitigations can — both of which Holos can provide. Expedient might make certain things comfy, but it's not gonna break the game. Otherwise we should immediately remove En Avant, Icarus and all gap-closers in general!
Also, can we stop saying "you removing Expedient" etc.? Even if the button is removed, both of its effects are still there, except they are not at odds with each other — why do you find a reason to complain about that?

5) I don't see how this version fo Scholar is "less flexible". On the contrary, I've strived to remove the contradictions between its kit to allow more freedom of use. Could you point out what exactly feels less flexible? Also, let not be disingenuous: Bard is a DPS Job, so I don't think it's bad for its players to expect interaction in its DPS kit — cause... you know... that's its Role. Not like a Bard has 12 mitigation/healing cooldowns to map during a fight.

As an addendum, which I wish you would make an effort to understand:
When I wrote down the list of Spells and Abilities, I had in mind all levels of Scholar players, that they could enjoy the Job to its fullest despite their competence. Beginners would be glad not to see their hotbars empty when they unlock the Job at Lvl. 30; casual players can still go about playing the Job however they like and will still clear the content they interact with; normal players might find some extra enjoyment when trying to push themselves a little bit; good players might find they are not so bored when they run the same fight for the 200th time. I've thought about controller players and KB&M players. Would you tell me how that dissatisfies you? Did you, in your answers, try to follow the rulesI set out at the start? Or, if you think they are bad rules, would you tell me which and why?