SE, "Seraphism" is appalling. This is not the fantasy that appeals to Scholar fans.

[ty_taurus]

Scholar’s fate is probably the single most devastating aspect of FFXIV. Every single expansion has sought to dismantle Scholar piece-by-piece, mutate its identity, and undermine their faeries. Even Heavensward which gave Scholar a few good new tools also came with downsides. Ruin II was the perfect mobility spell in ARR, ignored and forgotten in Heavensward while Ruin would be replaced with Broil. Dissipation was and still is a bad action and began the trend of constantly maiming Eos and Selene in every expansion.

It has gone from being a masterpiece that literally was the sole reason I continued playing FFXIV to a hideous insult to the Scholar we started with that has somehow remained at the top of the healer food chain despite being gutted over and over and over. I really believe the designers hate scholar more than any other job.

For anyone that continues to play Scholar, my best advice is to remove Seraphism from your hotbar. Trust me, you won’t need it. Scholar already has a surplus of healing. All the new Dawntrail heals are just going to be more excessive healing bloat anyway.

[HappyHubris]

It has gone from being a masterpiece that literally was the sole reason I continued playing FFXIV to a hideous insult to the Scholar we started with that has somehow remained at the top of the healer food chain despite being gutted over and over and over. I really believe the designers hate scholar more than any other job.

If old scholar was the only thing keeping you in the game, what is keeping you on? (Not trying to tell you to leave, just curious.)

The devs don't "hate" any job, it's just that SCH/SMN were some of the farthest designs from the New Way Of Things - homogenized and simple. And the pet never worked well with the tech, so it had to be neutered.

[ty_taurus]

If old scholar was the only thing keeping you in the game, what is keeping you on? (Not trying to tell you to leave, just curious.)

The devs don't "hate" any job, it's just that SCH/SMN were some of the farthest designs from the New Way Of Things - homogenized and simple. And the pet never worked well with the tech, so it had to be neutered.

Shadowbringers' story. Additionally, I was able to enjoy Dancer for a while. What I've come to realize though was that while I do think Dancer is fun, it lacks the shining quality that made me enjoy FFXIV's combat like how I did before Shadowbringers. Because Dancer doesn't have very many options in the way of choice management. I don't have a way to be greedy with MP like I could with ARR Scholar's Ruin II or SB Scholar's Miasma II. I don't have any choices to make with my resources, unlike what Energy Drain offered. I'm not responding to the needs of my team. My gameplay is largely static. The procs and feather generation help a little, but it's not what the older Scholar or Astrologian offered.

With Endwalker, I first wanted to genuinely give Sage a shot, both to refresh my experience with healers so that when I say healer design is dogshit, I can say so from experience. I am in love with Sage's aesthetic design, so I really wanted it to work. I did end up in a static and made some good friends, so I was doing that for a while as Dancer, but we stopped prematurely in tier 3. Since then, I don't actually play the game. I keep my sub to continue giving feedback, logging in briefly to renew my activity status. I haven't progressed the story since 6.4, I haven't engaged in events. I helped some friends who were playing through ARR do the last dungeons a couple weeks ago. Otherwise the only thing I actually play is PVP Sage on occasion, and that's it.

Also, saying that the pet had to be neutered is a very intense opinion and nothing more. It didn't work because they didn't try to make it work. So few adjustments were ever made to pets, there was never any experimentation with how to balance pets more effectively. It absolutely could've been handled better if they had any care at all for these jobs and wanting to make them work for their target audiences.

[rawker]

Also, saying that the pet had to be neutered is a very intense opinion and nothing more. It didn't work because they didn't try to make it work. So few adjustments were ever made to pets, there was never any experimentation with how to balance pets more effectively. It absolutely could've been handled better if they had any care at all for these jobs and wanting to make them work for their target audiences.

If only there's a way to spam more than 1 like to a single post, i'd break the living crap of it for this statement, alone.

[ForsakenRoe]

Also, saying that the pet had to be neutered is a very intense opinion and nothing more. It didn't work because they didn't try to make it work. So few adjustments were ever made to pets, there was never any experimentation with how to balance pets more effectively. It absolutely could've been handled better if they had any care at all for these jobs and wanting to make them work for their target audiences.

This could be applied to a lot of things, really. WHM's old Lilies, with the CDR effect, could have been experimented with more, creating a gameplay about guaranteed CDR effects on things in the same vein as Holy Priest in WOW (which I assume was what they were drawing inspiration from). AST's cards could have been tweaked so that 'AOE Balance or bust' wasn't the entire gameplay (eg by adding damage to other cards via unique delivery methods, ie counterattack, increase AA speed, etc), but instead they threw the whole thing out and made SHB cards, where they're all the same bland 'increase damage by X%, or X% x 2 if you use it on the correct damage type'. SMN could have been made to have a more 'rotate through summons' gameplay without deleting everything and replacing it with 'press Gemshine a lot' (eg by making Summon Baha require one of each Elemental Aethertrail, and have Enkindle grant the Aethertrails with a 20s CD, so you'd have to rotate between the three summons to use their 'ultimate move', but you'd still have the DOTs/Egi Assault GCDs to fill with, instead of 3 recolours of the same VFX for Ruby/Topaz/Emerald Rite)

As the saying goes, 'throwing out the baby with the bathwater'. Except for when SE does a 'rework' rather than just 'minor adjustments', in which case they seem to tear out the entire bathroom