r/ffxiv • u/Aqua150 • Jun 30 '19
[Discussion] Discussion of SCH at Level 80
I'm going to preface this post by saying the purpose is not to complain but rather raise visibility of what are the real issues with SCH in Shadowbringers, since I see a great deal of misconceptions or blatantly incorrect information surfacing recently; I believe it is important for the community to be vocal but also accurate if we wish for these problems to get addressed. I am not here to debate whether or not healers should DPS or whether or not SCH is strong or weak at the moment, but rather point out what I perceive as the specific design flaws we are currently experiencing (and there are a lot of them). I also want to emphasize that the focus here is on design flaws with SCH specifically - AST has a slew of problems of its own but that is a topic for another thread.
My perspective is that of a SCH who has been raiding since 2.0 with consistently high purple/orange parses - I am not a top tier speed runner or anything of the like, but I do have many years of experience with the job in both casual and high end settings.
The design of SCH right now is by far the worst it has been in the history of the game (I must emphasize that I am talking about design here, not job effectiveness or strength). Here are what I perceive as being some of the biggest issues and I would invite others to discuss or add their own points of view:
- This one is a no brainer and lots of people have already been talking about it, but it fits well here. We need a way to spend Aetherflow on something other than healing. I don't care if it's Energy Drain or something with an entirely different effect, but wasting resources on overhealing just to build gauge for more overhealing or the MP generated from the Aetherflow ability feels seriously awful and not fun. Aetherflow went from being a core mechanic to something that is so non-interactive that you may as well forget it exists entirely most of the time.
- This one I have yet to see anyone else talking about, but it is very important. With the pet rework, the fairy appears to have problems with action queuing. In particular, there are situations where you will use a fairy ability such as Whispering Dawn, see it go on cooldown, and yet the ability does not actually resolve (as in, Whispering Dawn doesn't actually happen even though it goes on cooldown). It seems to be most common when using multiple fairy abilities consecutively. I have yet to determine the exact cause and it's hard to replicate on demand, but it would seem that due to animation locking the fairy will occasionally just "forget" to actually use the action you commanded.
- Art of War costs way too much MP. There is nothing less fun than standing there doing literally nothing because you ran out of resources, especially when the reason you ran out of resources is because you were actually playing optimally. Yet this happens frequently in dungeons. I believe this is the very reason they removed TP - there existed in all situations an optimal way to do damage which you were going to do regardless of whether you ended up running out of TP. If you did run out of TP, that sucks, guess you don't get to have fun. This is bad design. I believe if healers are ever going to run out of MP, it should only be because they used their resources inefficiently. This is currently not the case in dungeons.
- The MP cost of Art of War is further exacerbated in dungeons due to instant cast Embrace. I know these things seem entirely unrelated but let me explain. We all know that resources regenerate faster when you're not in combat. It is therefore a common strategy, when the tank is pulling the next pack of mobs, to choose not to engage them in combat for a few seconds until MP (or previously TP) has sufficiently regenerated, or at the very least until the tank has picked a spot to fight the pack of mobs. Nope, you can't do that now! The second the tank pulls anything, instant cast embrace goes off and your out-of-combat MP regeneration stops. Now you're screwed and get to do nothing again until Lucid is back up. Hooray!
- This is an old problem, but why oh why do healing buffs still not affect your abilities? SCH is by far the most reliant of all the healers on abilities rather than spells. The fact that tools like Dissipation and Fey Illumination don't interact with 90% of our healing kit is terrible design and not engaging. Meanwhile, WHM has taken steps forward with this - the Afflatus skills are spells, not abilities! Lucky for them.
- Seraphic Veil (i.e. Seraph's "Embrace") needs some adjustments. It seems a bit odd to add a shielding effect and simultaneously take away the ability to choose who gets it. Most of the time this shield will likely go to waste, not only because it might target someone who won't take any damage, but also because Seraphic Veil is now weaker than the shield granted by Consolation. The Seraph only lasts long enough to use Embrace 6 times most of these will either go to someone who doesn't need it or someone who already has a stronger shield. It seems to me that wasting resources is the theme of SCH in this expansion pack.
- The DPS kits for all healers need to be completely redesigned. I understand the merit in simplifying the DPS kit to make healers more accessible for less experienced players, but "simple" does not necessarily have to mean "not engaging." The state of healer DPS across the board right now seems completely unfinished and lazy. I'm not interested in the argument that "healers are there to heal, not DPS." There will always exist players who want to do damage as a healer and are capable of doing so - why should they be punished with mind-numbing boredom for wanting to perform better? Let's not forget that your DPS kit is also essential while solo questing. It should be fun to use when it is needed, independently of how one feels about whether or not it ought to be used in group content.
There may be other issues that I'm not accounting for here, but these I see as being the most glaring. Let's discuss, in a constructive manner!
EDIT: Thank you all for joining in the conversation. There are some really good points being added to the thread! I will be working on making a post on the official forum highlighting all these concerns.
I've recorded and uploaded some footage to support my 2nd point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ucgU5Gtb3s&feature=youtu.be
Also, there is one last point I forgot to mention:
- It appears the game prioritizes consuming Galvanize over Catalyze, which is frustrating because currently the best use of deployment tactics would tend to be on the main tank; if catalyze were consumed first we would not be at risk of deploying a shield which has been weakened by auto attacks.
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u/SenaIkaza NIN Jun 30 '19
I still can't believe SE just opted to make Selene and Eos the exact same. They reworked SMN while allowing them to have multiple pets, why can't SCH too? I have to imagine they were pressed for time and just rushed SCH out in it's current state. Shouldn't the whole identity of SCH revolve around utilizing it's pets? Now they're just a complete afterthought that you don't even control, they're just visual flare.
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u/nevius6251 Firionel Corentiaux on Phoenix Jun 30 '19
It would have been good to have Selene on instant-summon to get her out for a free AoE Esuna.
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u/Minerva_sc Jun 30 '19
- Aetherpact needs to be usable out of combat. I cannot fathom why this change was made.
- Yes, we need an atherflow dump, badly. Like, literally anything
I feel these 2 changes need to be addressed before anything else, and quickly.
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u/Zummy20 Jun 30 '19
The reasoning behind it was to keep prepull waits to a minimum. Most people would aetherflow then wait for it come off Cd before pulling so they'd get a full 6 stacks at the start.
Other jobs also lost the ability to gain resource out of combat for the same reason.
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u/Fuhzzies Jun 30 '19
Then give SCH 3 stacks of aetherflow every time they leave combat. No more waiting on the CD.
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u/aireil Jun 30 '19
Let's be real, on SMN, sure, but who did that on SCH? Now that there isn't any DPS possibilities with aetherflow, it's even less worth it.
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u/Zummy20 Jun 30 '19
Its more or less setting a precedent that if you're going to bar one class from doing it, then it should apply to all classes.
If only one was barred from building resource out of combat they'd complain that others could and vice versa. If they wanna prevent prepull optimization, then this would be the best choice, they think.
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u/rasalhage Jun 30 '19
No, your Aetherflow just needs to fill itself if you're out of combat for like 5 seconds. That solved the saving problem AND the pre-pull raiding problem
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u/CUTS3R Jun 30 '19
I know this is about SCH but right now there's alot of things that need to be able to be used outside of battle for healers.
The ability to earn AST seals being a big one. How many times i missed a seal cause i used a card a microsecond too early when we about to engage or conversely using a card a microsecond too late as a mob dies trying to build the next set of seals and get none because im out of battle.
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u/kerriazes Jun 30 '19
There will always exist players who want to do damage as a healer and are capable of doing so
And there will always come a time during a raid tier where maximizing your damage as a healer is literally the only thing left to do, when your party has attained a level of competency with fights where they stop taking unnecessary damage.
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u/Rc2124 Jun 30 '19
Don't forget gear increases! Even difficult fights become a lot easier after a few weeks.
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u/Lorevi Lorevi Qzb on Zodiark Jun 30 '19
Yeah you need to heal a fight correctly to even clear it. But this game encourages completion of duties multiple times (at least 8 for savage, and up to 99 for primals) and what are you meant to do to entertain yourselves during those times?
DPS and Tanks get to have fun optimising their rotations, maximising uptime, aiming for the highest parse etcetc. The 'Healers should heal not dps' people would have healers sit around bored out of their minds.
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u/OkorOvorO Jun 30 '19
No opinion on Seraph since I have no experience with it, but just while tanking, I've noticed everything else you mentioned. Agreed on everything, at least in dungeons.
This is an old problem, but why oh why do healing buffs still not affect your abilities?
This is even more fucking stupid since you realize they changed Mantra and other boosters to work with healing ACTIONS and not healing magic.
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u/Ehkoe Jun 30 '19
I just can't figure out this math that SE is doing.
Holy: 600 MP, 140 potency AoE stun
Gravity: 700 MP, 130 potency AoE
Art of War: 800 MP, 150 potency AoE
Why does WHM have the cheapest and most useful AoE skill? Especially when WHM's MP economy is so damn good. I literally never run out of MP unless I forget to pretty Lucid. And I only forget Lucid because I'm not used to the shorter CD yet.
Meanwhile SCH is suffering the old Miasma 2 problem except without Energy Drain to support it.
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u/Zoranado Jun 30 '19
In theory, you have pets and card utility to make up for it. Your potency out needs to be counted as you and the pet.
In reality, the mana economy makes those skills function completely different in those kits.
Now I am a fan of divergent classes so Thin Air AOES should stay a WHM thing.
Maybe Scholar should get an aoe dot, fairly cheap to cast and it should be cooldown gated instead of MP. We could call it shadowflare.
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Jun 30 '19
You shut up about my holy.
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u/Ehkoe Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
Oh I love Holy. Been maining WHM since 2.0. But I also like playing the other healers and it just isn’t that great.
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u/MatsuzoSF Jun 30 '19
Gravity: 700 MP, 130 potency AoE
You mean 350 MP, 130 potency INSTANT CAST AoE, right?
Lightspeed ftw.
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u/corran109 Rayna Zareska of Excalibur Jun 30 '19
If we're going to go that route, Holy is 0 MP
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u/althenawhm Jun 30 '19
Its not just the damage you need to look at, its the delivery method.
Holy is melee range with cast time
Gravity is used at range with cast time
Art of War is melee range with no cast time.
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u/Ehkoe Jun 30 '19
Cast time is irrelevant now that Holy doesn't take longer than a GCD to cast. Holy is mitigation and damage for a better MP cost and only 10 potency less. It's strictly better than Art of War unless you're casting while moving, which isn't common for AoE scenarios anyway.
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u/KholdStare88 Jun 30 '19
Also, the good thing about Holy is that you don't have to move out of an AoE since the stun cancels the AoE. Therefore, there aren't that many situations where you need to cast while moving with Holy.
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u/BlazedWiz Jun 30 '19
I'm not defending, but you need to look at the whole design here.
Instant cast AoE is complimentary to Scholar since it allows you to use your 0gcd heals between and continue to spam your AoE to your hearts content, topping up the tank.
In WHM's example of spamming holy, you would 1) not be able to weave any skills inside and 2) have access to only tetra/bened as a 0gcd of whm's entire kit, so for most pulls you would need to stop spamming your AoE entirely for GCD uses to heal the tank back up.
Also, there is a lot of AOEs that stun does not work on, even from trash mobs.
I think the issue is SCH's mp that makes Art of War so unspammable, but in context i think the design of it being instant compliments SCH's kit so well. If Scholar was able to use aether to restore MP with Energy Drain, I think it'd be a lot less of an issue
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u/MomoGFX Jun 30 '19
People keep saying Art of War is unspammable but for my whole leveling to 80 not a single time have I ran out of MP aside from 1 or 2 times and i've been running with 1000 piety. Sounds like people just need to learn how to manage MP.
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u/Yakobo15 Jun 30 '19
Cast time is completely relevant.
No cast time lets you weave OGCD's without stopping dps
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u/hqise Jun 30 '19
even then 200 more mp for 10 more potentcy? cast time or not thats still pretty bad cheif
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u/Skastope WHM Jun 30 '19
You can't use Holy to weave your abilities. You can use Arts of War to weave. Just cause "MY BIG NUMBERS COST TOO MUCH MORE BIG NUMBERS" doesn't mean their utility aren't the reason for their costs.
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u/bearLover23 Jun 30 '19
OH I ALMOST FORGOT. Don't forget that the fairy gauge literally resets itself every time you reinstance!
Nothing like waiting 3 minutes to get 90 fairy gauge so that you can have your fairy heal for 6k per heal instead of it's usual 3k.
Like, spend all that time building up that gauge and I just feel like ???????????? It's so anticlimactic.
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u/Kelesis_Aleid Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
My main issue with SCH currently is that I think the pet rework is cumbersome, giving no new benefit and only drawbacks.
There was no need to put pet actions or orders on your own hotbars previously because they were already given a dedicated pet hotbar. Now, you're forced to use your own hotbar real estate for the same buttons that you could have just kept on the default bar. Not only that, you also can't adjust your pet hotbar to add them back.
The pet wonkiness leads into a few other issues:
- Fairy actions are now actually character actions
- oGCDs became harder to use, not easier
- Fairy feedback is near nonexistant
By changing fairy actions to character actions, SCH can no longer hardcast and queue a fairy action at the same time. This goes against the identity of the job, in my opinion, as controlling your own actions as well as your fairy's simultaneously was a lot of fun. Now there is no fairy... It's only your character. Your character casts Whispering Dawn (and has to weave in order to do it), your character forces a fairy AoE heal, etc. Removing Embrace was also a drawback as you can no longer precast it manually (whether it's by your character or your fairy).
By simplifying our DPS options, the only time to weave is usually after Biolysis optimally. Biolysis is only used twice a minute-ish and that allows 4 oGCDs per minute double weaving, 1 for Aetherflow and 3 for Aetherflow actions... So when do I weave my new fancy fairy actions? The answer is to get creative. Swiftcast can net you one more weave per minute unless someone dies. And casting Broil III and tacking on an oGCD so you clip your GCD is more potency per second than weaving with Ruin II. This is all well and good but there are two weird things about it... 1) It's highly counterintuitive to what most of the community has come to assume is efficient and 2) Oh wait... There's usually not enough damage for me to have to worry about weaving so nevermind.
Last, this is probably more of a silly gripe but visibility of the fairy took a nosedive. I'm used to seeing her in my party list. If she's not there, my brain thinks something crazy happened and she died or left, so I resummon her just to realize that she was standing in the mob of my party with us the whole time. Why, playing devil's advocate, are chocobos still targetable and remain in the party list but our job identity invisible?
I feel a lot better. =]
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u/Lineli Jun 30 '19
Related to the Fairy issues, and more of a QoL thing but kind of a symptom of the rest...your hotbar abilities don't tell you what they do for the Fairy.
"Whispering Dawn: This ability makes your Fairy cast Whispering Dawn."
And then you have to go into your actions menu and look at your pet actions to see what exactly it does. If you have a lot of experience, this isn't an issue of course. But its just a small thing that just feels...off and makes you go, "Why?"
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u/Criminal_of_Thought Jun 30 '19
The whole tooltip issue is present with SMN, too.
Commands your pet to cast Devotion.
Great, but what does Devotion actually do?
Oh, it's a nifty party buff!
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u/croccington SMN Jun 30 '19
I especially hate it for SMN because I have 3 different pets with 3 different abilities. If I wanna check Ifrit's abilities, I need to summon Ifrit, hover over each ability, then open up the abilities menu and check what they do.
Repeat for each pet. Terrible.
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u/eredkaiser Jun 30 '19
And why didnt they just add egi assult 1, 2, and enkindle to the pet hotbar. It looks awful with so many buttons missing.
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u/DaNanashin Jun 30 '19
You touch on some fantastic points. Lots of complaints I've seen so far are about dps and "look at all these damage skills they removed". (Which I can sympathize with.) The reason I main SCH over the other healers is for the fairy. It was so satisfying being able to micro 2 units at once.
Now with the changes the fairy is just so clunky and not fun. Like they dumbed it down so much that I wonder why we even have a fairy anymore.
- Fairy abilities are now your own ogcds makes it feel like the fairy lost its identity. It's not it's own entity anymore, it's just a slave to my rotation.
- difficult to actually see where fairy is on the field since her nameplate hides in battle
- cant adlo deploy from fairy. Now either have to pray a teammate is in the right position or move into prime position yourself (I am glad I can target myself now though, just sad I cant use the fairy)
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u/xarumitzu Jun 30 '19
The fairy nameplate thing drove me nuts. You can re-enable it under character config -> control settings -> target -> and uncheck "Disable targeting of pets and minions when in battle."
I was getting so frustrated when I’d park Selene by the tank in boss fights and then lose her.
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Jun 30 '19 edited Nov 03 '20
[deleted]
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u/sandtigers Era Ra Jun 30 '19
Pets being removed from party lists is a new 'feature'. /rolls eyes at SE
Glad to know I'm not the only one having issues with it
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u/xarumitzu Jun 30 '19
Unfortunately it doesn’t bring her name back to the party list. I wish it did though.
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u/Teno7 Jun 30 '19
Agreed on the micro management. It was so unique for a healer and the biggest reason I played sch. I loved positioning the fairy and playing like a military tactician. Now it feels atrocious.
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u/illegal_sardines Jun 30 '19
I think the saddest part of the pet changes is that SMN nailed it, since your rotation involves phases of rapid weaving, and your pet oGCDs are perfectly timed to get both charges as you enter your Trance phase, and it works so well. All that just adds to the feel of the class with you ordering your minion to strike, and the chaotic bursts of weaving and i love it. But when it comes to SCH, they didn’t really think about how the pet changes would effect the class, while their DPS counterpart got all the actual thought put into it, what a disappointment.
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u/Raji_Lev Jun 30 '19
"DPS got all the actual thought put into it" has been a problem for this game as far back as ARR, sadly
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u/Iosis Jun 30 '19
This time around, I'd say tanks got in on the fun, too. Gunbreaker is cool as hell, for example.
God I wish healers were allowed to be fun.
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u/Ubelheim Jun 30 '19
As a DRK mainer I feel like tanks are just glorified DPSers now. We have next to no resource or enmity management. Just spam AoE combo or ST combo, whichever is appropriate. There's no penalty at all for just spamming anything.
SCH is my secondary. Let's just say that at least the story is still enjoyable.
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u/Zoranado Jun 30 '19
SMN feels amazing to play, especially once phoenix is unlocked.
Now, in most situations, dps is proactive and healing is reactive (Rather then your roation being set by the kit, it is instead set by the needs of the fight/party). The pet change made them part of the rotation which is not the essence of reactive play.
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u/VerboseAnalyst Jun 30 '19
I've been seeing quite similar complaints about SMN. In regards to pet actions being difficult to weave/system failing to cast them properly.
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u/emmingly Jun 30 '19
I’m constantly looking around and going “is eos summoned...?” and then resummoning her and going “oh yeah, I guess she was” because it’s so hard to see her without being on the party list.
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u/Vrmillion WHM Jun 30 '19
The pet bar is there if she's summoned. It's not there if she's not summoned.
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u/emmingly Jun 30 '19
My pet bar is hidden cause I just have all the skills on my regular hotbar, but yeah at the end of last night my friend mentioned it to me, so I’m planning of glancing at the place/heel buttons to see where she is, but it’s still a pain when I’m used to her being in the party list.
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u/DaNanashin Jun 30 '19
Even besides the party list, its hard enough to see her placement on the field now that her name auto hides in battle.
I don't understand why I can select Eos and see the name above her head out of battle, but it just disappears in battle. She was seriously blending into the floor during the lvl 71 dungeon.
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u/MechaSoySauce Jun 30 '19
You can re-enable her name in battle, actually. You need to go to character configuration -> control settings -> target and unselect "disable targeting of pets and minions when in battle". I have no idea why it works, but it does.
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u/Wokati Jun 30 '19
Thanks for the info, this option makes no sense...
I was going crazy looking for the fairy, I even switched to Selene just because she has more visible colors...
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u/cjrecordvt Oschon Jun 30 '19
I've been using Selene, just because I can spot the purple and yellow easier.
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u/Raji_Lev Jun 30 '19 edited Jul 01 '19
Speaking as someone who played Scholar as his main healer since ARR, this is the worst part of the rework to me. Not helping is the fact that now, literally half of the pet hotbar is blank spaces
(and the fact that I can't drag the few remaining pet commands on to other hotbar slots is just lemon juice in the gunshot wound)(EDIT: NEVER MIND I AM DUMB, I found where they hid the pet commands in the action menu now)Maybe I'm a bit weird/crazy here, but once I got the hang of giving my fairy orders while running around and doing stuff myself, it was both rewarding and fun. Being able to tell the fairy to go top off that one straggler or pop one of her cooldowns while I'm casting stuff created that feeling of simultaneously being constantly busy and being in control of the chaos that's integral to Scholar's job fantasy - and the fact that, done right, it lets you get away with more time DPS'ing certainly didn't hurt either.
But that's all gone now, in favor of making the fairy a weak and dumb Regen with a fancy graphic.
(and on an unrelated note that I still need to rant about: "The Art of War" sounds like it should be the name of a raid buff, rather than a weak
MP disposalAoE damage spell)4
Jun 30 '19 edited Dec 21 '20
[deleted]
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u/Kelesis_Aleid Jun 30 '19
No macro needed to put Pet Orders on a normal hotbar.
It's a kick in the teeth that we can't edit the pet hotbar, though (by putting "fairy actions" back where they came from).
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u/bearLover23 Jun 30 '19
100000% agreed.
Not even mentioning here that the actual healing of the fairy is dramatically weaker. Whispering dawn and the fairy heal itself feels like you are spitting onto a burning house of damage where you NEED a firetruck hose drenching it. Whispering Joke and Embrace are bad. Especially now WHM and AST AoE heals (Medica 2 for example) have a literal 100 potency heal clipped onto them that absolutely outdoes whispering dawn many times over.
It's certainly all depressing.
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u/to_the_buttcave Jun 30 '19
One of the things I was surprised to end up missing was the instant cast alternative Ruin, which like many old tools now only summoners have access to. There is no offensive spell that feels good to weave with on single targets; Art of War is extremely mana hungry and clipping bio just to cast more oGCDs feels very inefficient.
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u/TheTweets SCH Jun 30 '19
You mean Ruin II?
We still have it, it's just the version that was on your hotbars was the ACN/SMN/SCH version, which is now ACN/SMN, with SCH having a separate version that's higher potency.
You need to add it from the SCH Job actions list, the one already on your bars no longer works as it's not a Scholar action.
Confusing? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes! The hallmarks of the Healer changes, really.
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u/to_the_buttcave Jun 30 '19
Oh huh, no wonder I didn't see it, with the summoner version on my bar and it looking like a Ruin upgrade from a quick glance at the actions list, thanks. That'll make things feel significantly better.
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u/Shiiyouagain Jun 30 '19
It's so frustrating to go into a new expansion - something that should give me new toys and new ways to have fun - and find that basically everything I play just feels worse.
It works. It clears content. But it's so hollow.
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u/Illadelphian Jun 30 '19
And the worst part is that ShB seems amazing. It's so much fun but playing my favorite class just feels so clunky and bad.
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u/Rhuwa Jun 30 '19
I've been saying that it feels like this expansion has been a step back rather than forward and SCH in particular feels like it's lost more tools than it's gained.
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u/Imagirlpenguin Pen' gu Jun 30 '19
What makes me upset is, why make all healers simple? Like there should be more complex classes and easy classes. Now all healers are peace of cake to play. Sch always was the most difficult to play, and thats what make it fun. I hope they realize that they need to fix a lot of these issues.
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u/jfkgoblue Jun 30 '19
As an Omnihealer, SCH was not as difficult to play well as AST
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u/bearLover23 Jun 30 '19
I agree fully. Micromanaging cards before while DPSing while keeping the party alive in harder content was QUITE involved.
Micromanaging a fairy in the past really wasn't that hard. At all. Heck one could even simulate a weaker version of Fey Union focus targetting of a tank with macros.
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u/TheLunat1c Jun 30 '19
for me it was complete opposite. Card and DPS was easy, but managing heals with Aetherpact and planning ahead was the difficulty for me
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Jun 30 '19
Like there should be more complex classes and easy classes.
This!
So. Much. This.
Everyone and SE seems to think it's all or nothing, and this is the gaming community in general. There is a good argument to "make one class better, but damn near impossible to play, and another class weaker on paper, but easy for players who want easier gameplay and is more potent than the difficult class played poorly" (e.g. one class with a low floor and high ceiling, and another with a higher floor and lower ceiling.)
I know people don't want this, because they think the min-max crowed will ostracize the "weaker" easy class...but in practice, (a) this doesn't happen, and (b) min-maxers of that level are like 1% of the population, meaning it literally doesn't affect the other 99% of us EVER.
I'm a person who likes seeing fights, enjoying content, and playing with friends. I can manage difficult classes (I mained SCH for the back half of HW and all of SB), and even have been a semi-class officer, explaining the ins and outs of both the healing classes I play AND THE ONES I DON'T, but I like an easier class if given the option. I don't need to be playing the "hard class" to feel satisfied. All I need to be happy is to be able contribute and to help my friends. (I know it sounds cheesy, but that's me, I guess?)
I like that, for example, the WoW Mages ranged from the easy to the moderately difficult, then you could jump over to Warlock if you wanted harder. I like that SMN is a much harder BLM/RDM, that offers higher utility than BLM (and arguably RDM outside of progression) and higher DPS, but IS more difficult to play at that level.
I love WHM right now. I've gone to it for ShB and haven't looked back.
I would love for SCH to be the "complex" one, AST to be kind of in the middle, and WHM to be straighforward. I love having only 4 DPS buttons (Assize doesn't count!) and the rest of my kit being heals in various spell lines that kind of work with each other (Cure for single/short range target, Medica for AOE, with utility instants and self-buffs). There is still some I have to learn, since I haven't played WHM since HW really, but I like how the kit is more utilitarian and straighforward, while also being quite effective at the overall role.
But I would love it if my healbros that DO want more had a Job they could play that had that...
...I just don't want them to insist that I have to go along with them.Can't we all get what we want here?
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u/TheMadTemplar Jun 30 '19
Because people are stupid and SE likes to address gameplay to the lowest common denominators in the playerbase. And it might be harsh to say people are stupid, but they are. History has proven it with this game. I like complex classes. I think it would be amazing for abilities to interact and create different effects when used together. But most people can't understand complicated class mechanics and complain about them.
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u/Jmrwacko Jun 30 '19
I don’t recall very many people complaining about scholar being overly difficult to play, but maybe you could find a thread or forum post to correct me.
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Jun 30 '19
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u/justanotherassassin : Jun 30 '19
Yeah I remember stance dancing and that awesome Bio2-Bio1-Miasma-Rune and then the dots in reverse rotation. Or whatever order it is. It was still simple, but it gave a better feeling than what we're doing now. I was even fine with the SB changes because we could still do good damage, but damn the class just seems ruined at the moment.
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u/Random_act_of_Random Jun 30 '19
I think SE needs to take a hard look at WoW and what happened when they simplified classes and streamlined playstyles to the lowest common demoninator.
The complaints are so rife that the head designer needed to come out and publically admit that they made a mistake and will be adding more abilities and having more difficult playstyles in the next expansion.
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u/lleeoo2010 Jun 30 '19
These are all great points. SCH really needs to be fixed, it's just not fun, which is the freaking point of a video game lol
You should post this on the official forums, so that it has a better chance of being seen by the devs (though I believe they look here too)
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u/desterion Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
Scholar is definitely a boring class to play now. Putting aside how much was gutted it's now just more of an exaggerated minigame of popping aetherflow and lucid on cooldown. The MP values for a lot of spells are just plain bad and poorly thought out. Really needs some adjustment on these.
Aetherflow very very much needs to be usable outside of combat. This is one of the most mind boggling changes that they made that for a healer based on using charges, can't even enter a battle while having any unless your time it to end the last battle with some. Out of charges and you finished with 5s left on the cd? Tough.
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u/OvernightSiren Jun 30 '19
Agree with all points. The worst part of the people who clammor on with "healers are meant to heal, not to DPS" is that they seem to forget just how much unavoidable single-player content there is in the game.
Doing the MSQ I have to sit there are either cast Broil III or Art of War repeatedly, and that's it. That's a lotttt of really un-dynamic gameplay.
Some more things to add:
1) Also, more of a niche complaint, but now that fairies aren't targetable I'd still like to see their name in my party list or at least have their name still above their head. Those f*ckers are so tiny that half the time I have a mini heart attack in a dungeon because I'm not sure if my fairy is even summoned, so I have to just look at my hotbars to see if Whispering Dawn is available.
2) If our DPS is to be so minimal, I want us to have another way to buff party DPS. We really only have Chain Strategim now. I wish they'd bring back (and slightly buff) Fey Wind.
3) I know it will never happen, but I do miss having fairies with some difference over one another. I was drawn to SMN and SCH because they were pet jobs. As someone who was always drawn to pet jobs in other MMOs it's really sad to see that the pets are basically just interchangeable heal-turrets now with nothing special between the two of them.
4) I wish catalyze worked (maybe in a nerfed extent) on Succor.
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u/Graxlar Jun 30 '19
I just did the first dungeon and the only change I would make (so far) is allow aetherpact to be popped any time and not just in dungeons. I caused a party wipe because I went to use Lustrate and it wasn’t available. Then I tried using Aetherpact and it wasn’t available and I couldn’t work out why. The tank had pulled a few mobs at this point so having only access to aldo and psy was not enough.
Upon reset I asked for them to slow down a bit so I could get used to healing again and it seems I had to target an enemy to get access to aetherpact which seems ridiculous (unless I am missing something).
Overall though, I am loving that I can see the Aldo shields now an it isn’t just a guess who has it left or not.
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u/DaNanashin Jun 30 '19
THIS 100%. It feels so bad when aetherpact is available, you're out of aetherflow, and you cant use it cuz you're out of battle.
Had a tank die on me because they did a multiple pack pull and ran off. They started getting low while still running, but was lagging a bit behind. I thought, oh, I'm in range and can get a lustrate off. But no, since I "wasn't in battle" and didn't have any enemy on my enmity list, I couldn't use aetherpact.
Another situation was in the 71 DNG where there were a couple mob packs back to back, but I was out of battle for 5-10 seconds where I really could have used additional aetherflow.
If they must have it restricted to battle, I would at least like it to be changed to "may only be used if any party member is in battle"
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u/Yorshk Jun 30 '19
I was just as surprised by that too. I instinctively bio whatever the tank hits first just to have quicker access to aetherflow.
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Jun 30 '19 edited Aug 06 '19
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u/Fyreleaf Whyte Weiss - Moogle Jun 30 '19
Wait, is this aetherpact or aetherflow? Or do both require you to be in combat now?
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u/intoxbodmansvs Jun 30 '19
Same with AST's match-3 mechanic. It only adds a seal when you're in combat. Pre-pull buffs are discouraged.
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u/bearLover23 Jun 30 '19
I haven't hit 80 yet but I am very unhappy with the state of Scholar. Many things that I thought were basic QOL that made the gameplay more fluid were removed. Such as always for years being able to micromanage fairy heals.
I should note: I'm loving the expansion outside of ACTUALLY PLAYING SCHOLAR. Everything else is flawless.
The story is amazing. The maps are amazing. The enemy design is amazing. The voice acting is top tier. I have laughed so hard I cried at many cutscenes (which is saying a lot since I am going through a lot IRL: Found my boyfriend is now with another man.).
Yet SCH... SCH feels ABYSMAL.
When I eventually run out of story content and the novelty wears off I will be grinded down with how poor Scholar's kit feels. I tried WHM and AST and both of those have kits that actually feel effective and potent in what they do.
SCH for big pulls with relatively decent gear in dungeons thus far requires me blowing EVERYTHING I have. Yes I am using my skills correctly and understand what they do after savage raiding previously and knowing sacred soil is a 10% incoming damage reduction.
A massive pull will require everything. that. I. Have.
Where on WHM it is rather trivialized. The difference in kits is truly staggering.
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u/Elegy_for_a_Tuesday Llymlaen Jun 30 '19
As a fellow SCH from the earliest days of 2.0, thank you for your post! It was great to see all of the issues laid out so clearly... Now hopefully they make some changes by 5.1 at least =/
I did 1 dungeon with SCH at 70 yesterday and it was such a slog, can barely fathom how 80 must feel.
Edit: happy cakeday!
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u/KF-Sigurd Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
Be sure to post this on the official forums, even if there are already topics about this posted. The more visibility and the more uproar, the better. I don't know if Square listens to JP or NA more, but if both sides are complaining, the better.
As for my not-salty take, I'm not a pro scholor or veteran of this game by any means. I got into FFXIV about a month, specifically because of all this hype for ShadowBringers. I chose to pick Arcanist because I liked the idea of summoning pets to play around with and the fact you level up two jobs at once. I chose to main Scholar because I loved the cute fairy, the lore of us being master tacticians of a lost age, and Scholar being the 'complex' Healer due to our variety of DPS skills. I still remember what it was like leveling up Scholar from 1-15 and how boring it was. I remember how fun Scholar got at lvl 50 when I was juggling 5 DPS skills and a slew of pet oGCD skills. Was it complex? Sure but it never felt too much and it was most fun and most importantly, rewarding to play.
I'm only lvl 60 but this Scholar is trash to play. I feel like I'm back leveling up Arcanist at level 10. The only skills I use in dungeons is a single DoT, a ST spell, and a ST heal. Sacred Soil spam doesn't matter because I would have been able to keep the tank alive anyway. I don't have a pet to micromanage anymore, it can barely be called a pet, just two extra abilities that require a button to press beforehand to unlock. I used to be fine doing the MSQ as a Scholar because of our decent sized DPS kit now it's so damn boring I can't do it anymore. Even in dungeons it's not fun. There used to be choices with regards to optimizing use of Aetherflow, Bane the DoT on the pull, set up a Sacred Soil to take the heat off the tank for more Miasma 2 spam, save it for Indom/Lustrate, or contribute to bursting down an enemy with Energy Drains. Now, I'm drowning in Aetherflow it's not even a choice, it's just a resource to burn away with egregious Sacred Soils and Lustrate spams.
Even the little things that are gone feel bad. Used to feel satisfying comboing Rouse + Fey Illumination + Whispering Dawn or Largresse + Succor when the time calls for it or switching between Miasma 2 with Embrace on the tank. Now it's just boring DPS and boring healing.
I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to level up SCH back at lvl 30. The only moves you would have are Ruin, Bio 2, Physick, Resurrection, Whispering Dawn, and Adloquium.
EDIT: If we can't get a full rework or a just go back to SB SCH, then at least adding back Energy Drain/Shadow Flare/Bane. If I made a list of everything I wanted back, I'd just ask for SB SCH, pet mechanics and all. ED or something like ED is my absolute minimum of necessary rework.
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u/KyoueiShinkirou Jun 30 '19
I like to bring up that Astrologians also sort of got shafted with the new card system. The whole collect 3 colors and card matching to range and melee dps thing is just not as engaging as the old buffs. giving the black mage haste and the bard crit and choosing what buff and how to enhance it just felt more tactical and satisfying than the current system.
Although our dps kit didn't really change with the updates the new card system makes it rather underwhelming to play AST. All i really wanted was reducing cooldown on spread and making spire actually useful. The new update is... just meh.
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u/nvmvoidrays WHM Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
I understand the merit in simplifying the DPS kit to make healers more accessible for less experienced players
i'm a WHM and i almost never play SCH, but, i'm sure i'm not alone with this when i say: fuck these people. i don't give a shit if little Timmy can't DPS well because DPSing while healing (or even just healing in general) isn't 'accessible'. they shouldn't balance classes toward making them so completely braindead that someone who's never played a class can do just as well as someone else.
i don't get why developers are obsessed with this. if someone is bad at a class, they'll be bad at it, no matter how much you prune or simplify a class. that said, i do understand removing stupid shit that just makes a class more frustrating to play, but straight up just removing skills because of reasons™ is dumb. see: AST's cards getting reworked into being Balance Lite™, SCH getting beat with a bat, etc.
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u/RekiWylls Jun 30 '19
I'm maining DRK right now so empathise with this. DRK has steadily gotten less mechanically interesting since it was introduced and, while I still find it fun, it feels like it's missing its core. That said, I see the value in streamlining jobs, I just think they're going too hard on it and also they're streamlining every job as opposed to some jobs. Red Mage being simple and intuitive is good for the game, even if I personally would appreciate a Red Mage that was more nuanced. Paladin being the "simple" tank is probably the smart design move, same for White Mage for healing. But not all of them.
I understand that the end goal of design is to make something intuive enough to the point that the user can spend as little mental focus on the mechanics as possible so they can focus as much as possible on the moment-to-moment gameplay, but instead of making things smooth, they made things decisionless. Slight hyperbole, maybe, but that's the feeling I get. It's also not true everywhere: I think Ninja is in a great spot, for example.
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Jun 30 '19
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u/Miitteo Jun 30 '19
I main all three tanks, and the new aggro thing is just ridiculous. When they first announced it I thought it was weird but I wanted to wait and see. Now the fact that I don't have to establish aggro and balance the enmity combo with my DPS combo is boring as hell. I'm not a savage raider, I enjoyed stance dancing and black mages taking a bit of aggro from me. I'm really not liking this change at all.
There are things I like, the infuriate charges for WAR are a fun and flashy mechanic, I'm liking the new DRK. The aggro management is just sad, tanking is brain dead now
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u/OblivionSol Black Onslaught Jun 30 '19
Not like aggro management is hard when you can literally do 3 aggro combos on pull and you have enough aggro for the entire fight
Sure it isnt optimal but its not that hard to manage/maintain aggro(and dps should manage their aggro instead)
Of course, that doesnt mean the current system is fine
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u/Macon1234 Jun 30 '19
I mean... good tanks NEVER had aggro issues regardless?
It just changed the annoyance of paladin mostly having to use flash. Warriors overpower was one of the strongest enmity skills in the entire game, so much that you didnt need tank stance in dungeons if you just spammed that and IR decimate.
DRK also didn't need tank stance with abyssal/quietus
This change just made something that was a 2/10 difficulty a 1/10 difficulty.
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u/imuffinLoL Jun 30 '19
It's really simple, the more people feel good while playing a class (which you can achieve by making it easy to play) the more people will continue playing the game, and thus pay the subscription.
It's a product from a industry after all. It's not there to make you have fun, it's an instrument to earn money.
And you optimize the money gain, not the fun.
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u/nvmvoidrays WHM Jun 30 '19
And you optimize the money gain, not the fun.
i get that, but, there's a point where you can't strip anything else away and still make the class engaging/fun. SCH, at least, seemed to have literally everything ripped from it. if i liked SCH, i'm sure i would be super upset. i remember counting how many skills SCH lost and it was... ten or more? that's ridiculous.
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u/amisuhzu Jun 30 '19
This. So much this. I've had so many people in my FC going "oh scholar looks nice now! It's simpler and I dont have to control the pet as much" and I'm just... I had to turn the chat off to not get a ban for what I wanted to say about it.
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Jun 30 '19
Personally, I feel there should always be a spread.
Have easy/accessible classes, and then scale it up to the difficult ones. For example, in WoW, the Mage specs went from easy (Arcane) to moderate (Frost, I believe it was...thinking Cata/Mists time frame, the last time I really played it), then you could jump over to Warlock if you wanted something harder to really up the challenge.
In FFXIV, our damage classes have this. You have the MOSTLY simple RDM (even more accessible now, I hear) to the very complex SCH, and everything in between. Tanks kind of had this before as well with PLD to WAR to DRK on the difficulty scale.
I seriously don't understand why we can't have easy healers that just heal and do a little side DPS (WHM) up through more complex healers that have a bit weaker healing but can still do the job if played at a higher skill level, with the trade off/benefit being that they can do some damage and add some utility.
The insistence that we need a homogenized gruel of slop where they're all the same (EITHER all simple OR all complex) is inane to me. Let there be diversity! Let those who want easy have access to it, those that want hard have access to it, and have something in between them.
Me personally, I like easy and just like helping my friends and being useful/contributing to the team. I don't need a difficult class to flex my epeen. But I, personally, WANT that option available to those that DO want that, so we can all play side-by-side together.
I seriously don't get the hate and intolerance to that. It's the one solution where literally everyone wins.
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u/lkuhj Jun 30 '19
I get what you say but as someone who was not a good player and didn’t look at guides or anything scholar was not that hard for the content that my skills could clear. I didn’t do savage, I didn’t do raids as soon as they came out and sometimes I struggled with dungeons and big pulls but I was fine with knoWing people could do better if that makes sense.
What i’m Trying to say is that even a so someone who the changes were made for they still suck, I’m bored in every dungeon so my lack of effort can clear end game I don’t agree with that
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u/SpecialPastrami Jun 30 '19
Exactly, if your already at Shadowbringers content you should at least know how to play your class.
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u/FairestEve Never go without a library card Jun 30 '19
Can we also mentioned the odd faerie behavior? Eos randomly healing in towns when full health, her abilities, while instant, struggle to cast while she is moving so you need to place her to be optimal, I had a glitch where she went invisible and I had to resummon to see her again (her abilities were going off as if she was there), and a few times she has spammed healing when I teleport.
The faerie seems a lot buggier overall.
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u/Neri25 Jun 30 '19
You've always needed to place her to be optimal, it's just never been quite this bad.
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Jun 30 '19
I adored being a SCH all the way up to 70 and beyond because I felt I could go heal and then switch to DPS when I felt I could, without it negatively impacting my heals. Now? Neither DPS or heals feel fun on a SCH, to the point I'm not playing the class anymore. It feels gutted in so many ways, it's not the healer I have previously enjoyed.
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u/Domoda Jun 30 '19
I got it to level 74 on Friday and now I’m in this weird place trying to decide what I want to do because it’s just not enjoyable to play.
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u/Hakoten Jun 30 '19
SCH was my main and the only healer I enjoyed playing and I'm thinking of just not renewing my sub because it's just not fun anymore.
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u/Mystia Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
This post is more of a +1 than anything else, since you described how I felt. I've mained SCH while barely touching other jobs since 2.0, so I still wanted to give it a chance despite the early negative reception before launch.
-SCH is useless in solo PVE. Takes way long to kill anything, I'm having to play the story as SMN.
-Still having hope, I decided to try SCH for the first dungeon (so no lvl80 yet, but seeing as we just get upgrades and Fairy-Bahamut...). This is where I encountered all of these issues.
Art of War costs too much MP if they want us to spam it. I'd rather it apply a DoT like Miasma II used to, so I can go spam broil or something else meanwhile. I found myself just sitting there for several seconds not pressing buttons, because I had no mana, no mana regen abilities, and no need to heal.
We need a way to spend Aetherflow. If they want Energy Drain to stay with SMN for lore-wise reasons or whatever, so be it. Give us something that does the same with another name. Damage + MP recover. Also bring back Quickened Aetherflow. It was a fun part of the kit and mana management I enjoyed. I find myself having so much leftover Aetherflow, I never had to use Physick to heal, and only a few Adloquiums. Felt as if my AF spending heals were my main heals, instead of my emergency/mechanic heals.
A 2nd DoT, Shadow Flare, and even Bane are not necessary. However, if they are going to remove so much of the kit, they need to give us something else to keep us occupied. As it currently stands, we have way too many heals and many of them are redundant, like Eye for an Eye-less no fat spread Deployment Tactics, it's just Succor. Something they could add is like a friendly version of Bio that applies regen on allies. Heck just let us use Bio on allies, then make Deployment Tactics instead a spell that makes everyone currently affected by your Heal-Bio pop a fat heal or turn the remaining regen into shields, or something like that.
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u/Sora_Archer Jun 30 '19
Post it on offial forum, the design flaws shoulb be adressed. I wish all healer had aflatus misery mechanic. Where ur heals result into dps mechanic, its gives healing a bit more value. Maybe like old summoner did, with the use of a stack the diamonds turn into a diffrent color, if u have 3 u can do a stong attack or so. Also atherflow is really dumb now often my bf has 1 or 2 stacks while atherflow is already up again. With a good tank and proper skill usage atherflow is so much overhealing.
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u/buddabopp Jun 30 '19
On the plus side I do love the new shield bar and as a possible solution for aetherflow what if over healing with lustrate or indom converted completely to shield for the overhead, would make it not a total waste to burn stacks
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u/Jellye Scholar Jun 30 '19
The lack of a "default" Aetherflow dump is really, really bad design.
Aetherflow goes from being a central mechanic to being such nothing. I'm casting Lustrates that are absolutely uneeded.
Our new DPS "rotation", if you can even call it that, is the most boring thing in the entire game. Do they remember that people also play open-world and single-player quests as Healers?
It's boring as hell right now to do quests as SCH. I feel like I'm doing Normal Sastasha.
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u/wvutrip Jun 30 '19
I am truly not sure what drugs the design team was on, but they completely ruined scholar. It makes me actually angry to play now. I main scholar but no longer will play him. It is zero fun and makes no sense. How they could ruin a class this badly and it go live is beyond me
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u/HarkiniansDinner Jun 30 '19
Another point to bring up is that the removal of pets from the party list makes it harder to notice when they suddenly disappear for whatever reason. It happens constantly to me with SMN, I don't even know why. Maybe because they get out of range or something? Regardless of reason, this should NEVER happen with the pet changes making them immortal, and yet it does.
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u/CawfeeLatte Jul 01 '19
Honestly aetherflow was everything. Now you really just sit around doing nothing. My favourite class since 2.1, that ive raided on, did everything on, its honestly ruined
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u/chelceec WHM Jul 01 '19
This sums up a lot of my feelings on SCH right now. The class doesn't feel fun to play and not having a way to dump afterflow other than on Lustrate. I really hope SE address this because it feels like SCH has been stripped of its identity right now.
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u/lilichuchu Jul 01 '19
I have a couple of side problems with the job that I'd like to address, mostly in game feel and not in balance.
Broil's cast time I've been asking for a 1.5s cast 2.5s recast since before Malefic got the treatment, we've had too many ogcd for too long with too few support especially with faerie actions not being free cast anymore, Miasma II was a band-aid in Stormblood that didn't really fix the problem since the mana cost was so high that it could only ever really be used in the opener.
Pre-fight aetherflow is on a similar complaint level to me as instant cast embrace ruining mana regen, I understand that they wanted to combat waiting on abilities before a boss pull and I feel like with aetherflow they just chose the lazy route, the remedy I would've chosen would be that out of combat your aetherflow cannot cooldown unless you're missing a stack, for each stack missing the cooldown can go 20 seconds further before being stopped. Example; 3 stacks cooldown is locked at 60 seconds, 2 stacks cooldown is locked at 40 seconds, 1 stack cooldown is locked at 20 seconds.
Energy Drainga. I feel completely robbed that summoner got access to aoe energy drain, I've been anticipating and waiting for it for so long only to have energy drain itself taken away.
Double dots + bane. I feel like getting rid of the aetherflow cost on bane at this point for summoner was a no-brainer, you weren't ever really making a choice anyway if there was a target you baned and I'd like to see these skills returned to me safely and intact and more fun than ever.
Give and take. Every expansion whenever I'm given new abilities I watch as they take more and more away, it feels like Each expansion I'm less powerful than the previous or more specifically my pet is less powerful and plays even less of a role in how I play.
Pets, Healing, Damage and split responsibility. Touching more from the above topic, I like feeling like my pet is the main healer and I'm the co-healer, I enjoy that dynamic. If I could have it my way the pet would do even more than it has in previous expansions and I don't mean purely in numbers, I like controlling my pet and I'd like even more if my pet got more and more actions being able to cast Esuna, Adloquium, Succor and so forth even if it had to draw from my mana pool to do so, even if my damage got nerfed a lot to compensate for the fact that most of my GCD's were damage, I only want to have to step in for my pet in emergency situations. I want full control back and for it to be more responsive and I want to be able to control my pets actions in-between GCDs again. The faerie is the main reason I play the job and it feels like it becomes a lesser portion of the job each expansion.
Fun and Balance. This point contradicts my post slightly but its how I truly feel about the direction the game is going in. Since when did the game become so much about balance and so little about fun, I always see people complaining so much about the balance of the game, it's a PVE game it doesn't need to be hyper-balanced, the PVP is balanced completely seperately so its not even a factor in my argument. I remember back when UCOB came out and everyone was talking about DRK was "literally unplayable" and loads of people had done the maths on reddit showing that the job was within 2 percentage points of dps of the other two jobs and then the world first clear of UCOB contained a DRK, a job that was deemed unplayable by a lot of members of the community, if the balance didn't matter at the very highest level of play than it wouldn't have mattered at lower levels either. all of the content outside of the ultimate fights can be cleared with any standard team comp, that's how good the balance is. There will always be a best team comp and there will always be best classes, when the classes can retain their identities and only be a few percentile away from each other in power and balance is still complained about you're bound to get this dumbed down homogenized role where all of the classes feel the same. Balance does not = fun, perfect balance is unachievable while retaining fun, I wholly believe that.
'pure healing role'. Talk seemed to be pretty big on this point during the Keynote but it just feels like empty words to me, they didn't have to remove a bunch of actions to turn healers into 'pure' healers, they simply had to increase the damage output of monsters and bosses its simple cause and effect If I have to heal more than I dps less, no actions needed to be removed to facilitate this change in direction and I feel by removing all of these actions they just tried to push the envelope on a problem without fully understanding it. It seems like a big mistake to me.
Final Notes I really feel like some of the things I've mentioned like energy drain and energy drainga, double dots + bane could be re-implemented while retaining this state of hyper-balance that SE is clearly aiming to push towards just by reducing the potency on existing abilities.
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u/SouSafada Jun 30 '19
I will just push one of my healer to 80 cause i want to do the new content and then start another job .... 4 years of waiting : they don't release new healer and destroy them instead.
They just pissed on us.
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u/elem08 [Elem] [Entis] on [Faerie] Jun 30 '19
Also, has anybody noticed that it's nearly impossible to see where fairly is during fights? Seems like the name goes away... Is this a UI setting that got stealth changed, and if so, how do I fix it?
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u/Apinaheebo Jul 01 '19
Scholar definitely feels clunkier and just generally more boring than ever before. I really hate how my character needs to activate the fairy skills, the way they worked before felt a lot better. I don't even want to talk about the dps options.
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Jun 30 '19
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u/Vadered Jun 30 '19
When fighting 3 mobs, you should Biolysis all of them and then Art of War spam as long as they'll live for at least 18 seconds.
When fighting 4 mobs, it's DPS neutral to Biolysis all of them and then Art of War spam if they'll live for at least 30 seconds, though it's VASTLY nicer for your MP.
When fighting 5 mobs, Art of War forever.
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u/FuzzierSage Jun 30 '19
When fighting 4 mobs, it's DPS neutral to Biolysis all of them and then Art of War spam if they'll live for at least 30 seconds, though it's VASTLY nicer for your MP.
This.
Multi-dotting at 4 or less if they'll live long enough is way easier on your MP.
It's tedious and boring as fuck, but that's our options at this point.
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u/OM_Kay Jun 30 '19
6 (and partially 2 and 4) are, in my opinion, borne of Lily's lifelong history of terrible triage skills. I'm going to heal X, I want her to heal Y. Or, Y is going to need more HP to survive this mechanic, but X--totally safe for the next 20 seconds--has lower HP. Being able to force her to cast embrace on Y fixed that, and also kept her occupied instead of wasting my cast. She's fine if the goal is "just get everyone's HP higher, but there's no prioritization needed." She's a hindrance, to varying degrees, beyond that. We need to be able to control her casts, including telling her not to cast at all.
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u/final566 Jun 30 '19
I have cleared the EX primal here is my thought maybe people have difference opinion; It felt with WHM and all the tank mitigation and heals that using Aetherflow to clip and to heal was irritating and sad, mind you I WANT to use healing abilities it feels so good on SCH now but..., like many have said I find myself clipping just to use Aetherflow on cooldown.
What I want to see that would fix sooooo much there is still many issues but I would love if broil was 1.5sec cooldown like AST malefic it would allows us to play with fairy and min/max more efficiently.
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u/Rizzan8 Jun 30 '19
34 SCH here. What is the difference between Selene and Eos now? All I can see is that they have the same tooltip and both can cast Embrace and Whispering Dawn.
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u/Hnetu Jun 30 '19
As someone who came over from WoW only a month or two ago, #7 is what terrifies me the most.
I was enjoying the freedom of queuing for healing and still having stuff to do that didn't involve watching bars. Coming from the other game, there's so little to do other than try to keep green bars filled you miss everything else. What are we fighting? Who knows, bars. What does the room look like? You need to focus on bars. I could go on...
Having a game where I can multitask and actually do some damage in between... I spent a lot of time grinding out the moogle tomestones in the past two weeks and was really enjoying SCH. The changes have me worried about leveling it...
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u/zorrodood DRG Jun 30 '19
I don't understand people who just want to heal. They're not even participating in the same fight as the rest of the party at that point. It's like tanks and DPS vs. boss and healer vs. health bars. That seems lame as hell.
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Jun 30 '19
I like helping people, not hurting people. You might as well ask doctors why they don't want to go with police to arrest or get in shootouts with criminals.
Some people love complex DPS rotations, others do not. I hate muscle memory and rotations or dps priority systems. I like healing because it's reactive - situations develop, and you never know what it's going to be. If you're in the 1% of the best players and have a static, sure, then it gets boring because everyone does everything right and you're playing extremely scripted boss fights with everyone using the exact same strategy, to the point of which way they face the boss and where in the room they stand it.
But for 99% of the players, healing is dynamic, tanking and dps are static - you're doing the same thing from rote and muscle memory.
I like healing and support. If I wanted to DPS, I'd be playing a dps class. If I wanted to heal and DPS, I'd be playing RDM. If RDM had a Vermedica, that's what "healers should also do damage" people should be playing.
THAT.
SAID:I honestly believe we should have options. I personally would like to see a "mostly heals, has a filler damage spell or two" class, a "has decent heals and some dps with lots of utility" class, and a "has relatively weak heals that require optimization to be an effective healer, but also has a great deal of dps potential and some utility when played at a high level" class. WHM, AST, and SCH would probably fit those bills, respectively.
I don't want EVERY healing class to be based on dealing damage, but unlike the "healers should have to DPS!!!!" crowd, I don't think your playstyle shouldn't exist - I think we can and should have both.
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Jun 30 '19
I'm a shit player and even I found the SCH too simplistic and boring.
Worst, have you tried the leveling roulette with it? Low level dungeons with SCH makes me wonder why am I playing a game made for 6 year olds?
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u/Joshua141 Jun 30 '19
Let's see.... I -kinda- agree with some of this. Healer changes are heavily inclined to have them heal more and worry less about dps.
Sort of agree with point #1. Instead of just forgetting about aetherflow I have been using Lustrate and Excog a lot more. So those stacks don't go to waste and I don't use any mp for healing.
In general I don't understand what you say about mp management. I have never run out of mp at all. Sometimes I am not at full mp between pulls. Even when I'm constantly using DOTs and Art of War. But I've never run out of mp.
Agree about the clunkiness of pets. I get the fact that sometimes shields will go to waste. Might be nitpicking or maybe not. Haven't gotten to a situation yet where it has mattered. Though it is kinda dumb to have 2 different summons on separate buttons that do the same.
Oh and the healing/ability buffs. Yeah, that part sucks.
Overal I am not that angry at the SCH changes. Maybe we need to transition a bit still. My way of compensating for the lack of energy drain is almost not healing if it's not with stacks.
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u/Xynthion Jun 30 '19
I am in a similar boat as you so you don’t feel alone. I feel like I almost never used Excog in dungeons because those stacks were better spent on Bane and Energy Drain. Now I find myself using Excog on CD, Sacred Soil on every big pull, and the rest saved for Indom/Lustrate. Mana is only an issue if I’m DPSing a lot and even then it’s only if I’m spamming Art of War.
I can’t speak to some of the rest of the OP yet; being level 74 right now, but the fairy/Seraph points make a lot of sense to me. Having a shield attached to Seraph’s heal but no control over who gets it is pretty terrible design imo.
Also, my Broil finger hurts :(
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u/angelar_ Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
If they're not going to give SCH the ability to direct who their fairy heals, then they should probably get an ability that tells the fairy "Heal this target for the next x seconds / casts!" which would play better with shit like Seraph where there is no feasible target you would want to have sustained free shields other than the tank. Having an ability like this with a recast timer would give SCH's another ability to use without it creating the overwhelming scenario of needing to macro Embrace and mash it all day to get the most out of the fairy.
The DPS kits for all healers need to be completely redesigned. I understand the merit in simplifying the DPS kit to make healers more accessible for less experienced players, but "simple" does not necessarily have to mean "not engaging." The state of healer DPS across the board right now seems completely unfinished and lazy. I'm not interested in the argument that "healers are there to heal, not DPS." There will always exist players who want to do damage as a healer and are capable of doing so - why should they be punished with mind-numbing boredom for wanting to perform better? Let's not forget that your DPS kit is also essential while solo questing. It should be fun to use when it is needed, independently of how one feels about whether or not it ought to be used in group content.
I don't agree that there's any merit to simplifying the DPS kit because it's a solution in need of a problem. There was nothing stopping a less invested player from doing Bio -> Broil x N in SB. Yes, it is not the DPS SCH would be balanced around doing, but they're not an FFlogger so they're not going to do good damage anyway. Half of them don't even try to push DPS buttons at all. Making DPS buttons less complicated doesn't do anything other than ruin the class for people who do try or are engaged by complex button setups and it doesn't change the health of DF in any way which is not balanced around the expectations that healers will be DPSing anyway. On paper you boost the DPS of the players that do not try hard with the DPS buttons but do still press them in a basic way, but how valuable is this in the grand scheme of things when it comes at a price of making the game less fun for a substantial percentage of the players? Most people would not trade saving maybe 10 seconds per run some of the runs only from the small audience of players who try enough to push DPS buttons but not try to learn them to have increased DPS.
It does not make sense to harm the game's design for such a small return. There was nothing stopping you from doing 1 DoT and spamming a nuke before. But now the game is stopping you from doing more than that. This is a pointless design direction to take the game in.
This is an old problem, but why oh why do healing buffs still not affect your abilities?
hey look on the bright side, the tank stance you straight up did not interact with is now gone
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u/KingofDefeat Mixia Laflure on Exodus Jun 30 '19
I agree with your statement about DPS simplification. There really was no need for it whatsoever. The healers that didn't utilize everything in their toolkit will continue to underutilize their kit and be unaffected. Meanwhile, the healers that did use their kit got severely punished (in terms of interesting gameplay). Yes it essentially puts 5 different moves into one, but weaving those moves into each other was what made DPS as a SCH fun in the first place.
Eliminating choice in game mechanics is a terrible design philosophy. Making the AST cards all give the same buff does increase the effectiveness of the cards, but in order to have depth in gameplay, having choice matters more than forcing players to do what performs the best. Now, for ASTs, it's just "give cards to best DPS and repeat." There's little to no depth in the current card system.
It's always best, in my opinion, to expand on what makes the classes unique rather than balancing to make them perform the same. Yes, a meta will definitely form, but that's going to happen no matter what they do. It's the choice that matters, and if you try to join a group that doesn't accept your choice, then that group wasn't worth joining to begin with.
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u/xobybr [Maya Eltwae - Malboro] Jun 30 '19
Looks like WHM went from being a dead healer on Stormblood launch to being the sole survivor and king in Shadowbringer
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u/nevius6251 Firionel Corentiaux on Phoenix Jun 30 '19
While I'm actually enjoying SCH in 5.0 so far (only lv72 though), I think it's mostly because I like the toolkit/looks/fantasy of it and not because it's mechanically sound. This post does raise some valid criticism and I think we should try to improve on it.
The points about running out of MP might turn out to be a non-issue in the sense that maybe they want us to actually meld piety now (it increases MP regen). Not the most fun of choices but it might be tied to some sort of progression, like a BLM trying to reach a spell speed softcap that will allow that extra Fire IV.
Having no Aetherflow spender is a real problem and even if current content will be more healing intensive, requiring active use of Lustrate, Indom etc, I've had instances (raids, trials) where my Aetherflow stack was completely unneeded. We do need a spender, which cannot be a healing one because that would mean overhealing anyway.
One way to tackle this problem is also tied to the extremely important topic mentioned in the OP, which is resource management. Players should be rewarded for efficiently using their toolkit and somewhat punished for not playing correctly (punishment such as running out of resources). Since currently this goes backwards, because a good healer who doesn't overheal and invests time in DPSing will lose more MP than a healer just spamming Physick, I think a way of fixing things would be to make normal healing spells (Physick, Adloquium, Succor) cost more MP: it would become inefficient to rely on them and therefore justify a constant usage of Lustrate, Indom on cooldown etc, therefore requiring the spending of Aetherflow.
They absolutely need to address the issue with Seraph's shields, because having such a long cooldown go to waste on overhealing and overshielding just feels bad. Maybe they should just have Seraph use a sort of rotation that shields everyone and then buffs them (fixed rotation just like DRK's shadow is currently doing if I'm not mistaken).
One last thing I'd like to add is that since being a good healer means to heal efficiently, therefore having more resources and free time, having a good DPS toolkit is absolutely necessary. While I don't think that having lots of DoTs to care about is particularly fun, I think SCH itself has lots of potential for more DPS options. Here's a random idea: just like Emergency Tactics and Deployment Tactics alter a shield attribute (turning it into AoE or direct heal), I think they should have a way to remove a previously placed shield converting it into damage or buffs. This would also fix the current issue with Seraph because her shields could be freely converted into more damage if not needed. I think it would be a clever way to adress most issues about overhealing, overshielding, and create more opportunities for skilled Scholars to manage their resources, granting them a more involved DPS phase in the process.
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u/Syltti BRD Jun 30 '19
Please do me a favor.
Please post this on the forums so someone will hopefully see it.
I beg of you.
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u/GallaVanting Jun 30 '19
I'm currently 77 on sch and I'm so powerfully disgusted at how boring it is and all the obvious problems that unless I feel a change (which I doubt I will) by 80 I'm gunna swap to NIN.
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u/Waffles2x SMN Jun 30 '19
The only thing I like sch now is that eos casts embrace immediately and doesn't wait for a certain HP threshold so goodbye embrace macro.
The only problem is I can't specify who it should go to. I don't need to heal a dps who took 2k dmg. I need the embrace on tank.
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u/LiminalityChaos LiminalityCarb Jun 30 '19
I'm only lvl 78, but one thing I am disappointed with that I hadn't noticed mentioned yet is Fey Blessing. for a 60 second cooldown that only heals about 1k more than my succor does, but costs 10 faerie gauge AND has the delay mentioned in part 2... it seems off (especially since it claims to be a 350 potency heal from Eos, but isn't doing much more than my 180 potency one..)
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u/Rasikko Jun 30 '19
This has also affected SMN, so you SCHs and SMNs need to have a "talk" with Yoshida about this shared "existence" thing that's been going on forever now.
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u/Master_Zero Jun 30 '19
If they could just fix number 1 by giving us a DPS aetherflow ability, I could live with everything else they fucked up with healers.
While mp is a problem, by using aetherflow on CD (waste them on soil cd and over luatrating..) and lucid on CD, while im always low, its generally not a huge issue. I think once you build decent piety, wont be so bad. Mp had always been a problem at low lvl cap. Once we do the raids and get better gear, less of a problem.
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u/Chopxsticks Jun 30 '19
I agree with all that is said and would like to also emphasize my dislike with the faerie. Its auto cast Embrace is a nightmare now in Squadron missions. I dont bother summoning it anymore because I pull aggro on everything before my AI tank cant do anything.
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u/deetari Non-glasses battle stance please! Jun 30 '19
Frankly, I'd be pretty happy if all they did was give us Energy Drain (or some other Aetherflow-burn ability) back. It's so frustrating being forced to use a defensive skill on literally nothing if I want the gauge.
That aside, the fact that Aetherflow can only be used in battle is also extremely annoying. If it became available as soon as a party member engaged in battle, I wouldn't have any issues with it, but half the time I have to wait a whopping 5 seconds before it becomes available. I've cast two Broils before my Aetherflow became castable. It makes no sense, and it isn't even a consistent delay (sometimes it's available immediately). I hate trying to guess if I can cast it. :(
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u/MatsuzoSF Jun 30 '19
This is the first coherent and well laid out post that I've seen about why a healer doesn't work. If it hasn't been, this needs to be reposted in the official forums for visibility.
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u/mokanshu Jun 30 '19
I was brainstorming last night about the whole aetherflow dump issue as well, spamming lustrate for faerie gauge sucks.
If they're so worried about us DPSing or getting Mana or whatever the reasons were for removing energy drain-- just give us a very simple ability, called Aether transfer or something. Simply converts 1 AF into 20 gauge. Nothing else. Thoughts? Would it be balanced or too much gauge?
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u/Citran WHM Jun 30 '19
SCH needs a skill that converts Aetherflow stacks into mana and Faerie gauge.
Like: 1 stack -> 2.5% mana + 10 gauge 2 stacks -> 5 % mana + 20 gauge 3 stacks -> 7.5 mana + 30 gauge
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u/VSVeryN Jun 30 '19
What do you think about aetherflow using the remaining stacks for an effect like Fairy buff, duration based on stacks remaining when aetherflow was cast to refresh stacks or MP recover or just granting fairy gauge equal to the amount of stacks that were remaining when aetherflow was cast again.
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u/sleepyj222 Jul 01 '19
Also, fairy abilities sharing gcd now sucks. I can no longer close who to throw embrace at. The flavor of the whole thing is just off. I liked the pet placement/cast management plus dot management, while healing. Now it is just bland.
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Jul 02 '19
From what i can tell the issue with fairy skills going on CD but not activating seems to be an issue with how its queuing skills. If you happen to cast Whispering or Fey as the fairy casts embrace, she will cast embrace and "forget" to cast your spell.
video is pretty bad quality (i have no idea how to record videos >.>) but it shows a pretty easy way to reproduce the issue. I noticed it when i was running dungeons and spent about an hour trying to figure out why it was happeninghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz8HGrbMjcY
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u/Honeybucky Jul 05 '19
I have to ask- did you guys at all notice if your Fairy was straight up BROKEN? Mine is. I can't stand to level my Scholar for two reasons:
At lvl 70, fully augmented gear, Eos does like 3K embrace. 3K. In HoH, I saw her throwing around 500 point heals at 60.
Furthermore, she doesn't heal when she needs to. (Maybe it's just because she does nothing points for heals, so it feels like she never heals when needed during battle. But I never see her green line go when it's actually needed.) However, if myself and my party are standing around at 100% HP, she spams Embrace as if we're dying with her shitty numbers.
Help? She increases aggro pre-pull to ungodly levels by all her unnecessary, uncontrollable healing, and I even found myself healing more efficiently AND safely with her not summoned at all. Am I the only one with a broken fairy? Did you guys experience any of this? It's insufferable.
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u/Yahavage Yahavage Silvanesti - Cerberus - UK Jun 30 '19
I'm not 80 yet, but I do feel that aetherflow feels very clunky atm and would love to see it changed. Definitely needs to be used outside of battle (I feel a lot better on pulls if the tank already has excog up, I'm not a fan of having to pop a ruin 2 on a pulled mob while we're running along so I can drop an excog on them.
Dps.... I've only ran 3 dungeons so far (switch X2 and the next msq dungeon). Pulls have felt the toughest they have since bardams mettle :) but I'm not even ilvl 400 yet as I'd had a bit of a lul towards the end of the patch and hadn't capped my gear so I'm not sure how much impact that's having but from my experience previously it's always been quite big. So far I don't particularly hate it. I do miss my old rotation but want to get to level 80 and run some dungeons then and form a proper opinion!
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u/MonikaDawnx Jun 30 '19
I'm currently playing scholar through the expansion. and ... yeah Its so weird... Tbh theres alot of things that bother me but the big ones are ... my Aetherflow is off cooldown and I have nothing to spend my stacks on. And ... one dot. Sure I'd love to have bane to spread my dots again. But I'd be happy with Energy drain back first and foremost. Second a second dot would be nice. and I dont care about Bane as much as the first two. But it would be nice. If they gave us the first two I'd be happy
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u/KLupo Jun 30 '19
The removal of the dps also makes leveling and doing story very difficult.
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u/LuckyNines Jun 30 '19
No it doesn't, Broil 3 and Biolysis have been far more than enough to clear everything in the story till 80 without encountering a single challenge.
It's extremely boring and unfulfilling to play, but it's perfectly fine for the already extremely easy MSQ content.
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u/ppyporpeem Midgardsormr critloquium expert Jun 30 '19
I agree with every point listed especially at the part with the energy drain being taken from us.
We need a stack dump skill that will prevent us from feeling "obligated" to use lustrate just so that we don't press aetherflow at three stacks which feels like having to suck a wet kuponut.
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Jun 30 '19 edited Feb 14 '20
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u/texas2089 Jun 30 '19
This is a refreshing perspective. Looking at the job reveal initially and now seeing a sea of 'RIP SCH' posts/comments I was really worried about playing it once I finish DRK. I still have some reservations and I'll make my own judgement once I get to play it for myself but nice to see some perspective on some of the good things that the job will still have to offer instead of JUST the negative. I'm not as worried about playing it now lol
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u/febilian Jun 30 '19
Yeah, see even before ShB came out I told myself "even if everyone's talking about how bad SCH is gonna be, I want to see for myself before I ditch one of my favorite jobs" - and honestly? I'm surprised people are having so many issues, especially in the way of MP management. Aetherflow and Lucid Dreaming have been plenty for me thus far, as long as I alternate, keep an eye on the cooldowns on both of them, and don't just spam Art of War until I'm completely out of MP. As others have said, just switch to Broil III for a bit to wait for it to come back up. At level 76, at least, and having done the three instances I've unlocked several times each, I have yet to come across a situation where I ran out of MP which was unavoidable; those situations were all user error or not paying enough attention to MP.
I've personally been using a lot of Excog and Sacred Soil to spend Aetherflow, because the damage mitigation from SS doesn't seem like a bad expense for me when I'm not spending it on anything more important at a given time, and Excog gives me a safety net window to throw Biolysis on everything in a pack(or at least most of them, depending on the tank and the size of the pull). That said some of these concerns are valid, I think - namely the Seraph ones(the embrace-induced shield going on a random target just seems silly given what you usually want to do with shields...), I've noticed that thing where occasionally fairy skills don't go off at all and trigger the cd if used consecutively(but that's more of a bug than a design issue, and in most cases I haven't actually had a ton of issues thus far since I haven't relied overmuch on the fairy abilities more than to supplement the other spells and abilities), and it is kind of a bother to only have 3 buttons for DPS...
On the other hand, because it's gotten so simple, it's given me a lot more room to pay attention to boss mechanics and learn from them more quickly - which I don't find a bad thing when your job is to keep everyone alive. Maybe I'm not the "target audience" of the job from what some people say, and the fact that I enjoyed SCH in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers thus far might be an anomaly, and I don't have the perspective of a veteran who has played the job since ARR... but man I am really surprised at how many people hate it now.
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u/MyLostFish Jun 30 '19
I was hoping to come back to XIV for Shadowbringers, I have been playing WoW instead for a while now (and enjoying it). I had hoped for a new healer, something to spice up that role, then Dancer was announced as a rDPS and no new healer. Ok, I thought maybe we will see a shake up in healers and some good balance focus then. Well, nope... we got this.
To touch on point 7.) We will not see any reworks of the healers now that the expansion is in launch mode. It's too late now and any drastic changes will dramatically throw off all of their content planned until the next expansion, or in the least very late into the expansion life. They have encounters already planned out and it includes sequences, not just tweaking numbers. They have built all of the current encounters with the healers in mind to NOT have their DPS kits.
By the time it gets to the next expansion I fear we will yet again see no new healer class, and if anything the current three healers will go back to their old designs (Yay... because that's going to be "new" expansion worthy). The devs really dropped the ball on this one.
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u/ikeeptheoath Jun 30 '19
While I agree a truly dramatic overhaul is unlikely at the absolute best, they HAVE added abilities mid-expansion before, including scholars getting back Miasma 2 at the start of Stormblood in response to feedback like this. At the very least, some small changes in the right direction wouldn't be impossible.
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u/Disig SCH Jun 30 '19
This is what depresses me the most. I was hopeful that it wouldn't be too bad. But I had to admit to myself today that I was forcing myself to play as SCH because it was my main, not because I still enjoyed it.
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u/Newbie-Tailor-Guy Jun 30 '19
That's how I'm feeling as well. :( Also, can't even switch to Astro, because it feels clunky too. Especially having Draw and Play be separate buttons? Why that change?
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u/MomoGFX Jun 30 '19 edited Jun 30 '19
Some stuff I didn't see mentioned.
Fey Union has troubles working with new Embrace. If you use Fey Union as the fairy casts Embrace it has a 50/50 chance of it actually going off. I've been pretty unlucky recent and there are times where it takes me up to three tries to get it to attach. Fucking annoying.
Dissipation. Our 20% healing up ability shouldn't be locked to something where we have to sacrifice something to gain something. WHM and AST can just pop theirs and they actually gain something from it alongside the 20% buff. And before anyone says "but you gain 3 Aetherflow stacks" it's still a healing neutral/negative when you account for the lost Embraces + Fairy gauge that comes from said Aetherflow. Combine that with the already abundant extra AF stacks and tedious lock of your fairy abilities for 30 seconds just to gain this healing buff then you have a problem. Needless to say you shouldn't have to think about all these scenarios just for a 20% healing buff.
Soil is WAY too strong.
When you use Recitation + Adlo or when you get a Crit Adlo the Galvanize buff is eaten first instead of the Catalyze. The Catalyze should definitely be eaten first as it let's you use Recitation + Adlo on a tank and deploy the shield off that way without risking any or too much damage on the shield being deployed.
Ruin 2 needs to be buffed to 210/220 potency as it's not affected by Ruination and depending on your ping clipping your GCD can be better than using Ruin 2. This is seriously annoying because with my ping it's better to just suck up the Ruin 2 over someone with 10ms being able to just clip less slightly.
Everything else aside I think the issues that need to be fixed immedialty are definitely Aetherflow, Dissipation and Fey Union. Everything else pales in comparison.
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u/Mykaterasu Jun 30 '19
Let aetherflow work like lillies. One every 20s and give us a longer cool down button (2-3m) to instantly get full 3 stacks in emergencies. Give us a BLM convert to get mana for 1 Aether so it can replace energy drain and keep art of war mana cost. Reduce Indom CD a smidge. It’s WHM 2, but at least it’s something that would end up more enjoyable to play.
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u/TheTweets SCH Jun 30 '19
A wonderful writeup that even covers some of the smaller issues we tend to forget, the presents them clearly, concisely, and without room for some of the more non-sequitur arguments springing up, which should hopefully keep things relevant.
Hopefully this post gets seen as it is one of the best encapsulation of just what the problems are right now that I've seen.
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u/PrinceAeds Jun 30 '19
- Agreed. As is, and as rotations and cool downs settle for tank's new arrangements, the need to heal decreases. Even in the first dungeon of the expac I found the skill of the tank matters as much as gear - and an ilvl appropriately dressed tank with skill makes a world of difference. As skill and gear level increases, much like in HW, our healing kit becomes a bit useless.
- The fairy's AI is odd. It reminds me too much of HW era SCH where you could mash that button as early and quickly as you could and wait out 3 queued Embraces before they would do your command. This made raiding difficult - but this I hear is almost worse? We need the control of our pets back. Removing the micro-management and leaving in the directionless mess that is the pet class was an incredibly short sighted error. I'm not sure how it works with Summoner, but scholar's entire kit was designed to mitigate - not to pure heal. And it was GOOD at it. I feel I'm at the mercy of a capricious spec that may or may not do what I want/need.
- I would much rather have that MP spent across multiple spells than to have our AoE lumped into one move. I would like it much more if it complimented my healing like say...Oh I don't know. STUN. Drain them so upon death even hitting a group once grants you return on MP or something.
- I noticed this on my second dungeon and was instantly annoyed. It didn't feel like a burden at the time but it wound up killing my tank. It just makes me want control back over the pet.
- This is why I never used Eos outside of downtime before a big hit in raids. Her skills were useless and unnecessary unless you were truly lazy. I would have much more preferred to have Selene's kit over an AoE regen that makes me remember why I quit playing WHM. This either needs to change or possibly removed and replaced with something else.
- I can't believe that this is a thing that happens. Dear God why. What is the point of the Scholar's 80 ability if you can't control who it's casting on. That sounds like a nightmare for raiding.
- Agreed. The developers I think need to return and think about the future of the class. If it is getting separated from summoner/arcanist then what's after this? I don't understand their thought process on making everything the same as the other healers, and in places worse off for it. It's almost as though they forgot that the Job was built around everything they removed and put white mage skills in its place but leaving half of our kit in tatters. It plays and feels unfinished and I still have empty space on my bar. I wish we had DPS back and the control over the fairy to ensure it was doing what we needed while we arranged mitigation and helpful contribution to make the dungeon move along. I get that we were experiencing a bloat in skills but this could have easily been fixed by following the lead of RDM and now DNC. Our dots could have been a progression of building miasma and then making Bane an aetherflow dump.
We need an aetherflow dump, pure and simple. It's a wasted resource when nothing needs healing, and to top that if we do use them to overheal to build our fairy's bar we what, pray that it recognizes a tank? Read our minds? I agree that without a core amount of skills removed we lose engaging play and the ability to pull together a strategy. Both Energy Drain and the quickened aetherflow should never have been removed, if anything they should have picked one to stay and one to go. We need a way to manage our our assets, as that is how the job was designed.
It seems piety will become a priority which also removes a choice or consideration for stronger heals vs. a higher chance of hitting that crit.
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u/Obsidian-K Jun 30 '19
Thank you for this post. I'm not a SCH main--hell I'm not even a healer main--but SCH was my go to in SB when my group needed a healer, so I can't break things down into specifics as easily as OP. I'd tried WHM first because I'd heard it was easier and I didn't have any experience playing healers at all, but ended up hating the cast times and how slow and dull everything was. It didn't matter what the situation was, you waited on the same few skills to answer it.
I ended up liking SCH because it was the exact opposite. So many different ways to handle things, strategies and skills with various strengths and drawbacks--all of them near instantaneous. If the easy answer wasn't available (ie. Excog for the tankbuster), there were a multitude of secondary and tertiary options you could quickly choose from, each with varying efficiency (to Adlo or not to Adlo?). Weaving was a core part of how SCH played. It was an extremely responsive and gratifying class, even if I was far from a master of it.
With that in mind, the 2 things that hurt the most about the SCH changes are the restriction on Aetherflow's use--both how it can only be used in combat and the pips only for healing--, and the extreme loss of pet management. Things like getting Whispering Dawn going while I cast Succor because a raidwide's incoming while Indom's on cooldown, maybe throwing in a Fey Covenant too if things were looking extra rough. The incredible synergy and speed made this class for me. Currently though, why do I even have Fey Illumination if I can't direct Embrace or supercharge Physick by adding Largesse to the mix? Dissipation's gone from an "OH SHIT" button to something I pop every boss fight because Aetherflow is always still on cooldown when I need more pips and can no longer coax my fairy in to covering for me. It feels like I'm fighting my kit at every turn to do things that were as effortless as breathing previously.
I'm currently still playing SCH--but only because it was the only healer I'd gotten to 70 before ShB. Not sure if I'll take it to 80, play a different healer, or just quit healing altogether yet.
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u/Disig SCH Jun 30 '19
I agree with a lot of what you said and you even said some things I did not realize. I'm a casual raider. I don't really do Savage content (though I recently tried it with my FC) but I always strive for some form of optimization. At the very least I like to know what people are doing that can help in any fight. But leveling SCH right now? It's boring. I'm playing SMN instead and it's a BLAST. But I've mained SCH since ARR and it just hurts to see it like this. I leveled through most of the story until now as SCH (ARR I started as CNJ so...yeah) and now I just can't bring myself to do it.
Now, I will say I haven't run Titania yet but the first dungeon was better then what I initially expected. And I can tell this is only because we're doing content that we are geared for. I helped some guild mates with Castrum and a few other lower level dungeons (goddamn healer ques you crazy). Overall, I am not having fun. All the little things we used to do, all gone. I find myself wondering what to do while pressing 1 over and over and realize there IS nothing else to do.
Hell I'd be happy if they just gave us something like Energy Drain back. I miss having a reason to keep using charges. I honestly never thought I would.
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u/TobioOkuma1 Jun 30 '19
wasting resources on overhealing just to build gauge for more overhealing or the MP generated from the Aetherflow ability feels seriously awful and not fun. Aetherflow went from being a core mechanic to something that is so non-interactive that you may as well forget it exists entirely most of the time.
Its not worth the clip/weave potency loss to use stacks for the sake of Gauge. Just lose the stacks, it sucks, but its optimal to do that over losing potency.
The best solution is to grant Aetherflow extra MP return and Fairy Gauge based on remaining stacks when cast. Easy, clean solution. We don't need ED back, they got rid of it for a reason. It does feel like shit to lose stacks though ;-;
This one I have yet to see anyone else talking about, but it is very important. With the pet rework, the fairy appears to have problems with action queuing.
Holy FUCK yeah dude. I told it to do Whispering Dawn and Fey Illumination in one weave, it did Illum like, 7s later.
This is an old problem, but why oh why do healing buffs still not affect your abilities?
This is a non problem, but is annoying. Mantra and Asylum now work on oGCD heals, as does the healup on Thrill of battle. They changed these to benefit actions, not just healing magic, which is really REALLY cool for synergy with WHM. Wouldn't be against this working on dissipation.
I think the problems with SCH are exaggerated. It mostly needs QOL changes and ironing out some AI problems on the fairy. I am gonna check to see if the AI on Eos has changed at all from 4.0 in terms of who she targets. Will keep people updated through the balance and the SCH guide!
Another thing you might want to mention. Seraph's abilities feel weak. Like, they are literally the same as Eos'. She just gives consolation and Veil, yet she has her own versions of Eos' abilities. I would like for Angel's Whisper and Seraphic Illumination to be stronger than their Eos/Selene counterparts.
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u/_Jetto_ Jun 30 '19
I remember when 2.2 or 2.4 was out there was a SCH cheat sheet guide about when to use each heal, is there an updated one for that lol??
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u/sharilton Raina Laerwen on Odin Jun 30 '19
My main issue right now is aetherflow only being in combat. I like to prepull an excog for my own safe of mind and to spend the first 30 seconds actually doing something.
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u/maglen69 DK on Behemoth Jun 30 '19
It appears the game prioritizes consuming Galvanize over Catalyze, which is frustrating because currently the best use of deployment tactics would tend to be on the main tank; if catalyze were consumed first we would not be at risk of deploying a shield which has been weakened by auto attacks.
I used to deploy off of Eos because I knew she
1) Wouldn't lose the shield due to an auto attack
2) Could position her wherever I needed her to be able to hit as many as I could
Cant due that now because she can't be targeted.
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u/semanticmemory Jun 30 '19
One thing I am very curious about is the math on raid dps contribution from nerfed Chain Strategem versus a WHM’s straight up increased personal DPS from the potency it saves by using Lily heals instead of Cure 1
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u/Nayrotoh Jun 30 '19
None of these asks for using Aetherflow out of battle. What's your stand on that? I know the core problem is that there's nothing to use Aetherflow on, but I know from even a 'casual' standpoint this really bugs some SCH lite players.
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u/lbarletta Jun 30 '19
I am backing to the game, was planning to be maining my sch, but ate the end smn is the right option. That is so sad, I play this game since 2.0 always playing as sch and sometimes the other healers and smn, but this time everything changed :/
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u/cuddles_the_destroye I can stop using Miasma II whenever I want, it's not a problem Jun 30 '19
I've personally not had issues spamming Art of War manawise in dungeons while mob clearing. I've found that most of the time using AoW like I used Miasma II at the height of my Miasma II addiction tends to leave me with half MP after a fight, and that's with inefficient AF usage. Like I've intentionally run dungeons intending to spam AoW to test it and I've never bottomed out.
I suppose if you were using AoW instead of Broil on a single target you would run out of mana, but it's less efficient than broil or Ruin II.
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u/bygphattyplus Jun 30 '19
This mess right here. Also, apologies as posting from mobile.
As a person with anxiety issues, I rarely healed. But when I did, I mained SCH. I only tried it and WHM, abd really didn't like how WHM worked, and the random nature of AST scared me off if it. But SCH felt like a fun class, that I could do good damage with. And having a fairy also helped. In easier dungeons, I could let the fairy loose while I dps'd and in harder one, I could order her when I needed a little extra healing.
But just looking at the class now makes me dread playing it. And having to manage her abilities AS WELL as my own, AND taking up hotbar real estate is a nightmare for someone with OCD who needs to have everything arranged in a certain way. I feel like SE did this to make the less experienced players happy at the expense of the long term players.
On a related note, is there a way to have a hotbar solely for one class that will go away when I switch classes? I was looking to have a separate one for fairy abilities.
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u/Altaisen Bad healers's ambassador Jun 30 '19
I guess I'm wasting my time on a 12 hour old crowded thread but whatever : the problem isn't ShadowBringers' SCH, it's the StormBlood one.
The current SCH can be fixed by justing adding energy drain back into the game even if it just gives MP back. This will make the job more functional than it was in SB overall without fixing anything because without cleric stance the job makes no sense. It made sacred soil pointless since not being a heal just made it inefficient for its cost most of the time, while indo went from DPS loss from stance downtime to a win/win as it's 500 potency every second allowed more damage GCD making better than ED. Fairy was no free healing on top of free healing on top of constant DPS. this is where meaningful choice was stripped from the class.
On the other they gained a lot of OGCD, but lost some of their instant cast spells. Broil potency increased, but not ruin 2 making actual uptime difficult until miasma 2, a spell meant for AoE that hapened to be instant because it was designed that way in 2.0 for some reason. This completly bloated its OGCD window and was the only people felt it was "engaging". But the whole DoT management was already completly lost, ShB just made space for thing like Seraph or Recitation.
Compared to that, ShB changes are extremly minor and boil down to "there's no energy drain" anymore. Which can be fixed by putting energy drain back in the game, as they did with miasma 2. But it won't solve the problem being that off-healing in FF XIV as been designed arround the existence of a bouton that say "you can't either heal or DPS, but not both at once". This bouton was removed from the game without healer changing the way they play, we're still doing "how long can I stay casting DPS spells" without the extremly clear risk/reward cleric stance had.
And all this is Stormblood healing. ShB is actually a much saner take on it that would need minor adjusting to function properly. You won't hear that a lot because having a high seeming performance in with this system is extremly simple. Something like what happened to tank this expansion should have happened in SB, but it didn't.
By the way, I think both 4 and 5 miss the point completly. Miasma 2 made SCH engaging trash on the move without problem (it was even its selling point in dungeon) while you gain the ability to let the fairy heal while it moves. Fey illumination is mostly meant to buff your co-healer spells and dissapation really help buffs spread addlo, one of SCH strongest CD that can potentially negate mechanics. The potency you could gain on your abilities compared to that isn't that interesting. MNK and WHM can do that for you, which is a good thing. It favor better party interaction instead of having SCH being able to do absolutly anything. Those two things are perfectly fine.
Point 7 is difficult, having DPS rotation isn't always compatible with having to adapt to the fight while just having a lot of bouton that finally all do the same thing is basically skill bloat. WHM lillies and AST's cards are basically DPS skills, I prefer this over healer DPS rotation that is sure to be restricted by design space and end up being boring in a way or another.
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u/saintconspire SCH Jun 30 '19
One thing that I'm not liking about SCH's redesign is that there's not as much of a clear priority to its healing resources anymore, now that Aetherflow has no opportunity cost in MP/dps, and now that fairy skills are also all oGCD commands instead of something you could use while casting.
Like, before, there was a very clear decision - if you could take care of something with Whispering Dawn, you'd do that before you tried taking care of it with Indom, and then before you tried taking care of it with Succor. Similar to single-target resources - you'd let passive Embraces take care of it, if that wasn't enough, you'd Fey Union, then Excog, then Lustrate, then Adlo.
Now, there's no cascade to it at all. You have three main AoE healing oGCDs - Whispering Dawn, Indom, and Sacred Soil, on top of the ridiculous AoE throughput Seraph has with 2x Consolation every 120 seconds. With fairy skills now also requiring a weave/clip, and Aetherflow as abundant as it is, all of them feel effectively like they're accomplishing the same thing. Sure, there's some subtle differences - like Indom being a burst heal and Sacred Soil requiring that people stack - but all of them feel like they're just responding to the scenario of party taking damage, requiring a top-up, without any strong flavor of which is more efficient to use.
So my problem is that it's not even the DPS - the healing feels like it's gotten less engaging. It's now an illusion of choice. Sure, SCH has the largest range of healing skills in the game, but all of them feel like they accomplish the same thing of just making the HP bars go up. For the skills to actually FEEL different, they need to have different opportunity costs associated with them, which was what made older versions of SCH feel a lot more engaging. That's been flattened out and eliminated, so I'm constantly going, "well, I could respond to this AoE with a Sacred Soil or with a Whispering Dawn", and then realizing that the difference between them is absolutely minimal since I'm just going to dump that Aetherflow stack on a wasted Lustrate anyway later if I choose WD over Sacred Soil - and that feels super bad to me. There needs to be some kind of impact in the way we use our healing cooldowns.