So a while back I did a big thing about a different take on the healers, but that was messy, and I wanted to take a step back and look at the healer that started my journey in FFXIV: Scholar.
I have been here since the open Beta, and once the game officially launched, Scholar was what I played almost exclusively until Heavenwards where I grabbed Astrologian as well (and eventually White Mage in Stormblood).
In my opinion, Scholar has always felt a little messy HW onward, even if it was performing rather well. Now more than ever, it feels like the developers have lost the original identity of Scholar, and many of us feel frustrated on the way the job has been handled. I want to go over these issues as well as a cleaner solution that takes the Scholar back to their roots with a system that compliments their play style in a way that stands out against the other healers. Let's start with the issues:
1. The loss of DoTs through every expansion (and Bane).
2. The homogenization of Eos and Selene.
3. The unresponsive pet issues.
4. The counter-intuitive design of actions like Dissipation and the ineffectiveness of actions like Deployment Tactics
These are the overarching issues that umbrella all the rest. So what's the solution? Personally, I feel that the different healers should cater to different play styles. We've historically argued over healer DPS, but the way the game is designed does demand it to some degree. We ultimately do need to address encounter design as a whole to give healers more opportunities to heal, but DPS contribution should be considered when designing each job. For that reason, I think much like how the Scholar began, it should be treated as the DPS heavy healer who wants to spend more time directly DPSing. We could contrast this with Astrologian who I think should be designed to be more supportive and spread DPS boosts through GCD actions to give the healers who want to DPS as little as possible a healer to match their play style, but that's another topic. The point is, understand this design is assuming there would be a DPS-minimal foil to this design.
Let's talk about actions. I want to emphasize the importance of separating what is GCD (Spells) vs what is OGCD (Abilities). These ultimately determine how much time you can DPS by healing outside of your GCD, and I really want to make that an element to Scholar optimization. Additionally, I want to really make the Scholar a resource management healer like no other--where managing your aetherflow and fey gauge are both very important to your ability to keep your DPS contribution high while keeping the team healthy. So lets discuss tools.
Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics:
I want to rework DT and ET completely to be essentially stances you switch between or turn off based on your needs.
DT causes all your GCD spells (excluding Resurrection and Shadowflare) to be AoEs with a range of 15y for healing and 8y for DPS. As a consequence, potencies are halved and MP cost is doubled.
ET increases the potency of GCD heals (excluding Resurrection) by 50% and doubles the MP cost.
DT would be learned at level 10 while ET would be learned at level 15
GCD Healing Actions (Spells):
- Physick (No Change)
- Resurrection (No Change)
- New Epiphany (level 84 going into 6.0) - 700 Potency heal on the GCD but with a 45 second CD.
That's it. With the way DT and ET now work, you'll essentially be augmenting Physick when you need more potent healing that your abilities can't cover. Later when you get Epiphany, you'll have the ability to respond more aggressively in emergencies, but the point this Scholar is to stay DPSing through the use of your abilities.
GCD DPS Actions (Spells):
- Broil Spells
- Ruin II (Upgrade and Rename to Klaustra)
- Bio/Biolysis
- Miasma/Miasmolysis
- Shadowflare
- New Helix (Explained Below)
- New Nightshade (Level 86)
Because of the new DT, you can use it to turn your DPS actions into AoEs, so you won't need Bane or Art of War. This will reduce button bloat as a result.
Let's start with Helix. Helix is a weaker Broil, but it will change Broil, Bio, and Miasma into Aether Syphon, Spirit Syphon, and Mana Syphon respectively for 1 cast. AS is damage equal to Broil and restores Aetherflow, SS is the same but restores Fey Gauge, and MS is the same but restores a chunk of your MP. It's ultimately a DPS loss, but you need to use these tools as they're the only source of Aetherflow and Fey Gauge generation now, and you'll need to restore your MP as you use DT and ET especially.
Essentially, it's a new combo mechanic that will be the bread and butter of Scholar optimization--managing your resources through DPS so that you can stay DPSing. You'll need your Aetherflow and Fey Gauge to use your healing and mitigation abilities.
Nightshade would be a new GCD action every 60 seconds that does high damage to enemies standing in Shadowflare.
Aetherflow Actions (Abilities):
- Adloquium
- Succor
- Excogitation
- Chain Stratagem
- New Assuage (Level 90)
Since there's no longer a timer on how many stacks of Aetherflow you get, and you have to manually generate them, there's no longer a need for energy drain. Instead, Aetherflow will grant you the ability to use largely mitigation tools.
Adloquium and Succor would change to be abilities that are OGCD and that would now only grant a shield and not heal (the shield will be stronger to compensate for the lost healing). These are used to block damage so that you don't need to heal it in the first place. Assuage would be the level 90 capstone of 6.0 being an AoE Excog on a longer CD.
Lastly, Chain Stratagem would change to be a self buff only--one that would be smaler like a 5% buff, but would last longer and you could keep up on yourself. Since this Scholar would be DPS heavy, they wouldn't need raid-wide support tools like AST does, but it's something you'd want to keep up as much as possible to max your own DPS and enable more frequent Critloquiums. Speaking of which...
One new added trait, possibly the level 78 trait, could be that when using Adloquium while Chain Stratagem is up, it consumes the buff and gaurantees a critloquium.
Fey Gauge Actions:
- Fey Blessing (Replaces Indomitably)
- Fey Gift (Replaces Lustrate)
- New Fey Dawn
- New Fey Dusk
Fey Blessing and Fey Gift are just Indomitability and Lustrate but now with the Fey Gauge as a resource. Basically the Fey Gauge is your way of maintaining HP when the team has sustained damage without needing to stop your DPS.
Fey Dawn and Fey Dusk will merge with Sacred Soil in a sense to create a new identity for each faerie.
Eos can use Fey Dawn, granting a HoT effect to the party and reduces damage taken by the party by 10%.
Selene can use Fey Dusk, granting a movement speed buff and increases the amount of HP recovered by healing actions for the party.
Using Fey Dawn will cause Eos to change into Selene and vice versa, so your faerie will be shifting throughout the fight.
Lastly, Seraphic Veil and Angel's Whisper when Seraph is summoned will replace and mimic Fey Gift and Fey Blessing respectively.
Let's talk about buttons and what buttons would be merged. Here's a list of all the buttons you could possibly have on your hotbar:
- Repose
- Esuna
- Lucid Dreaming
- Surecast
- Swiftcast
- Rescue
- Physick
- Epiphany
- Resurrection
- Deployment Tactics
- Emergency Tactics
- Broil III/Aether Syphon
- Biolysis/Spirit Syphon
- Miasmolysis/Mana Syphon
- Shadowflare
- Klaustra
- Helix
- Nightshade
- Adloquium
- Succor
- Excogitation
- Assuage
- Chain Stratagem
- Summon Eos/Fey Dawn
- Summon Selene/ Fey Dusk
- Summon Seraph/Consolation
- Fey Gift/Seraphic Veil
- Fey Blessing/Angel's Whisper
- Sic
- Stay
- Place
- Away
Total: 32 if all buttons are used.
Overall, the ultimate goal here is to reinforce the things that made many of us turn to Scholar to begin with--take advantage of that play style and design it in a way that flows together. Everything here has a purpose, and while this means dropping a lot of things to minimize bloat, many of those purposes have been merged into existing tools. For example, Recitation is gone, but Chain Stratagem now allows for a more constant crit buff on yourself to replace that.
Continue reading...
I have been here since the open Beta, and once the game officially launched, Scholar was what I played almost exclusively until Heavenwards where I grabbed Astrologian as well (and eventually White Mage in Stormblood).
In my opinion, Scholar has always felt a little messy HW onward, even if it was performing rather well. Now more than ever, it feels like the developers have lost the original identity of Scholar, and many of us feel frustrated on the way the job has been handled. I want to go over these issues as well as a cleaner solution that takes the Scholar back to their roots with a system that compliments their play style in a way that stands out against the other healers. Let's start with the issues:
1. The loss of DoTs through every expansion (and Bane).
2. The homogenization of Eos and Selene.
3. The unresponsive pet issues.
4. The counter-intuitive design of actions like Dissipation and the ineffectiveness of actions like Deployment Tactics
These are the overarching issues that umbrella all the rest. So what's the solution? Personally, I feel that the different healers should cater to different play styles. We've historically argued over healer DPS, but the way the game is designed does demand it to some degree. We ultimately do need to address encounter design as a whole to give healers more opportunities to heal, but DPS contribution should be considered when designing each job. For that reason, I think much like how the Scholar began, it should be treated as the DPS heavy healer who wants to spend more time directly DPSing. We could contrast this with Astrologian who I think should be designed to be more supportive and spread DPS boosts through GCD actions to give the healers who want to DPS as little as possible a healer to match their play style, but that's another topic. The point is, understand this design is assuming there would be a DPS-minimal foil to this design.
Let's talk about actions. I want to emphasize the importance of separating what is GCD (Spells) vs what is OGCD (Abilities). These ultimately determine how much time you can DPS by healing outside of your GCD, and I really want to make that an element to Scholar optimization. Additionally, I want to really make the Scholar a resource management healer like no other--where managing your aetherflow and fey gauge are both very important to your ability to keep your DPS contribution high while keeping the team healthy. So lets discuss tools.
Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics:
I want to rework DT and ET completely to be essentially stances you switch between or turn off based on your needs.
DT causes all your GCD spells (excluding Resurrection and Shadowflare) to be AoEs with a range of 15y for healing and 8y for DPS. As a consequence, potencies are halved and MP cost is doubled.
ET increases the potency of GCD heals (excluding Resurrection) by 50% and doubles the MP cost.
DT would be learned at level 10 while ET would be learned at level 15
GCD Healing Actions (Spells):
- Physick (No Change)
- Resurrection (No Change)
- New Epiphany (level 84 going into 6.0) - 700 Potency heal on the GCD but with a 45 second CD.
That's it. With the way DT and ET now work, you'll essentially be augmenting Physick when you need more potent healing that your abilities can't cover. Later when you get Epiphany, you'll have the ability to respond more aggressively in emergencies, but the point this Scholar is to stay DPSing through the use of your abilities.
GCD DPS Actions (Spells):
- Broil Spells
- Ruin II (Upgrade and Rename to Klaustra)
- Bio/Biolysis
- Miasma/Miasmolysis
- Shadowflare
- New Helix (Explained Below)
- New Nightshade (Level 86)
Because of the new DT, you can use it to turn your DPS actions into AoEs, so you won't need Bane or Art of War. This will reduce button bloat as a result.
Let's start with Helix. Helix is a weaker Broil, but it will change Broil, Bio, and Miasma into Aether Syphon, Spirit Syphon, and Mana Syphon respectively for 1 cast. AS is damage equal to Broil and restores Aetherflow, SS is the same but restores Fey Gauge, and MS is the same but restores a chunk of your MP. It's ultimately a DPS loss, but you need to use these tools as they're the only source of Aetherflow and Fey Gauge generation now, and you'll need to restore your MP as you use DT and ET especially.
Essentially, it's a new combo mechanic that will be the bread and butter of Scholar optimization--managing your resources through DPS so that you can stay DPSing. You'll need your Aetherflow and Fey Gauge to use your healing and mitigation abilities.
Nightshade would be a new GCD action every 60 seconds that does high damage to enemies standing in Shadowflare.
Aetherflow Actions (Abilities):
- Adloquium
- Succor
- Excogitation
- Chain Stratagem
- New Assuage (Level 90)
Since there's no longer a timer on how many stacks of Aetherflow you get, and you have to manually generate them, there's no longer a need for energy drain. Instead, Aetherflow will grant you the ability to use largely mitigation tools.
Adloquium and Succor would change to be abilities that are OGCD and that would now only grant a shield and not heal (the shield will be stronger to compensate for the lost healing). These are used to block damage so that you don't need to heal it in the first place. Assuage would be the level 90 capstone of 6.0 being an AoE Excog on a longer CD.
Lastly, Chain Stratagem would change to be a self buff only--one that would be smaler like a 5% buff, but would last longer and you could keep up on yourself. Since this Scholar would be DPS heavy, they wouldn't need raid-wide support tools like AST does, but it's something you'd want to keep up as much as possible to max your own DPS and enable more frequent Critloquiums. Speaking of which...
One new added trait, possibly the level 78 trait, could be that when using Adloquium while Chain Stratagem is up, it consumes the buff and gaurantees a critloquium.
Fey Gauge Actions:
- Fey Blessing (Replaces Indomitably)
- Fey Gift (Replaces Lustrate)
- New Fey Dawn
- New Fey Dusk
Fey Blessing and Fey Gift are just Indomitability and Lustrate but now with the Fey Gauge as a resource. Basically the Fey Gauge is your way of maintaining HP when the team has sustained damage without needing to stop your DPS.
Fey Dawn and Fey Dusk will merge with Sacred Soil in a sense to create a new identity for each faerie.
Eos can use Fey Dawn, granting a HoT effect to the party and reduces damage taken by the party by 10%.
Selene can use Fey Dusk, granting a movement speed buff and increases the amount of HP recovered by healing actions for the party.
Using Fey Dawn will cause Eos to change into Selene and vice versa, so your faerie will be shifting throughout the fight.
Lastly, Seraphic Veil and Angel's Whisper when Seraph is summoned will replace and mimic Fey Gift and Fey Blessing respectively.
Let's talk about buttons and what buttons would be merged. Here's a list of all the buttons you could possibly have on your hotbar:
- Repose
- Esuna
- Lucid Dreaming
- Surecast
- Swiftcast
- Rescue
- Physick
- Epiphany
- Resurrection
- Deployment Tactics
- Emergency Tactics
- Broil III/Aether Syphon
- Biolysis/Spirit Syphon
- Miasmolysis/Mana Syphon
- Shadowflare
- Klaustra
- Helix
- Nightshade
- Adloquium
- Succor
- Excogitation
- Assuage
- Chain Stratagem
- Summon Eos/Fey Dawn
- Summon Selene/ Fey Dusk
- Summon Seraph/Consolation
- Fey Gift/Seraphic Veil
- Fey Blessing/Angel's Whisper
- Sic
- Stay
- Place
- Away
Total: 32 if all buttons are used.
Overall, the ultimate goal here is to reinforce the things that made many of us turn to Scholar to begin with--take advantage of that play style and design it in a way that flows together. Everything here has a purpose, and while this means dropping a lot of things to minimize bloat, many of those purposes have been merged into existing tools. For example, Recitation is gone, but Chain Stratagem now allows for a more constant crit buff on yourself to replace that.
Continue reading...