One Mediocre Scholar’s Perspective (FFXIV)



Existence is suffering. Chapters: 0:00 – Hello 1:26 – I’m right 1:30 – An Example 3:11 – Anti-synergy 4:07 – Pet Jank 5:44 – To Energy Drain or Not 7:24 – Nocturnal …

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50 thoughts on “One Mediocre Scholar’s Perspective (FFXIV)”

  1. "It used to be worse before"
    This peak ffxiv insanity where they have the idea that because something have been marginally improved there should be no complaints.
    But I guess if they can have this world view they can never have a bad day since they are not in jail being tortured, because if something somewhere is worse all things better are good.
    Might seem a bit sociopathic to other people that you can never show sympathy to someone else's bad day unless they had the worst day in history.
    But that is a small price I get for always having a great day no mater how shit it is.

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  2. Another annoying thing about scholar is the pet potency
    Pet Spells have about 2/3 of the potency listed in the tooltip
    For example it says Fey Blessing has 350 potency but in reality its only about 230 potency
    Pets are weaker than players and therefore the tooltip is missleading
    This is sadly never mentioned or explained ingame

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  3. Much as I appreciate your dry humor, I also appreciate that you can base it on a core of serious criticism. You're exactly right on all counts (and even revealed aspects of SCH that I had not realized were a problem because I don't raid).

    Here's hoping SCH gets the love it needs….eventually.

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  4. why does emergency tactics have a 15s cd why does emergency tactics have a 15s cd why do i have to use the scholar equivalent of fucking cure 1 if i'm completely out of aetherflow and i already have a shield up

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  5. The only time i use succor is when I combine it with emergency tactics. succor -> Psy2*maybe -> E.T -> something -> succor. but this is also coming from the guy who built tenacity on a healer 🙂

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  6. Yes. Yes yes. yes yes yes.. YESSSS…..yes-yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. yes. yes yes. yesyesyseyesyesyesyeysyesyesyyes. YES. yes. yes. Yes. YES. yes. yES yES yES. yesyes. yesYESyes. YEs Yes YEs. yes yes. yes-yes-yes-yes-yes.

    Yes.
    Yes.
    yes….

    /playdead

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  7. hello I am a SCH main, and this is what I do during junction shiva

    step 0: setup
    – make sure to start prepull opener as early as possible or you will not have abilities up (20 sec start optimal)
    – preposition fairy on top of boss during a broil cast during tankbuster or else none of this will work
    – do not spend any aetherflow until after earthen fury if you enter junction shiva with 1
    – resist the urge to activate fairy abilities during spread/stack

    step 1: diamond dust
    – succor + sacred soil before diamond dust
    – after diamond dust cast > fey illumination + fey blessing > succor

    step 2: slides
    – ruin ii > slide
    – ruin ii > whispering dawn + recitation
    – ruin ii > slide
    – broil > ruin ii > swiftcast

    step 3: icicles
    – swiftcast adlo when running in (cast asap and DO NOT weave deploy within this gcd) + aetherflow if at 0
    – ruin ii > deploy + indom
    – resolve icicles

    step 4: post-shiva
    – sacred soil after to heal up and mitigate raidwide (do not be late with cast or you risk not having it up for earthen fury)

    all of this amounts to what nocturnal astro can accomplish with neutral sect and more or less 2 buttons, and if you forget something it all falls apart (like not positioning fairy after dissipation)

    even then, your allies can just be monkeys and not get in the deploy or straight up pvp. as stated earlier, if you go into shiva with only 1 aetherflow you cannot spot heal them with lustrate or else you do not have enough aetherflow to cast sacred soil during earthen fury (which is a really big deal on no echo) also, you do not have swift after shiva in case someone screws up and dies (which never happens during shiva…) so you better hope the red mage in your group is paying attention or not in the middle of their melee combo

    I am truly greatful to SE for reducing the recharge of deploy to 90 so I can experience headaches like this even more often in my raids. SCH is really strong, but it is a huge pain in the ass to play optimally. expedient looks great tho 10/10 will continue being a sacred soil main what a great job

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  8. Just got my 6th clear of e12s on SCH and agree with most of the points here. I think if Fey Blessing had less of a cd and dissipation affected all healing and buffed damage they'd be in a better place. Fairy Jank is half of the preplanning aspect of the job and idk I enjoy it. WHM will probably remain the SAM of healers, AST will do it's thing, and we'll be one of dozens of scholars still in the game, Dozens!

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  9. Literally leveling Sch just so my Summoner will be 80 for endwalker tbh lol Every time I play Sch I think, man I wish I had medica II rn or any other spell (Though Catalyze popping is really addicting ngl)

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  10. I play Scholar because it is a pet class. I love pet classes and fairies are fun.
    Not to mention it shares levels with another pet class (summoner).

    Sadly Summoner is getting royally fucked in Endwalker – losing summons and being transformed into a shitty geomancer ripoff -, so Scholar will be the only remaining pet class 🙁

    As things are progressing, who knows how long that will last. Maybe in the following expansion the devs will rework it and turn the fairies into spells or some shit — that will be the point when I am leaving this shitty game for good.

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  11. The new 90 skill is also slightly conflicting. If you use the movement speed to move out of incoming dmg, you don't need the mitigation. The only time it'll be fully used is undogable raidwide + dodgable skills…
    Just like how succor feels terrible to use because you're supposed to use it before dmg but if your party is full then you're just wasting the heal on succor and using it after dmg is wasting the shield.

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  12. is it just me or does everyone else play SCH more complicated than me? Press Adlo to win, move Fairy to tank, Crit Hit + Piety Materia, Lucid Dreaming is you friend, the end?

    Of course I'm over simplifying. But, not too much.

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  13. i may be mediocre but dammit if i haven't been occasionally above par enough to keep most of my alliance alive while my co-healer keeps biting the dust! the meh gameplay can pry SCH from my cold, dead hands!

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  14. "It's a culmination of a million annoyances"
    a culmination of a whole lot of stuff has always been SCH/SMN's identify
    basick attack/heal, summon pet, dots, ogcds, barriers, mitigation
    meanwhile WHM/BLM is just heal/attack go brr relatively speaking.

    But anyways you're 100% correct SCH has always been a masochist class

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  15. As a SMN player I feel a fair bit of this too, especially pet jank and having to press 500 buttons to do the same as another classes 1 button. But I love it

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  16. You aren’t a mediocre scholar. You’re top tier best in the world and everyone else is cheating. Remember that, and you’ll don’t pay my sub your way to eliteness

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  17. Ironically, I figured Dissipation worked about as what you described – just I thought it applied to ALL heals, not just GCD ones.

    I tried to play Scholar, and unfortunately, having mained White Mage since Stormblood, the benefits of Scholar just feel supremely outweighed by the sheer clunkiness and lack of QoL improvements. I know it's useful af, but if I wanna heal, why heal with frustration?

    Astro on the other hand… oh man I can rant for days on Astro. Still sitting at sub-50 with it, ever since 4.4. >>

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  18. Scholar is my favorite job out of the healers based solely on the lore and feel of the job but I’d say you hit the nail on the head with all the minor grievances that add up to be a major annoyance. Too much jank, lack of cohesiveness and no identity are the exact reasons I’ve drifted more towards Astro in the last expansion.

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  19. I’m a savage sch main who just fucking now learned that dissipation doesn’t work on my ogcd heals. I’d be more disappointed in myself, but as you mention I’ve been using it almost entirely for more energy drain anyway, and occasionally to chonk a big dick critlo in casual content.

    I also have to push back a little on excog, because if it triggered upon receiving a lethal hit, that basically makes it an auto-life, which is pretty OP. It might as well just be a straight up shield like Benison in that case.

    I remember being kind of disappointed when they caved to everyone’s outrage and put energy drain back in. Sure it felt weird but I was getting used to it, and I knew that more changes were coming to justify it. But instead they backpedaled and now scholar is pretty much still the same job it was then.

    But fuck all that shit. Let’s ask the really important question.

    WHY DID YOU TAKE AWAY MY FUCKING LEECHES SE?

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  20. Damage mitigation good and shield ast feels like ass to play so I like sch. I honestly don't even really have much of a problem with sch's design rn. I just wish the fairy gauge was more involved because its super easy to just overcap on it in any content that isn't ultimate (and even then it isn't super useful there aside from the occasional 10 from fey bless) maybe attach a shadowflare to it 😉 wink wink
    Oh yeah and dissipation actively fights sch's design unless you died and need 3 ED's for MP

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  21. Things about Scholar that annoy me most:

    1. It does not have an instant-cast shield spell like every other healer. WHM has Divine Benison: 500 shield, 15s duration, 30s recast. AST has two. For Diurnal you have Celestial Intersection: 200 heal, 400 shield, 30s duration, 30s recast. And on Nocturnal you have Aspected Benefic: 200 heal, 500 shield, 30s duration, 30s recast. The closest thing Scholar gets is Consolation, 300 heal, 300 shield, 2 charges, 30s duration, -> 120s recast, requires Summon Seraph <-. Why is the only healer without an instant-cast shield on a decent recast timer the shield healer? I'm not using up my swiftcast to cast effing Adlo.

    2. Excog. I hate it completely. I play all healers and all tanks and have them all at 80. When I'm tanking and start to get down towards 50%, I start using cooldowns to stay alive, and if I don't notice the healer is an Excog fanboi, I just wasted cooldowns. As mentioned in the video, the healing potency of this skill is not even that great for what you're getting. It costs one stack of aetherflow and does 800 healing. Essential Dignity has 2 charges and can do up to 1100 apiece, as mentioned in the video. WHM has Tetra for 700 (as mentioned), Benediction for full HP, as well as Afflatus Solace which is 700 per charge, and accumulates charges naturally, in combat, without requiring your class to punch itself in the crotch to get charges.

    3. Deployment tactics. For reference, a Succor is an AOE shield spell and its radius is 15y. Deployment tactics is used in combination with Adlo to make a stronger AOE shield. But the radius of Deployment Tactics is not 15y like Succor and just about every other AOE heal in the game, its 10y. Why? Add on to this the fact that you are pretty much required to make a macro for this spell to add a delay between the Adlo and the Deployment to make sure it isn't completely wasted. You also need to be sure the target is yourself because if you use it on the tank, the Adlo is going to be used up immediately, making you Deploy absolutely nothing to no one. Also, I think a 120s cooldown is a but much.

    4. Macros. Of all the classes I play, this class "needs", by far, the most macros. Recitation (force crit) + any spell it can affect. Emergency Tactics (force non-shield) + any spell it can affect. Recitation + Emergency Tactics + any spell it can affect. Adlo + Deployment Tactics. Thinking up macros to help myself out made me feel smart at first, but now I just feel like an effing moron for playing a class that requires so much to do so little. Why use Emergency Tactics + Succor to cast a Medica when I can just switch to WHM and cast a Medica or AST and cast a Helios?

    5. The huge problems with Dissipation as stated in the video. I would only add that whenever I start a dungeon I always eat my fairy even though I don't want to, just to get the aetherflow needed to do my job. I could use the Aetherflow cooldown, but as the dungeon just started I am already at max MP and want to save that one.

    How I would improve the class in as few changes as possible, in descending order of importance:

    A. Change Excog completely to be a large instant-cast shield spell costing one stack of aetherflow.

    B. Remove Dissipation, give Aetherflow (the cooldown) 2 charges, which would also allow for the removal of Energy Drain. Make this usable outside of combat!

    C. Change the radius of Deployment Tactics to 15y, matching most other AOE heals. Change its functionality so it no longer spread a galvanize which is already on the target, but spreads the NEXT galvanize to be applied to the target. This would allow it to be used on tanks without worry of instantly exhausting the galvanize.

    D. Smarter fairies. Make fairy follow Aetherpact recipient if they get too far. When placing fairy in a static location and then getting out of range, have it follow you again instead of being unsummoned. Make fairy abilities activate immediately!

    E. Make Medica (1) baseline for all healers. Remove Emergency Tactics from Scholar and Helios from AST, to reduce redundancy. WHM would retain Medica 2, AST would retain Aspected Helios, and Scholar would retain Succor.

    Sorry this was so long and thanks for making a place for me to vent my frustrations with this class I want to love.

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  22. You are the solo reason I noticed the problem with pets. The thing you, only you, made me fear while playing this job is the movement with the stupid fairy. The job trailer for Endwalker made it look like you going to be able to "place" your fairy in place? In other words (if true) a new knife for Scholar's sadistic kinks. shudders

    Thank Gods I main AST.

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  23. I was huffing on copium until I saw this video. There's a lot of stuff that really hit me like "yeah…why don't they just give that to SCH? That actually seems fair compared to what they have now."

    Like Deployment Tactics…why not just make it a buffed, instant-cast succor on a 1min CD? Maybe merge it with that movespeed buff they have planned. A lot of little things that I suppose internally they have reasons they haven't yet done it, but maybe they will go ahead and implement if SCH playerbase becomes a barren wasteland like it's shaping up to be.

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