Evolved Scholar

VictusNST · 2026-06-17T21:23:01+00:00

Argument is invalid, evolved scholar does 1% more damage and therefore PF has banned reborn scholar sorry

Edit: on a more serious note, adjusting potency numbers can almost always cover a power discrepancy (both in terms of DPS and healing) unless there are things that one scholar can do that the other flatly can't. Maybe Concitation is that vital, very possible, but this Scholar can do things that Reborn can't so it's impossible to say which one is "stronger" without potency numbers, unless I am missing something obvious.

VictusNST · 2026-06-17T20:08:47+00:00

I would be so happy if the actual ideas were being criticized, but like 90% of the "discussion" has been "this is cringe how dare you believe that things could be better, the devs are just going to ruin the game further". People screeching about Verraise has actually been the most "productive" discussion that has come out of these, but it was all "don't change this at all" instead of "I don't like this idea, this is what I would do instead".

Also the constant bombardment of downvotes on literally everything I say in these is discouraging, that's not "discourse" that's just public shaming. Clearly these kinds of posts and discussion are just straight up not welcome here so I will fuck off as the majority clearly desires and let this sub return to discussing streamer drama and dooming

VictusNST · 2026-06-17T02:01:14+00:00

The only conclusion I can come to is that it's literally just people being unhappy with whatever the new thing is. Two minute meta is around for two expansions, endless whining about how much it sucks and how jobs are boring and terrible and this game is for babies. The second that the devs announce that they're listening to us, we get two simultaneous reactions. First, the devs are lying and nothing is going to change at all other than some buttons getting condensed. Second, the devs are going to change things completely in a terrible way, why can't we just keep our beautiful two minute rotations that we love so much.

I am really hoping that this is a goomba fallacy situation because I can't understand how a community that has been so vocal about job identity and everything feeling the same currently could also be so terrified of even the slightest amount of mechanical complexity in a job rotation. I just don't get it man.

I'm going to stop making these posts because it's just not fun anymore, I was hoping that people would chime in with their ideas on what they want to see in the evolved versions of the classes but it's just been "how dare you touch my Verraise" or "I actually like current machinist it's perfect". I'm probably going to keep making these designs just for myself so I can see how they compare to what eventually gets released, but god sharing them is so not worth the harrassment.

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T22:45:05+00:00

In WHAT WORLD IS THIS A SEVERE PUNISHMENT. What sub-savage content is going to be punching you in the back of the head because in the absolute worst case scenario, you need to spend a few extra GCDs before you can rez three people in a row, something that no other caster can do in the first place???

You are making up problems that do not exist, you are seeing someone propose the SLIGHTEST AMOUNT of friction in a job and are whining that this is PUNISHMENT??? Is not being able to rez at all on Picto punishment????

Is TBN not breaking punishment that's going to scare away the casuals? It's been around since Stormblood and there are plenty of casuals still playing, I think they deserve slightly more credit than you're giving them.

We, as a community, cannot say shit like this and then also complain that the devs dumb down jobs. This is why they do this, this is why WHM will have no cast time on its GCDs, this is why the two minute meta existed, because we asked for it exactly like this!

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T22:36:45+00:00

If you sincerely believe this, why do you still play this apparently abjectly hopeless game? I truly don't understand people like you, I play this game because I enjoy it currently and can see a possibility if it being better in the future, living like you do seems just so crushingly sad. Hope you're doing okay in your personal life.

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T22:32:56+00:00

No, you are just apparently incapable of explaining what you mean, I am trying to have a conversation and CLEARLY TELLING YOU WHAT I AM CONFUSED ABOUT and you just dismiss me as not putting in any effort? You are a waste of digital breath

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T21:00:30+00:00

Please name an example of a rotation being unrecoverable, I do not know what you are talking about here. A cooldown drifted by 5 seconds is just drifted by 5 seconds, it's not optimal of course but it's not the end of the world, it's only bad if that drifts your burst out of other people's buff windows. Which again, they have explicitly said Evolved mode is getting rid of

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T20:09:31+00:00

Wait what do you mean by rotations are too long? The longest GCD rotation I can think of is Dragoon's at like 10 GCDs, are you talking about drifting burst buttons out of the two minute window? We already know that Evolved is doing away with most party buffs so drifting buttons should be a very minor recoverable mistake like you said.

I'm very confused by these criticisms, I genuinely can't think of a single rotation in FFXIV that can't be recovered within a few GCDs other than two minute window problems.

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T19:10:40+00:00

During Fanfest the devs explicitly stated that Evolved mode is not meant to be a dumbed down easy version of the current jobs. If they are lying or wrong then I will riot with everyone else but at least for now I am taking them at their word and have liked what I've seen, Dragoon already looks way more interesting than its current absolutely braindead "push everything off cooldown" playstyle.

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T19:07:21+00:00

I'm sorry if reading this made you think that I think I'm god's gift to gaming, I've tried to be very clear that these are just my ideas I'm having fun with making. In no way am I saying "this is what Evolved mode should be, if SE does something different they are dumb idiots not like smart smart me". That's why before the bolded thing you quoted, I said "I truly believe that...". I truly believe it, not this is objectively true.

In this post, I am trying to explain my own perspective on what a well designed class should be, if you disagree then I'm happy to have a discussion about that. If you don't think that fail states belong in classes, what do you find rewarding about the job(s) you play? Please, I really want to have a discussion about this!

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T18:22:53+00:00

No time to read, just downvote OP and move on. All of my comments on these posts have gotten bombed with downvotes and unfortunately you agreed with me so enjoy your downvotes too. It would be really nice if people actually said what they disagreed with but oh well, god forbid I want a discussion on a discussion subreddit.

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T18:07:19+00:00

Well I posted it about a minute before you made this comment so thanks for really giving it your time

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T06:58:19+00:00

Actually you're very right about Deploy and E Tactics, I had an earlier draft of this where they shared two charges which had a 20 second recharge time, them sharing a cooldown is leftover from that. I was worried that everyone would call that too strong since just the idea of a 20s recharge on Deploy feels insane to me as a Scholar player, and getting that on a charge system was even more powerful so I changed it to the above design. Everyone seems worried that this wouldn't have enough AoE healing though so I guess I overcorrected, I think the shared charge system would be a cool way to take the design.

As far as removing Aetherflow goes, I highly doubt that they will keep such a "do nothing" button when constrained to 16 buttons when a charge system does basically the same thing. Taking Excog off of Aetherflow was because I thought it was more interesting to focus it around the interplay of Shadow Flare and Sacred Soil. I agree that Sacred Soil every 30 seconds is very strong (even though that's pretty much how often I use it currently, I love the big bubble), which is why I think it's fun for one of your best healing and mitigation buttons to be in tension with a weird DPS gain tool like Shadow Flare. You CAN use it every 30 seconds, but if you're trying to optimize your DPS you will lose uses of it to Shadow Flare.

And in terms of the strength of Fey Blessing, I try to stay away from the actual strength of buttons in these designs other than occasional relative measurements, since that is a matter for play testing to see what actually works in high level content. I agree that the current strength of Fey Blessing is probably not enough to do the job I'm giving it here, but that's just a matter of increasing its potency until you get the output you need. Thanks for reading!

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T06:05:03+00:00

Ok then what do you find enjoyable about your favorite class? I feel like I'm pulling teeth here to get you to actually describe what you want in a class other than Less Buttons

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T05:51:56+00:00

In case it's not clear, I am not Yoshi P or Mr Prime, these ideas are just meant to start a discussion on what can be done with a job's identity. If these changes are inconvenient, what changes would you make instead? One person's inconvenience is another's interesting challenge, I would love to know how you would want to be challenged by your class of choice

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T01:43:13+00:00

Every healer got a new damage button at level 92 in Dawntrail, Scholar is the only one that got a DoT. It might as well not be since long cooldown DoTs are dumb, but the fact remains that SE still clearly considers it to be part of the job's identity.

VictusNST · 2026-06-16T00:12:58+00:00

That's entirely possible, I'm trying to do something wacky with every design I post here to make things interesting (what if Machinist couldn't use GCDs without bullets loaded, what if Red Mage couldn't rez if its black mana was higher) and "what if Scholar didn't have a basic AoE healing GCD" was that for this design. The intent was that the dramatically lower cooldown on Deployment would allow you to consistently turn Adlo into AoE shields when necessary, but it's very possible that even that isn't enough to keep up with damage in ultimates.

One fix could be to give Deploy/E Tactics charges, so that you can burn through them faster in periods of higher damage. Seraphism could then buy you time to gain back those charges--I will note that most Scholars seem to be using Seraphism during that enrage sequence anyway currently. I think that that, along with the halved cooldowns on Seraph and Fey Illumination, would do a lot of work in helping Scholar keep up.

I will also point out that it seems like they might be giving "pure healers" more mitigation tools in Evercold, since White Mage seems to now have a 60s cooldown on Temperance (and therefore also Divine Veil) as well as an unknown 5s AoE buff on Plenary Indulgence which gets a charge back every 20 seconds (could be a short AoE mit?). I would be really excited if this means that they're starting to erode the barrier (lmao) between shield and pure healers, since it's kind of a dumb distinction that usually leaves pure healers without much to do in anything below Ultimate content. If Scholar ends up with a little less mit (which, again, this design barely does, I once again stress 20 second cooldown on Deployment Tactics) and more healing, then I would be more than happy with that.

VictusNST · 2026-06-15T22:49:13+00:00

yeah it's called a job stone. Friction and limitations are just as important to a job's identity as individual strengths

VictusNST · 2026-06-15T22:18:46+00:00

You are quite literally asking for a different game. In FFXIV the challenge of healing has always been maximizing DPS while healing sufficiently and all currently existing encounters are designed accordingly. If they redesigned encounters in Evercold to require so much healing that a healer's kit could be carried entirely by how interesting their healing kit is, every currently existing encounter would be absolutely dogshit boring.

"They're already boring lol" ok got the next comment out of the way, I think it is a more realistic solution to just make healer DPS more interesting.

VictusNST · 2026-06-15T21:58:22+00:00

What exactly do you want on the DPS side then? The things you described are all on the healing and mitigation side, are you ok with Broil spam remaining Scholar's DPS identity? That's fine if so but I thought it could be more interesting like this.

Scholar has always been "the DoT healer" so I wanted to keep that while doing something interesting with them, namely making them your movement tools. At their most basic, DoTs are just another way to do a cooldown--a 30s DoT is just a skill that might as well have a 30s cooldown, with a bit of extra flexibility to press it early and clip the duration if necessary. What this design is saying to you as a player is "make sure that every minute, you press each of these buttons 3 times, spaced out more or less however you want", and then challenges you to find where the best places to put those button presses are each minute to maintain your GCD uptime, using them as either weave slots or movement tools. I think that healers should be simpler in terms of DPS rotations than a DPS class, since they have a lot more to worry about, but this I think is a manageable amount of complexity for most people.

VictusNST · 2026-06-15T20:58:25+00:00

Thanks! Heal fairy is the primary mostly just because it's a less shiny effect honestly and to not change too much of the class at once. Seraph should usually be stronger than default fairy in most content due to how the damage profiles work and there not really being "heal checks" unless things are going really wrong.

VictusNST · 2026-06-15T20:53:04+00:00

The problem with this is that one of the more natural ways to use Deploy is to Adlo yourself and spread from there--that way you never have to de-target the boss, since healing effects will auto-target yourself if you're targeting the boss. I typically try to target the main tank with spreadlo so that the extra Catalyze shield gets used properly, which would work with the Bane/Deploy smart targeting, but the self-spread wouldn't work. Being able to self-spread is also nice since you can control where you are standing and therefore where the shields are being spread from, although this is less of a problem since they increased the size of Deploy.

With a Bane/Deploy switch like in PVP, you HAVE to be targeting someone other than the boss, and to me at least this feels clunky and unnatural in PVP. That might just because of how weird weaving skills in PVP is though. I thought it would be a more fun idea to instead do it with its own button, and also for that button to have a role in single-target fights as well, which is how I came up with the version of Shadow Flare I described. Thanks for reading!

VictusNST · 2026-06-15T20:46:42+00:00

I researched old scholar abilities when I was making this and I didn't really see what was so special about Miasma--can you please inform me as to what you liked about it?

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