Scholar Discussion attempt #2

[Evelyn]

you can make the skillchain damage be based off of the same stuff nuke damage is: INT and MAB, ele skill for resistance. Damage can still be low, as the main damage off of such a spell would be from the MB damage not the spell itself (maybe 75-150 unresisted?)

I agree with the whole Level 2/3 skillchain being overpowered though. Melees should have the ability to make higher skillchains off of these spells, but mages realistically only need to nuke with one element (thunder or ice depending on resistances). They probably wouldn't want to use other element spells anyway. Don't need light/dark either since no one has decent nukes for those.

Also, being able to do a handful of skillchains at the same time isn't the idea. You need spell timers to cool down for the BLMs, plus worry about hate and MP issues. One big MB every 5 mins is perfect, and still leaves time for mages to do other things.

[Damane]

Would a castable lv2 skillchain still be able to be followed by a WS for lv3? You'd be getting close to the whole "breaking" aspect in an alliance situation. 5 SCH and a SAM with Meikyo could pump out 5 lv3's, Light and Dark, in a matter of seconds for MB purposes.

yes but that fills a whole PT out of an alliance, meanwhile you could just have 6 BLMs there with manafont, I dont think the difference is big dmg wise

and I dont think that lvl 3 + the lvl 4 skillchain would be so gamebreaking for SCH. every mage is limited by their MP, SCH too lvl 3 Skillchains costing 150-200 MP would mean like 1/4 of your MP was just casted away.

as an addition I said that weaponskills can go on on casted SCs and thus the melee gets a buff in modfied WS stats and dmg multiplier.

what woudl be gamebreaking would be stratagem AoE SC nukeing on multiple mobs with timed blm -ga bursting lol

as every spell for a mage SC casting is subject to resist, and if you get fully resisted you wont even get the MB window up for MBs, while on the other hand melee SCs will allways open the MB window

[Toth]

By "game breaking" you mean "Scholar becomes useful" ?

I wonder how many people said "OMG BARD IS BROKEN" as they kept levelling. Just because it's a good idea and very powerful doesn't mean it's broken, job is shit as of now.

Why level a job if the 'job is shit as of now'? Honestly. I had a blast leveling it to 75 and had no trouble contributing to my parties as either a healer of nuker. I also keep finding ways of using SCH in different situations even at end game (see above with Kirin). PUP was terrible when it came out. SCH is flawed but it is still workable at its current state.

And the reason why castable lvl 3 skillchain spells would be game breaking is nicely described in the previous post. SE may be...stupid sometimes but I doubt they would go this far as to have the most powerful skillchains castable. For argument's sake, even if it did happen, the spells would probably have 5 min recast time and obscene MP costs. Limiting SCHs to lvl 1 and 2 skillchain spells balances with the ability of melees to make lvl 3 skillchains. And balance is oh so key to SE (or so they say).

[ronin sparthos]

Who makes SCs in endgame events anyways as the main strategy for most endgame events these days? Judging by how many RDM/BLM/BRD burn Fafnirs ive sat through..... not many. If you called a SCHs 'skillchain' magic its 'AMs' (high mp, long casts) then it wouldnt be so broken. Level 1-2s at least, leave level 3s 'special' and introduce 'Cosmic Elucidation' via a quest :/

The reason many people say SCH is 'broken' is because it doesnt have a distinguished 'purpose' yet beyond the obvious endgame helixes. Its like RDM 2.0 atm, it needs its uniquess to grow into it.

Maybe that could be a part of SEs 'revival of SC+MB'.

[BRP]

If SCs aren't being used, the logical option would be to make them better. BLMs want SCs done when possible. The problem is that they don't always pay off for the melee and there are many situations where enmity would be a problem.

[rori]

Stratagems- Instead of generating one every four minutes, just give the full number of available stratagems to the SCH every 4 minutes. So at 70+ you'd get the use of 3 stratagems every 4 minutes, allowing you to combo them in whatever way you want.

New Stratagem- Dual cast- Cast two spells at once, using the cast time of whichever has the longer cast and combining the MP usage of both.

for Light- Allow the casting of two buff spells simultaneously, so like Stoneskin & enthunder on the whole party in a single spell. Or the ultimate cure spell, cure3+cure4+ds+rapture

for Dark- Allow the casting of two spells which share the same element. So you could burst Thunder3 and the appropriate helix simultanouesly. Or if there is another SCH who is doing helices then you can cast Thunder3+2 simultaneously to give you a nuke that comes near-ish Thunder4.

I think SCH should also get an innate stoneskin spell, maybe not necessarily blink but I think it would be a lot more viable as a sub just granting stoneskin as part of the natural spell lineup.

[Max™]

The more I think about the SC spell idea, the more fitting it seems.

They gave them weather spells, give them something to let mages fire off MB's basically at will, while making it easy for melees to skillchain, needing just one WS to chain off them, and you'll get the counterpart for mages, that bard is for melees.

I look at a couple Bards and think "yum, 20% haste and 800+ attack", mages look at a couple bards and think "yay, mp!"

Make mages drool over having two Sch's around to layer SC spells and weather effects for them.

[Genosync]

Stratagems- Instead of generating one every four minutes, just give the full number of available stratagems to the SCH every 4 minutes. So at 70+ you'd get the use of 3 stratagems every 4 minutes, allowing you to combo them in whatever way you want.

good idea

New Stratagem- Dual cast- Cast two spells at once, using the cast time of whichever has the longer cast and combining the MP usage of both.

for Light- Allow the casting of two buff spells simultaneously, so like Stoneskin & enthunder on the whole party in a single spell. Or the ultimate cure spell, cure3+cure4+ds+rapture

for Dark- Allow the casting of two spells which share the same element. So you could burst Thunder3 and the appropriate helix simultanouesly. Or if there is another SCH who is doing helices then you can cast Thunder3+2 simultaneously to give you a nuke that comes near-ish Thunder4.

cool new idea but kinda game breaking to do 2100 dmg in one cast on a job thats not blm

we're not remaking the black mage here, people

[LD]

It might be a bit overpowered, but the concept is probably the best I've read in this entire thread. Because of SCH's ability to better manage MP usage, adding Double Cast in this way allows it to gain some ground against WHM & BLM while still being limited by the consumable nature of Strats. It still can't match the raw damage potential of BLM, 2 tier 3s could probably only hit ~1.5k at best, and that's really no better than a unresisted AM2.

[neira]

why not do a more global change to the SC system, make SC's deal more dmg (light/darkness specifically) so they are more desirable for melee to use, and give SCH an ability to use spells to create an SC, kind of like Blu's chain affinity thing. I havent done much looking into the job, but doesnt SCH have an ability to create local weather effects (dont know if its specific to the SCH or for all near the SCH)? so like if BLM's have obi's that could be pretty desirable for things like wyrms and turtles.

So basically melee would be more inclined to perform an SC because the DMG is now equal to just spamming WS's, so they aren't doing less dmg, SCH can no SC (with a spell) with a WS from a melee and then BLM's with obis can take advantage of the weather thingy (if it works that way) to drop a even larger SC to MB off of.

If this is what you guys were mentioning above sorry i FAIL, thought the above said stuff was saying to let SCH simply cast LIGHT SC's not create a situation to make them >_<;

[ronin sparthos]

They could give skillchains different effects for creating them, possible partial enmity shed/drop for making Skillchains on the melee side.

On the SCH side, allow them to make all level 1 SCs (how many melees employ these on purpose?) so you give the melees the ability to create level 2s and 3s off those. The SCH is the catalyst and the melee finish what the SCH started. If enmity was shed via skillchains then melee would employ them far more than now -or- if each skillchain had a special bonus effect for creating it/them then SCH would be desired for that ability on top of melees wanting to use them more often.

Changing skillchain resists would help, so would using skillchain elements to do MORE damage to the target instead of just calculating how badly a mob will RESIST it.

[Kyreth]

Would Refreshga really be broken if it cost 3x as much anyway?

Not broken, but it'd certainly be a time-saver. A few cases it'd be a discount (say, BLM PT's). RDM 60 or so, and there would be much rejoicing.

I still don't understand why anyone thinks this is a good idea. Why would you waste one of SCH's defining abilities to Refresh an entire party when you could just do it without the ability? It's like wasting a DS on a cure2 or an ES on a bliz2. It's almost never a good use of the ability.

I was derailing there- it'd be a good RDM ability. Scholars don't have the charges to keep a Refreshga cycle going even if they did have the spell- and I don't think they should anyway. Note the "RDM 60 or so" in the original you quoted.

[BRP]

I look at a couple Bards and think "yum, 20% haste and 800+ attack", mages look at a couple bards and think "yay, mp!"

Make mages drool over having two Sch's around to layer SC spells and weather effects for them.

If by mages you mean BLM and MAYBE SMN. Let them apply Stratagems to allies and then you have a real mage buffer.

EDIT: And it lets RDM refreshga.

[Kyreth]

The big advantage to a "magic" skillchain would be no longer having to wait for multiple melees to hit 100 TP to do one. Let it be a modest base damage and terrain-based naming structure- say "Rockslide", "Waterfall", "Windshear", etc. Give it two tiers- one with about tier I spell damage, second with tier I-ga spell damage. Levelwise, put them in about where BLM gets their -ga spells/-ga II spells of the same element.

Tier I can do L1 skillchains. Tier II can do L1 or L2 skillchains.

Monk does Combo. Scholar casts L1 "Fire" SC spell. Liquification SC.

[Meian]

Hmm... all this SC talk... They could just make it that Helicies also acted like a SC of that element.

An example can be Hydrohelix. After it's casted, the same duration of a SC period can occur for BLMs to MB Water (in the case of Hydrohelix).

Least that way can be a two-in-one deal instead of making some new bizarre spells. Guess it can also justify having use up that much mp for cheesy DoT (if they don't plan to fix it anytime soon) on much higher levels/endgame.

I also like the idea of the strategems being all together on one timer but not sure how easy that is to implement.

Again, two seperate symbols for Light Arts/Dark Arts!

[ronin sparthos]

Helixes come so end of the road it'd be SMN and lvl70 BPs all over again.

[Not Kuno]

Helixes come so end of the road it'd be SMN and lvl70 BPs all over again.

Well the first one is at 61, which is around the halfway point for exp so.. it's not nearly as bad as the 70s.

[Spekkio]

[quote=Not Kuno]

Helixes come so end of the road it'd be SMN and lvl70 BPs all over again.

Well the first one is at 61, which is around the halfway point for exp so.. it's not nearly as bad as the 70s.[/quote:306pc740]
plus, they're getting tier 3 nukes just a tad after blm, so it's not like they'd all of a sudden get zomg tools like a smn does. they'd grow into them and out of tier 3 nukes as they progressed.

[Ryushii]

Would Refreshga really be broken if it cost 3x as much anyway?

Not broken, but it'd certainly be a time-saver. A few cases it'd be a discount (say, BLM PT's). RDM 60 or so, and there would be much rejoicing.

I still don't understand why anyone thinks this is a good idea. Why would you waste one of SCH's defining abilities to Refresh an entire party when you could just do it without the ability? It's like wasting a DS on a cure2 or an ES on a bliz2. It's almost never a good use of the ability.

I was derailing there- it'd be a good RDM ability. Scholars don't have the charges to keep a Refreshga cycle going even if they did have the spell- and I don't think they should anyway. Note the "RDM 60 or so" in the original you quoted.

I'm confused as to why RDM would have/want that ability. The stratagem level for that is 40, and it would be a bit broken as a sub job anyway. Not to mention the fact that Refreshga is still useless as shit because we can just do the exact same thing without an ability of any sort by just casting Refresh on each person like normal.

P.S. That wasn't speficially intended for you. A crap load of people are like "omg Refreshga." It's not a good idea, period.

[ronin sparthos]

So based on everyones ideas:

-level 19, Blink
-level 29/30, Stoneskin
-level 22, Scission - Deals Earth damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 24, Reverberation - Deals Water damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 26, Detonation - Deals Wind damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 28, Liquifaction - Deals Fire damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 31, Induration - Deals Ice damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 32, Impaction - Deals Thunder damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 34, Compression - Deals Dark damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.
-level 36, Transfixion - Deals Light damage and is affected by the weather/INT. Mimics skillchain bearing the same name.

So that'd give you a line of tier 1.5s in a sense for SCH and anyone who subs /SCH along with the other spells SCH currently has at its disposal. Affected by the weather but since only a SCH main can manipulate the weather, they would maintain the upper hand with them.

~Post 37~

Level 41 - Break (Psuedo-Stun, earth based) -> useable only when under Sandstorm/sand effect.
Level 43 - Pax (Enmity Gain -%) -> useable only when under Rainstorm/rain effect.
Level 45 - Flurry (Attack Speed+) -> useable only under Windstorm/wind effect.
Level 47 - Champion (Critical Hit Rate+%) -> useable only under Firestorm/heat effect.
Level 49 - Decoy (Enmity Gain +%) -> useable only under Hailstorm/blizzard effect.
Level 51 - Stun -> useable only under Thunderstorm/thunder effect.
Level 55 - Aspir II (Aspir effect + temp Max MP boost) -> useable only under Voidstorm/gloom effect.
Level 56 - Raise II -> useable only under Aurorastorm/aurora effect.

~Storms~

'Storms would cost less and have a 4-5min duration.

~Helixes~

Damage-over-time + potent drop in enemy resistance to the casted helix element. 1 helix per SCH and can be stacked to a max of 2 helixes on a target.

~Stratagems~

Stratagem charges are cut in half, down from 4mins to 2min timers for a charge.

2 new level 30 stratagems, and 2 level 75 stratagems and id say SCH would have a fair about of JAs at its disposal. Stratagems could also be used on any target in a party or alliance. (Tutoring methinks >.>)

One idea for a level 75 stratagem i think might be cool is one that uses 2-3 charges + the appropriate weather effect (unless its naturally up of course) to create a tier 4 elemental nuke out of a Tier 3. That'd be Dark Grimiore and you'd be on a 6min timer to create a 'false' tier 4 so BLM would keep their edge and SCH would have a neat trick to spice things up a bit.

Light Grimiore could have something where you could cast 2 spells for the price of one, under a Aurorastorm + 2-3 charges. (Healing/Divine/Enfeebling side onry) Toss on a WHM and have them drop 2 cure 5s in rapid sucession? or maybe a doublecasted Raise III if things arent going your way?