Feedback on Aetherial Manipulation.

[Joe777]

I believe you should not design MMO basic mechanics (as in class abilities) around static groups.
They represent only a fraction of playing populace. And even many statics are more on the casual side, so will not bother coordinate to such details.

Thats why NIN teleport or DRG backflip (abilities not dependent on others) see lot of use when evading AoE, whereas AE less so.
Hence the strong simplicity of "Blink" - essentially DRG back-flip going instead forward.

If everything was designed around strong group coordination then that would be a problem nowadays, but having a few things work better for you with it isn't a bad thing. Also it is true statics differ widely but in this game your chances of getting an even slightly coordinated PUG are slim to none at best, so coordination is more visible in some statics, particularly the ones made up of like minds that get along and agree with each other. Not very common, yes, but not extinct either.

[Acidblood]

How to make AM more useful:

* cough, cough *
WoW's Mage "Blink"
* cough, cough *

Such an awesome ability... but I don't think they would have to do away with the current functionality, just add the functionality that if you don't have a friendly target it moves you forward 15y.... that way it can still be used 'as is' (and would arguably be better, as you could get up to 25y out of it), but would also be infinitely more useable in a great many other situations (inc. solo instances, hunts, fates, quests, and PUGs in general; i.e the 90%+ of this game that isn't Savage Raids).

As for the controller targeting thing, best I've found is:
/macroicon "Aetherial Manipulation"
/action "Aetherial Manipulation" <t>
/action "Aetherial Manipulation" <f>
/action "Aetherial Manipulation" <2>

So you can still manual target, or focus target, if you need to, but otherwise you just zip to the tank, which is generally good enough to avoid all those 'ranged killer' (e.g. cone, donut, etc.) aoes that SE has become so fond of.