Scholar Aetherflow Issues

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Originally Posted by Random_Guy

the more I think about this the more I actually start asking myself why they even put the restriction on aetherflow for being out of combat only.
from what I read it was to stop parties from waiting before a fight so scholar could get his AF going into it and perhaps more, if that's even the case why not leave it as it was and just add the effect of Dissipation as it is now?

Course i could be wrong so I'm gonna ask here, does anyone have the reason why they even added this limitation of AF to begin with? If i knew more about the reason i would probably be able to give a more detailed response to this situation. Sorry if its seems really off topic but it feels like this question probably belongs here rather than different discussions.

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It was sparked by smn's having an opener that related to the party being held up til it was off cd. Then Yoshi decided it would just be easier and better in general if all core mechanics were started at the beginning of the fight. As for dissipation I have no clue what you're talking about. dissipation can't be used outside of combat either due to the fact it gives you max aether and the fairy has nothing to do with aetherflow outside aetherpact.

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Originally Posted by Nethereal

This honestly seems a little intellectually dishonest. I can say for a fact for me at least Sch does not feel as smooth as before mainly due to Fey Blessing but having to press 1 button while the tank pulls and then use Excog is honestly not that different. If you feel entering combat is tedious you probably don't have your keybinds set up conveniently.

And then talking about how the other healers can pre-pull shield, are you trolling right now? Sch has been the shield healer since release and it has never had an oGCD shield. Honestly it just feels like you're not respecting Sch's full kit. Even though the first pull is the most annoying Sch easily has the most oGCD's to use through a dungeon maybe even more than both healers have put together, is that fair to the other healers? If you really want a instant shield, use swiftcast.

Having said all this I want to remind you of something you clearly forgot existed. Recitation. You can use it outside combat despite it allowing you to use aetherflow abilities freely. You get where I'm going with this right? Considering you don't believe you should hold onto your oGCDs for emergencies I'm surprised you completely overlooked this.

As for the criticism of not having anything to dump your aetherflow into besides healing? Get with the program, that's how Whm lilies work too.

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That's the crux of it all though, really. Aetherflow easily gates half of your toolkit and limiting the amount of aetherflow you can get out in a dungeon makes the buttery smooth gameplay of SCH as before run into some odd hiccups in practice. As stated before, SCH functions with this restriction. It's only a matter of being able to function as smoothly as it had for six years without this unwarranted change. WHM has more immediate access to their oGCDs with the use of Tetra, Bene, Assize, and DB. You only have a mere three abilities locked behind lilies now, not a staggering half of your healing toolkit.

Recitation is great and nobody is contesting that, but it's a 90s CD. This makes for a great tool to use on Excog pre-pull, or on Indom for a chunky aoe heal but it doesn't replace the out of combat functionality that AF used to have.

I definitely think that having a DPS Aetherflow skill available (similar to what Energy Drain was before) would be the most important fix for current Scholar gameplay. As a Scholar, I feel like most of the time I am desperately trying to think of ways I could use my stacks without playing ineffectively (like using Lustrate on a tank with almost full HP). The stacks do get used during dungeon wall-to-wall trash pulls, but the issue appears in dungeon boss fights, primal and raid fights. For enjoyable gameplay experience, I should be able to use all three Aetherflow stacks meaningfully within the one minute cooldown, and right now it just isn't usually happening. And this issue only gets worse the better you'll learn the fight.


Other than that, and not related to the Aetherflow issue, I would love Scholar to get an AoE DoT ability, something similar to what we had with Shadowflare or Miasma II.

We all know not having an aetherdump skill like energy drain is a problem. However, the glaring issue I see with aetherflow that I don't see many mention is the fact that three of its four skills are not only locked behind aetherflow, but also have their own cooldowns. I cannot stress enough how crazy it drives me when skills use multiple resources. DRK's old skill Dark Passenger was like this too having a long CD AND an extremely high MP cost.

I am ok with Indom, Excog, and Sacred Soil remaining aetherflow skills, but those CDs need to be drastically reduced; then just make all the skills share the recast timer. If we were to get ED back, it would make even more sense for them to set up aetherflow this way. I won't say the way it is set up now breaks SCH, but it's an annoyance I've had even before ShB and now that we also can't use it outside of combat, dealing with aetherflow is exactly that: Dealing with it.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

We all know not having an aetherdump skill like energy drain is a problem. However, the glaring issue I see with aetherflow that I don't see many mention is the fact that three of its four skills are not only locked behind aetherflow, but also have their own cooldowns. I cannot stress enough how crazy it drives me when skills use multiple resources.

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Same. CD or Resource. Pick one.

Indom without a cd and stacks would be broken. Just saying. Meta would be solo heal sch.

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Originally Posted by Nethereal

As for the criticism of not having anything to dump your aetherflow into besides healing? Get with the program, that's how Whm lilies work too.

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Not even remotely comparable. The healing component of afflatus skills is irrelevant to the gameplay. It's only bonus. If tomorrow you took away all the healing from the skills and removed rapture to only keep solace as an instant cast that does NOTHING (short of huilding the blood lily), it would still be a cornerstone of WHM gameplay and be used regularly. Afflatus skills are basically a Ruin II with healing attached. Actually, not only that but it's a better Ruin II since it can be used to single weave and has no mana cost.

Even if that weren't readily obvious. The fact that lilies allow for some form of dps and AF does not should've been a good clue that they aren't the same.

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Originally Posted by Nethereal

As for the criticism of not having anything to dump your aetherflow into besides healing? Get with the program, that's how Whm lilies work too.

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And when I play WHM I often wish I had some way to dump my lilies on dps, too. Alternately, I'd love it if the lily gauge filled up based on dps done, rather than just over time, like the blood lily fills based on healing. This would make a lovely synergy between the healing and dps components of the class, I feel.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Indom without a cd and stacks would be broken. Just saying. Meta would be solo heal sch.

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Nah. AST can already lightspeed+helios with nearly the same potency as Indom. I also said that the aetherflow skills would all share the recast timer, so you can't just mindlessly spam Indom. Aetherflow within itself already limits Indom usage, there really isn't a need for an excessive CD of 30-45 seconds when aetherflow itself is on a 60s CD, and can't be used outside of combat.

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Originally Posted by Hatstand

And when I play WHM I often wish I had some way to dump my lilies on dps, too. Alternately, I'd love it if the lily gauge filled up based on dps done, rather than just over time, like the blood lily fills based on healing. This would make a lovely synergy between the healing and dps components of the class, I feel.

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It's technically DPS. Because of how you build up to misery each healing skill can be considered as a 225 potency dps skill. So if you're going to use and ogcd (bene, tetra, DB, assize) weaving it into an afflatus skill is a DPS gain over clipping your glare even if you just use it overhealing a random target.
If you're runing around and can't dps you can also just burn your lilie stacks and it's equivalent to having a 225pot instant dps skill so long as you use misery.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

To me, sch right now is just a class that has a bunch of minor inconveniences that individually aren't that bad, but together they add up in a way that makes the class less than enjoyable to play.

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Some really impact the gameplay and optimization though. Ruin II in it's current iteration is such a pain to use, it's just not fun. It pushed you into using ogcds in pairs or otherwise clipping your GCD. The later is obviously crazy clunky and doesn't feel right, because 1- clipping sucks, 2- muscle memory is a bitch when unlearning something. The former although it's an optimization opportunity, is just a pain to deal with in it's current iteration because you need to evaluate the true value of your second weave on the spot. Things like "well I can gain from placing SS over the tank anyways" is a falacious thought process because you're basically taking a dps loss for something that may not be necessary. Especially if you party with a WHM (which you most likely will) as they NEED to spend assize and afflatus skills on a regular basis.
It'll work just fine when we sit down and spreadsheet our CD use with our party but that's a lot of trouble for something that could be fixed with a potency tweak. Especially considering WHM afflatus skills work propperly for this purpose AND heal (healing aspect is normal since it's gated behind ressources, but just saying).

Not having a stack dump is a HUGE inconvenience. It completely removes the risk/reward aspect of the gameplay. Having one would make things more fun, allow for a bit more optimization, fix dissipation in a single target scenario, fix the weaving issues we have. Things like not having anything to weave which feels horrible, or helping make ruin II more relevant by giving you the option to stack dump into your single weaves to make ruin a dps gain and not a loss. etc..

AF out of combat can't even be compared to the comfort of say.. being able to control seraph embrace to target the mt, or even correcting some of the bugs with fairy skills going on CD but never hitting the party. AF out of combat is so low down the list.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Nah. AST can already lightspeed+helios with nearly the same potency as Indom. I also said that the aetherflow skills would all share the recast timer, so you can't just mindlessly spam Indom. Aetherflow within itself already limits Indom usage, there really isn't a need for an excessive CD of 30-45 seconds when aetherflow itself is on a 60s CD, and can't be used outside of combat.

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I made my post before reading yours. What recast timer are we talking about here? Also lightspeed has it's own cd and 15 s uptime, different from having access to your kit whenever. One thing is certain, indom on AF without cooldowns definitely would not work. That's potentially 12 indoms every 3mn (6 in a row) in addition to fairy skills.... not gonna fly lol.