Scholar aetherpact feels underwhelming

So..here's my hot take. SCH was the first one i got to 80..

The massive buildup to the faerie gauge gives you...a small regen? In addition to whispering dawn and fey illumination. should apply those before using aetherpact, cus then the faerie can't do anything else. When i did half of e9s before my static broke up, the amount of times i used aetherpact was like...none? I did use fey blessing though. But the actual single target skill is the underwhelming part.
I have healed wall to wall and honestly get by fine without using it. Or rather, it seems like the healers kits are overkill for the story content we get.

I hope that sch and astro get some better kind of rework next expansion, and wont be like poo tier compared to the sage =(

Damage in this game is super bursty, it rarely has long periods of moderate to high sustained damage on a single target which is the exact situation Aetherpact would be excellent for. I rarely use that ability because the moments in which is would be truly useful are so rare. The only time I have used it and felt it really helped was at one point near the end of e3s. Every other time I felt it did too little to put up with the downside of the fairy being unable to do anything else for the duration. Fey Blessing uses the same resource and by contrast I use that ability all the time. Even more reason for me to not use Aetherpact, I can use that resource for Fey Blessing instead.

Fortunately for me I feel sch works just fine even with one ability being near-useless. I think it's an otherwise well made class as far as healing is concerned.

Perhaps if Aetherpact consumed two charges per tick and did double the current heal per tick I would use it more than once in a blue moon.

IDK I find it exceptionally useful during periods where everyone needs to be doing mechanics and the boss starts unleashing a bevy of autos on the tank.

Also dungeons. It's lovely for big pulls.

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Originally Posted by usernameuwu

The massive buildup to the faerie gauge gives you...a small regen?

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It's not small. It's extremely powerful. I use it while Sacred Soil is down and sometimes in addition to help with really big pulls, since I don't want to use shield GCDs which are a damage loss.

Aetherpact can be used instead of wasting aetherflow on heals when it could go to Energy Drain.

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Originally Posted by usernameuwu

In addition to whispering dawn and fey illumination. should apply those before using aetherpact, cus then the faerie can't do anything else.

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That's something you come to realise, but it's the same with Seraph. Getting used to using them first when it's needed is part of becoming a better Scholar.

Anyone else remember Quickened Aetherflow? man I miss Quickened Aetherflow.

Scholar is in the worst state it's ever been. You're not alone in thinking it's underwhelming in so many areas. Efficiency is good but the job is completely disjointed.

Aetherpact as an ability is fine, it focuses your fairy on the tank for up to 30 sec at a stronger potency than Regen or AspBenefic. For an oGCD that's rather nice. The issue is that it's tied to the fairy, so any other fairy skill breaks it, it's subject to 15y range and will obviously be unavailable or break during Dissipation. In addition to all that, it takes a weave slot and SCH pays a high weave tax, which is even worse if it breaks and you need 2 weave slots or you don't have plenty of gauge for duration. Finally, with how light damage is in the game, even if it's good on paper, you often just don't need it.

SCH's in a strange spot, where it has an amazing oGCD toolkit, but half of it is tied to a fairy that only serves as a handicap and it pays high taxes to weave. While AST has free weave windows to accommodate it's high oGCD usage and no pet to manage. When they put all the fairy skills on the oGCD, they added nothing to allow the SCH to weave them in. Ruin II is practically a hard clip in terms of loss for single weaving, which is ridiculous.

E12S aetherpact is solid. As both tanks get tankbustered at the same time, can just tether the tank that isn't using an immunity to prevent them from getting below 1. Tank also gets heavy autos in phase 2 until enrage, and you don't really need fairy juice for much anything else.

Aetherpact was king in SB because savage tank autos could crit. They removed boss crits in SHb, so the damage is more predictable. It takes a weave slot to tether so this is careful thought if it allows you to stay off of throwing lustrates/excog or not. Like for dungeons, this is great.

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Originally Posted by WhyAmIHere

Anyone else remember Quickened Aetherflow? man I miss Quickened Aetherflow.

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I feel like Quickened Aetherflow was much needed this expansion. It's still not fun having 4 different moves attached to a stack you can only get 3 of every 60s. That 5s reduction to the cooldown for each stack used just made things so much easier on us...

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Originally Posted by Teno

Scholar is in the worst state it's ever been. You're not alone in thinking it's underwhelming in so many areas. Efficiency is good but the job is completely disjointed.

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Agreed. At this point the job is all over the place. They're going to need to fix what they broke and make it feel more connected. Preferably with the Fairy Gauge not being used for only 2 moves (maybe replace Aetherflow costs with gauge costs?) and Seraph being a permanent upgrade to our fairy.

I haven't needed Quickened Aetherflow. There are effectively 6 stacks of aetherflow because there are times when you can let the 3 linger for 60 seconds and then use all 3 of them up, followed by pressing Aetherflow to get another 3, especially during big pulls where there's no point using it for DPS because that would be single-target.

For DPS you can even get as much as 9. If you have 6 available because of the time between trash and a boss being 60 seconds, you can use up all 6 and sacrifice your pet for another 3.

There are plenty of alternatives to aetherflow as well, like Recitation + Indomitability or Excogitation, Seraph, Aetherpact, pet regens, mitigations and heals and if there's no alternative, GCDs which you can swiftcast.