Dissipation... just dissipate yourself

4.1 and it's still here...

Seriously am I seeing this wrong? Is there any use for this skill, any scenario where you are not left in a worst position after using it?
I don't put it on my hotbar, fearfull of actually using it by mistake...

From what I've seen using it in V1S-V3S, it doesn't cause too many problems, assuming you don't accidentally pop it when a big heal check is coming in. And even then, I'd only be terrified during the 4x Dimensional Waves at the end of V3S, where you need pretty much every healing tool you have to keep the party alive.

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Originally Posted by Dragonhand

any scenario where you are not left in a worst position after using it?

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Well...

Any time you don't need much more than regens for the next 30sec.
Any time you really need more single target healing from the healing boost.
Any time you want to be able to use 9 Aetherflow stacks in less than a minute.
When you die immediately after using Aetherflow, to get fast stacks to help recover.

So it is occasionally useful, yes.

It is rarely used but depends on your playstyle and whether you can use it effectively or not. But with the changes coming in 4.1 of summoning time being reduced from 6 to 3 secs, Dissapation might see more use.

Actually you should be using it at least once every fight. During the last few % it's essentially three free stacks to push out more DPS.

Aside from that, it has very niche uses. I can recollect quite a few moments where I've had to dissipate to save someone from a certain death. I think in most scenarios keeping a party member alive is worth more than the drawbacks of not having a Faerie for 30s. It's incredibly niche and should be reworked, but there are still uses for it as it is now if you actually try.

Although right now it doesn't have much of a use, it may become more useful with 4.1's changes. Because Summon's MP cost is being reduced and the cast time is 3s instead of 6s, it might be worth using on cooldown. Assuming you don't have much Fey gauge.

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

Actually you should be using it at least once every fight. During the last few % it's essentially three free stacks to push out more DPS.

Aside from that, it has very niche uses. I can recollect quite a few moments where I've had to dissipate to save someone from a certain death. I think in most scenarios keeping a party member alive is worth more than the drawbacks of not having a Faerie for 30s. It's incredibly niche and should be reworked, but there are still uses for it as it is now if you actually try.

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This I can agree with. My main beef with Dissipation has always been that it has huge drawbacks for what appears to have been designed as an emergency button; it's more consistently useful for weaving more Energy Drains than anything else.

The change to Summon skills should help make it more user-friendly, and the earlier rework of Quickened Aetherflow also added value to Dissipation, but I'm still bothered by the fact it and the Fey Gauge are at complete odds.

At this point I would like for Dissipation to be reworked as more of a stance-altering skill. Since the 20% buff to healing spells affects Aetherflow spenders not one bit, it doesn't actually encourage an interesting and rewarding shift in playstyle. Perhaps if it altered spell-based healing and/or damage skills in a way that gave them new features or functions at the same time it banished the faerie, players would actually use Dissipation more frequently and not have that nagging worry that they will be putting themselves in a worse position than that in which they started.

If they wanted to keep it as an emergency skill and make it attractive, they would allow it to reset Aetherflow spender CDs upon activation, which would be a simpler solution if not quite as interesting.

It really needs to extend the buff to healing abilities as well as healing spells, IMO. There are those times where I desperately need those extra insta-heals and wasn't planning ahead properly, but then I need to hope that I can keep people alive so I can spend the swiftcast on getting my fairy back.

The main problems with Dissipation:

It actively conflicts with the core aspect of the job, having the fairy out.

It actively conflicts with the level 70 abilities, Aetherpact gain and Fey Union

It actively conflicts with what you get in return for it, Aetherflow stacks. Since they're abilities, your healing abilities (Lustrate, Excog, Ingom) are NOT affected by the 20% healing gain. So those nice new Aetherflow stacks you got, aren't anymore powerful and you've just lost your maintenance heals.

Prior to 4.1 Resummoning the fairy was an MP loss overall and you had to burn a swiftcast to resummon the fairy. This is fixed in 4.1 (hopefully)

Basically, Using Dissipation generally puts you in a worse position than if you didn't use it. It is a TERRIBLE Emergency Cooldown. You could literally take it off of your toolbar and not really notice it's gone. I have used it maybe once to see what it did and then never again.

This is the worst spell in the game. It needs a complete redesign.

Imagine if Dissapation had a very long CD (like 5 minutes) and automatically re-summoned the fairy you dropped afterwards, it could act as a viable emergency option to grab to Aetherflows like it's supposed to be.

That said, the buff to the Summon spell itself may be the adjustment it needs. 9 Aetherflows a minute is nothing to balk at.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

Well...

Any time you don't need much more than regens for the next 30sec.
Any time you really need more single target healing from the healing boost.
Any time you want to be able to use 9 Aetherflow stacks in less than a minute.
When you die immediately after using Aetherflow, to get fast stacks to help recover.

So it is occasionally useful, yes.

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The Skills have CDs you know?... so that would be me casting 6 lustrate... if you are that desperate that you need 6 lustrates... they ain't enough to save you...

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Originally Posted by WayofTime

Although right now it doesn't have much of a use, it may become more useful with 4.1's changes. Because Summon's MP cost is being reduced and the cast time is 3s instead of 6s, it might be worth using on cooldown. Assuming you don't have much Fey gauge.

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3s is still an eternity to stay still in the same place without moving. I'm still gonna inst cast it.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

Imagine if Dissapation had a very long CD (like 5 minutes) and automatically re-summoned the fairy you dropped afterwards, it could act as a viable emergency option to grab to Aetherflows like it's supposed to be.

That said, the buff to the Summon spell itself may be the adjustment it needs. 9 Aetherflows a minute is nothing to balk at.

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It is... because what you want, most of the time is to EXO the tank and Indo after a big Aoe, with Sacred previously. 2 of them have 30 sec CD the other has 60s CD.
In all honesty, I only use Lustrate when main healing o2s, just to make sure I don't need help from the second healer and he can DPS as much as possible, or in o3s as second healer, during the adds because they hit hard a.f. (never completed o3s so there is no o4s experience) In any of those situations, the 45 cd on my Aetherflow stacks is more than sufficient.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

That said, the buff to the Summon spell itself may be the adjustment it needs. 9 Aetherflows a minute is nothing to balk at.

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Well it still has a 180s CD, so maybe not every minute. That would be OP.

The move should definitely see more usage with Scholar having MP costs lowered across the board. I think that was the major reason for not using it much, the cast timer being reduced isn't as impactful for SCH as I'm assuming we'll generally want to Swiftcast it for more weaving potential. It'll be interesting to see how we coordinate Dissipation with the rest of our kit, in an odd way it will require a lot of pre-planning and that does mesh well with the whole image of the job.

That being said, I really hope this isn't their fix for the ability. Its usage will increase for sure, but not for the purpose it was designed for. They should probably acknowledge that and give it some sort of buff relating to DPS for now. (Assuming it won't be getting a proper rework until 5.0 at this point.)

I also really like Cynfael's suggestion. It almost made me think of how MCHs abilities change when they get to 50 on their heat gauge. Something like that would not only make our kit more interesting, but it would probably be visually appealing to get newer players to engage more. I also completely have no expectations that SE will give SCH this much love, but we can hope. #prayFor5.0

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Originally Posted by Dragonhand

The Skills have CDs you know?... so that would be me casting 6 lustrate... if you are that desperate that you need 6 lustrates... they ain't enough to save you...

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You'd be surprised, actually. The extra Lustrates was a fairly common use for it back in A2S.

And yes, AF skils have cooldowns, but none of them are longer than 45sec. Indom amd Soil are both 30sec, Excog is 45sec, and Bane is... 10sec, I think? Not that Bane's CD is ever really relevant. The way stacks work out with Dissipation looks like this:

Aetherflow
> 15 seconds to use 3 stacks
Dissipation
> 15 seconds to use 3 stacks
Aetherflow
> 45 seconds to use 3 stacks

So if we're in a situation where we're actually using every non-Bane/Lustrate/Energy Drain skill on cooldown, that's 2 Soil/Indoms, 2 Excogs, and only the 3 stacks from Dissipation itself left to non-CD usage.

Even outside that specific situation, Energy Drain is still a large part of both our MP enconomy and DPS potential, and any time you can save your cohealer having to cast Cure II/Benefic II by using Lustrate instead, you should; it is way more cost/time efficient.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

You'd be surprised, actually. The extra Lustrates was a fairly common use for it back in A2S.

And yes, AF skils have cooldowns, but none of them are longer than 45sec. Indom amd Soil are both 30sec, Excog is 45sec, and Bane is... 10sec, I think? Not that Bane's CD is ever really relevant. The way stacks work out with Dissipation looks like this:

Aetherflow
> 15 seconds to use 3 stacks
Dissipation
> 15 seconds to use 3 stacks
Aetherflow
> 45 seconds to use 3 stacks

So if we're in a situation where we're actually using every non-Bane/Lustrate/Energy Drain skill on cooldown, that's 2 Soil/Indoms, 2 Excogs, and only the 3 stacks from Dissipation itself left to non-CD usage.

Even outside that specific situation, Energy Drain is still a large part of both our MP enconomy and DPS potential, and any time you can save your cohealer having to cast Cure II/Benefic II by using Lustrate instead, you should; it is way more cost/time efficient.

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I think the issue is more that, if I recall the initial discussion and dev response around HW launch, Dissipation was intended to be SCH's big emergency cooldown. The problem with Dissipation as an emergency skill is that there is a high probability that the SCH will have recently used most of their AF CDs before needing to activate it, in which case they are left with no faerie, extra Lustrates, and a healing buff that doesn't boost said Lustrates.

Can Dissipation be used strategically? Sure. Would it be much nicer if it didn't directly work against other parts of the SCH kit? I really think so.

SE should give up on the idea of Dissipation being an emergency CD; if you're already in trouble and need however briefly to weigh the pros and cons of hitting your so-called emergency button, something is wrong with it. 4.1 tweaks should make Dissipation far less painful to use, but the skill itself needs a rework to help it be a more useful and natural part of the SCH kit.

Oh, sorry, I'm not at all trying to argue that it's a well designed skill, just outline use case(s) for it as it exists now.

I can't help noticing that every single "buff" Dissipation has gotten in SB has actually been nearly system-level changes that happen to make it less punishing to use, not actually any direct buffs to Dissipation itself. Embrace potency lowered making losing the fairy less punishing, Quickened Aetherflow, 4.1 Summon cost/cast buffs.

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Originally Posted by Riyshn

Oh, sorry, I'm not at all trying to argue that it's a well designed skill, just outline use case(s) for it as it exists now.

I can't help noticing that every single "buff" Dissipation has gotten in SB has actually been nearly system-level changes that happen to make it less punishing to use, not actually any direct buffs to Dissipation itself. Embrace potency lowered making losing the fairy less punishing, Quickened Aetherflow, 4.1 Summon cost/cast buffs.

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I completely see where you're coming from and don't disagree. I mostly forget about how disappointed I've been in Dissipation since HW up until a new Dissipation overhaul thread pops up, then I'm breaking up with that poor excuse for a lvl 60 capstone skill all over again :(

The Summon changes in 4.1 make Dissipation much less punishing, as it is a solid emergency cooldown and doesn't sacrifice much in terms of healing output on the tank if you do the math. Eos is gone for 30 seconds, which is roughly 10 Embrace. That scales to just under 1500 Healing Potency.

The only change that is really needed for Dissipation (because despite what people think, it's already a very good skill) is that it could potentially reset the cooldown timer on Indomibility and Excogitation when used. If people are concerned that Aetherflow cooldowns will not be available when Dissipation is popped, this would solve that.

As far as it's uses as a HEAL spell (not DPS) go, I use it quite frequently on massive mob pulls. The extra aether stacks can get you through to the end of the pull's danger zone on the tank, at which point not having a fairy isn't really a problem.

I don't really play that much SCH, so I can't comment that much otherwise, but as the leader of an eccentrics guild, I can see it having a lot of use in unconventional gameplay as well.

I find in raids dissipation is a great recovery tool if you just ressed and need to stabilize your mana and aetherflow stacks if your lucid dreaming is on cooldown. With 3 second cast on summon you spend basically 1 GCD to summon, rouse and whispering dawn if needed then dissipate and spam aetherflow stacks on ED. Hopefully aetherflow comes back off cd and with 20% healing bonus you can supplement healing with succors.