Question about SCH 5.0: Mana managment

Hello, I played SCH casually in 3.x but only leveled it in 4.x to cap. I am trying it for 5.0 and I get why optimizers are bored with it and frustrated with the lack of a non-healing aether ability, but I've noticed at 70, 71, and 72 that if I try to help with fates or use a Trust group to practice and gain XP that Art of War burns very fast through my mana. Yeah I can burn some stacks on wasted heals and use Lucid and Aetherflow on CD but even then spamming AoW seems like a bad idea as it isn't sustainable.

I'm sure my noobness is involved here but are there any SCH who use sustained AoW spam? Does it get better with higher level gear, melds, etc.? If not how do you use it effectively? :confused:

Thank you!

It stays pretty bad, even with Piety melded gear. Best response I can give you is to cast Excog on yourself if you're solo-fate grindings, stop casting for ten seconds if Aetherflow and Lucid are on cooldown, then resume. Grinding out the fate rewards on my own wasn't fun precisely due to our MP issues... Especially if there were only two other people doing it in the zone so the fights lasted forever.

All you can really do is use Lucid at around 7,000-8,000 MP.

Lucid has to be used proactively now, and practically on cooldown.

The Trust tank takes a beating in the 71 dungeon, but from the 73 dungeon and onward, it gets easier. I've reached a point where tanks aren't taking very much damage again, and at least for now, my MP bar is back to being my Art of War bar. If you're curious, I'm 78.

That said, in situations where you're running low on MP, just spam Broil. It feels like we're kind of punished if other people are playing poorly (and Trusts play poorly; pugs are sometimes not much better), but that's always the way of things.

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Originally Posted by Lynesse

Lucid has to be used proactively now, and practically on cooldown.

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This is probably the best advice for working with all the changes. Doesn't matter if you are healing or DPSing, make sure you are being active with Lucid. It helps a ton.

If the pull take too much time, you'll end up having mana issu/be very low on mana even with a full use of all fairy skills/aetherflow skills/dissipation, AF & lucid dreaming on CD

Art of War just cost a bit too much mp.

MP management is fine. It is essentially equivalent to the MP regen you would have had in SB if you saved 3 aetherflow stacks for healing each minute.

AoW does not cost too much MP. AoW costs less than Miasma II did, proportionally to your MP pool.

As others have said, you need to use Lucid Dreaming on cooldown.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

MP management is fine. It is essentially equivalent to the MP regen you would have had in SB if you saved 3 aetherflow stacks for healing each minute.

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I am specifically asking about situations when sustained AoE is desirable, such as FATES with lots of mobs, dungeons where mob pulls are taking forever to die (and it isn't just Trust runs, we've all seen parties where one or both DPS are allergic to their AOE skills), etc. In SB we had Shadowflare, Bio2 + Miasma spread out with Bane, etc. to help with sustained AoE over time. Miasma 2 was nice but even without it there was a strong AoE contribution. Now we only have Art of War. On AST and WHM it seems like Lucid + Lightspeed and Lucid + Thin Air (+ Assize) respectively keep Gravity and Holy rolling along nicely for extended periods of AoE. So far I haven't found the same true for Lucid + Aetherlow. Hence my post.

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Originally Posted by LariaKirin

AoW does not cost too much MP. AoW costs less than Miasma II did, proportionally to your MP pool.

As others have said, you need to use Lucid Dreaming on cooldown.

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And as others have said, including my OP, I am using Lucid on cooldown, even using Aetherflow on CD despite the number of remaining stacks, and again for extended periods of AoE I either switch to single target or go OOM. Also as just mentioned, Miasma 2 was used in concert with other long-lasting abilities for AoE prior to 50.0 so while it was nice, you didn't need to spam it to keep up AoE.

Thus my asking for advice and whether things get better at higher (gear levels), or if there is some trick other than keeping Lucid and Aetherflow on CD. If other people are able to spam Art of War for as long as WHM can spam Holy or AST can spam Gravity, then I am curious how so I can do better. If it's simply the case that SCH can't go as long as the other two healers for AoE, that's fine, I'll just do what I can with the tools given :)

There's no trick, sweetie. We really can't sustain it like a WHM can. I said what I said because it took me a little while to adjust to the way Lucid works now, and I wanted to share what I learned with, really, anyone who reads this thread.

The lower our team's DPS, the more we're punished with MP issues. Once it reaches a certain point, Broil spam and reapplying Bio are our only options.

You're doing it correctly.

Piety melds: Worth it or not?

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Originally Posted by Lynesse

There's no trick, sweetie. We really can't sustain it like a WHM can. I said what I said because it took me a little while to adjust to the way Lucid works now, and I wanted to share what I learned with, really, anyone who reads this thread.

The lower our team's DPS, the more we're punished with MP issues. Once it reaches a certain point, Broil spam and reapplying Bio are our only options.

You're doing it correctly.

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I get it. I do that, too (posting for anyone who might read a thread). But sometimes I'm not clear in my wording or people skim so I sometimes feel like I should clarify just in case.

If that's all there is to it, that's fine. :)

Other than leveling to 70 at the start of 4.0 I only really played SCH in Heavensward, so I'm checking to make sure I'm on the right track overall with SCH with the AoE being part of the bigger picture.

I know some people hate the loss of options for 5.0, but I want to get SCH to 80 anyway. It always seemed like it had an interesting class/job fantasy. And so far the extended AoE has been the only issue I've noticed which means an adjustment to my playstyle on that job. My recent learning curve has also included the fact that your ET affects the next shield(s) you give out not one you already gave out (because apparently I also had to learn what Catalyze meant and pair that with a simple tool-tip description).

I’m currently sitting at 2.2k piety and have the same mana issues as you do.

AoW costs roughly the same as miasma II (roughly 8% of your pool) but the natural regen and 60s lucid don’t make up for the lack of energy drain. Mostly because the lucid gain doesn’t really line up in any meaningful way. You trash pulls see the same lucid usage but then you waste the extra lucid you get on he bosses.

AoW spam in dungeons is hard to maintain unless you have good party dps (which you rarely do) this is comparing my current 2.2k piety to my sb 300 piety build. I can’t spam nearly as much as I used to.
And it’s abysmal in open world content like fates and whatnot. So bad I run those as whm if I want to be on a healer class. It’s ridiculous how long whm can holy. I was literally laughing at my ability to holy spam nonstop for the entire fates and still have the majority of my mana left.

AoW needs around a 12-15% reduction in cost to get it to a decent state if the energy drain they give us back (which they just have to at this point) doesn’t have a mana regen component to it.

Said in another thread:

Without Energy Drain, Aetherflow needs to go back to the old 20% MP restoration that it was before. Energy Drain was the whole reason Aetherflow was nerfed to begin with.

It's like the Devs can't keep track of what they've done.

I can confirm that piety melds don't really make much of a different. The only fight I've been in where MP wasn't much of an issue was Titania EX, and that's because the fight is so scripted and the team I go in with knows it well enough that cooldown usage of Aetherflow and Lucid keeps me relatively solvent. But if people are dying left right and center because they don't have the mechanics down? Bye bye MP, it was nice knowing you. As EaMett said we really need AoW to have a cost reduction and as Deceptus said Aetherflow needs it's old MP restoration if they don't plan on giving us back Energy Drain. SCH right now is very much a case of death by a thousand cuts in terms of what's wrong with it.

I know nobody likes doing it but I find applying Biolysis to be much efficient for MP, even in expert roulette speed pulls there’s usually time to apply it to every enemy while keeping the tank alive.

I can see Art of War being reduced to 700 MP and potency down to 130 to make it the same as Gravity. Would be kinda weird if it had the same MP cost as Holy or Gravity plus higher potency than the two. Then again, with all the complaints I wouldn’t be surprised if they just reduce it straight down to 400 like Broil/Biolysis

It may suck but sometimes you just have to watch your mp and back off Art of War a little bit and either roll Biolysis on targets or Broil nuke a weaker target.

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Originally Posted by tinythinker

Snip.

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I understand. ^^ You are! You're fine!

When I have to single target, I think of it as a form of damage mitigation. The fewer things attacking the tank, the less of a drain on my resources the whole thing is.