Want healers to be more accessible? Add "Quickened Aetherflow" back in + more

I'm gonna make the argument that healers need to be hit with the design philosophy behind Quickened Aetherflow across the board in order to be more accessible to new players. For those who don't know, or need a recap: In Stormblood, Scholars had this as a trait: "Reduces Aetherflow recast time by 5 seconds upon execution of an action that requires Aetherflow."


The design of this ability guides the player on how to play. "Use Your Stacks!!" Find me a scholar who doesn't agree that using your stacks up by the time AF is off cooldown is good play- I'll show you a liar. This trait guides the player by rewarding good play.


On Shadowbringers launch, this trait was removed. Energy Drain was also removed, but at least that was added back, which returned us to a state where utilizing your stacks to the fullest is part of Scholar's gameplay. That means using them on healing and mitigation first, then treating yourself with some Drains with your spare change. I believe Quickened Aetherflow is still sorely missed, though. Not only should it be added back, but I think every healer is STILL lacking similar key features that help improve accessibility by guiding the player towards making good gameplay decisions. This is because it is an instance of "breadcrumbs"- positive-focused design that rewards the player for good play. I love getting the damage buff in E8S, for instance, and I'd LOVE love love, absolutely adore, seeing similar mechanics used liberally from here-on in. Not just in encounter design, but job design as well.


White Mage sort of has this in the Blood Lily, but has the awkwardness of sometimes encouraging you to use heals when they'd be pure overheal, just for the sake of the mechanic. Overall, I'd like to see that system be more developed, to remove instances of encouraging bad play. It's ALMOST great.


AST is sorely lacking in breadcrumb design. The current card system causes a lot of Autopilot Brain, which isn't great. I'd like to see the added breadcrumbs here- since AST dishes out buffs so frequently, I'd like to see their design encourage stacking multiple different damage buffs as a player-visible mechanic, to make the practice of the "raid buff window" something that you don't need a discord or a wiki or a google doc to teach you. It's good play, so please, encourage it in a way that a total newbie playing AST gets rewarded by game- and job-design for good play.


Want new players to have an easier time learning how to play healer jobs, devs? Then you need mechanics that provide guidance baked into the job itself. Reward the player for good play, and do not reward the player for bad play. Try to avoid punishing them for bad play- withholding the reward is punishment enough. And, for the love of Nophica's bosom, please don't go trashing systems that were working to do what you tried to achieve in the first place!!! I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas on how to implement breadcrumbs to improve job design!


edit: post's a bit long, hope emphasizing with b/i/u helps improve readability, 3kchar


edit2: My goal is to get the devs to consider this. Any 'Likes' you can give will improve those chances. Please leave a 'like' if you approve!

Please don’t give SCH QA back. They don’t need it. Stack management went out the window when it was available. Nevermind Fey Union management. Just use Dissipation and Recitation. Seriously. Your gameplay will improve without encouraging blind ED spam every time you possibly can. Part of SCH’s tension and fun comes from NOT having answers for everything. All they need right now is a non-Aetherflow based damage oGCD with charges and their former DoT management brought back.

Blood Lilies are fine. Find ways to use them instead of Regen if you’re having trouble dumping stacks. I’d argue WHM needs a filler DPS spell that uses Lilies, and a trait that decreases Afflatus Misery’s Blood Lily cost to 2 and their regular Lily cap to 4. Maybe give back Aero III as an instantcast DoT that matches the potency value of the next Glare/Stone upgrade. Nothing complicated.

AST cards need their former card functionality restored to some degree. It’s painful to input on a controller. Add some way to see cards before drawing them too.

I'd love to have quickened aetherflow back, just to have bio not line up with aetherflow anymore, also, yes, please, encourage people to actually use their main class mechanic. I don't see why it was removed. Having more aetherflow doesn't give SCH an answer to every heal, all it does is reward them for proper aetherflow uses. Your main aetherflow heals will always be excog and indom, both of which are on long-ish CDs, 45 and 30 seconds respectively, having more aetherflow at most gives you more lustrates, which is more of your "oh no" button, it's not used nearly as often as your other aetherflow heals. As for it making fairy gauge harder to manage? lol, that gauge is worthless. Both heals on it are pathetic, maybe when there's actually something on the gauge worth using frequently that'd be a genuine concern, as is you could get rid of the gauge and both abilities tied to it and I wouldn't miss it in the slightest. I'd gladly trade those for QA back.

Not sure about this one particular feature, but in general I very much agree. As I said in other thread, a good way to solve many of healers' issues is to add synergy between abilities. Make all abilities interconnected. Make them all somehow affect each other. Make a fluid, flexible rotation. Not as it is now, when Adlo and/or W.Dawn and/or Excog, so to say, are floating around each other in a vacuum.

If there were a system of synergies, then average healers would just heal as they usually do, not realizing - and not caring - what they miss. But for good and perceptive healers - sky would be their skill ceiling :-).

You can just say you want AF to have 45 second cooldown.

It's shorter, it's cleaner, and doesn't require you justifying what cooldown timers already teach.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Please don’t give SCH QA back. They don’t need it. Stack management went out the window when it was available. Nevermind Fey Union management. Just use Dissipation and Recitation. Seriously. Your gameplay will improve without encouraging blind ED spam every time you possibly can. Part of SCH’s tension and fun comes from NOT having answers for everything. All they need right now is a non-Aetherflow based damage oGCD with charges and their former DoT management brought back.
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Your points on WHM and AST are good. I disagree about SCH, on many points, but I'll stay on-topic: I'm iffy to recommend using Dissipation to anyone in most circumstances because deleting your fairy at the wrong time can cause you big problems. That's one of the main reasons why I'm absolutely baffled that Dissipation still made the cut when so many of Scholar's tools got gutted. What parts of SCH do you feel could get some breadcrumbs to help unify the kit and guide scholars to Good Plays without relying on external guides / videos / discord servers?

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Originally Posted by Kiarin

Not sure about this one particular feature, but in general I very much agree. As I said in other thread, a good way to solve many of healers' issues is to add synergy between abilities. Make all abilities interconnected. Make them all somehow affect each other. Make a fluid, flexible rotation. Not as it is now, when Adlo and/or W.Dawn and/or Excog, so to say, are floating around each other in a vacuum.


If there were a system of synergies, then average healers would just heal as they usually do, not realizing - and not caring - what they miss. But for good and perceptive healers - sky would be their skill ceiling :-).

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Yeah! The general point's more important than the specific details.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

You can just say you want AF to have 45 second cooldown.
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I could say that. And, if that was what I wanted, I would. I wouldn't complain if it was reintroduced with a similar -15s CD reduction, nor would I if it had -3s instead. For the sake of argument, if cooldown timers did teach players how to play jobs (personally disagree, but...), then I don't see why I should be satisfied with JUST a basic system when I could ask for a more robust one that provides greater guidance than a merely adequate system. Healers shouldn't even be using their healing CDs on-cooldown, unless they deal damage or generate MP. The fact that they have cooldowns doesn't seem to stop players from misusing these tools. So, our healer mechanics should be focused on rewarding good cooldown usage, not just blinding going "haha asylum go brrrrr" just because a button lit up again.

i agree the game should reward good play. i kinda wish they moved the freecure and enhanced benefic procs to the dps spells

absolutely, the game should reward good play, especially with healers and punish idiots who just want to sit there, occasionally casting cure and no broil/stone/malefic

synergy and complexity are sorely needed in healers again, and that's why i keep coming here as someone whose ditched healers. I want to heal damn it, but i want to have things to aim for, to improve at my job when i get more skilled as a healer

Accessibility is a euphemism for shit change my mind

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Originally Posted by Gravagar

Your points on WHM and AST are good. I disagree about SCH, on many points, but I'll stay on-topic: I'm iffy to recommend using Dissipation to anyone in most circumstances because deleting your fairy at the wrong time can cause you big problems. That's one of the main reasons why I'm absolutely baffled that Dissipation still made the cut when so many of Scholar's tools got gutted. What parts of SCH do you feel could get some breadcrumbs to help unify the kit and guide scholars to Good Plays without relying on external guides / videos / discord servers?

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Actually press the buttons.

Seriously, Dissipation isn’t a bad cooldown. Learning how to use it isn’t going to magically make sense until you actively try to make use of it. It’s DPS and healing positive but actually requires thought. My problem with Quickened Aetherflow is that it trivializes SCH’s Cooldown management. That also includes Fey Union, which would be up way more often. It doesn’t make the class ‘hard’ as billy assumed I meant, it makes it brainless by completely mitigating the need to manage Aetherflow actions or Fairy Gauge at all. That’s my problem with it. Healers already barely have any resource management beyond their GCDs, why would you want to further trample on that?

EDIT: Was at work when I first wrote this, but to prove my claim that Quickened Aetherflow trivializes SCH's Aetherflow management, I'll demonstrate that it will do so even with Kabooa's suggestion to reduce it to 45s.

Stacks generated:
Aetherflow 3/45s -> 12/180s.
Recitation (Indom or Excog) 1/90s -> 2/180s.
Dissipation 3/180s.
Total: 17 Aetherflow stacks, 2 are limited to Indom or Excog.

Aetherflow spenders:
Sacred Soil/Indom 2/30s -> 12/180s
Excog 1/45s -> 4/180s
Total: 16, not factoring the use of on-demand cooldowns such as Lustrate or Energy Drain.

Now add another 25 seconds (Dissipation + Recitation's effect on Quickened Aetherflow as it existed in SB) onto that, which adds another aetherflow cycle every 6 minutes, roughly speaking. There's no reason to add such a ludicrous buff onto it again. SCH is already -barely- limited by Aetherflow as is. At that point the only reason Aetherflow exists is to add Energy Drains and Lustrates. We might as well add that in the form of an actual DPS cooldown instead, rather than bolster SCH's maximum healing throughput as a knock on effect.

As for how to improve SCH's gameplay, merge Dissipation and Summon Seraph, in addition to my previous suggestions (add a charge-based DPS oGCD, bring back DoT management). When you unlock Seraph give Dissipation 2 charges, and lower its cooldown to 90s. Force it to alternate between Dissipation and Seraph every other use. Forcing people to use one in order to get the other will make it clear why you should be alternating both. Another idea would be to make Deployment Tactics act as Bane when used on an enemy, with no drop off. That way you can justify leaving the cooldown alone.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

Healers already barely have any resource management beyond their GCDs, why would you want to further trample on that?

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This so much. As cool as the trait was, I really didn’t like it because it fed you soo many Aetherflow stacks to the point where there was very low risk of being caught off-guard without any stacks. The recent post about healing values visualised gives a better idea on how much oGCDs heal for.

AdamFyi (nice name), can you explain what "heal range" is in the graphs you linked?
Everything is pretty self explanatory, but I'm not sure I get that part.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

AdamFyi (nice name), can you explain what "heal range" is in the graphs you linked?
Everything is pretty self explanatory, but I'm not sure I get that part.

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In the case of Essential Dignity, it refers to its maximum potential heal (assuming no crits). For most other AST abilities as well as SCH's Fey Union it's the difference between using that ability for it's theoretical maximum value or its minimum. The regen values are also per tick, not total. It's also important to note that Fey Union can last longer than 100 gauge if micro managed...but realistically you're only using about 50-60 at a time barring slow big pulls in dungeons.

Gotcha.
Thank you very much.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

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You're missing my main point, as well as a detail from another reply I already mentioned. I don't care if you only get a 1s cooldown reduction instead of 5s per stack. The most important thing is that the trait rewarded good play. This thread is about discussing how to add mechanics that reward good play to areas where they are lacking, and perhaps discussing how to avoid the current pitfalls that reward bad play instead. I'm somewhat glad that Dissipation isn't the massive liability that it used to be, but I still greatly dislike any ability (like the old Riddle of Fire) that goes strongly against the core job design. If I had to pick between whether Rouse or Dissipation got axed, I would kill Dissipation with a smile.


But, yeah, you did edit in more details about improving SCH. I respect it. Personally, being forced to use an ability I already dislike for going against what is left of SCH's identity would make playing what used to be my favorite job even less palatable, but I do have to respect it. Still, I get that your argument is that the additional aetherflow from QAF and Dissipation combined is overkill. I'd rather have additional aetherflow from Quickened Aetherflow (even if it's not -5s/stack)and get none from Dissipation, if I had to choose what direction to go in. Largely, I say this because Dissipation has room to prove to be a bad play, if you use it right before a moment where you have a planned fairy CD usage. I'm focusing my thoughts on how to reward good play, not add punishments for bad play.

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Originally Posted by Gravagar

You're missing my main point, as well as a detail from another reply I already mentioned. I don't care if you only get a 1s cooldown reduction instead of 5s per stack. The most important thing is that the trait rewarded good play. This thread is about discussing how to add mechanics that reward good play to areas where they are lacking, and perhaps discussing how to avoid the current pitfalls that reward bad play instead. I'm somewhat glad that Dissipation isn't the massive liability that it used to be, but I still greatly dislike any ability (like the old Riddle of Fire) that goes strongly against the core job design. If I had to pick between whether Rouse or Dissipation got axed, I would kill Dissipation with a smile.


But, yeah, you did edit in more details about improving SCH. I respect it. Personally, being forced to use an ability I already dislike for going against what is left of SCH's identity would make playing what used to be my favorite job even less palatable, but I do have to respect it. Still, I get that your argument is that the additional aetherflow from QAF and Dissipation combined is overkill. I'd rather have additional aetherflow from Quickened Aetherflow (even if it's not -5s/stack)and get none from Dissipation, if I had to choose what direction to go in. Largely, I say this because Dissipation has room to prove to be a bad play, if you use it right before a moment where you have a planned fairy CD usage. I'm focusing my thoughts on how to reward good play, not add punishments for bad play.

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The problem with your line of logic is Dissipation already rewards good play. Itjust doesn’t engage you in the same way Quickened Aetherflow does. The way Quickened Aetherflow works has no inherent cost, but it does has explicit punishment (delaying Aetherflow actions too long results in twice the cooldown loss. Dissipation, by contrast, has inherent cost (fairy uptime) when used, but doesn’t explicitly punish the player, because you can circumvent the cost through timing or mitigate that cost using the benefits it gives you. That is to say, Quickened Aetherflow forces you to accelerate your Cooldown, while using Dissipation is an explicit choice with trade offs. I value the latter, particularly as a healer, as those choices in aggregate allow for skillful expression. Quickened Aetherflow doesn’t do that.

while i intensely disagree with the design direction, i can sorta see why they removed it--receiving complaints of SCH never actually using GCDs to heal with as quick and efficient as their freebies are, despite how this specifically enabled the class to both manage its suite of dots and engage with the fairy gauge mechanic (despite having only one whole action that used it). with the combat rebalance removing their dots, the need to free up yet more time to cast them was gone. which sidenote: using outsiders' perspectives to balance a class is really stupid and they should stop apparently doing that, since they've all but openly admitted that the office team doesn't particularly like/want to play healers (between content testing comments and the complete neglect of healers in LLs and articles).

of course this just further neglected the fairy gauge mechanic with the aetherflow dripfeed caused by the trait's removal, but that's okay there's still basically nothing that uses the gauge anyway!
real waste of potential if they're serious about SCH not doing damage as it's downtime activity, since managing the fairy gauge and associated skills would be an excellent way to fill their time that would've gone towards dps previously.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

while i intensely disagree with the design direction, i can sorta see why they removed it--receiving complaints of SCH never actually using GCDs to heal with as quick and efficient as their freebies are, despite how this specifically enabled the class to both manage its suite of dots and engage with the fairy gauge mechanic (despite having only one whole action that used it). with the combat rebalance removing their dots, the need to free up yet more time to cast them was gone. which sidenote: using outsiders' perspectives to balance a class is really stupid and they should stop apparently doing that, since they've all but openly admitted that the office team doesn't particularly like/want to play healers (between content testing comments and the complete neglect of healers in LLs and articles).
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I definitely agree that designing healers to appeal to non-healers was a foolish move, especially considering that it was tanks who had supply shortages, not healers. Not to mention a general void of healing-focused content creators invited to interview Yoshida during times like the media tour- it felt like backlash during that time period would've been our only chance to avoid both the past year and the next year of this drought. The entire handling of this situation is just so frustrating! Like, the fact that SCH can't aetherflow outside of battle because "I don't like my group's healer making me wait, so they shouldn't be able to do that" just makes me feel like I'm being bullied for playing the job the way it's designed. Why can't SCH just have an out-of-battle exclusive button that aetherflows but freezes your cooldown at 60s?

I've wanted more uses for the fairy gauge ever since it was introduced. Was glad to see some abilities that used it in SB2, but it's certainly not enough- not with things in their current state, for sure.

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Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

The problem with your line of logic is Dissipation already rewards good play.
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I think the civil thing to do might be to agree to disagree on the point of QAF vs Dissipation. I get the impression that you're trying to tell me the advantages of Dissipation are intuitive and the disadvantages are easily dealt with, and I'm not seeing it. And you're telling me what I view as intuitive design in QAF is not great, I'm not seeing that either, and vice versa.

Quickened Aetherflow and Dissipation are both highlights of Scholar to me. Dissipation fits nicely into that hole the fairy cool downs leave since they are all rather lengthy. In this current expansion where Embrace feels weaker than ever Dissipation by contrast feels more powerful than ever especially since the fairy comes back automatically. I hated when Dissipation required resummoning Lily. It was the most awkward capstone ability ever in Heavenward but it required thought and that was supposed to be the whole point of Scholar. Healing tactically with a more DPS centric orientation. Scholar healed while dpsing and Quickened Aetherflow reinforced that by allowing aggressive Aetherflow usage to be rewarded. Of course it was only Energy Drain that got used mostly but the extra damage felt good even if it was somewhat small. All we needed was another stronger DPS ability tied to Aetherflow on a 30 seconds cool down to make the system perfect. That's what Art of War should have been. An offensive Fey Gauge Spender to compete with Fey Union and Fey Blessing on top of our existing DPS kit from Stormblood.

Personally if QA were to return in some fashion I’d rather bake its recharge effect into said independent charge based DPS cooldown rather than explicitly tying it to Aetherflow again. Then you could have it proc off of more actions, like whenever you spend the Fey gauge or SCH’s healing spells. My problem with its effects on SCH’s healing power budget and resource management. As a pure DPS ability it’s fine. There’s a reason MCH got its own variation of it in their hypercharge windows. The base mechanic can (and frankly, should) be implemented in a less degenerate fashion.

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Originally Posted by QooEr

i agree the game should reward good play. i kinda wish they moved the freecure and enhanced benefic procs to the dps spells

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That'd be nice, they're pretty worthless traits past ARR/mid HW levels.

The fact that people view Dissipation as a DPS gain when it locks us out of our healing kit should be proof enough that it's a badly designed skill.

NO OTHER HEALER is locked out of half their kit for any of their abilities (let alone their "healing buff" abilities). It's an obvious coincidence how we're both last in DPS and HPS.

ED isn't good design, but having ED is better than not having a DPS sink for AF. If the dev team are set on their current course of action they need to give all healers DPS incentives to heal. Scholar choosing DPS or Heal is a flaw in the current design that can only be mended by either reverting SCH design or reverting encounter design.

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Originally Posted by MorganG

The fact that people view Dissipation as a DPS gain when it locks us out of our healing kit should be proof enough that it's a badly designed skill.

NO OTHER HEALER is locked out of half their kit for any of their abilities (let alone their "healing buff" abilities). It's an obvious coincidence how we're both last in DPS and HPS.

ED isn't good design, but having ED is better than not having a DPS sink for AF. If the dev team are set on their current course of action they need to give all healers DPS incentives to heal. Scholar choosing DPS or Heal is a flaw in the current design that can only be mended by either reverting SCH design or reverting encounter design.

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I disagree. Don't get me wrong ShB SCH is a disaster, 100%, but the risk factor is not why it's a disaster. SB SCH was fun because Selene had a risk, Miasma II had a risk, bane had a risk, energy drain had a risk. SCH having a risk/reward gameplay isn't a bad thing, in fact I'd argue the worst part about dissipation is that there isn't enough risk tied to it. The fairy is so useless that getting rid of her for 20 seconds doesn't hurt you. I have never used dissipation and then regret using it because I couldn't use a fairy heal, because the only fairy heal worth using at this point is seraph, the rest, sure, have uses, but they don't have any sort of impact. The fairy should be more useful and actively make a difference so using dissipation has some sort of cost.

ED being tied to aetherflow is a great thing and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. It makes you think. You have to actually think "is this heal worth using, can I get away with using ED here" you are punished for being too greedy but you are rewarded for using your resources smartly. I'd argue aetherflow on SCH is better than on SMN because it actually has a purpose for SCH. SMN will never not spend aetherflow on fester, I don't even know why they have it, just give fester stacks that they need to dump instead of aetherflow and their gameplay would not change.

again, ShB SCH is a mess, but it's not because it has risk/reward design. It's because it's had too much stripped away from it because SE doesn't know how to balance healers in any other way.

Agreed with OP, and Scholar would be both busier and more fun with more cooldown flexibility and interactions as well

• Let Aetherflow take 15s off pet abilities, and let them accumulate 2 charges
• Let Eos'/Selene's abilities take 18s off Dissipation and 12s off Summon Seraph

I actually think bringing back this perk would fix most of SCHs current problems with downtime, as well as its weaker healing potencies.

STB SCH could get away with having weaker healing due to its strong DPS, allowing for increased mitigation via offence.
SHB SCH doesn't have much (if any) offence left, and none of its healing spells were strengthened to match the lowered offence, which leaves it feeling weaker compared to WHM and AST when looking at their lv 1-70 kits.

With this perk back, SCH will have more access to healing abilities, as well as more EDs to deal damage with, bringing it a little closer in line with the other 2 healers. this would be a quick and easy fix that SE could implement before 6.0, in which I would hope they bring back the glory of battle medics.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

I disagree. Don't get me wrong ShB SCH is a disaster, 100%, but the risk factor is not why it's a disaster. SB SCH was fun because Selene had a risk, Miasma II had a risk, bane had a risk, energy drain had a risk. SCH having a risk/reward gameplay isn't a bad thing, in fact I'd argue the worst part about dissipation is that there isn't enough risk tied to it. The fairy is so useless that getting rid of her for 20 seconds doesn't hurt you. I have never used dissipation and then regret using it because I couldn't use a fairy heal, because the only fairy heal worth using at this point is seraph, the rest, sure, have uses, but they don't have any sort of impact. The fairy should be more useful and actively make a difference so using dissipation has some sort of cost.

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On this we definitely agree. Lily is the core of our class identity, and while I feel like I get a lot of mileage out of Fey Illumination and Whispering Dawn as well as Seraph, the skills tied to the Faerie Gauge are mostly trash. Fey Union is never the AoE heal you worry is up, that's Indom. Aetherpact is Regen that costs Faerie Gauge and Embrace casts, and unless you're really worried about your tank you almost never use it.

Risk/Reward I can get behind. I mean, Healer Greed is practically a meme for a reason. But when an ability literally just locks you out of what's supposedly the core feature of your class it feels gross and unintuitive. If Dissipation and Seraph were tied together, as I've seen other posters suggest, the ability would feel better. If Dissipation ended early if you used all stacks before the timer ran out it would feel better. If SE made Lily more powerful , even, it would feel better.

I like how in ShB they tried to bake the faerie more into our kit, but she mostly feels very disjointed. I mean when this expansion started, there were times you didn't even notice if she desummoned, because she was removed from the party list. Yeah smart move SE, that goes to show you how much she's needed.

And her skills, while useful, at times feel niche. The Fey gauge was a "decent" addition, I guess, it fit in better than the initial lily system. But using the skills can feel clunky at times, because of the delay. Additionally, too often I find myself with too much gauge, or too little, because of how little it can actually heal when needed, or how little healing is actually required. And at those points it's either a Broil spam or an Adlo/Physick spam. And neither of those is fun.

If you ask me SE needs to focus on what makes a SCH, the faerie and shields. Make the faerie mean something, make her skills worth it. Make the Fey gauge not feel like an all or nothing gauge. Learn from the Egi-Assaults, lol. And give us more shielding options. We finally got stackable shields and SCH can only really use one. Give us ways to pile on the shields.

And please rework Dissipation. It's a bad skill in both design and execution. Turn that into a stackable shielding skill maybe.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

I like how in ShB they tried to bake the faerie more into our kit

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Personally I feel like they went the opposite way. Her actions being independent of your casts made her feel more like she was a pet that you commanded.
Now she just feels like oGCDs with an unknown delay and chance to ghost. Yeah, her skills are now forced onto our hotbars, but we could still put them on our hotbars before too.

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Originally Posted by Eloah

If you ask me SE needs to focus on what makes a SCH, the faerie and shields.
give us more shielding options. We finally got stackable shields and SCH can only really use one. Give us ways to pile on the shields.

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SCH isn't really a 'shield healer'. Not only are its shields weaker & less frequent than AST's (Noct Opposition is waay better than Consolation), but are completely detrimental to the way that the game is currently played (casting shields for anything other than lethal damge is a 100% waste with 0 damage return).
If you want shielding options so badly, how's about instead of just increasing a health buffer (which square wants us to avoid doing - see the Critlo change), we get skills that are more tactical and interesting.
How about status effects that reduce incoming damage instead, a strong single target effect that we can spread with Deployment. How about a defensive boost that breaks if the target's HP drops too low.
Just- Something that you need to put thought or planning into using over just 'bbbrr hit points go up, status goes on'.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

Personally I feel like they went the opposite way. Her actions being independent of your casts made her feel more like she was a pet that you commanded.
Now she just feels like oGCDs with an unknown delay and chance to ghost. Yeah, her skills are now forced onto our hotbars, but we could still put them on our hotbars before too.

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Not only did the SB fairy feel more responsive, she also required no weaving windows to execute her abilities because she was a separate entity which made using her a lot more flexible. It's almost hilarious how they "improved" the SCH fairy by undoing all the fixes they made to it in SB.

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Originally Posted by YusiKha

SCH isn't really a 'shield healer'. Not only are its shields weaker & less frequent than AST's (Noct Opposition is waay better than Consolation), but are completely detrimental to the way that the game is currently played (casting shields for anything other than lethal damge is a 100% waste with 0 damage return).
If you want shielding options so badly, how's about instead of just increasing a health buffer (which square wants us to avoid doing - see the Critlo change), we get skills that are more tactical and interesting.

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That's why I don't really see the reason they nerfed critlo spread. Sure it was powerful but that was the WHOLE POINT. You gambled on a potential crit adlo to completely negate the next damage to the party which meant no healing was required at all. Now your shields are so weak that you will have to spend resources or gcds to heal anyway so you might as well not bother.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That's why I don't really see the reason they nerfed critlo spread. Sure it was powerful but that was the WHOLE POINT.

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Recitation.
1) The SCH community had been asking for a guaranteed-crit ability for years
2) The community was (with fair regularity) abusing critlo spread to ignore mechanics
3) Squeenix doesn't like it when their mechanics get foiled

Put those three together, and you get nerfed, guaranteed critlo.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Recitation.
1) The SCH community had been asking for a guaranteed-crit ability for years
2) The community was (with fair regularity) abusing critlo spread to ignore mechanics
3) Squeenix doesn't like it when their mechanics get foiled

Put those three together, and you get nerfed, guaranteed critlo.

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I'm going to go against the grain here, but, I'm okay with the critlo nerf. I am not opposed to change, but, it needs to be a good change, and if something is lost then something of equal or greater value needs to be given in return. Yes we lost the critlo spread, and that certainly stings a bit in certain situations, but, in return we got recitation, the only good thing that SCH got this expac (I genuinely adore recitation, I think it is a natural evolution of SCH's kit and it feels good to get those free crit indoms)

The problems I have with SCH is everything else they took away and didn't give us anything in return. What did I get for Selene? Nothing. What did I get for Miasma? Nothing. What did I get for bane? Nothing. What did I get shadowflare? Nothing. What did I get for Miasma II? Art of war, which is worse. What did I get for eye for an eye? Nothing. What did I get for a fairy that was amazing? A gimped oGCD that is worse in every single category.

Change is fine, or even good in a lot of cases. But if you're going to take something away there needs to be something to replace it. That is where ShB SCH fails. The only place they didn't fail this in, imo, is with the critlo nerf because recitation does, imo, do a good job in replacing it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Recitation.
1) The SCH community had been asking for a guaranteed-crit ability for years
2) The community was (with fair regularity) abusing critlo spread to ignore mechanics
3) Squeenix doesn't like it when their mechanics get foiled

Put those three together, and you get nerfed, guaranteed critlo.

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In that case Recitation was the wrong answer.

I'd argue people wanted a guaranteed crit ability for adlo for exactly those beefy shield spreads.
You rarely ever want to actually use Recitation on an adlo simply because of it's value as a free crit indom or excog and spread adlo being so incredibly weak.
Anything you'd mitigate with a spread adlo can be mitigated by a Succor and most of the time you don't need shields at all since you're gonna have to spend resources healing afterwards anyway.
The biggest benefit to those ridiculous adlo spreads was that the healers didn't need to spend anything on healing because nobody took any damage to begin with.


Even for single target mitigation there hasn't been a situation so far where a crit adlo is necessary or beneficial when a crit excog does the same job but better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

In that case Recitation was the wrong answer.

I'd argue people wanted a guaranteed crit ability for adlo for exactly those beefy shield spreads.
You rarely ever want to actually use Recitation on an adlo simply because of it's value as a free crit indom or excog and spread adlo being so incredibly weak.
Anything you'd mitigate with a spread adlo can be mitigated by a Succor and most of the time you don't need shields at all since you're gonna have to spend resources healing afterwards anyway.
The biggest benefit to those ridiculous adlo spreads was that the healers didn't need to spend anything on healing because nobody took any damage to begin with.


Even for single target mitigation there hasn't been a situation so far where a crit adlo is necessary or beneficial when a crit excog does the same job but better.

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I would add that deployed critlo might have more value with helping SCHs weakened healing and offence in SHB. as it stands, SCH as such low healing and damage that it could use the old critlo deployment combo in general. maybe even lower the cooldown of deployment to 90 secs if they wont give SCH back its offencive tools. I would also add eye for eye effect back on deployment to make it a little stronger too

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

In that case Recitation was the wrong answer.

I'd argue people wanted a guaranteed crit ability for adlo for exactly those beefy shield spreads.
You rarely ever want to actually use Recitation on an adlo simply because of it's value as a free crit indom or excog and spread adlo being so incredibly weak.
Anything you'd mitigate with a spread adlo can be mitigated by a Succor and most of the time you don't need shields at all since you're gonna have to spend resources healing afterwards anyway.
The biggest benefit to those ridiculous adlo spreads was that the healers didn't need to spend anything on healing because nobody took any damage to begin with.


Even for single target mitigation there hasn't been a situation so far where a crit adlo is necessary or beneficial when a crit excog does the same job but better.

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Yup, this. As a former SCH main, I'm sure you know exactly how pissed I was to learn I finally got the one ability I've been wishing to get for YEARS, only for it to come at the cost of being unable to perform the very action I intended to use it on. Hell, it practically felt like encounters were designed to MAKE crit spread adlos feel like you just did something amazing, with mechanics like Grand Cross, Forsaken, Hello World that force the party to spread out right after chunking you. And somehow, SOMEHOW, Dissipation didn't get axed from the kit despite the massacre happening on all the buttons and features I actually used on a daily basis.



If SE doesn't like mechanics getting cheesed, take Hallowed and friends away from tanks. I'm kidding, don't do that, because nobody else deserves what happened to healers. Instead: Give WHM and AST cooldowns that are as awesome as pre-nerf Deployment. And then, when they have them, actually design encounters properly so that being able to deploy crit adlos doesn't automatically give you free wins.
...
...wait, what? You were never able to clear a fight for free just because you have crit adlos? The fights were actually designed properly? Huh. I guess it's not as overpowered as people make it out to be, huh?