The Culling: Moving into 5.0

[Shurrikhan]

Fundamentally, Stormblood has felt like a transitional period more than a standalone when it came to job mechanics. I honestly do see TP being phased out in 5.0 and the mechanics introduced so far being tweaked and expanded upon.

Scholar and Summoner, in particular, I can see being a split focus revamp at some point in the future, as they both suffer by being tied to Arcanist as a base.

There's not a single thing they can't differentiate between the two jobs at this point. They've already shown that actions and traits can both be trimmed or added from the Arcanist arsenal as it applies to one job or the other. Everything level 30 and before can be retroactively changed at this point. There's nothing left that hasn't shown precedence for manipulation. The only remaining fundamental change is to prevent duplicated experience gains across the two jobs. They remain as close as they are for convenience and because the devs haven't found anything they'd rather replace the skills in common with.

[Sylvain]

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yeah there's only a few skill that remain shared, add a few skill rank upgrade and they're 100% different beside Aetherflux, Physick and Rez, which are skills I don't suspect to get new ranks.

But the exp share is an issue imo. There's no reason for someone leveling SMN or SCH to get the other job without even playing it. You can litterally be lv 70 SCH without even knowing what Adlo is. (Which is pretty much what happened to me at lv 60)


Gameplay wise, I consider that Aetherflux isn't adapted to SMN anymore, it doesn't bring anything. The mechanic doesn't feel interesting (but that's just me).
Unlike SCH, there's very little to no management of the Aetherflux with the SMN, at best you need to keep one stack for an eventual DoT split. Actually the place I manage those stacks the most is in dungeons. While I'm not expecting such a drastic change, if they were to separate the job I wish SMN would be the one being the Stand alone and get a new replacement mechanic.

[Shurrikhan]

Gameplay wise, I consider that Aetherflux isn't adapted to SMN anymore, it doesn't bring anything. The mechanic doesn't feel interesting (but that's just me).
Unlike SCH, there's very little to no management of the Aetherflux with the SMN, at best you need to keep one stack for an eventual DoT split. Actually the place I manage those stacks the most is in dungeons. While I'm not expecting such a drastic change, if they were to separate the job I wish SMN would be the one being the Stand alone and get a new replacement mechanic.

Personally, while I'm fine with the vast majority of maintenance buff weaponskills, so long as they bait out and at certain speeds allow for rotational differences (i.e. Twin Snakes is a better skill than Straight Shot which is a better skill than Hot Shot), maintenance abilities like Invigorate, Lucid Dreaming, and Aetherflow, which have no further thought that "hit per CD", are all button-bloat to me. As such, I wouldn't mind seeing Aetherflow removed from either/both SCH and SMN. I'd like to see something pet/trance-based for SMN, but have no major preferences as to SCH at the moment. I love that both can expend resources more quickly than they gain them, but let's face it: passively generating stack of Aetherflow per 20 (15 on trait or so) seconds to a maximum of 4 would have identical burst opportunity.

[Sylvain]

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I agree with you overall but I however do think Aetherflux is an interesting mechanic on SCH.
Unlike WHM/AST who have straight forward cd, SCH has rather low cd but they consome a ressource which you generate at a rate of 3 per 45sec. As a SMN your goal is to burn through these as fast as possible, as a SCH not really, (I mean, it could be depending on the situation but in general you don't burn your stack as soon as you press Aetherflux)

For the SMN a passive generation of 1stack every 20sec wouldn't change a damn thing dps wise,you're right, for SCH it would slightly change the dynamic tho.

For instance, if you just used Aetherflux and you burned through your 3 stacks because reasons, you have to wait the entire CD before having them back but here we're talking about healing and not just dps optimisation.
So if you badly need a stack in 20sec to heal that nasty AoE, well too bad, you won't get to use any of those skills for the next 40sec.
Which is why I consider the Aetherflux mechanic to be interesting on SCH. it does require management, you don't necearly want to burn through them ASAP (unlike you do a speed run I guess)

[Shurrikhan]

I agree with you overall but I however do think Aetherflux is an interesting mechanic on SCH.
Unlike WHM/AST who have straight forward cd, SCH has rather low cd but they consome a ressource which you generate at a rate of 3 per 45sec. As a SMN your goal is to burn through these as fast as possible, as a SCH not really, (I mean, it could be depending on the situation but in general you don't burn your stack as soon as you press Aetherflux)

For the SMN a passive generation of 1stack every 20sec wouldn't change a damn thing dps wise,you're right, for SCH it would slightly change the dynamic tho.

For instance, if you just used Aetherflux and you burned through your 3 stacks because reasons, you have to wait the entire CD before having them back but here we're talking about healing and not just dps optimisation.
So if you badly need a stack in 20sec to heal that nasty AoE, well too bad, you won't get to use any of those skills for the next 40sec.
Which is why I consider the Aetherflux mechanic to be interesting on SCH. it does require management, you don't necearly want to burn through them ASAP (unlike you do a speed run I guess)

My point was that there's virtually no complexity added by having an Aetherflow ability button as compared to just generating a stack automatically every 15-20 seconds. There's no optimal use for holding onto any more than 1 stack of AF when going into the next AF CD, meaning you'd only need to hold a maximum of 4 stacks in a passive system. Heck, even if you were to allow for 6 stacks held, it'd generate no additional complexity; it'd just pad downtime further, slightly adjusting whether one is able to hold onto all 3 stacks into another CD for a massive AoE pull -- albeit a bit wastefully. I'm not sure that minor, minor degree of additional control is worth spending a button on. Sure, it's not the first thing I'd choose to trim or combine (Summon Bahamut - Enkindle Bahamut), but it doesn't seem worth the bloat to me any more than Invigorate does, assuming TP gains and costs were adjusted to do without it.

[Khalithar]

My point was that there's virtually no complexity added by having an Aetherflow ability button as compared to just generating a stack automatically every 15-20 second.

Instead of the aetherflow for smn my mind keeps going back to the bar that builds during various ults (sephirot, knights, Tsukuyomi) and giving smn some sort of primal limit break or something to build and spend instead of aetherflow.

[Sylvain]

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I get your point and for summoner I 100% agree there's virtually 0 difference.

However I don't think you get my point regarding SCH(I put some emphasis because my entire last post was about SCH and you replied about SMN altough I said you were entirely right regarding SMN).

SCH could get it removed and turn into a "one charge per 15sec", but it would involve a change gameplay. A SMN will "nearly always" burn through their 3 stacks ASAP.
If as a SCH you burn your 3 charge within 5sec after using Aetherflux, your healing option are quite limited for the next 40sec.
No instant AoE (totally broken this spell seriously)
No instant heal
No Dome
No Proc-heal
No "Insert new Healing skill form 5.0"

However if you holded your 3 stack and burn them, you know that in 15sec, you can do one of these actions. And that's a big difference.
Some would be true if you would hold your 3 stacks and delay Aetherflux because you know that in 10-20 you might need to burn up to 5 of them in a very rapid succession.

[Shurrikhan]

I get your point and for summoner I 100% agree there's virtually 0 difference.

However I don't think you get my point regarding SCH(I put some emphasis because my entire last post was about SCH and you replied about SMN altough I said you were entirely right regarding SMN).

SCH could get it removed and turn into a "one charge per 15sec", but it would involve a change gameplay. A SMN will "nearly always" burn through their 3 stacks ASAP.
If as a SCH you burn your 3 charge within 5sec after using Aetherflux, your healing option are quite limited for the next 40sec.
No instant AoE (totally broken this spell seriously)
No instant heal
No Dome
No Proc-heal
No "Insert new Healing skill form 5.0"

However if you holded your 3 stack and burn them, you know that in 15sec, you can do one of these actions. And that's a big difference.
Some would be true if you would hold your 3 stacks and delay Aetherflux because you know that in 10-20 you might need to burn up to 5 of them in a very rapid succession.

And, again I see no difference to decent play. At worst, there's less potential by which to trap oneself. I don't see that as complexity enough to warrant the keyspace.

Even then, you could still emulate that exact same gameplay and ability to trap oneself even without the button, simply by breaking it into 3 stacks of 'readied' Aetherflow and 3 stacks of 'reserve', which are made ready once the 'readied' are consumed, but must still each be recharged before any new 'readied' stacks can be made.

I.e. Start combat with 3 readied stacks. If you consume a readied stack within 15s of starting combat, another stack replaces it, bringing you back to 3. If you remain at cap (3) when the recharge completes, you gain a reserve stack, which will instantly refill a stack. If you blow through all 6 in a 3 seconds, you'll still have 42 (45-3) seconds to wait before you gain a single new stack. Holding onto stacks past the first three doesn't allow you to use another any sooner: it just increases burst potential, just as currently true. The only difference then is that you have one less oGCD to cast when blasting off all six. Zero gameplay change.