Quote Originally Posted by Sylvain View Post
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.