Scholar Aetherflow Issues

[Gemina]

Good lord, no...we do not need to remove Indom's or soils's cooldown. Arguably SCH is venturing on OP when it comes to how much instant cast, MP free.

Let me see if I can be a little more clear. I am not actually suggesting that SS, Indom, and Excog have their recast times reduced to 2.5s, which is what I think some of you are under the impression I am stating. I actually never even stated what the recast times should be reduced to. What I am saying is that aetherflow skills already use aetherflow as a resource, and it is a flawed design to put skills in there that also have CDs. If the ability is so powerful that it warrants a CD, then have it operate free of aetherflow much like Chain, Deploy/Emergency, or Recitation.

After giving it more thought, I came to the inquisition of, "Why even have aetherflow at all?" With energy drain gone, we're all kind of scratching our heads about it: It can't be used outside combat, nothing to dump stacks on if we don't need the heals leading to overhealing, most of its abilities already have their own CD timer... seriously, why aetherflow?

[Jerichai]

Let me see if I can be a little more clear. I am not actually suggesting that SS, Indom, and Excog have their recast times reduced to 2.5s, which is what I think some of you are under the impression I am stating. I actually never even stated what the recast times should be reduced to. What I am saying is that aetherflow skills already use aetherflow as a resource, and it is a flawed design to put skills in there that also have CDs. If the ability is so powerful that it warrants a CD, then have it operate free of aetherflow much like Chain, Deploy/Emergency, or Recitation.

After giving it more thought, I came to the inquisition of, "Why even have aetherflow at all?" With energy drain gone, we're all kind of scratching our heads about it: It can't be used outside combat, nothing to dump stacks on if we don't need the heals leading to overhealing, most of its abilities already have their own CD timer... seriously, why aetherflow?

The cooldowns are there for balance. Aetherflow is there to make us thing about what kind of healing footprint we are going to have for the next minute. Are we going to focus on AoE? Single target? Mixture? With energy drain and bane we could also factor damage in that equation previously.

If you remove aetherflow, you take out one of the last mechanical expressions of "tactics" that are part of the Job's core lore and identity.

[Gemina]

The cooldowns are there for balance. Aetherflow is there to make us thing about what kind of healing footprint we are going to have for the next minute. Are we going to focus on AoE? Single target? Mixture? With energy drain and bane we could also factor damage in that equation previously.

If you remove aetherflow, you take out one of the last mechanical expressions of "tactics" that are part of the Job's core lore and identity.

It used to be that way when we had energy drain and bane. Those days are gone, and I don't see much need for aetherflow at all with the exception of limiting lustrate.

[Jerichai]

It used to be that way when we had energy drain and bane. Those days are gone, and I don't see much need for aetherflow at all with the exception of limiting lustrate.

It still is that way though, just diminished. Each lustrate you use is perhaps less uptime on soil or skipping a use of excog. You're having to factor if that spot healing is worth it over general raid wide sustainability. Or if you go all in on AoE skills, you may need to forgo excog and lustrate. I agree the system was better with energy drain and bane, but to say the current system forces no decision making is completely false.

[YanderePrincess]

Those days are gone, and I don't see much need for aetherflow at all with the exception of limiting lustrate.

I'm inclined to agree. The limiting of Lustrate could easily be done with the new charges mechanic, and probably done better that way. That just leaves Aetherflow as a tool for restoring MP, which could literally be any number of other concepts that would fit the idea of Scholar just fine.