SCH needs help

[Brandedblade]

Reducing the DPS opportunity cost of all AF heals to zero did happen: 5.0, Shadowbringers' launch.
Without Energy Drain, all AF could be used for was for healing, and SCH had heaps of zero-DPS-cost healing, easily beating both WHM and AST.

It was also the most boring playstyle ever made in this game.
In my opinion, even with ED back SCH has one of the most boring playstyles in the game. I honestly don't care right now if SCH's healing or DPS tools are weaker/stronger than AST/WHM. Its just a complete bore to play.

And you can clearly see that SCH's AF was an afterthought for SE because not only was ED not there on launch, but it came back as an outright copy-paste of the SB version, completely at odds with the new AF mechanics they made for SMN.

I personally feel like the AF mechanics are an afterthought on ACN/SMN then they are on SCH tbh. While I will agree that making AF a dps cooldown that you have to use to access your healing toolkit would be an interesting design choice. Aetherflow on ACN/SMN feels utterly disconnected from the systems of commanding your pet and alternating between Demi summons and Trances. At least with SCH it is a core component of your healing/dps/mana management.

[Volkaj]

I personally feel like the AF mechanics are an afterthought on ACN/SMN then they are on SCH tbh. While I will agree that making AF a dps cooldown that you have to use to access your healing toolkit would be an interesting design choice. Aetherflow on ACN/SMN feels utterly disconnected from the systems of commanding your pet and alternating between Demi summons and Trances. At least with SCH it is a core component of your healing/dps/mana management.

AF was for sure a core component of SCH healing back in SB, but as I've mentioned in that other thread that took several hits in ShB (Seraph, Fey Blessing, Recitation). The important part that tied (and still ties) everything together was ED. Otherwise AF tools had no cost, and were basically WHM Lilies with a different charge mechanism and no Misery payoff.

As for SMN I have to admit I've never played the job. To me it seemed like AF was the starting point of the whole summoning loop: use AF abilities and trances to unlock Bahamut and then Phoenix. In that light making ED give AF makes perfect sense.

I personally believe making AF a DPS CD to unlock your healing abilities would be a bad idea, but we are in agreement that AF healing/DPS management should absolutely be a key part of the core SCH loop. New AF-based DoTs would be really nice, for instance.