Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Shurrikhan]

Although I'd say that already happens with the current ED design, made worse with Dissipation being a DPS gain to align with raid buffs.

Well don't double down on the problem; just fix Dissipation if you feel it needs fixing. And/or allow for a slightly higher maximum AF stack count so you're not as compelled to ED-dump before a fresh AF CD.

But as for SCH's ability to trade excess healing for damage, I don't see it that way at all.

It quite literally is, though. Over-sacrificing healing means losing 195 potency per GCD you're forced to use (or up to 210 if you, say, force your WHM co-healer to deal with it through a non-Lily GCD heal). Sacrificing healing correctly means gaining 100 potency per ED.

If that healing would not be excessive, it is a damage loss. It is therefore, if optimized, only trading the excess.

ED being a DPS gain means optimizing SCH gameplay, as cognitively interesting as that might be, is essentially trying to interact as little with your class defining healing oGCDs as possible.

But this only applies if and when those tools would have gone to waste. This can only then argue for the right to waste those skills.

If the SCH from the fastest Phoinix clear in the game still only has 7 Aetherflow heals and only a single healing GCD (Reci-Deployed Adlo) AND its cohealer still has zero GCD heals, that's not a problem of Energy Drain allowing you not to waste those heals. That's a problem with having way too little damage in the game.

Forcing fluff heals just to try vaguely to pretend your healing kit isn't stupidly excessive relative to incoming is not a solution for that. It's just another among the mandatory healing gimmicks that have already been shot down a dozen times over this thread, except that it'd come at cost: the one healer who always actually had a way to deal with that problem would now lose that option.

Or at least call it what it is, a pure nerf. SCH has this unique affordance and you want it gone.

ED being a DPS gain means optimizing SCH gameplay, as cognitively interesting as that might be, is essentially trying to interact as little with your class defining healing oGCDs as possible.

Which is a hell of a lot better than nothing (or, the ability to "engage with" those excess heals only through overhealing).

You already want to avoid using GCD healing in favour of maintaining a steady stream of Broils and upkeeping your Dot, I just don't like having to avoid using the other abilities to maximize my contribution to party progress.

And if we needed every oGCD heal, that might matter, but we don't. Not only can we skip all GCD healing, but also a decent portion of our oGCDs. That's not an ED problem. That's an issue of raids' low damage.

[GrimGale]

[B]Forcing fluff heals just to try vaguely to pretend your healing kit isn't stupidly excessive relative to incoming is not a solution for that. It's just another among the mandatory healing gimmicks that have already been shot down a dozen times over this thread, except that it'd come at cost: the one healer who always actually had a way to deal with that problem would now lose that option.

Fair enough, this here convinced me.

I still don't like it, and I'd rather have ED be an MP recovery ability for AF stack dumps than it being a DPS gain.

[Shurrikhan]

Fair enough, this here convinced me.

I still don't like it, and I'd rather have ED be an MP recovery ability for AF stack dumps than it being a DPS gain.

And I'd love a healing context in which we'd need a strong MP recovery tool, even if at cost to more direct and free healing, because damage just gets that intensive. Alas. For now...

Funny thought, though: Energy Drain would then become your purest healing option, with all others being a way to try to wrangle an extra Broil X of DPS (195+ potency more than ED) with their increased offensive uptime (as oGCD heals).

[GrimGale]

And I'd love a healing context in which we'd need a strong MP recovery tool, even if at cost to more direct and free healing, because damage just gets that intensive. Alas. For now...

Funny thought, though: Energy Drain would then become your purest healing option, with all others being a way to try to wrangle an extra Broil X of DPS (195+ potency more than ED) with their increased offensive uptime (as oGCD heals).

If we had the Aetherflow action as the "AF dump", would that work better with my previous suggestion?

Aetherflow as an oGCD ability that burns all your current AF stacks into MP, restoring MP based upon the amount of stacks burned.

I'm trying to have SCH press different DPS actions that have resource involved mechanics, to break up the Broil spam. I guess the least upseting way to do that is to add another DoT to upkeep.

[Shurrikhan]

If we had the Aetherflow action as the "AF dump", would that work better with my previous suggestion?

Aetherflow as an oGCD ability that burns all your current AF stacks into MP, restoring MP based upon the amount of stacks burned.

Again, healers (including SCH) would need a reason to make MP worth sacrificing damage for. Otherwise you just end up with a tool about as useful (for MP-efficiency) as Physick.

But yeah, if raid damage was intense enough it to be worth trading healer damage for MP (since people not dying would net yet more damage and, in that very different from present case, we'd need the MP to keep people from dying), then AF would demand a bit more MP per Aethercharge consumed than ED (since it'd have zero potency) but would be more flexible due to not requiring a target.


Unfortunately, for now, that premise just harks back to the roots of this thread: Even in Ultimate, there's very little to heal / spend significant MP on.

[LyraleiManagem]

It’s a nerf in two ways:
You will no longer be able to spam ED in a buff window;
DPS loss due to downtime.

It’s the same logic how making whm’s lily dps neutral a huge buff —“store” you damage during downtime and burst during buff window.

[GrimGale]

Or at least call it what it is, a pure nerf. SCH has this unique affordance and you want it gone.[/B]

This I dont understand though. How would having the 100 potency of ED integrated into the 295 Broil potency be a nerf? Isn't it numerically the same? Wouldn't that be like having ED available at all times every 20s without losing access to your heals? I get it would remove skill expression by removing choice but isn't it numerically identical?

[Shurrikhan]

This I dont understand though. How would having the 100 potency of ED integrated into the 295 Broil potency be a nerf? Isn't it numerically the same? Wouldn't that be like having ED available at all times every 20s without losing access to your heals? I get it would remove skill expression by removing choice but isn't it numerically identical?

Back, sorry; I hadn't seen your response earlier.

First, the affordance I was speaking of was the ability to trade excess healing for extra damage. That would not be changed by ED being a 395 potency GCD so long as it remained a spender, not a generator.

But, your 395 potency GCD ED wasn't an spender/option; it was a generator, a step to getting access to your heals, not a means of trading them out.

If balanced, then, the maximum performance from something with cost (a trade) and something without cost (no choice, no trade) would not be the same. Present ED requires an consumption of (healing) resource, excessive though it might otherwise have been. Your suggested ED, since you've used it only as a generator, does not.

Consider, for instance: in a given possible buff, extra potency awarded through Third Eye and extra potency awarded through SAM's every GCD would not always have the same output. Theirs could only be the same if every situation, every fight, allowed one to fully maximize the potency from Third Eye (i.e., to mitigate raid damage precisely every 15 seconds).

Because that will not typically be true, and balance tends instead to target the average situation (note the SCH's rDPS would be overtuned if we were to consider it as balanced for zero ED usage, meaning that most of that damage is truly extra), the maximum performance of the context-dependent capacity will be higher than that of a universal one.

Put more simply, if you make a contributing tool baseline/inescapable/non-optional, you have to budget the job's baseline power for it. Otherwise, you're just slapping an rDPS buff onto the already rDPS-strongest healer, at cost to choice and skill-gap. Unlike the previous choice, that would not be a unique affordance, but simply a tuning error.

[GrimGale]

Back, sorry; I hadn't seen your response earlier.

First, the affordance I was speaking of was the ability to trade excess healing for extra damage. That would not be changed by ED being a 395 potency GCD so long as it remained a spender, not a generator.

But, your 395 potency GCD ED wasn't an spender/option; it was a generator, a step to getting access to your heals, not a means of trading them out.

If balanced, then, the maximum performance from something with cost (a trade) and something without cost (no choice, no trade) would not be the same. Present ED requires an consumption of (healing) resource, excessive though it might otherwise have been. Your suggested ED, since you've used it only as a generator, does not.

Consider, for instance: in a given possible buff, extra potency awarded through Third Eye and extra potency awarded through SAM's every GCD would not always have the same output. Theirs could only be the same if every situation, every fight, allowed one to fully maximize the potency from Third Eye (i.e., to mitigate raid damage precisely every 15 seconds).

Because that will not typically be true, and balance tends instead to target the average situation (note the SCH's rDPS would be overtuned if we were to consider it as balanced for zero ED usage, meaning that most of that damage is truly extra), the maximum performance of the context-dependent capacity will be higher than that of a universal one.

Put more simply, if you make a contributing tool baseline/inescapable/non-optional, you have to budget the job's baseline power for it. Otherwise, you're just slapping an rDPS buff onto the already rDPS-strongest healer, at cost to choice and skill-gap. Unlike the previous choice, that would not be a unique affordance, but simply a tuning error.

I see, so If I understand correctly, I would have buffed the class beyond the brackets of its skill floor and skill ceiling by making something that was previously considered part of the skill ceiling (AF management with ED) essentially integrated into the skill floor. And that would merit a reduction, for the sake of balance, to the other parts of SCH kit.

[Shurrikhan]

I see, so If I understand correctly, I would have buffed the class beyond the brackets of its skill floor and skill ceiling by making something that was previously considered part of the skill ceiling (AF management with ED) essentially integrated into the skill floor. And that would merit a reduction, for the sake of balance, to the other parts of SCH kit.

Yes, specifically to its damage.

Rather than raising just the job's at-healing-cost offensive ceiling, you'd have raised its offensive floor (to its former ceiling).

Given that'd otherwise come at no cost (unlike the earlier choices), that'd be, of course, imbalanced. Such would then oblige a decrease to, say, the potency of Broil itself until SCH was back at the rDPS available to any other healer that has no way to trade out its excess healing (since SCH would likewise have no such option at that point).