Fairy Gauge….

[Renathras]

I think it goes without saying that I'm referring to having more than just Energy Drain for Aetherflow to be spent on, or more specifically, removing Energy Drain and introducing a few new actions meant for this reworked Aetherflow. The point is to offer more avenues for offensive gameplay.

No, I get that, but it in practice will end up being something like "Fester unless on CD, Bane if in AOE unless on CD, Energy Drain otherwise". There are so many kinds of attack spells. Something like Fester but has a 60 or 30 sec CD, Bane with the same, and Energy Drain as the dump for when you're in single target (Fester) or AOE (Bane) and the respective "better skill" is on CD. We could add Energy Siphon as the AOE ED, but it's still the same thing. Basically adding a whole bunch of buttons that aren't actually doing anything interesting and ends up being "use the good one on CD, use the bad one to dump excess". Might do something like work one in as an MP regen tool...but for that to matter, MP management would actually have to be a thing. Energy Siphon/Bane would actually need to really have a lot of AOE stuff in the game other than just dungeon pulls to justify.

Alternatively, you could make it the crux of SCH's damage kit, have everything other than Broil use Aetherflow and have SCH truly go totally oGCD kit. Bio uses AF, Miasma uses AF, Shadow Flare uses AF, etc.

...which honestly would be interesting, but not sure anyone would propose it.

[ty_taurus]

No, I get that, but it in practice will end up being something like "Fester unless on CD, Bane if in AOE unless on CD, Energy Drain otherwise". There are so many kinds of attack spells. Something like Fester but has a 60 or 30 sec CD, Bane with the same, and Energy Drain as the dump for when you're in single target (Fester) or AOE (Bane) and the respective "better skill" is on CD. We could add Energy Siphon as the AOE ED, but it's still the same thing. Basically adding a whole bunch of buttons that aren't actually doing anything interesting and ends up being "use the good one on CD, use the bad one to dump excess". Might do something like work one in as an MP regen tool...but for that to matter, MP management would actually have to be a thing. Energy Siphon/Bane would actually need to really have a lot of AOE stuff in the game other than just dungeon pulls to justify.

Alternatively, you could make it the crux of SCH's damage kit, have everything other than Broil use Aetherflow and have SCH truly go totally oGCD kit. Bio uses AF, Miasma uses AF, Shadow Flare uses AF, etc.

...which honestly would be interesting, but not sure anyone would propose it.

Then you have even more GCDs dedicated to Broil, which is the opposite of the goal. Alternatively, another line of thinking I've had was doing more with your tactics actions...

For your neutral, we'd at least see Broil, Biolysis reworked into a 15 second instant cast DoT while Miasmolysis (or Bio III and Miasma III if I had it my way), as a hardcast 30 second DoT. Deployment Tactics spreads barriers when targeted party members and spreads DoTs when targeting enemies. Emergency Tactics, on the other hand, is reworked. When used, it swaps Physick for Protraction, Adloquium for Lustrate, and Succor for Indomitability, with those specific actions being changed into GCD heals. Additionally we add a new action in "Engagement Tactics" or if we prefer a more simple "Combat Tactics." This works the same as our reworked Emergency Tactics, only it swaps Broil, Biolysis, and Miasmolysis for more potent actions, a stronger attack that's also AoE in Meltdown, A powerful third DoT in Pain that can also be spread through Deployment, and an attack that's not quite as strong as Meltdown, but greatly restores your MP in Osmose. Or something along those lines. This is a little similar to Eukrasia on Sage, but would be OGCD conversion actions rather than the shortened GCD environment Sage creates.

[Aravell]

If it were up to me, I'd see the Faerie Gauge reworked into your main resource for healing and rework Aetherflow to be strictly a DPS resource.

Honestly, I disagree with this. Separating the 2 gauges into purely for healing and purely for damage strips away meaningful choice from the job. SCH is unique among the healers where it currently has additional considerations to make when optimising damage. For example, instead of only thinking "Will this tool be up again when I need it?", SCHs also have to think "Can I get away with not using Soil here?" or "Can I burn ED here and have Aetherflow be up in time for when I need Indom?" or "Should I burn all stacks here and use Dissipation? Or will I need Seraph within 30s?", all these are unique considerations that only SCH has.

By separating the gauges into purely for one purpose, you are stripping any extra considerations away in favour of making it just like any other healer in terms on optimisation. This does not appeal to people like me who want meaningful choice. If people want totally lossless healing with no extra considerations, there already are 3 healer jobs they can play, I'd rather not see any remaining vestigial thought required to be gutted out of SCH with no replacement.

[ty_taurus]

Honestly, I disagree with this. Separating the 2 gauges into purely for healing and purely for damage strips away meaningful choice from the job. SCH is unique among the healers where it currently has additional considerations to make when optimising damage. For example, instead of only thinking "Will this tool be up again when I need it?", SCHs also have to think "Can I get away with not using Soil here?" or "Can I burn ED here and have Aetherflow be up in time for when I need Indom?" or "Should I burn all stacks here and use Dissipation? Or will I need Seraph within 30s?", all these are unique considerations that only SCH has.

By separating the gauges into purely for one purpose, you are stripping any extra considerations away in favour of making it just like any other healer in terms on optimisation. This does not appeal to people like me who want meaningful choice. If people want totally lossless healing with no extra considerations, there already are 3 healer jobs they can play, I'd rather not see any remaining vestigial thought required to be gutted out of SCH with no replacement.

You know, I actually referenced this concept before somewhere and specified that it could also have a tool that converts Aetherflow into Faerie gauge specifically to retain that aspect of choice--that you have the ability to change a damage resource into more healing for such situations, and the response I got from someone was "What's the point of having them be separate resources then if I can just convert one to the other?" And that was the end of that conversation.

[SweetPete]

Hopefully we can see some big changes to the fairy gauge in 7.0. I really like that idea of using a skill and it drains the fairy gauge. Kinda reminds me of old bard’s foe requiem ability. It use to drain mp while in effect.

[Aravell]

You know, I actually referenced this concept before somewhere and specified that it could also have a tool that converts Aetherflow into Faerie gauge specifically to retain that aspect of choice--that you have the ability to change a damage resource into more healing for such situations, and the response I got from someone was "What's the point of having them be separate resources then if I can just convert one to the other?" And that was the end of that conversation.

Seeing you mentioned conversion made me have an idea. What if they returned Eos and Selene as separate fairies with a twist?

When Eos is out, you're granted the buff "Offensive Tactics", all your Aetherflow actions will be offensive while all of Eos' fairy gauge skills are healing/defensive.
When Selene is out, you're granted the buff "Preservation Tactics", all your Aetherflow actions will be the healing and defensive stuff we have now while all of Selene's fairy gauge skills will be offensive.
They can add an OGCD action called "Aspect Shift" or something which swaps between fairies.

This preserves the tactical aspect of SCH by making both gauges multipurpose while also making both fairies have a use as you'd want to swap between them as their abilities come up for maximum effect.

[ty_taurus]

Seeing you mentioned conversion made me have an idea. What if they returned Eos and Selene as separate fairies with a twist?

When Eos is out, you're granted the buff "Offensive Tactics", all your Aetherflow actions will be offensive while all of Eos' fairy gauge skills are healing/defensive.
When Selene is out, you're granted the buff "Preservation Tactics", all your Aetherflow actions will be the healing and defensive stuff we have now while all of Selene's fairy gauge skills will be offensive.
They can add an OGCD action called "Aspect Shift" or something which swaps between fairies.

This preserves the tactical aspect of SCH by making both gauges multipurpose while also making both fairies have a use as you'd want to swap between them as their abilities come up for maximum effect.

The problem is either your Eos Aetherflow DPS abilities will be stronger, or your Selene Fearie Gauge DPS actions will be stronger. Whichever faerie wins is the right answer, and the other is the wrong answer. It's basically more steps involved with Summoner's old pets from Stormblood and earlier, where there was just a right pet and a wrong pet. If you aren't soloing with Titan, do you want Garuda or Garuda but worse? Only in this case the question is whether or not you need the healing from the better faerie. For example, if it's determined that Eos is the stronger of the two, then the question is if you need her Faerie Gauge healing, or if you could just swap to Selene and burn that gauge on DPS. In that sense you might end up with two DPS gauges where you avoid the healing unless absolutely necessary.

[Aravell]

The problem is either your Eos Aetherflow DPS abilities will be stronger, or your Selene Fearie Gauge DPS actions will be stronger. Whichever faerie wins is the right answer, and the other is the wrong answer. It's basically more steps involved with Summoner's old pets from Stormblood and earlier, where there was just a right pet and a wrong pet. If you aren't soloing with Titan, do you want Garuda or Garuda but worse? Only in this case the question is whether or not you need the healing from the better faerie. For example, if it's determined that Eos is the stronger of the two, then the question is if you need her Faerie Gauge healing, or if you could just swap to Selene and burn that gauge on DPS. In that sense you might end up with two DPS gauges where you avoid the healing unless absolutely necessary.

I don't think jobs should be designed around the right answer and the wrong answer, if everyone is meant to arrive at the right answer, you just get bland and unimaginative jobs and no one wants that. I've always said that jobs shouldn't be as they are now with only one right answer and everything else is wrong, I want jobs to be designed in a way that you have multiple answers and they're varying degrees of right, so there's no wrong answer but every answer comes with varying degrees of loss, optimisation would become mitigating losses as much as possible instead of finding the one correct answer and doing the same thing over and over for eternity.

The point of my example is that both fairies bring different benefits with varying cooldowns, there will also be a button to swap between them and it's OGCD. Not swapping between them is a dps loss because both gauges are multipurpose, but it's not a wrong answer as you can use only one fairy for the entire time and still clear content, it's just an answer that comes with a bigger loss than another answer.

[ForsakenRoe]

Yeh the first thing that comes to mind with 'Fairy handles the opposite side of damage/healing that the SCH does' is that you'd need to, ideally, swap fairies on the fly because of the inherent CD on skills. So you'd use all your Fairy Gauge stuff on Eos for healing, then when she's out of gas, you swap her for Selene so that you (the SCH) cover healing while Selene does her damage stuff, then flip back. I imagine you'd swap roughly once per 30s, and you 'could' just camp one Fairy and not swap, if you really wanted, but then you'd cap on one of the two gauges (as we tend to do now), so hot-swapping would be the way to go, to keep either gauge from overcapping. Or you could purposely not swap in the leadup to a known healcheck (eg Harrowing), so you can pool up both gauges and go in with everything prepared

[ty_taurus]

I don't think jobs should be designed around the right answer and the wrong answer, if everyone is meant to arrive at the right answer, you just get bland and unimaginative jobs and no one wants that. I've always said that jobs shouldn't be as they are now with only one right answer and everything else is wrong, I want jobs to be designed in a way that you have multiple answers and they're varying degrees of right, so there's no wrong answer but every answer comes with varying degrees of loss, optimisation would become mitigating losses as much as possible instead of finding the one correct answer and doing the same thing over and over for eternity.

The point of my example is that both fairies bring different benefits with varying cooldowns, there will also be a button to swap between them and it's OGCD. Not swapping between them is a dps loss because both gauges are multipurpose, but it's not a wrong answer as you can use only one fairy for the entire time and still clear content, it's just an answer that comes with a bigger loss than another answer.

I would love for that to happen. But I think it would require a very significant change in XIV's combat system in order to achieve that.

If the goal is to create a situation where the optimal route is to use your DPS aetherflow, then swap over to the other faerie to use your DPS faerie gauge, then I think having the two gauges as they are currently would be odd. Why wouldn't you, in that case, have a single gauge in that example that simply "Flips." Spending gauge on one half generates gauge on the other half? I'll do a mock up...

Wouldn't something like this make more sense?



The same would be true in reverse, and the cycle repeats itself. We'd cut the faerie gauge entirely at that point. You'd have unique DPS options with Eos' charges and different ones for Selene's, but either could be spent on the same healing options, like Lustrate/Indom or whatever you had in mind, so you can always opt to sacrifice damage for healing as needed, but it feels like that would be a much cleaner interpretation of your concept.