Visual feedback for Aetherflow PLEASE! (Quality of life imporvement)

[YuriRamona]

I really don't see how this would be detrimental to new scholars since you can see how many stacks are left on your status bar. if anything its aesthetic. just my opinion though. there is no way I consider myself an expert scholar.

I think it's quite detrimental to have to take half a second to glance at your status bar to count your stacks. In a game full of instantaneous mechanics and razor-thin reaction times, that momentary distraction (or perpetual visual clutter distraction from a character glow/aura) is extremely costly.

I don't see how a visual reminder on your character could be a crutch. It's good to know how many stacks you have, but when the crap hits the fan and you're concentrating on keeping order in the chaos, you can forget stacks, it'd definitely be helpful even to end gamers.

This is what I'm trying to get at. Yes, the chaos may lead to you forgetting your stacks, but I don't think we've considered the possibility that the forgetting of stacks is what can generate more chaos.

And it's not necessarily just the memorization of stacks that is beneficial. It's the entire principle of having knowledge and awareness of the situation at every moment. A critical component of multitasking is the mastery of individual tasks: comfort through familiarity, routine, and ritual make adding additional tasks exponentially easier. I would argue that mentally keeping track of stacks gives people greater stability through the ritual and routine of holding that number in mind. Whereas other elements of the fight are less predictable and controllable, your stacks and cooldowns are inherently knowable and controllable, through practice.

This doesn't even consider that the SCH playstyle can be heavily dependent on available Aetherflow stacks. Considering that Lustrate is the most powerful tool in the SCH healing handbook, having an excess of it any moment (or knowing that you will have an excess for the next few moments) allows freedom to reposition, choose lower-cost heals, use or save pet cooldowns, and most importantly, entering and leaving Cleric Stance. Being short on Lustrates (or knowing you will exhaust them in the next few moments) likewise heavily informs all of a SCH's decisions.