Collective Unconcious

[Publius85]

So I'm rather new to posting on here and wanted to discuss this topic with everyone here but I'm getting trolled by the forums 1000 char limit so I broke paragraphs into different posts. Here we go...

Ok so I had a long car ride to and from a work meeting today and since I wasn't driving I spent a majority of the ride reading up on some of the forums here on my phone. The basic mentality around here for AST is that Collective Unconscious is utter crap and useless. Why is that? I find it to be a very useful tool for a number of reasons.

[Publius85]

For one a lot of people say mp management can be an issue. For me it was more so during the leveling process of 50-60 and then the 2 60 dungeons prior to getting a full set of i160 gear. When I got CO at 58 I thought it was a god send. Any time I found myself burning through mp too quick I would just stack AH (with an AB on tank) pop LA then top it off with CO. This I found was more than enough to sustain the group on trash pulls as the pack thinned and allowed me to reset at nearly full mp after CO ends. Further more when they dropped the buff to CO's regen effect it made doing this even safer as the stacked regens are potent enough to tick anyone up to full hp in literally seconds as long as no one person is taking an extremely large amount of damage at one time.

[Publius85]

Since gearing from i160 to now currently i186 I've found mp management to be less frustrating almost to a point of it no longer being a problem to me at all (In all end game content so far minus Alex savage since I play on a rather small server and pf groups are next to non existent on my server save lolunsynced pony farms). This makes CO seem rather useless but again I continued to find uses for it.For instance during moments where unavoidable raid/party wide damage is incoming and everyone always bunches together for AoE heals I find myself using AH then popping CO as the move hits allowing the regen to top everyone off in a few seconds before everyone scatters. My favorite 2 instances where I find it useful right now are in A1 during the jump and in A4 during the raid wide attack that happens between phases.

[Publius85]

The best part is its free of mp cost, and it heals while in diurnal sect. Thats 2 things it does in 2 areas people say AST is really lacking. I did an ex roulette one day and the tank asked me what the bubble was. I explained to him what it did and he was shocked cause he said I was the first AST he had grouped with that he had ever seen use it. I found that rather shocking as I have seen it as an invaluable tool for healing since I hit 58 and got it.

[TatoRazzino]

Simple: people didn't bother to learn how to use it. It's easier to set up than Asylum/Sacred Soil in a lot of situations (e.g., jumps in A1S) and the Diurnal version is quite strong. I was using it yesterday to recover from the jumps in A1S and the party got topped off easily with that an a normal Cure III.

[Publius85]

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand it has its limitations especially when compared side by side with WHM or SCH's bubbles. But to flat out say its useless to the point of not using at all is completely baffling to me. Like one of the forums I was reading today was about classes "useless abilities" and someone said they don't even have CO on their hot bar on their AST. Again I know its not the best move in the world but there are clearly plenty of situations where its useful to use and I'm sorry but that kind of behavior and mindset is just laughable in my opinion. No wonder half of you think AST is flat out useless, if you're going to ignore the tools given to you then the job is going to be that much harder to perform well with.

Anyways just my thoughts on CO. I'd really like to hear everyone's opinion on why or why not CO works or doesn't work for them.

[GideonHighmourn]

It has the same uses as Asylum/Sacred Soil, essentially. The problems being that it's smaller than it's counterparts, roots you into position, and prevents you from continuing to cast compared to Asylum/Sacred Soil. It's not an inherently bad skill with no use, however, the uses of it are quite limited compared to it's counterparts.

[TatoRazzino]

Do you want to know something that's useless? The Overcure trait in WHM. Getting that from a Cure II is a waste almost 100% of the time. The MP cost reduction doesn't make Cure III more MP efficient than Cure II since it was buffed and Cure III only works when the party is stacked, so the uses are very limited. Do you see any threads complaining about this? No. That's because people have little to 0 knowledge about how healing works and are just crying about AST because it's harder to play than WHM or SCH. Don't mind the threads in this forum. If they spent half of the time they are using to complain to actually play AST and learn how it works, we would have many good AST.

[TatoRazzino]

It has the same uses as Asylum/Sacred Soil, essentially. The problems being that it's smaller than it's counterparts, roots you into position, and prevents you from continuing to cast compared to Asylum/Sacred Soil. It's not an inherently bad skill with no use, however, the uses of it are quite limited compared to it's counterparts.

There's a reason for that. Asylum/Sacred Soil cancel each other, while Collective Unconscious stack with both of them. They had to create a weakness, otherwise it would be too OP.

[GideonHighmourn]

Asylum/Sacred Soil cancel each other

No they don't.

I find it fascinating that you come into every thread and claim people need to "l2p" when that wasn't even the purpose of this thread. No one sad CU was bad or useless, or that AST was bad. The OP asked how people are using CO and how they feel about it as a skill. Where did the "l2p" comments and "AST isn't useless" even come into question?