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]

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.

[Crater]

Asylum/Sacred Soil cancel each other

They do not.The "Cannot be used with any other area-creating actions." part of the tooltip on Asylum and Sacred Soil refers to other area-creating actions used by the same caster. In other words, a Scholar's Shadowflare will cancel her Sacred Soil and her Sacred Soil will cancel her Shadowflare, and a White Mage using the PvP skill Sacred Prism will overwrite Asylum and vice versa.

Asylum and Sacred Soil are most definitely usable together.


More on-topic: Collective Unconscious is a bad skill because it prevents you from performing any GCD actions, while also being weaker than the actions you could be performing with those GCDs. Nocturnal is at least useful during phase transitions after you've put A. Helios up on everybody, assuming that the WHM is going to be the one timing a heal to bring everybody's HP back up as soon as the damage hits, but the Diurnal version is only really usable in fights that present so little danger that the piddly little 200 pot/tick heal is enough to keep people alive - in which case you should be using your GCD heals to keep people alive, and then throwing on some extra DPS since the fight is obviously too easy to require a full-time healer. It's pretty telling that most instances of people saying that they use CU in any difficult fight end up saying "Yeah I like Collective Unconscious, I do my regular heals and then throw it up for one or two ticks" - meaning that the best use they can find for the skill is a gimpy version of Assize/Indomitability.

Unfortunately, the reason that Collective Unconscious exists in the game is not because someone thought that it would be an interesting, unique, or effective addition to a healer's toolkit. It exists because someone said "It looks really cool in that cutscene when Y'shtola does that thing, players should be able to do that thing". The effect of the skill was an afterthought to its aesthetic, and it shows.

[Muahbec]

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.

Wait, Asy and SS cancel each other?
STOP.RIGHT.NOW.
CU is a lv58 i repeat, lv58 skill that is a weaker copy of stronger skills that you learn at lower levels. (sure it has 200 heal potency but with Asy you can throw it and keep doing your stuff, same for sacred soil) of course it has its uses (like when people are hitting bismarck you can use it and regen some mp while they do damage but...really...lv58, for that little effect, and WHM can do de same just by casting Asylum and stop doing his stuff, if something bad happens whm won't need to cancel asylum to help).
And it makes me so, SO mad that AST instead of having their unique effects and spells, receives weaker copies of their fellow healers and the only unique stuff they have is made of PURE RNG.