What Dissipation should have been

[Rubiss]

After receiving some positive feedback in another thread about Scholar skills I've decided to make my own thread.

Dissipation, as it stands, is so situational it's almost next to useless. I won't rag on it too much as it has legitimately saved the day in Alexander Savage for me, but that was due to the Aetherflow and the fact that the very last phase of A2S requires little healing when just the Gobwidows are left.

At any rate, I think Dissipation would be better if the reward was higher. Either a boost to the overall percentage gained to healing (I heard that the 20% isn't even worth it as the fairy healing for 30 seconds greatly outweighs it.) or making it boost spells and abilities. To be honest, if I had to rework Dissipation I'd do it like this...

Gives the user three Aetherflow stacks, desummons their fairy and summons the opposite fairy. So if you used Dissipation with Selene, she would go away and Eos would replace her. Based on which fairy was desummoned the Scholar would gain a different effect. If Selene is desummoned, maybe the entire party gets a haste buff (which can override or stack with Fey Wind). Maybe like 10%? (This is once every 3 minutes, you know). If Eos is desummoned, give the Scholar 20% more healing on spells and abilities.

This may sound OP but I think it adds a new meta to Scholar healing. Not only would you use Dissipation for emergency healing, but you would use it swap fairies. This actually enables the Scholar to use everything in their toolkit and would give each fairy some time to shine without the huge penalty of either wasting 5 precious seconds or blowing an important Swiftcast.

Let me know what you think and what you would change. I understand Scholar is a great healer and I'm not trying to buff them to make them broken, but Dissipation is just far too situational to even see proper use.

[Ninimo_Babamo]

Have you seen any Alexander Savage group without a scholar? No.
Scholar is fine and needs no changes and needs no buffs.

[Khyan]

Most of the time when I use Dissipation during savage, it's for additionnal dps before changing fairy, depend of the phase.

This would be a god send for me.

[KinnisonArc]

After Dissipation wore off, I think a simple 10~15 seconds buff that gives you instant cast and no MP cost for Summon I / Summon II will be great. Since the skill already has a long cooldown I don't think this addition will make it too OP, it's just so you don't have to use the Aetherstack gained from it for Energy Drain if you're out of MP and swiftcast your fairy back.

[Alistaire]

Have you seen any Alexander Savage group without a scholar? No.
Scholar is fine and needs no changes and needs no buffs.

This. You can never balance based on individual skills. You have to balance based on the whole package.

Is the skill bad? Sure, it could've been a lot better. But the whole package is still top-notch.

[Rubiss]

This. You can never balance based on individual skills. You have to balance based on the whole package.

Is the skill bad? Sure, it could've been a lot better. But the whole package is still top-notch.

I don't see why a class being good warrants a poor skill. I'm not saying that Scholar isn't good. I main a Scholar, I am aware that the class is quite good. However Dissipation is not very good at all. Fairy switching is almost non-existent and when it is used, it is very costly. Dissipation can save the day at times (very rarely) but you end up fairyless and have to either sit there for several seconds (costing you DPS and heal time) and resummon the fairy or use Swiftcast which is a very valuable tool.

I know Scholar is fine. They're a nice class who can do their role well. I don't see why that warrants having such a poor skill.

[Valesti_Peleiades]

What I like about your suggestion is it attempts to remove (or at least mitigate) the penalty while adding a new dimension to the SCH playstyle. As you note yourself, balance is the first concern that comes to mind, as your suggestion may be approaching OP territory, at least in certain ways. I'm assuming that in your new suggestion, we'd be eliminating the existing potency buff and replace it with the buff corresponding with the fairy that you sacrifice (otherwise, that would just be bananas). But in any event, your Eos buff essentially equates with the current buff, but without losing Embrace and potentially extending the buff to abilities. This is probably OP, bc a healing buff AND free aetherflow stacks is...a lot. But when you think about it, if the only cost to you is switching to the other fairy, then free stacks on top of a buff is, in all likelihood, going to be too powerful, unless you get only 1 free stack and a smaller (e.g., maybe 10% healing buff). More to come.

[Valesti_Peleiades]

So I think there are a number of options to play with, depending on what you think Dissipation should actually accomplish. If you want it to be an emergency healing tool (which is what it's *supposed* to be), then extra aetherflow is definitely the way to go. But if you think about it, 3 stacks of aetherflow is....all we'd really want in an emergency CD. So to make it add an interesting new dimension without being too OP, I think 1 Aetherflow stack + fairy buff would be appropriate. Then you could get maybe a 20% healing boost from Eos and it wouldn't be OP. As for Selene's buff, let's consider another possible purpose for Dissipation: honestly, what it often gets used for currently is a DPS boost, so maybe Selene could give you a Spell speed boost to strengthen your DoTs (or something).

[Valesti_Peleiades]

After Dissipation wore off, I think a simple 10~15 seconds buff that gives you instant cast and no MP cost for Summon I / Summon II will be great. Since the skill already has a long cooldown I don't think this addition will make it too OP, it's just so you don't have to use the Aetherstack gained from it for Energy Drain if you're out of MP and swiftcast your fairy back.

This is also a good option. But even then, 30 seconds w/ out your fairy is still a high cost, so I'd also just shorten the buff from 30 to maybe 15 seconds.

[Valesti_Peleiades]

I don't see why a class being good warrants a poor skill. I'm not saying that Scholar isn't good. I main a Scholar, I am aware that the class is quite good. However Dissipation is not very good at all. Fairy switching is almost non-existent and when it is used, it is very costly. Dissipation can save the day at times (very rarely) but you end up fairyless and have to either sit there for several seconds (costing you DPS and heal time) and resummon the fairy or use Swiftcast which is a very valuable tool.

I know Scholar is fine. They're a nice class who can do their role well. I don't see why that warrants having such a poor skill.

I agree. Especially since the OP is more interested in taking a terrible skill and changing it in such a way that it adds depth to the job, not necessarily raw power. At least, that's how I interpreted the post.