Collective Unconscious

[BeerMusketeer]

Hey there, I am leveling up my AST, really liking it! I just unlocked Collective Unconscious and I was wondering in which sorts of scenario's I should use this ability. At first it seemed like an amazing ability, but then I figured out that I cannot perform any actions or movements during the channel. Now it seems rather lacklustre to me. Am I correct in this and is it really just a niche spell or am I wrong? Thanks in advance!

[Nekotee]

Almost all the time that you could pop the sch bubble you can use CU

The difference is the cd and channeling
You could think that it doesn't help

But in fact i almost never stay in CU the whole time
Only to soak in the raid damage and apply the wheel of fortune (super strong HoT) then go back healing

As long as the CU is running the wheel is reapplied so using the CU fully and adding Celestial opposition give you a 30sec HoT on the whole group
Giving you almost nothing to heal

[DarkmoonVael]

It is in fact an exceptionally powerful cooldown, but requires skill to use.

First of all, something to take note of. The regen effect (wheel of fortune) is placed upon the party member on the global dot/hot tick which is once every 3 seconds. This being the case, when you use this skill it can take up to 2.9 seconds to register the HoT on people.

So as for its uses. In dungeons, in diurnal, pulls can be managed as so: Aspected Benefic>swiftcast>Aspected Helios>Collective Unconscious>Time dilation once wheel of fortune is up>cleric stance>dps. All the healing is obviously targeted at the tank, and when all three HoTs are up you absically dont have to heal the tank for the rest of that pull. Note you are going straight into a swiftcast A.Helios into collective unconscious for global cooldown effiency.

In terms of other content, its uses vary. Take A6S, the way you use it can depend very much on which robot you are on. Blaster (first one), you can use Collective unconscious just after the first mind blast is silenced around the boss to get the regen on all of the melee tanks and healers. This helps with the impending damage going out for mirage drops.

On the second boss, there are times you stack as a group to share damage. Here its used for both the damage mitigation aspect as well as the regen.

Its a fairly tricky cooldown to use, but part of AST raid gameplay is finding the best situations that it can be used.

One thing that should never happen is that this should be on cooldown for 4-5 mins+ like i have seen with some AST i have been paired with. You should be trying to maximise efficiency with this skill rather than saving it all the time.

Basically any time people have to stack you can try to use it, other than that for aoes etc where people will be close to each other.

[BeerMusketeer]

Thanks for the swift replies guys! I didn't realise the HoT continued after cancelling the ability so thanks for pointing that out, aswell as it's synergy with time dilation and celestial opposition, I can definitely see the point of the ability now. It also looks pretty cool so yeah, awesome skill after all!

[Powe]

If you're healing a raid and having a hard time healing the tank, with the regen for that added with your other regens it can be about 5000 hp per sec or how long it usually takes for regen

[Nekotee]

One of the few moment i use this ability full time it's A5S repeated 5 shock therapy where everyone is stack and 10% mitigation is quite nice
It allow your partner to catch his breath and start working

But it can only work for 2 shock out of the five but wheel can last during almost all

As Powe said adding all diurnal HoT, a bole if you have and time dilatation in your tank/MT is quite a relief
(Especially on Hummel Faust XD)

[Rongway]

I didn't realise the HoT continued after cancelling the ability

It does, and as long as you're channeling, it refreshes the duration to 15 sec on everyone inside when it ticks. So if the boss has disappeared and there's still, for example, 12 seconds before a big AoE, you can start channeling, give everyone 12 sec of super regen, reduce the damage from the hit, and then still have another 12-15 seconds of super regen after you break your channel.