SCH needs some nerfs

[loreleidiangelo]

I replied to a post a bit below yours about how I don't agree with that. I think AST has to think more than any other job. As a SCH main you aren't really thinking about your aetherflow stacks and after you map out the fight your stacks are consistent and you generally won't use them outside of the mapped spots. Most of the time you're dumping all your stacks into trick attack in the form of Energy Drain. Trying to get 3 Energy Drains under trick. Bio > Energy Drain > Broil > Miasma 2 > Energy Drain + Swiftcast > Broil > oGCD + Energy Drain. Not much else to think about stacks there. Even if you aren't in a kind of environment where you can utilize that there's still not too much to think about because you should know the threshold on where you need to dump the rest of your stacks because Aetherflow is coming off CD.

And outside of managing multiple Lords during a Trick Attack window the AST card system has no more depth than sacking Energy Drains when Aetherflow is about to come off CD. It's a moot point for both classes, but at least SCHs have more than two damage buttons as part of their regular rotation and a fairy to micro-manage to at least SOMEWHAT up the skill floor.

EDIT: To clarify a bit, yes, at the top .1% of the playerbase you're generally going to be using more mental overhead to plot out optimal AST card timing compared to just straight-up AOEing everything that can be remotely perceived as a DPS increase and calling it a day. In those scenarios, AST is likely harder than SCH to play, because on top of that you're never going to need to use unplanned SCH stacks in an emergency to cover mistakes, either. But even among the Savage-clearing playerbase (of which I was a part until pretty recently), your scenario isn't the common one and for the other 99.9% of the playerbase AST is too faceroll for too much utility and healing, with a surprisingly strong card system given how little elements of actual choice exist within it.

tl;dr in my opinion even a mediocre AST can achieve tons of value with only a rudimentary clue on how to optimize the card system, whereas a mediocre SCH is a lot more easy to discern. Whether they tweak the card system to give actual elements of choice to it or simply nerf AST's bongos healing so that they at least have to work a little harder on the healing front, I'd like to see something done about the class, though I do admit it's unlikely given that SE has been terrified to hit it with nerf bats due to it's insanely underwhelming release (and subsequent attached stigma).