Thread: Sch wishlist for 5.0

Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

What are you even talking about? You said single target. Miasma II is 200 potency. Broil II is 230. aka dps loss. Two or more targets is when you start weaving again.

You clearly don't understand how this game works, then. The engine locks you in place for a minimum period (.75 seconds, last I recall, plus ping if you don't queue a spell or ability ahead of time) in order to play animations. This includes the animations that play whenever you use a spell or weaponskill with a cast time (which locks you out of using anything while that cast bar fills up), and including abilities such as Energy Drain, Lustrate, and so on. Every spell or ability has a minimum animation time you have to abide by, and because of this minimum time, using Energy Drain inbetween Broil IIs yields less overall DPS compared to using it after casting Miasma II, because you get to use it while your Global Cooldown Timer (which most spells and weaponskills operate on) is rolling down, instead of having no time to due to the cast time of Broil II taking up that entire period, resulting in what people call clipping (short for animation clipping, which refers to any period where any animation prevents you from regaining control of your character as described above, in this game's case it prevents you from using another GCD spell to keep that timer rolling as soon as possible). That's the crux of this issue.

Originally Posted by Sylvain

However, SCH having many ogcd, if you clip absolutely every single ogcd, not only the Aetherflux spells, then you will see a major difference in your dps.

This, so much.

It becomes major when you then factor in that you're able to combine another oGCD alongside ED and Miasma II in order to free up room for another Broil II later on. In addition to all the Aetherflow abilities, you have Aetherpact/Rouse/Chain/Shadowflare/ET/Deploy/Dissipation and all of the Role action cooldowns you can weave in as well. SCH's ability to doubleweave on demand and maintain DPS while on the move is the primary advantage it has over the other two healers. Ruin II hasn't been updated in order to help balance their DPS out as a result. Miasma II breaks that rule in certain situations.

Also, Pet Actions break all of the above because they're tied to your pet's GCD, not your own. They work on a similar, but wonkier system that is governed by server checks on top of animation lock, but you can still weave them while you're casting your own spells, as long as the spell is on the pet hotbar and you watch your fairy's Embrace casts. In theory, this enables some super heavy micromanagement windows, such as slidecasting Broil II into melee range while commanding Eos to move underneath the boss before popping Miasma II so you can put Excog on the main tank while also telling Eos to use Whispering Dawn and intentionally resetting Aetherflow's cooldown just in time for you to pop it in that same two GCDs while enabling you to DPS through a weak Raidwide AoE followed by an immediate Tank Buster. It's ridiculous yet also completely possible to do that with the current system.

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

This, so much.

snip

Yeah well, the list of "what clips" with SCH is very extensive
It was just to show (and support) your claim.
I also specifically pointed that a few clipping isn't a big deal (like, "only" EF) but it can go out of hand if you clip everything.
Good reminder on pet action I forgot about it.

@Trensient_Shadow : However, no matter what happen, priority is still to heal no matter how much clipping you do. A dead group does 0 dps (and this will affect more your rdps than clipping)
Avoiding clipping is something you learn to do overtime, basically see it as a mean to progress.
First, you learn to efficiently heal the fight
Then, you try to improve your dps by upkeeping your DoTs and having a maximum amount of Broil cast
Finally, you start replacing some Broil by MiasmaII to avoid clipping, thus increasing your dps.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

It makes me wonder if they could do something in 5.0 alike to the lenience we get with stutter-stepping, allowing oGCD animations to flow into GCDs earlier without cancelling them, cutting the maximal clipping time down from the average ~.7 seconds to .4 or less.

Of course, there are also just some animations which are stupidly (sometimes even to the point of self-contradiction, in the case of Swiftcast) long that could just be individually revised.

The ~.75s rule of thumb is accurate in most cases, but not all. Right now, on my 1.8s GCD Monk I can double-weave with just a bit of clipping between certain oGCDs (e.g. EF-SP) but that clipping is scarcely reduced by RoF's 15% Attack Speed penalty, when it should help massively; there may already be some hidden scaling going on behind everything. Whatever is, though, it's not enough.

While I don't want to remove the value of clip-conserving skills -- just make the a little less necessary while reducing their potency gap a tiny bit, til it's mostly based on mobility instead of equal parts that and oGCD access -- if we could reduce it to below .5s naturally, we'd hit a new breakpoint for reducing output loss on the 80% GCD casts like most ST healing spells and the like. Add a 20% cast speed reduction, reduced by 5% per rank, to Enochian and you'd be able to weave after Fire and Thunder III, as well, not just Firestarter and Thundercloud.

Well, I don't think they can remove the animation lock, it seems to be part of the whole "clunky server side" issue. I mean, just making Mudra client side with a shorter animation lock seems to have been a complicated thing to do.

One very simple change they can do is reducing Broil, StoneIV cast to 1.5s
I mean, that didn't solve ALL AST clipping issue, but it sure helped a freaking lot.
Beside my Starplacement I barely clip anything (some bad habit remains)

For BLM, perhaps a future rework of ... I forgot the name of that spell... you know the instant crap one ... could help
Or simply making Fire1 a 1.5s cast (that would help a lot of BLM learn the job)

Or ultimately (I don't see that happening) Allow OGCD to be cast while casting.
Some skill have this property in WoW, like, you can use Fireblast while casting a Fireball on a mage.
But this will defintely never happen, the game engine seems to be too clunky to allow such a thing

Changes :

• Removal of the critical effect from Adlo giving a boosted shield.
• Deployment Tactics cost now 1 aetherflow stack.
• Deployment Tactics now increases Faerie Gauge by 10.
• Eye for an Eye back to Scholar skills.
• Sacred Soil and Shadow Flare can be stacked.
• Dissipation invoke the same fairy at the end of the effect.
• Emergency Tactics additionnal effect allow the next Addlo or Succor to cost only 50% mana. In Sacred Soil II, it goes to 25%.
• Broil I, II... cast time goes to 1,5.
• Selene updates : Silence Dusk is replaced by Whispering Dusk : Erects a magicked barrier which nullifies damage equaling 130 potency to all nearby party members.
  Duration: 30s ; Fey Caress additionnal effect give 60 potency heal to all members.
  

New skills :

• Eye for an Eye II : Erects a magicked barrier around a single party member or pet. Duration improved: 20s --> 30s
  Barrier Effect improved: 20% --> 30% chance that when the member is attacked (physical or magical), the striker will deal 10% less damage. Duration improved : 10s --> 15s
• Broil III
• Sacred Soil II : Duration improved: 15s -->20s. Additionnal effect improved: Inside the area, Succor and Addlo cost 50% mana.
• Aetherflow IV (trait)
• Phoenix ascendance (recast time 300 sec) : Cost all the fairy gauge. The fairy transforms into a Phoenix for 20 sec. During this time, she can cast one only action : Breath of the Phoenix which can revive a party member dead without penalty. Cast time : 3 sec.