Scholar Aetherflow Issues

[Lagomorph]

Responding to Nethereal:

Because I'm too lazy to quote. Your two main points throughout this thread are everyone except you can't do math, and that healers should heal, right? On that first point, I've only seen a single pretty misguided use of numbers concerning the dps value of whm lillies throughout all your posts. It seem's like you're unaware that you can use lillies to weave for an essentially 225 potency instant cast spell. Or you can use them to move, when you can't cast glare. Or you can use them during downtime when there is no target. Or perhaps you can even hit more than one target with misery. Or maybe you just knew all of this but selectively omitted it to try to forward your point? Next, on reducing the cooldowns of aetherflow skills like another person mentioned. Let me say that I know this is not a good idea, but it has very little to do with math. Since you think that it does, though, where is your math? According to mine, if we took off all cooldowns on aetherflow skills, scholars would get a pitiful 200 more potency of aoe healing per minute. Now responding to your 2nd point that healers should heal. I see a few ways to interpret this. You might be a newer healer, who is still doesn't completely understand how the flow of encounters generally goes in this game for healers. You might be someone who doesn't actually play healers, but is posting on theses healer forums for some reason. You might be deliberately trying to provoke people. I have no idea which it is, but I will say one thing. Any experienced healer who has healed shadowbringers will tell you the same thing: there is hardly anything to heal. I should do my job and heal the team up? The job is already mostly done, and I didn't even have to do anything.

[HyoMinPark]

While I'm sorry you feel I'm being hostile and or condescending, your opinion is uninformed and is based on second hand information that you haven't gone through yourself(hopefully seen first hand at least) and while I focus on the class as a whole your view of it is currently on the lower levels and lacks information on the tail end of it making your argument feel genuinely dishonest. If you knew about some of the things I talked about prior and mentioned them instead of ignoring them(what I assumed because you didn't clarify) then I would have taken a different approach. Hopefully we both now understand each other's point of view.

Career SCHs better than you and I have similar complaints to what I have expressed in this thread: they don't like Aetherflow being locked to combat, nor do they like not having a way to dump excess stacks that doesn't involve blatant overhealing. They also don't like overcapping because that's ultimately a waste of resources. It's Resource Management 101. That's the biggest two complaints I have about SCH currently.

Even with only being level 73. I’ve already listed the reasons why I find the Aetherflow lock strange; I won’t list them again. And I’m not one that enjoys wasting resources, so having nothing to get rid of unused stacks is particularly grating for me—and this becomes particularly egregious when synced down, which means it’s probably roughly the same for any SCH leveling from 30 to 80 (that cares to properly manage their Aetherflow—let me clarify that). I’d have to relevel the job on another character to see if that’s truly the case, but that’s what I think currently. They’ve also said that they disliked leveling SCH, which I can kind of see why when you get so used to things like out-of-combat Aetherflow and having to adjust to that change.

I wouldn’t call level 73 “low level”—the only “low level” comment I made still applies to the level I’m at now: I’m finding myself without things to spend Aetherflow on (usually during single-target) to the point where I overheal randomly to get rid of excess stacks or drop Sacred Soil again because “why not it’s time to refresh Aetherflow”.

My viewpoint may be from leveling—and it may be from an average SCH’s viewpoint—but I fail to see how that makes it "intellectually dishonest". I believe the word/phrase you're looking for it "uninformed" or perhaps "ill-informed due to not having the whole picture". And, as I said, maybe my opinion will change when I reach level 80. But you neglected that part of my reply. As it stands now, I’m definitely not finding the leveling experience smooth for me. Not when compared to WHM, which was the last healer I leveled. At least leveling SCH feels better than when I leveled AST, which was a god-honest nightmare.

Again, pardon me for not including skills I don't yet have available to me in my post, and pardon if I was not clear that I was still leveling (though a quick Lodestone search would have shown I wasn't level 80 yet). I didn't mention them because I have no experience with them, and I'm not sure how the SCH experience will be with them. I can only hope it gets better - which, people have said to me that it does (from this thread and from others), so hopefully my own experience will improve. That's the part that seems to have upset you the most about my personal, honest, if not entirely informed from a level 80 perspective, viewpoint of SCH and I can't understand why that is. I already mentioned that I've heard it gets better, but that some of the complaints I have posited here remain. I don't think you saw that any time that I mentioned it.

[Gemina]

It doesn't take high math skills to make suggestions on the forums. It only takes a middle schooler with a calculator and someone who's willing to actually listen to themselves before they type something out. If you wish to clarify your points you should've done so in your original post, my previous response was a direct quote from yours. And yes it would be different, it would be broken in fact and they would have to nerf the potentiates into the ground. I can't tell if you're serious or not about making every aetherflow ability unconstrained to 3 uses every 60 seconds or if you just actually don't play this game. Also CDs are not a resource, they only use 1 resource, Aetherflow. As for the rest of your post I don't see how that relates to me at all, there are a lot of people who can't do simple math not because it's hard but because they don't bother to think about it.

Also it seems kind of ironic to talk about Ast considering what they've done to it this patch, they obviously weren't happy with it and thought about it more. You should probably do the same.

It also doesn't take high math skills to know how to have a constructive conversation either. It does take some literary comprehension though. You're not providing anything other than a offensive opposition, but I'll be sure to have a calculator handy whenever you're around. How about that?

And no, I was never serious about unconstrained aetherflow usage. If you knew how to read you would know my issue is with aetherflow, not its abilities. Also, CDs use the resource of time. No matter how you choose to perform your mental gymnastics, the abilities are still restricted not by one gate, but two, and that is what I have an issue with.

Anything else you would like to instruct me on today senpai?

[Jerichai]

Let me see if I can be a little more clear. I am not actually suggesting that SS, Indom, and Excog have their recast times reduced to 2.5s, which is what I think some of you are under the impression I am stating. I actually never even stated what the recast times should be reduced to. What I am saying is that aetherflow skills already use aetherflow as a resource, and it is a flawed design to put skills in there that also have CDs. If the ability is so powerful that it warrants a CD, then have it operate free of aetherflow much like Chain, Deploy/Emergency, or Recitation.

After giving it more thought, I came to the inquisition of, "Why even have aetherflow at all?" With energy drain gone, we're all kind of scratching our heads about it: It can't be used outside combat, nothing to dump stacks on if we don't need the heals leading to overhealing, most of its abilities already have their own CD timer... seriously, why aetherflow?

The cooldowns are there for balance. Aetherflow is there to make us thing about what kind of healing footprint we are going to have for the next minute. Are we going to focus on AoE? Single target? Mixture? With energy drain and bane we could also factor damage in that equation previously.

If you remove aetherflow, you take out one of the last mechanical expressions of "tactics" that are part of the Job's core lore and identity.

[Gemina]

Indom is already 30s... that’s pretty short for its potency. How much further would you propose reducing it? 15 seconds? 20 seconds?

Remove it as an aetherflow skill. Actually just remove aetherflow all together. They've already ripped just about everything from SCH that can tie it to its ACN roots. Why not at this point? And that is a serious question.

[Gemina]

The cooldowns are there for balance. Aetherflow is there to make us thing about what kind of healing footprint we are going to have for the next minute. Are we going to focus on AoE? Single target? Mixture? With energy drain and bane we could also factor damage in that equation previously.

If you remove aetherflow, you take out one of the last mechanical expressions of "tactics" that are part of the Job's core lore and identity.

It used to be that way when we had energy drain and bane. Those days are gone, and I don't see much need for aetherflow at all with the exception of limiting lustrate.

[HyoMinPark]

Remove it as an aetherflow skill. Actually just remove aetherflow all together. They've already ripped just about everything from SCH that can tie it to its ACN roots. Why not at this point? And that is a serious question.

I’m guessing because of what Jerichai said above: the tactics lore surrounding the job—managing Aetherflow is SCH’s mechanic, and since they’ve kind of made SMN a bit different with regards to its stacks (from what I’ve heard), I guess they want Aetherflow proper to be an ACN/SCH thing.

Personally, I like the Aetherflow mechanic SCH has, so I don’t think the solution is to just outright remove it. I would merely like something to use on excess stacks I may have laying around so that I don’t overcap or needlessly overheal. While I haven’t healed either EX with it (since I’m only level 73), I’ve been told that this is still an issue then by SCHs I know that are way better at the job than I am. Even if it’s second-hand information, I’ve heard it enough that I won’t be surprised if I take it into 80 content and find it to be the case.

EDIT: I see that you replied to Jerichai already.

[Jerichai]

It used to be that way when we had energy drain and bane. Those days are gone, and I don't see much need for aetherflow at all with the exception of limiting lustrate.

It still is that way though, just diminished. Each lustrate you use is perhaps less uptime on soil or skipping a use of excog. You're having to factor if that spot healing is worth it over general raid wide sustainability. Or if you go all in on AoE skills, you may need to forgo excog and lustrate. I agree the system was better with energy drain and bane, but to say the current system forces no decision making is completely false.

[FoxyAreku]

AF out of combat is not an issue at all and it's pretty much 100% certain at this point that they will not change it back anyways.. so a lost cause.

How is it not an issue exactly? Honest question. Because I'd say it's pretty annoying when you're in a dungeon and the last enemy dies right as aetherflow comes off cooldown.
It's also really annoying that you have to hit something before you can use aetherflow unless it's a raid fight. Feels very bad.

[Nethereal]

What second hand information? Career SCHs better than you and I have similar complaints to what I have expressed in this thread: they don't like Aetherflow being locked to combat, nor do they like not having a way to dump excess stacks that doesn't involve blatant overhealing. They also don't like overcapping because that's ultimately a waste of resources. It's Resource Management 101. That's the biggest two complaints I have about SCH currently. Even with only being level 73. I’ve already listed the reasons why I find the Aetherflow lock strange; I won’t list them again. And I’m not one that enjoys wasting resources, so having nothing to get rid of unused stacks is particularly grating for me—and this becomes particularly egregious when synced down, which means it’s probably roughly the same for any SCH leveling from 30 to 80. I’d have to relevel the job on another character to see if that’s truly the case, but that’s what I think currently.

My viewpoint may be from leveling—and it may be from an average SCH’s viewpoint—but I fail to see how that makes it "intellectually dishonest". I believe the word/phrase you're looking for it "uninformed" or perhaps "ill-informed due to not having the whole picture". And, as I said, maybe my opinion will change when I reach level 80. But you neglected that part of my reply.

Again, pardon me for not including skills I don't yet have available to me in my post, and pardon if I was not clear that I was still leveling (though a quick Lodestone search would have shown I wasn't level 80 yet). I didn't mention them because I have no experience with them, and I'm not sure how the SCH experience will be with them. I can only hope it gets better - which, people have said to me that it does (from this thread and from others), so hopefully my own experience will improve. That's the part that seems to have upset you the most about my personal, honest, if not entirely informed from a level 80 perspective, viewpoint of SCH and I can't understand why that is. I already mentioned that I've heard it gets better, but that some of the complaints I have posited here remain. I don't think you saw that any time that I mentioned it.

Honestly it doesn't get any better the higher you level, 74 when you get recitation is probably the highest point out of all your skills.

I re-read your original post that I replied to and read the other posts you had in this thread slowly and completely and I found nothing of you stating your opinion is subject to change or that you're not 80. all I found was that you stated specifically that it was just your opinion. Are you sure you're not confusing threads? If not could you link me to where you said in this thread that your opinion might change as you level that would be much appreciated and would warrant an apology.

Responding to Nethereal:

Because I'm too lazy to quote. Your two main points throughout this thread are everyone except you can't do math, and that healers should heal, right? On that first point, I've only seen a single pretty misguided use of numbers concerning the dps value of whm lillies throughout all your posts. It seem's like you're unaware that you can use lillies to weave for an essentially 225 potency instant cast spell. Or you can use them to move, when you can't cast glare. Or you can use them during downtime when there is no target. Or perhaps you can even hit more than one target with misery. Or maybe you just knew all of this but selectively omitted it to try to forward your point? Next, on reducing the cooldowns of aetherflow skills like another person mentioned. Let me say that I know this is not a good idea, but it has very little to do with math. Since you think that it does, though, where is your math? According to mine, if we took off all cooldowns on aetherflow skills, scholars would get a pitiful 200 more potency of aoe healing per minute. Now responding to your 2nd point that healers should heal. I see a few ways to interpret this. You might be a newer healer, who is still doesn't completely understand how the flow of encounters generally goes in this game for healers. You might be someone who doesn't actually play healers, but is posting on theses healer forums for some reason. You might be deliberately trying to provoke people. I have no idea which it is, but I will say one thing. Any experienced healer who has healed shadowbringers will tell you the same thing: there is hardly anything to heal. I should do my job and heal the team up? The job is already mostly done, and I didn't even have to do anything.

It seems you think I'm against lilies? That's not the case I know exactly what they do and what they're there for it's simply that some people don't respect the whole function of them. Specifically for down time when not having a target, those are only during transitions phases which usually last anywhere between 5 to 15 seconds which isn't enough time to even generate a lily and you'll probably have already used them and are holding a blood lily til the boss comes back, in my experience at least. With the longest time you won't have anything to hit will being around 30-40 seconds and during that time you usually won't be able to move or use any abilities because they're cutscenes, which is only one lily(30 sec). As for being able to hit multiple targets, that's honestly not worth discussing.

In theory you should be able to get off 10 casts of glare in 30 sec making the dps comparsion laughable. Going further it takes 90 seconds to get 3 lilies and another recast before you can use blood lily. Accounting for all this it's possible to get 31 casts of glare in before you even use misery if for arguments sake we say recasts are the same duration as tics. There's a reason Glare will always be your highest dps output. I don't know why you challenge this at all. Even if we were to be fair and say you spent 30 seconds dodging or healing, it still wouldn't be a contest.

Lilies strict function is to reimburse dps lost from healing. It wasn't omitted either it's just such common knowledge I felt no need to waste time typing it out.

As for your comments about aetherflow. The amount of healing per minute is irrelevant in this specific case of removing aetherflow's requirement to make choices on what to use and making it a completely free resource. It's how fast you can heal that matters. Being able to heal 2400 hp in aoe within 2 seconds is not okay and neither is being able to cast excog and sacred soil while still being able to use lustrate. As for healers should heal, it's a very literal statement, if your team is actually dying you should heal them over dpsing, simple as that.

The amount of healing required even though low when doing mechanics properly is irrelevant to the statement as a whole. Rather it seems more taken out of contex or you didn't understand how literally I meant to imply that sentence. If one of your teammates is going to die and you can either A. Use another Glare or B. Save their life, you save their life.

It also doesn't take high math skills to know how to have a constructive conversation either. It does take some literary comprehension though. You're not providing anything other than a offensive opposition, but I'll be sure to have a calculator handy whenever you're around. How about that?

And no, I was never serious about unconstrained aetherflow usage. If you knew how to read you would know my issue is with aetherflow, not its abilities. Also, CDs use the resource of time. No matter how you choose to perform your mental gymnastics, the abilities are still restricted not by one gate, but two, and that is what I have an issue with.

Anything else you would like to instruct me on today senpai?

I'm not providing anything because there's nothing to provide you can't already learn yourself if you spent the time. 10-11 minutes in general, the transition phase if you feel like it. It's not my job to educate you something that's standing infront of you simply because you can't comprehend it.

I know how to read it's just simply that you don't know how to write and you leave things open ended which allows for assumptions to be had based on common knowledge. And not using aetherflow for aetherflow abilities is unconstrained use lel. You have an issue with aetherflow but you don't with the abilities, you want to have your cake and eat it. That's not how the works.
If you have an issue with aetherflow then you need to rebalance the abilities which will no longer use it. They are indeed restricted by two gates but gates aren't resources. If you were talking about restrictions you should've typed that instead of typing "resources". Use the correct words to convey the correct message.
Nothing I can teach someone who doesn't want to teach themselves.