Scholar Aetherflow Issues

[Nethereal]

We all know not having an aetherdump skill like energy drain is a problem. However, the glaring issue I see with aetherflow that I don't see many mention is the fact that three of its four skills are not only locked behind aetherflow, but also have their own cooldowns. I cannot stress enough how crazy it drives me when skills use multiple resources. DRK's old skill Dark Passenger was like this too having a long CD AND an extremely high MP cost.

I am ok with Indom, Excog, and Sacred Soil remaining aetherflow skills, but those CDs need to be drastically reduced; then just make all the skills share the recast timer. If we were to get ED back, it would make even more sense for them to set up aetherflow this way. I won't say the way it is set up now breaks SCH, but it's an annoyance I've had even before ShB and now that we also can't use it outside of combat, dealing with aetherflow is exactly that: Dealing with it.

You literally can't use math.

Indom without a cd and stacks would be broken. Just saying. Meta would be solo heal sch.



Not even remotely comparable. The healing component of afflatus skills is irrelevant to the gameplay. It's only bonus. If tomorrow you took away all the healing from the skills and removed rapture to only keep solace as an instant cast that does NOTHING (short of huilding the blood lily), it would still be a cornerstone of WHM gameplay and be used regularly. Afflatus skills are basically a Ruin II with healing attached. Actually, not only that but it's a better Ruin II since it can be used to single weave and has no mana cost.

Even if that weren't readily obvious. The fact that lilies allow for some form of dps and AF does not should've been a good clue that they aren't the same.

Except that's completely biased towards dps. You can't beat something without damage and you can't stay alive without healing. The healing from lilies is just as relevant as the damage from the blood lily after 3 uses, you just have an extreme bias towards dps on healers. You disregarding the fact you heal more (3) than you dps (1) with lilies doesn't change the fact just because your opinion is biased more towards dps. The majority of the mechanic is used for healing same as aetherflow. 75% healing 25% damage. In fact lilies and aetherflow share more in common than they don't. They share, healing, instacast, free resource. What they don't share, oGCD, aetherflow has no damage ouput. You could argue you get 3 aetherflow in 60 seconds compared to 2 lilies but not all resources are created equal and even then it just evens them out.

I'm struggling with the must be in combat for to use AF etc.

I'm a new SCH, swapped from WHM last expansion, maybe folks have some tips for me.

I only really only struggle with one pull in current experts. It is the first pull of the dungeon and wall to wall ends up with 3 groups and a roamer. It is the one where you are running down ramps etc. I'm spacing on the name. It seems I can manage the pull if I do things without error, but it can be very dicey if others take damage, or the tank doesn't use cool downs properly.

I start with tank Adlo pre pull,
get in combat and AF,
run ahead of tank so I can shield again after the roamer is picked up, or after the 2nd group depending.
then once we are down at the bottom where the last group resides..
Sacred soil,
Excog,
Lustrate when needed, (at this point quite a ways from AF coming off cooldown) might cast adlo a few times to buy time.
At this point I sometimes will use the fairy tether or I will use whispering dawn & dissipate
if disipate now I've got 3 stacks so will keep on going (sometimes I find I have to start hard casting Adlo if I go through stacks quickly)
use up the new AF stacks, hopefully the fairy is about back and AF is off cooldown.
If I can make it through this period I'm good, if not it can get dicey...

Other than making that first pull tough, I find I'm having to micro manage AF stacks, is combat about to end, maybe burn stacks and recast before combat is over. I would really love something similar to energy drain, a little damage and MP back would be so handy. Also makes soloing a bit easier/faster.

Do your job and heal. If your tank is having problems staying alive you heal. The only GCD heal you used in that entire scenario is pre-pull aldo and maybe 2-3 to "buy time", do you really not see the problem when your primary role is to keep your team alive?

Think of lucid as another defensive CD after popping all that stuff just use lucid and spam adlo til lucid wears off, weave as needed. Adlo is the new cure 2 for sch.

[ElroyDrundan]

Except that's completely biased towards dps. You can't beat something without damage and you can't stay alive without healing. The healing from lilies is just as relevant as the damage from the blood lily after 3 uses, you just have an extreme bias towards dps on healers. Except that's completely not true? You disregarding the fact you heal more (3) than you dps (1) with lilies doesn't change the fact just because your opinion is biased more towards dps. The majority of the mechanic is used for healing same as aetherflow. 75% healing 25% damage.


Do your job and heal. If your tank is having problems staying alive you heal. The only GCD heal you used in that entire scenario is pre-pull aldo and maybe 2-3 to "buy time", do you really not see the problem when your primary role is to keep your team alive?

Think of lucid as another defensive CD after popping all that stuff just use lucid and spam adlo til lucid wears off, weave as needed. Adlo is the new cure 2 for sch.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, I was listing the cooldown skills I use to give you an idea of the flow. I'm constantly spamming adlo in between cooldowns but on that pull I reach a point where my cooldowns are gone and I'm slowly losing ground and can't keep the tank up. I'm not dpsing and I'm not standing there doing nothing. Also spaming adlo (which I"m doing, makes mana start to be an issue as well).

You seriously thought I was posting for tips, not actually casting our spam heal spell?...

[Nethereal]

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, I was listing the cooldown skills I use to give you an idea of the flow. I'm constantly spamming adlo in between cooldowns but on that pull I reach a point where my cooldowns are gone and I'm slowly losing ground and can't keep the tank up. I'm not dpsing and I'm not standing there doing nothing. Also spaming adlo (which I"m doing, makes mana start to be an issue as well).

You seriously thought I was posting for tips, not actually casting our spam heal spell?...

Yes I did. It's not your fault and you probably don't know this but everyone on this forum is more prioritized towards applying another DoT to another mob out of 4 to 6 or dpsing than keeping people alive. If it works for them it works for them but sometimes it doesn't work, I assumed you were one of those cases.

The way I go about healing tanks that are on the squishier side is the classic sacred soil, whispering dawn, heal if sacred isn't up yet or use excog, repeat. Use Illumination too before you use dissipation. If things are getting real dicey you can use a rec excog or adlo. If you're still having problems at this point you start spamming adlo and pop lucid(Honestly you could just spam adlo til you're 0 mana.)(Sacred soil should be back up.) and keep using aldo til either lucid drops off or aetherflow comes back up (Around this point whispering dawn will be back up.). Then you repeat til you're so desperate you need to use dissipation. At this point if the tank is about to die they either pulled to big for their ilevel, don't know how to use CDs or refuse to use their immunity and should go for smaller pulls.

A tank using an immunity is usually a welcome thing and if you time it right you shouldn't have a problem even with walking dead/holmgang. Walking dead can be intimidating if you don't know you only need to heal their full health, not heal them up to full.

Hope that clears things up.

[EaMett]

Except that's completely biased towards dps. You can't beat something without damage and you can't stay alive without healing. The healing from lilies is just as relevant as the damage from the blood lily after 3 uses, you just have an extreme bias towards dps on healers. You disregarding the fact you heal more (3) than you dps (1) with lilies doesn't change the fact just because your opinion is biased more towards dps. The majority of the mechanic is used for healing same as aetherflow. 75% healing 25% damage. In fact lilies and aetherflow share more in common than they don't. They share, healing, instacast, free resource. What they don't share, oGCD, aetherflow has no damage ouput. You could argue you get 3 aetherflow in 60 seconds compared to 2 lilies but not all resources are created equal and even then it just evens them out.

A few things. Why is the fact they heal more than dps relevant? I would like to know what that has to do with anything. It's not like the healing requirements are the limiting factor here.

Also, why am I focusing on dps? Just so we're clear, Lilies are mainly a glorified swifcast timer reset you can use on cure II and medica. Nothing more. Rapture is a switfcast medica and Solace a swifcast cure II. You're still limited to the GCD so you'll need to wait to do anything. Whether you cast medica and get the heal at the end of your GCD or cast rapture and get the heal at the beginning of your GCD it's the same thing.
The real upside to this mechanic is 1) an opportunity to weave after the heal in order to keep DPS uptime 2) misery for DPS uptime 3) healing and DPS uptime during mobility
So yeah it's almost all about the DPS, without the DPS it's nothing much. Actually, without the DPS it's essentially a mobility tool (in a setting where you wouldn't want to gcd heal anyways... so yeah), and potentially a single gcd burst mechanicsm.

Not only that but the afflatus suit can be a DPS gain if used properly (more than one target, coupled with required ogcds, cast during phase transitions or movement, cast during buff window), whereas currently AF is a pure dps loss. With that said this point isn't that important since at least some healing output is expected and there's still the whole ruin II double weave thing.

The DPS aspect of the afflatus suit is such a big component of the mechanic that if you took the healing out of it completely you would still use it! Comparatively AF would serve no purpose.

The only common ground is that they're both healing mechanisms that are geared towards minimizing your dps loss (in whm case can even potentially increase your dps). This should come to no surprise but the reason for this is that, again, healing requirements in FF14 are pretty low.

So yeah I'm making it a DPS conversation because it's mostly a DPS uptime tool in a game where healing kits are meant to free up DPS uptime anyways. (and it's a great tool at that, lets just call a cat a cat)

[Gemina]

You literally can't use math.

When in the hell was I even using math? Especially in the text you quoted. You even quoting the right person dude?

[Nethereal]

I’m offering my opinion on the changes, and while it comes from someone who is not a SCH main by any stretch, you are being unnecessarily hostile in this response. Please, take a few seats.

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.

A few things. Why is the fact they heal more than dps relevant? I would like to know what that has to do with anything. It's not like the healing requirements are the limiting factor here.

You ask that but the exact same point applies to dps. I only brought it up because you brought up dps they're just even factors they're equal but you seem to think of healing as being the side mechanic of lilies.

Also, why am I focusing on dps? Just so we're clear, Lilies are mainly a glorified swifcast timer reset you can use on cure II and medica. Nothing more. Rapture is a switfcast medica and Solace a swifcast cure II.

You're completely ignoring the fact they're resource free that fact alone already makes them incomparable to swiftcasted spells. Regardless of that misery is still only 50% of the mechanic whether you like it or not. While the other half is resource free instant healing with yes the advantage to weave.

You're still limited to the GCD so you'll need to wait to do anything. Whether you cast medica and get the heal at the end of your GCD or cast rapture and get the heal at the beginning of your GCD it's the same thing.
The real upside to this mechanic is 1) an opportunity to weave after the heal in order to keep DPS uptime 2) misery for DPS uptime 3) healing and DPS uptime during mobility
So yeah it's almost all about the DPS, without the DPS it's nothing much. Actually, without the DPS it's essentially a mobility tool (in a setting where you wouldn't want to gcd heal anyways... so yeah), and potentially a single gcd burst mechanicsm.

You clearly know that not all weaves are offensive so I don't see why you separated 1 and 3 considering they're the exact same. And again you ignore the healing because of bias and the fact it's a completely free resource. Healing in this game is predictable but even with that it still is equal to dps by definition. You're not going to be clearing any current content fights without some form of healing and vice versa. Lilies by design are supposed to represent the balance between healing and dps but you seem either unwilling or unable to see that due to your bias towards dps. Even if you combined the fact that optimization on healers is largely to increase dps up time the point still stands and you'll never get around that.

The DPS aspect of the afflatus suit is such a big component of the mechanic that if you took the healing out of it completely you would still use it! Comparatively AF would serve no purpose.

Except you're talking about an impossibility so it's irrelevant. If AF didn't heal it would do something else, like on smn. And you seem to not be able to do math either because misery requires 4 gcds before it can even be used and just some simple math you would be able to tell 4x glare is 1200 potency versus misery's 900. The purpose of misery is to refund your dps lost during healing, healing. Why do you not understand this? If you took the healing out afflatus and didn't change misery it would never be used, did you not think about this at all? Strictly speaking using misery is a dps loss the only reason misery is even used is because it heals and refunds the dps lost for doing it, why are you so biased you are unable to see this? Can you not see the balance between dps and healing from the way lilies function alone? The reason misery is a dps gain is because the time you would spend healing is recovered from the three HEALING lilies used prior to using misery.

The only common ground is that they're both healing mechanisms that are geared towards minimizing your dps loss (in whm case can even potentially increase your dps). This should come to no surprise but the reason for this is that, again, healing requirements in FF14 are pretty low.

They're both mechanics geared towards healing and minimizing your dps loss, why is it so hard for you to admit that healing and dps are just two sides of the same coin?

So yeah I'm making it a DPS conversation because it's mostly a DPS uptime tool in a game where healing kits are meant to free up DPS uptime anyways. (and it's a great tool at that, lets just call a cat a cat)

Yes lets just call a cat, a cat. So it would be amazing if you stopped your bias towards healing the only thing that could remotely justify it is that you can never have too much dps versus you can always have too much healing in terms of availability.

When in the hell was I even using math? Especially in the text you quoted. You even quoting the right person dude?

Because if you knew how to use math then you would know what you're suggesting would never even come as a thought to any rational person balancing a game that is completely based around math.

If you want your idea to be taken even a little seriously you have to at least elaborate on your idea instead of leaving it opened ended by saying stuff like

I am ok with Indom, Excog, and Sacred Soil remaining aetherflow skills, but those CDs need to be drastically reduced; then just make all the skills share the recast timer. If we were to get ED back, it would make even more sense for them to set up aetherflow this way.

If you knew the math for how these abilities work, especially sacred soil you wouldn't say any of that. Reduce the CD on sacred soil? We're already praying they don't nerf sacred soil in its current state.

[Gemina]

Because if you knew how to use math then you would know what you're suggesting would never even come as a thought to any rational person balancing a game that is completely based around math.

If you want your idea to be taken even a little seriously you have to at least elaborate on your idea instead of leaving it opened ended by saying stuff like


If you knew the math for how these abilities work, especially sacred soil you wouldn't say any of that. Reduce the CD on sacred soil? We're already praying they don't nerf sacred soil in its current state.

Oh man, really? During my time on this virtual rock, a lot of people have opened their arguments against me in some ridiculous ways, but this really does take the cake. You're telling me to elaborate on an idea instead of leaving it open-ended, yet to express this you quoted my post with a statement saying, "You literally can't use math." I honestly don't know how you could be more vague.

Ok fine. Enlighten me, Math Wizz. How good was the person at math who green-lighted buffing AST into the stratosphere in late HW into SB? Who looked at one job being able to: shield, regen, buff party speed for 30s, buff party dmg for 30s, buff party crit rate for 30s, increase raid defense, stun enemies, regen MP, extend durations on buffs, give them the best of both worlds from WHM and SCH bubbles, reduce their own cast times by 2.5 seconds, and also have an ogcd heal that gets stronger the less HP the target has, and said.... "Yup! Mathematically, healers are balanced." Enlighten me. How good are the players at math who want this ridiculously OP version of AST back?

All I am talking about is that I do not like skills using multiple resources. Aetherflow in it's current state, sucks. And if you even taken to time to read my posts instead of spouting thoughtless nonsense, you would have seen that I suggested for these skills to either have their CDs reduced, or removed as aetherflow skills. Think about it.... mathematically of course. If aetherflow was just scrapped, and these abilities just functioned as is outside of needing stacks (SS on 30s CD, Indom on 30s CD, Excog on 45s CD), would it really be all that different?

Also, get out of here with requiring high math skills to make suggestions on the forums. Good grief.

[Nethereal]

Oh man, really? During my time on this virtual rock, a lot of people have opened their arguments against me in some ridiculous ways, but this really does take the cake. You're telling me to elaborate on an idea instead of leaving it open-ended, yet to express this you quoted my post with a statement saying, "You literally can't use math." I honestly don't know how you could be more vague.

Ok fine. Enlighten me, Math Wizz. How good was the person at math who green-lighted buffing AST into the stratosphere in late HW into SB? Who looked at one job being able to: shield, regen, buff party speed for 30s, buff party dmg for 30s, buff party crit rate for 30s, increase raid defense, stun enemies, regen MP, extend durations on buffs, give them the best of both worlds from WHM and SCH bubbles, reduce their own cast times by 2.5 seconds, and also have an ogcd heal that gets stronger the less HP the target has, and said.... "Yup! Mathematically, healers are balanced." Enlighten me. How good are the players at math who want this ridiculously OP version of AST back?

All I am talking about is that I do not like skills using multiple resources. Aetherflow in it's current state, sucks. And if you even taken to time to read my posts instead of spouting thoughtless nonsense, you would have seen that I suggested for these skills to either have their CDs reduced, or removed as aetherflow skills. Think about it.... mathematically of course. If aetherflow was just scrapped, and these abilities just functioned as is outside of needing stacks (SS on 30s CD, Indom on 30s CD, Excog on 45s CD), would it really be all that different?

Also, get out of here with requiring high math skills to make suggestions on the forums. Good grief.

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.

[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?

[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.