Scholar Aetherflow Issues

[HyoMinPark]

This honestly seems a little intellectually dishonest. I can say for a fact for me at least Sch does not feel as smooth as before mainly due to Fey Blessing but having to press 1 button while the tank pulls and then use Excog is honestly not that different. If you feel entering combat is tedious you probably don't have your keybinds set up conveniently.

While I’m not the best SCH, I feel like my hotbars are fairly intuitively set up. Thank you for your unneeded criticism on my set-up, though.

Compared to ShB WHM and even SB SCH, I don’t find SCH feeling as smooth pre-pull. Again, I stressed this as my opinion. I also believe that I do not yet have access to Fey Blessing at my level (level 73), so it’s not really relevant to my current SCH experience. We will see when I get to that point. However, before, I usually did Excog pre-pull as it just felt more comfortable for me. Just like a pre-pull Shield in the form of Noct A. Benefic or Divine Benison felt comfortable.

And then talking about how the other healers can pre-pull shield, are you trolling right now? Sch has been the shield healer since release and it has never had an oGCD shield. Honestly it just feels like you're not respecting Sch's full kit. Even though the first pull is the most annoying Sch easily has the most oGCD's to use through a dungeon maybe even more than both healers have put together, is that fair to the other healers? If you really want a instant shield, use swiftcast.

No, I’m not trolling. I’m saying that SCH is the only one locked out of a lot of it healing toolkit out of combat compared to the other healers. AST isn’t locked out of things pre-pull save for seals. WHM doesn’t have lilies, but they still have the bulk of the rest of their healing tools. SCH doesn’t have access to anything pre-pull because...reasons, I guess? I’m still trying to figure out why the developers saw the need to combat-lock Aetherflow. Perhaps you can share some insight? Any ideas of why that may be?

Of course, I pre-pull Adlo. While I’m not the best SCH, I’m also not incompetent. My complaints also aren’t coming from anything about instant shielding. I’m well aware that I can use Swiftcast for that if need be.

If this is what you took from my post, you clearly didn’t read it or you failed to understand where I was coming from.

Having said all this I want to remind you of something you clearly forgot existed. Recitation. You can use it outside combat despite it allowing you to use aetherflow abilities freely. You get where I'm going with this right? Considering you don't believe you should hold onto your oGCDs for emergencies I'm surprised you completely overlooked this.

I am level 73. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t have that skill at this level. While I suppose it’s natural to assume I would be level 80, I think I may have mentioned that I am still leveling SCH right now? Maybe that was only in the Tales of the Duty Finder thread—it was fairly late when I posted this. If I did not, then I apologize for that lack of information. For your future reference, I am level 73. So the only new skills I have gotten thus far are Biolysis and Broil III. So maybe Recitation will make things feel better for me once I reach that level. As of now, I do not yet have it. Pardon that I did not include the existence of a skill I cannot use yet in my posts.

All that said, I’m not sure what my opinion on not holding oGCDs for emergencies has to do with me vocalizing my concerns as a leveling SCH. I don’t hold my oGCDs now as I level, so I guess I’m not sure what relevance this comment has. Unless you thought I sat on Recitation, which I doubt I would do if I had access to it.

As for the criticism of not having anything to dump your aetherflow into besides healing? Get with the program, that's how Whm lilies work too.

While I understand that this seems to not be an issue in higher level play (or too big of one), I have also heard the opposite, where SCHs are forced to dump Aetherflow on pointless heals just so they can keep Aetherflow on cooldown every 60s and not waste resources by overcapping their Aetherflow. I am not asking for a damage ability to dump them on—I never asked for that—just something for lower level content where it’s a waste to toss out random Lustrates on people that aren’t even taking damage for the sake of keeping Aetherflow on cooldown. This has nothing to do with SCH’s Aetherflow being exclusive to healing. It has everything to do with proper management of one’s resources, though.

I don’t believe my initial comments made any sort of complaint about Aetherflow being locked to only healing abilities. So I’m not sure where you got that conclusion from. I don’t mind that—I just don’t want my resources wasted on meaningless heals or overheals. Generally, you want to avoid pointless overhealing (though, for WHM, it’s apparently optimal for Afflatus Misery usage).


I think you could stand to be slightly less condescending in your response to me, and perhaps actually read what I wrote. I’m getting the impression that you just skimmed over it and offered a knee-jerk response without stopping to consider what I actually typed.

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.

Nah. AST can already lightspeed+helios with nearly the same potency as Indom. I also said that the aetherflow skills would all share the recast timer, so you can't just mindlessly spam Indom. Aetherflow within itself already limits Indom usage, there really isn't a need for an excessive CD of 30-45 seconds when aetherflow itself is on a 60s CD, and can't be used outside of combat.

Except the difference between Indom and LS+Helios is that Indom is an oGCD—meaning you wouldn’t lose any GCDs to casting heals. oGCD healing is still king in this game—which would make a cooldown-less Indom far superior over LS+Helios. Especially considering that Lightspeed still has its own CD. And while it can be reduced by using Essential Dignity, it wouldn’t come close to holding a torch to an Indom with a shorter or even no CD. Indom is already 30s... that’s pretty short for its potency. How much further would you propose reducing it? 15 seconds? 20 seconds?

This isn’t taking into consideration that optimal use of Lightspeed now is for cards during Divination windows to avoid the John Madden mess of double-weaving that that involves. Which I have my own complaints about, but I’m not going to bring up here because this thread is about SCH. Not AST.

[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)

[KarnSalander]

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.

I would not call it an "issue", but it is a real bad game play experience. In a dungeon, between two pulls, if you miss your AF refresh by one second, it delays three stacks of resources for 20-30 seconds. Considering that when we had Quicken AF in Stormblood, AF was so quick that I never had to ask my party to wait before pulling, I really wonder what motivated that change that hinders so much the game play experience.

It will make little to no difference in raids and in trials, but it's super annoying in everything else: dungeons, hunts, treasure hunts, etc.

[EaMett]

I would not call it an "issue", but it is a real bad game play experience. In a dungeon, between two pulls, if you miss your AF refresh by one second, it delays three stacks of resources for 20-30 seconds. Considering that when we had Quicken AF in Stormblood, AF was so quick that I never had to ask my party to wait before pulling, I really wonder what motivated that change that hinders so much the game play experience.

It will make little to no difference in raids and in trials, but it's super annoying in everything else: dungeons, hunts, treasure hunts, etc.

Kinda gone over this one but because the pack pulling is predictable the ressource management can be done during bosses. There's no point in using a cooldown if it comes back up when you don't need it anymore and that exactly what "not being able to refresh AF out of combat" does in dungeons. It's not like you would get an extra AF you needed somewhere in there. Between Recitation and dissipation there are plenty of options already. It's a gameplay change, sure, but a minor one at that. It's basically not being happy about having to weave a couple more skills during the pull.

[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.

[Jerichai]

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.

Good lord, no...we do not need to remove Indom's or soils's cooldown. Arguably SCH is venturing on OP when it comes to how much instant cast, MP free AoEs it has:

Indom
Sacred Soil
Whispering Dawn
Fey Blessing
Consolation (x2)

Cycling those should give you plenty of AoE damage coverage assuming you're using them well. And that's not factoring in more situation AoE mechanics and deployment tactics. If we were able to instant cast 3 Indoms a minute (and upwards of 7 if you include Dissipation and Recitation)...that would be straight broken.

SCH is already venturing into the territory of having too many answers to whatever encounters can throw at us, which honestly makes the class feel boring. It's another reason we need to opportunity cost of energy drain back to come back because it's too easy to just cycle between indom and soil...because what else are you going to use the aether on in a lot of cases.

[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]

Good lord, no...we do not need to remove Indom's or soils's cooldown. Arguably SCH is venturing on OP when it comes to how much instant cast, MP free.

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?