How Energy Drain and Aetherflow healing should work.

[EaMett]

A big point of the sch gameplay is the risk-reward from using stacks to heal vs ED. All other things aside your suggestion totally removes this.

Edit: Also liliy dps loss is the same as a single weave on sch. They're meant to align because they serve the same cost-weave ratio purpose. SCH isn't punished particularly more than WHM for healing on that front. When taking ED potential into consideration that changes healer pair coordination priorities but not the value of lost dps. Namely because the healing is still required regardless. You can chose to either save your ED and make your co-healer gcd heal or you can abandon the ED in favor of a co-healer GCD dps skill.

[Nethereal]

That wouldn't be free dps though, because you would use it on cd for the dps, just like Assize, even if it were 100% overheal.

Fair point it would have to be a 100 potency AoE on cast for it to be true free dps. Though if there's multiple targets I guess the case would still stand?

What are with these responses saying to "get rid of energy drain". You aren't just clowns, you're the entire circus. SCH flat out does not work if there isn't at least 1 DPS button tied to aetherflow, full stop end of discussion. If you don't like how that's tied to a few healing abilities as well, therefore forcing you to decide whether or not it's worth taking the risk of getting more DPS or holding your stacks for a heal, then don't play SCH. That little bit of risk/reward with energy drain is literally all they have left, and they had to beg for over a month to even have that. If AST truly feels better because it has more free healing, then just play AST.

Should we get rid of GCD heals too? Because those also compete with DPS abilities. Of course not, while you should be minimizing the use of them there are times where you do absolutely need them.

I don't think anyone here is advocating for the deletion of ED, more so we're acknowledging that when you weren't punished for oGCD healing on SCH the trade off was you didn't have anything to use it on. The solution I thought of would fix both issues while keeping everything as close to the source material as possible while being flexible and retaining balance. SCH is the only healer that loses dps for using their healing oGCDs even when done properly. I can live with it but I also acknowledge it.
I also don't think there's really much risk/reward once you've done a fight a few times unless someone makes a mistake. AST feels better because I'm not punished for oGCD healing but SCH is more aesthetically pleasing.

Getting rid of GCD heals? I don't know about that one if you need to GCD heal then that means if you don't you're going to die which means less dps.
I can see why you would think they're comparable since you'll always use aetherflow on a healing/support ability if you have it over letting someone die. The same is true for all the other healers the only difference is when they GCD or oGCD heal they don't permanently lose damage like SCH does by giving up an ED.
SCH is unique in the fact they're the only healer that has a damaging oGCD(Star and Assize both have healing and damage put together) tied to their healing oGCD kit that forces you to choose between the two as such they have a unique problem or as you would say risk/reward. If you want a true comparison it would be having a card already drawn on AST, not using said card and then drawing another card. All the dps you would've gained from that card you just discarded is completely lost you'll never get it back. Or even better using Dissipation when you still have stacks of aetherflow, yikes.

[Claire_Pendragon]

Since energy drain is meant for you to use up the stacks, before the CD is ready, and u waste them... the easier "fix" (that no one will like) is to just give the MP amount of a single physic. Thats it. No damage dealt. (Sorta feels like a bad lustrate, because you didnt use lustrate) If you didnt need to do ANY healing, then its just more MP for nukes. Now it fills the same role its intended to fill, while also not feeling as punishing to your DPS. (Of course this shouldnt be the answer, but since ppl keep complaining about the current system, this is the only "fix" that fits what the devs want.)

[EaMett]

SCH is the only healer that loses dps for using their healing oGCDs even when done properly.

Technically SCH is the only healer that has the option of extra dps in exchange for resources. Not the other way around. If you didn't have ED at all your healing windows would cost as much as whm for instance. ED doing damage is a bonus that other healers don't have. In that sense it isn't balanced, but lower sch potencies make it work. (SE's balance was way off on this one on expac release)

Since energy drain is meant for you to use up the stacks, before the CD is ready, and u waste them... the easier "fix" (that no one will like) is to just give the MP amount of a single physic. Thats it. No damage dealt. (Sorta feels like a bad lustrate, because you didnt use lustrate) If you didnt need to do ANY healing, then its just more MP for nukes. Now it fills the same role its intended to fill, while also not feeling as punishing to your DPS. (Of course this shouldnt be the answer, but since ppl keep complaining about the current system, this is the only "fix" that fits what the devs want.)

If ED did no damage you just wouldn't use them. Exactly like on the release of the expansion where you would do your ex trials without even refreshing aetherflow because the dps loss from creating weaving windows wasn't worth it. That would also completely negate dissipation as tool. Mana isn't even an issue to start with. Hard pass.

[Saefinn]

I think it feels "punishing" because they already stripped us naked of many of our DPS abilities. But actually Energy Drain is a dump if you have excess aetherflow and not as intended as part of your core DPS rotation, but does add a little to our DPS. As awful as it is our DPS rotation is pretty much:

Broil->Ruin II with the occassional Biolysis and Energy Drain (on the condition we have an excess, or if you're playing to risk/reward to boost your deeps a little more, but ED doesn't add a lot).

I don't think the solution to the problem has anything to do with Energy Drain or aetherflow, it is more "give us back more to do in our downtime".

And actually, I personally advocate more risk/reward mechanics for SCH, in that we have more dual purpose where we might sacrifice healing potential for DPS potential and to do more with the DPS, because I think it plays more to the tactical feel of a SCH and the idea of enhancing/using abilities differently depending on the situation. It means we can get better use out of more skills in our downtime, more heal focus may sacrifice DPS, but that's the case when you have more of a focus on healing anyway.

One of my suggested changes to SCH is to get more mileage out of existing spells by allowing skill like Deployment Tactics and Emergency tactics and faerie choice affects how certain skills are used, where a healing spell could be changed for more utility or DPS, or a DPS spell to do something slightly different (eg. Biolysis dumps all damage at once, akin to Thunder procs on BLM). This adds more risk/reward, but adds to the tactical feel (which SCH is supposed to have) and gives us more out of our downtime without taking up more space on our bars and sees more use of skills we're not touching in our downtime, but you have to make your choice in a heal focus. Because for a lot of content, we're not actually seeing much use of our healing abilities and in content where we do, we have periods/sections where we aren't.

[Claire_Pendragon]

If ED did no damage you just wouldn't use them. Exactly like on the release of the expansion where you would do your ex trials without even refreshing aetherflow because the dps loss from creating weaving windows wasn't worth it. That would also completely negate dissipation as tool. Mana isn't even an issue to start with. Hard pass.

true, so there would be a need for a minimum amount of dmg to make up for the dps loss from clipping the GCD or needing a ruin2. (technically i feel all basic spells should leave 0.5s off their cast bar, to help with basic weaving, but thats my personal taste in gameplay. i know its not a 100% perfect thing.)