Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
Once upon a time, SCH actually had quite a few debuffs that weren't just DoTs, because yeah, SCH had 7 DoTs in the beginning, but they also applied a bunch of other debuffs as well:

- Miasma and Miasma II would inflict Disease which reduced the amount of healing enemies received. Didn't matter much, but there were bosses that had regen mechanics like Garuda EX.
- Ruin II would inflict Blind that would cause auto attacks to miss.
- Shadowflare also applied Slow to all enemies in its radius.
- Virus was an OGCD debuff that reduced the enemy's Strength and Dexterity--this was basically moved to Feint on melee DPS.
- Eye for an Eye was an OGCD buff you'd place on an ally that had a 20% chance to reflect a damage dealt reduction debuff onto enemies that attacked them.
- Ruin naturally applied Heavy on enemies that slowed their movementspeed. Also very situational but super helpful against very specific bosses like A3S.
- Selene had Silent Dusk which inflicted Silence. Almost useless, except Silence wasn't ubiquitous on other roles, so if there were actions you were meant to interrupt, and you only had one other silencer in your party, it would greatly behoove you to work with them to alternate interrupting that action. The miniboss in Coil 1 was a wakeup call to this for me.

Honestly, I miss having more situational debuffs linked to actions that have more standardized uses like the Disease on Miasma. It adds a bit of flair and allows you to shine just a little more in certain situations.
I'd rather not romantisize or return to the past. Super situational stuff, while impactful tends to be often be balanced in a way that the encounter design leaves it to the side and then we never get to actually use it. AST's card system is always useful, so the AST feels like they can use it whenever the CD is up.

I want something like that for SCH, a side mechanic that is always useful and feels aligned with the class fantasy. That is why I think SCH could stand to lose the Aetherflow system (or at least merge it with some sort of Stratagem system.) and instead gain a whole debuff, weakness exposing system to make SCH the rDPS shield healer.