Healers need an overhaul

[Shurrikhan]

they could do it the sage way and make them start with 3 stacks of aetherflow. no, instead take away their ability to have fun in even ways that dont matter.


optimal aetherflow usage would just change. but thats not a punishment. having nuances to increase your dps by a small fraction is Not punishment for not playing optimally, its a reward for planning things well.

I never said that having further nuances would be punishing. I love nuance. I simply, in looking at what opportunities and actual decision-making would come from it, do not see how Quickened Aetherflow in particular would have a net positive effect on that.

So let's look at how that lines up with what little optimization is available, let alone that which fits into 2min cycles. We'll assume no AF is needed for heals here:

Under the current 60s AF cycles, you blow 6 EDs in the first raid cycle between AF and Dis. You then reload AF at 60 seconds. You hold for up to some 2 seconds over recharge for raid buffs to pop, using a Swifted Broil and Biolysis to blow 3 EDs and reload AF in the second pair of oGCD slots. You then blow your remaining 3 EDs as quickly as you can as not to delay Dis. Blow them again.

Under Quickened Aetherflow, to get your alignment to work out you're all the more forced to use Dissipation on CD in order not to desync. You blow all at start, reload at 30 seconds (since you've spent 6, due to Dis), blow all, reload 45s prior to raid buffs, and do as before (blow all asap, drifting Aetherflow by roughly 3 seconds, which you can manage for roughly 4 raid cycles before loss). It essentially only feels decent when you're playing like Dissipation isn't a skill in itself, but simply your Aetherflow-part-2 that locks you out of fairy skills per raid cycle.

Granted, Dissipation practically that already, but that's also been a notable point of contention.

That seems less a further optimization space than just... a ball and chain. And that's before even getting into how your cycle can be desynced by ill-timed downtime, much like SMN's old Energy Drain.

it being harder to align means youd have to pay more attention to the timing. quickened aetherflow would also make things more interesting than now, because of the downtime implications. it would actually make scholar a lot more interesting than it is.

Don't get me wrong; I like downtime implications. But... they are only as interesting as they are deliberately recoverable -- i.e., if/when there are distinct options from which to pursue the best (or, if uniquely hurt by downtime, the least bad).

Taking 4+ raid cycles (8+ minutes) to resync... in a 7-minute fight, or it being superior to just outright drop a full AF than remain desynced throughout, isn't nearly as "interesting" as it may first sound.

personally i feel that when everything in a jobs design is perfectly smooth and on rails, the job suffers for it because it takes away decision making and planning.

I agree completely. I just ask that you look concretely at the decision space it would provide. At present, it would seem to me like it'd more likely enforce pairings (thereby degrading options) more so than it would improve the number of actionable considerations SCH would work with.
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Edit: That's not to say there couldn't be other ways of handling this, to open up that decision space (and ideally create a greater number of viable decision paths, not just to add QoL) if one were dead-set on a CDR.

For instance (very rough spitball here), though it'd likely be too QoL-centric, perhaps Aetherflow could have, itself, 3 charges on a 20s CD each, consuming in a single animation as many charges as are available and wouldn't overcap. You'd have the CPM, and you'd have the effective 6 charges without quite so much disalignment issues (for better or worse).

Or, you could even attach an Ebb and Flow mechanic to Aetherflow itself, whereby it offers a % bonus to its spenders that fades or rises over time, alternating. Now, per 20 seconds, you could set it up to rise to a bonus before burst or fall from it, attempting to max out the 5s window on each side.

[QooEr]

Don't get me wrong; I like downtime implications. But... they are only as interesting as they are deliberately recoverable -- i.e., if/when there are distinct options from which to pursue the best (or, if uniquely hurt by downtime, the least bad).

Taking 4+ raid cycles (8+ minutes) to resync... in a 7-minute fight, or it being superior to just outright drop a full AF than remain desynced throughout, isn't nearly as "interesting" as it may first sound.

I agree completely. I just ask that you look concretely at the decision space it would provide. At present, it would seem to me like it'd more likely enforce pairings (thereby degrading options) more so than it would improve the number of actionable considerations SCH would work with.

i see your point, but if im completely honest im not sure if things would be that much worse for it. almost every single fight in the game nowadays has near full uptime anyways, and with so little healing needed dissipation might as well BE aetherflow 2, so all these negatives that quickened aetherflow would bring are already here. on the flip side, having to press AF and ED more often would certainly help to break the monotony of broil and would make sch more varied in its execution. the only time when this wouldnt apply is ultimate because of the increased healing requirements and how much downtime there is.

i do agree with you, especially on this bit:

If there was more to heal and more, besides just that trait, that made you want to look at and work around AF's CD (much like Stormblood Warrior with Enhanced Infuriate and a very low potency-per-gauge-efficiency loss on Onslaught), I could see the logic to it, but among modern healers and encounters?

quickened aetherflow would certainly be way more nuanced if we had actual ways to play with it (like if ED reduced the cooldown less than using a heal), but thats because healers have lost so much that no single simple change will really make them truly nuanced. but as they say, nowhere to go but up??

[Shurrikhan]

having to press AF and ED more often would certainly help to break the monotony of broil and would make sch more varied in its execution. the only time when this wouldnt apply is ultimate because of the increased healing requirements and how much downtime there is.

Totally tangential, but if you wish to pursue above all a way of just breaking up the no-heals-needed monotony/spam...

Consider:

First, what would make Broil itself... more interesting? I don't mean Broil as "SCH's 11111 spam button" but rather as whatever its animation, lore, potential mechanical tie-ins, and other thematic components may suggest. That could be as a rarely used nuke spell, a pretty frequently used GCD, or still as the primary filler. Just... what do you imagine it might be?

Second, what, if there were no precedents beyond the name and that it was originally introduced alongside "Aetherpool," do you imagine "Aetherflow" even ought to be? What ought it refer to? If you could imagine a totally different mechanic for that name that'd nonetheless fit SCH (and, ideally, interestingly), how might that work?

I ask because, if we able to go a decently different direction with either, we could already massively shake up and provide further considerations within SCH's offensive playflow, even without requiring many extra buttons.


P.S. Not the greatest example --merely the least terrible analog I can think of to one spitball idea floating through my mind at present-- but... have you ever played an Arcane Mage?

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but as they say, nowhere to go but up??

...But, many also said the same about ShB SMN, and then we got EW SMN (to my mind, at least, not an improvement overall nor per most of ShB's greatest pain points).

So long as we're looking, in detail, at the resultant gameplay, instead of just assuming that an added bonus/constraint (they are, gameplay-wise, one and the same) will necessarily make for net improvement, though, I tend to agree.

[QooEr]

Totally tangential, but if you wish to pursue above all a way of just breaking up the no-heals-needed monotony/spam...

Consider:

First, what would make Broil itself... more interesting? I don't mean Broil as "SCH's 11111 spam button" but rather as whatever its animation, lore, potential mechanical tie-ins, and other thematic components may suggest.

well.. broil (and 気炎法) allude to the idea of a heated argument, with a bit of a punny nature in both languages too, so the fire element does tie in pretty nicely. the only thing i would say is missing thematically is the argument part. but the one-sided nature of ffxiv combat kind of makes it hard to tie-in since arguments are by nature two-sided.

That could be as a rarely used nuke spell, a pretty frequently used GCD, or still as the primary filler. Just... what do you imagine it might be?

if i really wanted to put the rhethorical part of broil's themes, maybe broil could be used as something that is procced when you take damage, thus somehow making the argument heated (similar to cold fog). or maybe when youre low on hp or some other resource. or if those are problematic with ffxivs encounters it could still work as something that you build up to since arguments dont really start heated right off the bat. i dont think broil works as a one-off nuke more than as a spam phase however, since heated arguments last a while. (would this be ripping off fell cleave ??)

Second, what, if there were no precedents beyond the name and that it was originally introduced alongside "Aetherpool," do you imagine "Aetherflow" even ought to be? What ought it refer to? If you could imagine a totally different mechanic for that name that'd nonetheless fit SCH (and, ideally, interestingly), how might that work?

aether is so vague in ffxiv's world that aetherflow might just be called "something-flow".... given how its a "flow" that you can "pool" though, i guess it could make sense if its a resource that is built both passively and proactively as more aether flows through the scholar. in that vein it would actually make more sense if energy drain granted aetherflow instead of spending it. i'll admit im fond of the idea of taking damage (or shields breaking) proccing things, so maybe you could build aetherflow from that as well. using pooled aether could mean basically anything, so... i dont know. (i also dont quite understand what the difference between your MP and your "aether" would be at that point. i suppose you could merge them and fully use MP alone as your main resource)

the scholar quests dont actually tell us too much from what i remember, other than they are strategists that also fought alongside the nymian marines, lifting their spirits or something. for some reason lily is there too. and arcanists kind of dont really have much to do with nymian scholars at all to begin with. i mean where does bio even come from now that they retconned arcanist?
i suppose you could see it all as a scholar being knowledgable about many different techniques, which results in these eclectic abilities all around. however none of that is particularly evocative of any specific gameplay mechanic to me.

I ask because, if we able to go a decently different direction with either, we could already massively shake up and provide further considerations within SCH's offensive playflow, even without requiring many extra buttons.

call me cynical or apathetic but i dont think us musing about what could be would do much good since Squenix is ultimately the one who implements things.

P.S. Not the greatest example --merely the least terrible analog I can think of to one spitball idea floating through my mind at present-- but... have you ever played an Arcane Mage?

i havent played WoW so im afraid not.

[Shurrikhan]

<On the topics of SCH theme, Broil, Aetherflow, and ED.>

Admittedly, my take on these are probably the more odd. Simply put, I feel like SCH's toolkit capitalized far better on what themes it transposed from Arcanist that it ever managed to capture any of the metaphors of Orator (as per the theme dominant across non-ENG skill names).

Let me explain. Arcanist was originally introduced as a job without any aspected magics, what many fantasy series might variously call "primary" or "primal" or "Greater-Wheel" magics, limited instead just to "Lesser-Wheel" manipulations -- essentially, meta-magics. They primarily adjusted aetheric densities as could harden, still, or energize highly localized systems (as small as a single organ) of said Aether. Ruin simply propelled an orb of densified aether. Bio and Miasma were each no longer a poison, but simply unaspected magic, inducing aether sickness by destabilizing said aether's passage among an opponent's body.

From there, SCH and SMN diverged in an oddly fitting way. SMN opened channels in the worldaether to summon archons of particular elements and thus get around its restrictions by funneling its universal but unaspected magics through its summons and capitalize upon those summons through Aethertrails (filling a void of aspected aether through its universal, unaspected magics). SCH instead learned how to capitalize upon its understanding of pooling aether deliberately, allowing its resonance, reinforcement, or whatever one may call it to galvanize the initially spent mana (essentially, channeled/resourced aether, a bit like the difference between work and energy).

(And, of course, we got to see how a pairing of archetypes, world aether, and metamagics/unaspected magics created the mana plague among the Nymians, another interesting pairing between those two identities. The problem of shared EXP aside, the pairing was actually pretty damn neat.)

What was sad to me was simply how little SCH's addition, though, was capitalized upon. Rather than investing fully in that idea, it was applied simply to one skill, Adloquiem (then merely a Stoneskin-heal hybrid but at flat, rather than target-maxHP-dependent, shield value), and given the wrap.

But what if it had gone further?

• What if we could take the extra mana pushed into an enemy (say, via Ruin casts, etc.) and bring it... to a boil, not just destabilized but seemingly opposed aether conflicting actively within an opponent (as with, to a degree, the Nymians when struck by their plague)?
• What if we could pump shittons of MP into an ally and detonate that (into a healing pulse or whatever else) later?
• And, befitting that, what if we had far more control over our MP, if Aetherflow, Aetherpool, and Mana-galvanizing were all deep and integral components of its play?

I'd have loved to see them take those aspects and run with them, creating distinction even to the point of memery: "Nothing can oom a SCH, save for the SCH itself." I'd loved for them to have used all that, and more, to make SCH both all the more wildly bursty, deliberate, and preemptive.