Quote Originally Posted by Nizzi View Post
Any time someone says they want they want Energy Drain deleted, I will say it again; PLEASE go play Sage. It's there for you, stop trying to change Scholar even more. Aetherflow and Energy Drain optimization is the only thing that is interesting and offers anything close to a skill ceiling with healer DPS kits, as small as it may be. If Energy Drain bugs you so much, just don't play Scholar.
I think the problem with Energy Drain is that it's a relic of the old HW design SE wants to get away from, but can't remove because every time they do people complain until it comes back. It's a skill that is supposed to, by design, 'reward the player with extra damage if they dont need the stack for healing', but because this is FFXIV and damage is everything, this has morphed over the years into 'this is a skill that you lose uses of if you are forced to heal', feeling more like a punishment than a reward. It's the same issue people have with TBN and it's 'time it right and get a refund': it feels bloody awful when you DON'T get the refund. You can do this thought experiment with a lot of different classes too, 'imagine if X skill on Y class lost you damage, but you're expected to use X to do your role'. There's a reason defensive skills don't share resources with offensive skills (with the exception of TBN and Energy Drain): When given the choice between damage and not-damage, people will choose damage. The only time they don't is when they're completely forced to (early prog) and even then some people don't want to drop the damage. If an Oath Gauge spender got added to PLD that did damage, everyone would use that instead of Sheltron. If WAR had a defensive skill that costed Wrath, it'd never get used because that's Fell Cleave juice. TBN is on very thin ice, and Energy Drain's already had the ice crack under it and fell in, twice.

I'm torn over ED as a skill, part of me wants it gone, I'm tired of seeing people grief and refuse to put a Soil down for a raidwide because they were trying to parse good, and it's been nerfed in potency so many times it's just pathetic in terms of how hard it hits. On the other hand, I can't be sure that if it were removed, SE would replace it with a different form of 'optimization' complexity. If it could be guaranteed that ED's removal would bring a new thing to optimize in it's place I think a lot of people would be on board with it. I suggested an idea where using Aetherflow skills gives resources on a new gauge, and a new button allows you to dump that gauge as one big hit, with a stack of debuff applied for each 10 gauge spent to increase the potency of the next Broil (or AOW for AOE situations). The optimization there would be similar to MCH's battery gauge, you'd want to use it at lower amounts outside of raidbuffs, to have it lined up that you'll be at 100 when you go into the raidbuff window.

I've asked in the past and I'll ask again: Energy Drain used to be 150 potency in the past. Now it's 100, having been nerfed. Say the devs decide that next expansion, it's nerfed to 50. Is it still worth it to keep it around, knowing that it's potentially the anchor around the neck of the job's design? If so, what is the lowest potency value you'd accept it going to before deciding 'okay it's kinda crap lets just axe it'? Is an Energy Drain that hits for 10 potency still 'worth it to keep', because it's 'optimization'? Because I'm already at the point where I wouldn't mind if it was removed, if it was replaced with something else. EG, if they don't want to give us the DOTs back, give us 2-3 debuff skills that do eg, Crit rate against the target increased by 1%, DHit rate by 1%, flat damage by 1%, and have us juggling the timers of those 100% uptime debuffs, to make SCH be the 'debilitation' class, with Chain Strat being the 'big burst' window. Would that count as 'optimization' tools?