SCH is a mess, thematically and visually, and needs streamlining

[ty_taurus]

Just replace that with a pure shield. Make it stackable like a reverse haima with a 1s recast so you can dump 1-3 AF on your tank so you can spam broil/aow in peace

So unnecessary shielding that gives you the illusion that you’re doing something of value. It’s kinda like giving a child a toy hammer and a separate plank of wood to make them feel like they’re helping.

The solution to Energy Drain is pretty easy really: Make Aetherflow a resource exclusively used for DPS. If your optimization aspect is managing some combination of DPS resources, and that\\'s the consistentd expectation for every use of Aetherflow, then there\\'s no more punishment aspect other than performing your rotation correctly, which is the same expectations every DPS job has.

But what do we do with the resources that use Aetherflow currently? Well, fortunately (or unfortunately) SCH already has a second gauge that has absolutely no uses of notable value currently and is basically just a decoration on your screen at the moment that we can just shift healing cooldowns onto.

[ForsakenRoe]

So the solution is, if I understand this right, not 'remove ED so Aetherflow heals don't feel like they're competing vs damage', it's 'rework Aetherflow heals to use Fairy Gauge so that Aetherflow is ONLY spent on ED'? How is using AF then 3 ED's different from using a reworked ED that does 300p, once per min, to give you the Aetherflow stacks? They'd fulfill the same function and do the same damage. I'm not sure why we should keep designs that are clearly past their use-by date when we could replace them with fresh new design for optimization in a different way. Of course, losing it and having it replaced with nothing is not good, but I'm going to (perhaps foolishly) look at this from the point of view that SE will replace stuff with other stuff, not just remove it outright ala Kaiten. Like Fairy gauge is pretty pointless feeling atm yes, but so was Salted Earth in SHB, and in EW it honestly should have been removed. Instead they tied a 500p hit to it to keep it on life support.

There are plenty of different ways that SCH could have other 'optimizations'. We don't see PLD having an offensive Oath spender (and Shield Swipe was removed for the same reason), or WAR having a defensive for Wrath, because if there's a choice between 'not-damage' and 'damage', people choose damage, sometimes to the point of causing a wipe, and blaming others for not picking up the slack. We all remember DRKs being squishy in SB because they refused to use TBN cos 'dps loss', we've probably seen a barsing SCH or WHM in SHB who cause a wipe by not using Lily heals/Soil expecting their cohealer to pick up the slack, etc. At this point I expect SE will just be spiteful and make ED do 10 potency, so that even if someone DOES decide to dump all their 'flows on it, they're going to get like 240 potency total gain, and then crit variance means their gained damage is potentially outplayed by someone who just got lucky.

And that shielding is only 'unnecessary' if it doesn't save you a GCD. Which in prog, it probably would, and I think it'd be nice to be able to apply a shield, as the 'shield healer', that isn't a GCD, for the purpose of Deployment Tactics, especially if it can interact with Recitation or Protraction. The only OGCD option to shield atm is Consolation.

[ty_taurus]

I can’t quote because the response is too sling and I’m on my phone.

The solution I brought up would not be as uncharitable as Aetherflow is only used for ED and nothing else. It would be about having a selection of DPS tools including new DoTs or things like Shadowflare, not just a dinky ED.

Then you add a new way to generate Fey Gauge that is manually decided and not a consequence of cooldowns, and make that your healing resource gauge.

The proposed solution I commented on suggested a barrier action with a 1 second cooldown. So in other words Lustrate but better or Lustrate but worse. Yay. We either get to turn Lustrate into a piece of vestigial bloat, or we get a button that won’t be used seriously because it’s better to just wait for Lustrate assuming you wouldn’t just use literally any other Aetherflow, and exists purely so that you can burn it when you’re overlapped on Aetherflow, but you get to feel marginally better because it’s not considered “overhealing” even if the barrier times out because it’s duration expired, or the amount of healing you saved yourself from would have just been covered by your faerie anyway.

Surely the prog tool that will have SCH’ players sobbing in church over.

[ForsakenRoe]

I can’t quote because the response is too sling and I’m on my phone.

The solution I brought up would not be as uncharitable as Aetherflow is only used for ED and nothing else. It would be about having a selection of DPS tools including new DoTs or things like Shadowflare, not just a dinky ED.

Then you add a new way to generate Fey Gauge that is manually decided and not a consequence of cooldowns, and make that your healing resource gauge.

The proposed solution I commented on suggested a barrier action with a 1 second cooldown. So in other words Lustrate but better or Lustrate but worse. Yay. We either get to turn Lustrate into a piece of vestigial bloat, or we get a button that won’t be used seriously because it’s better to just wait for Lustrate assuming you wouldn’t just use literally any other Aetherflow, and exists purely so that you can burn it when you’re overlapped on Aetherflow, but you get to feel marginally better because it’s not considered “overhealing” even if the barrier times out because it’s duration expired, or the amount of healing you saved yourself from would have just been covered by your faerie anyway.

Surely the prog tool that will have SCH’ players sobbing in church over.

The stipulation that there'd be multiple DPS Aetherflow spenders was not included in the comment I was responding to, but yeh that sounds good. Not overspending early so you have enough left for a 30s CD or such. However, since the order they come in is already kinda set in stone, would it not be easier to have Aetherflow heals stay as Aetherflow heals, and change Fey gauge into the 'DPS resource'? That way, Energy Drain can stay as the 'this is away to dump Aetherflow', perhaps give it's MP restore back (but remove it's damage) and have Fey gauge have more use than just Union. Then the issue is 'What the hell do we do with Union', since it can't really be converted over into an Aetherflow heal without it losing the ability to cancel it midchannel. Is it possible to have a 'charged action' with like, 10 charges? A 10 charge action that restores one charge per 15 seconds, and consumes a charge per tick, is that even doable in this crusty engine

[Deceptus]

So the solution is, if I understand this right, not 'remove ED so Aetherflow heals don't feel like they're competing vs damage', it's 'rework Aetherflow heals to use Fairy Gauge so that Aetherflow is ONLY spent on ED'? How is using AF then 3 ED's different from using a reworked ED that does 300p, once per min, to give you the Aetherflow stacks? They'd fulfill the same function and do the same damage. I'm not sure why we should keep designs that are clearly past their use-by date when we could replace them with fresh new design for optimization in a different way. Of course, losing it and having it replaced with nothing is not good, but I'm going to (perhaps foolishly) look at this from the point of view that SE will replace stuff with other stuff, not just remove it outright ala Kaiten. Like Fairy gauge is pretty pointless feeling atm yes, but so was Salted Earth in SHB, and in EW it honestly should have been removed. Instead they tied a 500p hit to it to keep it on life support.

There are plenty of different ways that SCH could have other 'optimizations'. We don't see PLD having an offensive Oath spender (and Shield Swipe was removed for the same reason), or WAR having a defensive for Wrath, because if there's a choice between 'not-damage' and 'damage', people choose damage, sometimes to the point of causing a wipe, and blaming others for not picking up the slack. We all remember DRKs being squishy in SB because they refused to use TBN cos 'dps loss', we've probably seen a barsing SCH or WHM in SHB who cause a wipe by not using Lily heals/Soil expecting their cohealer to pick up the slack, etc. At this point I expect SE will just be spiteful and make ED do 10 potency, so that even if someone DOES decide to dump all their 'flows on it, they're going to get like 240 potency total gain, and then crit variance means their gained damage is potentially outplayed by someone who just got lucky.

And that shielding is only 'unnecessary' if it doesn't save you a GCD. Which in prog, it probably would, and I think it'd be nice to be able to apply a shield, as the 'shield healer', that isn't a GCD, for the purpose of Deployment Tactics, especially if it can interact with Recitation or Protraction. The only OGCD option to shield atm is Consolation.

Hell every Broil / Bio / Ruin / Art of War cast could increase the fairy gauge by 5 points or something.

[ForsakenRoe]

Hell every Broil / Bio / Ruin / Art of War cast could increase the fairy gauge by 5 points or something.

nah can't have that, that'd be one step away from forcing people to do damage as a healer and we know we can't have that /s

if we go with what Taurus said, converting the Aetherflow heals into Fey gauge spenders, theoretically we could change Aetherflow into a different max count, or even into a 0-100 gauge for more granularity. Atm it's 3, for SMN it's 2, so different maximums are apparently possible. lets imagine we make it a 0-100 gauge. having 'previously AF heals' now on a 0-100 gauge also gives some leeway in changing their cost based on their strength. Fey Blessing and Indom are, functionally, identical, but one comes from the SCH and one from the Fairy, thus they could have the same Fey gauge cost. But Soil is vastly better than either (being as it heals twice as much via it's regen, and also has %mit) so it could have a different price. EG Blessing/Indom are 20, Soil 30, Lustrate 10, Excog 15, Union 5 per tick, etc. then we can have a direct conversion, without having the issue of 'well, indom is 20, soil is 30, but both generate one aetherflow so indom is better for damage'.

so once we convert fey gauge into aetherflow, we'd be able to have tools to spend it, with various CDs. ED would presumably be the 'dump' skill, so i think it'd be good if it had a cost of 'all of your aetherflow', scaling in damage based on how much is consumed. or just 10 per use so you dont misclick and waste it all works too. then there could also be stuff like, idk, 30s CD Shadowflare which costs 30 to place, bring back Bane for 20 to spread DOTs (maybe with upfront damage to keep it as a better option than ED), etc. not sure what should generate should generate Fey gauge to start all of this off though, probably not something uptime reliant like attacking, else you'd be forced into using crappy Succor during something like High Concept. 'Fairy actions' could work, since Embrace is pretty low healing it'd almost always be firing off, making it the healing equivalent of 'PLD gets gauge by autoattacking', while still being able to generate even during downtime like HC2. It'd also incentivise the idea of 'use your fairy skills first preferably', but if people are full HP then it won't work. Unless they changed Embrace to always cast, with 'target of target' (aka the maintank) being chosen if everyone is full HP, to keep it precasting in case the MT takes an autoattack and to keep generating gauge

the problem is, a design like that would still force you to spend 'healing resource' on Lustrate to get the 'damage resource' (which feels bad). The alternative is that the two systems are separate, which also feels bad because it just continues to demonstrate that the damage and healing halves of the kit are distinctly seperate from each other instead of a cohesive whole. like slicing an orange and a lemon in half, and mixmatching the halves from the two together. 'theyre both citrus fruits so what does it matter' say the devs. I wonder how much SMN has had an effect on all of this, the EW rework should have been the time to seperate the two once and for all. Make SMN a job unlocked in ARR by getting any class to 30, and change ACN to a second healer choice on the main menu so people have options when they want to start a character and be a healer, instead of instantly railroading them into CNJ by default. Seems pretty obvious to me that ACN's evolution into SCH is the lore-apt one, and SMN is the side thing, rather than the other way round, especially since the SCH job trainer is in the same city the ACN guild is in. By having SMN be it's own standalone thing, the shared concepts between the two jobs wouldn't have to be shared, like getting Aetherflow as an ACN only to lose it becoming a SCH only to get it again at 45 because it's used for Lustrate. Just remove it from SMN entirely, make Fester and Painflare be shared 2 charges, 30s CD it's not rocket science but hey i'm not a rocket scientist so maybe it is way harder than it looks to me

[ty_taurus]

How I constructed the Aetherflow vs Fey Gauge mechanics, simply put, looks roughly like this:

- ACN's Aethercharge becomes Aetherflow on SCH: a GCD button that generates 1 Aetherflow and 20 Fey Gauge. It also has charges.
- Aetherflow stacks enables 1 use of Libra, an OGCD tool that converts your DPS spells into different spells.
- Miasma spells are returned to SCH as a 2nd GCD DoT with a hardcast and last 24 seconds. Under Libra, Bio spells transform into Pain, a 3rd DoT to manage which lasts 45 seconds.
- Ruin/Broil spells become Fester. In the doc, I listed Broil as being 260 potency while Fester is 500, increasing by 40 for each of the 3 DoTs on your target.
This is the basic Aetherflow gameplay loop, though there's a bit more in the doc.

Meanwhile, Fey Gauge enables two GCD spells that change based on your current Faerie.
- With Eos summoned, you can cast Protraction or Indomitability. These are spells you cast by pulling aether from your faerie. Both cost 20 fey gauge and grant 1 Aetherflow. Protraction can be spread to other party members through Deployment Tactics.
- With Selene summoned, you get Retaliation and Expedient. Same deal as above on the fey gauge cost and Aetherflow generation. Retaliation is similar to Eye for an Eye--taking physical damage reflects a physical damage down on the attacker while taking magical damage reflects a magical damage down onto the attacker. This can also be spread through Deployment Tactics. Expedient is just the sprint.

You can store up to 100 Fey Gauge so there's little concern about overcapping. Shadowflare also generates Aetherflow when used, which it has a cooldown, and Recitation causes your GCD heals to generate 1 Aetherflow as well.

[Nizzi]

I'm astounded that people want to remove the last bit of complexity that Scholar has for more bloated and worthless oGCD heals or a token worthless damage oGCD that interacts with nothing. At some point, we have to accept that we get the job design we deserve.

[ty_taurus]

The stipulation that there'd be multiple DPS Aetherflow spenders was not included in the comment I was responding to, but yeh that sounds good. Not overspending early so you have enough left for a 30s CD or such. However, since the order they come in is already kinda set in stone, would it not be easier to have Aetherflow heals stay as Aetherflow heals, and change Fey gauge into the 'DPS resource'? That way, Energy Drain can stay as the 'this is away to dump Aetherflow', perhaps give it's MP restore back (but remove it's damage) and have Fey gauge have more use than just Union. Then the issue is 'What the hell do we do with Union', since it can't really be converted over into an Aetherflow heal without it losing the ability to cancel it midchannel. Is it possible to have a 'charged action' with like, 10 charges? A 10 charge action that restores one charge per 15 seconds, and consumes a charge per tick, is that even doable in this crusty engine

It makes far more sense for Aetherflow to be the DPs gauge both in lore as well as from a player experience standpoint since that’s the role it fulfills for SMN. It makes way more sense that the Fey Gauge be healing based not only because it’s associated with your faerie.

In my SCH concept over in the echo chamber, I outlined what I think feels a lot more fluid—generate fey gauge for GCD heals and utility that changes based on your current faerie, and those heals generate Aetherflow for you, but is not the only source of Aetherflow Generation. It mirrors how new SMN works in some ways which also makes the jobs connection to ACN’s leveling experience more intuitive since you currently need to break your neck turning your head upside down to make sense of SCH as a new player when you unlock the job.

The only reason I could see keeping Aetherflow as the healing resource in this example is because “it’s always been that way” which is not a valid reason, but an excuse.

The current healers are some of the shittiest game design I’ve ever seen. I see no reason to not approach these designs with a bulldozer instead of silk gloves.

[Duskane]

isn't it annoying SMN job stone is green while SCH is blue.