Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Zeke Von Genbu]

It's a cooldown that costs, in essence, 10 lustrates to fill the bar to use it. It's a worse cooldown than most other classes get for "free". Haima (Sage's 120s CD) is a lot smarter, more powerful, faster, and costs 0 resources for example. It doesn't even stop on overhealing, so it's pretty easy to waste the entire thing unless you're micromanaging it.

The cooldown needs to be extremely re-evaluated, even if every Aetherflow action gave 20 gauge, it would still be mediocre. It would go a long way if you could spend the bar on damage of any kind, so it isn't the "bar to ignore" for most SCH players.

You can't just compare CDs side by side, you must look at it as the whole and consider what healing you actually need in this game. Sage as-is overheals like crazy if you use its CDs freely with a co-healer/tanks that aren't monkies on keyboards, so even if Sage has a million hps worth of heals it doesn't matter because you only need like a few thousand hps (example numbers). Haima is more comparable to Excog anyway, except you can't force Haima to crit like you can with Excog due to Recititation's existence (which makes Excog free anyway).

You don't even need to fill the gauge to use Aetherpact, you can use it whenever you want if you have at least 10. So it basically maths to every aetherflow = about 270~ (pet potency calculation) in healing from the fairy that replaces the Embrace cast (and more importantly forces the fairy to heal the tank, as the fairy is a retard and heals random people). It isn't a cooldown like Haima is, it is basically WHM Lilies, except better (outside of abusing boss phasing to make lilies a damage gain) because Aetherpact doesn't cost a gcd and energy drain does technically do damage and fill the gauge.

Aetherpact is basically your last fairy exclusive line of defense after Whispering Dawn and Seraph before you resort to aetherflow and gcd heals to get the tank to a fine hp level for the tank buster. It is basically a really fancy Soteria if we have to compare it to Sage. If you are actually ignoring Aetherpact fully, you are a shit Scholar 100% or you're doing casual content where it doesn't matter.

If you could just spend it on damage, all it becomes IS damage unless they better tune the content due to what this game devolves into after early progression. At that point I'd ask "Why does Aetherpact's healing even exist, if we're going to just spend the gauge on some 50 potency per 10 gauge 90% of the time?" This is why Energy Drain is a terribly designed ability and the only reason it is tolerated (or loved depending on who you ask) is because you don't need to heal very much in this game so everyone was just twiddling their thumbs waiting for their resources to be used on something that isn't overheal when Energy Drain died in ShB. We do that with Sage today where you just sit on your gauge being full unless you just want to overheal for fun, especially in casual content and while I think it is better then Energy Drain's shit it isn't exactly great either.

 

[Fcret]

Aetherpact
Grants target Fey Union
Fey Union effect: Restores HP whenever damage is dealt by Fey Drain
Cure Potency: 300

Fey Siphon
Orders faerie to execute Fey Drain
Faerie Gauge Cost: 50
Fey Drain Effect: Deals unaspected damage over time
Potency: 50
Duration: 30s

There I fixed the tether, Square-Enix. You know where to mail my checks.

EDIT: Also remove Energy Drain and replace it with this

 

[Well Intentioned]

My take on this is that a lot of male viera players are probably fujos and twink-loving gay guys who will keep most of their autism on twitter and not ingame.

The sheer amount of "Him Bo" and "Bun Boi" crap I've seen spewed throughout Limsa and in NN does not support this.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Male Vieras just make me laugh because thanks to FFXIV's limited customization and the fact that they're a new race its very easy to find two or three edgelords who pick the exact same face/hair colors

Otherwise i kinda how Female Au'ra's horns pop out of all helmets, it makes some of them look pretty neat imho,

Larger builds like male roe and hrothgar also make PLD shields look very wierd too, most of the time they dont look that properly scaled to em

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

EDIT: Also remove Energy Drain and replace it with this

Then everyone goes "What do I do with Aetherflow when I don't need to heal?" again and you've effectively replaced 1 button you press every minute or so with a button you press about 1-3 times a minute depending on how good you are. You basically remove the tether jank to have even less buttons to press then you already do. I don't think this fixes anything besides tether jank and making the fairy feel a bit more impactful.

Scholar needs something that actually interacts with Aetherflow (or some other resource) that isn't Aetherflow itself, so Aetherflow is basically Addersgall on Sage. If I had to suggest anything, I'd make it something akin to ye old Fester where it you have an off gcd that does damage based on how many aetherflows you have (more damage for more aetherflow held) and gives you mana (to make up for no energy drain) depending on how many aetherflows you are missing. Slam that every I dunno 15-30 or so seconds so it is an incremental gain to hold your aetherflows instead of just slamming them, without this being just another "slam this 60/120 second CD into your 60/120 second burst window" and tune the numbers accordingly.

I'd just remove Aetherpact and Dissipation for different abilities, and just retool the fairies entirely. Perhaps make it so both are up at once and you can just place them onto allies like buffs that do something while placed on an ally, and they execute their abilities from that party member's location. Then Seraph can just be its own thing that does what it does now, just rewrite the lore a bit as I know Seraph is intended to be Eos and Selene fused together. The exact specifics of what I'd do with Selene (as I'd basically keep Eos the exact same) is something I'd have to sit and think about more. But this seems like the simpler way to have the fairies do something without the usual pet jank and shitty automation.

 

[Fcret]

Then everyone goes "What do I do with Aetherflow when I don't need to heal?"

The same thing Sage does with addersgall when it doesn't need to heal - spend it anyway for the side-effect (damage for scholar and MP for sage) and just accept that you'll be overhealing.

Look I'm not saying my proposal is perfect, but it's probably the best we could hope for without a total rework of the job.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Whispering Dawn would be better if it originated on target instead of being centered on a fairy imho

Illumination having all damage mitigation and increasing the amount of healing taken from all sources (so WAR/DRK/GNB's self heals also get a boost) would be better

I think besides a full rework then atleast allowing the fairy to use fairy skills would make union not garbage, or atleast make the heal also give a barrier

My slighly on crack change would be to make dissipation give you 3 extra aetherflow or 3 guranteed heal crits on a charge like the tank classes have to have extreme bursty heals

Maybe instant casting too like lightspeed


Dunno, just spitballing, i actually kinda enjoyed getting it to 90, dunno why

 

[Zilortha]

You can't just compare CDs side by side, you must look at it as the whole and consider what healing you actually need in this game.

You absolutely can compare CDs side by side. You should take the totality of the job in mind, but c'mon... none of this is in a vacuum.

Aetherpact is basically your last fairy exclusive line of defense after Whispering Dawn and Seraph before you resort to aetherflow and gcd heals to get the tank to a fine hp level for the tank buster. It is basically a really fancy Soteria if we have to compare it to Sage. If you are actually ignoring Aetherpact fully, you are a shit Scholar 100% or you're doing casual content where it doesn't matter.

I think what you're overlooking though is that unlike with Aetherpact, as a SGE using Sotaria I don't suddenly lose Sotaria if I have to throw out Kerachole or something.
That's the part of Aetherpact that feels like utter shit. I think the "single ability tied to a resource" design is stupid (I feel the same with Addersting for SGE for instance), but that's not what makes it so egregious. What makes it frustrating is that you literally lose the cast and have to re-tether if you use any other fae ability. I'd much rather that it functioned like Sotaria and just buffed embrace for a short time instead.

I feel like SE heard players complaining about "breaking the tether" and thought, "I know! we'll just make it longer! Clearly that's what they're talking about right?" and moved right on. They're completely out of touch when it comes to healer design, and that's partially because they have no main healer dev. We can bitch and moan and scream into the void for all eternity about healer design, but if there isn't anyone who can hear us...

 

[Kane Lives]

I think what you're overlooking though is that unlike with Aetherpact, as a SGE using Sotaria I don't suddenly lose Sotaria if I have to throw out Kerachole or something.
That's the part of Aetherpact that feels like utter shit. I think the "single ability tied to a resource" design is stupid (I feel the same with Addersting for SGE for instance), but that's not what makes it so egregious. What makes it frustrating is that you literally lose the cast and have to re-tether if you use any other fae ability. I'd much rather that it functioned like Sotaria and just buffed embrace for a short time instead.

Now that you mention it, this is exactly it. I don't actually care if it's just an exclusive resource used only by one ability (god forbid, the game is full of those), but by god having it break just because the fairy was suddenly needed to cast any other fairy skill is aggravating in the extreme.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

The same thing Sage does with addersgall when it doesn't need to heal - spend it anyway for the side-effect (damage for scholar and MP for sage) and just accept that you'll be overhealing.

Look I'm not saying my proposal is perfect, but it's probably the best we could hope for without a total rework of the job.

I just don't think this makes the job better beyond fixing the tether jank, as energy drain's biggest upside is it makes Scholar more active then Sage generally speaking so removing Energy Drain for this makes Scholar less active. It doesn't fix the Seraph or Dissipation issue either from what I can tell, which imo are the bigger problems of Aetherpact.

The crux of fixing Energy Drain would be to replace Energy Drain with a roughly comparable ability that doesn't eat at Sch's other abilities while basically doing the same general function of being a damage gain if you don't aggressively rely on aetherflow. Which is why I made my suggestion for a replacement Energy Drain. If I had to put it into text it'd be something akin to this.

Jank Fester
CD: 20 seconds
Description: Deal potency to a single enemy based on number of Aetherflow charges remaining

3 Stacks: 150 potency
2 stacks: 100 potency
1 stacks: 75 potency
0 stacks: 50 potency

Additional effect: Restore 0/200/350/500 mp based on missing aetherflow stacks.

You absolutely can compare CDs side by side. You should take the totality of the job in mind, but c'mon... none of this is in a vacuum.

I mean you can technically, but for what purpose? What does comparing Haima and Aetherpact tell us? Nothing imo because these CDs are different in what they do, their availability, and what you use them for. You don't use Haima the way you use Aetherpact, because Haima is generally not as available or as easily expendable as Aetherpact as ideally every Haima charge must be expended during that 15 seconds to be as effective as possible and the case of multi hit tank busters also tends to give Haima more priority. Aetherpact can practically be a "Fairy CDs are down? Okay Aetherpact time" thought and that will be good enough unless you overheal. Plus you have the case of "being the best healer, doesn't mean having the best healing output" due to how light this game's healing requirements ultimately are, so even if Aetherpact is weak it doesn't make Scholar weak overall.

As another example, it is like comparing Tetra vs Lustrate, these technically do the same thing but their availability is different and those are much much more similar comparisons then Haima and Aetherpact. You could say "Well you get 3 lustrates a minute!", but that misses every single other comparison between these two abilities (Like Indomitability's entire existence).

I think what you're overlooking though is that unlike with Aetherpact, as a SGE using Sotaria I don't suddenly lose Sotaria if I have to throw out Kerachole or something.

So we don't get confused here, I'm not saying Aetherpact isn't jank (I've said the tether is jank a post ago and in this post). I'm saying Aetherpact isn't weak or useless, which are very different statements.

Tornado Kick rotation SB Monk was jank, but it wasn't really weak.

HW Brd was jank, but you'd be a damn fool for saying it was weak.

HW Whm wasn't really jank, but it was basically useless by comparison to AST/SCH after 3.3's (iirc) Ast buffs gave us improved Balance and other healing buffs.

You can be jank and powerful, and in many such cases being jank leads to being powerful in this game as some autist will master the jank (Such as ShB Sams who memorized the EXACT gcd to use Hagakure for perfect Tsubama alignment) and achieve performance the devs never intended. The only thing I can think of that was jank and terrible was HW BLM due to how Enochian worked and how awful it was despite one's best efforts to master Enochian.

 

[Zilortha]

I mean you can technically, but for what purpose? What does comparing Haima and Aetherpact tell us? Nothing imo because these CDs are different in what they do, their availability, and what you use them for. You don't use Haima the way you use Aetherpact, because Haima is generally not as available or as easily expendable as Aetherpact as ideally every Haima charge must be expended during that 15 seconds to be as effective as possible and the case of multi hit tank busters also tends to give Haima more priority. Aetherpact can practically be a "Fairy CDs are down? Okay Aetherpact time" thought and that will be good enough unless you overheal. Plus you have the case of "being the best healer, doesn't mean having the best healing output" due to how light this game's healing requirements ultimately are, so even if Aetherpact is weak it doesn't make Scholar weak overall.

As another example, it is like comparing Tetra vs Lustrate, these technically do the same thing but their availability is different and those are much much more similar comparisons then Haima and Aetherpact. You could say "Well you get 3 lustrates a minute!", but that misses every single other comparison between these two abilities (Like Indomitability's entire existence).

I mean can I not compare Lustrate and Druochole? Just because there is complexity and not every ability lines up 100% doesn't mean we can't compare and contrast design decisions. It's a bit silly to do so in a vacuum without taking the totality of design into consideration, but I don't feel like that's what's happening here.
Idk. I think comparing Haima and Aetherpact isn't wholly accurate, but we really don't need to compare specifics to determine that Aetherpact is janky af lol.

You can be jank and powerful, and in many such cases being jank leads to being powerful in this game as some autist will master the jank (Such as ShB Sams who memorized the EXACT gcd to use Hagakure for perfect Tsubama alignment) and achieve performance the devs never intended. The only thing I can think of that was jank and terrible was HW BLM due to how Enochian worked and how awful it was despite one's best efforts to master Enochian.

I get that. I'm not saying it's particularly weak either. I mained SCH for years and I know firsthand how strong the job can be. I'm saying it's annoying af to play and it feels bad, even when you're playing well.
Autists will always optimize. But it's still janky as fuck and not fun to play. That's my issue here. I'd be happier with a weaker SCH that was actually fun to play vs. a dominant, janky SCH that is miserable to play but puts up numbers. I'm sure a lot of the raidtranny types would wholly disagree with me on that. But I play the game for fun.
And it's hard to have fun as a healer, especially playing SCH.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

We upped the potency on broil by ten. There, we fixed scholar.
If you're expecting any more from SE in regards to fixing healers, man, that's

There was some hope that the mass exodus of healer mains in SHB would burden duty finder times and move SE to act, but, ah, didn't really happen. Despite being by a country mile the easiest role to play, tank still seems to be the one in constant demand, and the influx of new players seems to have kept that similar dps>healing>tanking distribution.
I should note, despite being so easy a caveman could do it, people regularly fuck up tanking. Step up today if you have at least two braincells and want a faster queue, so I can finish out these role quests with slightly less misery when I get someone single-pulling at level 90.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Step up today if you have at least two braincells and want a faster queue, so I can finish out these role quests with slightly less misery when I get someone single-pulling at level 90.

What if I get lost going in a straight line and fail my duty as the leader of the party? I might have a literal panic attack, better stay as Dancer.

#TankxietyThings

 

[Dave.]

30. Fucking. Minutes.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

Ver archivo adjunto 2908465
30. Fucking. Minutes.

Jesus, you can do the entire event in 30 minutes, who's watching this?

 

[John Titor]

I skimmed through it. To give him some credit, I like to be able to see what the furniture looks like since I don't have a house yet but he really does prattle on about the minute details. The last 12 minutes was of him trying out the dyes.

 

[Gravemind]

What if I get lost going in a straight line and fail my duty as the leader of the party? I might have a literal panic attack, better stay as Dancer.

#TankxietyThings

Responsibility is scary. You have to do things like turn the enemy away from the party, keep the enemy in a good spot so people don't yell at you about their positionals and adapting to mechanics, plus you have to touch your cooldowns every so often.

Better to just stay as a DPS where you can just press buttons and nobody cares if you eat shit. Not your problem.

 

[Fcret]

I should note, despite being so easy a caveman could do it, people regularly fuck up tanking. Step up today if you have at least two braincells and want a faster queue, so I can finish out these role quests with slightly less misery when I get someone single-pulling at level 90.

None of the tanks are fun to play in dungeons, so I don't queue for them. Healer I can at least play limbo with HP bars and DPS I can microoptimize DPS on trash.

Tanking is just what I do when it's 30 minutes to reset and I haven't collected my allaganbux for the day.

Ver archivo adjunto 2908465
30. Fucking. Minutes.

I used to put Meoni on in the morning when I'd make breakfast. I stopped once his video length started exceeding the amount of time it takes me to make breakfast and eat it.

 

[CharcoalChkn]

Not that I was planning on using the costume, but it does annoy me a great deal that the hat from the new event does not work on Viera or Hrothgar.

I really can forgive that pre 5.0 stuff is not compatible with new races, but come on, this is a holiday celebration and you know these races are in the game.

Does not bode well for the future of head slot items for these characters.

 

[Near]

Which one of you fuckers was it