I argue that shield bash is actually useful outside of high end instances, primarily being proper mitigation against virtually all trash in the game. Most everything else on this list is typically deadweight except under very niche circumstances, by comparison.
You really shouldn't make high end content the sole focus of a list like this. Analyze from all angles.
For example, I argue that Synastry is one of the most useless AST skills in the game(behind Undraw) because, in all content levels, it's plain better to be using virtually any other heal ability. I get that you're meant to use it as a setup ability, typically on one tank going into dual tank mechanics, but rarely do you ever need that level of prepwork in order to complete a mechanic properly.
Flamethrower is for large packs in dungeon pulls. That is where the skill shines provided your tank doesn't pull the mobs out of it. I agree it should generate heat.
"Flamethrower is useless." "Not relevant for high end raiding." Sounds exactly like someone who doesn't play machinist in high end raiding often.
Explanations: 1. Flamethrower ticks per second instead of per 3s, so it has incredible potency. For 10s, 80pot/s means 200pot/GCD. As Shinnouryu points out, it disables auto, but still a tremendous tool for managing heat and dealing extra damage to a pack. And yes it is a gain over scattergun when there's 3 targets. 2. Because of its high tick rate, you can prepare it when the boss is about to be targettable after downtime, especially in ultimate settings, it's literally a free 80 potency to fish for.
here's my take on each one of them cited: – Krasis , '' doesn't do anything'' that's literally not true ,it literally boosts healing done of the healing that target receives, if you dont heal the target of course the heal you get from kardia alone is low, not to mention it affects all the heals , not just yours and to be honest i rather do a lil bit more healing than not at all. -Cure 1, While I do agree it doesn't have any use beyond lvl 30-50 it's still a viable tool when you're in fact * low lvl* , you don't get many mp managment tools till you get assize. Maybe would have a use if they added a better passive that makes it useful, for once. -Reprise, it literally deals 20 potency more than jolt 2 and its instant cast and you mainly use it if you cant afford to cast ( not hard cast, you never hard cast.) and its a good option if you run out of mp ( rare but better to have an alternative than standing there waiting for some mp or lucid dreaming) -Scathe, nothing to say, I fully agree. It's a garbage spell and has no reasons to be there still as it doesn't provide any recharge to the gauge or anything and using sharpcast is nothing but a waste on fire 3 or thunder 3 and if you use it or try to defend it you need to get therapy. – Flamethrower, its just a really fast aoe dot, sure you wont use it much on high content but its needed to clear a lot of adds or enemies, the tics you get are faster than any other dot in the game. Could use some more love though. -Physick (summoner) Why on earth would you still have this skill on your hotbar -Hyoton, Bind is probably one of the worst debuff you could inflict to an enemy. If it was on PVP it would be busted as hell but on PVE it's useless as most of the enemies are immune to it, if it was AOE bind MAYBE a bit of use while pulling mobs so they get off the tank's back for a while as they cant auto attack but thats not the case. -Shield Bash, its 6 sec stun. if it was aoe it would be too strong and even when pulling mobs you can just spam it on each target and stun them all, while its not a good idea , its still an option. -Kaesgi Hinganbana , wasting a stack just for 5 more potency dot is caveman logic, don't do that. -Undraw, why does it even exist, just use the card even if its not the one you want. That being said, i'm suprised none of the following was mentioned: 1.Repose 2.Anatman ( has some use to maintain the buffs but the window of which you can use it are really small) 3.foot gaze 4.leg gaze
Flamethrower is worth against dungeon pack… On paper only. Flamethrower disable auto attack, which are worth around ~40 potency and cannot crit, if scattergun crits (which it should), if you take in account the heat generated, you'll do more damage overrall.
Flamethrower only exists to fish for a damage tick when bosses comes back from downtime. On my tests, I have about 20% of managing to get a tick without taking in account the many times where you're just stunned or can't stay immobile.
Okay… on Krasis. I have a counter argument as to why it's giga-busted, if you indulge me by reading my rant.
It's one of the many reasons SCH/SGE comp is giga busted in 6.5 (or all off endwalker tbw). With Physis and Krasis combined, you can buff a Recitation + Deployment Tactic + Adloquium (spreadlo) by 35% (+another 10% with protraction and another 20% with Thrill of Battle bringing it to 65%) thus giving a ~39k shield to the entire party, every 120s (well… thats at 345 sync because im pulling numbers from TOP). So Krasis is essentially giving the party ~7k on spreadlo if used properly.
The way adlo becomes multiplicatively better with these buffs is kind of nuts. You get base potency of 300 times 1.8 (cause thats how adlo works), times crit healing of ~1.6, times healing buffs of 1.65, times 8 people. So in this situation (which is Krasis's main usage in this comp) its not just a 1.2 multiplier in a vacuum but is 1.2 * ~1.6 * 1.8 * 8
Then you start stacking damage mitigations and the multipliers stack even further. It's nuts.
For those bad with numbers, you can take mechanics that are exceptionally stressful with healing and completely trivialize them with some good planning. Take TOP phase 1, pantokrator for example. With the proper sprealdo buffing in a sage/sch comp (not even including a warrior!), you literally won't take damage until the 4th in line goes off thus letting you completely focus on slide-casting and dodging IEDs the MCH and reaper are leaving all over the place.
Giving it some more thought Flamethrower might actually better than it seems even while not generating heat or battery for dungeons exclusively. It's a potency gain over Scattergun/Scattershot even when taking the heat into account and saves you resources that you would normally burning into the trashpack that you can use to burn down the boss faster. Scattershot spam into a hypercharge is 181.25 potency per second over 8 GCDs. Flamethrower is 200 potency per second over 4 GCDs. Simply taking opportunity cost into account makes Flamethrower actually worth using since it's only very slightly weaker than Scatter spam + Hypercharge.
I will say that I have found INCREDIBLY situational use for scathe in dungeons. When the tank is pulling wall to wall and the whole group is sprinting down the hallway, spamming scathe is something you can do in ice phase to at least be doing SOME kind of damage while you wait for the tank to stop moving and corral them. And… you know, assuming you don’t have Triplecast or Swiftcast readily available.
The sad part of Flamethrower is that it's still a slight damage increase in dungeon and add packs even without getting the MCH heat, but it's still bad feeling because so much dungeon trash throws out AoEs which force you to end the Flamethrower early or get the healer mad at you.
– Krasis Casters require ~3% more hp to survive some raidwides (e.g. Dragonsong on release), Sage can slap Krasis on the caster before casting AoE shields. Also very useful in regular dungeons, Krasis can save you a GCDs on trash pulls. – Cure 1 Only useful when you're pulling everything in Stone Vigil. Sometimes you run out of mana by the end of the gigapull and putting a few regular Cures in your rotation is the only option as you can't AoE yet. – Enchanted Reprise Great as a fight finisher when you don't have time to dualcast. Woudln't make much of a difference, and they should remove mana cost, but it's still cool to use. Sucks when it's a regular downtime though, because of mana cost. Monk also has a fight finisher with 5s recast, used for the similar purposes. – Scathe Same stuff as E.Reprise, they should remove the mana cost. Peanuts damage is ALWAYS valuable compared to no damage, though you need some planning in order to not get dps loss (e.g. cast in Ice phase). Also valuable in low level dungeons. – Physick Sometimes 400 hp matters (e.g. Dragonsong) – Hyoton, Shield Bash Lifesavers in the Deep dungeons.
The only use for the kaeshi hinganbana is for two large enemies that you can generally assume will bleed for the full amount. Like the lions before Azemya in Aglai
shield bash isn't useless this is propaganda
I argue that shield bash is actually useful outside of high end instances, primarily being proper mitigation against virtually all trash in the game. Most everything else on this list is typically deadweight except under very niche circumstances, by comparison.
You really shouldn't make high end content the sole focus of a list like this. Analyze from all angles.
For example, I argue that Synastry is one of the most useless AST skills in the game(behind Undraw) because, in all content levels, it's plain better to be using virtually any other heal ability. I get that you're meant to use it as a setup ability, typically on one tank going into dual tank mechanics, but rarely do you ever need that level of prepwork in order to complete a mechanic properly.
Good list and all, but wheres anatman 🙁
Flamethrower is for large packs in dungeon pulls. That is where the skill shines provided your tank doesn't pull the mobs out of it. I agree it should generate heat.
doesn't Krasis also buff the tank's self-healing?
"Flamethrower is useless." "Not relevant for high end raiding."
Sounds exactly like someone who doesn't play machinist in high end raiding often.
Explanations:
1. Flamethrower ticks per second instead of per 3s, so it has incredible potency. For 10s, 80pot/s means 200pot/GCD. As Shinnouryu points out, it disables auto, but still a tremendous tool for managing heat and dealing extra damage to a pack. And yes it is a gain over scattergun when there's 3 targets.
2. Because of its high tick rate, you can prepare it when the boss is about to be targettable after downtime, especially in ultimate settings, it's literally a free 80 potency to fish for.
Enchanted Reprise actually is amazing when you want to keep uptime but can't melee the boss or melee them because of a mechanic.
was hoping in Dt theyd replace hyoton with something actually useful 😥
WHM – Cure 1
SMN – Physick
BLM – Scathe
AST – Undraw
the rest are actually useful
Thinking krasis is useless is a massive red flag. 😬
here's my take on each one of them cited:
– Krasis , '' doesn't do anything'' that's literally not true ,it literally boosts healing done of the healing that target receives, if you dont heal the target of course the heal you get from kardia alone is low, not to mention it affects all the heals , not just yours and to be honest i rather do a lil bit more healing than not at all.
-Cure 1, While I do agree it doesn't have any use beyond lvl 30-50 it's still a viable tool when you're in fact * low lvl* , you don't get many mp managment tools till you get assize. Maybe would have a use if they added a better passive that makes it useful, for once.
-Reprise, it literally deals 20 potency more than jolt 2 and its instant cast and you mainly use it if you cant afford to cast ( not hard cast, you never hard cast.) and its a good option if you run out of mp ( rare but better to have an alternative than standing there waiting for some mp or lucid dreaming)
-Scathe, nothing to say, I fully agree. It's a garbage spell and has no reasons to be there still as it doesn't provide any recharge to the gauge or anything and using sharpcast is nothing but a waste on fire 3 or thunder 3 and if you use it or try to defend it you need to get therapy.
– Flamethrower, its just a really fast aoe dot, sure you wont use it much on high content but its needed to clear a lot of adds or enemies, the tics you get are faster than any other dot in the game. Could use some more love though.
-Physick (summoner) Why on earth would you still have this skill on your hotbar
-Hyoton, Bind is probably one of the worst debuff you could inflict to an enemy. If it was on PVP it would be busted as hell but on PVE it's useless as most of the enemies are immune to it, if it was AOE bind MAYBE a bit of use while pulling mobs so they get off the tank's back for a while as they cant auto attack but thats not the case.
-Shield Bash, its 6 sec stun. if it was aoe it would be too strong and even when pulling mobs you can just spam it on each target and stun them all, while its not a good idea , its still an option.
-Kaesgi Hinganbana , wasting a stack just for 5 more potency dot is caveman logic, don't do that.
-Undraw, why does it even exist, just use the card even if its not the one you want.
That being said, i'm suprised none of the following was mentioned:
1.Repose
2.Anatman ( has some use to maintain the buffs but the window of which you can use it are really small)
3.foot gaze
4.leg gaze
Flamethrower is worth against dungeon pack… On paper only.
Flamethrower disable auto attack, which are worth around ~40 potency and cannot crit, if scattergun crits (which it should), if you take in account the heat generated, you'll do more damage overrall.
Flamethrower only exists to fish for a damage tick when bosses comes back from downtime. On my tests, I have about 20% of managing to get a tick without taking in account the many times where you're just stunned or can't stay immobile.
Ice paradox according to SE
Okay… on Krasis. I have a counter argument as to why it's giga-busted, if you indulge me by reading my rant.
It's one of the many reasons SCH/SGE comp is giga busted in 6.5 (or all off endwalker tbw). With Physis and Krasis combined, you can buff a Recitation + Deployment Tactic + Adloquium (spreadlo) by 35% (+another 10% with protraction and another 20% with Thrill of Battle bringing it to 65%) thus giving a ~39k shield to the entire party, every 120s (well… thats at 345 sync because im pulling numbers from TOP). So Krasis is essentially giving the party ~7k on spreadlo if used properly.
The way adlo becomes multiplicatively better with these buffs is kind of nuts. You get base potency of 300 times 1.8 (cause thats how adlo works), times crit healing of ~1.6, times healing buffs of 1.65, times 8 people. So in this situation (which is Krasis's main usage in this comp) its not just a 1.2 multiplier in a vacuum but is 1.2 * ~1.6 * 1.8 * 8
Then you start stacking damage mitigations and the multipliers stack even further. It's nuts.
For those bad with numbers, you can take mechanics that are exceptionally stressful with healing and completely trivialize them with some good planning. Take TOP phase 1, pantokrator for example. With the proper sprealdo buffing in a sage/sch comp (not even including a warrior!), you literally won't take damage until the 4th in line goes off thus letting you completely focus on slide-casting and dodging IEDs the MCH and reaper are leaving all over the place.
tl;dr – delete pure healers 🙂
Giving it some more thought Flamethrower might actually better than it seems even while not generating heat or battery for dungeons exclusively. It's a potency gain over Scattergun/Scattershot even when taking the heat into account and saves you resources that you would normally burning into the trashpack that you can use to burn down the boss faster. Scattershot spam into a hypercharge is 181.25 potency per second over 8 GCDs. Flamethrower is 200 potency per second over 4 GCDs. Simply taking opportunity cost into account makes Flamethrower actually worth using since it's only very slightly weaker than Scatter spam + Hypercharge.
I will say that I have found INCREDIBLY situational use for scathe in dungeons. When the tank is pulling wall to wall and the whole group is sprinting down the hallway, spamming scathe is something you can do in ice phase to at least be doing SOME kind of damage while you wait for the tank to stop moving and corral them. And… you know, assuming you don’t have Triplecast or Swiftcast readily available.
That’s about it though!
The sad part of Flamethrower is that it's still a slight damage increase in dungeon and add packs even without getting the MCH heat, but it's still bad feeling because so much dungeon trash throws out AoEs which force you to end the Flamethrower early or get the healer mad at you.
Scathe is a useful skill. It’s not something to use constantly, but it has its uses.
Pretty useless video as at least half of these are actually good, and you just dont understand use cases for some of them.
Flamethrower's only use is so I take my hands off the controls for a moment.
They hated him because he told the truth
– Krasis
Casters require ~3% more hp to survive some raidwides (e.g. Dragonsong on release), Sage can slap Krasis on the caster before casting AoE shields.
Also very useful in regular dungeons, Krasis can save you a GCDs on trash pulls.
– Cure 1
Only useful when you're pulling everything in Stone Vigil. Sometimes you run out of mana by the end of the gigapull and putting a few regular Cures in your rotation is the only option as you can't AoE yet.
– Enchanted Reprise
Great as a fight finisher when you don't have time to dualcast. Woudln't make much of a difference, and they should remove mana cost, but it's still cool to use. Sucks when it's a regular downtime though, because of mana cost.
Monk also has a fight finisher with 5s recast, used for the similar purposes.
– Scathe
Same stuff as E.Reprise, they should remove the mana cost. Peanuts damage is ALWAYS valuable compared to no damage, though you need some planning in order to not get dps loss (e.g. cast in Ice phase). Also valuable in low level dungeons.
– Physick
Sometimes 400 hp matters (e.g. Dragonsong)
– Hyoton, Shield Bash
Lifesavers in the Deep dungeons.
The only use for the kaeshi hinganbana is for two large enemies that you can generally assume will bleed for the full amount. Like the lions before Azemya in Aglai
chat this guy is healing for me next tier should I be worried
none of these skills get used in high end raiding besides Krasis, if you think I'm wrong send me a log!