[Latto]

Aquamancer has been out for 3 weeks now and by now enough time has passed to see that there's been quite a few issues in terms of skill useability and gameplay. Let's start off with the central point that's leading to the class feeling clunky/lackluster: resources and (later on in the post) cooldowns.

Most classes operate on a 2 resource system (FP and Momentum) with a few operating with a third (Feathers for Firebird, Ki for Monk, etc.) while also having their skill usage limited by cooldown timers for more powerful spells. For aquamancers the third resource is:

Crests

The foundation of Aquamancer skills, the crests! Intended to be a resource to be managed and have interactions with skills to be impactful, right now the best use for them is to just... hit 9 stacks immediately and use it to burst people down while avoiding casting anything that uses them. Aquamancer is supposed to be a pseudo-support class with a variety of utility skills for the team, so why is everyone just playing them as burst mages and not utilizing the majority of their spells? 
The simple answer is efficiency and management.

Aquamancer currently only has 3 ways to 'generate' crests. Casting spells for 1 crest each, crest surge and Aquae Mastery (which gives a 3/6 boost at battle start if Aquamancer is main or main+sub.) Other classes that use a third resource like VA/Monk/Firebird all have a passive resource regeneration along with an more active one (Frayed Voidgates/Power Up/Boon of Apus.) Aquamancers are currently forced to use their spells in order to generate their resource due to not having a turn by turn regen like the other classes, which leads to obvious issues like not being able to use your other class's spell or actions due to wanting to get it to 9 ASAP. 

Now while this was intended as an obvious drawback to the class, this is also where another issue lies. When playing Aquamancer, I choose which skills to use or take based on what I call 'crest efficiency.' Because Aquamancers are always trying to maintain that sweet 9 crest stack in order to gain that huge boost in damage, they have to use actions that are worth the momentum and FP drain in order to stack it up and decide if it's worth losing the stacks to boost other skills. By default, 3 momentum is equal to 1 crest as a baseline for gaining crests.

Currently skills that consume crests are not worth using and losing the damage boost a majority of the time to the point where it feels like a detriment to cast them. Meanwhile a bunch of other skills simply aren't worth using to stack in the first place due to having weak effects.

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Let's look through Aquamancer's spells and their usability. These are the go to spells that an Aquamancer will find themselves using:

• Water Dragon: Extendable line AoE damage, minor heal, flooded water tiles. Soaked at 3 crests without consumption. 
  
• Jet Stream: Single target damage and knockback. Effect increased at 3 crests without consumption.
  
• Water Pillar: Single target damage and airborne. Soaked at 3 crests without consumption.
  
• Ring of Pearls: Increased evasion success and damage reduction. AoE knockback at 3 crests without consumption.
  
• Water Wall: Adjustable line that acts as a solid wall and collapses into flooded water at the end of its duration. Increased duration at 2 crests without consumption. Only 1 SP!
  
• Crest Surge: Grants 9 crests and a status that generates 1 crest per round for 5 rounds.
  

Now what do these examples have in common that make them the go to spells to use in combat? They're straightforward and do what they're supposed to without consuming any crests or have other strings attached! The majority of Aquamancer fights you are mostly spamming Water Dragon + Pillar + Jet Stream over and over (and over and over and over.)

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In contrast let's look at the unusable ones and their major issues.

• Wild Waterfall: Small AoE damage with knock down and flooded water tiles. Soaked at 3 crests without consumption. 
  

Wild Waterfall doesn't consume crests and does what it's marketed to do! So what's the big issue? Momentum efficiency. As an invocation, Wild Waterfall takes a whopping 9 momentum (along with 46 FP) in order to cast. This isn't the biggest issue about why it's bad though, ties back to crest efficiency- it costs 9 momentum for a 1 crest net gain. Since stacking up crests is so important, the return for casting this is MUCH worse than using almost any of the go to spells (while also dealing less damage than just spending 6/7 momentum casting 2 of them.) To make it worth using, it has to either do enough damage to make the lack of crest generation worth it or do something better than soaked at 3 crests. Neither a knockdown, flooded water or soaked (the latter two of which are covered by Water Dragon) are worth the 9 momentum to set up.

• Steam Sear: Deals fire damage, attempts to inflict burn. Only useable if the targeted tile has water on it or if the target is soaked/frozen and consumes it. +10% status infliction and +25% damage to jammer enemies at 5 crests or higher without consumption.
  

Only thing that this has going for it is the burn (which you have to invest 5 SP in if you want to get the full effect, which could go to other, better skills.) Fire attack scaling makes building for this spell super awkward. Lack of crest consumption should at least make this somewhat useable but the third resource used here instead is the water tile/soaked/frozen status to cast, which you can usually use for other effects like lightning weakness/Water to Wine. Honestly no reason that you ever don't want frozen status on an enemy either, so instantly ending it is pretty terrible unless it's about to expire anyway.

• Cold Splash: Plain ice damage. At level 9 crest, consumes 9 crests for a chance of LV100 frozen for 3 rounds. 
  

Awful, awful spell. Effectless, mediocre ice scaling spell (5 SP for 120% ice attack) before max crests. At 9 crests, it instantly strips away all of your resources and damage for only CHANCE at LV100 frozen. The effect is so weak that it's pretty much an active detriment in almost ANY situation you use it in. -8 crest efficiency (worth a whopping 24 momentum in total of crest buildups!), instant loss of 10 to 20% damage, level 100 frozen can be broken through in pretty much one spell... it is just really, really bad.

• Drowning Chant: Attempts to silence an enemy for 2 rounds. If successful, also silences you for 2 rounds. +1 duration and +10% status infliction at 8 crests and consumes 8 crests.
  

The worst spell in Aquamancer's arsenal along with Cold Splash. Intended to be comboed with Silent Prayer to silence your enemy while clearing it for yourself, the setup takes a whopping 6 momentum to use. Compared to skills like black bubble, absolute fear, sonic shell and other silence effects, this is at the very bottom- only a silence, is an active detriment to yourself in the worst case scenario, starts off with an 80% inflict chance for whatever reason at level 1 scaling to 120% at level 3, has a 5 turn cooldown (our first example in this post of an arbitrary cooldown whereas things like black bubble has none), consumes almost all your resources for a weak boost at 8 crest.. Not worth putting any points into.

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Flooded Water | Storm Calling | Support Spells

Flooded Water: another key mechanic for Aquamancers, these cause halved movement in tiles it covers along with having interactions with several spells. Currently they are only generated by Aquamancer spells and last 3 rounds (unless extended by Storm Calling.) Spells that interact with flooded water tiles can be replaced by dark water tiles in exchange for different effects. The current problem with flooded water is the duration and maintenance versus reward of having them on the field, which also causes issues with spells that interact with them (which is why dark water tiles are usually much better for such spells, due to being both easier to generate via Black Bubbles and lasting much longer with Altermancy talent.)

Currently the 3 spells which can generate flooded waters are Water Dragon (very usable), Wild Waterfall (very unusable) and Dead Sea.

• Dead Sea is a small circle AoE that has the singular effect of creating flooded water for 3 rounds (increased to 4 rounds at crest level 4 without consumption.) This spell isn't used very often, if at all, due to the low area of coverage, no damage or secondary effects, short duration of tiles (1 extra round is basically next to nothing) while still costing 3 momentum and having another arbitrary cooldown of 3 rounds for a lackluster ability. The only saving grace is that it only costs 1 point to invest in, but Water Dragon pretty much covers its function in every single way. 
  

This directly affects the set up options for spells that rely on flooded water, the most common one being Dancing Water, which in itself is a decent ability. For flooded water Aquamancers, the maintenance of these tiles is often too troublesome to actually use outside of the occasional zoning or unless paired up with another Aquamancer that can help maintain the tiles for you (but often times it's better for them to just use regular damage spells to burst things too.. especially since fights tend to move around.)

Which leads to the only way to increase duration on flooded water tiles:

Storm Calling 

One of Aquamancer's three invocations, it is mandatory for teamwide support Aquamancy. It is the only way to extend the duration of water tiles, refreshing their duration for as long as the storm is maintained. 

Now there's quite a few issues with Call Storm as a whole. It is bad in terms of crest generation/efficiency, giving a whopping 1 crest for 9 momentum and at crest levels 6 or higher, consumes 6 crests to refund 3 momentum and allow for a 7 momentum/1 turn casting time. This many resources to extend the duration of your water tiles by 5 turns with a minor water attack buff is never worth it for any sort of water tile setup. Because the main usage of Call Storm is for its effect of changing single target support spells to party wide ones, let's look at the issues with support spells and the effort it takes to use them versus the reward.

• Brine Blade: Target gains 20/40/60% of caster's water attack damage as an on hit water effect for 3 rounds. At crest level 3 or higher consumes 3 crests for a 5 round duration.
  

This was initially bugged when it first came out to use the target's water attack and not the caster's, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt until it got fixed but even after it properly uses the caster's attack it's still... incredibly lackluster (and I'm saying this with a 140 water attack build.) Before level 3 it's pretty much unusable with the low scaling and even at level 3 its damage is easily reduced to negligible amounts with a moderate level of resistance. A base duration of 3 rounds is low enough that it can barely be used before it expires. If you want to extend the duration, it uses 3 crests that could be put towards better spells (or the almighty Crest Break pierce.) 

This (along with other support spells) is also where you will start to clearly see a recurring theme of severe resource inefficiency in comparison to rewards. Let's assume you are casting for the base spell at 0 crests to buff your party early on. That's 9 momentum for Call Storm and 3 momentum for a total of 12 momentum for a low scaling 3 turn duration. If you're a mono aquamancer starting the round with 6 crests? That's still 10 momentum and 6 crests spent for a weak 3 turn buff. Want to extend it to 5 turns as an aqua main with mastery + other sub class? 12 momentum and 3 crests (remember a crest takes 3 momentum to gain on average!) at minimum. 

Along with the previous issues, Brine Blade comes with another arbitrary 3 round cooldown, so you can't even cast it on multiple people as a single target spell if you don't want to spend all that momentum to invoke and buff two people (or, even if it didn't have a cooldown, to spend all those crests on the two spells at higher crest levels.) A possible way to make this spell better is to remove the cooldown and increase the base duration to 5 turns with crest consumption increasing the % scaling of the buff (maybe in addition to a 2 turn duration extend or something along those lines.) This way it isn't completely worthless at lower levels (since you can increase the buff from bad to mediocre scaling with crests) while still giving a solid buff at higher levels (going from mediocre buff to good.)

• Purifying Aquae reduces the duration of the highest level negative status effect by 1/2/3 rounds. At 9 crests, it consumes 6 of them to affect all status affects. 
  
  

This is one of the spells that is theoretically very good because of how powerful its effect is but most of the time, you won't be able to find a good time to use it. It has a 5 turn cooldown which means you're probably only going to get it out once a fight, so you usually want it at 9 crests in order to be able to get the cleanse for the whole team. But because it takes so many turns to set up (at least 3 whole rounds with 6 crest call storm-> crest surge -> purifying aquae) by the time you set it up and at the ready, the status effects will have already run their course (since most last 3 rounds) or you'll find yourself forever holding onto your crests and unable to cast any other spells that consume them (because spells that consume crests cost at least 3 of them which at the minimum costs 2 turns to replenish out of the 3 round status effect duration average and bars yourself out of using any other class' spells during the meantime.) 

Compare this to Priest's Gentle Torrent, which has a damage component, cleanses everything it passes over for 1 duration and only has a 3 turn cooldown, or even a regular cleanse potion- both are more forgiving on usage and work on multiple status effects without the huge set up time.

• Refreshing Flow gives a 15/30/45 HP regen for 3 rounds with a 7 turn cooldown. At 3 or more crests, it consumes 3 to immediately heal for an amount equal to the regen tick.
  

Another addition to the unnecessary cooldown/too long setup/bad return list, Refreshing Flow has too long of a cooldown for what it does and its crest consumption effect is subpar enough that you don't want to use it. This is the support spell that you generally want to cast regardless of the situation due to it being a heal but most of the time, losing the 3 stack progress towards Crest Break feels like more of a detriment than a benefit to the point that most of the time I find myself wishing it didn't have a crest effect at all. By the time damage takes place and you have a storm up to warrant casting the spell on the whole team, you usually have 3 crests and are forced to use them for the spell. Compare this to pretty much any other AoE healing spell like Healing Discharge, Massed Graft, Malmelo, Cherry Blossom, Phoenix, etc. this is BY FAR the weakest one due to no scaling in combination with a high cooldown. 

Other Call Storm Issues: Hitting higher storm levels is basically never going to happen because on average you'll be spending 2/5 turns of the storm duration casting the extension in itself. It is also overwritten by another Aquamancer casting it, even if their level is lower than yours, so you can't have a team of aquamancers power up a single storm to utilize. The idea of a single Aquamancer on your team using most of their time maintaining for the rest of the party seems funny but for obvious reasons is not optimal or something you ever want to do at all, especially due to the current strength of the support spells it's supposed to enable (maybe if you want to for whatever reason have a flooded water extension bot for tentacles but dark waters already does that better.)

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Other Minor Skill Gripes: 

• Water to Wine is fine in itself as a spell but at 5 crests or more consumes 3 crests to add 1 duration to the mist + status effects (you'd usually rather have the 3 crests for Break.)
  
• Water Wall blocks allied projectiles, which can be a hindrance due to its size. If at higher crest levels it could have an effect where it lets ally projectiles pass through, it'd be nice but not necessary as it is good for the investment (not using crests is always a plus too.) 
  
• Ensui Veil is okay as a skill for its fire resist/burn resistance/burn cure at crests levels 6 and higher (the armor buff is basically nonexistent outside of multihits, hence why Ensui's bubble effect is a meme) but has a 3 turn cooldown with a 3 turn duration for no real reason.
  
• Ring of Pearls feels like it should be a support spell compatible with Call Storm (something that might actually be worth the long setup time for to give the entire party the evasion buff.) 
  
• Aquamancer as a whole does not have a way to deal with water immunity/absorb/reflect outside of Dark Authority switching damage to dark type. A skill similar to Verglas' Winter's Bite would be nice.
  
• Aquae Crest and Voyager of Rough Waters both feel like they should be innates once skilled instead of actively taking a skill slot (especially aquae crest since that is the class' whole gimmick.)
  
  

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TLDR: 

• Aquamancers have a huge problem with resource control and generation.
  
• Spells that consume crests often do so while providing little extra benefit and actively delay/decrease power due to losing Crest Break and water attack to the point where it's often better than not to completely ignore using them. 
  
• Many spells have needlessly long cooldowns while having low durations or lackluster effects.
  
• Many spells have setup requirements that are too costly and take too long to be worth what they do.
  
• Flooded water tiles have no maintenance options outside of the very costly Call Storm.
  

This leads to most Aquamancers simply always going straight for 9 crests to get the power spike from Crest Break and abusing the 20/30% elemental pierce with Indignant Idol as a burst mage. 

Since generating crests is impossible outside of using Aquamancer skills, this also locks you out of using other class skills in the turns you spend charging. Since you only get 2 actions per turn on average, it takes a minimum of 5 rounds of using only Aquamancer skills to get back to 9 crests outside of Crest Surge. Other invocations (including future ones for balance issues) further exacerbate this problem by taking 9 momentum in exchange for 1 crest and thusly have to be worth using enough to ignore the lack of crests. 

Aquamancer being marketed as a pseudo-"support" class is invalidated due to having lackluster utility skills with heavy setup and cooldown time while offering nothing outstanding compared to other support classes. A majority of Aquamancer skills feel terrible to cast and feel like they're kept weak and restricted solely to have the Crest/setup system be put to use (and even their crested versions feel mediocre AT BEST.) 

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TLDR;TLDR: crest break water pillar / water dragon / jet stream 3 button aquamancer gameplay stronk unga bunga

[Snake]

I'm typing with my feet because my hands are busy clapping. 100% great observation about the class.

Aquamancer's just Evoker's wet dream. No pun intended. With some 'fluffy support'.

[Kazzy]

Ice spell ain't useless. Dead sea ain't bad if you run it with Servant of a Dark Authority, Drowning Chant is meant for gish Aquamancers. I could go further in depth but lack the desire or brain power to do a full dissection and response.

[Autumn]

There's some niche uses to Cold Splash and Drowning Chant that mostly involve the soaked status and a heron feather respectively, but for the most part this thread has a lot of points I generally agree with, the class doesn't feel very good when it comes down to how undersold a lot of the class' supportive qualities are, damage wise its pretty much fine where its at, Cold Splash/Jet Stream/Water Pillar all do some pretty good damage, its invocations are pretty mehhhh honestly, I would appreciate if more of its invocations got the "Call Storm" aquae crest effect onto it, so that they could be action economy efficient.

Lastly I will mention that Purifying Aquae is one of my biggest gripes with the class, what I thought would be a cleanse potion in a skill would pretty much cement the class wasn't actually the case, and ends up being generally not that useful, more details can be found in my thread on that subject: https://neus-projects.net/forums/showthr...p?tid=7561

Anyways, like above mentioned, Cold Splash isn't useless when paired with something like Water Pillar, given that its an on-demand immobilize whenever you need it, it also is a 1 point wonder skill for 2 of those reasons, same with Steam Sear, since it can target a Soaked or Frozen ally and cure those statuses, its also a 1 point wonder that works pretty well on its own. Dead Sea could use some damage I think, but its immediately deployed dark water tiles with Servant of a Dark Authority, which has some niche uses.

Generally the class needs some buffs overall, it doesn't feel very great, kinda like release-Firebird.

[Miller]

I do feel like Cold Splash is powerful in it's own right when paired with the soaked status for the immobilize, yeah. But the main issue lies within the fact that you generally want to avoid dropping from 9 crests for the -10%/20% ele res attached to Crest Break and Cold Splash gets rid of /ALL/ crests for the sake of a /chance/ to inflict frozen. This essentially locks the spell's use until you're either under 9 crests or absolutely need the frozen.*

If the crest cost was reduced in some manner and/or the frozen was a guaranteed inflict or had a bonus infliction chance, it'd be a more than fine skill to use regularly.

[Neus]

There seems to be some misconception about Cold Splash. It doesn't remove any crests unless the infliction is successful.

[alyssiaerend]

I still feel that Cold Splash can be reworked to use less crests, 8 crests for frozen is just not very reasonable since you could easily break the status, wasting 24m worth of crests.

[Miller]

I do also feel like Aquamancer should have a skill similar to 'Suppress Ki' as well, it'd solve the issue of being soft-locked out of specific spells until you need their crest effect.

[Perdition]

As stated in the OP, the 'optimized' way so far of playing Aquamancer is avoiding spells that consume crests as much as you can outside of Call Storm if you want to lean into the supportive aspects of the class more. Crest Break is such a good passive so losing 9 crest LV after you've achieved it feels really bad. A crest use toggle as mentioned in the post above me would go a long way.

[Latto]

So enough time has gone past once again for me to provide my thoughts on the most recent Aquamancer changes:

>Purifying Aquae is now usable with the reduction to 6 crests for its effect activation but its change to main class was a nerf since there is still nothing really worth taking Aqua main class for and thus limits its usage. I personally don't think it's worth being and really, REALLY wish it wasn't changed to a main class skill due to it being so situational in the first place and the amount of time needed to set it up even with the changes.
>Wild Waterfall change was kind of in the right direction but didn't actually address any of the issues in that its effects/damage are really mediocre/not worth the momentum and FP so it's still unusable.
>Brine Blade crest consumption from 3 to 2 crests was an incredibly small buff that also didn't really change much for the spell (setup, mediocre duration, mediocre damage buff with the current mage/autohit meta and I still think it shouldn't have a cooldown for what it does.)
>Refreshing Flow change was good! I think it's in a fine spot now and doesn't have to be touched any further.

The other issues in my original post still stand since nothing else was addressed during the update.