I always thought that @return static or @return self should be used for static methods like Elastica\Search::create, but in case of fluent interface @return $this is more semantic, isn't it? This differences also described in proposed psr-5 (13, 14, 15).

// my ST3 cannot into autocomplete, so maybe i'm just wrong :)

Coverage increased (+0.47%) to 83.54% when pulling 59d6a52 on bakura10:fix-ide into 0db1e7e on ruflin:master.

I just tried and I can confirm that $this work as well :). I like static because it is coherent with how late-state binding works, but I'm open to change that to $this. Let's let @ruflin decide :D.

I wasn't even aware that PHPStorm is now able to use static or $this for auto complete. I quite like "$this" as it describes very well what it actually is. In which IDE's is this going to work?

I'm pretty sure NetBeans take advantage of that!

Eclipse confirmed also

I've updated to modify static to $this!

Coverage increased (+0.93%) to 84.0% when pulling c301d14 on bakura10:fix-ide into 0db1e7e on ruflin:master.

Merged. Thx.