Astro/Astro the new raid paradigm?

[Ashua]

Did not know a person had to have a formulated and developed thesis to post something miniscule as an observation on the topic this forum is made for.

I made my point and I guess I do not understand the hostile response.

[Sebazy]

Disagreeing != Hostile FYI =(

*edit* just to add some clarification and data to this, pre echo, the fastest double AST log in A12s is over a minute slower than the fastest AST/SCH clear and is even pipped by WHM/AST.

Simply put, yes double the chance for balance cards is very nice, but it doesn't outweigh the raw and consistent throughput that SCH brings to the table.

AST/AST is very viable as is any other healer combo currently. But it's certainly not 'meta' =(

[Maltothoris]

Like everyone has said, the reason why ast/ast/ isn't the "meta" is because the noct AST, despite the majors buffs to noct to where its shields are consistently stronger than sch, doesn't have the flexibility of the SCH. It doesn't have the fairy, which is a free regen every 3 seconds, also the fairy has abilities to complement this, Rouse which increases the strength of the fairy by 40 percent, fey illumination which all the healers if in its range when used, fey covenant, and its best spell whispering dawn, which trumps collective unconscious and asylum because its cooldown is only 60 compared to the other two at 90 seconds. There's even the ability of the SCH, deploy tactics which is a larger shield at the cost of 3 minutes for BIG hits, indomitably, strong ogcd every 30 seconds for one aetherflow stack. Remember, astro doesn't have a ogcd aoe heal.

Like others have said, it isn't that double balance isn't nice, because it is, it's just that AST/SCH is a far better combination.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

AST/AST is not optimal. At least not yet. If they did one smart thing with healer balance in 3.0, it was not letting cards stack. That would have been a mess.

Unfortunately that's the only smart thing I can say they did. 3.0 was a flood of bad balancing decisions, honestly.

[technole]

As long as there is a free regen fairy flying around a Scholar, the other healers by-themselves will never be meta. Those healers have to "manually" heal and that costs GCDs. Which is also damage potential lost, hence the slower clears. Double decks of cards won't make up for that.