3.3 AST adjustments

So...Nocturnal Aspected Helios will soon give a 120% shield off the value of the amount of HP healed (like how Nocturnal Aspected Benefic does with it's heal, just 10% less), and Spread CD is to be reduced to 30 seconds. Apparently some random bug where you could keep channeling Collective Unconscious despite being knocked up into the air will also be fixed? (lol)

Thoughts? As I said in the main 3.3 thread, I think SE is showing more and more that they don't really understand what the issue with Noct AST (I'd go so far as to argue AST as a whole) really is. While some of the community rebalance suggestions have been outright ridiculous, others have been reasonably well thought-out and fall into SE's apparent design pathos of wanting all of the healing jobs to be fairly homogenized re: their base toolkit.

This isn't meant to be YET ANOTHER "AST suggestions" thread, as frankly we could theorycraft and dream balance until we're blue in the face and SE likely won't do a thing that we suggest, but I AM curious to see if anyone thinks that these AST changes will have any impact on Noct AST's raid viability as a whole.

The problem about Noct AST is that you want it in place of SCH, and SCH is stupidly strong atm.

Noct.AST is actually very very powerful......as the main healer along side a sch.....in certain content....sigh (ok maybe not very very powerful...more like useful.....ish......depending on the person using AST). If you are going to do the absolute healing designation role of SCH dps and other healer just heals, it can be far easier to main heal on a Noct.AST, but this does require communication between the two healers when it comes to things like deploying adlo, as you dont want to overwrite it with A.Ben.

Other than that the spread adjustment is very very welcome. It will be used more for phase changes or mechanics in raids where the card you have drawn needed to be saved for 10-20 secs until its use become optimal.

Changes in Noct shields are welcome, but will see little use (kind of explained this above). AST will probably never be able to replace a SCH in raid in Nocturnal unless the devs do some serious overhauling of the healers.

Also to make Nocturnal AST viable, it may require a fourth healer to be introduced into the game that can pull off the healing/dps thing SCH can, but have this new healer more of a regen based one, so you end up with Shield main healer (N.AST and regen SCH replacement).

CU changes are....um......meh (yep they are a nerf, not sure how it will impact gameplay though).

Also were the changes to Nocturnal Aspected Helios 120% and not on par with Aspected Benefic 130%?

EDIT: yep its 120%

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DarkmoonVael

Also were the changes to Nocturnal Aspected Helios 120% and not on par with Aspected Benefic 130%?

EDIT: yep its 120%

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Thanks for the correction; I'll adjust the OP.

That said, I don't think anyone ever had a problem with AST's mitigation in Nocturnal...most complaints were about SCH's superior practical DPS (as in, actual potential raid DPS, not dummy DPS), and how their shields have much better synergy with their toolkit (lol Nocturnal Shield and Time Dilation). I think a big issue is that the devs have to balance around things like Helios and Benefic II, which are two abilities a SCH lacks (they kind of get Benefic II with Physick + Embrace). So in some ways, I feel like if they buff Noct AST DPS, SCH may actually suffer, but I'm not sure about this overall.

I thought one reason SCH is so powerful is because Selene isn't weakened by cleric stance. Rather than nerf selenes heals while in clerics, would it be okay to make Aspected benefic and WHM regen ignore the cleric stance penalty?

The problem is almost entirely with how dominant SCH is to be honest.

They're taking baby steps towards making Nocturnal AST better and I think we can expect more adjustments with 3.4 and the last tier of Alexander, but let's get real, there won't be any major rebalancing before 4.0 at this point. It's simply beyond their development capabilities (and to be honest I'd rather have major rebalancing and retooling around expansions). I think one of the biggest challenges the dev team will have to face in the future is where they really want healer DPS to be and how demanding they want their content in terms of healing output, which is directly related. Right now it's stupidly low.

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Originally Posted by Ragology

I thought one reason SCH is so powerful is because Selene isn't weakened by cleric stance. Rather than nerf selenes heals while in clerics, would it be okay to make Aspected benefic and WHM regen ignore the cleric stance penalty?

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The whole Cleric Stance mechanic is a problem and hard to balance things around IMO. Nerfing fairies while in Cleric Stance would probably outright kill SCH's DPS potential, especially in solo and 4-people content, and buffing everyone else to somehow ignore Cleric Stance's penalty would make things kind of confusing.

With all the stuff that can negate Collective Unconscious, they should make it give its effects instantaneously then, instead of waiting 1-2 seconds for it to kick in. >x>

Like others have said, as a healer, Noct sect is okay, but as an off-healer, SCH just has so much more working for it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ragology

I thought one reason SCH is so powerful is because Selene isn't weakened by cleric stance. Rather than nerf selenes heals while in clerics, would it be okay to make Aspected benefic and WHM regen ignore the cleric stance penalty?

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The problem with that is Aspected Benefic and Regen use the user's MND stat when the spell is used, versus the Fairies, which use the user's MND stat when they were summoned.

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Originally Posted by DarkmoonVael

Noct.AST is actually very very powerful......as the main healer along side a sch

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Oh my god no. Running ast on noct sect alongside a sch is possibly the worst thing you can do besides curing in cleric stance.

If i could do anything for astrologians, it would be to create synergy with time dilation and celestial opposition. Something like, when a nocturnal shield is present, the shield is increased by 10-15% of targets max HP for time dilation (probably needs adjusted, but ast couldn't use it on themselves, just going from second to%hp) and celestial opposition adds 5% raid wide. I really couldn't see any other buffs than adjusting collective to be more instant (instant aoe regen, then refreshed with server tick, with reduced damage added on first server tick.)


ANYWAYS I think that what they did was give ast another GCD edge over SCH in the healing department. Having the option between a full heal and a shield, at reduced comparative MP cost is pretty good. Yes, other factors make SCH a more desirable offhealer, but with powerful SUSTAINED heals like this, ast should continue to have the extra oomph to hold what could have been a wipe, together.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Oh my god no. Running ast on noct sect alongside a sch is possibly the worst thing you can do besides curing in cleric stance.

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No it really isnt. And people need to get this out of their head. Please read carefully what i have written and how i elaborated on this rather than quoting me out of context with an ulterior motive of trying to make an issue out of a non-issue.

There are places where if you run AST/SCH, with the scholar leaving all the healing for the AST, it can be more beneficial for the AST to run Nocturnal sect over Diurnal Sect depending on the encounter. I have done this, i know others that have done this.

Do not try and crassly conflate a raid group making a conscious decision to run an instance like this with voice communication and absolutely defined roles with what you are trying to; this is with the average DF person just making bad choices with which sect to run depending on which co-healer they are presented with.

Deliberately quoting out of context is poor form indeed. The fact that you have deliberately cut off half of the sentence you quoted just show you are here to do nothing other than partake in a very crass point scoring manoeuvre.