[Request] AST MP cost reductions please

You missed the part where SCH's basic, GCD healing recieved a nasty nerf in a massive MP cost increase at 4.0, and Aetherflow's MP recovery was severely cut down from 30% to 10%, so this "buff" is actually bringing SCH back up to the level of AST and WHM. Basically, 4.0 way over nerfed SCH, and it's getting little buffs to find the sweet spot.

ALSO, Astrolgian sects give ALL healing spells better potencies without increasing MP costs, so AST heals are comparatively cheaper, and you have the short, potend oGCD Essential Dignity and can store a Lady of Crowns. ALSO ALSO, you have Lightspeed as a clutch heal situational skill that slashes MP costs on top of Lucid Dreaming and Ewer.

Yeah, man, AST isn't hurting and won't be set aside by tye meta after 4.1.

Thin Air is OP.

Lightspeed is amazing and using it for stacking AoE heals or a raise can save you lots of MP.

Also remember Collective Unconscious has a HoT which you can access even in Noct stance, not to mention the sweet shield-bubble that it is.

AST (more than WHM for sure and perhaps more than SCH in some ways) requires a bit more thought about your MP management. Less of the MP reduction/return is frontloaded into parts of your kit you would be using anyways (Assize, Aetherflow) and in my opinion it's more reliant on the AST making the most of their kit so they don't need to Ewer themselves.

That being said on WHM I got an Enhanced Ewer in Susano EX from my cohealer the other night which pretty much saved us from a wipe. Sometimes it's a good idea. Don't be scared to use it.

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Originally Posted by Sylvina

It's my understanding that shield applying heals are best cast right before raidwide damage, and then you cast the non shielding aoe heal after if you need to.

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This is exactly correct.

I don't think AST needs help or buffs in the MP department.

I mean I raid savage on AST and I don't have MP issues unless there were simply too many deaths or mistakes in which case any healer would likely run out. I mean Ewer sometimes does pop up when you need it and like other posters said LD + CO is a good combo.

So I don't know, in my experience AST is fine when it comes to MP. Not as good as WHM of course, but still totally fine for all content.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

the more aggressive you are with your heals as WHM, the more lilies you have, the lower the cooldown on this baby gets,.

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I get where you're coming from, and you absolutely burn assize on cooldown outside of prog, but the ideal whm barely touches the cure spells. Hell even in the early savage turns that I've healed (1 and 2s so far) I only need to touch the cure button if I've picked up one of those "cooldowns for wyrm tail? naaah" tanks in this week's pug.

Also, Adlo's mp cost is so restrictive you can run dry trying to get a crit from it BEFORE A PULL. Its cost is so high that the OUT OF COMBAT mp regen tick isn't enough.

AST only has mp problems if they're spamming gravity or their cohealer is allergic to raidwide heals, and neither of those cases is cause to lower mp costs.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

https://image.prntscr.com/image/BxCM...TnfYbdjfVw.png

To elaborate on what I meant before in regards to Assize - the more aggressive you are with your heals as WHM, the more lilies you have, the lower the cooldown on this baby gets, the more MP refreshes you get over the same time-frame. And that's alongside Lucid Dreaming.

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You do see he said SPELL?
anyways ast is fine

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

So I need to burn two cooldowns just to keep up, ok, great, ty. It's not like the other healers have mechanics that give them back mp basically just from healing or something

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You don't have to use Celestial JUST for LD. Have a good AoE card stored? HoTs up? Pop lucid dreaming and extend everything. It's all about timing things right and getting the most bang for your buck.

I regularly will use an AoE balance/spear, diurnal Aspected Helios, lucid dreaming, and then pop celestial for massive extended buffs on everyone and huge mp regen right after white hole/before black holes on o4s. You can even do it on a pull (except without the helios) and go hardcore aggressive on your dps because you'll have so much MP to use up.

Most of what people have said so far still rings like it needs to burn too many cooldowns just to maintain my mp. Lightspeed is an emergency button in my book and the mp cost cut on it ties in with what it should be used for, but it feels wrong to use it just for the sake of MP management. Burning Essential Dignity to get the cooldown on it down feels wasteful as well.
And nothing brought up in this thread negates the main point that AST's mp management is still locked heavily behind RNG, and many points brought up here are basically 'well if you get lucky it will all work out well'.

At the end of the day, the reality of the matter is that when I run BLM, it's the ASTs I have to Mana Shift before any other healer (used to be SCHs, but they changed them since), and that's in dungeons, raids, or the extremes I go into.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Most of what people have said so far still rings like it needs to burn too many cooldowns just to maintain my mp. Lightspeed is an emergency button in my book and the mp cost cut on it ties in with what it should be used for, but it feels wrong to use it just for the sake of MP management. Burning Essential Dignity to get the cooldown on it down feels wasteful as well.
And nothing brought up in this thread negates the main point that AST's mp management is still locked heavily behind RNG, and many points brought up here are basically 'well if you get lucky it will all work out well'.

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Thing is if you get the full benefit from it when you use it, it's not really wasting it. Wasting it is holding onto it thinking you'll need it later then never use it. (I see a lot of players do that) If you hold LD for 2 full minutes you could have used it twice and got twice the amount of MP from that one skill.

LDream is only 2 minutes and it gives a lot of MP. Not to mention with proper use of Earthly Star (insane amount of healing that costs 0 MP, only 1 min cooldown, instead of spamming helios you can just use this for stack markers and save a lot of MP and Dignity which also costs no MP which has a low cooldown can be used to manage MP. If you end up flipping the arcana (because you don't need either card you draw) into the healing card that is another MP free heal.

Usually when I see healers run out of MP it's usually:
A) People dying like crazy (this isn't the specific job's fault, people just need to stop dying)
B) Overhealing (healers that keep regens/spamming shields when there is going to be no damage at all, wasting MP)
C) Not using Lucid Dreaming until they are completely out of MP (Bad idea, unless you are churning through MP so fast that you unintentionally dump everything in 2 minutes after using LD in which case you might want to check what you're doing)
D) Aggressive DPS (Using too many Holy/Gravity/Miasma II and bottoming out but usually they'll just pop LD and get all their MP back by the next pull so no problem there)
E) Tank is undergeared af/no cooldown and pulls to the wall causing perma Cure II/Benefic II and Adlo spam.