Scholar vs Astrologian Mitigation

AST's shield are only stronger if you only look at raw potency numbers, but Noct AST is much, MUCH weaker than a SCH as a shield healer. Here are some reasons why:

- In practical situations, the critical hit property on Galvanize already makes their Succor better than Aspected Helios overall, let alone Adloquium.
- Critical Adlo deploy straight up lets you cheese mechanics and/or ignore AOE healing for extended periods of time.
- Eos. Eos is actually a huge part of why SCH is so strong, Fey Union, Rouse Whispering Dawn, Fey Illumination and Fey Covenant (which adds up to SCH's individual mitigation) are all incredibly strong skills. Embrace by itself is like a permanent passive regen that costs nothing.
- Much higher individual DPS output.
- Sacred Soil is on a 30 second CD and is much more readily available than CU.

This is without considering the much stronger OGCD healing options like Indom or Lustrate and vastly superior MP management. The single advantage a Noct Astro has over SCH is the fact Asp. Benefic is insta cast compared to Adlo, which makes it better for emergencies, but otherwise SCH is always a better option.

Succor is never better than Aspected Helios.
The crit Galvanize only affect Adlo.

Besides, Nocturnal Sect has a passive +15% healing bonus.
So they both are 150/225, but Ast has the healing bonus.

There's two thing that those AST vs SCH always overlook :

- Aspect benefic isn't that much lower than a crit addlo. And you can rely on it. The fact that it's instant cast makes it really valuable when there's a lot of movement, wich is why NocAST was the job to solo O4S really early. You can shield people through black hole while doing the mechanic and use earthly start after the holy stack without resking someone to die, you can shield the alagan field during GCA/GCO or the stack marker in GCD and you can achieve that without having to do more than use a skill. Pretty sure it's also really good against O7S.

- The base potency of everything you have as AST is higher. It's les signifiant since succor buff, but every single OGCD AST have is extremly strong and your rarely need more than one of them to handle a mechanic. GCD heals are also still stronger, wich isn't the case with AST vs WHM HoT game. SCH in the other hand have a lot of underwhelming option, such as sacred soil, emergency tactics or fairy union. In terms of OGCD AST both have the least and the best, with high efficiency and low cooldown.

The only reason why SCH is preferred is chain stratagem. But if mitigation was a matter, AST have the best single target shield, the best AoE GCD shield and the best AoE damage mitigation (wich is also better than asylum, as its HoT only require to get in the Aoe once, not to stay in it for the whole duration).
Deployement is a strong team gimmick and critlo a prepull meme in comparison.

Ast has really strong tools but they can't mutli-task. A Sch can place Sacred Soil and shield the party with Galvanized Barriers while their fairy cast Fey Covenant, Fey Illumination, and Whispering Dawn. These five abilities used together make the Sch more powerful and can be tuned to be even stronger with Rouse to boost the fairy and Largesse to boost the spell power of the Sch. It really is incredible what a Sch can pull off while a AST is really limited to one ability at a time. They cant even move during Collective Unconcious without dropping the Damage Shield. They both have their benefits but one doesn't really shine over the other in any special way to me.

So, you're telling me that using one eather flow, 2k+ mana, 2 OGCD, 1 GCD, 3 "the fairy will use it in 5 seconds" spells every two minute is better than doing the same every minute with no mana cost because you lose arround one GCD worth of cast on the lowest personal DPS job of the 3 healer ?

It's not a matter that you can't move while doing this, because it allow your co-healer to not have use 7 different skills on one mechanic.
AST OGCD are just plain better. There's no way arround it. Earthly star is better than assize/indo, collective unconcious is better than sacred soil/assylum and essential dignity is better than tetragram/revification. And let's not even talk about how stupidly good celestial opposition is. That's all you have because that's all you need.

A most importantly, there's no point in stacking everything single SCH spells to get something. It takes ages, it's clunky as hell, it cost too much, it uses way too much ressources for what it gives. Why would you ever want to do all of this ? Most of those cooldown are wasted, they would be better somewhere else, like fey covenant on a magical tank buster, fey illumination before aspect helios/medica II is applied or using the eatherflow stack for the much more potent indo, leaving mitigation to shield that would mitigate more and build LB if they ever save anyone from dying.

Earthly Star is one of the most powerful heal in the game, everyone definitly agree with this.
But Indom is still better.

That's not a just a 500 VS 720 potency.
Earthly is a 60s CD, needs 10s to have its full potency and people need to be on it.

Indom is a 30s CD, 500 potency with no other restriction.

Don't get me wrong, Earthly star is awesome and well designed.
But Indom has less restriction than Earthly Star and come back more often.

Besides, what makes Ast oGCD be so strong is that he has less of them.
They couldn't balance Astrologian and give the exact same potencies as some WHM or SCH with that in mind.

What I'm saying is. Ast is awesome, yes. Their spells are too.
But the logic behind its design can't just be a "this spell from whm/sch vs this spell from ast"

We have no analyze the whole toolkit to see why he has that like this.
Essentialy Dignty is a response to Benediction/Tetra, merged onto one unique skill that come back more with a variable potency.
Earthly Star is a response to Assize&Plenary Indulgence - Whispering Dawn/Indom.

Ast does in one skill what other might need in 2. But because they had to free up some space for the card system, so he has less of them.
If you made a wrong choice and burned those oGCD badly, you'll be more GCD reliant. That's still efficient, but that's how it is.

However...
Having many oGCD, powerfull or not...
Both gameplay design work well and work together.

Why did I think Succor also got a crit bonus lol, my mistake.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vyriah

AST OGCD are just plain better...

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I'd say you could have a point, but on fights like O8S I think the weakness in AST's shield kit really shows. In there everything hits stupidly hard and the said "once every two minutes" fairy cooldowns works wonder against massive near-50k unmitigated raid busters, or 30k raidwide spam.

Earthly is better than Indom if you look at the potency and the fact most fights have a huge interval between hard hitting raidwide AOEs, but i has double the cooldown and MUST be set up at least 10s in advance, whereas Indom can be used after every skull set and twice during every Forsaken save for the 2nd. Critlo deploy eliminates almost all healing needed before the 2nd set of skulls on Forsaken 1 saving both of your healers GCDs and relieving a lot of pressure, while also making Forsaken 3 much easier.

So while you're not completely wrong, I'd say when an encounter demands it, which healer has the better kit is very noticeable. The same was true in UCOB with Golden Bahamut and quick spamming massive raid wides, it was much easier to sync and execute that fight with a SCH.

Indo does cost an eatherflow stack.
And it's not nothing, eatherflow management is ultimately harder than just using a spell 20 seconds before it happens. And indo won't ever be enough by itself.

Quote:

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I'd say you could have a point, but on fights like O8S I think the weakness in AST's shield kit really shows. In there everything hits stupidly hard and the said "once every two minutes" fairy cooldowns works wonder against massive near-50k unmitigated raid busters, or 30k raidwide spam.

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Yeah, that was specifically answering to "use every Eos spells on top of each other and you get something like collective unconcious".

Indo is great to complete healing when you don't have time, and that's exactly what makes SCH so good. It's weaker, but who care, the two other healer are powerhouses, it's exactly what you need. You hit indo before the raid damage for everyone to survive, but then you can just keep doing DPS because once shit is over earthly star is gonna blow up and everyone will be healed anyway.

You don't use them for the same reason, but earthly star really bring a lot to the table everytime it explode. It's not just potency, it's potency you don't have to spend in GCD. And that's pretty much what AST is about.

I try not to think of one as being better than the other, because they're quite different (as has been covered). Sch is more of a ogcd healer than a mitigator these days.

As far as why someone would want to play a job that requires using so many more skills to do the same thing that another job does with one skill but less often. For fun of course. I enjoy scholar because all of those ogcds mean a lot of weaving for some very active gameplay, especially while trying to pump out massive heals and good damage at the same time. Scholar is an extremely active role, at least for me.

So even if AST was stronger in theory, I'd still want to pick scholar.

That being said, in the end player skill has more to do with job strength. I don't know many ASTs but so far the ones I've met don't really pump out impressive heals, shields, or damage - or they are pumping out good spells but do so at unnecessary times that just pretty much go straight into overheals. Few of them even know how to use the shield sect because they've only learned the regen sect. Of course this is just anecdotal experience so it's possible that I'm just unlucky when it comes to the ASTs I meet, and not an overall trend of all ASTs out there. But based on my experience, I'd take a WHM or SCH over either type of AST any day :/

Aetherflow managing isn't that hard.
With the SB trait now it coms back every 45s.

I guess that's just a matter of personnal feeling and opinion then. But for me Indom wins.