Astro or White Mage ?

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Originally Posted by Vlady

I would pick astro for now. They outclass white mages right now with a better toolkit for tank healing and utility.

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whm are still better.

Just play AST, everyone will love you for your card and you will have a preview of Whm and Sch gameplay through the stances.

Honestly starting with WHM makes more sense. Then if you like astro switching over. You are going to need a few things from the WHM kit anyhow along with swift cast from the THM kit and the leveling experience of going thru the beginning dungeons are a better introduction to basics of healing than just starting at 30 on astro.

Whm are easier...
Ast is a bit more challenging and fun !

But still whm is fine not better.

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

Honestly starting with WHM makes more sense.

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The OP does have healing experience in other MMOs, so I honestly don't know how much benefit Sastasha and the other dungeons will be. Maybe she learns a lot, maybe not. She's been to 50, so she knows what the endgame mechanics are like and should know how much her experience applies to it. She can make her own assessment on that end.

Diurnal AST healing is comparable to WHM but Noct AST is very different from SCH. The fairy and utilitarianism of the scholar skill set are big game changers.

I would recommend the OP at least do the hunting log for Conjurer simply for protect and cleric stance (lv.8) if nothing else. Lv.26 THM for swiftcast is useful, but not necessary until 40 or 50 when you can't out-heal through stupid.

AST will be getting adjustments next week when the patch releases, so who knows what will they change.

I am currently leveling AST, but from what I see it seems to play similar to a WHM but with the use of cards. The cards can be quite fun since I can help the party in more ways than just simply healing and occasionally dpsing

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

The goal of my model was to measure maximum potency in a given scenario.

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It's interesting to look at, but an "infinite MP" scheme isn't particularly useful. It's not indicative of much when it comes to balance, unless they add a "heal the mob to death" style fight later on. It also ignores a few mechanic-based things, even in your realistic version.
Just to list one, counting Collective Unconsciousness' HoT as a fire and forget it heal isn't really how it functions in practice. It's off the GCD, but if you treat it like any other OGCD heal and spam Benefic after you press the button it simply won't apply anything. Depending on where the server is for ticks, it can take up to 3 seconds of channeling to apply its HoT.

So, like I said, interesting read, and I do appreciate the research, but I feel like the value is tenuous at best, and at worst you could have someone running around using it out of context as grounds for their whining.

One thing I want to know is how many DPS in all honestly know what the AST cards are and when they are up? First thing someone told me when I started as a DPS was to trust your healer and not focus on your HP which I do when playing as DPS. When I started as WHM I assumed everyone just knew when they were at like 300 HP and my Benediction saved them from death and so on. However when I play as DPS, I rarely pay attention to that specific detail, focusing instead on doing damage. So I always wonder, when I pop that expanded balance for example, or if the WHM is low on MP and I pop Ewer, do people even notice? I know for me I focus on the party list and mainly watch for debuffs to remove with Esuna and so on, but playing on PS4 I can't just hover my mouse over a buff or debuff on myself to see what it is like a PC player can. So half the time I could have something on me and not even know about it unless it's doing something bad. I just personally get the feeling that people don't pay attention, like when I pop extended Balance on a DPS and then Time Dialation, it's not like it screams out to them "Your damage just went up by 10% for over a minute!"

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Originally Posted by 416to305

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Probably not many know/ pay attention to the AST buff they get unless they also leveled an AST themselves .... but they certainly know when their HP is too low, lol

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Originally Posted by myahele

Probably not many know/ pay attention to the AST buff they get unless they also leveled an AST themselves .... but they certainly know when their HP is too low, lol

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Haha yeah the HP one for sure!! I mean I don't need the recognition or anything like that, but I find AST would probably be way more powerful if people actually knew and realized like their damage was up 10%, so pop those big attacks and so on, just stuff like that. I'm so torn myself now with ESO armour being class specific as well since it takes so long to get them. I have the weapon for my WHM, all other gear is 190 from Alex normal (I don't do savage). So I'm torn between now spending the eso's on gear for my AST, or just keeping at it for WHM. I think that new 24 man raid drops similar gear from what I saw quick so mostly waiting until then to see (also to see if they change either class with 3.1 in a good or bad way).

I liked AST before but I couldn't justify playing it with weaker heals just for the cards as they are too random. With 3.07 though making the base heals the same as WHM, that's what brought me back to it. I think if they were weaker though I'd stick to WHM.

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Originally Posted by 416to305

Haha yeah the HP one for sure!! I mean I don't need the recognition or anything like that, but I find AST would probably be way more powerful if people actually knew and realized like their damage was up 10%, so pop those big attacks and so on, just stuff like that. I'm so torn myself now with ESO armour being class specific as well since it takes so long to get them. I have the weapon for my WHM, all other gear is 190 from Alex normal (I don't do savage). So I'm torn between now spending the eso's on gear for my AST, or just keeping at it for WHM. I think that new 24 man raid drops similar gear from what I saw quick so mostly waiting until then to see (also to see if they change either class with 3.1 in a good or bad way).

I liked AST before but I couldn't justify playing it with weaker heals just for the cards as they are too random. With 3.07 though making the base heals the same as WHM, that's what brought me back to it. I think if they were weaker though I'd stick to WHM.

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Then why even have a white mage in the game if the astrologian is as strong of a healer potency wise? You just said what is wrong with the balance of the healers. Astrologian is going to replace white mage as the goto healer that comes with buffs now. Everyone is suggesting to the OP to go astrologian which is imo a better endorsement but it also shows the mistake SE made buffing astrologians to the same level as white mages.

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Originally Posted by Mibgestalt

It's interesting to look at, but an "infinite MP" scheme isn't particularly useful. It's not indicative of much when it comes to balance, unless they add a "heal the mob to death" style fight later on. It also ignores a few mechanic-based things, even in your realistic version.
Just to list one, counting Collective Unconsciousness' HoT as a fire and forget it heal isn't really how it functions in practice. It's off the GCD, but if you treat it like any other OGCD heal and spam Benefic after you press the button it simply won't apply anything. Depending on where the server is for ticks, it can take up to 3 seconds of channeling to apply its HoT.

So, like I said, interesting read, and I do appreciate the research, but I feel like the value is tenuous at best, and at worst you could have someone running around using it out of context as grounds for their whining.

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You are indeed correct in this respect. I originally built the table as a tool for me to gauge the maximum output a healer regardless of the situation and circumstances. A lot of posters talk about the power a WHM brings to the table but when you look at raw single target healing power between WHM and AST, that's not the case. However, once you start including factors such as MP consumption and the like, it begins to shit the paradigm in some capacity that is harder to gauge. And like you mentioned, I can't account for all variables. Collective Unconsciousness will require one server tick to proc the HoT effect so that can push the AST heals back 3 seconds. Likewise, my WHM number is skewed partially because I'm assuming you'll get five ticks of Divine Seal Regen before reapplying Regen at the very end of Divine Seal, which more often than naught not the case.

As a whole, what I built was a tool to help myself and potentially others understand specific nuances of a job and just like any other tool its important to not take that out of context. Its not different when someone using ACT can blame DPS X for not performing but forget to realize that DPS X also had to deal with mechanic A, B, and C because RNG decided to spit in their face and they weren't looking at the fine details.

In general, that Google doc I link I use as a massive scratch pad for my own thoughts and you can see some of my musings and rambling thoughts on a bit of the tabs. Because I included MP consumption as part of particular set of research, I also began to see the real power Freecure gives to a WHM and shouldn't be underestimated at all. Once you start to remove Freecure from the WHMs repertoire in my normal healing sheet, they begin to lose dramatically in the race of raw single target power against their AST counterpart. In the exact same token, Freecure is also what gives WHM the edge in MP management over an AST. Assize's 10% MP restore does nothing for WHM when ASTs are casting their healing spells that are at 10% cheaper in cost (and in the case of Benefic, almost 20%!) and the only thing that keeps WHM MP management more manageable is both Assize's 300 potency heal (essentially a free Medica) and Freecure procs. If they didn't have either, WHM would lose hands down to AST in the healing department in both power and MP management.

It's things like these that I like to do and encourage others to look at as well because it enables informed decisions and proper discussion with context. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to use the tools properly while maintaining the context of the discussion.

If you like a healer with a wider range of healing abilities for more situations, go WHM.

If you like to be a more support style healer, with a smaller healing toolkit than a WHM, but more buffs, go AST.

If you like a more proactive style of healing, with more supportive dps capabilities, go SCH.