Astrologian impossible to balance as it is

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

I'll just throw this in as a source to sustain this:

Famitsu interview with Yoshida
Same interview translation found on BlueGartr

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Thank you for providing those.

I think it would be neat if for 30 seconds after using CU, you got a buff that lets you switch Sects if you want to. The buff wears after switching Sects though.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

Or even better: people could stop pretending to be game designers suggesting lots of complicated ideas that are harder to program and won't solve a thing. The simple "fix" is take the restriction off and allow AST to change Sects. If that doesn't happen, that's ok too, because AST is viable in any Sect.

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Yup. That's like half the threads on the healer page.

You know one fix could be changing Nocturnal Barrier from a pseudo galvanized to direct damage reduction by ___% ? Aspected Benefic could be 20% and Aspected Helios could be 10%. Have them stack for 30%.

I don't mind the ability to change sects. Although in it's current state I'm not sure what the value would be in end-game raid content. You are going to have the opposite type of healer anyway. Like stacking shields would be OP for progression raiding, and that is why it's explicitly mentioned that it doesn't work in certain skills, and likely never will.

But lets play the sects change game anyway. For-example you could coordinate with your Scholar on Adlo use, and like for A4S practically instant-shield yourself or others for ball and tether mechanics instead of having to stand and heal the damage to eat more, then switch back to Diurnal for healing leg tank damage. I'd even argue it might be a little OP.

I kind of wish there was some more Noct-exclusive abilities even if they don't want to allow sect changes they can get creative to make it more desired. Attach a SCH "Emergency Tactics" type of cooldown of ~60s to allow Aspected Helios HoTs while in Noct (Whispering Dawn is 60s, so that is the benchmark) would be an easy start.

Some may mention Scholar Non-Shield AoE healing, but it is gated by Aetherflow (I don't think the value of a stack is always appreciated when this comparison comes into play) and cool downs. Whereas AST isn't gated in any stance because of Helios. Scholar non-shield options are not always available for every mechanic nor desired to be used often because DPS isn't cheap on MP either.

Of course that is where Dissipation comes into play, as there are many instances in raids where you don't need full fairy healing uptime and that is why AST not having an auto-embrace heal going on isn't going to make or break a setup. If they lower the Synastry cooldown even more, I'd argue this fairy topic would practically go away.

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Originally Posted by technole

Sect Change Snip.

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Honestly sect changing would help but not how you think. WHM + AST, I would use Noct for barrier and Diurnal for dpsing. SCH+AST I would use Duirnal for Regen and Noct for 20% healing buff. This is why I said Sect is a contradiction in a previous post. You kind of need both sides to fill the job of main healer and back up healer.

Long post incoming. No TL;DR, read it only if you will.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

I'll be sure to remember that whenever I see two ASTs paired together in an instance.

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Please, do. Diurnal/Diurnal is a good combo for lots of DF instances that don’t require any kind of shielding. Who cares if the effects stack or not? You’re already sub-optimal by having two of the same job, so just use what’s better to clear the duty with.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

Or rather that people made the natural, logical decision that the 'SCH-like stance' - which Nocturnal was advertised as being, not some PVP niche skill that you keep mentioning - would be a better complement to the WHM's toolkit in a party, instead of being a secondary WHM-type. Except the Sect sucks as doing what's intended in a raid setting (which Jobs are designed and later adjusted around in the first place), while Diurnal doesn't, so it wins out.

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It’s not a “natural, logical decision” to pick any job or healing style based on your party composition and disregarding the duty. I’ll bring up the Yoshi-P quote again, since you guys decided to just read what you wanted instead of reading what he said in detail:

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Tell us a bit more about the two styles of astrologian.
Y: The best way to put it simply is that you'll be able to switch between stances of a pure healer type and a barrier type. One way to think of it is that the healer type would be kind of like white mage, while the shield type would be closer to scholar. However, it would be too strong if you could switch frequently during combat, so there will be restrictions on how often you can change.

Can you give us an example of what the proper utilization would be?
Y: When you're doing a raid dungeon with a white mage, for example, you might use the barrier stance, and you'd use the pure-healer type stance if you were paired with a scholar.

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He said that Diurnal is kind of like a WHM, not a substitute for a WHM (and the same goes with SCH). It was an analogy about healing style, not a statement that AST should replace any of them optimally. People read this as “oh, nice, I’ll be able to replace the other two Jobs!” and Yoshi-P didn’t said that, at least not in this quote.
He used the WHM/Noct x Diurnal/SCH composition as an example of how you could use the Sects. He never said anything about being optimal, necessary or mandatory to do so. Also, he said raid dungeon, which is a label that’s not related to Gordias (Savage) only: all normal Gordias content and Void Ark – not to mention the Coils and the three Crystal Tower duties – are raid dungeons. They’re in the Duty Finder and are the only kind of raid dungeon that you can find yourself paired with anything you didn’t plan on being paired to. To do the Savage version of Second Coil or Alexander – Gordias (Savage), you have to form a pre-made party, which means you’ll include whatever you want. If you choose to be sub-optimal, that’s your problem. Yoshi-P never said it would be optimal in Savage to do so. PLD is not optimal for the last two turns of Gordias (Savage), MNK is not optimal for any of the turns, so there’s absolutely no reason to believe that Nocturnal should be any different. Back in 2.X, there were instances that solo tanking as PLD was the optimal DPS-oriented meta (T5, T7, T8 and T9, which means 1/3 of the raids designed), having a BRD in the party was considered not only optimal, but mandatory for all the 12 battle oriented turns of Coil (I’m excluding T3 for obvious reasons), and having a DRG in the party became a sub-optimal decision as soon as NIN was released. So, please, stop using end-game raiding as a parameter for complaining about how some jobs or stances work, because there will always be a sub-optimal job/stance. In this patch, it happened to be PLD/MNK/Noct. AST. There are other things that could be pointed out:

- In A2S, for example, MCH may fall short in relation to BRD, since the boost to casters provided by BRD is stronger and their AoE potential can be very high with less TP cost;
- In A4S, some SMN mains are using BLM instead to deal with the MP-drain mechanic;
- In A2S, PLD is optimal due to lots of physical damage.

However, I’ll repeat that Nocturnal is viable in all of them. A1S and A2S were cleared week 1 with Nocturnal Sect. In fact, Noct/SCH was used for A2S because the regens were giving tanks a harder time to keep aggro and, since the couldn’t afford to not spam heals with the kind of gear we had back then, HoT effects overhealed more than healed. So the “natural, logical” decision was, in fact, a bad decision for that particular group, which found that the unnatural decision-that-has-no-logic was the better decision in the end. Pretty ironic, don’t you think?

High end raiding tests your perception of things all the time, and the best players know that these natural, logical decisions can mess up progression if you decide to let them constrain you to the point where you stop thinking and let other people think for you instead.

Also, I’d like to point out how sub-optimal Nocturnal actually is in relation to SCH, since this is the biggest issue with the job until now. I’ve done it before, in another thread, with more detail, so I’ll just point out two (big) things:

1) In relation to mitigation, the SCH toolkit has:

- A single target 300 potency shield, which can reach 900 when it crits (Adlo);
- A single target shield that has a 20% chance to reduce the damage dealt by enemies attacking the shielded target by 10%, with a 2 minutes cooldown (Eye for an Eye);
- The ability to spread those two shields in a 10y radius every 90s (Deployment Tactics);
- An 150 potency AoE shield (Succor);
- A bubble that reduces incoming damage by 10% every 30s at the cost of one Aetherflow stack (Sacred Soil);
A 15s 15% STR/DEX/INT/MND reduction debuff with a 90s cooldown (Supervirus);
A 20% magic resistance AoE buff when using Eos every 2 minutes (Fey Covenant).

AST has:

- A single target, instant cast 325 potency shield (Aspected Benefic);
- A 157 potency AoE shield (Aspected Helios);
- A bubble that reduces incoming damage by 10% every 90s (Collective Unconscious);
- A debuff that reduces damage dealt by 10% for 6s every 60s (Disable);
- A random buff that reduces damage taken by a variable amount, being able to reduce 15% of a single target or 5% in AoE (all the variations of The Bole);

Now let’s compare:

a) Since critical hits and cards are RNG based, we can’t consider them a consistent way of mitigating damage. People who play AST or SCH know that you can spend a complete raid night without getting a single Critical Adlo when you need to deploy it or a Bole during incoming AoE damage. For that reason, we can dismiss the critical hits and the AoE boles as being a thing that raiders rely upon to clear content. This makes Eye for an Eye and Fey Covenant more effective than a Bole, and also make Aspected Benefic more effective than an Adloquium. We have to keep in mind that Fey Covenant increases magic resistance values by 20%, and that a 20% increase may will not be translated into an actual 20% reduction;
b) As Ghishlain showed in another topic, Supervirus is more effective than Disable in average mitigation, but they can also reach the same values due to the RNG component of damage equations in this game, so the actual difference in damage output may not be felt as strongly as most people believe. Also, Disable can be used more often and even stack with a SMN Supervirus;
c) Sacred Soil and Colletive Unconscious are both used during spike raid-wide damage, and have the same kind of mitigation. The main difference is not the placement of the bubble since people usually stack for Cure III (assuming we’re doing the natural and logical pairing with a WHM of, course), but the cooldown: Sacred Soil can be used more often than Collective Unconscious;
d) Succor and Aspected Helios are equivalent due to the RNG component of the equations;
e) Deployment Tactics are a way of spreading a 300 to 900 shield to the party. Since crits are not reliable, we must assume that 300 is the default value that groups are going to consistently rely upon. AST has nothing like it;

I believe it’s reasonable to say that for normal mitigation, they’re very competitive for some reasons:

a) SCH’s shielding spells (Adloquium and Succor) have slightly stronger counterparts in the AST toolkit, with the exception of a critical Adloquium which is not consistent;
b) Even though Sacred Soil can be used every 30s, it costs a stack, so it’s fair to say that no SCH with their right mind will spam that and burn their chances of using an extra Lustrate, Indomitbility or Energy Drain. For that reason, let’s assume they’re using it once a minute. This matches the cooldown for Disable, which offers a comparable of mitigation (minus 10% every minute);
c) For raid-wide damage, we can compare Supervirus with Collective Unconscious in relation to the number of times you can use it, with Supervirus being overall stronger in mitigation, which is an aspect that the healing component of Collective Unconscious can make up for. Of course, SCH could use Whispering Dawn, but the Collective Unconscious HoT potency can be way higher (even double it, in some cases) than the fairy one;
d) Eye for an Eye doens’t stack, and can be used not only by SMN, but also by WHM and BLM, so even with the longer cooldown when cross-classed, this kind of mitigation is present even when a SCH is not in the party;

The optimal mitigation comes from two aspects:

a) Fey Covenant even though it’s very strong, has a long cooldown and requires Eos to be present. An AST could answer this with a spread Bole if this more mitigation is actually necessary. Nevertheless, this is something that makes SCH optimal in mitigation;
b) Finally, we reached the Deployment thing, which is the primary reason why SCH’s mitigation kit is overall stronger. An occasional 900 potency AoE shield is not something to overlook, and a 300 reliable shield every 90s is very consistent. The only way that an AST can come a little closer to this number is by using Synastry before casting Aspected Helios to boost the shielding potency to 187, which is 113 potency lower than the regular Deployed Shield. However, SCH can also use Fey Illumination to boost the spread shield to 360 (I’m not even going to consider Dissipation, because that takes the fairy away), which will make the gap even bigger. In actual numbers, the consistent shielding a SCH provides is between 1000-2000 hit points for a non critical hit.

These are raw numbers, without any context. Let’s introduce some situations to see how they fare in the fights we’re actually talking about:

a) For A1S, no shielding is actually required. The fight was cleared with WHM/Diurnal combo, which means that mitigation is not a defining factor. Shields are helpful, of course, but the party is too spread out for Adloquium + Deployment Tactics be a thing you use when the bosses are in the Arena. Jumps are the only situation where this mechanic is viable, but it’s not necessary to survive anything. It was fairly easy to keep everyone topped off before and after the landing impact with no shielding at all (since back then Diurnal Collective Unconscious didn’t provide any shielding). This means that a Nocturnal AST would be just fine for A1S;
b) A2S does not require any shielding as well, specially of the AoE kind. This makes Nocturnal Sect completely viable for this fight;
c) In A3S, the cooldown of Deployment Tactics and Supervirus is not short enough to guarantee its use for every single Cascade and all splashes, which is the mechanic you want to mitigate damage from. This means that even a SCH won’t be able to use its complete toolkit to deal with this kind of damage, and Sacred Soil + Succor will be the reliable kind of mitigation your party will have and it’s honestly the only one it actually needs. This is easily matched by Disable + Aspected Helios, which means that a party can survive any mechanic in that fight with a Nocturnal AST mitigation toolkit. SCH is stronger, that’s a fact, but that doesn’t mean any party requires it for mitigation;
d) Finally, a lot of people say that in A4S the party AoE buster is very strong and that you needed a lot of mitigation to survive it earlier in the patch 3.05, more than a Nocturnal AST could provide alone. I can’t confirm that with my own experience, so I’ll take the claim as true. Nowadays, there have been clears with Nocturnal AST (very few, of course), so it’s viable, even though it’s not optimal. However, I’d like to point out the fact that a lot of groups used DRK to clear A4S earlier in the patch, which means that the party didn’t have PLD’s Divine Veil mitigation. Noct AST + PLD could provide the same kind of mitigation a Deployed Adloquium can (even more, actually), so the fact that groups didn’t use PLD + SCH makes me inclined to believe that mitigation is not the reason SCH is the default off-healer choice. That leads me to my second point.

2) What makes SCH optimal for the off-healer spot is not mitigation, but DPS potential, which comes from the fact that the job stems from a DPS class (ACN, the same as SMN). This already means that the basic DPS spells of a true DPS job are all available to SCH, and so is the resource management mechanic; this puts SCH in a very special spot, which is also occupied by WAR when compared to tanks –MRD is a weird tanking class that has several things we only see in DPS classes, like a sustained increased damage buff (Maim) and a debuff that increases damage dealt by a certain weapon-type (the slashing debuff).

As far as I know, Yoshi-P never stated that Nocturnal would ever have high DPS capabilities, and he only made an analogy about healing style. This means that SCH is not something Nocturnal was ever intended to replace and that groups that build their statics around optimizing DPS output for all roles will have to include a SCH. This is something similar to 2.X DPS meta, which had only 4-DPS spots for fights which required two tanks: before 2.4, the number of DPS spots jobs was five, which meant one of them would be left out. BRD had a guaranteed spot back them. Nowadays, the two healer meta requires a choice similar to what existed in the 2.X – one of the jobs will be left out –, and since competitive groups want to clear the high-end content as fast as possible, DPS optmization is necessary and SCH will have a permanent spot. This is not a problem in the game, but a choice that the community makes with the possibilites offered. We just have to deal with it, since it exists in several games and it exists in FF XIV since 2.0 was launched; if SE has not “fixed” this aspect by now, I’ll assume that this won’t ever happen. My bet is that in 4.0 we’ll see a new off-healer oriented job, and that WHM/AST will fight for the main healer spot and that SCH will fight with the new job for the other spot; the SCH/NEW HEALER combo will be sub-optimal in healing capabilites, just as the WHM/AST is sub-optimal in DPS capabilities at the moment.

Finally, Yoshi-P has also stated that the fights were not designed with healer DPS in mind, and that it is only needed for parties that want to clear the Savage fights below the expected average item level – which has not been stated yet, but while comparing it with Coil we can assume that A1S would be around i190, A2S around i195, A3S would be something like i200 and A4S something like i125. Since clearing the fights before this item level treshold is what the pro-groups want, WHM/AST is not going to be the optimal choice; in fact, it will probably render the effort impossible. However, how many groups are actually competing for the World 1st position to make this whole optimal versus sub-optimal discussion actually necessary?
If, after passing the item level treshold, your group is still not meeting the checks without the amount of DPS a SCH provides, and if your group can’t survive the mechanics with the amount of mitigation a Nocturnal AST can provide alone, then it means that your problem is not a sub-optimal party composition, but sub-optimal players. Most people that cry about Nocturnal are not clearing the fights as WHM/SCH as well, simply because they can’t do the mechanics properly.

This raid tier has been having a lot of issues that are not related to job design, but to raid design. Most groups can’t clear A3S because of issues like latency, which makes the Wash Away + Digititis mechanic impossible to handle. There are groups wiping to the double hand mechanic because latency doesn’t let them place them properly. People are also not meeting Equal Concentration’s DPS check. All of those happen way before healer DPS/mitigation becomes a problem, specially because the DPS check I mentioned is best done as WHM or AST, because of the higher burst in relation to SCH.

In that case, Square-Enix can buff the hell out of Nocturnal Sect. They could indulge the ideas presented in here and add not one but two floating moons to heal and add HoTs while Nocturnal AST blasts the supernovas people suggested in another topic: groups would still not clear it with this raid design.

I’ll give you guys a personal example: I have been doing A3S since september. My static still hasn’t cleared it, because of stupid things. Since we started in july we had to replace not one, but three bards that decided to quit for different reasons. We also lost a MNK who went to Panama and never came back; this led to us having our OT change to MNK and relearn A2S from the gobwalker perspective. This OT I mentioned was already replacing our former OT, who stopped playing because he was in the middle of a divorce. Our original healer composition was WHM/AST, but our WHM had a teenager tantrum because of a stupid fight with a friend of our former raid leader; we replaced him with a SCH that is in the Air Force and two months ago decided he wouldn’t play anymore after he was transfered to Alaska, which means we got another SCH (our third healer so far). The last development happened last week, when our MT decided to quit the game because of lag issues with Comcast, and now our BRD, who lives in the same state, is having lag issues. None of this issues was ever related to my job choice, or even Sect choice for that matter.
This personal story is my own, of course, but almost all groups in my server are having similar problems and stopped progressing not because of job composition, but because of real life issues. Statics are breaking up in A3S because that fight was poorly designed and requires not only an insane amount of practice, but perfect conditions to play, otherwise you’ll wipe constantly to god knows what.

This is the reason why I believe people are overreacting to the Sect thing. In all of the end game raid design, only one fight requires the kind of mitigation SCH offers and in only two of them healer DPS is actually an issue. Square-Enix has already stated that this will be fixed in Midas, so just wait for three weeks or so, and you’ll see how Nocturnal Sect will stop being a problem, even if they don’t buff it or if they don’t take away the restriction to change Sects.

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

You're threading on thin ice here with an accusation of others being pretend-game designers while throwing in a proposal yourself in the very same sentence.

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Yes, that's true. I don't mind the thin ice thing, because I have a degree in game design and I have been working with game design for the past six years. Some of the people in here may also be designers, but the amount of absurd ideas I see in here show otherwise.

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Originally Posted by technole

I don't mind the ability to change sects. Although in it's current state I'm not sure what the value would be in end-game raid content. You are going to have the opposite type of healer anyway. Like stacking shields would be OP for progression raiding, and that is why it's explicitly mentioned that it doesn't work in certain skills, and likely never will.

But lets play the sects change game anyway. For-example you could coordinate with your Scholar on Adlo use, and like for A4S practically instant-shield yourself or others for ball and tether mechanics instead of having to stand and heal the damage to eat more, then switch back to Diurnal for healing leg tank damage. I'd even argue it might be a little OP

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I don't know if this will be that overpowered, since using an Aspected Spell, changing Sect and then using another Aspected Spell consumes a lot of MP and generates a lot of aggro. If it becomes OP even with the MP/aggro issue, there are some easy fixes, like:
- Adding a longer cooldown to Sect change; or
- Adding a temporary debuff that increases the cost of Aspected Spells when you change Sects.

Only actual testing will tell how OP it is, since stance dancing has always been something that requires some degree of skill.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

Yes, that's true. I don't mind the thin ice thing, because I have a degree in game design and I have been working with game design for the past six years. Some of the people in here may also be designers, but the amount of absurd ideas I see in here show otherwise.

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And I am in the credits for Diablo 2 as a beta tester from the days of early Battle net and kali but that does not mean my perception is the same as the setup the designers have for the game. That does not make you an expert any more then someone else who has played the game and know the system to a detail for years.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

And I am in the credits for Diablo 2 as a beta tester from the days of early Battle net and kali but that does not mean my perception is the same as the setup the designers have for the game. That does not make you an expert any more then someone else who has played the game and know the system to a detail for years.

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True, I can't possibly know exactly what the developers plan to do, not any more than other people. But suggesting a floating moon and copycats of SCH DPS spells for AST while complaining, at the same time, that AST has no unique identity is pretty messed up, if you ask me. Knowing game design in theory and practice, not only as a player or consumer, grants a different insight. People are not worried about balance when they suggest balance ideas; they want their job to be OP, and that's a characteristic of game players. If 90% of the ideas in this forum were taken into consideration, the game would have three jobs that would be repeated, since everyone wants their favorite job to be able to do anything the other jobs do, with different names and animations. So I may not be an expert that can guess what the developers want, but I can have a different point of view and I can sort out lots of ideas that won't work. If you, who experienced game design from a developer point of view, can't do that, that's your problem not mine.

I'll chime in here for a moment, not too deeply about the AST "balance" topic because despite reading the thread I'm still unsure in what aspect balance is desired. I think it's argued that N-AST is to be made more desirable with relation to the rest of the AST toolkit, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it's AST vs SCH/WHM. Time Dilation if nothing else is a thorn that needs attention.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

[...] Most people that cry about Nocturnal are not clearing the fights as WHM/SCH as well, simply because they can’t do the mechanics properly.

[...] This raid tier has been having a lot of issues that are not related to job design, but to raid design. Most groups can’t clear A3S because of issues like latency, which makes the Wash Away + Digititis mechanic impossible to handle.

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Although I don't fully agree on A3S being a badly designed fight (personally finding it the most enjoyable fight in this tier), I support the claim that a certain number of statements regarding the weakness of AST stems from not using the job the way it was intended. AST possess tools that are similar to that of the other healers, but to have the rest of the party (or more importantly the healers themselves) act as if the AST is whatever healer the AST's replacing probably plays a part in failures experienced.

As a small tangent, I'd like to point out that it's quite possible to clear Wash Away, Digititis and Equal Concentration even with medium to high latency, but the way to tackle the mechanics need to be adapted and it makes the whole phase much more stressful.

I am not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, as I find AST to be pretty well balanced atm. With respect to Diurnal vs Noct - one thing to consider is shields are niche while regens are universally useful. For 95% of the game, if I could I would trade regen for Adlo on my SCH in a heartbeat. Shields are used, primarily single target ones, when there is a full hp threat of death which isn't that often. Noct isn't weak. There isn't much difference from a Diurnal vs Noct AST except that regens become shields, the rest of the job stays the same. Regens are simply more useful. I can go entire encounters without casting Adlo on SCH, but why would I ever go a whole fight without casting a regen?

The other thing to consider is that a Diurnal AST still has mitigation tools in Disable and Collective Unconscious.

AST needs to be balanced as a whole, there is no problem with Noct sect being niche. I thoght Titan Egi and Fists of Earth were great examples. The 4.0 healer add should be more off-healer focused to compete with the SCH slot, as AST currently completes much more fairly for the main healer role.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

snip

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I remember you have a regen called "Fairy"

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Originally Posted by AlphaSonic

I remember you have a regen called "Fairy"

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True fairy works much like a regen. But that's irrelevant to the point. I'd still trade A Regen spell for Adlo 95% of the time, whether the fairy existed or not.

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Originally Posted by Eisenhower

Although I don't fully agree on A3S being a badly designed fight (personally finding it the most enjoyable fight in this tier), I support the claim that a certain number of statements regarding the weakness of AST stems from not using the job the way it was intended. AST possess tools that are similar to that of the other healers, but to have the rest of the party (or more importantly the healers themselves) act as if the AST is whatever healer the AST's replacing probably plays a part in failures experienced.

As a small tangent, I'd like to point out that it's quite possible to clear Wash Away, Digititis and Equal Concentration even with medium to high latency, but the way to tackle the mechanics need to be adapted and it makes the whole phase much more stressful.

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I believe the fight is poorly designed mainly because of three reasons:
1) Its position in the progression, that locks out a lot of groups before the final fight. I've heard/read some people stating that A3S and A4S should be swapped, and I agree with that;
2) The gear progression is a big problem, because SE locked the three most important slots of most builds in A3S and A4S, making it harder to gear up before 3.1 hit the thing. This is a problem related to the first reason;
3) A3S requires fast reaction, raid awareness and precise positioning for several of its mechanics. All that with a tight DPS check, not only in Equal Concentration, but in the fight as a whole. Latency makes it way harder than it should be, specially because Digitiis, Ferrofluid, Protean Wave and the Tethers have short timers. Mix that up with some RNG components, and everything is just too hectic. One example: during add phase, all adds can spawn in one side of the map, which requires the group to move around much (this messes up casters and BRD); when the tether spawns, the affected target may be too far away from the tank and any issue with latency can mess up the tether passing. This makes progression a pain in the ass, and most groups don't have the energy to keep going after a while.

The main problem is that A3S was kind of designed in a vacuum, without much regard to the actual community and the material issues that are present when playing an online game. Animation lag can kill someone in a split second in A3S, and if your group can't spend a lot of time practicing it, it's going to take a long time to clear the fight. When real life happens, statics break up, people give up etc. This is why I believe the fight is poorly designed. When done properly, it's a lot of fun, but it just doesn't work with the rest of the game, in my opinion.

Overall I think A3 is an amazingly designed fight and super fun. It does take a lot of time to learn and is difficult, but that doesn't mean it poorly designed. A4 is poorly designed. Every single one of your examples I agree with in fact but disagree with that that fact means poor design, although you'd get no argument from me if they swapped the order with A4. I think super tight DPS checks while dealing with mechanics is the ultimate way to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the team, as all 8 players can contribute to dps while also also dpsrotationing/healing/mitigating while simaeltaneously having raid awareness and moving. It's the ultimate in game check of player skill.

And of course the better gear slots come from there and 4...the best gear should always come from the hardest stuff, this is true for any game with gear, really. I can agree to disagree on the design of the fight - but not sure where else you'd want pants, bodys and weapons to drop from.

Note, we have only recently beaten A3 and a lot of time went into learning it - so this isn't from the perspective of a supergroup who walked through it week 3. But all those wipes and messups led to some entertaining nights, and it took us longer to clear than most groups. I enjoyed the process, and if you don't you probably should not be raiding. Also note that the dps checks are much less now, you can miss up a digi or have someone die and still win the fight, which wasn't possible in i190 when it was released.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Honestly sect changing would help but not how you think. WHM + AST, I would use Noct for barrier and Diurnal for dpsing. SCH+AST I would use Duirnal for Regen and Noct for 20% healing buff. This is why I said Sect is a contradiction in a previous post. You kind of need both sides to fill the job of main healer and back up healer.

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That is why I also presented the A4S scenario. It would be a bit OP to allow changes, more importantly how much more broken the capstone raid could end up being with fast mitigation for ball/carnage mechanics and being able to churn out HoTs for the leg mechanics without much of a barrier. This is assuming one GCD for a stance change.

You also don't need both sides of the job at-once. With today's gear levels no one is struggling in Alex Savage without the MND buff. There isn't even a thread anymore complaining about it like there was during July. You don't need Noct simply for a healing buff. Synastry is perfectly fine for anything that used Divine Seal.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

I am not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, as I find AST to be pretty well balanced atm. With respect to Diurnal vs Noct - one thing to consider is shields are niche while regens are universally useful.

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If you've read the whole thing, you would have known the issue with Nocturnal Sect isn't limited to mitigation purposes.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

Overall I think A3 is an amazingly designed fight and super fun. It does take a lot of time to learn and is difficult, but that doesn't mean it poorly designed. A4 is poorly designed. Every single one of your examples I agree with in fact but disagree with that that fact means poor design, although you'd get no argument from me if they swapped the order with A4. I think super tight DPS checks while dealing with mechanics is the ultimate way to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the team, as all 8 players can contribute to dps while also also dpsrotationing/healing/mitigating while simaeltaneously having raid awareness and moving. It's the ultimate in game check of player skill.

And of course the better gear slots come from there and 4...the best gear should always come from the hardest stuff, this is true for any game with gear, really. I can agree to disagree on the design of the fight - but not sure where else you'd want pants, bodys and weapons to drop from.

Note, we have only recently beaten A3 and a lot of time went into learning it - so this isn't from the perspective of a supergroup who walked through it week 3. But all those wipes and messups led to some entertaining nights, and it took us longer to clear than most groups. I enjoyed the process, and if you don't you probably should not be raiding. Also note that the dps checks are much less now, you can miss up a digi or have someone die and still win the fight, which wasn't possible in i190 when it was released.

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In coil, some body/leg pieces dropped from the second fight and the other piece dropped from the last one, so this has been done before.

And I wouldn't mind progressing slowly if my static wasn't spending 90% of the time looking for subs/replacements instead of progressing.

I believe that A3S is poorly designed, but that's my opinion. I don't believe in vacuum design, which is the design choice for a lot of content in games since games have existed. But that's my bias.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

If you want to compare AST/SCH, I'm down for it and I've done it in other threads.

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The funny thing was I was trying NOT to compare Noct AST to SCH, lol. I feel that topic has been done to death and then some and I was trying to focus a bit more on Diurnal AST vs Noct AST with my post because I feel that's a important design consideration for the future of this job.

For all intents and purposes, Nocturnal versus Diurnal is like choosing between Discipline Priest talent tree versus Holy Priest talent tree (Kinda). AST is the first job in the game that basically has a talent spec that's like WoW in the sense you cannot change the Sect in combat and locking yourself into said "spec" prior to engaging content. Unfortunately, one spec in the AST kit is significantly more powerful then the other.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

b) As Ghishlain showed in another topic, Supervirus is more effective than Disable in average mitigation, but they can also reach the same values due to the RNG component of damage equations in this game, so the actual difference in damage output may not be felt as strongly as most people believe. Also, Disable can be used more often and even stack with a SMN Supervirus;

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I have to ask, where did I or you or perhaps anyone mentioned the bolded bit? @_@ Or perhaps some clarity because I remember making mentioning in said thread that Disable gives the group 10% mitigation for a total of 18s versus 15% mitigation for a total of 20s in the same two minute window.

I know it's a nitpick, but I am curious about what you were aiming towards with that train of thought and what you were implying because I'm curious more than anything else.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

I am not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, as I find AST to be pretty well balanced atm. With respect to Diurnal vs Noct - one thing to consider is shields are niche while regens are universally useful. For 95% of the game, if I could I would trade regen for Adlo on my SCH in a heartbeat. Shields are used, primarily single target ones, when there is a full hp threat of death which isn't that often. Noct isn't weak. There isn't much difference from a Diurnal vs Noct AST except that regens become shields, the rest of the job stays the same. Regens are simply more useful. I can go entire encounters without casting Adlo on SCH, but why would I ever go a whole fight without casting a regen?

The other thing to consider is that a Diurnal AST still has mitigation tools in Disable and Collective Unconscious.

AST needs to be balanced as a whole, there is no problem with Noct sect being niche. I thoght Titan Egi and Fists of Earth were great examples. The 4.0 healer add should be more off-healer focused to compete with the SCH slot, as AST currently completes much more fairly for the main healer role.

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I'm sorry, but comments like these make me feel you don't quite understand the magnitude of the situation regarding the two Sects.

Titan Egi / Fists of Earth to Nocturnal Sect in the sense that they are both situational. That is where the comparisons end.

Nocturnal Sect encompasses a significantly larger issue because it encompasses an entire paradigm of healing that fundamentally changes how you play the job in a healing capacity.

When you're in Nocturnal Sect, your healing style changes in the following ways
-More upfront healing require due no HoT capability
-More MP management required due to more MP consumption for equal levels of potency
-Less utility with Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition because you have less applicable buffs to extend
-Less overall DPS contribution due to 5% less attack speed


Whereas when a SMN uses Titan-Egi or MNK uses Fists of Earth is generally just one thing:
-They do slightly less DPS

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I have to ask, where did I or you or perhaps anyone mentioned the bolded bit? @_@ Or perhaps some clarity because I remember making mentioning in said thread that Disable gives the group 10% mitigation for a total of 18s versus 15% mitigation for a total of 20s in the same two minute window.

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I probably didn't express myself properly in that sentence.

Your spreadsheet shows different values for natural damage, disabled damage and "supervirused" damage for the same spell over a certain number of casts. When you look at the numbers, the variation in all three columns show that some Disabled values are lower than some "supervirused" values. We know that an AoE blast is not going to hit all targets for the same amount of damage, because not only the defense/magic defense values are different, but because the calculation is made individually. This means that the RNG part of the equation used to calculate damage can sometimes nullify the difference between the two skills in actual output.

Example: assume that the average damage of a hit is around 1K. That means Disable shoud reduce it to 900 and Supervirus should reduce it to 850; however, the 1K average damage is an average indeed: the maximum hit can be 1100 and the minimum hit can be 900. If you use Disable and the hits are closer to the minimum level, you'll see numbers that are lower than supervirused hits that are closer to the damage cap.

What I mean with my comparison is that the difference exists, but it can be negligible. In Thordan EX, for example, during the tank split for the two knights we may see two Holiest of Holy casts if the party can't burn down one of them in time; my group uses Supervirus in one of them and Disable for the other, and it's really hard to tell the difference between them because everyone is getting hit at the same time and the values are different every time.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I'm sorry, but comments like these make me feel you don't quite understand the magnitude of the situation regarding the two Sects.

Titan Egi / Fists of Earth to Nocturnal Sect in the sense that they are both situational. That is where the comparisons end.

Nocturnal Sect encompasses a significantly larger issue because it encompasses an entire paradigm of healing that fundamentally changes how you play the job in a healing capacity.

When you're in Nocturnal Sect, your healing style changes in the following ways
-More upfront healing require due no HoT capability
-More MP management required due to more MP consumption for equal levels of potency
-Less utility with Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition because you have less applicable buffs to extend
-Less overall DPS contribution due to 5% less attack speed


Whereas when a SMN uses Titan-Egi or MNK uses Fists of Earth is generally just one thing:
-They do slightly less DPS

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When you are talking about 5% more speed or heal strength, you are really splitting hairs - its not much of a noticeable difference either way. When we were testing our DRK in either grit or non grit during the first phase of A3, our WHM found it did not change his healing/dps rotation one bit. And that’s 20% more mitigation. The 5% bonuses are basically token differences between the stances.

Look at this this way - let's just pretend Noct didn't exist and an AST was simply their Diurnal version. The job works, it's powerlevel is fine, or if you think it's a little underpowered, it's still a little underpowered. The complete removal of a stance makes basically no difference in the job, cept now it's not as good in PVP. This is why the Titan and Fist of Earth comparisons are valid. Use it in the limited game situations it makes sense to do so, otherwise just rock Diurnal and not worry about Noct. The in game gravity of this "issue" is non existant.

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He said that Diurnal is kind of like a WHM, not a substitute for a WHM (and the same goes with SCH).

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Him saying 'kind of like a WHM' is the same thing as me calling it a 'WHM-type', so all you've done is attempt to play semantics. The fact that D.AST clearly leans more towards a main healer role (the WHM's strength), while Noct (albeit on paper, not so much in practice) leans more towards an off-healer role (the SCH's strength), reinforces this point.

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He used the WHM/Noct x Diurnal/SCH composition as an example of how you could use the Sects. He never said anything about being optimal

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He used it as an example of how the Sects should be properly utilised, as that was the question posed to him.

Can you give us an example of what the proper utilization would be?

So according to Yoshi's response, the proper way to utilise the Sects, is to use Diurnal with a SCH and Nocturnal with a WHM. Which, as I said before, is a logical decision you'd expect people to make, considering how they've just been told how one stance is 'kinda like a WHM' (i.e. WHM-type) and the other is 'closer to SCH' (i.e. a SCH-type).

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Also, he said raid dungeon, which is a label that’s not related to Gordias (Savage) only: all normal Gordias content and Void Ark – not to mention the Coils and the three Crystal Tower duties – are raid dungeons.

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Let's not pretend that high end-game content like Savage isn't the biggest (if not the only) factor when it comes to how they create and adjust Jobs in this game. Which makes all the sense in the world, as that's the only medium where you'll get to see the Job at full potential. That's why whenever balance issues come up they always mention stuff like waiting for feedback from raids before they consider making adjustments. How it performs in DF-content is minor since that's tailored to where any Job can do decently enough as long as people know how to press buttons.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

I probably didn't express myself properly in that sentence.

Your spreadsheet shows different values for natural damage, disabled damage and "supervirused" damage for the same spell over a certain number of casts. When you look at the numbers, the variation in all three columns show that some Disabled values are lower than some "supervirused" values. We know that an AoE blast is not going to hit all targets for the same amount of damage, because not only the defense/magic defense values are different, but because the calculation is made individually. This means that the RNG part of the equation used to calculate damage can sometimes nullify the difference between the two skills in actual output.

Example: assume that the average damage of a hit is around 1K. That means Disable shoud reduce it to 900 and Supervirus should reduce it to 850; however, the 1K average damage is an average indeed: the maximum hit can be 1100 and the minimum hit can be 900. If you use Disable and the hits are closer to the minimum level, you'll see numbers that are lower than supervirused hits that are closer to the damage cap.

What I mean with my comparison is that the difference exists, but it can be negligible. In Thordan EX, for example, during the tank split for the two knights we may see two Holiest of Holy casts if the party can't burn down one of them in time; my group uses Supervirus in one of them and Disable for the other, and it's really hard to tell the difference between them because everyone is getting hit at the same time and the values are different every time.

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Ahhh, I see what you mean then. If I can make a suggestion, I'd recommend you refrain from referring to the fact that Disable can match Virus with RNG involvement as, while technically true, isn't necessary an accurate statement for the majority of the times. It's like saying Virus is 50% more potent than Disable or can be double as effective as Disable thanks to RNG. While technically all those statement are technically true, they feel like they're exaggerating the basic analysis to one result or another and it's best we just talk about averages which does mean Virus > Disable in most normal circumstances.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

When you are talking about 5% more speed or heal strength, you are really splitting hairs - its not much of a noticeable difference either way. When we were testing our DRK in either grit or non grit during the first phase of A3, our WHM found it did not change his healing/dps rotation one bit. And that’s 20% more mitigation. The 5% bonuses are basically token differences between the stances.

Look at this this way - let's just pretend Noct didn't exist and an AST was simply their Diurnal version. The job works, it's powerlevel is fine, or if you think it's a little underpowered, it's still a little underpowered. The complete removal of a stance makes basically no difference in the job, cept now it's not as good in PVP. This is why the Titan and Fist of Earth comparisons are valid. Use it in the limited game situations it makes sense to do so, otherwise just rock Diurnal and not worry about Noct. The in game gravity of this "issue" is non existant.

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I understand your reasoning and logic but will have to disagree with your perception of the magnitude of the situation. With that being said, based on the comments of this post I'm fairly certain I won't be able to dissuade you from that argument either so I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with your stance.

I haven't seen it mentioned at all in this thread but it would be hard to compare the 3 healers without breaking apart their separate functions.

DPS
Healing
MP Recovery/Effeciency
Party Support
(Is that it?)

Then break it down over the 4 Healers (ASTN and ASTD, WHM, SCH)

Then you can pinpoint the exact area they are lacking and/or at an advantage. Then decide if it's possible another class can fill in that niche area or not.

You forgot mitigation, which is a big, significant part of a healer's tookit that can't simply be thrown under a 'support' category. Mitigation is very, very important in high end content until you overgear it enough.

If they truly want to allow nocturnal and scholar shields to stack then put a mitigation cap on it total amount the shield cannot add a hp buffer more then 50% of the targets health for warrior and maybe 40% for dark knight and paladin. Then let the shields stack up to that threshhold and allow the leftover bubble to be converted into a hot or something.

Stance Dancing Warrior style between sects would fix everything

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Originally Posted by Milestailsprowe

Stance Dancing Warrior style between sects would fix everything

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Maybe it would. It would let the astrologian shift to nocturnal to rev up a mitigation spell then go back to duirnal to output healing that would allow them to play the scholar side much more easily. Still a dps issue since scholars are brought more for its additional dps then pure mitigation.

I really don't see how stance dancing a kit would fix everything when the issue is the fact that nobody really uses Nocturnal for anything outside of PVP.... Now if both kits were utilized well or at least in a higher percentage then 80% : 20% (Diurnal : Nocturnal) I would say that making stance dance a thing would be beneficial, but it's pretty clear that the problem lies in that both stances are not equally beneficial. The Shield on Nocturnal needs augmenting whether it gives a different type of buff or a stronger shield, it needs SOMETHING. Diurnal's native is hardly noticeable and frankly given that it's mostly used for AoE spammy fights, it should be -MP Cost rather then this ridiculous Attack Speed +. The kits need to compliment one another, like how stupid it is that DRK gets a Parry + but when Dark Art'd it gets an Evasion + Making the idea of dodging what hits you to proc your parrying pretty much negating.

Diurn is fine, you don't need to change attack speed. 5% is noticeable in the long term and it's always welcome when you are dps'ing.
Noctunal would be funnier if its synergy with her skillset were higher. Time dilation/Co should be more usefull in Nocturnal.

Stance dancing would fix everything. Your in Diurnal till you need shields or you want to keep shields up. Get your regen up then swap to nocturnal for raw heals then back to refresh healing dot.

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Originally Posted by Milestailsprowe

Stance dancing would fix everything. Your in Diurnal till you need shields or you want to keep shields up. Get your regen up then swap to nocturnal for raw heals then back to refresh healing dot.

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While that would make AST the ultimate solo healer, I think it would create some major balance issues with the other healers.

I will admit that it would synergize much better with their Card Buffs since they can weave them while being a super healer and not having to stance swap at all, and being possible to solo heal progression content while bringing an extra DPS.

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Probably the simplest thing to start with would be to eliminate the useless card buffs that do not apply to the meta that the current healers follow.

Change:

- The Spire - TP Refresh (useless as an RNG party buff)
- The Bole - Reduce Damage taken by 10% (useless as an RNG Buff - does not fit the meta as people gear for unavoidable damage)
- The Spear - what is this? I don't even.


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WHM:
Pros: High AOE Burst - High Single Target Burst DPS - Strong AOE Heals - Strong Single Target Heals
Cons: Low Sustainability for DPS. Low active mitigation (shields/super virus) can't heal while in Clerics

SCH:
Pros - Very High Sustained AOE and Single Target DPS - Fairy - Party Utility - Shields - Decent AOE Heals with CD's - Burst Healing
Cons - High Skill Curve

AST
Pros - Strong AOE and Single Target Heals, Shielding, Disable, Party Buffs, RNG, can add party DPS while still healing.
Cons - Useless RNG Party Buffs, Lowest single target and AOE damage.

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Recommendations for AST

Lower MP in Noct/Increase Damage
Increase Healing in Diurnal
Combust II = AOE
Then make adjustments to the cards so AST isn't completely balanced around RNG and Party performance.

Assuming you are of the mind that AST is underpowered, I don't see how stance dancing fixes anything at all. It's not like when I am playing Diurnal I am thinking goddamn if only I had a shield right now I would be so much more useful. The faceroll 4man stuff doesn't need shields (and you can already stance dance between pulls to get a shield on for max dps), and for the hard content Disable and/or Collective Unconscious nearly always suffices, and if not you generally have a SCH with you. AST's issues:

Mana spend while healing and dpsing aggressively
Powerful CDs which need properly planned but are less useful, or power wasted to handle emergency situations (makes AST play much better in good statics, and less so in PF and pickup content)
AOE Dmg output in dungeons
Threat build in long healing intensive fights (A3)

Stance dancing doesn't really change any of it's core issues.

All they need to do is tinker for some minor QOL changes, like this new shuffle thing, and in 4.0 have the new healer more off-healer slot oriented instead of main slot to give SCH come competition. And tbh there is already so much stance dancing between in and out of Cleric, I dunno of I'd even want to add a second stance dance mechanic to the job.

Yet, Nocturnal Sect is still bad. SE really needs to figure out Sects because right now most AST just use Diurnal. I would stance dance just for access to the 5% healing buff when I need it, not the shields.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Yet, Nocturnal Sect is still bad. SE really needs to figure out Sects because right now most AST just use Diurnal. I would stance dance just for access to the 20% healing buff when I need it, not the shields.

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Huh? Noct does not have access to a 20% Healing buff that Diurnal does not also have.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

Huh? Noct does not have access to a 20% Healing buff that Diurnal does not also have.

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Sorry, meant 5% but my point still stands. If anything needs to be fixed first it's Sects.

Frankly I think they just need to bump up the shield strength or make it so it gives resistanc/armor + for as long as its in effect like how our bubble does that and regen. Then remove the AS+ for Diurnal and make it -MP% to make spells cheaper. Then make it so you can stance dance em, heck even give it a fairly long CD if you want, don't care, but making it so Diurnal is for AoE an Nocturnal is for maximum healing on a tank would make the class leaps and bounds better then what it is now.

If I could just ABC as Astro I'd be happy but in its current state minimizing overheals and maximizing DPS while properly using CDs leads to out of mana