AST's weakness in end game

LMAO umm what?? You're not serious? ASTs MP regent doesn't doesn't scale with Piety? Have you ever played AST?

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

LMAO umm what?? You're not serious? ASTs MP regent doesn't doesn't scale with Piety? Have you ever played AST?

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I literally said "AST MP abilities". Not passive regen. Assize and Aetherflow both scale with maximum MP. If you want to foster meaningful discussion in here, read more carefully, and respond less rudely.

I'll respond less rudely when people like you stop spreading misinformation on the forum. You said AST MP abilities don't scale with Piety, which is completely wrong as both LA and Ewer are refresh potencies based on MP (aka their piety).

He means there is tool for MP regen that scales with piety. Unless I've missed a memo, that's correct isn't it? We just have base mana ticks, whereas WHM has base mana ticks + Assize and SCH has base mana ticks + Aetherflow.

Edit: LA and Ewer are not based on piety. Their potencies only scale with level. Try it yourself, unequip all your gear. LA will restore 707MP per tick.

However, as much as I enjoy your talk about RNG mechanics, not getting 1 extended Ewer or 2 Ewers is the more rare case out of the two (getting vs not getting). My probability math went down the drain, but having 2 draws with one on a 1/6 chance to roll as needed (just Ewer) and one on a 1/2 chance (Ewer, Arrow or Spear) to roll as needed out of 24 draws should be high enough to make it a guarantee or near guarantee.

You mentioned it yourself earlier, let's wait until 3.2 rolls out. Context matters. There are thousands of combinations you can make between healing needed for a fight, when the burst is needed and how much, how many globals you have to do what amount of healing. If there's a fight designed for a WHM to always pull out Divine Seal + Medica 2 and Assize with nothing for AST to compensate, of course WHM will be better. If there's only tank healing and single target damage with bursts in 90s or larger intervals, of course AST will be better.

I'm not talking about passive, natural MP regen. I'm talking about MP regen abilities. The only difference between the other two healers and AST is the speed at which Aetherflow and Assize provide MP. They are instant where Ewer/LA is over time.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I use the full toolkits of both jobs. The only thing I don't do on your post--I tend to prefer party buffs over self buffs, when RNG permits. Of course, if I really can't do anything else, I'll use the ewer.

edit: To be clear, I don't run out of MP on either job in the course of normal healing.

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Same. I prioritize CO to buff the party when possible. I can't even remember the last time I use it to buff LA ticks because I generally don't need it either.

I'll even RR the Ewer even if my MP looks "low", but that is because of knowing the instance, damage upcoming, LA uptime, etc. Damage is sometimes the best mitigator anyway. As we healers know with fights like Thordan.

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

I'm not talking about passive, natural MP regen. I'm talking about MP regen abilities. The only difference between the other two healers and AST is the speed at which Aetherflow and Assize provide MP. They are instant where Ewer/LA is over time.

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LA is 707 per tick regardless of MP pool. I don't know Ewer off the top of my head. I get that it's a confusing mechanic, not a lot of details on how Refresh works. And I actually think Refresh should scale with max MP and piety in some way, if it's any consolation.

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Originally Posted by AzureFlare

However, as much as I enjoy your talk about RNG mechanics, not getting 1 extended Ewer or 2 Ewers is the more rare case out of the two (getting vs not getting). My probability math went down the drain, but having 2 draws with one on a 1/6 chance to roll as needed (just Ewer) and one on a 1/2 chance (Ewer, Arrow or Spear) to roll as needed out of 24 draws should be high enough to make it a guarantee or near guarantee.

You mentioned it yourself earlier, let's wait until 3.2 rolls out. Context matters. There are thousands of combinations you can make between healing needed for a fight, when the burst is needed and how much, how many globals you have to do what amount of healing. If there's a fight designed for a WHM to always pull out Divine Seal + Medica 2 and Assize with nothing for AST to compensate, of course WHM will be better. If there's only tank healing and single target damage with bursts in 90s or larger intervals, of course AST will be better.

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Yeah I know, I wasn't calling for buffs. My only real point was the scaling on certain abilities, and that AST's MP management system has a bit more complexity than WHM, so I don't think the "on paper" really does it justice. I think AST is a little weaker in practice than on paper, is my point I guess.

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Originally Posted by Velox

You're also forgetting that, AST MP costs are lower for spells of the same potency as WHM. That means you spend less MP during a boss fight as a AST than a WHM, meaning their MP management is very much on-par with each other

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You could also argue that WHM get procs to reduce their overall MP costs. Freecure being a very useful and fairly frequent one. And the Ewer might be decent, but I don't know many ASTs who would actually use that if it wasn't absolutely crucial, it's usually for shuffling.

We'll have to agree in disagreeing, then. Freecure procs won't be enough to grant better MP management simply because the amoung of MP a WHM saves by getting those procs matches what an AST saves from having spells that cost less MP. For example:

Cure costs 442 at level 60; Cure II costs 884;
Benefic costs 354; Benefic II costs 796;

15% chance to proc Freecure means that one of every 6-7 cures you cast procs. You can get more and you can get less, that's RNG, but you have to be ready to face situations in which you don't get any procs, so it evens out in the chance rate. 7 Cures cost 3094 MP while 7 Benefics cost 2478. A 616 difference. That's what? 3/4 of the cost of a Benefic II? And you save more from the other spells, save more from the fact that Essential Dignity is a very powerful healing spell with a shorter cooldown than Tetragrammaton, saves from Synastry, saves from Lightspeed on intense healing situations, save from the amazing Regen effect from CU, you can also save MP by extending HoTs with Time Dilation. Assize has a long cooldown and is not that reliable as an MP regen tool, specially if you're saving the skill for specific parts of the fight. Also, I line up my LA with cards so I can use CO to buff the party.

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

You could also argue that WHM get procs to reduce their overall MP costs. Freecure being a very useful and fairly frequent one. And the Ewer might be decent, but I don't know many ASTs who would actually use that if it wasn't absolutely crucial, it's usually for shuffling.

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Not true. In A2S, Ewers and Spires are very valuable and not shuffled at all. Arrows are not always wanted because they burn resources too fast. Each fight has its own card strategy.

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

I'm not talking about passive, natural MP regen. I'm talking about MP regen abilities. The only difference between the other two healers and AST is the speed at which Aetherflow and Assize provide MP. They are instant where Ewer/LA is over time.

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Shroud/Luminiferous/Ewer/Drain scale with level not with Piety. It doesn't matter if you have 200000000 MP or 1000 MP, all those abilities will restore the same amount of MP no matter how much MP you have.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

Also, I line up my LA with cards so I can use CO to buff the party.

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For anyone who cares about comparisons on a job's true potentials: always, always, always do this in any fair comparison. Using CO on just a party buff, even if it is AoE Balance, is a huge waste except for a few very niche cases (filled all your globals and mana-sated on the fight). You'll do more with the mana you get from extending LA and tossing out more Combust(2)/Malefic2/Aero.

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Originally Posted by AzureFlare

For anyone who cares about comparisons on a job's true potentials: always, always, always do this in any fair comparison. Using CO on just a party buff, even if it is AoE Balance, is a huge waste except for a few very niche cases (filled all your globals and mana-sated on the fight). You'll do more with the mana you get from extending LA and tossing out more Combust(2)/Malefic2/Aero.

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I didn't think I had to explicit that strategy, but I now realize that people are not lining up their skills. So, yes, always try to hit everything.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

I didn't think I had to explicit that strategy, but I now realize that people are not lining up their skills. So, yes, always try to hit everything.

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It definitely isn't as straight forward as most people think it is. I just had an AST on Thordan ex who on one attempt was wondering why he didn't have any mana, yet his base pool was 13k and he used CO without LA. Given, he was under the assumption the MCH in our party knew how to use Promoted Bishop, but he was sitting on 1k while I was on 10-12k. Sure, it isn't as fair of a comparison and a lot of other factors apply (11k mana difference after all), but that's like 3k-4.5k mana he missed on unsyncing his CO alone. He monitored his mana more on the attempt after, still didn't sync LA and CO and was behind by 6-7k mana still.

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Using CO on just a party buff, even if it is AoE Balance, is a huge waste except for a few very niche cases

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It's never a waste. NEVER. It could become a problem if you are running low and using every Ewer with Royal road
Of course, it could be better on another things but it will not be a waste.

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I just had an AST on Thordan ex who on one attempt was wondering why he didn't have any mana,

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And ?
I'm playing Astro and I can do all the fight, without Brd. And using Co on a party buff. And still have no mana problem on the end of the fight.

THe problem isn't using co on a party buff or not, it's how you manage your mana.
I'm not wasting my mana and I know how to optimize co. You need to adapt

I only use CO to buff just the cards when I do an AoE opener for The Balance or when I have an Enhanced Arrow on my BLM (then I use Time Dilation + CO). I do this because I know I'll have it up for when I use LA + Another card. After that, I line up all my buffs. For A2S I have a rotation to maximize that and I can post it if you guys want it.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

We'll have to agree in disagreeing, then. Freecure procs won't be enough to grant better MP management simply because the amoung of MP a WHM saves by getting those procs matches what an AST saves from having spells that cost less MP. For example:

Cure costs 442 at level 60; Cure II costs 884;
Benefic costs 354; Benefic II costs 796;

15% chance to proc Freecure means that one of every 6-7 cures you cast procs. You can get more and you can get less, that's RNG, but you have to be ready to face situations in which you don't get any procs, so it evens out in the chance rate. 7 Cures cost 3094 MP while 7 Benefics cost 2478. A 616 difference. That's what? 3/4 of the cost of a Benefic II? And you save more from the other spells, save more from the fact that Essential Dignity is a very powerful healing spell with a shorter cooldown than Tetragrammaton, saves from Synastry, saves from Lightspeed on intense healing situations, save from the amazing Regen effect from CU, you can also save MP by extending HoTs with Time Dilation. Assize has a long cooldown and is not that reliable as an MP regen tool, specially if you're saving the skill for specific parts of the fight. Also, I line up my LA with cards so I can use CO to buff the party.

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I feel that you've left out some things. You didn't count the freecure which would shrink the difference to 263 or, assuming you matched the potency for the heals (would be the case whenever you got the full benefit of that free cure 2) it would be 143 mp in whm's favor. Whm has a similar trait for medica costs as well: whm spends only 266 more for 5 medicas compared to ast and helios. I believe both regen and medica 2 are more efficient at their base than their diurnal counterparts. And, of course, divine seal has shorter cooldown than synastry and handles aoe heals better ( the spendiest of the bunch).

Still, I think it's pretty even till you get to ewer and assize. If you were going out of your way to fish for an ewer draw, you'd get one ewer for every assize (1/6 shot at ewer; using shuffle every time you can nets you 6 draws in 90 secs). From what I understand, one basic ewer gets you roughly the same amount of mp as assize (at the moment at least). The problem is, I don't think people are constantly aiming to draw ewer and that's the only time you could hope to match assize's mp regen and that's ignoring the fact that assize can mean one less medica/helios on top of that instant mp. Of course, this doesn't account for the royal road buffs or spread (3 opportunities to royal road or spread for combos, specifically extended ewer in this case), but the key issue is I don't think the average astrologian is shuffling away something like balance when they get the chance and that means that, generally, assize is gonna outpace ewer.

@Mutemutt what I meant is that an AST can cast Benefic II after a chain of Benefics and still use the same or even less MP than a WHM doing the same thing while using the proc. The WHM procs only allow the job to match something that an AST can do naturally.
About Assize, you don't need Ewers to match the 10% MP refresh at the moment because lining up your buffs extends LA by 5s. Ewersare only a bonus. If an AST is running low on MP, using an Ewer helps to take some of the refresh burden away from the BRD/MCH; that increases overall DPS, since they don't have to sacrifice DPS to refresh MP.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

About Assize, you don't need Ewers to match the 10% MP refresh at the moment because lining up your buffs extends LA by 5s. Ewersare only a bonus. If an AST is running low on MP, using an Ewer helps to take some of the refresh burden away from the BRD/MCH; that increases overall DPS, since they don't have to sacrifice DPS to refresh MP.

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I don't think it really stacks up to assize though

edit: I goofed the number

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Originally Posted by NamoNanamo

THe problem isn't using co on a party buff or not, it's how you manage your mana.
I'm not wasting my mana and I know how to optimize co. You need to adapt

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Yes. I have to agree there. I've healed through Thordan on AST plenty and I have never felt pressured on mana. The guy probably needed to calm down on B2 (or AB if he was Nocturnal).

In fact I really don't think mana is a problem on AST and for what it's worth this is a common misconception after the changes to Ewer. It's a tiny bit behind WHM all things considered but a Ewer or two during the course of a fight will even things out. I think it's one of the rare instances where the cards tend to nicely balance out one of the job's shortcomings as mana regen is less dependant on timing in normal circumstances (as opposed to CD usage, TP consumption and damage). This is how the cards should work, being synergistic with your kit instead of being a completely separate mechanic. More control would go a long way.

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Originally Posted by Mutemutt

Well, that's an extra 144 mp every 2 mins I suppose, assuming you didn't already spend it on something else, of course. I don't think it really stacks up to assize though

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No, not 144. Adding 5s to LA gives you at least 707; 1014 if the refresh ticks are a little early.

TLDR:

• On Living Liquid, AST use 17,692 MP when factoring in MP recovery tools
• On Living Liquid, WHM use 24,395 MP when factoring in MP recovery tools.
• Therefore AST MP efficiency > WHM MP efficiency.
• Please check my math / theorycraft, as it's a lot to write at once and I probably missed something on the way to my end result.
• Updated December 5th @ 5:30PM EST

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Assuming we're talking about equally geared WHM and AST at 14,500 MP ea. (both jobs have the same PIE formula) over the course of a Living Liquid Fight (11 minute fight as per FF Logs - some liberty taken):


Shroud and LA
Assume LA always gets two additional ticks via CO.

WHM MP Recovery = 6 * 707*5 = 21,210 MP
AST MP Recovery = 6 * 707*7 = 29,694 MP


Ewer
At 30 potency, I'm going to assume it's about 3/8 as effective as each Shroud / LA tick - which means approximately 265 MP / tick for a total of 1,325 MP. (I don't have the means to test this right now). No CO assumed since you can't always guarantee having Ewer + CO up together.

Assuming 20 draws in a 11 minute and no shuffles / RR of Ewer, you'll average 3 Ewers per fight.

AST MP Recovery = 3 * 1,325 = 3,975 MP


Assize
1,450 MP restored. 8 uses in a 11 minute fight. (More on free Medica savings later)

WHM MP Recover = 8 * 1,450 = 11,600 MP


Lightspeed
Assume you get to use Lightspeed on an Aspected Helios, Benefic II, and 3xBenefic. You get 5 Applications of it.

AST MP Saved = 5 * 0.25*(1,326 + 796 + 3*354) = 3,980 MP


The Fight itself
This is going to be a pickle to theorycraft for and something that should be taken with a grain of salt. The healing requirement of any fight will be dependent on the length of the fight, the mechanics of the fight, and the skill / gear level of the party doing the fight. With that in mind, I'm going with the following assumptions:

1. 11 Minute Fight = 660 seconds
2. 1,579,578 Healing Required - 710,810 healing for single target / 868,768 healing for raid damage (more on this below)
3. 1 Potency = 8.75 Healing (more on this below)

1,579,578 Healing Required
I'm using the White Mage HPS requirement for Living Liquid as per FFLogs HPS Metric. This means 2,389.3 * 660s = 1,579,578 healing required.

White Mage values are specifically used as White Mage should be assuming the bulk of the healing duty in WHM/SCH setup. We're also assuming the goal of this comparison is to determine if AST can fill the void WHM can fill. This means AST needs to be able to do what a WHM can do with the same support from the SCH. As soon as we start deviating from this, that means the AST will be "doing less" and the healing partner will be "doing more".

Raid damage itself is split 45% single target tank damage to 55% raid damage to meet the two values listed above as FF Logs has tank HPS requirement @ 1,047.5. 1,047.5 / 2,39.3 approximately 45% (some liberty taken)

1 Potency = 8.75 Healing
If we assume one Cure / Benefic = 3,500 healing, then 3,500 healing / 400 potency = 8.75 healing / potency.

AST - Raid Damage
868,768 Healing Required

868,768 / 7 = 124,109 healing required per person (not including MT - this value will be added to single target tank healing later).

Cascade does approximately 11K damage per application and there are five Cascades per fight. All five Cascades will be Disable'd, three will be CU'd with those Disables

(2 * 11,000 * 0.1) + (3 * 11,000 * 0.2) = 8,800 reduced via mitigation tools on Raid Buster

124,109 - 8,800 = 115,309 Healing Required per Person

Disable is a 10% reduction for 6s every minute for a [1.1*6 + 1*54] / 60 = 1.0% reduction over the course of the fight.

115,309 / 1.010 = 114,167 Healing Required after Mitigation

CU will occur five times in the fight since you're saving the final three CUs specifically for Cascade - assume 6 ticks per CU in total (waiting 3 seconds after first tick occurs)

5 * 6 * 150 * 8.75 = 39,375 healing via CU

114,167 - 39,375 = 74,792 healing via magic required per person

Synastry provides a 20% boost of healing for 20 seconds on a 90 second cooldown. [1.2*20 + 1*70] / 90 = 4.4% overall increase of healing during the course of the fight.

74,792 / 1.044 = 71,640 healing required for raid healing.

Assuming using Aspected Helios as its the most MP efficient (600 potency / person @ 1,326 MP)

71,640 / (600 * 8.75) = 14 Aspected Helios required

AST MP Spent for Raid Damage = 14 * 1,326 = 18,564 MP

AST - Single Target
710,810 Healing Required

Disable is a 10% reduction for 6s every minute for a [1.1*6 + 1*54] / 60 = 1.0% reduction over the course of the fight.

Bole is a 10% reduction for 30s every 180s for a [1.1*30 + 1*150] / 180 = 1.7% reduction over the course of the fight (assume no RR and one draw every six, like Ewer)

710,810 / 1.010 / 1.017 = 692,008 healing required after mitigation

Assume 14 Essential Dignity's over the course of the fight at 700 Potency each (tank @ 50% HP) = 14 * 700 * 8.75 = 85,750 healing

124,110 healing removed as collateral from tank healing.

692,008 - 85,750 - 124,109 = 482,149 healing required via magic

Synastry provides a 20% boost of healing and 40% increased healing to the tank for 20 seconds on a 90 second cooldown. [(1.2*1.4)*20 + 1*70] / 90 = 15.1% overall increase of healing during the course of the fight.

482,149 / 1.151 = 418,896 healing required for single target

Aspected Benefic
Requires 36.7 applications over the course of the fight to maintain 100% uptime.

36.7 applications = 220 ticks + 37 initial applications = 30,800 + 7,030 = 37,830 potency = 331,012 healing at the cost of 707MP * 37 = 26,159 MP

418,896 - 331,012 = 87,884 healing required to cover the rest. Assume 20% of that damage is spike damage that requires some more powerful healing overall, we'll get the following divide:

87,884 * 0.80 = 70,307 for Benefic = 21 Benefics required (21 * 400 * 8.75 = 73,500) and 21 * 354 = 7,434 MP spent.

87,884 * 0.20 = 17,577 for Benefic II = 4 Benefic IIs required (4 * 650 * 8.75 = 22,750) and 4 * 796 = 3,184 MP spent.

Total MP spent = 18,564 (Raid) + 26,159 (HoTs) + 7,434 (Benefic) + 3,184 (Benefic II) = 55,341 MP for raid healing


WHM - Raid Damage
868,768 Healing Required

868,768 / 7 = 124,110 healing required per person (not including MT - this value will be added to single target tank healing later).

Assuming Eye for an Eye is used to reduce overall AoE damage and assume only one proc per application (10% reduction @ 20 second uptime every 180s) for [1.1*20 + 1*160] / 180 = 1.1% Reduction

124,110 / 1.011 = 122,760 healing required after damage mitigation

Assuming 8 Assize is used specifically for the Medica effect, we reduce overall healing by 8 * 300 * 8.75 = 21,000.

Assuming 4 Asylum is used specifically for the HoT effect to the raid, we reduce overall healing by 4 * 100 * 8 * 8.75 = 28,000.

122,760 - 21,000 - 28,000 = 73,760 healing required via magic

Divine Seal provides a 30% boost of healing magic for 15 seconds on a 60 second cooldown. [1.3*15 + 1*45] / 60 = 7.5% overall increase of healing magic during the course of the fight.

73,760 / 1.075 = 68,614 healing required for raid healing per person.

Assuming we use 7 Medica II (7 * 700 * 8.75 = 42,875 healing) and 6 Cure III (6 * 550 * 8.75 = 28,875 healing) to handle the healing required (total healing = 71,750)

WHM MP Spent for Raid Damage = 7 * 1,503 (Medica II) + 6 * 1,680 (Cure III) = 10,521 + 10,080 = 20,601 MP

WHM - Single Target
710,810 Healing Required

Assuming Eye for an Eye is used to reduce overall AoE damage and assume only one proc per application (10% reduction @ 20 second uptime every 180s) for [1.1*20 + 1*160] / 180 = 1.1% Reduction

Assume Virus is used to help reduce overall single target physical damage on the MT once every two minutes (10 second uptime, 120s cooldown) for [1.1*10 + 1*110] / 120 = 0.8% damage reduction

710,810 / 1.008 / 1.011 = 697,496

Assuming 11 Tetragrammaton used for duration of fight, we reduce overall healing by 11 * 700 * 8.75 = 67,375

Assuming 4 Asylum is used specifically for the HoT effect on the MT, we reduce overall healing by 4 * 100 * 8 * 8.75 = 28,000.

124,110 healing removed as collateral from tank healing.

697,496 - 67,375 - 28,000 - 124,110 = 478,011 healing required via magic

Divine Seal provides a 30% boost of healing for 15 seconds on a 60 second cooldown. [1.3*15 + 1*45] / 60 = 7.5% overall increase of healing during the course of the fight.

478,011 / 1.075 = 444,661 healing required for single target

Regen
Requires 31.4 applications over the course of the fight to maintain 100% uptime.

31.4 applications = 220 ticks = 33,000 potency = 288,750 healing at the cost of 619 MP * 32 = 19,808 MP

444,661 - 288,750 = 155,911 healing magic required to cover the rest. Assume 20% of that damage is spike damage that requires some more powerful healing overall, we'll get the following divide:

155,911 * 0.80 = 124,729 for Cure = 36 Cures required (36 * 400 * 8.75 = 126,000) and 36 * 442 = 15,912 MP spent.

155,911 * 0.20 = 31,182 for Cure II = 6 Cure IIs required (6 * 650 * 8.75 = 34,125). 36 Cures means (36 * 0.15) = 5 Freecure procs over the course of the fight. 884 MP spent.

Total MP spent = 20,601 (Raid) + 19,808 (HoTs) + 15,912 (Cure) + 884 (Cure II) = 57,205 MP for raid healing


Final Calculations:
AST MP Spending = 55,341 MP (Healing) - 29,694 (LA + CO) - 3,975 (Ewer) - 3,980 (Lightspeed) = 17,692 MP

WHM MP Spending = 57,205 MP (Healing) - 21,210 (Shroud) - 11,600 (Assize) = 24,395 MP

Therefore AST MP efficiency > WHM MP efficiency.

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Any fact checking on my math / theorycraft is appreciated as it was a lot to think about and write about in one sitting. I feel I've covered most of the bases but can adjust if I hear some reasonable adjustments.

I'm sorry to say that, but your calculations don't make much sense. You're adding theorycraft to something that's situational and you didn't cover some basic things that AST brings to the table, like 10% AoE damage mitigation by using CU, which will also add a very powerful regen and doesn't cost any MP; also, you're ignoring Disable, which reduces damage by 10% and can stack with Virus/cover the damage when SCH's Virus is on cooldowm; you're also assuming that the AST will keep Aspected Benefic up 100% of the time, which is not necessary due to the initial burst healing/lower cooldowm on Essential Dignity, which reduces a lot of the healing burden on AST. And I didn't even mention the fact that any Bole used on the tank/party can reduce damage taken. It was a nice effort, but the playstyle you describe for AST is not that of an AST, it's that of a WHM. If you behave as WHM when playing AST, you'll always lose.
Even for WHM, which uses Cure III a lot in that fight. I don't think the metric you used is good for any conclusion about what you're trying to analyze. But again, nice effort.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

I'm sorry to say that, but your calculations don't make much sense. You're adding theorycraft to something that's situational and you didn't cover some basic things that AST brings to the table, like 10% AoE damage mitigation by using CU, which will also add a very powerful regen and doesn't cost any MP; also, you're ignoring Disable, which reduces damage by 10% and can stack with Virus/cover the damage when SCH's Virus is on cooldowm; you're also assuming that the AST will keep Aspected Benefic up 100% of the time, which is not necessary due to the initial burst healing/lower cooldowm on Essential Dignity, which reduces a lot of the healing burden on AST. And I didn't even mention the fact that any Bole used on the tank/party can reduce damage taken. It was a nice effort, but the playstyle you describe for AST is not that of an AST, it's that of a WHM. If you behave as WHM when playing AST, you'll always lose.
Even for WHM, which uses Cure III a lot in that fight. I don't think the metric you used is good for any conclusion about what you're trying to analyze. But again, nice effort.

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Any suggestion on when to use CU and Disable? I could normalize Disable over the course of the fight though you'd obviously want to save it for Cascades if possible. The CU mitigation isn't exactly easy to push into the equation since it disables the AST for a period of time and CU is slightly weaker compared to Asylum (something I also forgot) if you only CU on one tick. I don't think you'd CU more than three ticks per use when I think about it. I can probably normalize Bole (3 draws on MT throughout the course of the fight).

Aspected Benefic is still the most MP efficient spell in the Diurnal's AST toolkit and should be maintained 100% for MP longevity's sake. You'll just need to heal less frequently on occasion because of the added spike it provides. If I don't 100% uptime Aspected Benefic, AST would end up consuming more MP.

Essential Dignity should be included and I'll add that when I get to editting it. Tetragrammaton will balance that but the favour is still towards AST in terms of instant heals.

I intentionally left out Cure III on my analysis though I can probably split it 50/50 just for completions sake tomorrow.

In terms of "behavior", the intent was to see if AST maintains better MP efficiency if it attempts to fulfill the niche WHM does. As soon as you shift your focus away from that, any discussion you have regarding MP efficiency becomes moot because you're pushing some responsibility off from the AST. If you're going to compare MP efficiency, battle conditions need to be exactly the same which unfortunately skews results and on top of that the fight dynamic will change depending on composition. It's also why I'm intentionally ignoring the 3% MND bonus AST may not have if you got AST/SCH composition and that somewhat balances out the lack of mitigation in my math.

Things to note since it was brought up in previous semantics:

-Even though LA + CO gives about as much MP as Assize's free Medica, you can Assize much more frequently than LA (4 Assize for every 3 LAs). which pushes Assize to be more efficient.
-Freecure should still push MP efficiency towards WHM favour. Even though AST spells cost less, AST needs to expend more MP for Benefic II to stay on equal potency footing as WHM.

I'll get to editting sometime tomorrow afternoon and see where the numbers stand then. I still feel WHM has better MP longevity though.

[EDIT] I'll probably end up pushing CU as an AoE heal and Aslyum as 50% AoE 50% Tank heal and use Tetra at 750 Potency (healing tank at 50% HP) when I get to the edit. Bole's will be normalized over the course of the fight (10% for 30s over the course of 3 minutes) and I'll probably add Virus to WHM's mitigation package for physical single target to contrast Disable's AoE damage reduction on Cascade (and normalize AoE damage to suit).

Don't discount so easily - even if we can't build it to be exact due to variables outside of our control, we can still build what I feel is a fair facsimile just to see the end result.

You can save it for Cascades, which reduces AoE damage for the group, which is what we require the most. ASTs can let CU tick for more than 3s on phase 2 when the party is stacked (and WHM usually uses Cure III there). You also have to consider Time Dilation affecting Aspected Benefic ticks, which will reduce the amount of casts necessary to keep it up 100% of the time. Another thing: it's smart to line up Lightspeet with LA to get 2 more GCDs during Lightspeed; you can normalize that in your equation as well. Synastry also allows you to heal two targets at the same time, which means that some of the individual healing you added to the tank numbers is not going to exist; I don't know how to calculate that, though.

A calculation mistake on the WHM part: you considered 600 potency for Medica II (probably from copying Aspected Helios' numbers), but Medica II is 700 potency, which will make WHM more efficient.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

No, not 144. Adding 5s to LA gives you at least 707; 1014 if the refresh ticks are a little early.

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Woops, was looking at the wrong number.

But really, what I wanted to say is that, even then, there's a pretty noticeable gap in mp because the meta holds more value for the dps boosting cards rather than any that would help save or restore mp. Assize, on the other hand, always gives back mp. That one or 2 extra ticks just doesn't make up the gap. At least, that's what I feel is the reason.

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Originally Posted by NamoNanamo

It's never a waste. NEVER. It could become a problem if you are running low and using every Ewer with Royal road
Of course, it could be better on another things but it will not be a waste.

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Again, as I said before, it'll be inferior unsyncing CO and LA just for a 5 second Balance extension if you can get another round of DoTs out which you couldn't before. If you don't need the mana or have the globals to spend, sure, unsyncing will be in your benefit. Including normalised missrates and using the mana on just Malefic/Malefic 2, you'd need like 7425 raidDPS for it to be more mana-efficient than waiting for your first LA cast. In a burst session, sure, that's entirely possible, but I doubt that window lasts longer than 30 seconds which your regular expanded Balance already covers.

If you can fill all your globals without help of a BRD/MCH then of course it goes way deeper than that and using blanket LA will be fine if not better, but in fights like A2S or higher floors where bards/mchs lose DPS on giving mana thanks to large amounts of uptime, I have a hard time seeing that happen as opposed to mechanics-heavy, mana-slumberfest Thordan.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

Theorycrafting

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It is possible to fit 5 Lightspeed with Diurnal's boost, without it you'll need some spellspeed. Given, that does include Diurnal's speedboost. CU and Disable were mentioned, though I'd only count for Disable on critical moments as normal Virus would be close near a non-burst/buster Disable. Also didn't account for E4E on WHM to balance on that account, so CU would be the most noteworthy.
The 2 ticks from LA + CO are pretty much guaranteed as far as I know. It feels like the ticks are slightly faster than 3 seconds anyway, fast enough to guarantee 7 ticks in 20 seconds even if the first tick comes very late. (Edit: Just checked it. If the natural MP regen tick is 3 seconds, then LA definitely is faster. The first LA tick came after it and near the end, they synced up).
Honestly, we could discuss more points but I feel it becomes too contextual once we go deeper. Nicely done.

i m fine with AST
but could we have less trolling RNG for card drawn please?
4 TP in a roll with shuffle is a nice troll when i m only fighting a 60 dungeon with all my teammate have their own ability to regen TP
or 4 Ewer in a roll, when other 3 member dont use MP
can we at least change shuffle wont draw the same card again?

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

I don't think they have fewer tools to heal with, all 3 healers share the basic spells needed in this game to heal well.

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I should have been more specific here. What I really meant was, because of the card abilities, you have less space for "extras". No Virus, no Eye for an Eye, no Stoneskin. WHM has an instant group heal, as does SCH, without having to use a cooldown. WHM gets two large instant heals, SCH gets however many as stacks they have, whereas AST gets one. Does this make or break healing? Definitely not. It is just one of the things that makes AST a little different than the others, which people newer to healing may struggle with. It also allows less room for big errors in the group because you can't blow three stacks of Lustrate on the tank, etc.

This doesn't mean that AST is bad, needs revision, etc. Classes are different and not everyone will excel with AST.

@AzureFlare @Ghishlain

What I think this math shows is that the gap between WHM and AST is minimum in the course of a fight. The extra MP AST spent can be recovered in 15 seconds and is diluted throughout the fight. That, of course, ignoring the fact that the described healing strategy is not ideal for AST (and I'm not even considering the co-healer) and also ignoring other variables that are hard to calculate (mitigation from CU and split single target healing for Synastry, for example). And also: WHM has a natural advantage in high AoE damage fights. The fact that the difference is low shows that the two jobs are pretty much balanced MP-wise.

@Alisane
ASTs have Stoneskin, and the potency is the same. The casting time is longer, though.

Duuuhh, everyone has Stoneskin! What was I thinking? Guess my morning brain just lumped the cross-class skills together since AST doesn't get any of the Arcanist ones. Sorry about that!

I don't feel like AST lacks anything right now... Maybe identity, but that's just a personal opinion.

Updated my theorycraft post.

To put it bluntly, something feels "off" (it felt off to begin with, more so now than before, lol).

TLDR:

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

• On Living Liquid, AST use 17,692 MP when factoring in MP recovery tools
• On Living Liquid, WHM use 24,395 MP when factoring in MP recovery tools.
• Therefore AST MP efficiency > WHM MP efficiency.
• Please check my math / theorycraft, as it's a lot to write at once and I probably missed something on the way to my end result.
• Updated December 5th @ 5:30PM EST

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My own thoughts:
I feel I need to revisit this. Even with AST had better MP efficiency, the divide shouldn't be that grand (WHM consumes approximately 40% more MP) so I probably fudged the math somewhere. What's also a red flag is how low the MP consumption is now considering the intensity of the fight as well. (thought that might be my own thoughts at work).

As usual, any fact checking is appreciated. I'm outta mental capacity to revist this at this time so I'll probably look again later. lol.

Changes made:

• Adjusted order of operations to go from Damage Reduction > Ability Healing > Magic Healing (to compensate for cooldowns not affecting ability heals)
• Asylum and Collective Unconciousness added
• Tetragrammaton and Essential Dignitiy added
• Bole added
• LA adjusted to be 7 ticks regardless
• No Time Dilation used as Time Dilation should be consumed for DPS buffs
• Pushed Lightspeed to five GCDs due to Haste + SpS
• Added Virus and E4E mitigation on WHM math
• Added mitigation for Disable and CU on AST math

As been asked, Synastry and Divine Seal has been "normalized" over the course of the fight and that value has been reduced from the overall healing required.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

Updated my theorycraft post.

To put it bluntly, something feels "off" (it felt off to begin with, more so now than before, lol).

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Probably that, and I mean this with all due respect, your spell choices don't correlate to how fights are healed in practice.

Astrologians cast a ton of Helios on that fight specifically. Like... when are you realistically able to just let CU and Medica II and Aspected Helios slowly heal everyone up in actual practice, with no overhealing whatsoever? It doesn't happen.

You have a mana-free heal, Collective Unconsciousness, account for like 280,000 raidhealing in that fight for Astrologian. The most I have seen it account for on ANY log is like 90k, and that is RARE. Assize almost always beats it, because HoTs overheal way more by design. Hell, Asylum almost always beats it by a sizeable margin in terms of effective healing, because it's so much easier to use effectively. And because when CU is used to mitigate, you rarely have the luxury of waiting for it to tick everyone up, regardless of how powerful it is. Then, there's things like how Cure III comes through in spades MP-wise when it's being compared to Helios, and it's often a WHMs second most effective heal on that fight (behind Medica II HoT).

Seriously, look at a log, and look how far off the spell choice division is in reality to how you've chosen it. There are a lot of other factors that make it highly inaccurate, but this is the biggest one.

TLDR; your model ignores time. It's an MP efficiency test, that ignores constraints of time and burst. In any situation where you get to sit and wait for Aspected Helios or Medica II to heal all raid damage, are you really going to have MP problems?

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Originally Posted by Mibgestalt

Probably that, and I mean this with all due respect, your spell choices don't correlate to how fights are healed in practice.


Astrologians cast a ton of Helios on that fight specifically. Like... when are you realistically able to just let CU and Medica II and Aspected Helios slowly heal everyone up in actual practice, with no overhealing whatsoever? It doesn't happen.

You have a mana-free heal, Collective Unconsciousness, account for like 280,000 raidhealing in that fight for Astrologian. The most I have seen it account for on ANY log is like 90k, and that is RARE. Assize almost always beats it, because HoTs overheal way more by design. Hell, Asylum almost always beats it by a sizeable margin in terms of effective healing, because it's so much easier to use effectively. And because when CU is used to mitigate, you rarely have the luxury of waiting for it to tick everyone up, regardless of how powerful it is. Then, there's things like how Cure III comes through in spades MP-wise when it's being compared to Helios, and it's often a WHMs second most effective heal on that fight (behind Medica II HoT).

Seriously, look at a log, and look how far off the spell choice division is in reality to how you've chosen it. There are a lot of other factors that make it highly inaccurate, but this is the biggest one.

TLDR; your model ignores time. It's an MP efficiency test, that ignores constraints of time and burst. In any situation where you get to sit and wait for Aspected Helios or Medica II to heal all raid damage, are you really going to have MP problems?

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No offense taken and that's a very real possibility and most likely possibly. Sometimes in one's focus we forgot the one fundamental of it all.

I guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board. /think

I think some people are missing the boat, or maybe making it too complicated. The problem is that a Diurnal AST is a reasonable substitute for a main healing WHM, but is nowhere near as good as a Scholar for the off heal/dps/shield slot. So it's 2 healers vying for 1 spot much like PLD and DRK. So first, let's take a look at what makes SCH ideal for that role in the current meta:

1.) Fairy makes life easier on the main healer resulting in extra safety and usually allows the main healer to also add dps while the SCH barely leaves Cleric Stance
2.) Strong Single Target mitigation with Adlo/Virus (if used on single target)
3.) Strong AOE mitigation with Spread Adlo/Soil/Fey Covenant
4.) Very strong single target and AOE DPS while having unlimited mana to do so.

Now, when you put a Noct Astro in that slot - number 2 is the only area where they hang. Aspected Benefic and Disable perform similarly enough to Adlo and Virus to be equal in terms of clearing content for single target mitigation. But in all 3 other areas they are considerably worse. No fairy literally takes some dps away from the WHM/AST main healer. AOE shielding is considerably worse. It's impossible to AOE without running out of mana fast, and even on single targets, extended DPSing like in the first phase of A1 or Thordan leaves you in a pretty bad place MP wise. It ends up being a really bad substitute for a Scholar for the things we usually use a Scholar for. Even with the cards, it's an overall weaker party DPS than X/SCH while having weaker AOE shielding without bringing something additional to the group to compensate. A lot of people attribute it to cards versus Fey Wind, but I actually think the cards in their current form are better. It's the SCH doing more than the AST, and the main healer doing more with the SCH because of the fairy that the Noct AST in the offslot can't make up the difference for.

And with current gear the AOE shielding doesn't matter too much. But in early progression those A1 landings and Cascades it really hard in relation to HP creates a massive disparity between the two jobs.

My Suggestions which are simple but should fix the problem.

1.) 5% Bonus in Noct stance also to effect damage
2.) 20% MP reduction on Malefic II
3.) Aspected Helios in Noct changed to full Shield (300 potency, no hp healed)

Astro's are fine for endgame content. But Diurnal still is subpar all around. And Scholars are still more powerful than either of the other two healing classes when it comes to the healing + DPS game. In my eyes those are the two problems and they are big problems.

Y

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Originally Posted by Sidra

I think some people are missing the boat, or maybe making it too complicated. The problem is that a Diurnal AST is a reasonable substitute for a main healing WHM, but is nowhere near as good as a Scholar for the off heal/dps/shield slot. So it's 2 healers vying for 1 spot much like PLD and DRK. So first, let's take a look at what makes SCH ideal for that role in the current meta:

1.) Fairy makes life easier on the main healer resulting in extra safety and usually allows the main healer to also add dps while the SCH barely leaves Cleric Stance
2.) Strong Single Target mitigation with Adlo/Virus (if used on single target)
3.) Strong AOE mitigation with Spread Adlo/Soil/Fey Covenant
4.) Very strong single target and AOE DPS while having unlimited mana to do so.

Now, when you put a Noct Astro in that slot - number 2 is the only area where they hang. Aspected Benefic and Disable perform similarly enough to Adlo and Virus to be equal in terms of clearing content for single target mitigation. But in all 3 other areas they are considerably worse. No fairy literally takes some dps away from the WHM/AST main healer. AOE shielding is considerably worse. It's impossible to AOE without running out of mana fast, and even on single targets, extended DPSing like in the first phase of A1 or Thordan leaves you in a pretty bad place MP wise. It ends up being a really bad substitute for a Scholar for the things we usually use a Scholar for. Even with the cards, it's an overall weaker party DPS than X/SCH while having weaker AOE shielding without bringing something additional to the group to compensate. A lot of people attribute it to cards versus Fey Wind, but I actually think the cards in their current form are better. It's the SCH doing more than the AST, and the main healer doing more with the SCH because of the fairy that the Noct AST in the offslot can't make up the difference for.

And with current gear the AOE shielding doesn't matter too much. But in early progression those A1 landings and Cascades it really hard in relation to HP creates a massive disparity between the two jobs.

My Suggestions which are simple but should fix the problem.

1.) 5% Bonus in Noct stance also to effect damage
2.) 20% MP reduction on Malefic II
3.) Aspected Helios in Noct changed to full Shield (300 potency, no hp healed)

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I'll have to disagree with you in one point. Not your commentaries on how AST is not as strong as a SCH as a healer/DPS hybrid, but I'll disagree with you when you propose any changes to AST. We have to face the fact that SCH is a job that branches out of a DPS class and their healing tools only come after getting to level 30; you can heal as a CNJ, but ACN makes a poor substitue of a healer. Those characteristics are core to understanding the SCH as much as they are when we analyze the transformation of MRD into WAR and the transformation of a GLA into a PLD. DRK/AST came out with toolkits that focused on damage mitigation/healing, and you can see that easily by looking at how their toolkit evolves level after level. You can also see that WAR/SCH can't replace PLD/WHM as well as DRK/AST, simply because the last two were designed as main-tanks/healers. If you ignore their DPS toolkit and just focus on their healing spells/skills, you can see that WAR/SCH doesn't have a complete toolkit to main heal. They can, but it takes considerable effort to do it. In my opinion, that's not a problem, and I bet our next tank/healing job will compete for the off-spot of the meta. We just have to give it time. Until then, we can use PLD-WAR/WHM-AST for heavy damage fights where no DPS check is tight, since they offer the safest mitigation/HP restoration combo.

EDIT: another thing that I just remembered: in SCoB, the meta for lots of the fights excluded an off-tank, as lots of groups (even in the beginning) took only one tank to T8-T9. The chosen tank was PLD.

With all of this theory crafting going on how come no one attempts to figure up the dps contributed from astrologian through the card buffs. Theory crafting works with dps simcraft but not healing. Se has stated countless times about in house scenarios and dps requirements but never have I seen them talk about healer balance outside of trying to make certain mechanics work to the strengths of certain jobs.