Is it time to get rid of the PIE party bonus?

Everyone is thinking two hard on this one. This is simple. WHM gives mind bonus, SCH gives pie bonus, and AST gives both. AST is a sorta "hybrid" of the two anyways so this just makes sense. It doesn't mess or change anything from before.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

How about we leave it as it is because there's nothing wrong with it and this whole thread is mostly nitpicking.

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Not really.

Lets pretend you main AST, its your only class at 60, it's decently geared, and you want to do some A1 Savage progression. You see one party up in the PF and they're missing a WHM. On my server, if you were to ask this party leader if you could heal instead of a WHM, because it's a pug and progression, they will turn you away. They want the healers to be healing and DPSing for as much as possible, so they take that MND bonus into consideration.

About a half hour of waiting later, another PF pops up. It's requesting a WHM and a SCH. Well, you have a stance that allows you to shield and you offer the PIE bonus, so you ask this party leader if he'll let you join in place of a SCH. "Lolno. Your Adlothing doesn't Crit and I know your SCH stance sucks. Go ask to WHM another party or something, bro."

For old content (like Coil), especially if its undersized, people aren't going to care if you're a WHM, SCH, or AST. And as we get more Eso each week and new items, I'm sure this too will pass. However, if you wanted to do Savage since day 1 as an AST in a pug, you were never ever considered for the WHM role (so there goes one half of your play style) and were left to fight with SCH for the second spot, and because of AST's current issue with their Noc Sect, they were almost always pushed aside for a real SCH.

You can see it as nitpicking, but it can effect part one's experience in-game and not in a positive way.

[EDIT] I made reference to the 2 PIE classes and 1 MND class causing an issue in another AST thread. And I did get this response:

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Originally Posted by Israacf

I agree with Selli, I quit Ast because of the very same reasons that they couldn't take me instead of a Scholar, since they were, technically (and they are) better.

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It does exist, it is an issue, and it does effect people who want to play the class.

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Originally Posted by Garotte14

Everyone is thinking two hard on this one. This is simple. WHM gives mind bonus, SCH gives pie bonus, and AST gives both. AST is a sorta "hybrid" of the two anyways so this just makes sense. It doesn't mess or change anything from before.

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"Hybrid" doesn't mean you give it buffs that the current healers don't have. So no, that doesn't make any sense. Then someone is going to say give all the healers MND/PIE, but see my previous page argument on why that doesn't make any sense.

You'd think PIE would be fine considering it is the only healer job with only one definite MP regen ability. The real issue is many people want the job to act like a WHM in almost every way possible when there isn't one in the party. Potency, 20y HoTs, and now MND. It's okay, there is a job with those things currently.

Address the card buffs, lower the cooldown/potency of some of the job's abilities, and add some kick to some of the more bread-and-butter skills like CO and CU. That is how you solve AST without raiding the WHM toolkit.

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Or we can have AST give mind when in diurnal and PIE when in nocturnal, that'd make more sense than anything I think.

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Still say this is the best and easiest solution.

Why not do it this way.

1 x healer = MND bonus (for 4 man's).
2 x same healer = MND bonus
2 x different healers = MND & PIE bonus

So you only get both MND and PIE with two unique healers, otherwise you just get MND.

I can't think of a single good reason why you shouldn't automatically get all six stat bonuses whenever you're inside an 8-player instance, in a non-undersized party, regardless of party composition.

The problem goes beyond AST, Mind, and Piety, too. Imagine if your party were PLD / WAR, NIN / BRD / SMN / BLM, AST / SCH. That's a perfectly diverse party, with no duplicate jobs whatsoever, and yet neither of the tanks get a STR bonus, and neither of the healers get a MND bonus.

Half the party is taking an arbitrary penalty - a penalty that is ostensibly intended to discourage stacking a group full of the same class - that is roughly equivalent to a 10 iLevel downgrade on their weapon. I can't imagine that that's the system serving its intended purpose.

Mmm.... I wouldn't MND some PIE right now, I'm hungry. <derails off into the kitchen>

Release a 4th healer class with MND as its bonus and make things nice and square, Square!

(Or just give all bonuses all the time for full parties like some have suggested)

If AST is just a watered down, support version of SCH/WHM, I'm a little confused why a sect change wouldn't change the buff that they give to also mirror SCH/WHM. I certainly don't see why a main stat for healers would be restricted to one healer.

Then again, that would probably make AST overpowered! Some of you are absolutely ridiculous that you think something like that is unfair, but whatever you need to feel a bit more unique and special. Don't want to step on those toes.

I don't see why something like main stat buffs are restricted to one specific job anyway. If you can take 8 different jobs into a raid and you don't have all of the stat buffs, that's just stupid. That should be a restriction on having two of the same class and missing it. You should want to take a job because they offer, say, what a ninja offers a party every 60 seconds, and not because they have a DEX buff, for example. Will it make THAT big of a difference in the end? No, I don't think so, which is why I'm confused why it's a big deal to change it.

I liked the 1st healer = MND bonus, 2nd healer = PIE bonus idea (regardless of job).

To help discourage job stacking, it could also be refined to: 2nd healer that isn't same job as 1st healer = PIE bonus.