Astrologian impossible to balance as it is

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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.