Astro in savage

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Originally Posted by GeekMatt

You can get past the character limit by editing your post.

...it's dumb design that discourages well written posts and increases frustration.

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Thanks for the info :)

I Will try give my Feedback here, whit same sugestions.
I'm playing as AST for everything, but i still need to do Savage.
Cards
Arrow, Balance,Bore,Ewer Need a buff on potency,they feel very weak atm and is sad to get a good combo of cards and everyone just ignore it, no one ver said thanks for a bole whit Potency boost before a Blinding Rage or a AoE Balance on a DPS check moment.
Sugestion: Buff the cards, you can just make two kinds of "Buffs" related to sects, like extended potency for Noct, or extended time for Diurnal.
Spire The problem is so rare to see a DPS needing TP, bust still have a use if i can see the TP from my partners,since 2.0 when i was playing as BRD I asked myself why we can't see others guys tp.
Spear Recast Reduction it's uselless no matter how much you try to sugarcoat this, the job whit the bigger number of oGDC in the game is BRD, so in my inocence thinked whit me "Use Spear on that BRD", he use Bloodletter you reduce his Cd on 1,5s, Barrage is 9s, but if he already have that skill on CD or is just waiting for the next Emperal Arrow to pop and use her, the only use I see is to use that right before you tank use a powerfull CD, but y'know the spear is a RNG card you can't use her on that right moment unless RNG-sama Bless you. So Spear have no eficiency on a long run.
Royal Road I think RR have a big problem, if i get Bole,Balance,Arrow I will prefer to use them or just use Spread to save that for later, so when i get good cards I almost don't use RR because I don't wanna burn a card just to next time came a worst card (e.g: Spear/Spire).Sugestion: I think if RR work like a Buff i can use after a draw the card whitout Burning that card, will be cool, make RNG like the cards so I will use RR before the card and for that card I will got a Random Buff. Still RNG but that will give me the choice to use a Ewer whitout any buff on me and save a a Buffed Balance/Arrow/bole for my friends and maybe help os card be more efective, and dont making us so much OP because that will be a buffed card after 60~70s. Other sugestion is make all cards AoE, and the RR Efect will depend on the sect.
Collective Unconscious, y' know whit all that aoe, Tank getting Damage, and other stuff,If I have to stay unable do anything for 18 seconds make this skill almost unusable, every time I use this I have time to only let one tick/ two ticks have efect before i have to move or everyone get out of the Bubble. Sugestion: I love the lore behind the skill, how everyone is conected and the Furtune telling talk, why didn't you make this skill some kind of "chain" whit a 3y radius from the next person If i use the Skill she will give a buff for everyone the buff will have 18s, For every people "chained" by the buff the efect get strong.
So if you have to go Away from the party you will have a less powerfull version of the buff. But if everyone have to stay together they will have a good Buff.
Celestial Opposition Aoe Stun? Pretty much uselles till now, it's like Blunt Arrow from the BRD, if you need a right time for silence the boss you will not be using the skill for other things, so we can't use the 5 seconds improve on the buffs when we want to use it. So stun isn't a good debuff because except from Dugeons runs on Big pulls, this skill don't have any feeling of utility, and y'know the other healers have a lvl 60 Skill whit big utility on 60. The improviment on our buffs is so rare to use because I won't be using this for improve a Aspected Helios on Diurnal, and want o use this to improve a AoE Card.
Noct sect Is so weak,, I just use this when paired whit another AST, and i feel like being a burden for him, also the mp cost on this is to high, whenever a tried using this when a solo run/paired whit a White Mage I have high mp issues.

Just my Opinion.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

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You seemed to have comprehended most of it, given your response :) Indeed, there is no simple solution to the "AST buff problem" because AST buffs are highly dependent on so many different factors that are outside of their control. If you end up using Extended Balance at the same time your DRG is popping their burst phase, that's gonna skew the potency of that buff to a higher degree. Likewise despite Expanded Balance being the best DPS increase, if you get that combination in the middle of the add phase of Oppressor, you're probably only going to get 2/3 of your party with that Expand. Also, as you've rightfully mentioned bring an AST will generally lower the contribution from your healer DPS.

It's funny, because if you consider Yoshi-P's comment about how they take zero Healer DPS into account while tuning raids, one can make an educated assumption that they would try to balance AST card buffs around the best steady buff the healers have - Fey Wind.

But we all know that the players won't consider this and instead balance what the total DPS an AST can bring versus WHM and SCH. This in itself is difficult to determine because raw healer DPS is a function of player skill and how good your raid is at dodging "the dodge-able" and mitigating the damage properly. This compounded by the fact that the DPS an AST brings to the table via buffs is directly dependent on the player skill, gear, and job of the DPS and Tanks you have as well as the RNG type situations a raid encounter might put these players through. You can argue this affects all healers, but I would like to think this affects AST a bit more than it would WHM and SCH.

Well, let's go back to the simpler stuff for now and put the obvious out on the table.

1) Yep, you are correct, I did forget to divide the Expanded buff by two, will adjust that calculation a bit later down this post.
2) In your math, you did forget to take into account being able to Shuffle every time you want your "real" draw, and when you include shuffle into your math, you have a 55.5% chance to draw Balance or Arrow after your Royal Road.
3) I also do not also like the assumption that Arrow % increase = DPS % increase because there's a lot of factors that make haste less desirable (has no effect on DoTs) and more desirable (stacking with Huton / Greased Lightning makes it better!). However, since many players are making the assumption that the 1.5% Fey Wind gives = 1.5% raid damage, let's just do it for the sake of easy math.

The math below will be an attempt to balance at what potency Arrow / Balance should be to meet a 1.5% raid DPS check. Like before, I will be assuming you're RRing the first card in any your two draw set and you will be shuffling to get a DPS increasing card for the second draw.

So, let's consider the RR part first:

33.3% chance of getting Extend
33.3% chance of getting Enhance
33.3% chance of getting Expand

However, you wouldn't RR Balance because using Balance and then drawing another Balance in your second draw is equal to getting Extended Balance and Extended Balanced > Enhanced Balance. Therefore your probability changes to:

50.0% chance of getting Extend
16.7% chance of getting Enhance
33.3% chance of getting Expand

So, let's continue to use that A1S parse that was posted and go with the fact that the SMN contributed 19.72% of the party damage as our single target source. Let's consider X to be the value we need to meet our goal.

Extend = X * (30 uptime / 60 downtime) * 19.72% of raid damage * 55.5% chance to get Arrow / Balance * 50% chance for Extend = X * 0.0274
Enhance = X * 1.5 Enhance Bonus * (15 uptime / 60 downtime) * 19.72% of raid damage * 55.5% chance to get Arrow / Balance * 16.7% chance for Enhance = X * 0.0069
Expand = X * 0.5 Expand Penalty * (15 uptime / 60 downtime) * 100.00% of raid damage * 55.5% chance to get Arrow / Balance * 33.3% chance for Expand = X * 0.0231

So, now we solve for X.

0.015 = 0.0274X + 0.0069X + 0.0231X = 0.0574X
X = 0.015/0.0574 = 26.13%

So, in order for AST buffs to match Fey Wind's power, Arrow and Balance need to be buffed to 26.13%.

HOWEVER, consider the following:
1) In that parse, they managed to do 8,020 DPS to Faust and still took 2:34 to complete the fight. Based on what I've seen Faust you need approximately minimum 6200 single target DPS to break him. This means that chances are the OT stacked adds near Faust and was still pummeling Faust and giving the SMN additional DPS via Deathflare and Shadowflare.
2) Healer DPS for this fight will be lower as you will need to change one of the healers for AST.
2a) If you change the WHM to AST, you will most likely lose the 2% the WHM provided and your SCH will probably DPS slightly less to make up for the lost HPS. However, Synastry at an opportune time will probably give the SCH slightly more uptime on their DPS.
2b) If you change the SCH to AST, WHM contribution will probably drop to near 0% to make up for the lower HPS Aspect Benefic will bring compared to Fairy for "regen healing". Likewise, if your AST is DPSing on the same time frame that SCH is, they're damage will be a bit lower as they have 2 "no miss" DoTs (Combust + Combust II) compared to 3 from the SCH (Bio + Bio II + Shadowflare). While Malefic II is higher potency than Broil, Malefic II is subject to accuracy constraints. Like SMN, if you take into account Shadowflare is also pinging the adds, that'll be a further decrease. Gut feeling tells me AST raw DPS contribution would be 2% of raid damage in this case.
3) My math did not take into considering using Time Dilation or Celestial Opposition to extend buffs further
4) Arrow will most likely mean less to this group than Balance because of SMN / SCH DoTs and BRDs can't auto-attack while in WM.

So, despite my massive wall of text, we still don't actually have a real statistical model to calculate what the "appropiate" buff % to Balance and Arrow should because there is still a large amount of variables to the fight that is difficult to "math" for. If you want to expand on this model, you also have to consider the "well, should I shuffle Extend / Enhance and go for Expand and hope I draw a DPS card?" as well as the fact that being able to Spread a card beforehand make shuffling for Expand much more desirable.

TLDR: Lots of variables to consider, what's above is only a simple model of "balancing" AST DPS to other healer DPS that is no where near complete.

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The above is also assuming - the content is on farm and you don't need any other buff that the AST provides to clear it. This will definitely not be the case in progression content - which makes AST even less desirable as 10% on Arrow / Balance only gives an average party buff of 0.92% at this juncture.

Balancing ASTs buffs feels absolutely horrible and I don't think there's any easy way for S-E to do it.
Balancing ASTs healing is a lot easier and should probably be answered first, though I imagine there's a function where S-E wants AST to be slightly weaker and provide buffs to the party that makes them more desirable. That's a very very fine line at this point.

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Originally Posted by Leiloni

Thank you for the explanation!

Also, where did my post go?

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You're welcome~

For some reason, Richard's post to my wall of text was pruned and I'm not sure why. I personally felt we were making attempts to at least rectify the situation.

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Originally Posted by Kira_Yoshikage

This is a little overcomplicated. All you need to do is calculate the probability of not getting a card you want and inverting that to get the probability of the card you want showing up. Basically, 1 - (2/3)*(2/3) = 0.55555555555555 = 55.5%. It's also quite easy to calculate the chances of drawing the card you want if shuffle can't redraw a card: 1 - (4/6)*(3/6) = 2/3 = 66.6666666666% for getting either arrow or balance and 1 - (5/6) * (4/6) = 44.4444444444444% to draw a specific card using shuffle.

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Thanks for this :) I haven't done statistical analysis for a while so I'm a bit rusty / trying to Google things to make sure I'm correct. I might need to pull out my old statistics text book soon if we keep this up >>;

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

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Yes, I oversimplified my math and probably did some mistakes, but it seems we agree on most points. As you said, arrow is probably less desirable than balance (tp issues, cd alignment issues, the fact that %speed=/=%dps increase and so on), so the value you calculated for arrow/balance (26%) is probably a little on the low side. Btw I think that the real problem is what you correctly pointed out here

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But we all know that the players won't consider this and instead balance what the total DPS an AST can bring versus WHM and SCH.

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If SE is planning to keep AST as a support/healer job, then they cannot ignore this simple fact. I really feel bad for them, balancing AST will not be an easy task.
Also, I fear they will not have enough data available to fix AST soon enough. Most if not all parties are already putting AST aside for raid progression...they can run all the regressions they want on parties with a SCH/WHM combo to see what the avg dps contribution of healers is (provided they stop ignoring the healers' dps), but if noone is clearing AS with an AST, which seems to be the case, I really can't see how they can observe anything to understand what to fix.
Well, good luck SE lol

Got my first taste of savage last night. No clear yet, but I did not feel I was letting my group down, nor did they from the feedback I received. I also did not feel like it would have been easier if I was using a different job.

So I finally got to raid in savage today on Astro and it was easy to heal with a WHM in both stances(I tried both and they both work well) in only the short amount of time we had today we got to the second jump and into the 3rd rotation. Synastry lines up with every double prey allowing you to keep your tank topped off by healing your prey target and then you can disable the oppressor to soften the tank buster. The healing in that fight is super predictable. I don't want to be that person but no body should be having a hard time healing that fight on Astro if you have a WHM.

My suggestion.

Make Celestial Opposition a 60 second cooldown.
Take away the minus 50% potency on RR aoe cards, or increase the duration of the cards by 7 seconds.
Essential Dignity cooldown increase to 60 seconds, potency increase to 600
Make Lightspeed cooldown 60 seconds
Take away the channeling on collective unconscious, make it place where you stand.
Aspected Helios same range as medica 2
Time dilation usable on self
Change disable to decrease potency on all actions used for the next 10 seconds.
PLEASE change shuffle so you cannot draw the same card twice. It happens TOOOOOOO much and is very frustrating.

Nocturnal stance I dunno. It needs to change. The only thing I can think of is to either make the shield like scholars where you get the double potency effect on crit, or allow us to switch freely between Noct and Diurnal with a 10-15 second cooldown.

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

Got my first taste of savage last night. No clear yet, but I did not feel I was letting my group down, nor did they from the feedback I received. I also did not feel like it would have been easier if I was using a different job.

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It would have been easier though. With 100% certainty.

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Originally Posted by Skapoc

snip. I don't want to be that person but no body should be having a hard time healing that fight on Astro if you have a WHM.

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I agree that the fight is doable on Astrologian, but remember this is the very first turn of the raid, and the fight had no need for extensive damage reduction.

Saw these videos on youtube of this AST Yoshiyuki Ly for those that wanna see.

Floor 1 Savage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZkTySAHDI4

Floor 2 Savage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfPcG43yrA

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

but if noone is clearing AS with an AST, which seems to be the case, I really can't see how they can observe anything to understand what to fix.
Well, good luck SE lol

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Very much not the case.

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Originally Posted by RudyEstheim

Saw these videos on youtube of this AST Yoshiyuki Ly for those that wanna see.

Floor 1 Savage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZkTySAHDI4

Floor 2 Savage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfPcG43yrA

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PS4 gameplay/bars confuse me XD, but thanks for the links :D.

I've tried healing savage on both nocturnal/diurnal sect, although being the weak "casual" player that I am, I'm still unable to clear Faust XD, but here is some impression of using AST in savage (note : partner is a WHM, with pretty good skill to cover up my mistake so experience may differ with other AST XD)

- Diurnal Sect is fine, healing wise, but it feel like I overheal a lot with WHM partner whether when I'm stacking regen or we just happen to heat Benefic II/Cure II combo at the same time

- Nocturnal Sect is underwhelming. I really hope they change time dilation and celestial opposition(the AOE stun one) effect under nocturnal sect to enhance RR effect instead of extend effect in diurnal and it also apply to our shield and Luminous MP regen in nocturnal(time dilation is 50% increase in target's shield and buff potency, celestial can be miniscule, like 5% increase in potency to every party member in range). This will basically make us an (ironically) less RNG dependent shielder than SCH yet still weaker as not to replace it completely(because only 50% increase in shield power instead of SCH 100% increase on crit)

- I feel that during healing intensive part of Faust(when you're close to wiping due to time up), I don't have time to draw card or buff people while healing the tank because of the animation lock while doing a draw. If I press heal while my AST just start to do her draw animation, the draw ability will be cancelled and my AST start channeling the heal instead of just the animation cancelling and the card is still drawn. It's also probably partially due to lag on my side(around 200ms ping), but I wish dev team would remove the small window of animation lock where draw cast can be cancelled if you start to cast another spell at the start of the draw animation.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

Insert Bad Math Here

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First off its not 33 33 33 on Royal roads, because you can use half them instead of roading, and you can shuffle.
Plus its far more complicated than that, Ewar can reduce mana song need and thus increase bard damage, TP card can increase damage of certain classes, even more so for aoe.

Second fey wind / arrow have variable benefits based on the the % of damage coming from dots vs a base attack. Meaning a summoner benefits more from damage buff than an attack speed buff.
also the timing of the buffs can be huge, buffing a summoner during dreadworm trance for dots he can bane or double dot can outweigh doing so on multiple people conserving TP.

Also its all moot, because you can have an astro and a sch.

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Originally Posted by Staris

First off its not 33 33 33 on Royal roads, because you can use half them instead of roading.

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It's still 33% chance of getting any one RR effect

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and you can shuffle.

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Which, since it doesn't remove your current card from the pool, still gives you a 1/6 chance of drawing any one card and therefore keeps probability (33% RR) exactly the same.

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Plus its far more complicated than that, Ewar can reduce mana song need and thus increase bard damage, TP card can increase damage of certain classes, even more so for aoe.

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But they won't match the 10% DPS increase from Balance.

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Second fey wind / arrow have variable benefits based on the the % of damage coming from dots vs a base attack.

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No they don't. You still have to cast the DoT which is unaffected by either Arrow or Fey Wind, and you will not be auto-attacking on SMN, the biggest DoT user in the game, unless you are spamming the hell out of Ruin II for some reason.

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Meaning a summoner benefits more from damage buff than an attack speed buff.

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Everyone benefits more from Balance than from Arrow, because they are similar values (10% vs 15%) but one is a direct increase and the other.....is a 15% ASPD increase which really doesn't increase DPS by a whole lot for the same duration.

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also the timing of the buffs can be huge, buffing a summoner during dreadworm trance for dots he can bane or double dot

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Yes, the timing of that RNG card you get....

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can outweigh doing so on multiple people conserving TP.

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You realize the SMN has to be doing double the DPS of every person hit by Balance combined in those 15 seconds to be able to outweigh the benefit of an AoE'd Balance, right?

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Originally Posted by Staris

First off its not 33 33 33 on Royal roads, because you can use half them instead of roading, and you can shuffle.
Plus its far more complicated than that, Ewar can reduce mana song need and thus increase bard damage, TP card can increase damage of certain classes, even more so for aoe.

Second fey wind / arrow have variable benefits based on the the % of damage coming from dots vs a base attack. Meaning a summoner benefits more from damage buff than an attack speed buff.
also the timing of the buffs can be huge, buffing a summoner during dreadworm trance for dots he can bane or double dot can outweigh doing so on multiple people conserving TP.

Also its all moot, because you can have an astro and a sch.

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So, please explain to me how my "math is bad" because I feel like I've explained myself well for the model I was trying to achieve. I'll be a bit more explicit here.

1) My model was based purely on the assumption that you're aiming for "pure and direct attack buffs". This means aiming to maximize Arrow and Balance usage as the values are generally quantifiable (less so Arrow versus Balance). This also means you're going with the assumption that the content "is on farm" and you don't need additional resources to maintain raid resource health. This also means 4/6 cards are useless in this simulation and you're aiming for Expand more often than naught because Expand + power buff is generally the highest damage increase possible to your raid DPS.
2) The reason why Extend is 50% and Enhance is 16.7% is because if you're using my model, you don't RR Balance, you use it because Extend > Enhance due to overall up time. Since using Balance is the equivalent of having Extended Balance, you bump the probability of getting "extend" from 1/3 to 1/2 and reduce enhance from 1/3 to 1/6. Since Arrow is Extend as well, using Arrow is equal to using Extend Arrow in this case too.

With that being said:

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Originally Posted by Staris

Plus its far more complicated than that

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Of course it is. As I've stated in the post you quoted.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

TLDR: Lots of variables to consider, what's above is only a simple model of "balancing" AST DPS to other healer DPS that is no where near complete.

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So, let's consider more variables.

1) As several posters have stated on these forums (yourself included), Arrow is less beneficial for DoT classes and more beneficial for high attack speed classes. Arrow (especially Enhanced Arrow) is amazing for MNKs and NINs and lack luster for most other classes. The assumption that 10% Haste = 10% more DPS is a terrible assumption but suits the purpose of "poorly quantifying haste" at this juncture.
2) Arrow has the opportunity to give a small DPS boost to classes that rely heavily on oGCD abilities and buffs for their damage. Jumps from DRGs, Reloads from MCNs, and ninjutsu from NINs come to mind. This value is difficult to quantify in the middle of a fight because you may not be quite sure what buffs these jobs may be popping at what interval - but you can make a simple assumption that with a 20 second Spear, you'll probably get at least Jump, Quick Reload, and Ninjutsu Spearing these individuals.
3) Bole provides an indirect benefit of reducing required HPS for the duration of the buff. This potentially allows your healer more uptime on their own DPS. Again, this value is difficult to quantify because it may or may not allow the healer to actually DPS. What we do know is that it will increase the amount of resources the healers will have available as they don't need to keep their foot as hard onto the healer gas pedal as required.
4) As you've rightfully stated, Ewer and Spire can both reduce the need for BRDs to sing and thus keep their DPS normal. Likewise, Spire can assist your physical DPS class after they've had to hit a group of adds + boss with AoEs and thus allow them to continue going ham. Spire is also good after raising a dead physical DPS and also good for your PLD who has no TP regeneration tools compared to all the other DPS and WARs who have Invigorate / Equilibrium. Again, this value isn't easily quantifiable.
5) Spread gives you the ability to stack probability more in your favour so you can have the right buffs at the right time. Again, this value has no quantifiable value but can prove to increase raid resource health or DPS dramatically when played properly.

While I appreciate your contribution to questions earlier in the thread to how you used AST in your Savage group to clear A1S, please don't just waltz right in here and claim my math "is bad". It's just incomplete because there are many variables to the AST card buffs that is difficult to quantify due to the nature of the buffs.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

While I appreciate your contribution to questions earlier in the thread to how you used AST in your Savage group to clear A1S, please don't just waltz right in here and claim my math "is bad". It's just incomplete because there are many variables to the AST card buffs that is difficult to quantify due to the nature of the buffs.

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So, why do I see you ripping on a guy for using incomplete math and forgetting variables a few pages back?

I appreciate the thorough nature of your analysis, but I still have not seen you apologize for treating that man so poorly over something as trivial as forgetting to divide by 2.

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Originally Posted by MistralLevante

So, why do I see you ripping on a guy for using incomplete math and forgetting variables a few pages back?

I appreciate the thorough nature of your analysis, but I still have not seen you apologize for treating that man so poorly over something as trivial as forgetting to divide by 2.

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I knew this was going to come up from you. =p And yes, I can appreciate the irony of the comment itself.

I will say this first - I made a post that apologized to him directly after he commented to me about how I was the most aggressively agreeable person he's ever met. I absolutely loved that particular comment. My intent wasn't to offend him, but yes, my wording was exceptionally poor, so I do apologize for that.

With that being said, I'm not sure why that particular post was pruned (and with that post, my subsequent response). So, I'll just repeat it here and offer my advice.

Richard should refrain from using math in his arguments because it undermines the credibility of his work and I know how hard he's been working towards getting AST changes done. At one point in time he made this comment to me:

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

You're right to correct me, but I'm dumbing it down in order to demonstrate that an 11% buff to one player isn't an 11% buff to the entire raid, because otherwise someone will see 11% and 1.5% and jump to conclusions. :p

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My goal is to prevent people from jumping to conclusions based on incorrect information. If you consider his comment where he did forget to divide by 2.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

The 10% chance at boosting DPS for 15 seconds comes at the cost of a 1 in 6 chance to get that ability, which averages out to a 1.67% DPS boost on one player per minute. It would have to be closer to a 40-60% DPS increase for 15 seconds to actually be worth anything, but as you said, people would cry OP because they don't understand how statistics work...

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Then some players may jump to the incorrect conclusion that indeed the boost should be 40-60% while if you look at my extremely flawed and simple model, a change to Balance / Arrow to 26% may be better. To me, his comment was less about the fact he forgot to divide 2 by and more of the fact that he went from 1.67% DPS increase to needing a 40-60% boost.

This isn't the first post Richard has tried to put math down on the table, but the posts I've seen where he has tried to use math to his advantage have been incorrect and I don't want others to use that as a means of "Nah, you don't know what you're talking about" and discredit everything he had because I do like some of the ideas he's posted and I want to make sure he's covering his bases.

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Now with that out of the way, I'm not trying to make any claim with how to balance AST buffs in my dialogue, at least not directly. I'm just trying to put together a sample model that some players can use and analyze to see how they may change the card system to better suit how an AST operates. There are MANY variables to consider with AST buffs and there is no real way to model all these variables together as they are all a function of the people you are playing with and thus mostly outside of the healer's control (moreso than WHM or SCH).

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I knew this was going to come up from you. =p And yes, I can appreciate the irony of the comment itself.

I will say this first - I made a post that apologized to him directly after he commented to me about how I was the most aggressively agreeable person he's ever met. I absolutely loved that particular comment. My intent wasn't to offend him, but yes, my wording was exceptionally poor, so I do apologize for that.

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Fair enough. I think I understand where you are coming from. I think you may be one of those people who gets caught up in trying to provide helpful information that often polite word choice gets forgotten. I'm guilty of the same sometimes.

Sorry for calling you out in such a way. I hate seeing people use their knowledge to make others feel inferior, and I originally and incorrectly had you pegged as someone who did that.


Back on topic people! :D

Just cleared A2, and I have to say it really changed my mind on Noct.
It's crazy big, I think it's like having bigger cure2s but still having cards!

As gear scales, I think it'll be very decent. I went sch/ast, but we had no problems with double shield..

Gotta thank that other AST video, the dps soaking vuln up stacks really gave us ideas.

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Originally Posted by Richiealvian

Just cleared A2, and I have to say it really changed my mind on Noct.
It's crazy big, I think it's like having bigger cure2s but still having cards!

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Yes, I've also realized the 5% potency buff in Noct is actually huge for the healing on Benefic/Benefic II :) I prefer to use Noct in dungeons on my AST because of the easier (AKA Quicker) healing up from low HP.

It's good to hear people using noct after so much bashing on it! I have been using it a lot derping around doing lvl 50 things because in higher level play the main reason I prefer diurnal is that 1 or 2 ticks off of CU in an emergency could be lifesaving and noct CU just doesn't seem worth it, and TD doesn't do crap for noct either...Getting both regens and a buffed bole TD on the tank is great breathing room for fixing derp mistakes someone else made, or adding dps of my own....So when I am level synced below those abilities the shields are great.

@Richiealvian Was it no issue double shield with your sch parter because you co-ordinated your shielding, because the damage was constant enough for shields to always be popping, or because one of you didn't shield much and focused more on raw healing? Were one or both you able to dps much?

edit-also did you stack virus/disable and cu/ss or trade off who was using which cd? Basically having more constant cds or having very potent double cd

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Originally Posted by RudyEstheim

Saw these videos on youtube of this AST Yoshiyuki Ly for those that wanna see.

Floor 1 Savage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZkTySAHDI4

Floor 2 Savage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWfPcG43yrA

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Impressive. This gave me much hope for AST, because i like the animations and the Esoteric set. Even more considering the following:
i tried AST (my partner is a sch, so i'm main WHM) today in A1s.
I was hoping, people here in xx Threads would just exaggerate with how bad AST really is...
Honestly, AST is just SO bad and pretty much Useless in any serious raid scenario. Sure, it IS possible as shown in above videos. Sure, its "fine" on lower content below Alex savage. But double Warrior in 2.0 was also possible. Remember that Double warrior T5 clear? Just because it was possible, doesnt mean it's fine. PLD was way better. Just like whm or sch are way better healer than ast now.
But the difference between whm/sch, and any AST combo is so huge...
we had hard problems with Faust, took us like 30 minutes to bring it down. I had non stop zero Mana (and here i was hoping, people would exaggerate too.. Because potency are ONLY 5% lower, but Spell cost 20% less MP) during the end. The heal output is bad, and the buffs were almost worthless. I was even lucky with buffs, and draw like 2-3 attack speed for our Monk, one of them an extendet one + time dilation + CO, which got his dps up by like 50-100 in total? difficult to say... He was just slightly above the drg. My own DPS were stuck at 130, because i just HAD to heal so much.
On Opressor it was also very noticable. My sch partner had to AOE much more, had more MP problems, could dps less. Buffs again... Mostly useless junk. Way too weak to be noticed by any means, unlike the missing healing.
Went out before time up, i changed to war, we oneshotet Faust. I had 280 dps, and had an super easy time healing, without MP problems (endet the fight with 2500-3000 MP ). I probably could have re-newed my dots 1-2 more times.
And during Boss it was similar. Keeping everyone alive was noticable easier and better, than with ast. Despite so little differences in AOE heals. (maybe it was the Mind difference, that gets higher, the higher our Item level goes, since its a flat 3% bonus).
Not to mention, going ast just puts a higher stress on your co-healer, making him less efficient, and maybe even lowering raid dps at all.

Honestly i see 3 ways to fix this job, without a complete rework:
- Bring Healing up to whm/sch level, including potencies. Healing output needs a good buff here
- Cards need to get a HUGE buff. At least 10% -> 40%. The Healing deficite is SO enourmous in my opinion (my whole group noticed it, not just me, and not just my scholar partner), that buffs need to make up for that loss. 10% is just way too low.
- A combination of both.

Since #1 would make it into a whm/sch clone with a different weapon, i guess #2 would be the first pick.

Again: Just looking at potencies, i cant understand why it makes such a big difference. But it does... ;/ i guess, all the small things just add up.

But lets see the positive: SE "has" to do a major Buff (at a similar level as 2.0 warrior) at some point, so we can look forward in a better AST.

Considering I currently solo heal Faust to 50-40% on my AST with plenty of MP leftover (and no cards), I'm not entirely sure it's the class to blame there. AST needs some buffs, but no, it's not terrible.

The problem is not the first half, its more the 2nd one.
And you can't possibly compare that, since you probably dont run 2 warriors, that sometimes feel like paper ;)
With a PLD and/or DRK instead double warrior, that might look different.
But it wont change the fact, that as WHM its much easier. And that was my point. Not "ast is bad, i cant heal anything", its "ast is bad, because it has a more difficult time than whm/sch".

Like i said. Warrior could tank T5 in 2.0 also, but it was still bad.

Ast just brings pretty much zero benefit at the moment to the Raid. Even worse, in most cases, it gets worse with overall dps, and safety. And that is something, that shouldn't be.

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Originally Posted by Rahaya

Considering I currently solo heal Faust to 50-40% on my AST with plenty of MP leftover (and no cards), I'm not entirely sure it's the class to blame there. AST needs some buffs, but no, it's not terrible.

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The only thing terrible was using this as an example of why AST isn't terrible.

AST isn't terrible though.

Also everyone does know Astro has a perma potency buff in the form of Noc stance ? 5% is nothing to scoff at.

I prefer Noc over Regen stance because there are tons of fights where I need to heal big and that 5% is very helpful.

Also Ewer is a god send now and was an indirect buff to Noc as light speed was. ( why you would use light speed in regen stance Idk I never bothered with it)

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Originally Posted by Noira

( why you would use light speed in regen stance Idk I never bothered with it)

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You would use it for the same reasons in both stances, really. You don't typically want to spam Aspected Helios, as you don't want to overwrite the regen effects in Diurnal and you don't want to overwrite the shields on your party in Nocturnal. You want to use Benefic/Helios when Lightspeed is up, so whether you have regens or shields is irrelevant to its use.

Darkseth I am not sure if you are serious or trolling. Astrologian is a far cry from what you say.they are near the same strength as the other healers. They need at most a minuet tweak to let us pay of the strength of the job which is flexibility by letting us access both stances in battle somehow.other then that we are on par with the other two jobs.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noira

AST isn't terrible though.

Also everyone does know Astro has a perma potency buff in the form of Noc stance ? 5% is nothing to scoff at.

I prefer Noc over Regen stance because there are tons of fights where I need to heal big and that 5% is very helpful.

Also Ewer is a god send now and was an indirect buff to Noc as light speed was. ( why you would use light speed in regen stance Idk I never bothered with it)

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Ewer is also a card that gives you the chance to groupwide buff everyone. Basically if you're low on mana and without LA, you're forcefully using a card for your mana and sacrificing supporting your party. it's great we can use spear and ewer that way, I just don't agree with it at all.

Of course they aren't terrible, no one is saying they are. However, being able to do content isn't a justification for, say, their cards and support not being where it should be.

Also, why is our healing potency lower? We don't have the CDs/utility/cross class other healers do, which is made up for by cards. So, why do we lack the same potency as the other two healers? We already sacrifice what makes us similar to them, like our crits not giving a crit shield.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noira

AST isn't terrible though.

Also everyone does know Astro has a perma potency buff in the form of Noc stance ? 5% is nothing to scoff at.

I prefer Noc over Regen stance because there are tons of fights where I need to heal big and that 5% is very helpful.

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- AST is not terrible, but it is disadvantaged.

- I do scoff at Noct's 5% potency buff because it doesn't come close to making up the gap in efficiency between the two Sects. AST spells are strong enough with or without the tiny 5% buff; the problem is in the lack of potent healing CDs for those short spurts when you need dramatically increased healing, which applies to both Sects. At least with Diurnal the baseline maintenance healing is much less MP-intensive, the regens free up more GCDs and MP for the caster, and somewhat better synergy with CU (lol...but still) and CO is enjoyed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noira

AST isn't terrible though.

Also everyone does know Astro has a perma potency buff in the form of Noc stance ? 5% is nothing to scoff at.

I prefer Noc over Regen stance because there are tons of fights where I need to heal big and that 5% is very helpful.

Also Ewer is a god send now and was an indirect buff to Noc as light speed was. ( why you would use light speed in regen stance Idk I never bothered with it)

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Honestly this statement says why Noct is bad. You're not using for the benefits it gives to Aspected heals and abilities but purely for the 5% healing buff. Also the fact that we hold Spear and Ewer for ourselves shows we have short coming in the mana department.

I will simply agree to disagree.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Honestly this statement says why Noct is bad. You're not using for the benefits it gives to Aspected heals and abilities but purely for the 5% healing buff. Also the fact that we hold Spear and Ewer for ourselves shows we have short coming in the mana department.

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Exactly what i was discussing with a friend about our mana issue. We "seems" ok now but we have to keep Ewer for us and even use celestial opposition for personal gain.

Thats a huge concern i have with AST mana issue, i'm supposed to buff mainly others, not myself, just to cover my own weaknesses.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

It's good to hear people using noct after so much bashing on it! I have been using it a lot derping around doing lvl 50 things because in higher level play the main reason I prefer diurnal is that 1 or 2 ticks off of CU in an emergency could be lifesaving and noct CU just doesn't seem worth it, and TD doesn't do crap for noct either...Getting both regens and a buffed bole TD on the tank is great breathing room for fixing derp mistakes someone else made, or adding dps of my own....So when I am level synced below those abilities the shields are great.

@Richiealvian Was it no issue double shield with your sch parter because you co-ordinated your shielding, because the damage was constant enough for shields to always be popping, or because one of you didn't shield much and focused more on raw healing? Were one or both you able to dps much?

edit-also did you stack virus/disable and cu/ss or trade off who was using which cd? Basically having more constant cds or having very potent double cd

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It actually worked out perfectly. There are parts where I was solo healing (well, could say I copied the other AST's video), sch could dps and I was the only shielder. Jagd doll comes, I get Fey Illumination and we were healing different tanks. SCH doesn't have a Benefic 2 powerhouse, so a 7k buffed benefic 2 is just really awesome. If anything my only pet peeve was that I did 26 dps the whole encounter. Only braved myself to use gravity 2-3 times the first few pulls. The difference is crazy, 4.3k becomes 4.8k that's just amazing and will scale more with gear. The shields also do save you from some oh shit situation, it's like a somewhat extra lustrate cause in total it's over 3k unbuffed. Also, essential dignity is buffed with noct as well.

At some point with conva and stuff I remember critting for 16k.. that's really massive.

Here's our clear video, we did have some oh shit moments with the tank..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwerbtDeBFw

Finally people who understand the value of Noc stance. It's like people who go huh when a machinist takes feint from lancer.

Nov stance is incredibly powerful. Just people jump on the astro is weak band wagon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Richiealvian

It actually worked out perfectly. There are parts where I was solo healing (well, could say I copied the other AST's video), sch could dps and I was the only shielder. Jagd doll comes, I get Fey Illumination and we were healing different tanks. SCH doesn't have a Benefic 2 powerhouse, so a 7k buffed benefic 2 is just really awesome. If anything my only pet peeve was that I did 26 dps the whole encounter. Only braved myself to use gravity 2-3 times the first few pulls. The difference is crazy, 4.3k becomes 4.8k that's just amazing and will scale more with gear. The shields also do save you from some oh shit situation, it's like a somewhat extra lustrate cause in total it's over 3k unbuffed. Also, essential dignity is buffed with noct as well.

At some point with conva and stuff I remember critting for 16k.. that's really massive.

Here's our clear video, we did have some oh shit moments with the tank..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwerbtDeBFw

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IMO, the vid does not do good service showing off the strength of Noct Stance.
If anything, it shows Noct AST is able to heal it and the 5% buff is usefull.

However, the times you actually used the aspected spells (THE trademark of the sect) can be counted with one hand and I'm not even joking.

Yeah, I almost never used the aspected, it's the OH SHIT I FORGOT TO HEAL button, it's not mana efficient but the extra heal itself 5% makes you very efficient with all your skills. Benefic hits like a truck. Notice the power of benefic 2 spam during the double spiders.

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Originally Posted by MistralLevante

Fair enough. I think I understand where you are coming from. I think you may be one of those people who gets caught up in trying to provide helpful information that often polite word choice gets forgotten. I'm guilty of the same sometimes.

Sorry for calling you out in such a way. I hate seeing people use their knowledge to make others feel inferior, and I originally and incorrectly had you pegged as someone who did that.


Back on topic people! :D

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Indeed, stuff happens and the like and nobody is perfect (as much as we'd all like to think that!). Though some continued irony to the whole thing - I also forgot to divide by 2 in one of my equations earlier. >>; Though I guess that's better than dividing the server by 0 (harhar, terrible joke abound). I will admit this discussion has gotten me thinking more and more about how to handle the cards and I wouldn't be thinking about it more if not for the initial "math talk" with Richard.

Since I already have a very basic model in place, here's some more thought behind it.

If you take my existing model and substitute X = 10% (current Arrow / Balance values):

Y = 0.0274*0.10 + 0.0069*0.10 + 0.0231*0.10 = 0.0574X
Y = 0.0574 * 0.10 = 0.574%

You can loosely determine that AST's overall contribution to the 8-man DPS is 0.574%.

Now, let's say we keep the buffs the same but reduce the cooldown of Draw to 20s and Shuffle down to 40 seconds, effectively allowing the AST to draw 50% more cards than normal within the same model:

Extend = X * (30 uptime / 40 downtime) * 19.72% of raid damage * 55.5% chance to get Arrow / Balance * 50% chance for Extend = X * 0.0410
Enhance = X * 1.5 Enhance Bonus * (15 uptime / 40 downtime) * 19.72% of raid damage * 55.5% chance to get Arrow / Balance * 16.7% chance for Enhance = X * 0.0103
Expand = X * 0.5 Expand Penalty * (15 uptime / 40 downtime) * 100.00% of raid damage * 55.5% chance to get Arrow / Balance * 33.3% chance for Expand = X * 0.0347

Y = 0.0410X + 0.0103X + 0.0347X = 0.0860X

And then see how it looks with the existing 10%
Y = 0.0860 * 0.1 = 0.86% boost to overall DPS

If you want to try to have Balance and Arrow buffed to match that the assumed 1.5% Fey Wind provides using this draw frequency
X*0.0860 = 0.015 = 0.015 / 0.0860 = 17.4%

Arrow and Balance would need to provide 17.4% Attack Damage / Haste to match the assumed 1.5% Fey Wind provides.

Again, I will reiterate this is a very simple model that makes a lot of assumptions about Haste and doesn't take into any data of how the other cards can indirectly increase DPS potential as those values are difficult to quantify at this juncture.

Looking at the above, I think I'd actually be pretty happy if Draw was reduced to 20s versus the current 30s. And it would partially settle some concerns regarding AST trivializing some tight DPS if they chose to massively buff the cards instead.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Finally people who understand the value of Noc stance. It's like people who go huh when a machinist takes feint from lancer.

Nov stance is incredibly powerful. Just people jump on the astro is weak band wagon.

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I see you say things like this a lot, but without anything to support it.

If you're truly invested in the class, you'll want to see it brought up to the level of the other two healers.

The math (including actual party performance math, not just napkin math) doesn't lie about the current disadvantages of AST, and I, for one, don't want to see AST relegated to the niche class ghetto, because that's where it's headed. It needs to be better than "fine" or "not bad" to prove a strong choice for all kinds of content.

Honestly, at this point I'm pretty sure Vlady is just trolling. He never actually *argues* for anything he says, one way or the other. He just says it.