What does everyone think about those AST buffs?

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

you cant have your cake and eat it too

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Sure you can, as SCH we have been eating our cakes, many many cakes. Our Fairy is nothing to sneeze at, if anything, it is one of our most powerful weapon in our arsenal, and I rather have a pet who watch my back and HEAL ME FIRST when shit hits the fan. AST shield should be more powerful, considering when they get to be paired with WHM, AST does not have fairy who helps with the heal. Adlo is still the better shield when it critical to over 4000 HP healed. But let's stop the discussion right now, since the last thing I want is the community to get a wind on how good SCH is in the hand of good players. I am just glad now AST is equal when it comes to healing and buffing capabilities, though they still have no pet.

All I'm seeing is people not wanting SCH + WHM now, because AST combinations are "superior".

lol fevelle you do realize that since HW came out Astro has been EXCLUDED from all PF and progression content and your complaining now that your being excluded? now you know how we felt also if people are excludding the other healers they are stupid as every healer has the ability to heal all content fine. All healers are balanced and on point other than sch and dissipation.

I agree with does who love the changes. Im a careerSCH and AST will never out mitigate dmg like Sch or emergency heal with minimal mp strain.
Whm will always have bigger heals with better constant/hp regen capabilities with their tools. Sch has buffs and aoe esuna, whm has presence of mind and heal magic boosters. I just dont see why anyone would see why Ast is now OP and not just equal in its assistance to a party"s survival.

A shield that can shield equivalent to adlo, but you have access to cure II as well.

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Originally Posted by Fevelle

All I'm seeing is people not wanting SCH + WHM now, because AST combinations are "superior".

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Not superior by any stretch, since the 10% attack bonus buffs is RANDOM, like maybe 2-3 balance every 6 draws, IF YOU ARE SUPER LUCKY, 1-2 every 6 is more likely. All the other buffs are similar to what the Fairy already provided, so essentially it is about the same. It's just giving you a "somewhat different" play style when it comes to healing combination. It does give the illusion of "more superior", when in reality, it's more of the same. The biggest difference is, now AST is equal counterpart when it comes to HEALER role in the party.

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

A shield that can shield equivalent to adlo, but you have access to cure II as well.

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30% more than adlo while having access to cure 2 and cards.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

30% more than adlo while having access to cure 2 and cards.

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How is it 30% more when and aldo crit is a 200% shield?

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

30% more than adlo while having access to cure 2 and cards.

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If you fail to see how GOOD and OP SCH is, with the Fairy + Rouse combo, amongst other far superior tools in SCH arsenal, I don't know what else to tell you. AST is now can bring similar benefits as SCH, in different ways, and give players who like to play as healer, another way to play. THREE different healers, with their own uniqueness, but more or less about the same potency when it comes to "can you heal your party effectively?".

Our Fairy healing potency pretty much destroy any minor bonus that AST have, AST need that 30% more, to make up with the lack of Fairy, and everything else. The buffs and adjustment is sorely needed. Now we have a good healer who can stand toe to toe with the other two, and any party leader can simply try the AST combination without fear of "lacking the healing potency". And yes, that means, SCH or WHM will be out of the picture. You can say the same about the 4 DPS slot, and we have 7 DPS, three of them will be always out of the picture.

lol this thread


Just give it a week or two for this to blow over. All exaggerations and theory crafting should be solved by then. People from both sides are being far too dramatic for something barely tested. Kind of like when new Pokemon get released, people overhype it thinking it'll be the best thing ever because it's new and shiny and theoretically do everything but then a week in an people realise what it's actual potentials are.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

30% more than adlo while having access to cure 2 and cards.

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Oh give me a break. My AST is geared with three Eso pieces, while my SCH has none. My Noc Aspec Benefic is healing for about 1895-1950 while my SCH Adlo is over 2,000.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

30% more than adlo while having access to cure 2 and cards.

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Adlo shields for 300 (600 on Crit).
Asp Benefic shields for 342.

42 is 14% of 300.

Total potencies are 600 (900 on crit) for SCH and 604 = [262.5 + (262.5*1.3)] for AST

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

Adlo shields for 300 (600 on Crit).
Asp Benefic shields for 342.

42 is 14% of 300.

Total potencies are 600 (900 on crit) for SCH and 604 = [262.5 + (262.5*1.3)] for AST

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Still more and oh, at 66% mp cost of adlo + instant cast.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

Still more and oh, at 66% mp cost of adlo + instant cast.

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Even at 66% mp cost , a crit Aldo is more mp efficient. Think about it.

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Originally Posted by SenzorialBoundries

Still more and oh, at 66% mp cost of adlo + instant cast.

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Adlo also heals for more than Aspected Benefic. The total difference is about 4 potency if the 130% is calculated after the 5% from Noct boost. If it's calculated as a total 35% boost then it's exactly 600 and they are the same outside of crits.

AST also lacks fairy healing (which is significant) and fairy buffs, Virus, E4E, the MP management of SCH, and Lustrate.

AST still heals for less than WHM/SCH total but is a lot closer in terms of what they provide. Which is how it should be because cards are now powerful.

Honestly you need to chill out if you think AST is going to be brought over SCH. It's now up to the preference of the healers as AST is interchangeable with SCH.

Looks like a bunch of people who want to fight to be superior rather than being equal.

Some of you guys arguing are the equivalent of a level 52 of each of the three healers arguing over things they don't even understand.

This is EXACTLY why AST's were so terrible in the first place, because they KNEW people would whine about them.

Done A1S as both new astro and Scholar -for A2S i needed to sit on my sch for dps.

The difference isn't really noticeable, and Astro is in no way more powerful than scholar. People before whining should give a look to the whole healing+support kit of both healer on Progress content. Scholar that think Astro now do everything better are wrong, exactly like those who think Astro's buff aren't enought to be on par.
Yes. Healing-wise they're on par.

As scholar i can output more personal dps (about 350-450, 700-800 in p1) over the fight and my fairy and AF stacks (plus my whm skill) allow me to sit in cleric all the time except between resin and plasma. Plus, i'm always really high on mp and during heal phases i can use a lot of adlo over phisick.
The fight is really easy and not intensive.

As Astro 3.07 (nocturnal) i do half dps over the fight (about 180-220, 500 in p1) but heavily increase burst dps at the start thanks to expanded balance+CO plus time dilation on drg, the % of the boss when 0.5 come is the same as scholar. Since i don't have fairy and AF giving me time, i dps less (just dotting both both one time before resin and one time after plasma). I need to heal a bit more than scholar to make up but the timing os succor/asphelios and adlo/aspbene are exactly the same. It's more hard to manage mp, but still no need of ballad and while with scholar i have a better time with indom and lustrate for preys, with astro is really a lot easier to heal prey+plasma (thanks to sinastry) and the heavier single target heal allow the tank to stay more in dps stance. Card RNG sucked, half of my draws were spire and spear, only one balace and two arrow.

I'm not really competent as Astro, i'm main scholar since 2.0 and it's a month that i don't use astro but savage is the only place where test heal stress.
Average dps is similar, a bit higher in the end as scholar but 45/75s enhanced/extended balance and arrow are not bad at all. Probabily with more skill than mine with astro it can be close to sch dps.
Healing, my whm had easier time with me scholar -but not playing enougth astro it's normal- but tank-healing was better with Astro.

To me, as DPS/Mitigation healer scholar is still king, but Astrologian is a very powerful Single target heal and Sinastry is a beast of cd. Probably in fight like A1S and A3S Astro can really shine now, without replacing the sch/whm combo. It's only a viable substitute in both situation.
Sadly, 1000/1200 scholar dps in A2s is too important to try that as Astro. I'm sad ><
imho, basically: Scholar=DPS+Mitigation, Astro=Support/DPS+single target healing, WHM=Raw power+AOE healing.

In the end, i prefer Scholar gameplay because Astro remind me too much white mage and i don't really enjoy it, but his animations are too Gorgeous :<

Everyone should just be happy with the changes, they're awesome.

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Originally Posted by Kumori_Kumo

Meh! You're not gonna be in nocturnal sect when paired anyway. Also having many more mana options, effectively we can adlo more than you can afford to noct-asp, so I'd say it comes out pretty even?



Since when does SCH need buffs? There's a reason we didn't get anything amazing post-50: it's hard to give us anything without making us too good.

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Deployment Tactics is extremely situational & Fairy heal took a hit. Adlo is not what it used to be.

a 30 sec duration wow thats a huge increase, i didnt expect that much, now we can have 1 min durations with double duration royal road.

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Originally Posted by chumsy

a 30 sec duration wow thats a huge increase, i didnt expect that much, now we can have 1 min durations with double duration royal road.

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Plus Time Dilation makes it ridiculous :O

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Originally Posted by Dalvy

Deployment Tactics is extremely situational & Fairy heal took a hit. Adlo is not what it used to be.

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All healer changes should be tested in raid, in normal content everything is useless/situational exept main heals by how stupidly is ff14 normal content.
Most of healer toolkit exist to be used in raids, and there is where you find a place for situational skill.
Deployment is used for raidbuster like jump/cascade (or the old gigaflares for exaples) and works very well. The things is that it's needed only with low gear and low defence. When you get more more gear you need less mitigation, but skills are important when check are tight and you have to tune everything to survive (someone remember 2.4 T11?).
Yeah, a lot of skill are situational, you have less crit and fairy are slightly weaker than before but over the fight they do a very noticeable difference. The fairy is not as weak as scholar today want to say, it's still heavy healing-wise.
The fact is that Astro now has comparable tools to sch and whm, but having good tool doesn't mean that the other one are bad. Astro is better as raw base healing power and those heals costs less because they miss emergency spells aside dignity, have less mana over the fight and they miss support healing tool like fairy or true raw healing.

Maybe things are not so well balanced as they were in 2.55 and still need a bit of work, but for now there is a lot more sinergy between choices (whm/ast, sch/ast, sch/whm) than before.

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Originally Posted by Yzuna

Quick noob question :

Does Nocturnal Aspected Benefic's shield can crit ? I mean, if you crit do you get a double potency shield like SCH's Adlo ?

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It can crit but not with sch's double shield advantage.

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Originally Posted by Soyre_Monre

quoted stuff

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mm I meant to say dissipation :S Deployment is very frequently used when I heal.

It really baffles me how people can claim that AST is now stronger than whm/sch, this is wrong on so many levels. AST still has its core problems but due to higher potencies they're just masked a bit better. AST is still a situational pick.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

He clearly wanted SCH to remain the job you can't give up for raid, while now AST is maybe a possible substitute.

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Maybe in some month, when the content got outgeared enough.

But actually the scholar is not replaceable in most parties.

Its not about the shields. Except the case you really need a shield to survive a mechanic (actually didn't saw it in A1S or A2S [we have not done much there. actually wave 6], they are just quality of life and 2 whitemages would be much more comfortable from healing point.

The reason for scholar needing is nothing else than DPS.

Yes, a whitemage has more burst on single- and grouptargets. The AST btw. not. But when it comes to stance dance and MP management, the scholar leave the others far behind.

We've tested it out last evening and whitemage/ast combination resulted in a huge DPS drop.

80 secs the balance given to a dps will make up for the lack of dps that AST has.
Had a neverreap run last night with only about 16 minutes long (finished the dungeon with the protect duration was on 14m) due to the MNK was given the balance and the arrow on all the boss fights.

Anyday now, Selene will get her buff too.

*looks at sad faerie Selene* one day.

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Originally Posted by AlphaSonic

It doesn't work on me. I tried to heal the person I synastried and it was only healed by that 20% extra that gives synastry.

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You have to take a closer look. Heal and synastry effect pop as separate numbers. These get not merged in the flying text. You have to add them together your own.

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Originally Posted by AriaEnia

80 secs the balance given to a dps will make up for the lack of dps that AST has.

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A scholar provide way more damage that a balance could give one dd, even it could run the whole fight. And I'm talking about Raid and not the easy 4 man instances.

On a WHM / AST Combo, let the WHM DPS with tossing some regens in between and placing asylum, because AST is fine with healing now, regen up is like having a fairy. Apart from A2S, SCH and WHM are doing compareable DPS, but even A2S is clearable with ease without a SCH. All Healer comps are viable now. But can't speak for A4S.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

Maybe in some month, when the content got outgeared enough.

But actually the scholar is not replaceable in most parties.

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Of course I agree. As I've previously written, AST is still weaker than WHM in diurnal and much weaker than SCH in nocturnal. Cards are still unreliable, you can draw spires for all the duration of the encounter, AST dps is a joke, it has no emergency heals, it has only one MP free skill so it struggles more than whm/sch with MP, it has no fairy (when compared to SCH), and only has one (very powerful) healing cd that increases its healing throughput (as opposed to WHM who has 2) and causes a LOT of overhealing. People crying OP should just get good and learn what whm/sch are really capable of...or do us all a favor and level their astro so that they can speak without being ignorant.

I don't know what people are complaining about. AST no longer feels like fighting an uphill battle. Besides, a true healer levels all three Jobs.

Healed A1s and A2s tonight. AST/SCH combo.

Everything went fine - though we didn't clear A2 after having it on farm, it was due to a new tank rather than any HPS concerns. Some attempts were smoother because of the heart of the cards was on my side.

https://38.media.tumblr.com/c3ebdeae...tjclo1_500.gif

Will be interesting to see A3s as this will be 'progression' in the sense of our team hasn't got this on farm or seen past A3 hand split.

Pretty much the same experience on A1S and A2S with a WHM/AST Nocturnal. The shields even gave enough breathing room for the WHM to let me DPS quite a lot.

Congrats to being a true healer now instead of making the other whm or sch carry your weight. Truly that is good for your healing. :) But your cards are still garbage for potency. They could last for a min a piece and still be garbage. It's like having a longer butter knife to cut a steak, it's not solving the issue of getting the job done.

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Originally Posted by Dicejss

This is too salty to read.

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https://media1.giphy.com/media/xBa1yHZ1Psm76/200.gif

I think you need to take a chill pill.

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Originally Posted by Elth

Pretty much the same experience on A1S and A2S with a WHM/AST Nocturnal. The shields even gave enough breathing room for the WHM to let me DPS quite a lot.

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That's good to hear. Did you push A3 with the comp at all?

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Originally Posted by Dicejss

Congrats to being a true healer now instead of making the other whm or sch carry your weight. Truly that is good for your healing. :) But your cards are still garbage for potency. They could last for a min a piece and still be garbage. It's like having a longer butter knife to cut a steak, it's not solving the issue of getting the job done.

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Well, a little too harsh, but you're right. Unfortunately if AST cards system remains as it is, WHM/SCH will always be a better option mainly because of DPS. Devs can either:
1) Tweak AST dps skills so that they can be halfway between SCH and WHM dps in practical use; or
2) Give AST more control over their cards, since with bad luck you can REALLY wipe to enrage because you didn't draw a balance when you needed it.
I'd like them to go with the second option. Fix shuffle so that it can't give the same card, make it so that you won't draw the same card in your spread and the same card you've just burned for Royal Road. This way there will still be a lot of rng, but you can effectively control it to some extent. Then analyze the data and, if needed, further increase cards buffs (like adjust balance/arrow to 15% increased damage/speed). This would justify AST weak dps capabilities and cards rng. Right now they're still too unreliable and even with perfect luck (meaning keep drawing spire-balance for expanded damage up) a SCH dps will still be higher than the increase in raid dps thanks to balances.

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Originally Posted by Rewind

That's good to hear. Did you push A3 with the comp at all?

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I believe AST will be very useful in A3S (assuming you have very good dps), I mean CU is just perfect to counter cascade and such a small arena allows you to safely cast expanded buffs without having to worry too much if they'll get to all your party members. Also synastry should work like a charm for double hand phase. I can see SCH/AST being the best combo there, though I can be wrong since I have no direct experience in that fight. Sorry for intruding into your conversation :P

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

I believe AST will be very useful in A3S (assuming you have very good dps), I mean CU is just perfect to counter cascade and such a small arena allows you to safely cast expanded buffs without having to worry too much if they'll get to all your party members. Also synastry should work like a charm for double hand phase. I can see SCH/AST being the best combo there, though I can be wrong since I have no direct experience in that fight. Sorry for intruding into your conversation :P

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Sadly, a lot of discussions in this thread is about sch being replaced by astros, but in the end Astro is more viable when handling whm job with a scholar co-healer :<

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Originally Posted by Rewind

That's good to hear. Did you push A3 with the comp at all?

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Tonight, with the same WHM/NocAST comp. I'll edit or reply here to report how things went. A1S/A2S were walks in a park, but that could be (probably is) because everyone got some additionnal gear this week.

It's hard to determine the exact weight my cards brought to the field. I parsed between 350 and 600 DPS just for myself, engaged pretty much all the fights with AoE Spear (reducing every DPS' cooldowns en engage is nice but a pain to theorycraft) and got quite a lot of decent card draws.
So yeah, not a SCH, but more that decent when it comes to "added benefits" not counting healing pawa
Healing wise, Synastry alone felt kinda godlike, being able to heal both tanks + one prey (the other prey being my cohealer who took care of himself) on Oppressor or again, handle both tanks on the last widow phase in A2 to let my WHM get some MP back.
Additionnaly, while NoctBene is not Adlo, it was more than enough to keep the BLM alive if he was Converting during the first prey.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

Well, a little too harsh, but you're right. Unfortunately if AST cards remain as it is, WHM/SCH will always be a better option mainly because of DPS. Devs can either:
1) Tweak AST dps skills so that they can be halfway between SCH and WHM dps in practical use; or
2) Give AST more control over their cards, since with bad luck you can REALLY wipe to enrage because you didn't draw a balance when you needed it.
I'd like them to go with the second option. Fix shuffle so that it can't give the same card, make it so that you won't draw the same card in your spread and the same card you've just burned for Royal Road. This way there will still be a lot of rng, but you can effectively control it to some extent. Then analyze the data and, if needed, further increase cards buffs (like adjust balance/arrow to 15% increased damage/speed). This would justify AST weak dps capabilities and cards rng. Right now they're still too unreliable and even with perfect luck (meaning keep drawing spire-balance for expanded damage up) a SCH dps will still be higher than the increase in raid dps thanks to balances.

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I came here to say something similar to this. After playing ast all day yesterday, my final opinion is that whm/sch are still better, but ast is damn close now. The only thing holding ast back from being exactly on par with the others is their rng/overall dps output (and group mnd bonus). I know I mentioned rng earlier and it seemed I was the unpopular opinion, but it's really true. Sch can fey wind and SS, and keep those buffs up consistently on CD while dpsing. Ast has to rely on luck, which may cause them to never even pull an arrow/balance, and this really is an issue.

I know others in the thread liked to say I'm shit at the class if I can't adapt to the cards I draw. Well not only is that not true, but it's completely missing the point. If you're on a raid boss, and that said raid boss is a dps check, why would your raid bring a class that might boost dps well, but also might not at all? Well, they wouldn't. They would bring the ones that can consistently bring higher dps. And atm that's whm and sch combo. Since the whm/sch combo can still heal better overall than ast/anything combos too, that still leaves ast on the sidelines for any group that's min/maxing in progression.

With that said, I'm not saying the sky is falling for ast, or that it's a joke and will never get used. These buffs made ast a good class. It's just that any group that says "we should take the classes that are best suited for the job" will rarely ever pick ast until they either remove the rng aspect, or somehow make the cards more homogeneous (which I would hate to see the latter).

Very happy with the buffs after a lot of testing. Noticed an easier flow into delivering more DPS during dungeons thanks to richer heals. And a return to longer balance duration is bliss.