Cleric stance on sastasha for Ast

First post for me here I'm not level 60 on either healer yet and I don't consider myself an expert. I have a friend who just started and it was his first time going through it. After casting protect I swapped to cleric stance which stopped my heals and killed the tank which I regret. The tank told me that I shouldn't be DPSing anyways and said his main was healer. I pray he's not a scholar but I can't possibly see his side of the story on that one. In a level 16 dungeon with two level 55 people and a new drk level 32. He's pulling two sets of trash mobs and I had no issue healing him through it but he was constantly losing aggro on a class with aoe enmity and consistently whined about protect and how it was needed. I really just couldn't see his point so I just stayed with cleric stance so I didn't have to wait 30 seconds without heals again for useless unnecessary mitigation. How can anyone justify standing around casting cure ever 15-20 seconds on any class.

I've been leveling AST as my last healer job to 60 so been to Sastasha recently a bit more than I'd like :D Personally I have only cleric stance there as cross-class and just skip protect entirely. The healing requirement is already very low and I don't think protect makes much of a difference. I've had quite a few runs where I've healed mostly between pulls and maybe tossed one benefic during the pull here and there. There's no excuse for idling as healer for long periods of time so yes, you should be doing dps and the tank was just plain wrong. Healer dps is so high that it almost rivals that of the dps classes if you're geared well and it's sometimes even better. I'd also say that there's very little to gain in the early dungeons from pulling more than one group of mobs as nobody has a decent AoE damage anyway and taking one group at a time gives the healer more freedom to push dps as most of the time you can skip healing entirely.

Protect is useless in the early parts of the game. Stick with Cleric Stance.

Just keep CS as your first Cross class. Protect is over rated, especially at that level. Yes it's free damage mitigation but it isn't nearly as good, or as essentially, as many make it out to be. You'll need it by at least level thirty, so ignore anyone ignorant enough that tells you is better than CS.

Running PotD its funny to see how many AST and SCH have CS as their 10 skill vs the ones who have Protect. Noticed more people with CS.

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Originally Posted by Heliantheae

Running PotD its funny to see how many AST and SCH have CS as their 10 skill vs the ones who have Protect. Noticed more people with CS.

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It helps make the run quicker and seasoned healers should be able to heal just fine.
It's those who are learning who should start out with at least Protect.

The early dungeons where you only get the choice of one cross class skill definitely do not need Protect. I always have Cleric Stance set as my first cross class skill. That said, you will want to stance dance as an Astrologian whenever you need to heal which will happen occasionally. Usually this amounts to once at the end of each trash pull fight, and a couple of times during a boss fight. As a Scholar, as long as everyone is avoiding unnecessary damage you can literally leave Cleric Stance on 100% of the time, since your fairy will easily cover all healing needs even on bosses.

Isn't most casters leveling gear kinda even with mnd/int? It's been over a year since I've leveled a caster so I don't remember.

So, clerics in lower dungeons will give you what...5 extra points to int? And in the same breath, CS shouldn't gimp your healing that bad either. I think trying to sneak in one more Malfect or Stella made have done the tank in lol.

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Originally Posted by BorisDaBlade

Isn't most casters leveling gear kinda even with mnd/int? It's been over a year since I've leveled a caster so I don't remember.

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Yes. But...

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Originally Posted by BorisDaBlade

So, clerics in lower dungeons will give you what...5 extra points to int? And in the same breath, CS shouldn't gimp your healing that bad either.

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No. First, Cleric Stance does more than just swap INT and MND. It also increases magic damage by 10% and reduces healing by 20%. And that's not counting the situation of doing a roulette on a higher level class where you end up with synced gear which only has MND and no INT, and difference is quite significant.

A lot of people here recommend sticking with Cleric Stance in the first cross class slot but if you don/t Protect, the hate you'll get from the party members can be surprising since people sometimes don't really know what they're saying. SO I do the same as you put Protect on the first slot and swap it out once I finished casting it. That said, the healing requirement for Sastasha is really low so maybe it's a combination of you doing too much dps or the tank being too confident and pulling a ton of mobs. I find that even in the lowest level dungeons, mass pulling is still dangerous since no one really has their complete kit yet and only Archer and Thaumaturge have some sort of AOE damage.