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Hey everyone! So I've been having a hard time figuring out how I should meld my ast and what the stat weights for it are. Can someone help me out with this? I figure crit is still top choice but should I also consider spell speed and determination at all? Maybe even Piety?
Melds for healers are a pretty personal choice. Ask two difference healers and you'll likely get two different responses.
As such, take my views with a pinch of salt as some of them are pretty subjective. Also keep in mind that healer secondaries are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. Outside of melding VIT to survive mechanics, these melds won't make or break anything other than a bunch of Gil.
Crit is 'the safe bet'. It works decently well for all healer jobs, stances and play styles both in terms of healing and DPS. It's also a efficiency gain lottery. If you really can't make your mind up, you can't go too far wrong with Crit.
Det is the second safe choice, it's value is a little more divisive. I used to stack it above all else in 2.x but felt it was too watered down in 3.x. The juries still out for me in 4.0 but I've heard good things.
SS is a fantastic DPS stat but it's value from a healing perspective is somewhat sketchier. It's worth noting that a Noct Sect AST stands to gain the least from SS, whereas both WHM sees the most benefit.
Are you planning on clearing O4S with your AST? You might want to consider Vit melds in your accessories if you are.
Piety is my guilty pleasure, but I'll be the first to admit that it's not what it was in ARR/HW. Simply put, are you finding yourself MP starved? Get Pie, if you aren't, don't bother.
I did mainly crit n det. But I do have 320 crafted accessories. So with them after the initial crit/det 6. I overmelded with some spell speed and pie. More pie then sps tho. And I'm perfectly fine.
I've personally always gone Crit, then Det, and then SS. It works super well for me and I'm about to progress into O2S. I did meld Vitality into my accessories just to be safe but as has been said, healer melds are usually situational and very personal. I melded piety to start until I felt super comfortable but with the 4.0 abilities it's easy to get by with just what the gear gives you.
Id say, if you're only considering AST then DET > CRIT > SS = PIE
Why?
Well, from what I understand, until we start hitting much higher values of CRIT then DET is going to scale better. Not to mention that while the occasional crit shield is nice there's no big bonus like sch to do it cause yours is always 250% of the heal. Let's say for example a 4000 Heal = 10000 Shield to set an example. Knowing that, wouldn't you want to raise the base heal line up to where you can always, more or less, guess about what your shield will be without RNG? Now, that's not to say you should disrespect CRIT either. Points in CRIT, and the very bottom of the barrel will increase the potency of your Benefic 2 Proc. On the upper end it will increase your basic level of dps when you crit more often. So, I think those are the two main stats for AST with DET winning me over a little more.
Now you ask, but KEYO! Why SS = PIE. Well, because SS is nice but pie gives you some room to work if you have to Aspected Benefic more than you hoped for.
That's just my 2 cents on the matter at the moment.
-Keyo Reinhart
DET is basically the best stat for Healers right now. SpS has value to WHM in particular as a follow up to Det, but less so for the other two classes. Crit is kinda garbage compared to the other two at the moment, sadly. Yes, it scales better at enormous values, but we literally can't reach them with current BiS gear. I did notice some MP problems in late savage, so I tossed a few Piety in until 330+ gear started shoving Piety down my throat.
Thanks for all the tips guys. Right now, I don't plan on taking my ast through any savage content since I'm back to maining bard but I do take healing seriously, even if it's only on the side at the moment, so I still wanna get the most out of the job. Right now, I've been running my 317 ast through dungeons with rank 5 materia melded as place holders until I get this whole thing figured out but I think I'm gonna start melding rank 6 materia now (especially since I'm sitting on 40+ clusters and not spending them fast enough).