Change AST to HoT healer if we're getting DNC...

Thoughts on changing play style of AST to feel like a HoT healer if we're getting DNC and assuming it will be a melee dps style healer? Then we have a burst healer - WHM, shields/pet healer - SCH, HoT healer - AST, and dps healer - DNC.

EDIT: Also makes sense for AST to play this way since it's the closest thing we'll get to Time Mage.

While I agree that AST does need it's own identity if we're going to be adding more healers, it shouldn't be HoT. As much as people like to talk about WHMs being the "pure healer" and whatnot, it's actually AST that has the strongest heals in the game by comparison.
Nothing beats Earthly Star, their Benefic/II and Helios/II are both stronger than the WHM equivalents.

WHM simply has more OGCD options, but the actual potencies of heals is stronger on AST.

All healers, by design, are burst healers. You can get pretty much anybody to (or close to) max health with a GCD+oGCD. SCH's burst may not be as strong (in exchange for its ridiculous flexibility), but burst it still is.

Resto druid anyone?

I was actually thinking about this if they were to add dnc then at should have it's shield effects removed as it's kit works best for hots and dnc should instead have shields this way whm and ast are the hot healers with whm having more dps and raw healing power and ast having party buffs. Sch would have better shielding power and mild support while dnc keeping to it's past incarnation would be the debuff healer.

Challenge accepted.

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Originally Posted by Exiled_Tonberry

WHM simply has more OGCD options, but the actual potencies of heals is stronger on AST.

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WHM has Tetra, Bene, Assize and Asylum, whereas AST has ED, Lady of Crowns, ES and CU. Earthly star is much stronger than assize, whereas asylum is stronger than collective unconscious. Essential Dignity heals as much as (or more than) tetra as long as the target is below half health, and has a 40s cooldown as opposed to tetra's 1 minute cooldown. So I'm not sure that I agree that WHM has more oGCD options.

As far as AST's focus, I think it would be better to focus on shields for them.

If dancer has ever had any healing capability it's been a regen, so no, they shouldn't be a shield healer (although they should still have shields)

But I don't agree that AST needs to be fixed to one sect. The addition of another healer doesn't invalidate ASTs versatility. We could end up with 2 HoT healers and 1 shield healer plus AST, and it's ability to switch to fit with it's co-healer would be just as valid.

Don't worry about how AST will fit with a fourth healer, just worry about making that fourth healer unique.

Also, deploying shields is directly addressed in the AST questline, via use of Aspected Benefic, so that's never going away.

I don't think it a matter of making ast work with 4 healers but really how a fourth will work.

As for 2 hot healers, 1 shielder and versatile ast I don't quite like the sound of that since whm, dnc and ast will compete for the hot slot and sch only has to worry about ast causing sch to more then likely have a spot in any party and the rest having to duke it out. So if dnc is added I honestly would prefer it to be able to do both like ast or it take one role and ast lose it's versatility this way all healers have an equal chance.

Now dnc being able to do both may sound like it's taking away from ast but really I feel like ast main gimmick is it's cards and buffs so it's only a matter of giving dnc it's own gimmick ie. debuffs and being a melee healer