Astrologian Stat Priority

Hello, all.

This has probably been asked before and debated to death, so if I missed the thread where that happened, I apologized.
My priority for materia melding as an Astrologian has been on Determination and Piety. Our heals are relatively weaker now, as is our damage, so buffing up the overall base effectiveness of them seemed like a solid plan. Normally, properly using Lucid Dreaming is enough to keep MP stable, but when things go south, it's much harder for us to recover than other classes, especially if we need to cast Ascend a bunch, so I like being able to recover MP quicker.
I'm curious what other healers think about what stats to put on AST gear.

Crit > DH > Det > SS
u dont need to meld piety unless youre progging savage. i think 1700 piety is a comfortable place to be in
also our heals arent really weaker (ogcd heals take care of most of everything), and Crit increases damage output better than det

This helps me a lot too. I had been melding peity too and wondered if that was right. Is this the rule of thumb for all three healers? Or should I get new gear as well?

Sorry to kinda piggy back off of your thread Wilveren ^^’ I am just a little curious. Just now learning like what is good melding since I joined the game in 4.4

Mine is Crit > Det > SS >DH - ignore Piety as gears would cover that enough.

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Originally Posted by Alfric

Sorry to kinda piggy back off of your thread Wilveren ^^’ I am just a little curious. Just now learning like what is good melding since I joined the game in 4.4

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I don't mind at all. = ) The whole point was to get people together to talk about it.

QooEr, As for piety helping to prog savage... well, I am progging savage, so. =P I read that, for DPS, it's gotten to where the damage increase from Crit and Direct Hit outweighs the damage increase from Det given how the stats work now. It seems contradictory to me for healing, since I'd rather have consistently decent heals that I can easily predict how much will heal and therefore how often I need to heal, rather than hoping I get a crit-heal when I need it. Especially since AST heavily relies on being proactive, and planning ahead. Essential Dignity is good, but not as good as Bene and Tetra. I kinda wish we had one other "Oh crap!" healing spell, though the healing boost of neutral sect or synastry generally gets the job done. So while my mindset is that focusing on Det and Piety is more fitting of my style as an AST, if the numbers show that your way works better, then that's how it works, and I'll just have to adjust. =P

I meld Crit>DH>Det>SS>>>>Piety

Astro heals are not weaker. They’re actually pretty strong and also on a very short cooldown. Most are 60s and Essential Dignity is on a 40s cooldown with 2 charges. Since ED is my go to heal and not ‘emergency heal’ I find it performs much better with more Crit. Plus the extra crit and direct hit are better in the dps department too.

Best thing about Astro heals for me is the short cast time too. Even if I'm not using the time between GCD for cards, it's very nice to just have all my heals with cast times of 1.5 to 2s at most.

I too prioritize Crit > DH > Det > SS >>> Piety for all my healers, although in my case that's doubly reinforced by being primarily a Scholar healer which doubles down on the crit priority. It's super handy that all healers/casters do well with that priority, since I never have to think about which stats I'm focusing on and don't have to worry about multiple gear sets.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

Best thing about Astro heals for me is the short cast time too. Even if I'm not using the time between GCD for cards, it's very nice to just have all my heals with cast times of 1.5 to 2s at most.

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I agree, I've always loved how AST feels like the fastest healing class. Regardless of the potency of our healing spells, pretty much everyone agrees that playing as an AST is more difficult than the other healer classes now, at least before the buffs we got in 5.1, which admittedly have made quite a noticeable difference.

It seems like everyone agrees that crit is king though, which, I guess makes me a little sad. From what I've seen, there's basically no class where you DON'T want to maximize crit. I don't really like crit being my main focus as a healer, but that's mostly just a stylistic choice as opposed to a complaint with the game or scaling of stats. Since MP is only really a problem if we have to cast Ascend multiple times, Piety probably isn't as important as I've been treating it - though for sure I loved having high piety before Shadowbringers. I'll probably start to focus on Crit>>Det>>Piety. It might be a bit better to focus on direct hit instead of Piety, buuuuut I like to have a bit of an MP buffer, especially with how many times I've had to cast Ascend in the Copied Factory. XD Fun raid, but people seem to drop like flies in the earlier fights since they're still learning.