AST healing idea

Idea for AST healing

This is all with the thinking that SE would actually change the DOT tick to be every 1s instead of 3s. If it's still 3s, change the duration values below accordingly (also they're just spitball and not actually balanced)

Most oGCDs have, ideally, a newly implemented system that shows they have two charges, but only one is useable (we'll get to that in a sec). These OGCDs would be Horoscope, Star, Exaltation, CI, CO, CU (god damn it SE please stop putting 'celestial' in front of everything). Additionally, Aspected Helios and Aspected Benefic are changed to have 'new effects, we'll get to below.

Both Diurnal Sect and Nocturnal Sect are back as buttons to press and swap between mid combat, and is the core of the gameplay for the class. Neutral allows you to be in both at once.

In Diurnal, the above OGCDs and GCDs will apply a Regen as they do now. If they don't already (Horoscope, Star), they now do their potency as a short duration Regen instead. Additionally, Horoscope is no longer a 'power it up with a GCD', instead acting as a regen who's ticks get stronger the further into the duration it goes, with the final tick being the strongest. (Maybe like, 100, 200, 400 and falls off). You can only use the 'Diurnal version' of the OGCDs in Diurnal Sect, but they do not share a CD with their Nocturnal version counterpart.

In Nocturnal, no skills apply shields, nor % mitigation. Instead, they each apply duration to a buff that I do not have a name for, so I'll just refer to it as Retrograde because that's apparently where a planet looks like it's going backwards. This Retrograde would stagger the damage taken during it out to be a DOT of equal damage per tick, based on the remaining duration. You can stack up to X seconds of this Retrograde buff, as decided by devs for balance, I'd say 30s. the GCD 'shield heals' we have would exist as a 'oh bother I need to use this but I've spent all my OGCDs like a silly billy' panic button. Asp. Benefic should give 15s, Asp. Helios should give 5s. Any overhealing caused will instead heal off extra 'damage compiled' in this DOT. Note that certain things do not count as 'damage' and will not be compiled, eg 'HP is set to 1' mechanics. Additionally, DOT effects are not compiled, and will tick in addition to the compiled Retrograde DOT. For useability, Retrograde would not start ticking until the player with it receives an instance of non-DOT, non-ground effect damage.

As an example, lets take a raid boss. Aionagonia, everybody's favorite. It hits the party for a theoretical 40k, plus leaving a bleed on them that ticks for 5k every tick (remember, DOT ticks are 1s in this hypothetical). Hypothetical numbers. We go Nocturnal, place down CO (+5s), CU (+5s) and detonate a Star (+10s (it was charged)) so we have 20s of Retrograde. Aion hits us, and we take 40k, plus get the 5k DOT for 12 seconds (I think it's 12 it's been a while). 40k divided by 20s is 2k per tick, plus the 5k from the bleed, so the party is taking 7k per second. We swap to Diurnal and put up some regens to counter this (remember, the regens are also 1/3 as strong per tick now, because the HOT tick is 3x as often).

Then lets say, we're actually doing Dominion. So at 8s left of the Retrograde, we are hit by the Dominion spikes for 64k each. Now that remaining 10s recalculates, it's got 16k left to deal out from Aionagonia, plus a new 64k has just been added into it. So we've got 80k over 8 seconds, or now spiking to 10k per tick from Retrograde. So we need to apply MORE regens now, because the old ones will be falling off halfway through this burst of extra incoming damage, and people will need to be spread to take their towers. Alternatively, instead of adding more regens, we could also add more Retrograde duration, by going back to Nocturnal and using another skill there, such as an Asp. Helios (+5s). Now the incoming damage recalculates again, 80k over 13s, and changes down to a more manageable 6,153.8 per second.

The key here would be the understanding of how much Retrograde 'staggering' you need to make the damage manageable, versus how much Regen effect you need to counter that. Overspending on an earlier raidwide might leave you high and dry for the next one, forcing you back into using GCD healing to make up for the mistake. Also, remember that you're a Pure Healer as AST. This means that your Cohealer is a Barrier (usually) and this means that they can mitigate the initial hits from raidwides, which lowers how much gets through to Retrograde, which in turn lowers the damage per tick even further.


This would probably be horrid to try and actually play, especially if it's on AST with the cards to manage too. Though, changing Lady to be a 'delays damage into a DOT' effect might make it a little more interesting than it's current 'maybe you don't have to cast a Helios' form. Ideally I'd make this an entirely seperate healer but we just got SGE and they can't balance what we have so, y'know. I was also considering having Retrograde store up positive HP change too, so you could essentially 'buffer Regens' so that when a raidwide hits, it'd automatically start ticking back up, or ticking up and down at the same time as the HOT and DOT fight, but that might lead to some degen stuff where you place the Regens on people with GCD heals in downtime, then use the OGCDs during uptime and get way more use out of them than intended

On paper, not a healer I would readily pick and play tarot card interest be damned.

Its an interesting concept, but something I would need to play.

If we're going with the idea of compiled damage, why have it be this complicated though, and why tied to Noct sect? Why not have it be a couple of skills? Horoscope, ES, and Macrocosmos have proven that we can place a buff (and then in theory debuff) that can detonate later, we can just design dps skills for AST to have that do something similar.

Could even tie it to cards. For example a RR like situation where you place the debuff dps skill use X card and then when it detonates you get the buff applied to the party (or if we want a Reverse applied onto the boss/mobs) that you can line up for an attack or burst phase if you time it correctly.

I figure if we rework some skills to trigger the 'delay damage' thing, we'd lose actual healing power because those are no longer 'healing skills'. Maybe that's okay though given, yknow, HPS required VS HPS we can pump out.

I tied it to Noct sect because I don't think 'oh it can use shields in this stance' is super interesting. It being the healer that 'can do both pure and barrier stuff' is fine if we were to tear down the whole pure/barrier split, but something tells me they wont for another expansion or two, so this is a way to make Noct an integral part of the gameplay without making it just 'shields again lol'

And the compiled damage is not us compiling damage on the enemy, it's the enemy compiling damage on us. Instead of taking that 150k damage all at once, we stagger it out into a slightly more manageable 10k per second for 15 seconds. We're still gonna die to it if we dont pump HPS, but it's at least going to make it so we don't die immediately. In fact, thinking about it, this would be super interesting (I think) for enrage sequences of old like Terminal Relativity or Tumult spam, as it'd be constantly adding more damage to your compiled total, and you'd be constantly trying to juggle the dual responsibility of 'stretch out the duration over which you'd take that damage' and 'put up enough regen effects to counterbalance the incoming damage ticks'. I guess the main balance issue would be that you could push a lot of damage off of the fight timeline by staggering it out past the enrage so it's ignoreable, but that's not my problem to deal with

'Delayed damage' ala Earthly Star is something I've thought about in the past, but the more I think on it the more I'm not so sure about it anymore. It sucks when the boss randomly jumps away and you don't get to hit it with something EG your Primal Rend or your final Confiteor hit, or whatever. I imagine this would be the same issue, one they keep trying to get away from more and more.

Personally I feel like we'd have the issue of Noct/Diurnal again where Noct was good, but due to combat design (hello darkness my old friend) its just not really needed or wanted outside of a few things. Like, there's not enough in the game to want to stagger out damage, but if you know what you're doing and do so... well they could think its fun I would think its a needlessly extra flex (but this design isn't for me so...)

To make Noct more appealing than "oh hey, shields" why not make it the Reverse Sect?

Yeah of course a good chunk of heals would be turned into shields, but that doesn't mean all of them have to. CI for example goes from being a shield to a HoT. CU as I mentioned in another post would be stripped of its dual Mit/Regen and would only have one or the other per sect. CO could have a different ability instead of HoT/Shield. Perhaps Haste on allies vs "Slow/Top" on enemies (where in instead of actually freezing the boss it freezes damage only to detonate all compiled damage at the end in some way... might be bloated, just a spitball idea that needs refinement).

Macrocosmos I am not creative enough to think of something. Same with Exalt. Like Noct Exalt would be the same, but I don't know what Diurnal would be.

And I've already tied the cards to the stances. And again, I don't care which is which. We could give Offensive to Noct and Defensive to Diurnal or vice versa. Where I the one to actively choose... I'd say slap offensive (Arrow/Balance/Spear) onto Noct. The idea would be to give you reasons to switch stances after all. One sect has something that you want, ergo you switch to it to get it.

Very interesting design. I like the idea of being able to switch stances in combat. I also like the healing as regen concept. I'm not a fan of the damage as dots concept, basically because if I wanted to do that I'd be on my SCH - where I would want those SCH skills returned. I could however see some delayed/compiled damage skills - similar to macrocosmos.

Also, I don't like a design based upon a forced party composition. I would rather one that is flexible, so if it is 2 "pure" healers together or a pure/barrier I'm not forced into some decision. That pure/barrier design approach becomes may become interesting to balance anyway if ever SE decides to add a 5th healer.

This is an interesting one. The general idea returns a lot of the time mage feeling of old AST.

Building upon the base idea, what if Macrocosmos is reworked into something that freezes all damage for, let's say 5s, and it also boosts all regen effects compiled during it by 50% or so. Maybe CO can also be reworked to detonate all regen effects for a compiled heal in Diurnal Sect or increase Retrograde by 10s in Nocturnal Sect.