AST: What it means to be a "hybrid"...

The concept of a "hybrid" has always been a tricky one to tackle in MMOs, but it's certainly doable.

The idea behind a hybrid is that the added utility and versatility the hybrid will bring to a group makes up for their lack of strength in any one specialization.

In the case of a hybrid healer, we must first consider what the role of a healer during a boss battle truly is. The obvious answer is "keep people alive", sure, but that's not ENTIRELY accurate...

The REAL answer is "keep people alive until the end of the encounter", and there are multiple ways one can go about doing that.

A WHM focuses on healing damage that has been taken. A SCH focuses more on preventing the damage from being taken initially through mitigation.

By design, an AST was intended to focus on ending the encounter more quickly, thus negating the need for as much healing and mitigation. Just look at the cards: the only card that doesn't directly work toward ending the counter faster in some way is Bole (which mitigates damage).

Everything else either causes more damage (balance, arrow), makes cooldowns end more quickly (spear, which leads to more damage), or encourages players to spam abilities that would normally drain their resources too quickly (ewer, spire).

Yes, some of these can aid in healing as well, but all but one has a component that in some way aids in doing more damage. This was DESIGNED to make encounters end sooner in exchange for not having the emergency buttons and heal-boosters of the other healers.

And as I said earlier, this CAN work, but the AST has to legitimately deliver on ending the encounter more quickly, and right now, we have enough data that has proven that this just isn't the case. In fact, SCH DPS outperforms AST DPS, and the reliability of the Selene buff is just way better than the current randomness of the cards.

The AST was also designed with a risk vs. reward playstyle (which I absolutely LOVE) but this will only work in the long run if the risk is truly worth the reward. Otherwise, ASTs will be relegated to content that's on farm status, and I really don't want to see that happen to the class.

So here are a few suggestions on making AST end encounters more quickly, and no, I'm not suggesting ALL of these be implemented together, but maybe one or two here and there:

1. Significanly Increase AST's Natural DPS

Just make all of the AST-exclusive spells do more damage outright, and if they wanted to REALLY give the AST a leg up as a DPSing healer, make Cleric Stance unnecessary and calculate its spell damage off of the mind stat instead of int.

AST has enough buttons to push and would benefit from not needing to swap in and out (plus, you wouldn't have to worry about lag spikes causing CS to not deactivate when pressed).

2. Double or Triple the Potency of the Card Buffs

AST's have to average out to doing significantly more damage than other healers to be worth bringing, and that factors in the RNG nature of the cards. Remember, whatever additional benefit the card buffs can bring to an encounter is effectively divided by 6 as you have a 1 in 6 chance of drawing any given card.

Plus, pretty much all of the cards are limp noodles right now. 20% less T/MP usage when the AST happens to draw it is a joke. 20% cooldown reduction would be decent if it worked on abilities that were already on cooldown. A situational 10% damage reduction only serves to offset the lower mana efficiency of the AST. While 10% damage and 10% speed are nice, they're not nice ENOUGH.

Again, divide all of these by 6 and you have the actual benefit we're looking at.

Even firing off all of the buff duration extenders we have onto the top parsing DPS just doesn't make us worth it.

3. Make AST able to move while casting EVERYTHING

Many of AST's tools are already geared toward mobility (with some notably stupid exceptions like CU, which should also be mobile while channeling). AST could fill a role as a mobile healer, making them shine on fights with tons of movement/evasion.

4. Make the Cards Heal/Shield as well

A simple way to adjust for healing potency would be to add healing to the cards. For example, a card could heal for 1% of the target's HP (or a 50 potency regen) every second for the duration of the buff. This would also indirectly make ewer/spire more valuable for their 20 second duration as it would provide a longer heal.

Cards could even heal differently depending upon stance, maybe giving the the target a shield when in Noc stance.

This would also make the cards more versatile, as no card would ever be completely useless (like when you buff someone and a second later they get trapped in one of Titan's gaols) and the odds are that either the heal or the buff would be put to good use.

5. Reduce the Cooldowns on ALL Card-related abilities

I think it would be entirely reasonable for an AST to ALWAYS have a card buff running on SOMEONE, so I'd suggest:

Draw: 15-20 seconds and the cooldown starts the moment you draw the card instead of when the Drawn card falls off (I hate having to manually right click a card off because I'm not about to ruin my RR with a goddamn spear...), either that or, if you let a card expire after drawing it, you can immediately draw again.

Spread: 30 second cooldown and the cooldown begins once the card is held.

Shuffle: 30 second cooldown and it cannot draw the same card again.

6. Make Royal Road Not Suck

Seriously, there's only one situation in which you actually get more benefit for RRing and waiting another 30 seconds (expanded RR).

Ewer and Spire: Triple duration on the next card. If I'm going to wait another 30 seconds before buffing someone, it better be WORTH the wait.

Arrow and Spear: Increase the radius of the buff to 30y because good luck trying to corral everyone in the middle of a raid encounter.

Bole and Balance: 250% potency on the next card. Again, time is money, and just an extra 50% to wait another 30 seconds is a joke since you've just spent 200% card potency to get 150% back in return.

7. Make the Cards Less Situational by Giving them a 1 minute duration and a number of charges (after you've cast them)

Instead of throwing a TP reducer on a party member and hoping that they needed it for the next 20 seconds (when you have no idea if they actually will due to the randomness of boss mechanics), how about you throw it on a party member and the next 10 abilities they use will have their TP reduced by 20%?

Bole: 10% less damage taken from the next 10 hits

Spear: 20% faster cooldown on the next 3 CDs used.

Arrow: 10% faster cast time/GCD recovery time on the next 10 abilties/spells used.

Balance: 10% more damage done on the next 10 attacks (doesn't include auto attacks or DoTs already ticking)

This would ensure that buffs don't get so easily wasted as the player can use the buffs when they have a chance.

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In conclusion, I love the AST's playstyle, but the RNG needs to have enough rewards to offset the risks and that's just not the case right now. I want to see the AST be the luck-based, micro-managing, "run n' gun" hybrid that it could be, and TBH, it won't take that many tweaks before it's there.

Normally I believe the idea of AST was to not really be a "better" healer by using certain stance, but being able to "fill" what is missing, depending on whether you have WHM or SCH in your team. And replacing one or another doesn't mean you have to be as good as them - that's why SE gave AST some cards. And cards feel just not good enough.. There's a lot of playing with cards, shuffling, drawing thinking on who to use, but after all that they just feel not that good for how random they are.
As for damage i dont think AST was intended to deal some damage. Until lvl 54~ AST has very poor damage abilities, and soloing would be horror.
So here's how i see it: AST fills the role of a second healer. And is not better than the healer that is being "replaced", but AST has something unique - cards, to benefit the team for what's missing. And well currently cards are a bit too complicated with spread only possible in combat, long cooldown on shuffle, etc.

Just give us #3 and AST is completely fixed, lol.

Small added QoL change in terms of Royal Road: Let us apply the bonus effect manually. Meaning we target the affected player use Royal Road again and said buff will be extended / increased / shared in an AoE around the player.

It really annoys me using up my RR buffs even when I don't want to use them on the card I drew.

The primary issue with AST, I feel, is that it simply does not possess the synergy with itself that the other classes boast. Scholar is supported by ancillary mitigation, for example, that makes their shields more potent, while WHM is able to sustain cheaper heals through regen and freecure.

So, rather than trying (and failing) to be either a Scholar or a White Mage, I think it'd be really cool if AST took the whole concept of "Healer B" and ran with it. Made them focused on augmenting the abilities of the other healer and less for compensating inadequately for what they don't have.

Something like changing Aspected benefic/helios to a healing potency increase/percentage-based damage reduction would be an interesting way to support either SCH or WHM while maintaining some uniqueness to the class. Or letting Time Dilation affect E4E or Regen. Personally I think that'd be much more satisfying than simply filling in whatever your group doesn't have for its second healer.

I feel like people just want this class to be broken.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

I feel like people just want this class to be broken.

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What I want is to feel like I don't need to pick up SCH again to be useful in my off-spec for my FC. I haven't done a large variety of content on AST yet, since I've only just about hit i170, but what I have done has made me really miss the strength that SCH had even at 50, even if we've been able to clear the content. Considering SCH only got significantly better (with their primary weaknesses mitigated and Selene significantly improved), AST definitely needs some tweaks. I can't speak as much to WHM since I rarely played it in the past, but it seems to have significant advantages over AST as well. It's okay for the healers to be different (and indeed, personally, I want them to be), but the differences don't need to result in only feeling disadvantaged in difficult content.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

I feel like people just want this class to be broken.

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And I KNOW people cannot understand just how underpowered AST is compared to the other two healers.

As I said, I'm not suggesting they apply ALL of the suggestions, but they could probably double or triple AST's card buffs and it still wouldn't be worth bringing an AST on progression content.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

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I've been playing AST since it came out and what OP is suggesting is entirely unnecessary. Yes it does need tweeks but dramatically buffing the potencies of the cards by double or triple of their original potency is far too much. At most, they could use slight duration increases to mathematically beat out Selene's Fey Wind for a party-wide damage buff. Statistically, it'd would fall behind but that's why we have RNG in the first place. On our best days, our party buff should beat Selene but what we have now is ASTs DPS buffs just breaking even. If we double or triple the potency of the cards, we absolutely wipe the floor with Selene mathematically and statistically. I don't agree with that.

SCH is strong because of their overloaded kit. They have damn good mitigation, AoE healing, Personal DPS, Mana Sustain, Burst healing, etc. you name it. They also having healing oGCD at a constant rate but SCH only really excels in mitigation and mana sustain. They are the real Hybrid and AST is lurking the back but they aren't as far behind as people claim. ASTs personal DPS is actually pretty high but your weak mana sustain doesn't allow it like a SCHs can. Your mitigation pales in comparison to SCH but that's the point. You're not a SCH. Your sustained healing beats out SCHs unless they have Eos out (and they give up Selene to do that while we still have our cards.)

We don't need DPS spells that scale off of mind (Unless you remove CS all together and adjust other healers accordingly). We don't need double or triple the potency of our cards (1.5 at most or duration increases). We don't need to be able to cast everything while moving because mobility is incredibly powerful and it shouldn't be taken lightly. Cards do not need healing or shields.

The goal isn't to overpower the other healers. The goal is to be comparable with our unique strengths so buff what makes us unique but don't buff it so hard it overshadows the competition.

im sorry but AST is good but it does have flaws and quite a few

- Card system is good but it needs Tweaking
- MP is fine we just lack cooldowns to help with healing unlike our counterparts
- Some skills are just awkward to use or need slight changes

I love AST alot but it does have flaws but not major issues me personally want them to look at these skills

- Nocturnal Sect - Need rework
- Royal Road - Need rework especially with Draw/Spread.... make it only effect spread.... or rework entirely
- Draw - Need lower cooldown,,, due to cards being our core mechanic
- Spread - Need lower cooldown, Possible buff to group whilst holding card
- Shuffle - is nice but frustrating when u redraw the same card
- Disable - Auto attacks is a pain
- Lightspeed - Needs rework only useful for running and casting protect/stoneskin or to shorten cast time of Ascend
- Collective Unconscious - *You Shall Not Pass* need rework
- Celestial Opposition - *Disco Party* need rework

All other skills are fine maybe slight increase range on our AoE heals but other then that the class is fine we just lack cooldowns to boost our healing or ways to mitigate damage ... problem with AST is that when everything goes really bad it effect us in 2 ways...... 1 we turn into spam healers and burn through mp if there is ALOT of damage going out due to lack of cooldowns to help with healing.......... 2 whilst spam healing we dont have time to use our cards due being on global CD ... i have killed players b4 due to trying to draw a card whilst trying to rapidly heal everyone up due to high damage

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

And I KNOW people cannot understand just how underpowered AST is compared to the other two healers.

As I said, I'm not suggesting they apply ALL of the suggestions, but they could probably double or triple AST's card buffs and it still wouldn't be worth bringing an AST on progression content.

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Many of your suggestions are overbearing, even if one of them were to be implemented. The only ones I can somewhat agree on is 5 or 6. Enhanced, for what your trading off, is lack luster. Extended is fine as it is imo. Expanded is one of your best RR.

Dropping the cooldown of draw to 15s~20s (with Draw counting down when you first draw the card) would be a significant buff in itself. I'd argue that 20s base (CD starts after card is cast) would be sufficient if the card's potencies and durations were to be left the same.

Also to add, the reason why SCH does what it does is because they have really, really good mana sustain. I hardly have to worry about my mana on SCH unless I have to start raising people. I'm not sure where the misconception came from that AST was really far behind in personal DPS. While they are lower, it's not by that much (WHM beats them both). The problem is, the AST is done after 3min (if i get ewers) and the SCH can go 5min+ and still be at half mana.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

On our best days, our party buff should beat Selene but what we have now is ASTs DPS buffs just breaking even. If we double or triple the potency of the cards, we absolutely wipe the floor with Selene mathematically and statistically. I don't agree with that.

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But it SHOULD.

The AST trades reliable emergency healing and general healing throughput for card buffs, aka the ability to end an encounter more quickly.

If the stars align (pun intended), the best thing an AST can do is give a DPS 50 seconds of 10% damage increase. Is that worth giving up lustrates? Divine Seal? Amazing AoE coverage?

As I said, take ANY card buff and divide it by 6 and then you have the ACTUAL benefit of the card with RNG factored in, and those numbers suck.

I'm not sure why people cannot wrap their heads around the concept of "risk vs. reward" and, in order to justify the risk of an AST drawing 30 spires in a row, the reward for a Balance cannot be a piddly 10% damage increase for 15 seconds.

Even assuming you draw a balance every time (which you won't), that's 10% more damage for 15 seconds, or 2.5% more damage per minute, for ONE player. Compare that to Selene's 1.5% DPS/healing per minute for the whole party, 12% total benefit (assuming a full raid party).

And if you want to be honest about it, divide that 2.5% by 6 for the REAL number: an average of .42% per minute DPS increase.

We shouldn't just be BEATING Selene, we should be stomping her into the ground because we have to contend with the RNG while she doesn't.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

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I'm not necessarily on board with the changes in the OP, either. They're probably all too much, even individually. I don't think numerically doubling the cards would even really address the majority of issues anyway. The better solution, in my opinion, is to make all the cards worthwhile. Two of them are useful in nearly all situations, and this should be the case for all six of them.

Spire and Ewer are too limited in use. Unlike Balance and Arrow, they don't actually provide an increase in output for the target in most situations. No one is going to change their skill rotation because they are using less TP or MP now--they're already using their abilities in the most optimal way (or at least, they should be, in progression content). Ewer has some utility for healer mana conservation, but SCH and WHM have plenty of mana control. That leaves only AST that can really make use of Ewer for healing efficiency (but that's more of a problem of AST relative to the other two healers than it is a problem with Ewer).

Spear is only significantly impactful in coordinated burst situations for progression/static groups, when you can work out in advance when people will be using a large number of off-global cooldowns. Given that it requires planning to have a noticeable impact, it is thereby usually very difficult to use, since you can't often plan to have a Spear (unless you save it with Spread, anyway--but it's probably more efficient in most cases to save a Balance or Arrow for a burst phase).

Bole is middle-of-the-road. By itself, it does allow for more healer DPS, theoretically, since it should result in less healing needed on the tank. For ASTs, at least, though, I've never managed to get more than another cast or two out of it.

Of course, all four of the less useful cards can be used for Royal Road, though this runs the risk of actually reducing the impact your cards have over time even further, since you don't know if you'll get a Balance or Arrow on your next draw, and the only Royal Road option that actually makes cutting yourself from 2 cards a minute to 1 card a minute is Extended (since it doubles the effect). Expanded can double the effect in 8 man situations as well, if you can manage to catch all four DPS with it (which isn't easy given the 15y radius of the effect).

Given that you only have a 1/3 chance of drawing a card to use that Royal Road benefit on on your next card, though, tossing a card to Royal Road is generally only going to reduce your efficiency even further.

If every card draw had impact the way that say, SCH's 3 Aetherflow charges do (roughly one charge per 20 seconds, not incomparable), things would be a different story. That's not even including something like Fey Wind, which although weaker than individual card buffs, has the incredibly valuable strength of consistency on its side, something that's of great value especially in progression settings.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

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So you want us to replace SCH is every single fight that does not require their mitigation? Tripling the potency of the cards will do just that. I'm not sure why you can't grip the fact that there are 3 healers in this game where the standard is 2 healers in an 8-man. For the SCH to have out Selene. he is straight up giving up Eos' Regens, mitigation and healing buff. If he wants to switch pets, he has to blow Swiftcast on top of blowing 1600 mana. The pets also share cooldowns (Fey Illumination and Fey Wind share them for example.)

From my own activity with both SCH and AST, my AST beats out my SCH in HPS unless I am utilizing Eos. If I choose to utilize Selene, I lose a major chunk of my HPS in exchange for party DPS buffs. Stop acting like SCH doesn't have a trade off.

The cards don't need the absurd values you're trying to get across. They should be buffed by 1.5 at most.

I'm a scholar currently training ast simply because I am sick of being left out of farm parties if they already have a sch >.> I have played both whm and sch, and I think ast would be fun to play as it's like I'm using both at the same time, plus buffing peps! (I like healing/synergist classes >.>) But yeah, when ever I am playing as sch with an ast in the party, I AM getting annoyed as it feels like I am doing all the healing, and the fight seems to be taking just as long as it usually does. I just end up running out of mana faster, instead of the fight ending faster. Asts need buffs! Although I do like it when an ast chooses to give me more mana, it's like they care :D

I dunno about you guys, but even as sch, healing at lvl 60 seems really mana expensive.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

From my own activity with both SCH and AST, my AST beats out my SCH in HPS unless I am utilizing Eos. If I choose to utilize Selene, I lose a major chunk of my HPS in exchange for party DPS buffs. Stop acting like SCH doesn't have a trade off.

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The healing throughput for SCH isn't the issue. It's the fact that SCH has reliable and versatile emergency buttons while AST doesn't.

When the shit hits the fan, the AST has no answer while the SCH has several (I have a 60 SCH as well).

The tradeoff has to be equal, or to put it numerically (even though it's difficult to measure), if the AST's poor emergency options leave the party with a 10% higher chance of wiping, then the AST's contribution has to end the encounter 10% faster to compensate, otherwise the AST is just an inferior healer.

And again, risk vs. reward dictates that the risk of an AST NOT being able to end the encounter more quickly due to RNG means that there has to also be a chance of the AST being able to end the encounter MUCH more quickly.

If SE were to remove the RNG element and allow ASTs to pick the card they wanted every time or cycle through all 6 in a set order, sure, the class would need minor buffs at most.

But with a 17% chance of getting the card you want, that card had better REALLY do some work when you actually manage to draw it...

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Originally Posted by Alahra

The better solution, in my opinion, is to make all the cards worthwhile. Two of them are useful in nearly all situations, and this should be the case for all six of them.

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I would honestly prefer this as well, as Ewer (which we use on ourselves most of the time anyway) and Spire are just awful, Bole only helps to make up for our weaker emergency options and Spear is stupidly situational.

But I doubt SE would be willing to go through and revamp all of the cards, hence why I suggest simple tweaks instead.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

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If you throw one or two spires on the Ninja during the raid, it circumvents the odd 30s that he's out of TP waiting for an Invig (assuming 100% uptime on boss/adds). He saves around ~120 TP in the base duration of spire. Spire is also useful for DRK and PLD because they run out of TP much quicker than Melee DPS and warrior. Spire aids the tank's tp issues until the bard or mch has to play tp song or tp promote.

Ewer is useful for SMNs and AST (again poor mana sustain).

Spear is useful for Bard/MCH/NIN. They have many oGCD abilities on relatively short cooldowns.

SCHs aetherflow charges do not directly affect party DPS. ED (and bane) bumps your personal DPS which indirectly bumps up party DPS.

Expanded RR is effectively Quadrupling the card's effect in an 8man group. It's why I think Enhanced should be 250% potency bump (similar to what the op stated). Giving up Balance for something effectively weaker is bad.

You have a 10.8% chance of landing your Expanded Balance/Arrow combo in a minute's time and as of now, it is currently weaker than Fey Wind (unless you Celestial Opposition). If the cards were buffed by 1.5x or had duration increases, it would fix this "issue" we're having.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

The healing throughput for SCH isn't the issue. It's the fact that SCH has reliable and versatile emergency buttons while AST doesn't.

When the shit hits the fan, the AST has no answer while the SCH has several (I have a 60 SCH as well).

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And LightSpeed should be the CD that dramatically increases our HPS. If it just reduced the GCD to 1.5, we'd have something to work with. I agree with you here.

I also would agree with your cards being game-changing if we had the original concept of us having a bad card (We assumed Bole was the 10% increased damage taken from news sources pre-expac). None of our cards are "bad" but in this game, everyone just values "DPS boost" over everything. In the eyes of many players, all the cards aside from Balance and Arrow are bad. The only one I truly feel is iffy is Bole and even then, I find uses for it.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

SCHs aetherflow charges do not directly affect party DPS. ED (and bane) bumps your personal DPS which indirectly bumps up party DPS.

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Oh, I know. The cards don't all have to have impact in terms of DPS, though. I didn't mean to imply that.

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Expanded RR is effectively Quadrupling the card's effect in an 8man group. It's why I think Enhanced should be 250% potency bump (similar to what the op stated). Giving up Balance for something effectively weaker is bad.

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It's not quite quadrupling the card's effect in all cases, though it can be. If everyone is DPSing and you hit everyone with Expanded Balance, you end up with 8x the 5% damage increase. But you frequently won't hit everyone with it, and tank/healer DPS being lower means you don't get the same value of Balance on them as you do out of Balance on a DPS.

Regarding running out of resources, in a well-managed static group, whether Spire and Ewer will have any use probably depends on the fight itself. We've not seen Savage yet, but judging from playing NIN on all four floors, Spire would be somewhat useful on A2, at least, but the others haven't provided significant TP issues because of phase shifts and the like. The same would likely hold true for SMNs (though I'll definitely agree that Ewer works well enough for AST--that just doesn't feel like it's really helping the group much when it does).

NIN doesn't get any more benefit out of Spear than MNK or DRG, really, without planning, which is the main reason Spear is troublesome. NIN in particular doesn't generally hold its main short oGCD (Ninjutsu), ever, as they use it rotationally. The same is probably true for BRD/MCH though I was never much of a serious BRD in 2.0.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

If you throw one or two spires on the Ninja during the raid, it circumvents the odd 30s that he's out of TP waiting for an Invig (assuming 100% uptime on boss/adds). He saves around ~120 TP in the base duration of spire. Spire is also useful for DRK and PLD because they run out of TP much quicker than Melee DPS and warrior. Spire aids the tank's tp issues until the bard or mch has to play tp song or tp promote.

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Except that you cannot reliably expect to A) draw the card in the first place and B) draw the card when it's actually needed (ie when this rotation is happening) and putting a spire on spread would be a crime...

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Ewer is useful for SMNs and AST (again poor mana sustain).

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On AST, sure, because the mana sucks, but I play my L60 SMN a great deal and we NEVER run out of mana unless we're spamming Ruin III without DWT active or we're ressing people.

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Spear is useful for Bard/MCH/NIN. They have many oGCD abilities on relatively short cooldowns.

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And if they happen to not blow a cooldown for whatever reason (evading, AoE, crowd control, etc.), the buff is completely wasted.

...Which is why Spear needs to reduce the cooldown time of abilities that are already on cooldown when used on the target in addition to reducing the cooldown when someone uses an ability while under the effect.

Then, you could make it useful without needing voice chat to determine who is about to blow a big CD.

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SCHs aetherflow charges do not directly affect party DPS.

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Sure they do: they allow a savvy SCH to spend more time in CS because they know they can drop it an throw some big emergency heals in a heartbeat. Plus, the fairy is always helping as well.

Really, I DPS as much as I do as a SCH because I know that, even if everything suddenly goes to hell in the 5 seconds after I hit CS and cannot turn it off, I can seriously dole out the heals as soon as I CAN turn it off. AST just doesn't have that kind of saving power.

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Expanded RR is effectively Quadrupling the card's effect in an 8man group. It's why I think Enhanced should be 250% potency bump (similar to what the op stated). Giving up Balance for something effectively weaker is bad.

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It's actually only double, since you're giving a 40% increase using 2 cards which could've been 20% total output when cast individually, but it's still the best deal the AST gets, yes.

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You have a 10.8% chance of landing your Expanded Balance/Arrow combo in a minute's time and as of now, it is currently weaker than Fey Wind (unless you Celestial Opposition). If the cards were buffed by 1.5x or had duration increases, it would fix this "issue" we're having.

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Again, factor in RNG and they need to be stronger than that, even.

The chance that an AST won't be able to put that combo together for an entire encounter means that it needs to do oh so much more when the AST DOES get it going.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

And LightSpeed should be the CD that dramatically increases our HPS. If it just reduced the GCD to 1.5, we'd have something to work with. I agree with you here.

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That would be nice, yes.

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I also would agree with your cards being game-changing if we had the original concept of us having a bad card (We assumed Bole was the 10% increased damage taken from news sources pre-expac). None of our cards are "bad" but in this game, everyone just values "DPS boost" over everything. In the eyes of many players, all the cards aside from Balance and Arrow are bad. The only one I truly feel is iffy is Bole and even then, I find uses for it.

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While none of the cards are detrimental, many of them offer negligible benefit or are too situational to be useful most of the time.

And again, just having an AST along is technically damaging the party's survivability already.

It'd be VERY interesting to see the class brought up to being on par with WHM/SCH in healing and emergency buttons, but have the cards actually have a chance of hurting the party in addition to helping, heh...

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

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- Assuming 100% uptime, the SMN ooms around 4 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FV-5V58Vo8

- Again, assuming 100% uptime (I stated this in my original post), spire is a means to save tp. If you throw it on the ninja between the 3min and 30s (7 draws and 2 shuffles, odds are you're going to get a spire) of the encounter starting you will help them bypass the odd timing of invig.

- Healing to generate more DPS uptime is apart of what I said earlier. It is indirect. You do not directly boost damage by healing. Fey Wind is a direct boost in Party DPS. Also, AST isn't far behind in Personal DPS but we have terrible mana sustain while SCH, with oGCD healing and very good mana sustain, can keep up the DPS. If we had better mana sustain, I'd be able to do so much more with this class.

- Spear is also one of the skills that I think needs a duration increase. While retroactively reducing CDs would be nice, I'm under the assumption that SE doesn't want to do it due to technical reasons. So the next best thing is to increase the window of opportunity. Resets are another story.

- Keep in mind that we have Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition. You're asking for a healer to have the chance of giving a DPS a 30% damage increase for potentially 45~50s. That's pretty damn strong man.

- Expanded RR is effectively quadrupling the effect (because if you take time and chance into the consideration, It's potentially lower than 20%). I did not account for time and chance.

I'm extremely curious as well on how they'll handle the AST buffs. I really want Light Speed to reduce the GCD. Thematically, it fits the class but it's really sad that it's practically useless aside from raising people and SS. A mana sustain buff and a slight buff to cards would put the class in the right direction. Maybe Spire could be TP regain and Bole could be stronger by default.

One thing that definetly needs to get fixed is Spread. It being usable only during battle is very limiting and doesn't allow for strategy before a fight. I don't see any reason for this restriction. It certainly wouldn't be OP if we could use it out of battle. Not like we would spend 30 mins before a fight trying to get the perfect buffed card combo... and it's also annoying when a fight ends as soon as you try to Spread a card. Card lost and wasted.

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Originally Posted by Tyla_Esmeraude

One thing that definetly needs to get fixed is Spread. It being usable only during battle is very limiting and doesn't allow for strategy before a fight. I don't see any reason for this restriction. It certainly wouldn't be OP if we could use it out of battle. Not like we would spend 30 mins before a fight trying to get the perfect buffed card combo... and it's also annoying when a fight ends as soon as you try to Spread a card. Card lost and wasted.

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From the latest live letter, this has been addressed and they will probably be adjusted soon.

I don't have my SCH at 60 yet, but I have both AST and my main WHM at 60 now. From running content, even if an AST is a skilled healer, they're just not a stable healer for progression, which is the point of all of these threads wanting change on AST. They're not stable, and the cards don't make up for that.

If I go into A4 on WHM with an AST, the probability of wiping is much higher than if I go in with a SCH. That's a problem right there, a BIG one. Because frankly, when learning content, stability and emergency heals are HUGE. AST as it stands is a class that is best when EVERYONE knows a fight and is at farm status, otherwise, when problems happen, there's just no way of recovering, where the other two healers can.

Collective Unconscious is pretty much useless compared to the WHM and SCH's alternatives. Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition are only okay at best with Diurnal Sect. Bottom line, why take an AST when you can have a WHM and SCH combo?

As many said before:


AST might need some tweaks. The changes you recommend, would make AST broken as fuck..

- Healing while moving? Yes, of course, cuz it's that hard to avoid stuff on the ground and heal the current content...
- Double or even TRIPLE the buffs? Yes, sure 45% damage increase for 15secs, 60-90% cd reduce, sure go ahead...
- I might agree on increasing the damage on the abilities by a BIT, but not much.
- Versatility is not created by simply adding a HoT or a shield to a card for the duration...

- Yet i agree, the Draw CD is too long, reducing it by approx. 10sec would make the Card-Drawing more fluid and the buffs more present on the party.
Whilst I'd add that an AE RR would stack, so that if you have two ASTs in your party both could AE RR without overwriting their buffs (yet, I'd limit it to stacking DIFFERENT buffs)
- I also agree with you that RR is somewhat not worth it in terms of Enhanced RR.

I am wondering though, what do you mean by trippling the duration of the Ewer/Spire RR? Do you want to triple the time of a single buff duration, or do you want to triple the increased duration which is currently achieved by RR these cards?

Imo ast is the type of class that rewards the party if the party is awesome and top notch. A paty that executes mechanics almost if nt perfectly, dps is amazing and the co healer is smart.
Ur cards etc will be like gravy on top which will " make the run go even faster ".
But it punishes parties that r bad and r struggling with mechanics lol. Low healing potency & weak shields. Card buffs r often used on urself or co healer cuz ur mp is strained etc = 0 buffs to party.
So atm theres really no middle ground for the average ast.

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Originally Posted by MidnightTundra

- Assuming 100% uptime, the SMN ooms around 4 minutes

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Yes, but there's no such thing as a fight with 4 minutes of straight uptime. You're guaranteed to spend some time dodging AoE, changing phases, etc., and I've never had mana issues as a result.

And really, that's the problem with AST's buffs in general: they're so incredibly situational that they're typically going to come up completely useless or of next to no value to the overall course of the fight.

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- Keep in mind that we have Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition. You're asking for a healer to have the chance of giving a DPS a 30% damage increase for potentially 45~50s. That's pretty damn strong man.

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I just spent most of a Bismark hard run drawing completely worthless cards that did absolutely nothing of any real value most of the time. The few times where I was able to set up an expanded RR with an Arrow or a Balance for when the carapace came up were helpful, but they were hardly worth it for the sheer number of spires, ewers, etc. I drew.

Yes, I know it's strong, and the key reason it HAS to be strong is because of the odds against it happening.

When things go wrong for an AST, they bring absolutely nothing to a fight the other healers cannot do WORLDS better, and their lack of emergency options are a liability.

As we've already said, even when things go RIGHT, they're still only marginally better than what other healers bring to the fight.

If the buffs are going to revolve around RNG, they need to be AMAZING when you get the right ones.

And they just aren't.

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Originally Posted by YuiSasaki

- Healing while moving? Yes, of course, cuz it's that hard to avoid stuff on the ground and heal the current content...

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A) They're still releasing content and B) there are fights in dungeons right now that require lots and lots of movement, and it doesn't take many DPS blunders while dodging AoE before you won't have the chance to stop and cast to save them.

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- Double or even TRIPLE the buffs? Yes, sure 45% damage increase for 15secs, 60-90% cd reduce, sure go ahead...

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The potency of the good buffs has to be strong enough to justify the chance of not getting them.

In a best case scenario, you can give a DPS 10% extra damage for 15 seconds every 30 seconds. But there's only a 17% chance of that happening, or 1 in 6.

So look at it this way: once every 3 minutes, we can average out 10% extra damage for 1:30 seconds (if you use Arrow and Balance), and that's assuming we'll draw one of every card and not the same worthless cards over and over and over again.

Meanwhile, we lack good emergency options that can save the raid from a wipe.

Unless the buffs are going to be AMAZING, ASTs just aren't worth bringing to progression content. A hybrid that cannot actually deliver on increasing the DPS of the raid proportionate to the increased risk they bring is a terrible hybrid.

And yes, if the party is amazing and never gets hit (which isn't an option in many fights) an AST can suffice, but the problem is that ASTs queue as healers and are expected by the DF to perform the role of one, and you have to expect that you're going to be dropped into parties that get hit by everything and you won't have the emergency heals to deal with those situations.

I've already found myself struggling as an AST in situations where my SCH would have NO issue whatsoever because SCH has tools for handling incoming spike damage, never mind the fact that AST goes OOM way too quickly when a lot of damage is being done.

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I am wondering though, what do you mean by trippling the duration of the Ewer/Spire RR? Do you want to triple the time of a single buff duration, or do you want to triple the increased duration which is currently achieved by RR these cards?

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Right now it doubles the duration, which is a net loss of efficiency because you have to wait 30 seconds before using it. Instead of 15 seconds, it would be 45.

Another idea:

7. Make the Cards Less Situational by Giving the buffs a 1 minute duration and a number of charges (after you've cast them on a target, I mean)

Instead of throwing a TP reducer on a party member and hoping that they needed it for the next 20 seconds (when you have no idea if they actually will due to the randomness of boss mechanics), how about you throw it on a party member and the next 10 abilities they use will have their TP reduced by 20%?

Bole: 10% less damage taken from the next 10 hits

Spear: 20% faster cooldown on the next 3 CDs used.

Arrow: 10% faster cast time/GCD recovery time on the next 10 abilties/spells used.

Balance: 10% more damage done on the next 10 attacks (doesn't include auto attacks or DoTs already ticking)

This would ensure that buffs don't get so easily wasted as the player can use the buffs when they have a chance.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

They're so incredibly situational that they're typically going to come up completely useless or of next to no value to the overall course of the fight.

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And that is the problem. But not the only one.
AST is litteraly a nightmare to balance, i feel for the developers here.

And no, AST is not hard to use by any means. The class has the basic things +1 cooldown. Its literally the easiest class to use for "pure" healing, due to the lack of options. Its basically: Heal target with single target healing spell, heal group with multi target spell, target is near death->ED->repeat basic healing for 40 seconds (Not most effective mind you).
There is no secret to using AST effectively healing wise, as long as you keep unnecessary healing low.
And no, time dilation on a tank with hots wont make or break an encounter.

A "weaker" healer with more support just doesn't work in an enforced party environment.
The fights are simply not designed this way, and they pretty much cant be designed like that, as things are now.
Right now, AST is enough for everything, no discussion about that. But what are WHM and SCH supposed to do with all their shiny new healing skills?
If a (slightly) weaker basic set hast to be enough to win an encounter, you pretty much make all the "non-basic" skills the other healers get redundant.
If the basic set is not enough where does that leave AST?

Cards are the same:
The DPS have their fixed rotation, with fixed costs, the fights are designed with this in mind. Reducing the costs of a DPS classes will do next to nothing. If it would be designed like this that would make AST, as well as drawing those cards, mandatory.
This is also not something that can be fixed on AST, since most classes lack ways to do more damage outside of their best rotation with higher cost.

Balance can't be accounted for as well, if there are burn phases whre it would be needed, an AST would pretty much have to get AoE Royal Road, Spread Balance. Stop drawing cards until burn phase, to ENSURE he has those cards at an appropriate time.
(And cards come as random as it is, I actually had a DPS complain about running out of tp - because I threw 6 arrows in succession at him) - Also the thing about AST being mandatory again.

Arrow is nice, but the effect is not overwhelming in the grand scheme of things. Even in solo play, much less in compositions of 4 or 8 players (if not AoE'd).

Spear likewise. Also I don't get the people who say "use" it for LA. I mean I DO use it if I happen to get it (and actually need it - usually not the case, but its nice if you died midfight). But it furhter reduces your ability to support the team, and you actually have to get it, or spread it and hold for your next LA. And there are better cards to hold on to.
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Hybrids are always a problem to design around.
Its like creating a DPS, that can both melee and ranged, both worse than non hybrids, but as a class function it gets the ability to support heal for 250-500 ... sometimes.

Thats why in my opinion, the baseline for AST is to heal as well as the others. (You can still make that different from, the other two)
If the healing is taken care of, start adding gimmicks to further differentiate the healers.

That said, im super interested where the developers intend to take this.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Another idea:

7. Make the Cards Less Situational by Giving them Unlimited Duration (or a 2 minute duration) and a number of charges

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You might want to add "in-fight" in there, just to avoid the waiting game of giving everyone balance at the start of a fight. I already hated that with 8xStoneskin, imagine 8xBalance O_O

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Another idea:

7. Make the Cards Less Situational by Giving them Unlimited Duration (or a 2 minute duration) and a number of charges

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I don't think we will need infinite timer on cards. The timer is fine as it is. One solution I have in mind:

-Reduce recast time for draw to 10s.
-Allow Spread 3 cards at the same time.
-Allow Spread mid-fight.

This will significantly make it less situational and keep the RNG core idea intact.
-Reduce shuffle time to 20s.

I really would NOT want a healer class "fixed" by increasing its DPS. I play a healer job to heal, not to DPS :\

From another thread where I mathed out exactly why AST's buffs are so generally bad:

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We assume that all 6 cards have an equal chance of being drawn (because they do, or SE is seriously messing with us, like epic trololololololol to no end...).

So balance and arrow can each be drawn twice per minute, so there's a 1 in 3 chance of drawing a card that will increase damage output on one DPS by 10% for 15 seconds, twice per minute (and yes, I'm being kind in saying that Arrow is a flat DPS buff, but let's just assume it is for the sake of argument, even though it likely isn't).

So 10%/3 = 3.3% damage increase, divided by 2 because it can only ever be up for 30 seconds of every minute, and multiplied by 2 because you can draw twice per minute = 3.3% damage increase per minute on a single DPS, and this number gets WORSE for every 30 seconds you're holding onto the precious expanded RR +Arrow/Balance combo because you're not drawing.

Compare that to Selene's buff: 3% damage AND healing speed increase, divided by 2 since it's only every 30 seconds = 1.5%, times 8 as it hits the whole party = 12% DPS AND healing increase.

The only comparison AST even has is an expanded RR Arrow, which has an even worse chance of happening and my head hurts too much to calculate it out right now.

Even if Selene didn't exist for comparison, an average of 3.3% DPS increase from a single DPS isn't worth losing out on reliable emergency heals and all of the other tools that WHM and SCH bring to a party.

That's why AST needs a serious buff: sure, you're going to have good and bad streaks, but overall, the average benefit is terrible, especially when considering all of the emergency tools AST doesn't bring to a party that the other healers do.

I love the HELL out of AST's playstyle. I love how skilled managing can push to get the most out of the class, but the sad truth is that squeezing every last drop of buff and utility out of AST STILL doesn't make it worth bringing over the other healers.

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Originally Posted by Triaste

Thats why in my opinion, the baseline for AST is to heal as well as the others. (You can still make that different from, the other two)
If the healing is taken care of, start adding gimmicks to further differentiate the healers.

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I wouldn't mind this at all, either.

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You might want to add "in-fight" in there, just to avoid the waiting game of giving everyone balance at the start of a fight. I already hated that with 8xStoneskin, imagine 8xBalance O_O

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Ah yeah, fixed it to be a minute duration only.