Another perfectly reasonable AST idea

As if there aren't enough suggestions out there.

I've been playing AST since 3.0 dropped, etc. I have a decent understanding of how the job works.

The most annoying thing to me is how Nocturnal Sect doesn't synergize nearly as well with an AST's toolkit as Diurnal does. With Diurnal, you get absolutely insane HoTs using Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition. It's ridiculous. Time extending a shield, on the other hand, does very little. And since DS shields overwrite SCH shields, you will NEVER have a DS AST and a SCH in the same full party. So I'm looking at DS as a replacement to a SCH. You also lose the fairy, which from a buffing perspective isn't a terribly big deal because cards more than make up for it. Here are some things you lose:

• An absolutely free 300 potency cure that you don't even have to think about every GCD
• Strong shield spreading through Deployment
• A Sacred Soil you can set and forget
• E4E
• Aetherflow for endless MP

All in all, your shielding and healing ability is pretty gimped in favor of a slightly stronger instant cast shield, and somewhat decent buffs. Not a good tradeoff in my mind. So here's an idea I've been cooking up over a few months, to give AST more options than "on par with WHM or a mediocre at best SCH"

1. Make Nocturnal Sect Cleric Stance with AST extras

• All cards drawn become Reversed [Card], which can only be played on enemies. Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition affect these buffs.

• Reversed Bole could give a very small percent Vuln Up for a few seconds (like Trick Attack but weaker and shorter)
• Reversed Balance a small and short Damage Down (weaker than Disable)
• Arrow, Slow
• Spear, Heavy or something. Hell if I know.
• Spire/Ewer, maybe return TP/MP on hit. Maybe Spire has a chance to paralyze enemies while active (it's a lightning bolt, right?)

These effects probably aren't the best and I don't like giving potencies because I have no idea what's broken and not, but there's plenty of room to fiddle around with this thought.

1. Make not being in a stance useful

As it stands right now, there is absolutely no reason EVER to not be in a stance. This bothers me more than it should, since multiple jobs now have mandatory stances. But if NS is nixed in favor of becoming a DPS stance, then having nostance should still people a reason to go WHM/AST. I've had a couple of different thoughts, but none that I'm absolutely sold on. Here are a few:

• Reduce card game cooldowns when not in a stance. This would let you have more card uptime, and maybe you could afford to slap a Bole on your tank instead of burning it for Enhanced or discarding it because you don't want to waste your Expanded. But cards are still RNG, and the chance of more uptime doesn't guarantee you'll have anything that matches SCH's mitigation abilities.
• Allow Royal Roads to be stacked, up to 2. This would absolutely completely break some cards, but it would also make some combinations more useful (has anyone actually ever played an Expanded Spire?)
• Give Royal Road its own healing based on which one is used. Enhanced cures kinda strongly and gives a shield equaling heals, Extended gives a(nother) HoT, and Expanded gives an AoE. This would encourage you to play cards on tanks more often for the extra heals, but would overheal on pretty much anyone else, and its usefulness would be quite situational.

• One new cooldown that lets you Spread and play a single card onto a party member. It's essentially an extra Spread, but since people can only have one card buff active, it wouldn't be used willy-nilly, but more to store Boles on tanks for busters or Ewers on Bards for when they sing, etc.

None of these really stick with me though, because they're all still RNG dependent at their core, and RNG doesn't go all that well with progression. With the loss of Aspected heals and Collective Unconscious, stanceless would need something that really packs a kick to make it useful.

I'm not upset with AST's healing ability at all. If anything, I think Diurnal AST is too strong compared to WHM and should be toned back a bit. As a HoT healer goes, it's probably the best because of TD/CO. As a burst healer, Essential Dignity is a better panic button than Tetragrammation, and Lightspeed lets you pump out some good AoE heals on the move, though Cure III still wins out for that.

By and large, it's Nocturnal Sect that lets me down. I feel far more restricted using it than DS (Slower DPS, TD and CO have less value, mildly better heals that few would benefit from). The buffs are really nice, but the benefits of having a scholar seem much better than having a Noct AST. I'm running on fumes here, so I'll end the wall of text and let the discussion commence.

At the heart of it all, I really just want AST to have the option of (even) better buffing at the cost of some healing potential, or feel more unique beyond "Hit Draw when it's up, and play it if you can".

For next time, you can bypass the 1000 character limit by posting something and editing the post and adding the rest of the text :).

As for AST, I cannot comment as I'm not yet 60 xD

Had a similar cards idea to yours once. Another one I had recently was to divide the cards across the two sects. So for example, Bole/Arrow for Diurnal and Spear/Balance for Nocturnal. Ewer/Spire would be available for both.

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Originally Posted by FeliAiko

Had a similar cards idea to yours once. Another one I had recently was to divide the cards across the two sects. So for example, Bole/Arrow for Diurnal and Spear/Balance for Nocturnal. Ewer/Spire would be available for both.

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The only problem with that is that it would make Noct stance something you're forced to use even though you're severely limiting yourself.

You've never actually raided as a SCH, have you?

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

The only problem with that is that it would make Noct stance something you're forced to use even though you're severely limiting yourself.

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That's true and something I also considered. With Balance being the best card having it Sect-specific would force players into running that Sect all the time. So either Balance changes or the concept gets adjusted accordingly.

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You've never actually raided as a SCH, have you?

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If that was directed at me, then I have, yes. Now was there a point you were trying to make?

This reverse card idea is nice, but I don't think it should be tied to sect. We could get another deck in the future, with a Draw II skill that would read from a different kind of arcanum.

As for the issues with Nocturnal Sect, there is a few things that people should take into consideration:

1) Nocturnal Sect is insanely strong in PvP;
2) When compared to SCH, it's weaker in mitigation, in shielding and in DPS at 60, but it's actually quite competitive at level 50 content. If you analyze everything, the damage toolkit is fairly simple to use and it's pretty strong when you realize that Malefic has almost double the potency of Ruin/Ruin II; the shielding is stronger when crits are not happening; AST doesn't have anything like Sacred Soil at 50, but they can use Benefic II/Helios to heal through damage, while SCH only gets Emergency Tactics after level 50.

Anyway, they're quite similar and competitive at level 50, and this is my point: there's absolutely no reason to believe that Nocturnal Sect is anything beyond a situational stance - just like Fists of Earth or Fists of Wind, or even Topaz Carbuncle/Titan-Egi, all situational things used while soloing or in very specific duties.

Final Fantasy XIV is a raid oriented game, we can agree to that, but there are people who enjoy doing PvP and several spells/skills are there to serve this kind of playstyle. Think about Feint (LNC/DRG) or Haymaker (PGL/MNK) or Sleep and Lethargy (THM/BLM); status effects like Bind, which THM/BLM, SMN, ARC/BRD and MCH have are almost useless in PvE except for T7 so far, but are very useful in PvP. Nocturnal can be a PvP stance or something purely situational, used to do level 50 content in DF.

It sounds like a silly point, but we shouldn't forget that a lot of people started playing this game in Heavensward and have not done any of the 2.x content. They may choose to do so using the Duty Finder or setting up a new player static or even a pug PF group to do 2.x content without resorting to being carried by an unsynced group. And they may want/have to do it as a WHM/AST combo, which is perfectly fine for that kind of content.

Also, HW content, like primals (Ravana EX, Bismarck EX and Thordan EX), Alexander (Normal mode) and Void Ark, are easily done in Nocturnal Sect.

The only issue comes with Alex Savage. Well, it's really hard to say there's a problem with a stance that is only an issue in hardcore endgame content. And the issue is not about the healing capabilities themselves, but about the SCH DPS capabilities. This is something that will hardly change if they redesign Nocturnal Sect in any way, because this is not an issue related to healing, but something related to the fact that SCH comes from a DPS class, with a wider DPS toolkit and better MP management. The fairy helps with healing, we all know that, but it's being overestimated in several ways.

In my opinion, they should allow AST to change Sects in combat, because that will make all the problems go away. If they make it that you can’t stack your own regens and shields, it’s not going to break the game. Then we’ll be something unique, with two healing styles that can be swapped in combat, and all this mini-WHM/mini-SCH crap will end, since we won’t be locked in anything. Also, they should remove the +5% healing potency buff and make Nocturnal have the same +5% attack speed buff that Diurnal has. ROG/NIN’s venoms work exactly the same in their self buff and they only change special effects from skills, so having two instances that give the same permanent buff is not something new to the game.

Whenever I see a thread with "perfectly reasonable", I feel it's the same as seeing a party finder group with "sureclear".

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

You've never actually raided as a SCH, have you?

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No. I've raided as a Noct AST and with multiple SCH's who are always on top of their game and know what's going on. I'm quite familiar with the tools because I have a pocket SCH when I tank, and we work out how to do our best as a pair. SCH was designed from the ground up to mitigate; AST was not. It's not rocket surgery to see that SCH's kit is far better for that role.

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Originally Posted by TatoRazzino

A lot of things

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I've PvPed as Noct AST a handful of times in the drought before 3.1 when I really didn't want to get Neverreap again. You're right, it is extremely powerful. I'm not all that knowledgeable on PvP though, but my thought is that PvP would need a lot of tweaking to be a well-balanced experience.

I do agree that they're more equivalent in 2.X content, but I don't think that should be a major contributing factor when it comes to discussing its balance. It's nice, but AST is a HW job, so talking about its usefulness in ARR seems a bit tangential to me. I doubt many people are going to hit HW specifically because they want to heal ARR content as an AST and as no other healing job, and the only way they'd get non-faceroll content otherwise is by doing min ilvl sync.

As far as progression goes, SCH DPS is definitely an important factor, but AST could have the ability to contribute in a harder to calculate way. An AoE balance is an incredible boon, but it's not as easy to calculate how that contributes to the raid's DPS as it is to look at a SCH's potencies. I'm sure it's doable, but as it stands right now, your raidwide DPS contribution comes from having an Expanded Balance Spread at the start of the pull. Beyond that, you're stuck with a weaker WHM for DPS and RNG for your other contributions, including enough MP regen to keep yourself on track with WHM. If healer DPS is truly a problem, having the equivalent of an Expanded card without needing to burn a Spire or Ewer would significantly increase the frequency of cards played and boost raid damage more. An AST feeding one person cards is great for their personal DPS, but this way they could increase their raidwide contribution without having to wait ages for a Balance or Arrow.

As far as overestimating the fairy goes, you're probably right. I know fairy heals aren't as strong as SCH heals, but even if your fairy is set to manual and you never use a single pet ability, it's going to ease your healing burden because it will always be healing.

I probably forgot to address some things but oh well.

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Originally Posted by LegoTechnic

Whenever I see a thread with "perfectly reasonable", I feel it's the same as seeing a party finder group with "sureclear".

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I was poking fun at myself, because I'm aware it doesn't resemble anything close to balanced, proper, or reasonable. I just wanna kick my ideas around a bit.

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Originally Posted by Aloise

As far as progression goes, SCH DPS is definitely an important factor, but AST could have the ability to contribute in a harder to calculate way. An AoE balance is an incredible boon, but it's not as easy to calculate how that contributes to the raid's DPS as it is to look at a SCH's potencies. I'm sure it's doable, but as it stands right now, your raidwide DPS contribution comes from having an Expanded Balance Spread at the start of the pull. Beyond that, you're stuck with a weaker WHM for DPS and RNG for your other contributions, including enough MP regen to keep yourself on track with WHM. If healer DPS is truly a problem, having the equivalent of an Expanded card without needing to burn a Spire or Ewer would significantly increase the frequency of cards played and boost raid damage more. An AST feeding one person cards is great for their personal DPS, but this way they could increase their raidwide contribution without having to wait ages for a Balance or Arrow.

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You're underestimating the card system as a whole. All cards contribute to DPS in different ways, and some of them are not obvious. Drawing Ewers and Spires takes the refresh burden away from BRD/MCH, which increases overall DPS for two reasons: 1) they don't have to sacrifice their personal DPS to play songs/activate the refresh mode for turrets; and 2) BRDs can use that MP to play Foe Requiem for longer. Boles can increase DPS in several ways: 1) the most obvious is your MT dropping tank stance for that duration, which will increase DPS output; 2) you can go into Cleric Stance and use your DoTs, which are powerful and bypass accuracy checks; 3) your co-healer can stay in Cleric for a longer time, adding more DPS; and 4) you can conserve MP, which helps with the refreshing issues. The Spear card is useful in many ways, specially if you have a NIN or MCH in your group; if you don't, you can use it to double the amount of time your next card will stay on. Utility increases overall DPS, buffing specific party members increases their personal DPS (which increases overall DPS). It's a huge mistake to think that only an AoE Balance or Arrow will do the trick; use an Extended Arrow in your BLM at the pull, and you'll do more for him in their opener than Selene will do for them in the whole fight. Feed your MNK with a Balance and increase it for 15s, and notice the difference in the boss HP percentage. It's tangible and you can feel the difference if you pay attention to what you're doing. When I don't play AST and go WHM instead in fights like Thordan EX, for example, I notice a 3% difference in the boss HP in the splits. That's how strong the cards are.

My point about the tookit pre-level 60 was not to argue its balance, but to point out a situational use. SE doesn't need any reason beyond that to choose not to change anything about Nocturnal Sect. Like I said in my original reply, there are several situational stances/spells/skills that are only used in few places or in PvP. SE can simply state that they never intended a high end use of Nocturnal Sect and that will be it.

Also, there are A4S clears with Nocturnal AST, and that fight is arguably the only one that actually requires heavy shielding. My point is: using SCH to point out things about Nocturnal Sect is not going to take us anywhere.

During 2.X progression groups had one spot locked for BRD among the DPS jobs, and one of the melee and one of the casters were going to be locked out no matter what. That happened because BRD was the only DPS/support job that existed; SCH is currently the only healer job that has an actual DPS toolkit (not only DPS spells/skills, but a resource management system), which means it's the only job that can perform well as an off-healer. The same thing can be said about WAR: it's the only tank made to work well as an off-tank. They'll not nerf WAR/SCH, and they won't buff PLD/DRK or WHM/AST to become closer to what WAR/SCH can do. We'll have to wait for the next off-tank/off-healer oriented job to be launched. Either that or SE will start designing fights that require only one tank/one healer; remember T5 and T9? A lot of groups simply ran it with PLD only, because a second tank was not needed. The smart choice for those fights wasn't WAR (and I doubt it would be now). If you need a solo healer, you'll either choose WHM or AST, with regens, for progression. Or they could simply design fights that require two healers actually healing. In those contexts, you'll prolly see more WHM/ASTs, and SCH may be left out. In a similar way, fights that would require two tanks using tank stance at the same time for long periods of time may see more PLD/DRK combos. Then we'll see threads crying about WAR/SCH and so on.

I doubt those two scenarios would lead to SCHs/WARs making complaint threads to be honest. At most it would cause groups to become more open minded about different tank/healer comps, yet the edge that WAR/SCH have over their peers (Fey Wind, Storm's Eye), would inevitably cause most groups to gravitate back towards them.

Embrace is 200 potency at cap.

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Originally Posted by Aloise

No. I've raided as a Noct AST and with multiple SCH's who are always on top of their game and know what's going on. I'm quite familiar with the tools because I have a pocket SCH when I tank, and we work out how to do our best as a pair.

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Well my point was that you've come up with certain things in your post which simply aren't true, which you would notice if you raided as a SCH. For one, as mentioned above, embrace is not 300 potency, at least not in comparison to our 400 potency heals. It does around 30% more than a WHM regen tick, and my WHM is less geared than SCH so I can't make an accurate comparison.

Sacred Soil is definitely not something an AST is losing out on, in fact I think it's quite barbaric that anyone would even suggest Collective Unconscious as being inferior to the other two 'bubbles'. Sacred Soil isn't something you just use a stack on and plop on the screen, it's used specifically for raid wide damage and usually people run out of it as soon as the move is over; as such Collective Unconscious does exactly the same thing plus adding a very potent regen on top of that. Saying you can't move is not a valid argument, because you only ever really need it up for the one incoming attack anyway.

Finally, MP is certainly not endless on good SCHs. When you're in charge of essentially taking on two roles at once, you'll drain your MP fast. Not to mention some of our spells cost considerable more to cast than the other healers.

I appreciate that Nocturnal AST isn't as good at mitigation as SCH, but if you're making comparisons, you need to at least know enough about the other jobs so you're not discrediting your post. Personally I think AST is in a great place right now and needs NO buffs, it just requires more skillful people to play.

I agree AST is fine except Nocturnal AST and i dont play Nocturnal AST in raids or dungeons i cant rly give any ideas what they can do to improve that stance. =P

But i wish in Diurnal they would increase the range of Aspected Helios by 5 yards and make Celestial Opposition more useful for a 2min CD.
Its never the case but as Diurnal AST you cast very very fast with a Piety/SS build you have a higher heal output than a WHM (if you dont count in Medica 2 Hots and burst heal like Assize) with your Helios and single target heals. "rip MP?^^"

Of course you have to work more as AST to heal the party (10 potency less on hots its a lot and you miss stuff like Asylum/Assize) but you bring a lot of utility even if cards are RNG.
Also AST/SCH have the highest dmg mitigation with deployment tactics/sacred soil/grp bowl(if you have it rdy^^)/virus/disable/ystohla bubble

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

Finally, MP is certainly not endless on good SCHs. When you're in charge of essentially taking on two roles at once, you'll drain your MP fast. Not to mention some of our spells cost considerable more to cast than the other healers.

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I would suggest you a bit more use of Energy Drain.

Really, in raids and dungeons Scholars does have a large amount of practical mana, enough for it to not matter unless you waste it all on Succor and Adloquium. Sacred Ground is a great mitigation tool as well, due to the low cooldown it has. I'm using it more and more to lessen the amount of incoming general damage, in much the same way I learned how to love Emergency Tactics. The general idea of damage prevention is lost to the Nocturnal Astrologian, since all it seems to have gimmick-wise is an inferior Scholar toolbox.


And Embrace is half a Physick, almost a whole Physick if you've got Rouse up, at the same delivery speed as the Scholar can muster if it's got Fey Wind, or like a normal Physick if the target has Fey Illumination going. You're doing about 60% of your own healing most of the time.

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

Really, in raids and dungeons Scholars does have a large amount of practical mana, enough for it to not matter unless you waste it all on Succor and Adloquium. Sacred Ground is a great mitigation tool as well, due to the low cooldown it has.

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I'll let Kabzy roast you if he/she feels like it, so I'll just ignore the rest of your post. But this particular bit I'd like to address.

You do realise that Sacred soil is never worth it on non-lethal attacks, right?

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

You do realise that Sacred soil is never worth it on non-lethal attacks, right?

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You do realize that aetherflow stacks aren't THAT precious, right? You even have two ways to gaining them now. Shadow Flare does take priority, of course, but prevention is better than curing at all times.

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

I would suggest you a bit more use of Energy Drain.

Really, in raids and dungeons Scholars does have a large amount of practical mana, enough for it to not matter unless you waste it all on Succor and Adloquium. Sacred Ground is a great mitigation tool as well, due to the low cooldown it has. I'm using it more and more to lessen the amount of incoming general damage, in much the same way I learned how to love Emergency Tactics. The general idea of damage prevention is lost to the Nocturnal Astrologian, since all it seems to have gimmick-wise is an inferior Scholar toolbox.


And Embrace is half a Physick, almost a whole Physick if you've got Rouse up, at the same delivery speed as the Scholar can muster if it's got Fey Wind, or like a normal Physick if the target has Fey Illumination going. You're doing about 60% of your own healing most of the time.

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Basic rule of thumb on SCH: lustrate and imdom are for more valuable to spend stacks on than sacred soil. In fact sacred soil is usually the last thing a SCH spends stacks on. If its a non lethal attack, the soil is wasted. Lustrate and indom let you dps more, as you can drop clerics and use stacks on instant heals. Energy drain manages your mana and deals more dps. Sacred soil hasnt been worthwhile (except a few niche uses in raids like t11 crit nerve cloud, t13 terraflare) since 2.0 when lustrate healed a lower % of hp and people were still figuring stuff out.

Also in progression raids, SCH do have mana issues. They are less than AST or WHM usually, but non the less they are still there.

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

Personally I think AST is in a great place right now and needs NO buffs, it just requires more skillful people to play.

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Where as i agree that AST is in a good place right now, i dont agree that it needs no buffs. There is one area that really needs addressing and that is emnity management on AST. Luminiferious Aether's Quelling Strikes effects is all but useless, so some tweaking is needed there.

I agree with the points that moon/Lyrica/kabzy have made about SCH. Playing to the best of your ability, taking every opportunity to heal the most effectively while keeping your dps contribution as high as you can, can lead to massive mana issues, especially using succor back to back with emergency tactics (I usually let the other healer pick up that other half of the mana splurge or Indom.)

One thing for AST i would like to see is the ability to switch sects mid fight. The only balance issue would be the insane regens on top of instant cast shield. A fix would be to have your own aspected spells override your previous ones.

>>>>>>OR<<<<<<<

Another thing that could be done specifically to nocturnal is to increase the duration of all buffs by another multiplier, only while casting abilities like time dilation or celestial opposition. (Therefore cards and Wheel of Fortune act the same without the above skills)

Ex diurnal sect: cast bole for 30 seconds then celestial opposition it to 35
In nocturnal sect:cast bole for 30 seconds then celestial opposition it to 40.

This would shift the pressure of asts needing to be a dps clone of sch to a more true "support" in their nocturnal stance, thus increasing dps or damaging mitigation.

Just a thought. Everyone understands that time dilation and celestial opposition have poor synergy with nocts aspected spells.

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

You do realize that aetherflow stacks aren't THAT precious, right? You even have two ways to gaining them now. Shadow Flare does take priority, of course, but prevention is better than curing at all times.

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Not being "Precious" does not justify wasting them on pointless acts. I'm sorry if I hit a sore spot here and questioning "your style", but using soil on anything that will not cause a wipe or anywhere close to it is a waste:

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Originally Posted by DarkmoonVael

Basic rule of thumb on SCH: lustrate and imdom are for more valuable to spend stacks on than sacred soil. In fact sacred soil is usually the last thing a SCH spends stacks on. If its a non lethal attack, the soil is wasted. Lustrate and indom let you dps more, as you can drop clerics and use stacks on instant heals. Energy drain manages your mana and deals more dps. Sacred soil hasnt been worthwhile (except a few niche uses in raids like t11 crit nerve cloud, t13 terraflare) since 2.0 when lustrate healed a lower % of hp and people were still figuring stuff out.

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For example: Indomitability heals for 3300 on each target - With my gear anyways. That means soil has to mitigate enough damage that's worth 33000 unmitigated within the active time of Sacred Soil. When this amount of damage cannot be reached, it's a sub-optimal or even poor choice to waste an Aetherflow stack on Sacred Soil. For single target application it's an even worse choice, considering Lustrate packs more potency than Indomitability.

"Prevention better than curing"? Only in scenario's that can actually lead to deaths. For everything else, sacred soil's a waste of stack.

As for the "two ways to gain them", I'll let someone else roast you on that.

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

I agree with the points that moon/Lyrica/kabzy have made about SCH. Playing to the best of your ability, taking every opportunity to heal the most effectively while keeping your dps contribution as high as you can, can lead to massive mana issues, especially using succor back to back with emergency tactics (I usually let the other healer pick up that other half of the mana splurge or Indom.)

One thing for AST i would like to see is the ability to switch sects mid fight. The only balance issue would be the insane regens on top of instant cast shield. A fix would be to have your own aspected spells override your previous ones.

>>>>>>OR<<<<<<<

Another thing that could be done specifically to nocturnal is to increase the duration of all buffs by another multiplier, only while casting abilities like time dilation or celestial opposition. (Therefore cards and Wheel of Fortune act the same with the above skills)

Ex diurnal sect: cast bole for 30 seconds then celestial opposition it to 35
In nocturnal sect:cast bole for 30 seconds then celestial opposition it to 40.

This would shift the pressure of asts needing to be a dps clone of sch to a more true "support" in their nocturnal stance, thus increasing dps or damaging mitigation.

Just a thought. Everyone understands that time dilation and celestial opposition have poor synergy with nocts aspected spells.

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These kind of suggestions are the type of ones i tend to agree more with when it comes to Noct.AST. It should have a few more modal effects being in Nocturnal Sect that really emphasises the support aspect of N.AST. What it really needs to do is emphasise AST uniquness, make it all pretty :).

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

-Snip-

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So a SCH who keeps up Sacred Soil all the time is telling me I need to use Energy Drain more. Yeah... I suggest you learn that AF stack management IS a thing.

I just hope no one is reading your post and actually thinking it's a good mitigation strat. As Lyrica said, Sacred Soil's only use is heavy raid wide damage in which it can prevent KO's. Using it outside of that scenario is a complete waste of an AF stack (you can use it on Energy Drains :D).

Also you only mention Adlo and Succor, both which do need to be used somewhat frequently, and not any of the DPS abilities. Even when using all your stacks on Energy Drain, the cost of healing, keeping up DoTs and using Broil as a filler far outwieghs the regen from Energy Drain and AF. I agree that SCHs have the most friendliest MP regen, but we also seem to use our MP the most too. MP management is a skill that ALL healers need to learn, none of us have a free pass unless you're one of those terrible healers who stands idle when everyone's topped up.

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

You do realize that aetherflow stacks aren't THAT precious, right? You even have two ways to gaining them now. Shadow Flare does take priority, of course, but prevention is better than curing at all times.

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That's cute, maybe you should just stick to WAR.

Also you contradicted yourself big time here. If Shadow Flare, a move you should keep up all the time takes priority, why are you using Sacred Soil whenever it becomes available? ;D You're not only losing out on DPS and a slow debuff but you also waste an AF stack on something completely useless.

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Originally Posted by DarkmoonVael

These kind of suggestions are the type of ones i tend to agree more with when it comes to Noct.AST. It should have a few more modal effects being in Nocturnal Sect that really emphasises the support aspect of N.AST. What it really needs to do is emphasise AST uniquness, make it all pretty :).

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As I mentioned before, one thing that I would like to see is the Sect change thing. It doesn't make any sense to me not being able to switch stances.
Noct's buff could be the same as Diurnal's (just like ROG/NIN's venoms), or it could be changed to something useful like extra natural MP refresh, to make stance dancing a nice thing.

Hmmm... Tbh i would trade nocturnal sect to be a dps stance with enhance properties for being in that stance for dps.... And turn Diurnal into a WHM and SCH stance like do somethink crazy with it like

Aspect benefic
Heals the target, regen effect 18sec regen stacking shield

So i will use simple math what i trying to say ... For example ur regen is ticking over time and last 18seconds with each tick it also place a shield on the target say for 50%- 70% of the regen tick?

Regen 1200 tick 18sec
Shield 620 per tick stacks 3times = 1860 shield if not been hit

This is just as idea just to show how it would work would need adjusting to not make it too strong but i would like it like thia tbh but this is my own person veiwpoint

(Cannot edit due to being on tablet)

Also with the regen/shield combo HoT this would be allowed to stack with galvanize and with other ASTs

WHM = burst healing/ burst dps / emergancy heals
SCH = mitigation/ consitant dps / fairy support
AST = support / damage support / heal & reduce damage over time

Reduce damage over time would have to be kept up like debuffs to slash or pierce resistance like the dps abilities provide or it seems like the range for maximizing the reduction would be wasted. But supervirus and disable already accomplishes that role so probably not going to be something SE would use.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Reduce damage over time would have to be kept up like debuffs to slash or pierce resistance like the dps abilities provide or it seems like the range for maximizing the reduction would be wasted. But supervirus and disable already accomplishes that role so probably not going to be something SE would use.

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U read my post wrong the reduce damage over time is from the new idea i came up with aspect benefic etc

We basically supplying hots which each hot tick gives a shield which prevents damage taken which reduce the need to to heal more it will help both WHM and SCH and even play with AST/AST this is my idea to allow us to be paired with any healer

Did not realize interpreting words was meant to be taken in an introspective view point. Nocturnal stance would most likely gain a better ground to compete with scholar when it provides the dps the scholar brings along with its shielding. I am all for nocturnal being a slightly weaker version of cleric stance with mana reduction costs to dps spells and no potency penalty to heals along with a bump in damage. Being able to provide damage and healing without stance dancing might help us as well in the nocturnal side of things. But as I said in order to get any more toys we will have to lose our ability to be stronger healers then white mages.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

snips.

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What?... Ur totally disregarding that SCH and WHM have a lot more OH SHIT buttons then AST... Once we use essential dignity... Its game over man, game over

Celestrial oppotition
for a stun + 5sec buff time.,..... Yay (holy is better wtf)

Lightspeed
never use it apart from aoe healing and if u are using this on single target healing please quit ast because this skill does not remove GCD of skills also spell speed allow u to get 1 additional cast of (tested it)

Essential dignity
give tanks heart attack and waste cooldowns due to they need to be below 25% to get 750 potency heal

Synastry
Gains healing bonus yay....can heal 2 targets yay... What u do not do is use time dialation on this skill.... Use celestrial if u want it to last 5 sec longer

Collective concious
I hate and love this.. 4k hot combo awsome... Frozen in place...ughhh

Time dialation
Extend buffs /hots ... Yay ... For diurnal only.. WHAT??

Even if SE buffed our healing more then WHM... It still would not make AST better.. Because WHM and SCH got reliable Cooldowns and utility

Where AST playing with RNG jesus , got 2 ok cooldowns (synastry, essential) the rest is situational at best

Oh i forgot disable... But ughh only last 6sec and u have to have perfect timing to reduce the damage taken unlike virus which last longer....

Whilst SCH and WHM got cooldowns for nearly any encounter SE throws at them ... I want a WHM/SCH/AST cooldown comparison with a chart posted on here... And u will see WHM and SCH will wreck AST

Please can someone make this chart and post it on here... Thank u in advance :)

with me AST is ok, if something is about to be fix or buff then i just want
_Shuffle : no more ewer - shuffle - ewer again please.
_CO : do something about this, extremly hard to have it get full potencial, mostly use this only for combo with LA for more mp regen now.
_Stella : please stop telling me stella is good in pvp, not everyone like pvp, turn it to instant cast or make it reset the effect timer of combust / combust II.

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

I would suggest you a bit more use of Energy Drain.

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Originally Posted by Cheibriados

You do realize that aetherflow stacks aren't THAT precious, right? You even have two ways to gaining them now. Shadow Flare does take priority, of course, but prevention is better than curing at all times.

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So, I'm sorry, but from your PoV do I need to use ED or Soil?
Do I need to keep up Shadowflare and don't let if fall, with the other DoTs, or use Soil?
If, as you stated, the answer to these questions is "not Soil", then you yourself said Soil is actually situational and pretty useless otherwise.
T11, T13, A1S Jumps (when we were undergeared), maybe A3S, Thordan's LB, but that's as far as it goes.
Unless, of course, you're fine with losing 900~ish MP*3, the strongest ST heal we have, or the strongest AoE we have.
Your pick.

So the only way to make astrologian viable in your eyes is to give it as many oh shot buttons like white mage on top of what it has in its toolkit already?

No offense but if your group is failing that bad it should not be a good argument to buff astrologian when its already better then the white mage. Making it overwhelmingly stronger just makes me sit back and laugh at the silliness of some suggestions on this thread.

Astro will do extremely well in Alexander savage midas. Before you scream the sky is falling why not wait and see. Astrology works as well with the scholar as the white mage does.