AST's nerf goes too far.

I know, I know, wait until the nerf is actually implemented to see how it works, but still.


I think we could all argue that something could have been done about Aspected Benefic in Nocturnal Sect. It made ASTs utterly annoying to deal with, sure, but they could still be countered and kill.

They were not infallible, nor were they unkillable. Merely a nuisance that required more co-ordination to down, same as all healers.

So, the shield nerf doesn't surprise me. What does is the potency. Cutting it by half. On all accounts, that's ridiculously harsh, especially since PvP was the only place where you could use Nocturnal Sect with it actually being better than Diurnal.

We could argue all day over whether Astro deserved the nerf, but we can all probably agree on is the fact that the nerf is HARSH. Too harsh.

Not harsh I would say

You know how aspected benefic currently gives 130% shield? Why could they have not just started by reducing it to 100%?

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Originally Posted by Renault

You know how aspected benefic currently gives 130% shield? Why could they have not just started by reducing it to 100%?

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Because then every Astro in the game would still just 1 button PvP. This is necessary, and I suspect the adjustment will be rough for most who have not PvP'd without it. Most DC's have friday night den - queue up and start relying less on the 1-button-wonder now so that you are prepared when the patch hits. It'll be more productive than this.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

especially since PvP was the only place where you could use Nocturnal Sect with it actually being better than Diurnal.

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Honestly, I don't think Nocturnal should ever have been an Adloquium clone in the first place, it made more sense to me for it to be closer to Phalanx in XI; An effect which reduces damage taken by a value (rather than a percentage, which is what we have with tank skills). A shield simply never correlated well with abilities like Time Dilation and I've always discredited Nocturnal on that fact alone. Diurnal gives Regen, and extending the duration of Regen is extra HP restored. Were Nocturnal closer to Phalanx, I'm not sure how it would balance compared to Regen, but it would at least benefit from increasing the duration, not to mention stack nicely with Stoneskin/Adloquium.

Lets say, on average (in PvE), you'd take 10 hits in 30 seconds while taking (pulling that out my rear for simplicities sake). Currently a ~2,000HP Aspected Benefic will shield ~2,600HP. Lets instead make it like Phalanx, and it now mitigates ~260HP per hit over its 30 second duration. Since you're taking 10 hits over that time, it mitigates 2,600HP, but now Time Dilation can extend its duration. If someone is going to take more than 10 hits in those 30 seconds (which seems fairly relevant to PvP), it is technically doing more for you. They can even make Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios stack for Nocturnal Sect in that regard.

It wouldn't be particularly hard to balance, and it would be far more interesting than effectively cloning Scholars thing. As far as PvP goes, it wouldn't be stupidly overpowered as is currently the case, instead it could potentially be a fairly useful status effect to have. Sort of like another form of Testudo, but not percentage based. Every hit you take it would be mitigating some damage, when people are running into a group that would be fairly nice. Only issue I can perhaps think of is auto-attack damage perhaps being entirely mitigated by a Phalanx style effect, though even that isn't too hard to balance out.

And now they've made Nocturnal Sect useless in PVP, the one place it shined. I'll say it's good for balancing PVP but now Noct has been knocked down another peg... >w>()

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

We could argue all day over whether Astro deserved the nerf, but we can all probably agree on is the fact that the nerf is HARSH. Too harsh.

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Actually, I'm not so sure it's too harsh. Going to have to play around with it but, if I'm reading the numbers right, this puts the effective healing power of aspected benefic a little above the standard benefic/cure/physick heal. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to cast physick or cure when it has the same cast time as adlo and cure 2 but aspected benefic is still instant and essentially free; from my eyeballed-numbers math in level 60 pvp, the total heal shrinks by about 1k but that could still be pretty useful to cast while kiting or swiftcasting blizzard 2 and whatnot.

Still think it'll be more useful than diurnal in pvp though, to be honest. Even then, I still feel like it needs to be tested up against the damage in lvl60 4v4.

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Originally Posted by Mutemutt

if I'm reading the numbers right, this puts the effective healing power of aspected benefic a little above the standard benefic/cure/physick heal. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to cast physick or cure when it has the same cast time as adlo and cure 2 but aspected benefic is still instant and essentially free

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You're not reading the numbers right. The cost of the spell is 707 MP. That's nearly as much as Cure 2 which is double the potency. It is an extremely expensive, cost-inefficient heal. In organized PVP, Astro was fine. It has its strengths and weaknesses, just as the other healers. Unfortunately, one of its strengths is being invincible to bad players. I just hope that once the Feast comes out they receive more feedback and can hopefully alleviate this change for more balanced Ranked play.

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Originally Posted by Koltik

Because then every Astro in the game would still just 1 button PvP. This is necessary, and I suspect the adjustment will be rough for most who have not PvP'd without it. Most DC's have friday night den - queue up and start relying less on the 1-button-wonder now so that you are prepared when the patch hits. It'll be more productive than this.

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It is not "1 button PVP" at all. I have 44 hotkeys that I use for AST pvp, not including food, pots, mount and target macros. I also use nearly all of those in any given match, except those over level 50. Come The Feast, I guarantee I will be using all of them.

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Originally Posted by Renault

You're not reading the numbers right. The cost of the spell is 707 MP. That's nearly as much as Cure 2 which is double the potency. It is an extremely expensive, cost-inefficient heal. In organized PVP, Astro was fine. It has its strengths and weaknesses, just as the other healers. Unfortunately, one of its strengths is being invincible to bad players. I just hope that once the Feast comes out they receive more feedback and can hopefully alleviate this change for more balanced Ranked play.

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Mp cost was hardly an issue I think. I've spammed that spell for days on end it feels like and every once in a while it reminds me that I forgot to use LA and then I just mana draw. The numbers that really matter are how much it heals for.

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Originally Posted by Mutemutt

Mp cost was hardly an issue I think. I've spammed that spell for days on end it feels like and every once in a while it reminds me that I forgot to use LA and then I just mana draw. The numbers that really matter are how much it heals for.

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Must be frontlines, where the healing is pretty low and there's tons of downtime to regen your MP. The Feast will be similar to the Wolves Den, where damage is extremely high and there is no downtime. Sometimes it can be like healing through Ahk-Morns for 10-15 seconds straight, every 1 minute or so. Even with proper use of CDs, MP can run dry quickly as AST.

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Originally Posted by Renault

It is not "1 button PVP" at all. I have 44 hotkeys that I use for AST pvp, not including food, pots, mount and target macros. I also use nearly all of those in any given match, except those over level 50. Come The Feast, I guarantee I will be using all of them.

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44? How even. I just counted...I have 36. Am I miss something useful, macro wise :O?

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Originally Posted by Pence

44? How even. I just counted...I have 36. Am I miss something useful, macro wise :O?

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Card Cancellation macros (for when you get useless shit like spire, sometimes spear), Attunement cancellation macro, focus target disable. theres a few more for targetting but wasnt counting those. Not sure what you might be missing

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

And now they've made Nocturnal Sect useless in PVP, the one place it shined. I'll say it's good for balancing PVP but now Noct has been knocked down another peg... >w>()

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^ And this is what happens when dev's listen to little whiny kids. AST was never OP in PVP. you could kill a AST With one or two people if you would actually use your brain & work together as a team *GASP* is that even possible for most?
Don't LB a AST @100% Without getting him down alittle bit and stun him or what ever.

Just bad melee's who expect a free kill with LB. Welp. guess SE cave'd in again. Congrats whiny kids.

How could they leave Astrologians so overpowered in PvP for so long?

Really? They were making themselves and their allies immortal for almost a year and just getting nerf next week? What did they do in the past 7-8 months?

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Originally Posted by Blitzace

^ And this is what happens when dev's listen to little whiny kids. AST was never OP in PVP. you could kill a AST With one or two people if you would actually use your brain & work together as a team *GASP* is that even possible for most?
Don't LB a AST @100% Without getting him down alittle bit and stun him or what ever.

Just bad melee's who expect a free kill with LB. Welp. guess SE cave'd in again. Congrats whiny kids.

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Just because there were ways to kill it and it wasn't absolutely and totally insanely OP doesn't mean it wasn't imbalanced specially for arena based matches.

It was easier to play and harder to go against vs the other healers specially for newer players, which by the way we need tons of to make pvp healthy. Good change is good and i hope we get more and more frequent balance changes going forward.

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Originally Posted by Renault

Must be frontlines, where the healing is pretty low and there's tons of downtime to regen your MP. The Feast will be similar to the Wolves Den, where damage is extremely high and there is no downtime. Sometimes it can be like healing through Ahk-Morns for 10-15 seconds straight, every 1 minute or so. Even with proper use of CDs, MP can run dry quickly as AST.

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Sorry, my experience with wolve's den is matches rarely ever last longer than around 5 mins, but I see ast winning the 14 min+ matches too, so I can't say I'm suddenly worried about mp. And presumably, with this change, you'll want to use the move even less now

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Originally Posted by Blitzace

^ And this is what happens when dev's listen to little whiny kids. AST was never OP in PVP. you could kill a AST With one or two people if you would actually use your brain & work together as a team *GASP* is that even possible for most?
Don't LB a AST @100% Without getting him down alittle bit and stun him or what ever.

Just bad melee's who expect a free kill with LB. Welp. guess SE cave'd in again. Congrats whiny kids.

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The fact you say they arent OP in PvP then mention Lb'ing them tells me you only play Seal Rock. Lol.

250 potency +5% pot by nocturnal stance + 65% shield = 433 pot between raw healing and shield
cure potency 400

and you can spam it while running and give a shield that for casters mean "I won't be interrupted till the shield is up"

To me it is a good adjustment, not so hard because they touched exactly the problem,
they didn't nerfed all the noct stance or a generical malus to astro, and so the revalued the Diurnal stance,
that still is not weak at all.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

How could they leave Astrologians so overpowered in PvP for so long?

Really? They were making themselves and their allies immortal for almost a year and just getting nerf next week? What did they do in the past 7-8 months?

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This here is the statement of someone who is bad at PVP.

It's obvious that people have to defend the overpowered job that they're playing.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

It's obvious that people have to defend the overpowered job that they're playing.

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AST was overpowered in unorganized PVP when the other dps were unskilled, yeah. The same can be said for SMN and DRG and WAR.

In team play, the only thing that I was honestly worried about is SMN, because there's really nothing they can't do. They can burst, they can spread crazy damage, and they can CC quite well, all with a dot that lowers healing and a super virus.

The class is massively powerful in unskilled, skilled, solo and team play, yet it saw only a BUFF.

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Originally Posted by Renault

AST was overpowered in unorganized PVP when the other dps were unskilled, yeah. The same can be said for SMN and DRG and WAR.

In team play, the only thing that I was honestly worried about is SMN, because there's really nothing they can't do. They can burst, they can spread crazy damage, and they can CC quite well, all with a dot that lowers healing and a super virus.

The class is massively powerful in unskilled, skilled, solo and team play, yet it saw only a BUFF.

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What buff is this? Smn has been nerfed directly and indirectly several times now. Their existence is the major reason purify recast got cut. And besides Tri-bind they have s*it for CC lol. The heavy on miasma and miasma II was removed long ago so im not sure what other CC you are speaking of. Blizzard II perhaps?

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Originally Posted by Dimitrii

What buff is this?

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I think he was talking about this buff

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20121123010815

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He means the Ruin III potency buff from 120 to 200 potency. Which is actually an insanely high potency boost. (it's at the same potency as painflare now)

It's fine though, something like this was expected. This is just the 46294th melee buff and the 46987th caster/healer nerf (in pvp).

Still gonna bath in the blood of millions as SMN. Kek

I don't see how bringing back AST in line with the other healers from being healers as well as spearheads/tanks is problematic. You still get the light speed and the shields. All complaints about this nerf seems self centered around a desire to roll around solo usurping some other roles typically filled by other classes. Considering the big picture of team/alliance composition, AST should still be potent healers and proper team work has the tanks defending their healers.

R.I.P. Noct Stance 2016

All joking aside, we'll see how it plays out. While unnerfed Asp. Benefic definitely used to be OP for life support and as a means to avoid casting interruptions, forcing the skill floor to rise (everyone knows that at its lowest level, AST was braindead easy to play to a relatively effective degree) might be interesting in its own right.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

How could they leave Astrologians so overpowered in PvP for so long?

Really? They were making themselves and their allies immortal for almost a year and just getting nerf next week? What did they do in the past 7-8 months?

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You do know that in comparison to SCH and WHM, AST has the least effective tools to keep a full party under heavy pressure alive, right? Just because they were harder to kill or interrupt with unorganised burst doesn't mean that they can make themselves and their allies immortal, no matter how much you meant that as a hyperbole.

AST's niche is to be a mobile healer with great self durability and pocket heal potential, making it more of a noob trap for lone greedy dps than anything. And even then they are not unkillable. It mostly seems to me like SOME people need to properly learn how not to blow their stuns/cc the moment those get off cd, start working out proper burst rotations and learn which priority targets to focus with their fellow dps. And not get salty when they blow their melee LBs on a full vit specced, shielded AST without even so much as locking them down first. Because that is often where I feel all the "zomg nerf AST!!" cries coming from.

Nobody has to learn anything because you're gonna get nerfed tomorrow anyway.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

Nobody has to learn anything because you're gonna get nerfed tomorrow anyway.

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Sad isn't it? Learning is hard. What do you mean, I can't burst down a healer with only my 123 + autoattacks, shit's crazy yo.

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Originally Posted by Cer_Elys

Sad isn't it? Learning is hard. What do you mean, I can't burst down a healer with only my 123 + autoattacks, shit's crazy yo.

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We doomed!!!!!! D:

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Originally Posted by Evangela

Nobody has to learn anything because you're gonna get nerfed tomorrow anyway.

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Odd checked ya xivpvp profile and 0 recent match data found :3

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Originally Posted by Evangela

Nobody has to learn anything because you're gonna get nerfed tomorrow anyway.

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Ladies and gentlemen, the life story of content in Eorzea.

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Originally Posted by Cer_Elys

stuff

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You- ...stop making sense. :)

Noct shield probably would have been to strong in Feast Solo queue. This is a good change imo.

It seems like for feast they want tanks to use their mitigation abilities to be able to pick up and keep medals while the rest of the team does their thing. If AST were able to use Noct Asp. Benefic on the tank instantly with the same potency and no cast time as well as anyone else, it could've been very unbalanced.

I'm guessing anyway. Never had too much issue with AST outside of 50 Wolves Den, not a lot of burst on my jobs at 50 and Ast at level 50 felt ridiculous. Literally every team in every den match I've played recently has had an ast, cept a couple with a odd WHM.

Good, fuck Aspected Benefic. It wasn't fun to play against.

Good Riddance. Sprinting with instant cast shields is good enough. Even with half off their shields they're incredibly useful.