Noct Ast Misconception?

What if we have had it wrong all along maybe noct ast wasnt meant to replace sch as the off healer but instead allow whm to be the off healer instead in whm/ast parties

Oh hmm maybe. How is WHM mp sustain while focusing on damage abilities?

This has actually been suggested before in another topic. I'll quote myself here:

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Well, there are some issues and here are some of them:
Who will be doing the AoE healing for hits big enough that it will take 2 helios or 1 medica II?
Nocturnal sect as a main healer is practically a white mage without HoTs. Thus no form of sustained healing as well as mp efficiency issues
Same accuracy "benefits" scholar had applies to Astrologian

Frankly, putting white mage in the supportive healer seat doesn't really solve anything. Neither have high or even decent affinity towards that role. It's a matter of picking your own poison as there's a lack of better.

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Originally Posted by Ragology

Oh hmm maybe. How is WHM mp sustain while focusing on damage abilities?

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It isn't great and the buffs to Ewer isn't enough to sustain WHM dps. Which is too bad because it would be OP due to WHMs single target damage and Midas Savage raid design.

Thanks for the replys it was just something that crossed my mind and wondered if anybody ever thought the same and tested it out

It's actually not a bad thought persay and it has been suggested in the past. You can't look at Noct AST + WHM in the same sense as you would Diurnal AST + SCH or WHM + SCH.

Noct AST makes the better single target healer over WHM in some respects for three reasons now:

1. Stronger core spells by 5%
2. 10% less MP cost on healing spells
3. Better MP regeneration skills

So with that in mind it's better for Noct AST to heal and WHM to DPS (and provide more MP efficient AoE heals if Medica II is sufficient) but the WHM kit doesn't have enough MP sustain to maintain good DPS in an extended fight, even with Ewer being thrown in their direction.

If you're gonna run Noct AST + WHM, it's probably better to have a more even split in healing and alternate who's DPSing to maximize DoT up time while minimizing use of the more expensive DPS spells like Stone III and Malefic II.

What you've suggested in the OP is right idea going but your group has to adjust their meta thoughts when dealing with Noct AST + WHM since the MP sustain SCH has isn't there. This is a bit of a hard sell though since it requires more coordination than normal and probably more trust versus anything + SCH combo.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

your group has to adjust their meta thoughts when dealing with Noct AST + WHM since the MP sustain SCH has isn't there.

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That and:
The free fairy healing is gone. This effectively increases the mp cost over time in terms of healing. Which in turn results in less mp being allocated to damage.
I would like to throw in super virus in as well, but a summoner could make up for it and disable can have the same effect over time

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Originally Posted by Overrated

What if we have had it wrong all along maybe noct ast wasnt meant to replace sch as the off healer but instead allow whm to be the off healer instead in whm/ast parties

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It's not that noct ast is supposed to replace sch as a goal, but when you're looking at "the offhealer" as a role 2 classes compete for, sch wins the role, easily. AST could be completely different from and still be on par with SCH...but it isn't.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

It's not that noct ast is supposed to replace sch as a goal, but when you're looking at "the offhealer" as a role 2 classes compete for, sch wins the role, easily. AST could be completely different from and still be on par with SCH...but it isn't.

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Actually i think we as a community threw sch into that off healer spot and kinda demand the sch to dps, mitigate damage etc... Back in ARR not many players knew scholar exist as it was branch off from arcanist which was also a SMN

Any healer can be the off healer a sch can be a main healer if it really want to be, but it comes down drastically to the player skill and how sync ur healers are

Some healers teams heal certain parts of a fight to maximize dps and healing at the same time and form a trust with another, so in theory ANY healer can be main or off healer... Its down to the PLAYER what type of healer they are

This thread makes me worried that AST doesn't have a place? Not as good as main healer as WHM not as good as DPS/Off Healer is SCH? :s

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Originally Posted by Krissey

This thread makes me worried that AST doesn't have a place? Not as good as main healer as WHM not as good as DPS/Off Healer is SCH? :s

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AST has arguably a better kit for main healer than WHM does. Slightly less potent AoE burst but better MP management, better party utility, and easier DPS time due to Combust / Combust II being 100% accurate + cards augmenting your normal DPS. The only thing AST + SCH comp lacks is the 3% MND party buff WHM provides which might get rectified in the near future.

So, no real fear in the main heal slot for AST. It's just SCH's toolkit is significantly better than AST in that particular off heal slot that WHM + AST needs to work a bit harder and "mesh more" if you will to get similar results.

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Originally Posted by Krissey

This thread makes me worried that AST doesn\\'t have a place? Not as good as main healer as WHM not as good as DPS/Off Healer is SCH? :s

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Ast is a good healer and can beat whm and sch.... But ast have a high learning curve to do well as a healer.... Whm is just the easyier go to healer even if u make mistakes they not noticable.... As with sch u can slightly see if they make mistakes ..... Ast u can see mistakes happen a mile off

Unlike whm and sch these 2 healers can make mistakes and still come back from it

AST how ever.... If u make a mistake its going to hurt u ... If u use synasty wrong u loose a powerful buff that works in 2 ways... If u use collective unconcious the wrong way it hurts u...same for essential dignity (damn tanks dont warn us they got a tank buster covered)

But a lot of players dont use the full potential of AST or eveb use there kit.... I have taught 6 ast on my server about the 7k hot trick and how to use synasty

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

AST has arguably a better kit for main healer than WHM does. Slightly less potent AoE burst but better MP management, better party utility, and easier DPS time due to Combust / Combust II being 100% accurate + cards augmenting your normal DPS. The only thing AST + SCH comp lacks is the 3% MND party buff WHM provides which might get rectified in the near future.

So, no real fear in the main heal slot for AST. It's just SCH's toolkit is significantly better than AST in that particular off heal slot that WHM + AST needs to work a bit harder and "mesh more" if you will to get similar results.

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I'm still sad we seem to have a "false choice" because by all accounts and from all research Nocturnal Stance seems to be inferior/neglected. So it's Diurnal only. That's not as fun :(

I think I saw that 7k hot trick where you combine several cooldowns to chain 3 long lasting HotS from Aspected Benefic, Aspected Helios and some other HoT from like Celestial Oppression or something and time dilate it and do all this weird stuff. I havn't gotten to 60 yet though as I'm leveling with friends and we only go as fast as the slowest leveler. ;x

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Originally Posted by Krissey

I'm still sad we seem to have a "false choice" because by all accounts and from all research Nocturnal Stance seems to be inferior/neglected. So it's Diurnal only. That's not as fun :(

I think I saw that 7k hot trick where you combine several cooldowns to chain 3 long lasting HotS from Aspected Benefic, Aspected Helios and some other HoT from like Celestial Oppression or something and time dilate it and do all this weird stuff. I havn't gotten to 60 yet though as I'm leveling with friends and we only go as fast as the slowest leveler. ;x

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I understand where you're coming from. While Noct Sect itself isn't "weak" - it's a fully functional kit that just happens to have less MP efficiency and synergy compared to Diurnal and thus, more often than naught, gets left in the dust.

Hopefully this changes in 4.0. Until then, don't let Noct's "I'm weaker than Diurnal" put you off from using it either. As a whole I prefer the Noct kit more than Diurnal despite having a lack of HoTs and will default to it in an AST/AST comp that I may randomly DF into.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I understand where you're coming from. While Noct Sect itself isn't "weak" - it's a fully functional kit that just happens to have less MP efficiency and synergy compared to Diurnal and thus, more often than naught, gets left in the dust.

Hopefully this changes in 4.0. Until then, don't let Noct's "I'm weaker than Diurnal" put you off from using it either. As a whole I prefer the Noct kit more than Diurnal despite having a lack of HoTs and will default to it in an AST/AST comp that I may randomly DF into.

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I use it in Duty Finder 4 mans just for fun. The shields don't seem to last long but sometimes if I can predict a big AOE and get my Aspected Helios up in time it makes it take less to get every back up. I like Scholar, I liked Shields, and I like the Discipline Priest from WoW. That's why I'm sad. I love the whole "Shields" aspect that Disc had.

I also wish we had a chain healer like Restoration Shaman....that would be epic. A Chain healer with Shields = most fun healer ever.

Noct AST actually makes a fairly compotent main healer, however it is marginally more fight specific than the others.

Yes, generally Diurnal is the more efficient and "bang for your MP buck" of the sect's, and since it emulates WHM which is cast as the Main healer that feeling is more so.
However there are fights where being in Noct has its benefits.
Now I am going to say you could argue that in these same fights a SCH could do the same things and its true to an extent, but a SCH actualy has to burn more out to do so than the Noct AST; where a tank could be saved by an adlo followed by a physick into lustrate, you may only recover half of the tanks total HP thus requiring more Physick or even another lustrate if further heavy damage is incoming. Comparatively an N.AST can A.Bene just before, then hit Essential Dignity after the hit followed by a Bene2; this often will get a tank back to near full HP in the same amount of GCD time a SCH gets the same tank to 50% more often than not.
And this is in a situation where a shield is needed as a regen would almost def result in a dead tank. [im specificaly thinking Midas 1 if the tanks dont swap and the MT takes the big hit to the face, as Noct AST i can solo shiled the tank from dying and get them back to full HP in a moment, on SCH i have to do a bit more work comparatively for the same end result]

Now Noct AST will ofc only 99% be paired with WHM, so you may think ok, you loose out on fairy. but honestly do you?
Medica 2 is an on demand Whispering Dawn from your partner
you have Bene2 which is easily single target Physick+embrace
and if you really want to push it, Synastry works as your boost which is in some directions even better.


You just need to look at things slightly differently, and instead of directly comparing Sects to healers, compare how you can utalise them to how the other healers utalise their kit.

I use AST more now than ever and im normally a die hard Diurnal user for most things, but i find Noct use in raid content to be the more preferable sect for my style and ive been able to reliagte my co-healer to a 5 DPS position only providing back up if stuff goes wrong since AST is a compotently powerful solo healer with better MP management than WHM and utilities which, whilst RNG, do often work in favour of what your goal is.

Tell ya, I've kept parties going solo on AST due to DF mess up's leaving co healer and both tanks dead, Noct AST healing DPS tanks is pretty amazing and strong.

AST is easily as good a main healer as WHM and pretty close to SCH off healing; you need to remember that when a SCH off heals, they dont, the fairy does, which is why anything without a portable HP pet will NEVER match SCH for off healing.

overall though, dont look at AST as 80%-of-a-WHM sect and Hardly-a-Match-for-SCH sect, look at is as its own thing and hopefully you will see just how good it is.

Did you miss out on this?

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

The free fairy healing is gone. This effectively increases the mp cost over time in terms of healing. Which in turn results in less mp being allocated to damage.

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Additionally: The fairy being gone will not only result into more mp spend, but also more GCD "lost"

No i didnt, but then i didnt mention about MP, i spoke specifically about healing output which is really what matters.

agree or not but i personally find it rather moot to bring up the fairy in these things since its a rather obvious given you loose out on it; and i like to think anyone who knows the 3 healers knows using N.AST/WHM drops your MP efficiency and DPS uptime due to that loss.

but thats something you knowingly and willingly do in that composition, so if its that important for the portably battery of HP, why choose to not use a SCH.

This thread OP was questioning if N.AST was actually meant to be the main healer while WHM is the off healer in the composition, and that in turn brought up the query of whether N.AST is competent enough to do it as good as WHM, or if N.AST truly is a defunct SCH attempt and meant to be the off healer for WHM.

what i was trying to get across is that yes, N.AST can be the main healer and very compotently so; and that arguably in certain fights a MH N.AST is better than a MH SCH [for whatever reason you have a MH SCH], and again in certain fights maybe even better as the MH than D.AST or WHM.

but ofc people brought up the fairy, as always, and so i atempted to address the utilities you gain from your pet i.e its actual skills, and how the N.AST/WHM comp can compensate.
anything regarding MP efficiency and over-time Healing/DPS i didnt even bother mentioning because there is nothing to combat fairy loss in those regards, and its a given you'll be spending more on healing and have less DPS comparatively.

in all im just trying to give my views and thoughts on how we might try and view ASt and N.AST in future and also answer the threads original point of "is N.AST actually meant to main heal not off heal" rather than end in yet another pointless "you loose fairy and all this stuff why take N.AST" stuff again.

My AST has replaced my boring WHM completely and I'm perfectly fine at healing all content. I'm tired of people posting STILL whether it has a place.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I understand where you're coming from. While Noct Sect itself isn't "weak" - it's a fully functional kit that just happens to have less MP efficiency and synergy compared to Diurnal and thus, more often than naught, gets left in the dust.

Hopefully this changes in 4.0. Until then, don't let Noct's "I'm weaker than Diurnal" put you off from using it either. As a whole I prefer the Noct kit more than Diurnal despite having a lack of HoTs and will default to it in an AST/AST comp that I may randomly DF into.

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This is exactly how I feel too. If I see another AST I hastily try to snatch Noct. XD The fact that we have the ability to switch stances between fights allows for fun and creative ways to use both and feel relevant in almost any situation.

I main SCH and I do like playing Nocturnal AST in some fights just for the sake of replayability and learn how I can beat them as a different job. Nocturnal is not weak, its just harder to use and feels weaker for being a "WHM-like shield healer"... if that makes any sense for you guys. Often I like putting the WHM on damage dealer situation because I feel we benefit more from than just like SCH usually benefits more as a damage dealer with any other healer partner. But it all comes to what you wanna do in the end. I know Savage parties that run SCH today as the lead healer while his partner throw off some offensive spells. All healers have the capability of being the lead healer today if the partners are in sync enough for it.

Isn't healing wonderful? What kills it is that metagame mentality from 2.0 that is still strong on the cummunity for 3.0 content for some reason.