Looking to pick up AST, tips/tricks appreciated

Hello all!

So, I played SCH in HW and had a pretty good time of it, but it doesn't feel as... rewarding as it did now that we're in SB. AST looks pretty fun, the cards seem like they would add a layer of complexity to the role which is right up my alley. Problem is, I'm having a hard time finding info to help me get started. Any AST's out there want to supply some tips/tricks or QoL advice for someone looking to get into raiding on a healer they've never played before?

A few tips aimed at higher level optimisation for you:

AST has a ton of GCD and oGCD instants, try to get into the habit of working your oGCDs on the back of your dot/hot etc where you can, the amount of time this habit can add up over a 10 minute fight is pretty impressive, more so if your ping isn't great.

Don't forget cards! When I started making the switch to AST during Midas, I'd still be pulling and processing cards whilst I was running around town etc. You don't want to be distracted during Savage by figuring out what to do with the card you just drew. So being able to pretty much auto apply/discard/spread a card within a fraction of a second with little more than a glance at the animation over your head is a very valuable boon that's worth practicing for. Not to mention, getting into the habit of drawing constantly is every bit as important as keeping Aetherflow on CD.

Lastly, try to get into the habit of aligning buffs to extend. COing just a balance is one thing, but COing balance, your shroud and the tank regens? More gains than your local gym <3

GL!

A few things:

1. Be careful with Aspected Benefic. It's a strong ability, but it has the potential to be a mana dump if not used wisely. Use it only to refresh your HoT/shield (if you NEED to use it as an emergency heal, that's fine too).

2. Like Sebazy said, really get the card mechanics down. Draw constantly, and develop a habit of knowing what to do with your card choice as quickly as possible. Once you get Minor Arcana and Sleeve Draw your options extend considerably. It takes time to really get the cards down but once they're down the AST shows its true colors.

3. Really manage your OGCD's. While WHM and SCH have 3 or 4 abilities each that function as instant OGCD healing, AST has one: Essential Dignity. From there, you're left with Benefic I/II and Helios, aside from the "Aspected" spells (which as I mentioned, be careful with those as they ARE mana guzzlers). Lightspeed and Synastry are GODLY healing buffs that need to be used wisely and you should definitely cross-class Largesse for the extra healing boost. With Earthly Star, placement and timing are key, and use it often, because it is an incredibly potent AoE heal.

4. One of AST's greatest weaknesses is, despite having the lowest overall mana costs of the three healers, that they have the least amount of mana regen. Aside from Lucid Dreaming, they only have The Ewer, and getting the most out of it requires sacrificing other buffs that would help DPS/healing. Be as mana efficient as possible!

Hope this helps!

Personally if there is one thing I wish I knew at the beginning of my AST career it would be how OP Collective Unconscious is. The shield alone has saved me and a few other people when you don't get a big enough group for a stack marker but the HoT attached to it is amazing. Extending that HoT can be a big help to your MP if there is no more raidwide damage coming as it can pretty much alone fill up HP bars with no more casts necessary from you or your cohealer.

Enjoy AST! While WHM is my baby I do think it has become a lot more fun in 4.0 especially with the Spear/Balance rework.

Is there a good online source that explains all the intricacies of cards (when to use, when to shuffle, royal road ,etc...)? something comprehensive maybe.

Thank you all for the wonderful advice! It's really helped me get a foot in the door so to speak. I've been playing around with the cards just getting used to what they look like so that I can get better at knowing right away who should get what card. Couple of questions if anyone is willing to answer..

- Is there a point to undraw? I don't see very many moments where discarding a card would be beneficial since it still causes draw to go into cd. Is it just for those rare moments where party composition would make something like the arrow unfavorable?

- Royal Road... pretty much 24/7 right? Unless I draw something like bole/balance which would be better than the gamble of getting another under the RR effect?

-Spread, can I use this for royal road? Like... draw a balance, spread, draw (insert not balance here) Royal Road, Spread to use balance with the effect?

- Earthly Star... just need clarification if I'm understand that one. I place it, then wait 10 seconds before exploding it to see a pot boost?

Lastly... who should get which card? I think I got it pretty much figured out, but let me double check here.

Bole- Well.. Tank. Would let me dps more and conserve mp in higher difficulty content like EXs and Savage
Balance- Dps, whoever's doing the most.
Arrow- I love this on my Bard, but I heard most melee dps and BLMs don't like it lol
Spear- also love this on my bard. This will always go to the bard in the party, or the hard hitting dps if there isn't one.
Ewer- Me. Always me. Maybe a co-healer. But no really, me.
Spire- Melee dps, orrrr RR fodder? Don't think I've ever seen an AST use this on me (and even with my own TP regens, in dungeons TP hits 0 quick depending on which song I'm in, Army's especially) so I'm guessing this has to be the one to sacrifice. Now that I think about it... probably the ewer too since you most likely wouldn't need it unless you're just spamming the mana guzzlers.

Any answers or further tips/tricks appreciated! It looks like AST is going to be a little tricky at first, especially on controller with so much bloat, but I'm enjoying the concept. Even the first class quest duty was pretty fun.

Keep separate UIs for DPS/Tank jobs and healing jobs. Copy your dps/tank UI and make a few changes like a bigger, more centrally placed party window (ctrl-home to change size of UI elements). You can make a macro for each gearset that will change the UI automatically like so:

/macroicon AST classjob
/gs change 4
/hudlayout 2

Always use your main class resource on cooldown. I keep a an enlarged hotbar next to my party window with Draw on it (and similar on Scholar for Aetherflow) to keep an eye on the cooldown.

For doing dungeons on AST, I like to:
- throw out my card 0.1 sec before combat starts (time dilation if applicable)
- open up with Earthly Star
- hot the tank (I like diurnal for dungeons)
- Collective Unconscious for a moment to get the hot on everybody
- Cleric Stance
- stun the whole pack for 4s with Celestial Opposition and extend every buff/hot I just applied by 10 sec.
- spam Gravity
- trigger Earthly Star if necessary, but it can often be left alone to go off at 20 sec and heal everybody up allowing you more dps time.

After that it's just healing and using largesse now and then, throwing out gravity or combustion/malefic when you have an opening.

I don't play AST very often, but I found personally almost no use to undraw unless I had a royal road active and didn't want to use it on that specific card. As soon as you get Minor Arcana, undraw basically becomes useless. Specific Royal Roads are better than others in certain content. In 4 man dungeons it's rarely worth to AOE a card, but in 8 man an AOE arrow or balance is amazing. Earthly Star is place - wait or detonate immediately - gets potency boost - wait or detonate. Bole is nice for pulls and busters, balance should go on the best DPS, BLM should LOVE arrow, spear should basically go on the bard or top DPS, ewer is saved for healers or someone you just raised, spire is worthless :v). Even if a TP using class dies, Invigorate basically puts them back in the game.

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Originally Posted by Sciwolf

Is there a good online source that explains all the intricacies of cards (when to use, when to shuffle, royal road ,etc...)? something comprehensive maybe.

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One of the (good, in my opinion) things about cards is there's no 100% right way to arrange them every time. There's certainly "best" arrangements to get, but if you're focusing solely on that, you're discarding a lot of cards and ultimately hurting more in the end because especially with 3 dps increasing cards, a buff is better than no buff. Of the cards, Spire is the weakest but it's not -completely- useless.

There are a few rules of thumb, though:

In 8 man, you pretty much always want to use your cards as AoE unless you're saving Ewer for yourself, or Bole for the tank. (Or I guess Spire for some melee DPS that died) So Royal Road all your Ewers/Spires. Do your best to manage your MP without using Ewer as you want to minimize how many of those you have to skip over RRing.

In 4 man, you're better off using Extended/Enhanced RR.

Unless you need a card right away for some reason, you're better off waiting to use a card until you have an RR buff up. So unless you already have one, Spread Balance/Arrow/Spear.

I shuffle pretty much every time if Draw didn't give me one of the 3 DPS cards. If I already have one in Spread but nothing in RR, I'll shuffle if I don't get a card to burn for an AoE buff (or Enhanced/Extended in 4 mans)

Minor Arcana I don't actually use very much though it is useful. I'll only use it basically in a situation where I already have something in Spread, I have an RR buff (or the card I drew won't give me the RR I want) and Redraw didn't get me anything better.

Sleeve Draw you should avoid using until you already have something in Spread.

The Undraw abilities...I don't use much either, and they pretty much only get used in relation to Sleeve Draw. If Sleeve gives me a Spire in Spread, I'll take that out. If I need to ST a card when I have an AoE buff ready, I'll use Empty Road. And Undraw I will only use if I get a card that I can't use in some way for some reason, though I honestly can't think of a situation where I've used that recently with the changes that have been made. I guess Spire when your group is all casters. Maybe if I already have a Minor Arcana, but the nice thing about that is you can use MA, wait five seconds, then put the card you drew in MA. It helps if you think that your goal is to get Draw on CD as soon as possible. Very rarely should you be hanging onto a drawn card. That's the real purpose of Undraw, when you end up with a card you absolutely can't use and need to just get moving to the next chance.

Oh, on the subject of holding Drawn cards, I only do that in relation to the MA thing I described above or if, say, I just drew another DPS increasing card but I don't want to overwrite the one currently up. Or if I'm separated from the group temporarily for some mechanic but I have a good card to use.

And that's been my experience with AST cards. I will say most ASTs I group with almost never touch their cards. Please don't be that kind of AST.

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Originally Posted by Kwoon

Bole- Well.. Tank. Would let me dps more and conserve mp in higher difficulty content like EXs and Savage
Balance- Dps, whoever's doing the most.
Arrow- I love this on my Bard, but I heard most melee dps and BLMs don't like it lol
Spear- also love this on my bard. This will always go to the bard in the party, or the hard hitting dps if there isn't one.
Ewer- Me. Always me. Maybe a co-healer. But no really, me.
Spire- Melee dps, orrrr RR fodder? Don't think I've ever seen an AST use this on me (and even with my own TP regens, in dungeons TP hits 0 quick depending on which song I'm in, Army's especially) so I'm guessing this has to be the one to sacrifice. Now that I think about it... probably the ewer too since you most likely wouldn't need it unless you're just spamming the mana guzzlers.

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Its quite different for 4 man content than 8 man, on 8 man your main prior is to use aoe version of balance and Spear, you should only be casting single target cards if you dont have aoe RR and you already have a card under spread, on 4 man single target cards work the best.

For bole, yes the tank, but only if you do not have an aoe RR and you already redrawed, is not really a card worth casting otherwise, balance yeah just top dps, spear on bard always, Ewer to make get Aoe RR unless you really need that mp for emergencies like you just had to cast many ress, or you just died and your LD is on cd, most of the time Ewer goes to RR, Spire same RR always is the most useless card atm is never worth casting on anyone since TP problems are long gone.
How can you say BLM dont like arrow? they would sleep with you only to get arrow out from you, basic rule, Arrow always goes to the BLM, if there's none, pick whatever caster you have.

always use lucid dreaming and celestial opposition together for massive MP regen. they have the same cooldown

pulling off diurnal aspected Helios plus aspected benefic on tank then aoe balance with collective unconscious hot followed ny lucid dreaming then celestial opposition feels good when used right