Melding for AST

Hi hi, everyone! Just came back for the expansion, and although I'm salty about the healer changes (and no new healer!) I still really enjoyed the story! So now that AST is 80 and the queues always need a healer, I am getting all this sweet, sweet materia. What are you guys prioritizing? I want to make sure I'm doing it right haha

Leveling a whm

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Originally Posted by IanFrench

Leveling a whm

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You...certainly have a habit of having unhelpful things to say, don't you?

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The standard melds for a healer are Critical Hit, Determination, and Direct Hit in varying orders, as it stands right now with current gear, you can't stack enough Crit for it to make a major difference, so changing your base damage and healing are more important. Determination is used to increase your flat heal and damage numbers. From there we have Direct Hit, which just slightly increases your damage spells, at a random chance.

If you're the type of healer who contributes DPS regularly, Direct Hit and Determination are likely what you'd want to aim for.

If you're the type of healer who doesn't DPS regularly, you'd want Critical Hit and Determination.

From here, if you feel exceedingly uncomfortable with current MP management, a spot of Piety.

Thanks, Cyrocco. I appreciate it! I started stacking crit on because I thought that was what I remembered from a way back when I played before. But if we don't have enough options, maybe I will do direct hit and determination like you mentioned. Is spell speed not worth it? Or is it like crit where we dont' have enough to make a difference?

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Originally Posted by jojober

Thanks, Cyrocco. I appreciate it! I started stacking crit on because I thought that was what I remembered from a way back when I played before. But if we don't have enough options, maybe I will do direct hit and determination like you mentioned. Is spell speed not worth it? Or is it like crit where we dont' have enough to make a difference?

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Spell Speed is valuable when you're absolutely always casting, but ultimately, I feel the extra casts you'd get out of building this stat wouldn't be extremely beneficial to the raid. In order for Spell Speed to be an effective stat, you'd need to stack a very large amount of it, however, this would also increase the MP drain during an active DPS window, which isn't an amazing trade-off with Astrologians current MP Refresh options. I'm going to refer to a more researched method of explanation here:

https://i.redd.it/rmst2ndah99z.png

In order to stack enough Spell Speed for it to be valuable, you'd need a large amount of the the stat melded. An extremely large amount. In this graph, a total of 1964 Spell Speed is require before it sees gains over an equivalent amount of Direct Hit.

In other words, as we are now, Direct Hit offers us a similar amount of DPS for what's ultimately going to be MP-cheaper. And since healers are never really in the position where lengthy periods of chain-casting heals are required, it doesn't benefit our heals enough for it to matter more than our traditional meld options would.

I prioritize fun and leveled up another class^^.

Sarcasm aside, I'd go for the same stats I went for in Stormblood. Critical Hit whenever possible, Direct Hit everywhere else. Since stat weights tend to shift on new addons I cannot say if this is still the way to go though.

I disagree on DH being 'best', tbh. Unless you are going for really high rankings on a certain website DH is absolutely not needed on Healer and can only offer a gain of about 0,5% over Det.
Especially on Ast you will probably get more out of melding some piety, to make sure you can keep on casting even during MP intense phases.

As long as it's not skill speed, or something giving you +0, you're probably good with whatever. Nobody is going to call you out on it.

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Originally Posted by AmeliaVerves

I disagree on DH being 'best', tbh. Unless you are going for really high rankings on a certain website DH is absolutely not needed on Healer and can only offer a gain of about 0,5% over Det.
Especially on Ast you will probably get more out of melding some piety, to make sure you can keep on casting even during MP intense phases.

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Oh shoot - I guess I should have elaborated on that more.
Direct Hit does nothing to increase healing. In Stormblood it was fine, seeing how little impact determination had on healing, and how an abundance in Spellspeed would only give me mana issues. If healing strength is an issue in Shadowbringers, determination or spellspeed would be better options I guess. Or piety to increase mana regeneration if lucid dreaming does not provide enough. It all depends on how our new raid content will be balanced in terms of healing output.

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On a more general note: it's hard to give an answer that is true in all cases as it's highly dependend on the type of content, party compositions, how much healing your co-healer can provide ect. ^_^.
A rule of thumb would be using materia to compensate any weaknesses you notice - which can vary from case to case.

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Originally Posted by Xelanar

mkay

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I wasn't really replying directly to you... but DH was underwhelming on healers in SB too. 0,4% dps gain over Det in fully melded endgame gear and I don't mean to be rude but in all honesty, maybe 1% of the playerbase was actually able to make use of that in the first place, soooo.
As I already mentioned: if you are not going for high rankings there is no need to bother melding DH imo.

Since you mentioned Crit tho: we cannot reach the values we'd need to make crit actually worth, so Det is supposedly better atm.

Can agree with the sentiment. Det is the safe choice. Piety is underwhelming but isn’t a waste of a slot if it makes a difference for you. DH isn’t really wise for casual play, especially as an AST at the moment

Whatever you meld, make sure you meld at least 1 Direct Hit Materia somewhere. If you arent doing this you wont DH ever.