Suggestions for Noct Astro

Honestly, it´s undebatable that Noct Astro falls immensely short when raiding in savage content which made me switch to SCH. IMHO, the problem with the Noct Astro lies about the lack of mitigation the class has.

As a comparison

SCH - Sacred soil 10% mitigation + 500 pot regen (100/15s) = 30s cooldown
Fey Illumination = 2 min cooldown 5% mitigation + increased heals
Seraph shield = 2 Aoe Shield no mana spent + heals
Recitation - GOD
Whispering Dawn
adlo + deplo tactics


Astro - Collective Unconsciousness - 10% mitigation + 300 regen pot (50/18 seconds) 90s COOLDOWN?? REALLY?
Celestial opposition - 60s cooldown heal plus shields
Earthly star is horrible with a white mage due to the overheal generated and lack of protection
Neutral sect does not make sense in nocturnal sect, why do I want increased healing while the white mage has a similar skill with mitigation?

So my suggestions are quite simple actually

Collective - Diurnal Sect leave as it is / Nocturnal sect - Cooldown is reduced to 30s / no regen/ 10% protection lasts for 15s to whoever enters the shield (weaker than sacred soil to compensate the no aetherflow requirement)
earthly - Star - Durinal Same actual effects/ Nocturnal Sect - 150 (small)/300 potency (big) + 100% shield - 30s
Neutral sect - Diurnal Same / Nocturnal 10% mitigation Gains the effect of both sects

In that way, Nocturnal sect will be much more viable as a pair to WHT.

What do you guys think?

See ya!

Honestly noct astro should probably just be deleted i was surprised it survived into shb ofc that would require other changes but it's always felt weak and its seems like se has no idea how to solve its issues

I know and I agree with you that Noct astro always felt weak. Buth the reason for that, IMO, is exactly the absence of shield and mitigation at the skills when you compare with the scholars. When they introduced astro with 2 sects, one for regen and one for shield, it would be the same to introduce two healers at the same time without being aware of it. The change of sect changes its entire way of playing and obviously, the skill on one sect, does not work the same way for the other sect. So if they treat astro as 2 healers individually, I think they can manage to solve the issues regarding the healing resources by starting on the effects on each sect.

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Originally Posted by tikiwiki

Honestly noct astro should probably just be deleted i was surprised it survived into shb ofc that would require other changes but it's always felt weak and its seems like se has no idea how to solve its issues

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I'm doing savages as a Noct AST. :c Please don't delete me!

People keep comparing AST's heal with WHM or SCH yet also forgetting that those two cannot buff other class' damage like AST can. Maybe the devs think that AST's heal should be weaker than its fellow healers because of this?

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Originally Posted by tikiwiki

Honestly noct astro should probably just be deleted i was surprised it survived into shb ofc that would require other changes but it's always felt weak and its seems like se has no idea how to solve its issues

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How about no. I love Nocturnal Stance.

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Originally Posted by Evanoel

People keep comparing AST's heal with WHM or SCH yet also forgetting that those two cannot buff other class' damage like AST can. Maybe the devs think that AST's heal should be weaker than its fellow healers because of this?


How about no. I love Nocturnal Stance.

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Idk what the devs think, but that's not a constructive stance to take. If AST has more offensive potential than the other healers, but can't heal as well, it will be the only viable choice once healing requirements drop off. If it doesn't, there's no reason for it to lag behind in terms of defensive potential.

It's not really the mitigation that's the problem. Noct ast shields are actually stronger than sch shields. In terms of just the shield, 500 potency on aspected benefic vs 375 potency on adlo for single target, and 250 potency on aspected helios vs 225 on succor. The real problem with noct ast is that they can't really compete with sch for a raid spot. It's not just about throughput over the entire fight; burst healing matters too, as well as the improved mp economy from using regens in diurnal compared to noct ast. Lowering cooldowns would definitely help the class. I don't think eartly star needs to be changed much, it's mostly fine as it is. Here are some things that I think could be done to help noct ast:

-I do agree that CU in nocturnal sect should have a drastically lower cooldown. Letting it keep it's regen wouldn't even be overpowered.
-Even though eos has been nerfed into the ground, it's still pretty strong and is one factors that prevents noct ast from being able to compete with sch for a healer spot. Something like increasing the duration of the regen on the nocturnal sect celestial intersection to 30s would help to this end; it would be essentially a regen that is free to use with 100% up-time. This would sort-of mimic embrace from sch.
-Aspected benefic should not double in mp cost when you turn nocturnal sect on.
-In diurnal sect, celestial opposition is 700 potency total on a 60s cooldown, which is fine where it is. In nocturnal though, celestial opposition is 450 combined healing and shielding. This shouldn't be on a 60s cooldown when sch has both indom (400 potency) and sacred soil (600 potency + 10% mitigation) both being on a 30s cooldown.
-Neutral sect is pretty awkward in nocturnal sect. At best it gets you 30s of aoe regen uptime. While that's good and all, it's not really as big of a deal as having shields in diurnal sect is. What I would like to be done to it is to have its 20% throughput increase removed in noct sect and replaced with something else entirely. I think if it reduced the recast time on all non-damaging abilities to 1.5s for its duration it would be a lot more impactful to noct ast. Something else that I think would be interesting and fun for the class would be if for the duration of neutral sect, all your damaging abilities healed the party for a percentage of the damage they dealt, but SE doesn't like healers to have interesting/fun mechanics unfortunately.

Noct ast's problems are deeper just being under-tuned. The core problem with ast in general is that diurnal ast can kind of compete with whm for their raid spot, while noct ast can't really compete with sch. They're both shield healers, but sch job in raids is more than just shield/mitigation. Sch can do burst healing frequently because of its low cooldown on many healing abilities. Sch also has a pet that, even after the heavy nerfs, does a significant amount of passive healing. If noct ast wants to have a spot in raids they either need to mimic what sch does or bring something completely unique that sch cannot replicate.

Neutral Sect is a good idea overall, when you use it in dungeons it feels super overpowered. In Raids, it's kinda weird...
If you're diurnal, paired with a SCH, you may not benefit from the shields since they don't stack. If you're nocturnal, you get exactly the same effect of diurnal asp.Bene for the double of he cost. It's a Nightmare. I suggest Neutral Sect could be a trait that lets you change sects in battle (sects would have a 30s CD) and when you change sects you get an auto-crit on the next aspected spell.

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Originally Posted by Roxas_Andrade

Neutral Sect is a good idea overall, when you use it in dungeons it feels super overpowered. In Raids, it's kinda weird...
If you're diurnal, paired with a SCH, you may not benefit from the shields since they don't stack. If you're nocturnal, you get exactly the same effect of diurnal asp.Bene for the double of he cost. It's a Nightmare. I suggest Neutral Sect could be a trait that lets you change sects in battle (sects would have a 30s CD) and when you change sects you get an auto-crit on the next aspected spell.

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I might be wrong here, but when you use neutral sect as diurnal ast, I don't think the shield is actually called "Nocturnal Field". It's something like "Nocturnal Balance." I assume that it can stack with sch shields, since sch shields say they don't stack with "Nocturnal Field" specifically, but haven't actually tested it. If someone could help me it would be appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Lagomorph

I might be wrong here, but when you use neutral sect as diurnal ast, I don't think the shield is actually called "Nocturnal Field". It's something like "Nocturnal Balance." I assume that it can stack with sch shields, since sch shields say they don't stack with "Nocturnal Field" specifically, but haven't actually tested it. If someone could help me it would be appreciated.

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Yeah the shields of neutral and scholar stack.

On the note of making Noct Ast more competitive though... How about giving Synastry a noct exclusive ability? while keeping the one we have now as the diu version. My idea is to have it as permanent buff simimlar to dancers dance partner. instead of giving an extra 40% on heals like it does now, how about it giving a small (maybe 50 pot) heal every time Ast uses and GCD. Any GCD. that way it would help with minor hp loss during fights AND also improve the MP efficiency.

Maybe the idea is still not well fleshed out, but i think it would really help Noct sect.

let's hope they completly change AST when they create the 4th healer.

and change the sects as healing buffs that add effect for a duration. or something different that give AST a real healing personnality.


noc AST has access to too little heals and regens compared to SCH.

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Originally Posted by RyanRavenwood

Astro - Collective Unconsciousness - 10% mitigation + 300 regen pot (50/18 seconds) 90s COOLDOWN?? REALLY?

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I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Collective Unconcious is hot garbage. It needs a hefty buff to make it worth being unable to move or cast when using it.

Sure it is mainly used for the down time/giant party hits but the counterparts of Sacred Soil and Asylum can be used on CD by firing and "forgetting", leaving you freed up to move and cast other abilities.

Ever since the changes to AST in 5.0 I've been strongly advocating for certain changes to AST, mainly in the card mechanics, but I feel like a lot of people are under the impression that Noct AST is bad because everyone says it's bad. I raid as a Nocturnal AST and for one clear of Voidwalker savage, I pulled a 90 percentile healing parse for 11,872 HPS with about 19% overhealing. I was curious, so I looked up SCH what a 90% percentile SCH heal looks like and it's about 10,318 HPS. I'm all for discussion and if you have statistical information to prove that Noct AST is somehow weak, I'm all for the facts and information. However, what appears to be happening is that people have a lot of conjecture about Noct AST without any statistical evidence to support that claim.

For the original poster, you're very correct that AST doesn't have as much mitigation as SCH. However, nothing thus far has killed my group in savage that ever left me thinking, "If only I had more mitigation this could have been prevented." Typically in situations where heavy mitigation is needed, like Quietus going into its 5th stack, I have a 500 potency shield from CO and Aspected Helios, which with my co-healers temperance is enough to keep everyone up. If something doesn't kill you, the extra mitgation isn't necessary as long as you can heal it back up before any mechanics go out. To that end, I Usually have an Earthly Star out for big damage mechanics since they more often come out right as Earthly Star comes off CD.

People say noct is weak because diurnal is mathematically better. but thats completely ignoring how important having a shield healer is. Noct AST is in a good place right now. Especially since they buffed AST's stackable OGCD shield last patch. Its really hard for anyone to say Noct AST needs buffs. Albeit aspec bene is /really/ expensive It makes you hardly ever want to use it. (though you already don't use it for tank busters or anything because tank cd + ogcd heal is enough)

I'm sure it'll be used again when we get dps pray things.

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Originally Posted by RyanRavenwood

Honestly, it´s undebatable that Noct Astro falls immensely short when raiding in savage content which made me switch to SCH. IMHO,

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Solo-Heals-E4S

Am I missing something here? What am I missing?

Personally, I don’t think Nocturnal sect Astro is supposed to compete or take the spot of a Scholar. They have a lot to work with outside of shields and mitigation and especially after this new patch, I think a lot of those abilities are really strong. They can get a lot done for free and I think that’s where the shine as opposed to Scholar where everything costs something, I would hope their mitigation is top notch :p

But in all honesty, I think Noct Astro is perfectly capable still at doing its job and Scholar is good at doing its job :)

I'd like to see astrologian be this flexible in between of healing over time and absorption. While it might not be able to match either white mage or scholar with how effective it could be in either role, it's strength would come from the ability to do both and transition between either sect when appropriate. I like to keep things simple because it increases the chances the devs would actually implement it, so what about if they just let astrologians swap between Nocturnal and Diurnal Sect while in combat?

My only issue with AST is CU with its garbage potency and the abyssimal personal dps not compensated by the cards.