WOOT! They listened!!!! (AST Buffs)

[Vlady]

What makes noc stance bad? People claim it sucks but no specifics.

[Leiloni]

What makes noc stance bad? People claim it sucks but no specifics.

The total potency including shields is lower than the HoTs of Diurnal. So Diurnal is overall much more potency and since it's still the same mana cost, it's more mana efficient. Also the shields break pretty easily.

[Vlady]

Well that is natural with how regen is suppose to be an overall efficient form of healing over fast shielding and mana hungry ben 2. Scholars are not mana efficient but a powerful aetherflow mana regen mechanic makes it sort of null.

Ive managed to save countless people from eating 3 orbs at once with an instant cast aspect noc heal. Managed to keep tanks up long enough to heal them out of critical situations weaving in noc aspected shield and ben 2. If paired with a strong aoe healer like white mage noc is suppose to be in the position to help manage critical moment healing. It does that well. I do not consider it a stance you pre cast shields like scholar to help mitigate damage but to help smooth out the rough recovery by its instant cast with upfront heal and shield.

If you do not think about it as being a buffer against incoming damage but to help recover and keep those in the critical red of dying with a quick heal+ shield the stance does its job well.

[SuzakuCMX]

*boop*

Aspected Noct Benefic is weaker total potency than Aspected Diurnal Benefic. The Aspected Noct shield is also weak enough that it's almost always a waste of mana unless they were 100% going to die from one hit without that shield, which hasn't currently happened in any content. It also lacks the double-on-crit that SCH shield has so it's worthless for now.

Aspected Noct Helios is only useful if your party was going to wipe from not having the 150ish potency shield since the Di version stacks regen with WHM and will therefore heal for a lot more after a few seconds than Noct would have.

Since the 5% healing buff from Noct is made up for from regens in Di and the shield is currently not worth it, Di is almost always a better choice than Noct.

Not to say Noct isn't capable of clearing content, because it is. It's just not as good as Di.