AST Sect Theory

[Apeiron]

I didn't say it's 50% single target. It's 50% in general. And to completely discount the importance of AOE healing in a raid is absurd. If that's not part of the discussion, then why even have it? Pure single target healing is a situation that doesn't exist.

There is literally no good argument for using Nocturnal with a SCH, and the fact that people are even discussing it makes me worry for the intelligence of the community.

Not only is it rude, it's down-right unproductive. If you allow for your Diurnal AST to cast an AoE, where the ticks are counting, you'd also have to allow for the Nocturnal AST to do the same. In a scenario where both cast their respective main AoE heals, you get the Diurnast with a potency of 140 + 50/3sec. Meanwhile the Nocturast can very easily cast Helios for 304.5 potency. To catch up to that, the A. Helios of Diurnal would have to get 3 ticks in to bring A. Helios close (it becomes 290 total, and that's 9 seconds of your HoT's 30). By the time the Nocturnast would need to cast Helios again, it would pull away from A. Helios.

The main reason behind avoiding AoE healing numbers is likely due in part to it being rather difficult to get enough people to stand still while you run tests on their characters -- not to mention trying to pay attention to 8 ticks and write down all the numbers. I'll have to look into video recording as a method of getting around that though.

It's equivalent to bringing a WHM who only uses Cure, Cure II, and Medica with no DS or PoM.

Even though it's possible and passable, there's really no reason to do it.

See, if a WHM did this there'd be problems, as their HoT are significant enough to make a tangible difference. The consistent potency of their regens means that they're more likely to heal above incoming damage like auto-attacks. The WHM's Regen, compared to Divine Wind (the only regen for SCH) or A. Benefic in Diurnal, still wins out amongst them with a stronger potency drawing from the WHM MND and despite having the same duration as Divine Wind.

Medica II meanwhile has ~1.5 initial potency on A. Helios (diurnal) with the same follow-up potency of 50 to keep it ahead.

To recap, the WHM has longer and more potent regens. If they decide to forgo regens, it's a sizable difference than if an AST forgoes regens to go with more potent healing with a SCH to compliment what they already have.