Things I'm starting to hate on AST

[Miiu]

@Asquar
This is a pretty basic tip but don't sit on Luminiferous Aether for too long. Start maybe using it around 70% or so. In most cases by the time you reach 10% - 20% mp LA might be up again. Unless in fights like the last Vault Boss people try to catch the most horses or play chicken with the chain and see who holds still the longest :P

[Lorielle]

I have all healers at 60 as well, and have had zero issues healing on AST including the EX primals so far. That said, I have no interest in Alex Salvage given what it yields.

That said, it could use a few adjustments still, but hardly warrants all the forum complaint threads.

The bold is where most of the complaints are derived from. So, of course, you're not really going to see it in that light. There's understanding it from the outsider perspective and then understanding from the insider's perspective. Progression is where AST falls short.

[Zaj_Quilos]

My AST is only 58, but even though I enjoy playing it, I dread going into dungeons with it. Especially The Vault. That last boss. Oh my god. I had to pop hi elixir on cooldown due to the heavy healing. I think it has been improved due to the buffs. But in my opinion it still needs work to bring it up to par with the other two healers.

You should have no problem healing dungeons like this. Is this your first healing class?

[AlexanderThorolund]

My AST is only 58, but even though I enjoy playing it, I dread going into dungeons with it. Especially The Vault. That last boss. Oh my god. I had to pop hi elixir on cooldown due to the heavy healing. I think it has been improved due to the buffs. But in my opinion it still needs work to bring it up to par with the other two healers.

The last boss on the vault can be very unforgiving. There's no margin of error for the DPS and tank to mess up. If they perform flawlessly then healing as an AST goes very smoothly.

Stone skin at the end of the orb phase seems to really help. Also make sure chains are broke a.s.a.p.

And echoing what others are saying. Don't use LA as a last resort, make sure it's used as often as possible.

[Ghishlain]

My AST is only 58, but even though I enjoy playing it, I dread going into dungeons with it. Especially The Vault. That last boss. Oh my god. I had to pop hi elixir on cooldown due to the heavy healing. I think it has been improved due to the buffs. But in my opinion it still needs work to bring it up to par with the other two healers.

Unfortunately, the difficulty of both Boss #2 and Boss #3 of The Vault are highly dependent on the DPS and Tanks you get with. DPS and Tanks who understand the mechanics of the fight will give you a much easier time to heal versus those who don't.

Take into account the final phase of the final boss. His pattern is as follows:

• Boss summons the first row of his chess pieces
• Boss uses his player targeted AoE on each player in the group
• First row of chess pieces begin to move forward, second row is summoned
• Second set of player targetted AoEs are cast
• Holy Chain is cast, second set of chess pieces begin to move
• A few seconds after the second set of Chess Adds despwan, he'll begin to cast Altar Pyre

The easiest way I found to do this is to have all the players to move away from the middle into a safe zone where they won't be tackled by a Chess piece, WAIT for the 2nd set of targetted AoEs to pop up, everyone stack back onto the Boss, WAIT for Holy Chain to go out, then the two people afflicted go to safe spots in the Chess row in opposite directions.

Unfortunately, explaining this pattern is difficult in party chat (especially in the heat of the moment) and it's easier to visualize it then explain it. If DPS don't understand the dance in this way, it makes it dramatically harder for the healer to compensate because they'll be clipped by the bleed / slow from the Chess Pieces while dealing with Holy Chain and possibly blow themselves up on the targeted AoE.

AST can heal this fight, but they suffer the same problems any healer would have with this fight - the amount of HPS you'll need to output will be highly dependent on the group you get. Recently I was doing this as an AST with a tank in my FC and we eventually just duo'd the boss down ourselves to save the run because we understood this dance perfectly.

[chumsy]

Ive noticed Ive went OOM on Bismark hard when trying to DPS, not sure if anyone else had issue with MP when DPSing

[Esmir]

Ive noticed Ive went OOM on Bismark hard when trying to DPS, not sure if anyone else had issue with MP when DPSing

Exactly..healing mp issues? Not so much a problem for me. Swapping to do dps..AST tanks. Which, can be fine...just buff the cards so that AST "provides" dps.

[TatoRazzino]

Again, I disagree that AST is what is making A1 more difficult. I did it as SCH and it was a pain in the ass to heal with my WHM. I couldn't find the potency to do AoE healing without sacrificing a stack of Aetherflow, which would be needed to do Lustrate; and DPS was not an option, since the group was taking too much damage and my WHM couldn't handle it. As AST, I would have more options and my buffs would be more meaningful, since the speed Selene was providing was wasted with all the moving and the way my group was positioned (I told them to do it in a different way, but they didn't listen to me). I do more for them with the AST toolkit, to be honest. I only played SCH to add more direct DPS to beat Faust. The buffs from the fairies didn't make any difference at all, and healing as AST has never been an issue to me, since I solo heal most of the time (my WHM enjoys dpsing) and I do it in Nocturnal.

[Xenos74]

AST can heal this fight, but they suffer the same problems any healer would have with this fight - the amount of HPS you'll need to output will be highly dependent on the group you get.

I like the amount of detail you go into for the final boss in Vault, but you really don't need to complicate it that much. For the final phase, the only thing you need to remember is that each player will get a fire circle under them for each set of robots as they're making their way through the room. The movement from dodging the robots and fire circles should already be splitting everyone up so chains break easy. Its really that simple.

As an AST, you can just cast Aspected benefic whole you're dodging, and save your ED for anyone that spikes from a fire circle before boss does Pyre. I'd actually say this fight is easiest for AST than whm, or a sch blowing lustrates to patch heal while moving.

[TatoRazzino]

I'd actually say this fight is easiest for AST than whm, or a sch blowing lustrates to patch heal while moving.

^ This. People are ignoring that not all fights are equal and not all jobs perform the same. Ask a BLM about Titan EX, for example, and you'll know the meaning of pain.