Collective Unconcious

[TatoRazzino]

One thing I would like to point out: most people who are complaining about AST not making into savage are not progressing by using WHM or SCH. I see a lot of groups in my server that are using AST and progressing and every PF I see looking for a healer does not exclude AST. I believe people are using a minority of groups to account for the whole, and that's a big mistake.

[Parawill]

The reason why Collective Unconscious sucks isn't because it provides 1200 potency for its duration, but it is because it requires you to be locked into place for 18 seconds for 1200 potency, which is 200 potency per tick. There are hardly any instances that you can benefit standing there for its full duration, which makes it a completely lack luster skill.

If you're confused as to why it's a horrible trade off despite it being free healing is the fact that the game isn't turn based. You don't have 18 seconds of free time to heal while you wait for foes to hit your allies. Healing in this game isn't a matter about potency per skill, but rather potency per action versus time. When healing, if you remove MP from the equation, you would choose the highest potency heal to offset the damage that was taken. When you include MP, you choose the best string of heals to offset the amount of damage to survive the next incoming attack within seconds.

Since fights are generally scripted, if damage in your raid was like...

Let's say Diurnal Astro heals are these values:
Benefic: 1.5
Benefic II: 2.5
Aspected Benefic: 1 + 0.33
Helios: 1.33
Aspected Helios: 0.75 + 0.165
Essential Dignity: 4.5 (static for the sake of simplicity)
Collective Unconscious: 0.75

Each cast is locked within a GCD of 2.81 seconds.
HoT Ticks happen once per 3 seconds.


Raid HP
Tank: 10 HP
DPS & Healers: 7 HP

0:00 Tank: 2 Damage
0:03 Raid: 3 Damage
0:06 Tank: 2 Damage
0:09 Tank: 4 Damage + 2 Damage (without CD, 6 Damage + 4 Damage)
0:10 Raid: 3 Damage || Tank: 1.5 Damage (CD damage reduction)
0:12 Raid: 3 Damage || Tank: 1.5 Damage + 2 (CD damage reduction)
0:13 No Damage


An Astro's response to this would be to
0:00 Aspected Benefic: +1 HP (Tank HP 9)
0:03 Benefic: +1.5 + Aspected Benefic HoT Tick 0.33 (Tank HP 7.83)
0:06 Benefic: +1.5 + Aspected Benefic HoT Tick 0.33 (Tank HP 6.66)
0:09 Essential Dignity +4.5 + Aspected Benefic HoT Tick 0.33 (Tank HP: 6.66)
0:10 Aspected Helios: +0.75 AoE (Raid HP 4.75, Tank HP 5.16)
0:12 GCD LOCKDOWN Aspected Helios Tick +0.165 AoE || Aspected Benefic HoT Tick on Tank +0.33 (Raid HP 1.915, Tank HP 2.155)
0:13 Helios: +1.33 AoE (Raid HP: 3.245, Tank HP 3.485

This is a very simplified & condensed version of what you'd expect in A1S (minus mechanics requiring movement and time for DPS), but there's little to no room to use Collective Unconcscious for its full duration, which means it's completely outclassed by Asylum (800 total Potency) AND Sacred Soil (10% mitigation for 15 ~ 18 seconds since Sacred Soil applies a 3 second buff) because its up-time is 100%. Realistically speaking, I can only manage to get around 1 to 3 ticks in AS1, but probably more when there is damage and mechanic downtime for recovery.

At the moment, Collective Unconscious is too situational to be considered a great cooldown. It's just nice to have for when you're fishign for an extra 200 potency tick during a GCD. Besides, if you only need 200 potency ticks to sustain against damage, you might as well be using Benefics and Aspected Benefics WHILE throwing DPS out.

[Geardagas]

One thing I would like to point out: most people who are complaining about AST not making into savage are not progressing by using WHM or SCH. I see a lot of groups in my server that are using AST and progressing and every PF I see looking for a healer does not exclude AST. I believe people are using a minority of groups to account for the whole, and that's a big mistake.

So far you've done alot of talking, and not much else. You don't state facts and you obviously make certain things up. Watch this:

"I see alot of groups in my server that aren't using AST and progressing."

See how easy that was?

You can't just contradict common sense and personal experience and expect everyone to believe you.

AST is objectively worse than WHM and SCH.

[TatoRazzino]

So far you've done alot of talking, and not much else. You don't state facts and you obviously make certain things up. Watch this:

"I see alot of groups in my server that aren't using AST and progressing."

See how easy that was?

You can't just contradict common sense and personal experience and expect everyone to believe you.

AST is objectively worse than WHM and SCH.

I don't have to make anything up, Geardagas, because I already have a raid group and we're doing it with me as AST, so I couldn't care less about how other groups feel about the job. I've seen people not clearing it with WHM/SCH and clearing it with AST/SCH and WHM/AST.
I've said it a lot of times in other posts that it can be easier with WHM/SCH and the reason is simple: people are used to doing that combo, so there are no surprises during raid. When people start raiding, and that's specially true for healers, you see that lots of things you thought were useful during dungeons or leveling are not good during raid, so there's a learning curve. It's always going to be easier to do what you're already familiar with, because you can use your previous knowledge to deal with stuff. Mechanics repeat themselves, there's nothing that new in the raiding scenario.

[Vlady]

So far you've done alot of talking, and not much else. You don't state facts and you obviously make certain things up. Watch this:

"I see alot of groups in my server that aren't using AST and progressing."

See how easy that was?

You can't just contradict common sense and personal experience and expect everyone to believe you.

AST is objectively worse than WHM and SCH.

Common sense playing a game? Common sense would tell me to stop even attempting to defend against the wall of trash threads coming up against a job that is fantastic minus the nerf to stance dancing.

And I do not have to be a scholar or white mage to know what my current strength is compared to them because I can see myself side by side with them.

[Ghishlain]

Why do you assume that every pro-Ast is wrong about the job because we do not want to be white mages or scholars?

Well Vlady, in your particular case you have made claim after claim about AST proficiencies and right now all of these claims have continued to be baseless because of your lack of evidence. If you're as confident as you are in your claims, give us:

Your parses
Your record keeping methodology
Your screenshots of these claims

So that we, as the healer community, can verify and either agree or disagree with your claim.

For example, you claimed in the past:

I do not understand your issue? I double astro heal A1-A4 without issue all the time. Also have enough mana to keep my 3 dots up along with the utility of our cards which from my own experiences is another 150-170 dps unless you get a unlucky spreak and pull nothing but bole. I easily contribute 200-300 dps from my dots and a malefic cast every now and then along with arrow/balance/spear on my brother who plays a machinist he normally clocks another 150-160 dps through an entire run which is on par with scholar personal dps.

Show us your parse of this fight, and show us a before and after log of this MCN with the same group and gear but no buffs in one fight and full buffs in another.

And consider this, even if you can prove you contributed 350 to 460 DPS in A1-4 when you combine both your personal DPS and mathematically improbable buff boosting, I can do the following on SCH:

On SCH
I've clocked 520 personal DPS on Oppressor with Selene out and an i180 weapon in A1
I've clocked 800+ personal DPS in A2 using Selene and an i180 weapon
I've clocked about 420 DPS in A3 using Eos w/ 52% Overheal (which basically means I can afford to use Selene and be YAY, more buffs!) and an i180 weapon
^ All examples with me paired with a DF'd healing partner

And that's just my personal DPS, not including the additional DPS Selene brings to my group.

I have nothing against the AST job. I find the job extremely rewarding and engaging. But I wish the reward:work ratio was much higher as I can pretty much do the same amount of work on SCH/WHM with about 50-75% of the amount of effort. That seems to be what most of the pro-AST players seem to not understand.

[Bovinity]

if it doesnt require a brain i would just throw my cards on who ever and when ever... but the cards needs u to atless have a brain or knowledge to which jobs/class u going to give them too..... we actually kicked and AST in random duty due to him throwing EWERS on a warrior...

but i agree with what u said that AST require the most player knowledge to play good

So you kicked a guy in a pug for using a useless card on a random party member?

How skilled of you.

(Actually, depending on level, some Warriors use Flash as an alternate TP-free AE threat generator. And since no one else in your average Duty Finder group is gonna run out of mana on anything, the Warrior might actually be the best person!)

[TatoRazzino]

Don't even bother with him, Vlady; apparently, he hasn't done Savage. He just posted in another thread calling me a liar because I said that I use Synastry during double prey in A1 Savage. He claimed that there's not enough time for it to be out of cooldown, but there's a 2 minute window between preys in Savage due to Resin bombs. It's possible to time it by watching videos.

[Vlady]

Well Vlady, in your particular case you have made claim after claim about AST proficiencies and right now all of these claims have continued to be baseless because of your lack of evidence. If you're as confident as you are in your claims, give us:

Your parses
Your record keeping methodology
Your screenshots of these claims

So that we, as the healer community, can verify and either agree or disagree with your claim.

For example, you claimed in the past:



Show us your parse of this fight, and show us a before and after log of this MCN with the same group and gear but no buffs in one fight and full buffs in another.

And consider this, even if you can prove you contributed 350 to 460 DPS in A1-4 when you combine both your personal DPS and mathematically improbable buff boosting, I can do the following on SCH:



And that's just my personal DPS, not including the additional DPS Selene brings to my group.

I have nothing against the AST job. I find the job extremely rewarding and engaging. But I wish the reward:work ratio was much higher as I can pretty much do the same amount of work on SCH/WHM with about 50-75% of the amount of effort. That seems to be what most of the pro-AST players seem to not understand.

I did not say you did. I am confused as to why you are trying to put us into two camps as well. Pro Astro and Anti Astro? Is this a new page in your debate 101 to try to gain a new edge? And I have already gone into groups with people on my server who have whispered me wanting me to put up or shut up. I will gladly invite anyone to parse against training dummies and do a 5 minute run with and without my buffs in whatever scenario you wish to persue. And I have nothing against you since you have put up convincing arguments in the past that I have found turning my mind on some items in the past.

And in all honestly it is normally the job of the prosecutor to bring overwhelming evidence against those who are defending a job that does not need to be defended. Astro/Whitemage/Scholar bring there own strengths and the one thing people are not even mentioning is astro buffs will continue to scale exponentially while the scholar will only receive gradual increases in strength from gearflation. Our buff is a universal enhancing buff that scales incredibly well.

[Galdous]

Our astro in our team is doing well. We will beat A1 Savage tonight or tomorrow as soon as people stop dragging adds into resin goo. Yes I see my dps shoot 80+ with a constant flow of cards. The cards are fairly strong. The issue seems to be they do not make up for the raw healing and dps of the other two healers. Dunno maybe allow astro to burn tp like a healer version of a bard to turn a card into an aoe version. Shrug.