About AST and why their healing is weaker

[GideonHighmourn]

Ghishlain, as always, your math and collection seems to be pretty spot on. Your wording/explanation past the initial point is a little (oddly) lost, as SuzakuCMX pointed out; however, I know words aren't always our friends. It really puts it all on the table in terms of baseline healing tools of the three healers. Upon inspecting the myriad of cool downs SCH/WHM vs AST's few, it becomes even more obvious that changes need to take place in order for AST to perform better compared to SCH/WHM; however, I, personally, don't really care to get into debate about balance suggestions/changes, as it's usually just pointless debate/speculation. I'll leave that to the more creative.

[Ghishlain]

My suggestion would be to tie the card mechanic into their healing. For example, make Synastry a permanent buff and change it from what it is now to something that applies a small regen (50 potency?) in Diurnal for 15s on the Synastry target, and a 5% Max HP heal and shield for Nocturnal . This way their overall healing is much closer to WHM/SCH and you have some reason to use cards even if they're not optimal at the moment.

Another change I'd like to suggest for AST is make Synastry like an infinite buff, that would end upon reuse. You would be able to cast it on a party member - let's say the main tank - and he would gain like 5-10% hp from all healing you do. Even AoE. Even single-target heals on the tank itself. With that, you would compensate the lack of healing potency that AST has now. Or you could put synastry on a prey target, or on a random DPSthats been hurt and keep healing the tank. Would also make AST unique

I can go for this. I get the impression AST was designed to be a powerful single-target healer first and foremost (more so than SCH) and they sorta missed the mark with it.

Something I made mention elsewhere as a Synastry change was to make it so it always affected the target, regardless if you healed a Synastry buffed target or not. This way the AST would have a 50% boost on the MT if they really needed to heal the MT really fast. It seems perhaps too powerful at a glance though it is partially balanced by the fact the only spells that can truly make use of it are Benefic and Benefic II.

Of course that doesn't make the card buffs themselves suck any less or fix the fact that their emergency healing/healing cooldowns are lackluster.

I feel if they made the ability to draw more frequent, it would alleviate some of the concerns. 20s Draw timer would mean 50% more cards over the course of the same fight. You'd still be subject to RNG of course, but at least you'd have the ability to roll on that table more often.

I agree with you completely. But there's one more comparison to be done that is not GCD-based, but 1-skill-based:
Regen has a total of 1050 while Asp.Bene has a total potency of 790
DS+Regen has a total potency of 1365 spread through 18sec while TD+Asp.Bene has a total potency of 1290 through 33 sec

What SE proposes is that AST shouldn't be as potent as WHM and with your suggested change, DS+Regen would still have a 1365pot x 18sec against 1635pot x 33 sec of TD+Asp.Bene. Making it still worse than the first if you see HpS, but way better if you compare totals per skill.

I really liked your idea, but I guess Asp.Bene should be reworked to something like 150pot + 150potx10sec. Then TD+Asp.Bene would have a total 1350 potency through 25 sec. As Asp.Bene is instant and would have an upfront heal that regen hasn't, the only problem would be the short duration, but it would also make AST more like an instant-healer, which seems to match it's current playstyle.

This doesn't bug me so much for a couple of reasons.

1) Time Dilation + Diurnal Aspected Benefic is very similar to two Diurnal Aspected Benefic - you're basically one less cure at the beginning and one less HoT at the cost of your Time Dilation cooldown and adding one more Benefic. This also (still does) give the AST a choice - use Time Dilation to boost a buff or to make your existing HoT(s) more mana efficient. I like that small but subtle choice

2) You can reapply Regen at near the 15s mark while Divine Seal is still active, so you'd get 33s of boosted Regen which is a total of 2,145 Potency in that 33s, so if the WHM plays well they'll still out class the AST.

But I certainly understand the concern. This is the issue with balancing and it's always good to see everyone's viewpoint on how to change certain elements and see what we think. Even if the WHM only gets one HoT off during Divine Seal due to issues, that WHM is still getting boosted heals for 15 seconds that should still overwhelm what AST can put on the table with a Time Dilation Aspected Benefic + non-boosted Benefic casts.

You forgot to add Fairy heal potency and Rouse. And Fairy Regen, and 20% heal potency to party members, and 20% magic damage reduction. Those abilities alone, literally DESTROY any chance of AST to ever be in comparable to SCH. I can easily deal with stupid, and do DPS, while fairy is on rouse, and all abilities on manual control. I cannot babysit stupid as AST, and when you constantly draw "shit" cards three times in a row, there is something seriously wrong with this job.

Indeed. My data was intended to just take into account raw, unboosted healing potencies and how the healers compare under "normal, non-dire". Once you start taking into account things like Rouse, Divine Seal, Assize, Asylum, Lustrate, etc etc etc., that divide starts to become significantly greater.

There are some abilities in AST that could and should be tweaked to make it comparable to the other two jobs. I am all about really, seriously, just OVERPOWERED those damn card buffs already FFS... Give AST a much HIGHER LONGER BETTER refresh. Make the shield heal MORE and critical, since as AST, we have no fairy. Make our card buffs last 25 seconds. And for the love of god, get rid of the idiotic reduce potency when we can cast the buffs as AOE. The Card Buffs is AST trump calling card, make them REALLY GOOD, since the random factor will make sure that it will be decent buffs but not going to make the job OP. Heck, they can code so that you will never draw the same buffs in a row for all I care.

There's a lot they can do, but we still have to at least consider some form of balance. If we push AST too far in one direction, then we're back to square one, just with WHM and SCH on the flipside. The goal is to make all the jobs viable at any given scenario. While there will always be a desirability scale, we shouldn't prevent a specific job from completing content due to lack of abilities.

That being said, it does indeed suck that basically AST be regulated to farming for this raid cycle. Hopefully we'll see some changes in time for the next raid cycle.

Make the card system an actual part of our healing.

The whole system feels incredible tacked on with only store/reasons.

It doesn't help our heals in any way (bar arrow on ourselfs).

Remove the whole "buff other people" or at least add a "when used on self give x buff".
Currently it's a system that is just dangling behind us that takes valuable spellslots where other tools (hint healer tools) should have been.

I kinda wonder what we can do in this vein without making it completely broken for the AST. I have nothing that comes up at the top of my head ATM, but will post something if I think of something.

Ghishlain, as always, your math and collection seems to be pretty spot on. Your wording/explanation past the initial point is a little (oddly) lost, as SuzakuCMX pointed out; however, I know words aren't always our friends. It really puts it all on the table in terms of baseline healing tools of the three healers. Upon inspecting the myriad of cool downs SCH/WHM vs AST's few, it becomes even more obvious that changes need to take place in order for AST to perform better compared to SCH/WHM; however, I, personally, don't really care to get into debate about balance/suggestions for changes, as it's usually just pointless debate/speculation. I'll leave that to the more creative.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure how else to word the opening to make it seem less confusing at this juncture, but I can understand what you and SuzakuCMX mean in your quote too. I guess I'll have to get back to it later. Maybe sleep on it and see if I can word it better.

I'm glad the baseline healing is useful though. It's been something I've been meaning to compile for my analysis because we all need a foundation somewhere. The jobs will never be perfectly balanced, but we need as much information as possible to make informed suggestions.

=====

Thanks for the thoughts

[Edit] Editting to add more replies in from the thread, hang tight!

[Edit2] Mkay, caught up.

[GideonHighmourn]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure how else to word the opening to make it seem less confusing at this juncture, but I can understand what you and SuzakuCMX mean in your quote too. I guess I'll have to get back to it later. Maybe sleep on it and see if I can word it better.

You do an excellent job explaining what you meant in your initial reply to SuzakuCMX; I was scratching my head a little bit before reading it, though! Maybe just incorporate that a little bit.

"About AST and why their healing is weaker"

"AST's heals are equal"

"Here's why the aren't equal"

Is what I saw/thought upon first reading, if that helps organize your points/thoughts a little better to more properly align your information to your thesis.

The actual information is there, which is what is important. Not trying to nit-pick, but I'm a night-owl and love writing/reading; just thought I'd help if I could.

[Luvbunny]

Well, if they push AST to be a healer who can do decent heal, with really really good buffs, that is so random, for balance. We are talking a major major big awesome buffs that could happen randomly every 30 seconds to one party member, or once per 60 seconds to the whole group. This is to make up for the lack of healing power, but now AST can deliver a huge party buffs that rival Bard or Machinist, and completely destroy any buffs from SCH fairy. Then there are several outcomes for progression raids:

1. WHM + AST: whm will shoulder most of the big heal, AST will be back up heal, and throw some really good buffs to the party (they need to get rid of the loss of potency when you make AOE buffs, since it is on 60 seconds timer). You can put 4 DPS and no need for Bard. It's more aggressive, hoping that the cards will give damage buffs to speed up the battle.

2. SCH+ AST: AST can be the main healer, will throw buffs when it is available but not top priority, SCH will be the back up heal + DPS. You can bring either Bard or Machinist if you want to play it a bit safer, and hoping the AST buffs + Bard/Machinist will help to do more damage.

[Ghishlain]

You do an excellent job explaining what you meant in your initial reply to SuzakuCMX; I was scratching my head a little bit before reading it, though! Maybe just incorporate that a little bit.

"About AST and why their healing is weaker"

"AST's heals are equal"

"Here's why the aren't equal"

Is what I saw/thought upon first reading, if that helps organize your points/thoughts a little better to more properly align your information to your thesis.

The actual information is there, which is what is important. Not trying to nit-pick, but I'm a night-owl and love writing/reading; just thought I'd help if I could.

Mkay, made an update to the OP, dunno if it works or not. lol. Let me know~

Well, if they push AST to be a healer who can do decent heal, with really really good buffs, that is so random, for balance. We are talking a major major big awesome buffs that could happen randomly every 30 seconds to one party member, or once per 60 seconds to the whole group. This is to make up for the lack of healing power, but now AST can deliver a huge party buffs that rival Bard or Machinist, and completely destroy any buffs from SCH fairy. Then there are several outcomes for progression raids:

1. WHM + AST: whm will shoulder most of the big heal, AST will be back up heal, and throw some really good buffs to the party (they need to get rid of the loss of potency when you make AOE buffs, since it is on 60 seconds timer). You can put 4 DPS and no need for Bard. It's more aggressive, hoping that the cards will give damage buffs to speed up the battle.

2. SCH+ AST: AST can be the main healer, will throw buffs when it is available but not top priority, SCH will be the back up heal + DPS. You can bring either Bard or Machinist if you want to play it a bit safer, and hoping the AST buffs + Bard/Machinist will help to do more damage.

It wasn't me, but another poster on these fourms made a comment about how it seems like AST was designed to replace a BRD / MCN in the group, so you can have four heavy hitting DPS instead of 3 DPS + 1 DPS w/ an array of support abilities and I agree with that assessment. If we can get AST to that point, then I think that'll do the party composition meta some good and bring some diversity as well.

I will admit, your post made me think a "what-if they had two buffs that were on the draw cycle". For example, you can use Draw to get a buff similar to what it is now. Or you can use another ability, let's just call it "focus" for now that also puts Draw in cooldown, and what this does is give the AST a small healing buff - say, 25% for 10 seconds. It's nothing grand, but it's an option to increase AST HPS at the cost of their buffs.

I'm not sure how happy I am with that idea upon re-reading it, but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.

[Alexia89]

Imagine if they could stance dance and have access to both regen and the shield as was originally designed before the game's release?

NO. Just NO. Stop spouting this "we need stance dancing like originally intended".
They said they decided EARLY ON that stance dancing was not going to happen for AST. It wasn't some last second friggen change like you keep implying.
I mean yeah, most of what you post is utter rubbish but this ONE repeated idiotic statement really grinds my gears.

[Akyio]

as AST we only have the most generic heals available, we have no particular special heal and our 50-60 abilities are pretty much useless and bring nothing, particularly collective unconscious and celestial opposition(its a shame that such ability is used to refresh 5sec extra of mp lol)

we actually dont have that much healing skills at all. and when you look at the skills, most of everything from 30-50 is done for cards. and cards have from very little effect to being useless.

now i would understand if AST could buff well enough, then teams would be like "our dps is almost too low, we have a WHM so we should get AST for extra dmg buffs". But that doesn't work and this part is filled again with a SCH, a freaking summon that has 1 atk. speed skill that is practically better than entire arsenal of AST card skills.

[Akyio]

NO. Just NO. Stop spouting this "we need stance dancing like originally intended".
They said they decided EARLY ON that stance dancing was not going to happen for AST. It wasn't some last second friggen change like you keep implying.
I mean yeah, most of what you post is utter rubbish but this ONE repeated idiotic statement really grinds my gears.

stance dancing is also very gimmicy and practically useless. especially when you realize that it will work only with WHM partner,and wont work with SCH or AST anyways. that wouldn't solve anything, well maybe expert dungeons(4players) would be more fun, but they are decently playable with AST already.

[SuzakuCMX]

Or you can use another ability, let's just call it "focus" for now that also puts Draw in cooldown, and what this does is give the AST a small healing buff - say, 25% for 10 seconds. It's nothing grand, but it's an option to increase AST HPS at the cost of their buffs.

I feel like I'd rather have Bole give 10% healing potency on the target for the duration instead of damage reduction, since then they wouldn't have to change one of the existing CDs we have to be a heal buff.

[Roxas_Andrade]

I feel like I'd rather have Bole give 10% healing potency on the target for the duration instead of damage reduction[ ... ]

I suggested somewhere else that Nocturnal could drop all the shielding thing and have some stacking defense buff added to his aspected skills. Like this:
Aspected skills would heal for some potency and would also add a stacking buff up to 5 stacks. Every stack would give a 2% buff on def/mdef up to 10% and would last 10~15sec. This would also have synergy with Time dilation, thing that we don't have for Noct now.
If you consider this new trait, Bole would get kinda useless, so it could be reworked as a healing buff instead. I'm not sure on how it should work though: Either give the healer a buff on healing spells (this way, the skill would only work for healers, being a personal Mantra) or give the target a healing buff, like a targeted convalescence...

What do you guys think?