Yoshi-P's Interview with Famitsu includes a few comments about AST

[Ghishlain]

Seems you stopped reading after half a sentence I said they both have advantage and disadvantage, not one is greater than the other. I personal think HoT on Diurnal is great but the mp is very costly to use it continually as a mitigation tool and just times it's just cheaper to use helios.

SuzakuCMX has the right idea about Diurnal being more MP efficienct, though I will admit it took me a long time to wrap the logic around my head, so I'll see if I can help out with this.

Consider looking at a Diurnal AST and Nocturnal AST within an 18 second window (the duration length of Aspected Benefic's HoT)

Diurnal AST
18s @ 2.375 GCD = 7 spell casts within that time frame

• 1 Aspected Benefic @ 190 Potency & 707 MP
• 6 Benefics @ 2,280 Potency & 2,124 MP
• 6 Aspected Benefic HoTs @ 600 Potency

Total Potency: 3,070 Potency
Total MP: 2,831 MP

vs.

Nocturnal AST
18s @ 2.5 GCD = 7 spell casts within that time frame

• 7 Benefics @ 2,793 Potency & 2,478 MP

Total Potency: 2,793 Potency
Total MP: 2,478 MP

In order for Nocturnal to match this output, they'll replace one Benefic with Benefic II (+252 Potency, +442 MP), which in turn makes Nocturnal's AST total value for those 18 seconds as:

Total Potency: 3,045 Potency
Total MP: 2,920 MP

So, not only does Nocturnal do slightly less potency in the same 18 seconds, they also require slightly more MP to do so.

This is the unfortunate reality of Nocturnal.

[technole]

The specific mention of 'RNG problem' makes me really afraid they're going to just fix Shuffle and go 'welp, cards are good now'.

Oh I'm hedging a bet that Shuffle will get an adjustment. Whether a shorter cooldown or they give what most want, does not re-draw the same card. Cannot see both happening. The first solution is a safer bet.

[Dyvid]

Snip.

Again please read my full statement. I'm not saying Noct is better than Diurnal or the other way around. I"m simply stating both have good things and bad things about them. Noct has a nice 5% bonus but it's aspected sucks with a SCH. Diurnal has great HoT but those can consume mp faster. I've gone OOM once or twice trying to keep HoT when I should have just used Helios.

[Ghishlain]

Again please read my full statement. I'm not saying Noct is better than Diurnal or the other way around. I"m simply stating both have good things and bad things about them. Noct has a nice 5% bonus but it's aspected sucks with a SCH. Diurnal has great HoT but those can consume mp faster. I've gone OOM once or twice trying to keep HoT when I should have just used Helios

But it doesn't. If you're playing Diurnal properly you'll use slightly less MP over time while outputting slightly more potency. The logic says it right there.

[edit]

I see your edit about Helios. I have to ask, why would you be using Helios? You haven't given any specific example in this thread about the situation to use Helios over Benefics / Aspected Benefics. The only thing you've said to this topic is "Diurnal / HoTs use more MP overall" which is false (as shown above).

[Dyvid]

EDIT: NVM, I don't have the time to get into some long strung out debate about people misunderstanding my point and trying to put words into my mouth. Not sure how I can make it any more clear.

[Ghishlain]

K, where is your over healing factored in then? Over heal = mp loss. If you use an Aspected Helios @ 1500mp and you just needed to use a Helios @ 900mp it's a lose of mana points. "Diurnal has great HoT but those can consume mp faster." Can doesn't equal is.

So, if I understand you correctly, what you're advocating is the use of Aspected Helios as a continually running HoT to help normalize damage?

Most of us are talking about using Aspected Benefic as a HoT to help normalize damage and yes, single target healing Diurnal is better than Nocturnal.

When most people think "HoTs", they think spells like Regen and Diurnal Aspected Benefic - not Medica II or Diurnal Aspected Helios. You should've probably been clearer in your initial argument then.

[Edit]

And just so you know, Aspect Helios is much more MP efficient then using double Helios if you do need that much healing. I would like to think most healers understand when they need to use Helios / Medica versus Aspected Helios / Medica II while they're dealing with party damage.

[Mapleine]

The only thing I wanted from my Astro was to be more of a support role. All they showed and talked about was cards and buffs... None of that has come to fruition. Astro was my second 60, followed instantly by Scholar and the pets on Scholar outright feel superior to Astro buffs, it makes no sense.

I've never understood why this genre abandoned support roles so hard. FFXI was awesome for support roles, WoW was also amazing for support roles up until Burning Crusade ended and the new philosophy became that you had to be able to make a group out of anything and all classes must have potency within 5% of one another...

Heck, I got server first on a Lady Vashj during The Burning Crusade on a Shadow Priest, did like... 60% of the DPS of the top person but I super charged mana and health regen and people were elated when I was placed in their party in the raid group

That's all gone now though, now the consensus is that we all HAVE to be the hero. Max HPS/DPS, make everyone the same for easy balancing... Combined with the weird state of leveling and empty overworlds it's what sours me on the MMO genre every few years.

[Dyvid]

And just so you know, Aspect Helios is much more MP efficient then using double Helios if you do need that much healing. I would like to think most healers understand when they need to use Helios / Medica versus Aspected Helios / Medica II while they're dealing with party damage.

I'm about to step out the door for work but wanted to touch on this real fast. This is why Diurnal is better than Nocturnal right now, because you can over come the disadvantage of mp heavy HoT spells but trying to not over heal. When I play SCH I normally try to keep galvanized up on the party the whole time to make up for SCH lack of healing power verse WHM, that's what damage mitigation is about. You can't play that way in Diurnal Sect and you can't over come Nocturnal Sect inability to work with galvanized. The 5% healing buff is nice on Nocturnal but everything needs work. Until that happens Nocturnal Sect will not be good.

[Flinx]

I'm about to step out the door for work but wanted to touch on this real fast. This is why Diurnal is better than Nocturnal right now, because you can over come the disadvantage of mp heavy HoT spells but trying to not over heal. When I play SCH I normally try to keep galvanized up on the party the whole time to make up for SCH lack of healing power verse WHM, that's what damage mitigation is about. You can't play that way in Diurnal Sect and you can't over come Nocturnal Sect inability to work with galvanized. The 5% healing buff is nice on Nocturnal but everything needs work. Until that happens Nocturnal Sect will not be good.

You are going to run out of MP very very fast if you try to use this on savage. Just sayin'

[Viviza]

This is good to see. YoshiP's response to the current state of AST is very wise.

I've seen rapid balancing in other MMOs. Inevitably, the result is that things become imbalanced in other ways, which doesn't fix the problem at all. The slower and more objective approach of collecting data first causes some frustration for people who want changes fast, but fixes the real problems sooner.

Patience is difficult but rewarding. On the bright side, experienced AST who are toughing it out will find themselves in a very good place without having diminished the value of their friends' enjoyment of the game.