What does everyone think about those AST buffs?

[RichardButte]

Synastry buffs healing by 20%, Marks a party member to receive 40% of all your heals and therefore is healed an additional 40% when you single target heal them and has a cool down of 90 seconds.
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Dissipation gives you 3 Aetherflow stacks, sacks your fairy, and increases your healing by 20% to compensate with an anti-fairy resummon timer of 30 seconds and a recast of 180.
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What are both of these skills meant to do? Increase your healing output to stop what could have been a wipe. Which skill seems to have gotten all the love and none of the trade-off?
O.o
They really should look into the 60 SCH skill. It's a neat idea poor execution.

Diss needs a buff, yes. The entire SCH community has been begging for it to be changed for a while now, as it's friggin' awful.

But that's separate from AST's best healing CD, really.

AST NEEDED a big emergency CD...

[NorthernLadMSP]

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Astroella. She lived alone with her father, as her mother had died when she was young.

One day, Astroella’s father met a woman. The woman had two daughters, the same age as Astroella. In time, her father was married, and little Astroella got a new stepmother and two stepsisters. Their names were Cura and Physicka.

One sad morning, her father suddenly passed away, and little Astroella was heartbroken. She stayed in her family home, living with her new stepsiblings.

The stepsisters grew to hate little Astroella, and because of the families jealousy, she became a slave in her own home.

One afternoon, while cleaning and doing her stepsisters’ laundry, a courier arrived with an invitation to a grand ball. The stepsisters grew excited, and began thinking of the dresses they were to wear to this grand ball.

Little Astroella knew she would not be able to attend, as she had become a poor maid with nothing to wear to such an event.

Unbeknownst to her, her little animal friends made a beautiful dress so that Astroella could attend the ball.

She was so surprised when her friends presented to her the dress she was to wear, she quickly put it on, and went to show her stepsisters.

The sisters, Cura and Physicka, were shocked at the sight of little Astroella. They grew angry, and in a jealous rage, ripped Astroella’s dress to shreds."

[technole]

Dissipation lowers your healing actually. It also costs a "TON" of mana.

I don't follow this statement. It doesn't cost any MP if it's an instant that gives you 3 Aetherflow stacks. If you were going to switch fairies mid-fight, there could be some strategic use of Dissipation and with the healing potency buff the SCH can make-up the lack of Embrace in that time. It can be a good progression tool in raiding. It's not perfect, but it's the SCH's emergency resources.

[Parawill]

Potency buffs -> Bandage Patch.

CU -> Interesting--finally a non-situational CD in Nocturnal since it now has both Diurnal & Nocturnal Effects. Prior to the buff it was only used for a 3 second bole/rampart effect on my end, lol.

Disable -> Best buff for Disable. Not sure why people thought it being consumed by an auto-attack was "great" but now there's one less thing to complain about.

CO -> Aligns with Luminferous thus allowing you to extend more than 1 buff at a time, assuming you have a Card Buff out or a Regen at the same time.

Balance/Arrow/Bole Durations -> Interesting.

Synastry -> Need to experience it rather than read it.

In summary I'd say it's a nice step forward but there is still an underlying issue of Astrologian. Their core kit (GCDs) do not offer any difference in healing in comparison to SCH or WHM, thus making the amount of emergency healing & utility compare off WHM and SCH's already strong kits. They need their own identity, but it's tricky; however, including resources, time and player content on how it is now, buffing potencies and figuring out card things is the simplest and fastest way to patching Astrologians; however, it only fixes performance and not class vs. class issues.

[Eudyptes]

Since Astrologians got 90% (and some exciting unexpected ones) of their issues fixed

I'd actually say 90% of their problems are left unresolved. They boosted our hps, which is nice, but rng, dps, boosting overall group dps, mana, etc are all still the same issues as they were before.

[Zaj_Quilos]

The RNG isn't a problem - go play another class if you don't like it.

[Ananolf]

The healing wars have begun. Do the tanks act this way? Is three a crowed for them?

[Khyan]

Does Nocturnal's 5% boost still work now? If so, (forgive my math if it's wrong don't hurt me please)

Aspected Benefic in Nocturnal Stance still has a potency of 250. Noct's 5% potency buff increases AB's potency to 262.5 (I think?). The shield portion is now 130% of the heal, leaving us with a 341.25 potency shield. Total effective potency comes up to 603.75, just slightly more than Adlo's 600. Note, however, that AST also has Benefic II with 650 potency healing (682.5 after sect bonus), so Bene II is still your go-to burst heal. AB however has higher BASE shields than SCH's Adlo (341 vs 300).

Otherwise, Noct's healing potencies now look like this:
Benefic - 420
Benefic II - 682.5
Helios - 315

And then can be enhanced further with Synastry's 20% boost. I guess this... sort of makes up for the lack of a fairy?

Better and instant than adlo. Now SCH have to crit for better adlo than AST shield, it's ridiculous.

I'm glad they buffed AST though.

[AlaulaTheGreat]

Oh man, I didn't know with Synastry I could double heal the main tank... This is... very very nice.

[RoseM]

New patch made AST feels "dangerous": some of AST's skills now start to become more powerful than SCH/WHM in certain situations. Mana issue was a big reason AST were stopped from serious progression content. This patch didn't do anything related to AST's Mana management skills, but the problem was alleviated by giving several important healing skills potency boost, and bubble becoming useful. Regardless the quality of changes (lacks of originality ), I think AST is usable in serious raid contents now.

1. the AST's Adlo now shields for 130% of the healing amount, paired with being able to instant cast, this is even more powerful than a real SCH with 30% crit chance (AST: 130%, instant cast > SCH: 100%*70%+200%*30%=130%average, 2.5cast time)

2. AST literally has a Virus (Disable) now, and it has less cooldown (60sec vs. 90sec), and stackable with the real Virus. If you bring an AST to the party, you would be able to disable once every Cascade in A3S, and disable+virus once every 2 Cascades.. this just blows my mind lol

3. AST's regen got a huge potency boost, this is going to help with AST's tight mana management issue.

4. Synastry: I think this skill went from "best CD for AST" to "one of the best CDs among all 3 healers" if it wasn't already there b4 the patch. The meaning of these numbers (20% potency buff, 40% spread onto the synastry target) is you still heal the same amount on your synastry target (50% pre-patch / 120%*40% = 48% post-patch), but all your other heals including single target/aoe will be boosted by 20%. And if you Benefic the synastry target, it automatically turns into a Benefic II (400*120% * 140% = 672).

5. Bubble: Bubble used to be a joke, it now works like a Regen-type Cure III. (Bubble: 150*5ticks= 750potency,6y radius/ CureIII: 550potency, 6y radius)

6. Cards: Balance/Arrow duration extended. This is pretty straight forward, AST's cards used to boost raid DPS by 50ish in a 8-10mins fight,,, they can do 100ish now lol. Bole duration extended. Imo Bole and Ewer are the best 2 cards in AST's deck, so I love the buff to Bole, if you spread it instead of the fancy (not) Balances/Arrows, it could be very useful. (Bole: 10% mitigation, 30secs duration, 30sec CD/ Rampart: 20% mitigation, 20secs duration, 90sec CD)