How I wish AST was designed.

[Eudyptes]

I want to preface this by stating this is not a complaint thread. I enjoy playing ast more than whm and sch, and I think with the recent patch it is in a pretty good place. However, it's not really the class I imagined when I first heard of it, and I do wish that it was less of a hybrid between the two healers.

How I wished they had originally designed ast was by making it the "blm" of healers. Basically by making the stances similar to a blm's astral fire/ice stances.

So for example, in Diurnal stance you would fire off fast, smaller heals with a stacking HoT that starts off weak but ends relatively strong for a HoT (balanced by having a short duration). Basically yours casts in general are more HoT like, but they leave a residual effect. Every basic heal you would gain a stack of "Diurnal" (or whatever) which would give you a casting speed bonus (ala greased lightning) that would stack up to 5 times (with a 15 sec duration or so). You can maintain this stance for as long as you want, but should you use a specific skill, ideally a redesigned Celestial Opposition, you would do a sect specific AE heal that would consume the stacks and switch stances. The potency of CO would be dependant on how many stacks were consumed. For Diurnal, I was thinking the obvious choice would be an A.Helios/Medica II type effect that would heal for peanuts at 1 stack, but relatively powerful at 5.

Switching to Noct stance would put you in a much more supportive type of playstyle. Personally, I like the idea of keeping it similar to blm where you burn a lot of your mana in diurnal, then switch to noct to refresh your mana. Though the refresh is not nearly as quick as blm. Noct heals would be a bit more standard in design, except that they would add a stacking buff that adds 3% dmg mitigation per stack (up to five) on the target of your heals. The heals themselves would be more potent than the initial heal of a Diurnal heal (though less than a whm's), but they would also be slower. Diurnal would definitely be the definitive HPS stance for ast. Each heal would also give you a stack of "Nocturnal" that was a refresh, which would get more potent with each stack. Then when you use CO in this stance, I think a burst AE heal with an extended version of the mitigation proportionate to how many stacks are consumed would be ideal.

For the AE heals, I think simply making helios be a Medica II in Diurnal, and Medica in Nocturnal, with potencies that reflect how many stacks you have up would be the easiest option.

Many of the other current ast skills would have to be changed around and some even removed (aspected bene/helios wouldn't be necessary for example). Though one problem I would foresee is that there would be too few spells, and adding more might make it too powerful. Though less spells in general might not be a bad thing.

I also think that this class should focus on healing almost exclusively over dps. It should still have Malefic I/II Gravity, etc of course (many for soloing or phases with no incoming dmg), but I really think it's "dps" should come through cards (kinda like how it is now), and the ast themselves should be focusing on keeping stacks/buffs up.

Now, with that said, I think the bole card should be switched with another dps oriented card, since the effect of the current bole would be coming from Noct on a more reliable basis. I was thinking a damage reflect card would be good. Like maybe 10% of all dmg done to the target gets reflected back at the attacker. It wouldn't reduce that damage, just cause the mob(s) to take damage. So if you put it on your tank and then a mob did a 10k dmg hit, your tank would still take 10k dmg, but the mob would get hit by a 1k dmg attack too. This could be a great way to help both with dps and tank threat.

I'm no game developer though. So everything I listed would have to run through a balance team to come up with numbers that work. I'm sure there is a lot of refinement and changes that could be done too. I'm also not expecting this to ever actually be implemented (it's way too late for that). It's just something I've always envisioned how ast could have been, and just wanted to share and hear other people's take on it.

[Risvertasashi]

Well... for one thing, I would argue that AST is the least DPS focused of the healers. It's numbers aren't bad, but everything besides the DoTs are a touch less powerful than WHM spells. However, as AST has less burst healing, this translates to less time available to cleric stance, and an AST needs to juggle cards on top of that.

Now as for the core content of your post... There is one fundamental flaw is is why (I think) it's unlikely to happen.

Rotations for DPS are OK because, while occasionally burst is needed, for the most part it's averaged out over the whole encounter and that long term average is what really matters. HPS, however, is a useless stat... players have tiny HP pools and being even a little behind on heals means death. Healer kits are 100% situational and with good reason: you never know when someone might eat a bit of avoidable damage, or the boss might get a crit streak on the tank, and so on. Or if a mechanic punishes the party with vuln stacks, the healer needs to step it up in generally.

For Warrior, a stack building system works because tankbusters always happen at specific intervals and generally never closer than a minute apart. Raid hits, however, can be spammed and hit hard and outside of tankbusters, there can be spikes of simple auto attack damage as well. Add to that that different encounters can have very different patterns of incoming damage/healing that aren't built with having a rotation in mind.

Of course, it would really depend on how optional the stance swapping would be. If the healer could completely avoid using the ability that results in a stance swap, maybe not such an issue, but if heavy damage would effectively force it... That might be.

(15% def buff from every heal would also be slightly OP)

[Eudyptes]

I should clarify a little bit on a couple points. When I say Diurnal has fast heals, I'm talking fast. Like 1 sec GCD or less with instant cast fast (at 5 stacks). The stacks on you would allow you to keep that speed throughout the fights, but the HoT stacks on the player only lasts a short time. Of course, the heals themselves would have a low potency to offset this. If you ever played WoW, the idea is for Diurnal to heal the same way a Druid does (or did, I haven't really played WoW in a few years). Diurnal's total hps would be on par with whm and sch, it would just be in true "hps" fashion instead of bursty like whm or using mitigation like sch.

Noct doesn't have a 15% dmg mitigation on every heal, it is a stacking buff. You would have to reach 5 stacks to have that mitigation. That does effectively mean you'll have 15% mitigation on the tank/ot after 10 casts and can keep it up, but it's an important distinction that you aren't going to have that up on all raid members at all times by just spamming heals one at a time down your list. I should also note that the idea here is that your healing potency is lower than that of a whm (as I said). So really you are splitting your potency between the cast and the buff.

Third, when I say "works like blm", I want to stress I don't mean you go through your whole mp pool in 5 or 6 casts then switch. You would stay in both stances much longer than their blm counterparts. Not to mention certain situations would make certain stances more appealing.

In short, Diurnal is the stance you would stay in about 80% of the time. It's your go to/main healing stance. Noct would be used in place of Luminiferous Aether for mana regeneration, or for certain situations where you could trade in less healing for mitigation (like fights/phases with large tankbusters).

I would hope that at least something like this is actually viable in this game though. Otherwise I'm not entirely sure what they'll do for future healers except "more of the same + gimmick".

Edit: Of course this version of ast would have to have some burst healing CDs, beyond the CO AE, as to be able to ensure no one dies if things get rough. The CO would just act as ast's "assize" type heal (with weaker potency), but instead of getting 10% mp and doing dmg, it would stance change and add an effect based on previous stance + stacks. CO would also have a much shorter CD. Maybe 20 seconds or so to be able to ensure you could get into the right stance when you need to. Though with a CD that short it might be best if it either replaced helios, or you kept helios and CO only did the secondary effects.

Again, I'm not dev so actual balance/numbers needed aren't my strong point. Just vocalizing a concept.

[Risvertasashi]

Ok, the extra explanation helps and that sounds more viable (at least to me). Unfortunately... with SE, yes, the pessimistic side of me would expect "more of the same + gimmick" in future healers. But here's to hoping the next one is more innovative.

[Staris]

I think the class has been fine and works well.

If I could change anything though I would make two changes. First remove the RNG from cards and just make them 6 individual ogcd skills with individual timers that do different things when 2 are used together. They work as is but if you can remove rng and put in a high skill cap not.

Second I would allow switching between stances in combat, with a timer like cleric stance. Even if they nerfed abilities a little I think it would be interesting mechanic.

[Cynfael]

Speed bonuses for heals are virtually worthless outside of emergency cooldowns. Chain-casting heals is unnecessary under the majority of circumstances, so I wouldn't suggest that fast casting be a major selling point of any healer design (that design will lose hard to almost any other, especially mitigation).

[o3o]

So from what I'm getting from your first post. You want astro to become a very inconsistent healer that may or may not be in the right stance at the right moment? The way the game is right now, not only would that be incredibly difficult to balance but also the words inconsistent and healer are not something you'd want to have together in the same sentence. This is coming from a BLM main where I know how it feels to be caught in Umbral ice at just the wrong moment. Examples of this would be when an add spawns that absolutely needs to die instantly, but you are already out of mp and have to enter Umbral ice.

[Parawill]

...I wouldn't suggest that fast casting be a major selling point of any healer design (that design will lose hard to almost any other, especially mitigation).

Agreed and adding on.

With how enrage works relative to GCDs, we literally have a limited amount of actions we can use in savage. In addition to this, resources and conditions for skills (TP, MP, Positionals) prevent the spamming of the best potent skills. In order for speed bonuses to work, the class must be able to generate (almost) the same amount of potency in the same amount of time; however, it will take them two casts instead of one and cost similar amount of resources. So in order for "speed" to work for any class they would essentially have to have half the cast time and half the GCD of all classes, which basically makes almost all spells around a 1.25 GCD or cast time. In short, its safe to conclude that the idea doesn't work with the two systems: GCDs and enrage.

[Eudyptes]

I think the class has been fine and works well.

I made it clear I thought so to. It's just not what I expected we'd get when we got it since it's basically just whm/sch lite.

Speed bonuses for heals are virtually worthless outside of emergency cooldowns. Chain-casting heals is unnecessary under the majority of circumstances, so I wouldn't suggest that fast casting be a major selling point of any healer design (that design will lose hard to almost any other, especially mitigation).

It's not the speed that is appealing, it's being being a HoT healer + being mobile with your basic heals (ala WoW druid) in Diurnal that is supposed to be appealing. The speed is a nice bonus because you get in some healing faster allowing people to survive in situations where they would otherwise die mid cast. But the idea is that in the end 5 benefics would equal the same overall potency of two cure II's (maybe slightly less), and be cast within the same amount of time as two cure II's.

Beyond that, if you still need a spelling point for ast, it would be the same one it has now. The card system. Which actually is a big reason I'd was the HoT type healing. To allow for more fluid card play while you are healing with less cast times and more GCDs.

So from what I'm getting from your first post. You want astro to become a very inconsistent healer that may or may not be in the right stance at the right moment?

Read my second post. It wouldn't be inconsistent as you have a lot of freedom over stance control and you do not run through mana/refresh nearly as fast as blm does. It's just taking the general idea of blm's gameplay and redesigning it to fit a healer.

In order for speed bonuses to work, the class must be able to generate (almost) the same amount of potency in the same amount of time; however, it will take them two casts instead of one and cost similar amount of resources.

Yeah, that was literally the idea.

[ckc22]

Almost anything would have been better. Hybrid sch/whm jr was a bad idea in the first place and no amount of buffs or patches is going to change that fact.