Suggested changes to AST Design to bring it in line with WHM/SCH

[Miunih]

Hey mates, Miu here, long post inc, there is no TLDR :>


I've been playing this game since 1.0, I've always been a whm ever since so I'm experienced enough I think with 6 world firsts and 5 world second's under my belt. I was really looking forward to ast, but even with the buffs it's meh, feels underpowered and frankly is frustrating to play sometimes. AST is really fun to play, but it's being overshadow-ed in a major way by either other healing classes. The top 3 issues are GCD management (the main resource of healers), Bad MP management and the worst, it just doesn't heal as well as either without wasting mp/gcd's.

Whm has way more healing power. With Cure III for simple close range powerbombs, Longranged Medica II Regens and Asize/asylum/tetra for GCD-less and mp-less healing, it outclasses ast by a mile. MP regeneration is ezpz with asize and shroud. Whm can easily do dps while healing with regens without going oom.

Sch outclasses AST by a mile with adlo's, one crit and you save a lot of GCD's. Eos/Selene is MPless and GCDless healing as well while you dps/regen mp/do whatever else. It has instant heals with indom/lustrates. It has aoe regen with Eos and aoe shields with succor. It regens MP easily with aetherflows with it's short cd. Sch excels in dps without going oom or wasting gcd's on healing, eos/whm regens do most of the work.

AST Can do both, yet it really doesn't. Everything AST does, whm/sch does better. I'll suggest some changes that I think will improve AST a lot, make it worth to bring in progression without killing either of the other healing classes.


General Changes: Make ALL effects of AST NON-STACKABLE with other healing classes. AST Regens cannot stack with WHM regens. Shields don't stack already so that's fine. But you don't want lolafk regens with both classes in the same group.

Aspected Benefic:

Current: It's meh. It's an instant small heal and an 18 second regen (3 seconds shorter than whm. That's right, a whole GCD!). In sch form it gives a small shield for 707 mp, doesn't increase much when it crits.

Suggested Change: In whm form, bring the regen to 21 seconds, keep the instant small heal the same as the mp cost of this reflects it. In sch form, make it the same as sch. At crit, the shield it twice as gud. Increase to 150 potency to be inline with whm regen.


Benefic:
Current: Keep it, it's gud. Typical Cure. Lower MP cost is fine, aspected benefic's higher mp cost compensates this.


Benefic II:

Current: It's fine as well, the proc uses more mp than whm, but it's instant. It means it can safe a gcd at the cost of mp, and that's fine.
Suggested Change: Give it a proc like Cure II. 10% chance to increase your Spell Speed for 10 seconds at 15%. Fits the AST Lore Things as well, time and stuff.


Aspected helios:

Current: It's meh. It's a decent regen at mediocre range. Medica II outclasses it by a mile.

Suggested Change: In whm stance, keep the mp and cast time the same, increase range to reflect Medica II. In sch stance, keep the range the same, reduce cast time by .5 seconds, make it a succor clone. Why is it different, well check out the suggested change for Helios. Bring potency up to 50 to be inline with Medica II. Up the MP cost to 1502 for WHM Stance.


Helios:

Current: It's gud, but bland. It's Medica without the 50% MP Proc.

Suggested change: Sch stance; make it have a proc chance. 20% to make Aspected Helios Free and Instant? Is this overpowered? No not at all. Both whm and sch have asize and indom in that order. Ast has cards that makes it unique, but misses that instant heal. This gives the class a bit more uniqueness as well. Also, it makes you use it even if people don't really need it, freeing up GCD's.


Exalted Detriment:

Current: It's Esuna/Leeches, great.

Suggested Change: Now I'm not certain of this, but having a 25% chance to make the next Exalted Detriment instant and ogcd might be interesting, in line with AST's specialisation with speed.


*Essential Dignity: *

Current: It's great, keep it like this. Gud OGCD, scales nice. Honestly is one of AST's strong points. Fills the void of Tetra/Bene as whm, and instant lustrates of sch.


Collective Unconciousness.

Current: It's gud.. yet it's so shit. Great healing + Damage mitigation, but it eats almost 8 GCDs!! due to it being channeled. Luckily the regen stays, but having the mitigation stay as well is op I think. But losing so many gcd's is just bad design.

Suggested Change: The only change I'd say, is make it root/bind you in place and make it so you can still cast stuff. Clicking the butan again unroots/unbinds you, and you lose the buffs immidiately as well. Is it op? Not in the slightest. Whm have asylum with NO penalty. Sch has Sacred Soil with NO penalty. CU will have a penalty, but at the cost of not being able to move it has best of both worlds. Yes, it would and should stack with Sacred Soil.
That's it for the healing aspect of AST, onto the buffs.


Synastry:

Current: Not sure what to think about it, it's a love/hate relationship really. It's gud, but it's very shit at the same time.
Suggested Change: Split the buff into two. Ast is already lacking butans and this would be a great way to solve it.

Buff 1: The Split healing buff. It's great but for specific situations/tank splits. One of the biggest issues is that you cannot heal yourself, it doesn't work for the buff, and it should. Another issue is that aoe healing nor regens work on it. What I'm suggesting is that it does, but on a small scale. Keep the CD to 90 seconds, maybe increase to 120. Increase duration from 20 to 21 seconds to line up with GCD timings like any other ability in game. Any regen effect will have 5-10% of it transferred TO the target, it subtracts it from it. So if you have a 1500 regen on Target A with synastry on Target B, it will remove 150 from Target A and transfer it to Target B. End result: Target A will get a 1350 regen and Target B will get a 150 regen. This way it doesn't create additional healing, but rather transfers it. The same would go for shields, but instead of overwriting the shields, it would be added to the current shield buff(maybe a new buff?). 10% is a lot, so for shields it'd be like 3-5%. You get the idea.. This would go for normal healing as well. A cure of 5000 will transfer 500 to the target. Equally and aoe heal of 2500 times 7 = 17500. Means 1750 would be transferred to the target. This also solves the separation between healers. Whm is a powerhouse healer with Cure III/Asize/Asylum/Bene/Tetra. Sch is a mitigation healer with superb adlo's, deployment, eating da fairy for bigger shields. Now AST can do something cool and specific/unique healing wise as well! Something the class really needed aside from cards. Along with the quickness of ast, this buff would go extremely well and would feel natural. Keep in mind the numbers are there for examples, maybe they should be increased or decreased, as long as they are *IN LINE** with Whm/Sch abilities to be able to both complement or replace either.

*Buff 2: The Healing buff, make it a nice static 25% orso for 15 seconds like Divine Seal/The Eos Buff. A 60 second CD to accommodate it, in line with the other buffs.


Lightspeed:

Current: It's great, but short.

Suggested Change: I'd increase it from 10 to 12-13 seconds, and decrease the cd to
120 seconds. Other than that it's fine and does well. This way all healers have instant aoe heal options, AST's costs MP though, but can push out more in times off need. It's like a different kind of Presence of Mind. Being able to be mobile is great at the cost of mp.


Luminiferous Aether:

Current: It's a personal Quelling + Refresh, very similar to Shroud. It's fine, it's different but the same. Though I'd increase the quelling effect to a little bit of a stronger one. 120 second cd is fine.


Disable:

Current: It's great, keep it like this. AST's don't have virus/eye, this stacks with them.


Celestial Opposition:

Current: It's gud, remove the stun, you'll see why. This should NOT be a stun, this is a UTILITY ABILITY, not OFFENSIVE ABILITY. Se pls.


Time Dilation:

Current: It's gud.

Suggested Change: Make it offensive as well. Put dots on boss, disable, time dilation, extends the dots and disable by 15 seconds (maybe 10 for offensive use?). Would solve mp issues a lot, and makes it more versatile. Might be incredibly op so prolly a bad idea. Would NOT work on debuffs like slow/stun of course. Combined with Disable it's a gud replacement for Eye for an Eye/Virus. Also gives the player choice of how to use it.

The Sects themselves: Keep them like this. The individual buffs are fine, makes
either class different to play. Downside is that Hardcore progression raiders need two sets of Best in Slot, kinda fun as well.


Dps Abilities:


Stella:

Current: Great, used for heavy.

Suggested Change: Change to 2 second stun, will be used more often like this.
Combust and Combust II:
Current: Good dps, keep them the same.


Malefic:

Current: Shit, never used it once.

Suggested Change: Give it 40% heavy.


Malefic II:

Current: Keep the same, it's gud.


Gravity:

Current: Targeted holy without the stun that holy does.

Suggested Change: Give it a 20% SLOW, that's right. A buff hardly used ingame, it's great for aoe pulls. Obviously bosses wouldn't be affected, mobs would be.


New Ability: Combust III

Currently: Doesn't exist, but all healers have an aoe dot mechanic (Aero III, Bane), AST does not.

Implementation: Make it like Aero III in terms of potency, but 21 seconds. So you can use it for single target rotation, but can't spam it. Great for big pulls in dungeons as well to use just the once, and it's the missing dps spell that SE apparently missed. 707 mp like Aero III, 3 second cast time. Maybe a smaller radius than Aero III, lets say 4 y.

OR

New Ability II: Gravity II

Currently: Doesn't exist, a reddit user brought this up: august9979

A ground-targeted aoe, much like shadowflare, that does a dot + heavy effect. Simple and effective. I prefer this one, it fits much more.


Da Cards!

Finally, the cards, one of the things what makes AST AST. Now the BIGGEST issue, for both progression wise and casual play wise, is the rng. I often see myself drawing a spire, Royal Roading it, getting a spear, shuffling it, getting another spear.. Great. I right click it, useless. 30 seconds later, another spear -.-;. There's multiple ways to solve this, either by reducing the RNG, or making the cards useful. I don't wanna use that spear cause It would be aoe, what a waste. If there was a way I could use it single target but unbuffed, that'd be great, but with the current implementation I don't see this happening either. Another way of solving it is adding three butans, one for Resources (Ewer/Spire). One for DPS (Balance/Arrow). One for Utility (Bole/Spear). But.. that's another three butans.. Honestly, I wouldn't mind it, but having future expansions in mind as well it seems to be getting too complicated. Aside that you wouldn't use utility over dps/resources unless it's VERY specific. With the healing/sustainability buffs I suggested it means AST will do MORE damage on it's own, thus reducing the balance and arrow cards might be an idea. From 10% to 8% would be fine I think. They are still REALLY good, but not overpowering in the sense that AST becomes mandatory like sch is.

What I'm suggesting is would solve all of this, and the mp issue.


Shuffle:

You cannot re-draw the card you're reshuffling. 60 second is fine with this change, some rng is fine, but this removes a stupid issue of draw-ing the card again.


New Ability: Card Nom (Name TBD).

Implementation: You eat da card for mp. Draw a spear, meh, eat it, get 3% mp back, I was thinking 5%, but it would be too much, most ast abilities have lower mp cost in general. Additionally depending on what sec you're in, it would give a 5% Spell Speed or 5% Healing potency buff for 10 seconds. A 60 second CD should balance this well I think. This would NOT eat your royal roaded card, keeps your shuffle off CD, solves MP issues as well, it's win-win. Obviously, ewer-ing yourself is still more mp, but you don't always wanna do that as royal-roading an ewer is amazing as well! This gives you multiple choices and gives AST the depth that I was looking for as well without making it complicated as hell. Sch has great mp management with 20% aetherflows on 60cd. Whm has shroud and assize. Now AST has something to sustain itself as
well.

The Cards themselves are balanced fine, but this makes the unwanted cards useful.

In my opinion and experience as a 5-year long progression healer in this game, and like 7 orso in wow, this would balance AST to be able to compete and suplement WHM and AST without neither overpowering them, nor underpowering them. AST becomes another option.

There's PLENTY of things I haven't thought of of course, maybe other people have brilliant ideas to bring AST in line, i'm just but one mind. I just hope SE listens and I'm not typing all this for nothing ; ;7

[Ashelia_Ferron]

They're fine as they are. A few QoL changes maybe, but there is no need for some overhaul like you're suggesting.

[Sidra]

I agree in that these massive changes aren't necessary - it isn't that far off. To me, the biggest problem with AST is that in FFXIV, healers also DPS, and AST is the only one of the 3 healers that has serious MP problems when trying to do both.. Although I would like the Aspected Helios range increased as well.

[Anova]

I can see the rationale behind Shuffle (it is frustrating to draw the same card) and "card nom" as an additional way to recover MP (other healers have 2 reliable methods of MP regen). So sure, those are interesting ideas and I'd be fine with them.

I agree that the AST in noct stance is just not as effective imitating SCH as diurnal is imitating WHM, but i honestly don't think replicating SCH barrier heals are the solution. SCH's fairy pet also provides a lot of free healing that just isn't available for WHM and AST, so you'd probably want to focus on that instead of the barrier. It would solve the MP issue better (leading to more dps-to-burst-heal rotations) without completely usurping the strength of the WHM or SCH job.

Otherwise, some of the buffs for the damage spells are interesting but unnecessary or of small value. Slow on Gravity (or a DoT) would be nice and lore-appropriate. AST damage is the worst amongst healers, but it's offset by the cards. There is a lot of RNG there but it's not too much of a difference and you generally get a couple good draws over the course of a dungeon/fight. You won't output damage like a SCH or WAR, but it's close enough to a WHM that I don't think it matters.
Similarly, the healing doesn't need any more buffs. Yes, the stances aren't as good as WHM or SCH, but it's not intended to be a replacement for those classes. It's meant to fulfill their role as main/raid healer in 8-man content and the AST does that well enough.

I also see no need to buff malefic simply because it gets replaced with malefic2 later. All the healer spells are like that. No WHM uses Stone II once they have Stone III and nobody uses Ruin when they have Broil. Yes, it should probably change, but there's no reason to improve AST's malefic specifically and not the others.

As a side note, I don't see any point in adding new abilities unless you're hoping these changes come out in the next expansion. At which point, I'd suggest other abilities that play to the meta than playing catch-up to the other classes (who will gain new abilities that make them even better).

[Velox]

You're basically suggesting that they do as much HPS as a WHM (even more with the Synestry buff which is currently the most powerful heal buff in the game) and still retain their card buffs on top of that? You might as well just type out "I want to make WHM obsolete as much as possible."

The reason they have weaker abilities is BECAUSE they have utility. WHM has 0 party utility other than the cross-classed Virus (which is useless in raiding since everything is magic) and Eye for an Eye which has a much longer cooldown than the traited version ACN has. All WHM can do is heal. That's it. If they don't do it the best, then there's no point in even having it as a playable job.

I agree that Nocturnal stance leaves a lot to be desired for AST since SCH is pretty OP right now (probably the strongest healer of the 3 when averaging offensive ability, defensive ability, MP managment, MP cost, heal ability, and utility all together). Diurnal is fine the way it is.

[Kerrigen]

While some of your ideas are decent, I don't think what you're suggesting balances AST with SCH well at all. I know you're a WHM first and foremost but your suggestions would merely allow AST to be super competitive with WHM. I also personally don't think that'd make AST all that unique either, they'd be a few steps closer to WHM that what they currently are. Now that's just me, and I don't think this is necessary bad but why make it even more of a clone by touching durations and potencies while in Diurnal only?

You're not suggesting anything to fix the bad interactions of Nocturnal skills with TD/CO, you don't touch on the mitigation perks SCH has over AST (Covenant/Deployment Tactics/CU having 3x the CD of Soil), you're not even touching on what is your main argument: AST can't DPS well because they can't stay in Cleric for a very long time. With your suggestions, they could DPS more while in Diurnal but still would have to heal just as much as they do now in Nocturnal. You're basically completely ignoring Nocturnal exists or implying it's good as is (which comes as really questionable for someone with such a raiding pedigree as yours), when Nocturnal is widely considered as inferior to Diurnal and to SCH in the first place.

I mean, let's be realistic here: this is how you get rid of WHM, not how you make all 3 combinations equally viable.

[Miunih]

While some of your ideas are decent, I don't think what you're suggesting balances AST with SCH well at all. I know you're a WHM first and foremost but your suggestions would merely allow AST to be super competitive with WHM. I also personally don't think that'd make AST all that unique either, they'd be a few steps closer to WHM that what they currently are. Now that's just me, and I don't think this is necessary bad but why make it even more of a clone by touching durations and potencies while in Diurnal only?

You're not suggesting anything to fix the bad interactions of Nocturnal skills with TD/CO, you don't touch on the mitigation perks SCH has over AST (Covenant/Deployment Tactics/CU having 3x the CD of Soil), you're not even touching on what is your main argument: AST can't DPS well because they can't stay in Cleric for a very long time. With your suggestions, they could DPS more while in Diurnal but still would have to heal just as much as they do now in Nocturnal. You're basically completely ignoring Nocturnal exists or implying it's good as is (which comes as really questionable for someone with such a raiding pedigree as yours), when Nocturnal is widely considered as inferior to Diurnal and to SCH in the first place.

This is exactly what Im looking for. Making AST unique is hard, and honestly I'm not doing a good idea, these are just ideas to make them competitive with both whm and sch. I mean, why would you bring an ast to progression if either sch or whm just outclasses it. I also don't really know sch too well, but well enough. What my idea for ast is that it can replace either without nullifying the uniqueness of it. I want a REASON to bring ast to progression, at the moment, there is none :<

[Kerrigen]

This is exactly what Im looking for. Making AST unique is hard, and honestly I'm not doing a good idea, these are just ideas to make them competitive with both whm and sch. I mean, why would you bring an ast to progression if either sch or whm just outclasses it. I also don't really know sch too well, but well enough. What my idea for ast is that it can replace either without nullifying the uniqueness of it. I want a REASON to bring ast to progression, at the moment, there is none :<

Just know that I absolutely agree with you conceptually. We need all options to be viable for progression. I just don't think it would make SCH any less mandatory than it already is, which would bring about yet another imbalance (2 jobs sharing a single raid spot). This isn't too hot either as a SCH main who would like to play AST for progression content.

[Velox]

If you're looking to make AST unique, you come up for solutions to the one aspect of it that MAKES it unique. The cards. If you touch either healing or mitigation, you're just bringing it closer to WHM or SCH. Yes that may make it more viable, but that won't make it unique. If you keep their current healing and mitigation the same though, and alter the card system in a way that it makes AST desirable, then you've achieved perfection.

That being said, I have a feeling Alex2 won't be the same as Alex1. SE has already agreed that they are disappointed by the numbers they are seeing, and agree that the Alex1 mechanics favor DPS a little too much and only cater to certain jobs. Since they know this, I can almost guarantee you Alex2 will rectify this and be closer to Coil in design (unique nondamage-oriented mechanics, a nice blend of both physical and magical outgoing damage, laxed enrage timers or HP pools, less pure RNG, etc). AST may not even need a buff come 3.2 because the mechanics we see will automatically allow for it to be competitive.

Sometimes you don't have to change the class, you only need to change the environment. This is also part of the careful balancing act developers have to account for when designing content.

[Vlady]

Astro to be retooled will have to see an entirely new concept and should not step in the toes if white mage and scholar. Wont happen until 4.0 and right now it is as good as white mage in progression. Synastry is very good and should not be changed.