Quote Originally Posted by Mibgestalt View Post
That's why I'm dubious that it's just a "L2P" issue across the board.
It definitely isn't just a L2P issue, but it does play a big part. But you can't simply tune AST to be more like WHM. If a fight is designed to be able to be single-target healed fairly easily with just Cure and Cure 2, while having large AoE damage come out, then Divine Seal will always win over Synastry because Synastry doesn't carry over AoE heals or regen heals, doesn't boost them as high as Divine Seal and is on a longer cooldown. If you design a fight where dualhealing is king, let's say something like Skyward Leaps during Thordan ex, then Synastry is favorable over Divine Seal since Synastry is more powerful and more bursty. And whoever says 'just combine DS and PoM', PoM has a cooldown 2 and a half minute and you burned two cooldowns just for one mechanic. If that mechanic returns after 90 seconds, you can't use Divine Seal in between to save mana over the AST and you're going to spam costy Cure 2s.

Going to play devil's advocate really badly here: try PvP as a healer and see how different it is. Ignore the players for a bit and pretend it is the environment that is facing you instead. Seize Rock on EU/NA data centers in general are ideal for this, since most people are very unorganized. Suddenly, the healers are a lot closer and Nocturnal AST is one of the best healers if not the best healer. And then you compare it to savage and see what aspects of PvP will probably never be used as a mechanic in PvE, and why Nocturnal AST can't shine in its current form in PvE but could shine in the future, or what changes should be made for it to shine. PvP as a whole is really good at this since players get creative, wacky and out of control and show what possibilities a job truly has.