A3S (AST Solo Heal)

[Ghishlain]

@AzureFlare

The math at a glance looks right. I can't see anything wrong immediately but will point it out as I go.

@CU vs Asylum
Asylum is much easier to work with because you can just fire and forget it. As long as you have a general idea where your tank and maybe a few (if not all) your party is going to be, you can make excellent use of it.

CU is a bit harder to use because not only does the AST have to channel it, you would want to try to make use of it's 10% mitigation as well. This generally leads to AST wanting to save CU for hard AoE hits if possible (Cascade) and thus you may be using it less often than Asylum, thus leading to Asylum potentially healing more.

Also technically Asylum heals more than CU if you don't get at least one additional tick on CU (800 Asylum vs 750 CU) which also lead to a positive net gain on Asylum.

@Noct AST vs SCH
I feel AzureFlare hit the nail home with the theorycraft so I'll just add my two more cents to this. While SCH is constrained by Aetherflow stacks, they also get a ridiculous amount of MP-free healing via Fairy / Lustrate / Indomitability. Fairy accounts for 2,000 potency of healing every minute that the SCH can direct to any single target they like every 3 seconds. That's MP a Noct AST has to consume to keep up with that kind of healing, let alone the 1,800 potentially free potency via Lustrate and then the 1K+ MP SCHs get back every minute.

SCH might be restricted to cooldowns and stacks but AST has to consume a lot of MP to stay in the game. Without any sort of HoT ability, Noct AST has to make up with those highly MP efficient spells via brute force Benefic / Benefic IIs. And since Noct ACT has the lowest MP efficiency of all four healer kits it'll run out of steam the fastest too. In a long fight, I can't see a Noct AST maintaining their steam while a SCH just kinda whistles happily while doing their thing.

And I just want to touch on one more point regarding context - everything has a timer and every tool in any healers kit is subject to the dance of the fight. Even though CU does more healing that Whispering Dawn, as AzureFlare pointed out earlier Whispering Dawn can be activated every 60 seconds versus CU's 90. If using WD / CU on cooldown, this pushes WD ahead because you get 3 WDs (1,969 potency) versus 2 CUs (1,500 if nothing channeled past the first tick) every three minutes.

Now, let's take that into a fight like A3S. You'll want to save CU for every other Cascade in the final phase to make the most use out of it. This means you'll be having two Whispering Dawns for every use of CU, thus pushing WD even further ahead every two minutes (1,312 potency WD vs 750 potency CUs if not channeled fully). This is similar to how AST can have every Cascade Disable'd but SCH can only Supervirus every second Cascade.

[TatoRazzino]

I feel like I'm missing a point in here. Are we talking about solo healing or main healing during the course of an entire fight or picking up the slack of your main healer/keeping the fight going while they're being raised? I'm talking about the ability to be reactive at any given time, not about sustain. For example, I was farming Thordan yesterday and I had a SCH as a healing partner. i went Diurnal, of course, but I ended up dying (RL issues), and I couldn't be raised. The SCH wasn't prepared for that, and because of that he didn't have any AoE heals ready to keep the party up shile I dealt with the RL issues. He was using Selene, if I'm not mistaken, and couldn't switch fairies. The party wiped, because he used everything he had and he wasn't able to cast AoE heals to meet the requirement. This wouldn't happen with Noct AST, I believe, and even when no emergency situation is happening your toolkit is there, waiting to be used. That's my point. If we're going to talk about sustained values, then we need to discuss healing strategies. You're assuming an off-healer SCH is going to save stacks instead of using them for ED; when will that happen?

[Sleigh]

@AzureFlare

The math at a glance looks right. I can't see anything wrong immediately but will point it out as I go.

@CU vs Asylum
Asylum is much easier to work with because you can just fire and forget it. As long as you have a general idea where your tank and maybe a few (if not all) your party is going to be, you can make excellent use of it.

CU is a bit harder to use because not only does the AST have to channel it, you would want to try to make use of it's 10% mitigation as well. This generally leads to AST wanting to save CU for hard AoE hits if possible (Cascade) and thus you may be using it less often than Asylum, thus leading to Asylum potentially healing more.

Also technically Asylum heals more than CU if you don't get at least one additional tick on CU (800 Asylum vs 750 CU) which also lead to a positive net gain on Asylum.

You're slightly underselling CU, even if I generally think Asylum is more versatile and useful. The main thing you didn't note in this mostly accurate assessment is, as long as you hit the group, or really at least anyone that you needed to hit with CU, they are guaranteed that 750 potency of HoT. Asylum, while often (but not always) tanks can get the full 800 potency out of its ticks while staying in its field, anyone else, even melee, will often be forced away due to mechanics and positionals, especially on larger bosses where for the most part an Asylum is aimed solely at the tank(s).

The main strength of Asylum is that it's an oGCD you can fire anywhere, easily weaving it in and then forgetting about it. This aspect is CU's greatest downfall other than the range/time limitation on it ... quite on the contrary to Asylum, CU often requires 0-3s before the first tick even happens, of people coming in including ranged who may not so freely make their way in without a loss if you have not planned for it, while the AST has to literally float there doing no additional DPS or heals until said ticks happen.

I feel like I'm missing a point in here. Are we talking about solo healing or main healing during the course of an entire fight or picking up the slack of your main healer/keeping the fight going while they're being raised? I'm talking about the ability to be reactive at any given time, not about sustain. For example, I was farming Thordan yesterday and I had a SCH as a healing partner. i went Diurnal, of course, but I ended up dying (RL issues), and I couldn't be raised. The SCH wasn't prepared for that, and because of that he didn't have any AoE heals ready to keep the party up shile I dealt with the RL issues. He was using Selene, if I'm not mistaken, and couldn't switch fairies. The party wiped, because he used everything he had and he wasn't able to cast AoE heals to meet the requirement. This wouldn't happen with Noct AST, I believe, and even when no emergency situation is happening your toolkit is there, waiting to be used. That's my point. If we're going to talk about sustained values, then we need to discuss healing strategies. You're assuming an off-healer SCH is going to save stacks instead of using them for ED; when will that happen?

Most SCHs I've ever played with, myself included, have just used the philosophy of, don't burn your final stack until you're about to Aetherflow, in case of emergencies. It's not a DPS loss really, unless you could have used it during Trick Attack or Foe's or something earlier, and even then we're talking about 15-30~ potency lost by not doing that over having a safety net for an emergency Indom or Lustrate.

I mean, if you're gonna assume SCH without Eos, who doesn't have Emergency Tactics or a stack of Aetherflow or Swiftcast to use Eos or Deployment Tactics available, then yes Nocturnal AST would be able to salvage an AoE heavy situation easier, but that's assuming an awful lot. Nocturnal AST isn't exactly an AoE savvy class in the first place, it's just able to spam Helios if assuming no CDs, which Diurnal AST and WHM and a SCH who's NOT out of CDs would all laugh at.

[AzureFlare]

Stuff

I'm assuming a somewhat capable SCH regardless of either situation. Not the average SCH who thinks they are good because they end Thordan with 350 DPS (lol) DPSing fulltime and loldrain all their stacks away while assuming their partner does all the work or are under firm believe Eos is worthless. If you have no stacks and no mana to summon Eos, then sure you'll fall flat on your face, but that's the SCH's fault for taking the bait in the first place. I'm under no impression Nocturnal AST is a great AoE damage salvager, regardless emergency or not. SCH isn't as far off from either Diurnal AST or WHM, really, but the 'great age of Selene' seems to have taken over to the point most SCHs forget Whispering Dawn even exists at all.

The math shows what the differences are and where. SCH's way better at burst AoE and it is more convenient to use to boot. We're not discussing a context because there's about zero reason to discuss a context as it stands, I've put the variables so much in favor of N.AST and taken out most comfort requirements tied to N/AST and SCH still pulls ahead by a mile. Any further pushing goes into contexts of encounters rather than party/self but that's unreal and trying to force a shoe to fit where it shouldn't.

SCH's a great healer, but it is also such a great off-healer it has the same problem as WAR where it gets shoved to the offspot because they are so good at it and both other jobs are better in the main spot. The only thing that's different is double WAR is a legit thing and double SCH is like adding twice the lemon juice to your drink. I'm merely saying that SCH is not behind N.AST in terms of healing at all and more likely to be the other way around, just with Baitstrate and Energy Bait consistently in your face.

[TatoRazzino]

I really think you overestimate SCH and WAR, specially the fairy. The problem with math for anything other than DPS is that adding a single variable messes everything up, just like the post about MP management. A single changed flipped the table in an unrealistic situation in favor of the AST. But if you're going to take the math results, then yes, you're right. What I propose is: main heal as a SCH and see how stressful and clunky it is and you'll see what I mean.

[AzureFlare]

Compared to N.AST? Easy. I've been in the position plenty of times, the only thing clunky about SCH is the fairy insisting on knowing better and taking forever to respond. Besides, whether I think SCH is clunky or not is hardly relevant. I think D.AST plays more fluidly than WHM and I can already tell 50% of the people reading this message are ready to shoot me down or at least going 'Oh heeeeeeell no'. Likewise, I think SCH is grossly overpowered and a huge oversight made by SE that needs whacking with the nerf hammer or at least have Embrace taken off autofire and put a warning sign saying 'for people wearing gloves only'. That's just me though, being a little sadist.

But in the end, the only things that count are the theoretical how-do, the amount of people playing said jobs/stances and the performances of said jobs/stances in any context considered relevant (which overarchs what is considered current context), not what N = 1 thinks. I've used math that grossly favors N.AST and it lost. AST is still underplayed, N.ASTs generally struggle and a N.AST is not valued over a SCH by most people from what I've seen on multiple media. I'm all up for healers collectively measuring, sharings results and logging their results onto sites like FFLogs, though.

[Ghishlain]

Compared to N.AST? Easy. I've been in the position plenty of times, the only thing clunky about SCH is the fairy insisting on knowing better and taking forever to respond. Besides, whether I think SCH is clunky or not is hardly relevant. I think D.AST plays more fluidly than WHM and I can already tell 50% of the people reading this message are ready to shoot me down or at least going 'Oh heeeeeeell no'. Likewise, I think SCH is grossly overpowered and a huge oversight made by SE that needs whacking with the nerf hammer or at least have Embrace taken off autofire and put a warning sign saying 'for people wearing gloves only'. That's just me though, being a little sadist.

But in the end, the only things that count are the theoretical how-do, the amount of people playing said jobs/stances and the performances of said jobs/stances in any context considered relevant (which overarchs what is considered current context), not what N = 1 thinks. I've used math that grossly favors N.AST and it lost. AST is still underplayed, N.ASTs generally struggle and a N.AST is not valued over a SCH by most people from what I've seen on multiple media. I'm all up for healers collectively measuring, sharings results and logging their results onto sites like FFLogs, though.

I just did a look on FFLogs. I counted 35 ASTs that's cleared A4S out of the 811 Healers (4.32%). As far as I can tell there's no way to sort by class and they only way to tell what the composition is / what Sect was used is to go into each of those individual player's clears and manually look up the comp and buff list.

Though I think the percentage of ASTs that have cleared A4S alone is a little indicative of how most raid group feel about AST, sadly. >>; Let alone how many feel about Noct AST.

[Kerrigen]

I just did a look on FFLogs. I counted 35 ASTs that's cleared A4S out of the 811 Healers (4.32%). As far as I can tell there's no way to sort by class and they only way to tell what the composition is / what Sect was used is to go into each of those individual player's clears and manually look up the comp and buff list.

Though I think the percentage of ASTs that have cleared A4S alone is a little indicative of how most raid group feel about AST, sadly. >>; Let alone how many feel about Noct AST.

I did it for you. 32 of these clears included a SCH and a Diurnal AST. 3 of these clears included a Nocturnal AST with a WHM. That's a lot of total A4s kills including a SCH (99%+).

[TatoRazzino]

AST started with a terrible reputation due to the nerfed release and group hysteria in forums. For that reason, very few raiders invested esoterics in AST, so it comes with little surprise that only 4% of the clears included the job. Also, there is a lot of pressure for healer DPS, even with DPS being overgeared and having Thordan weapons; again, little surprise in seeing SCH being so used, since the job was designed to do DPS. All I care about is that it is possible to clear with the job in any of the two Sects. I personally like to think that, if other people have done it, so can I

[technole]

Even at the start, Warrior and Scholar were going to be the de-facto jobs you were definitely going to bring in Savage. Sure early floors were cleared with PLD+DRK as well but once A3S entered the picture there was some tightening of the tank roles. The extra DPS those bring to the table were undisputed in undergeared progression. Whereas Paladin or Dark Knight, Astrologian or White Mage are better replacements for each other. Just many invested in White Mage and it went from there. But there were some that stuck through with Astrologian from pre-buff to now.

Scholar as the main healer is really never considered because of the amount of resources they use up alone (Aetherflow, 30s and 60s cooldowns) just for non-shield AoEs is pretty high compared to the upside for them to put it towards DPS use. Dissipation is another skill that is proactively another method to push DPS, once again leaving the regen healing to the main healer.