Astrologian impossible to balance as it is

[Sidra]

I'm sorry, but comments like these make me feel you don't quite understand the magnitude of the situation regarding the two Sects.

Titan Egi / Fists of Earth to Nocturnal Sect in the sense that they are both situational. That is where the comparisons end.

Nocturnal Sect encompasses a significantly larger issue because it encompasses an entire paradigm of healing that fundamentally changes how you play the job in a healing capacity.

When you're in Nocturnal Sect, your healing style changes in the following ways
-More upfront healing require due no HoT capability
-More MP management required due to more MP consumption for equal levels of potency
-Less utility with Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition because you have less applicable buffs to extend
-Less overall DPS contribution due to 5% less attack speed


Whereas when a SMN uses Titan-Egi or MNK uses Fists of Earth is generally just one thing:
-They do slightly less DPS

When you are talking about 5% more speed or heal strength, you are really splitting hairs - its not much of a noticeable difference either way. When we were testing our DRK in either grit or non grit during the first phase of A3, our WHM found it did not change his healing/dps rotation one bit. And that’s 20% more mitigation. The 5% bonuses are basically token differences between the stances.

Look at this this way - let's just pretend Noct didn't exist and an AST was simply their Diurnal version. The job works, it's powerlevel is fine, or if you think it's a little underpowered, it's still a little underpowered. The complete removal of a stance makes basically no difference in the job, cept now it's not as good in PVP. This is why the Titan and Fist of Earth comparisons are valid. Use it in the limited game situations it makes sense to do so, otherwise just rock Diurnal and not worry about Noct. The in game gravity of this "issue" is non existant.

[Ghishlain]

I probably didn't express myself properly in that sentence.

Your spreadsheet shows different values for natural damage, disabled damage and "supervirused" damage for the same spell over a certain number of casts. When you look at the numbers, the variation in all three columns show that some Disabled values are lower than some "supervirused" values. We know that an AoE blast is not going to hit all targets for the same amount of damage, because not only the defense/magic defense values are different, but because the calculation is made individually. This means that the RNG part of the equation used to calculate damage can sometimes nullify the difference between the two skills in actual output.

Example: assume that the average damage of a hit is around 1K. That means Disable shoud reduce it to 900 and Supervirus should reduce it to 850; however, the 1K average damage is an average indeed: the maximum hit can be 1100 and the minimum hit can be 900. If you use Disable and the hits are closer to the minimum level, you'll see numbers that are lower than supervirused hits that are closer to the damage cap.

What I mean with my comparison is that the difference exists, but it can be negligible. In Thordan EX, for example, during the tank split for the two knights we may see two Holiest of Holy casts if the party can't burn down one of them in time; my group uses Supervirus in one of them and Disable for the other, and it's really hard to tell the difference between them because everyone is getting hit at the same time and the values are different every time.

Ahhh, I see what you mean then. If I can make a suggestion, I'd recommend you refrain from referring to the fact that Disable can match Virus with RNG involvement as, while technically true, isn't necessary an accurate statement for the majority of the times. It's like saying Virus is 50% more potent than Disable or can be double as effective as Disable thanks to RNG. While technically all those statement are technically true, they feel like they're exaggerating the basic analysis to one result or another and it's best we just talk about averages which does mean Virus > Disable in most normal circumstances.

When you are talking about 5% more speed or heal strength, you are really splitting hairs - its not much of a noticeable difference either way. When we were testing our DRK in either grit or non grit during the first phase of A3, our WHM found it did not change his healing/dps rotation one bit. And that’s 20% more mitigation. The 5% bonuses are basically token differences between the stances.

Look at this this way - let's just pretend Noct didn't exist and an AST was simply their Diurnal version. The job works, it's powerlevel is fine, or if you think it's a little underpowered, it's still a little underpowered. The complete removal of a stance makes basically no difference in the job, cept now it's not as good in PVP. This is why the Titan and Fist of Earth comparisons are valid. Use it in the limited game situations it makes sense to do so, otherwise just rock Diurnal and not worry about Noct. The in game gravity of this "issue" is non existant.

I understand your reasoning and logic but will have to disagree with your perception of the magnitude of the situation. With that being said, based on the comments of this post I'm fairly certain I won't be able to dissuade you from that argument either so I'm just going to have to agree to disagree with your stance.