diurnal sect or nocturnal sect which do you like better

[Kaurie]

Yes... the fairy that heals slower, at a lower potency than physick, cure, and benefic, and generally is in a stance that only allows it to use a party-wide Esuna once a minute. That fairy... I wouldn't trust Lily to heal through a dungeon, let alone a raid.

I generally use Eos over Selene, and her heals are quite powerful. Rouse + Whispering Dawn is amazing, buff up her heals with Fey Illum as well. Though the thing is Fairy is not solo, you have Fairy + your shields. With Noct, you have noct + no fairy. You lack:
- Crit shields
- higher potency shields
- Instant Cast AoE heal
- Deployment of large shields
- Eye for an Eye
- Regen of any sort while in shields
- Fairy healing (about 1/3 of your heals if you are using Whispering Dawn and heavy healing encounters like Seph Ex, otherwise 100% of your healing cuz u dun need to heal)
- Sacred Soil 10% damage reduction that can be cast and allow you to actually do other stuff such as move, deploy shields, succor, dps and so on
- Shadow Flare, AoE slow

Without the above, the shields of Noct just seem weak. Diurnal is the way to go

[MiniPrinny]

Though the thing is Fairy is not solo, you have Fairy + your shields. With Noct, you have noct + no fairy. You lack:
- Crit shields
- higher potency shields
- Instant Cast AoE heal
- Deployment of large shields
- Eye for an Eye
- Regen of any sort while in shields
- Fairy healing (about 1/3 of your heals if you are using Whispering Dawn and heavy healing encounters like Seph Ex, otherwise 100% of your healing cuz u dun need to heal)
- Sacred Soil 10% damage reduction that can be cast and allow you to actually do other stuff such as move, deploy shields, succor, dps and so on
- Shadow Flare, AoE slow

Without the above, the shields of Noct just seem weak. Diurnal is the way to go

Nocturnal Sect has benefits that Scholar doesn't, benefits that are often over looked... for some reason. From what I know comparing their skill sets:

- Instant cast healing for 10s every 150s
- Instant cast Benefic II on occasion
- A very potent (150 per tick) AoE regen and damage reduction barrier on a 90s CD
- A proper AoE heal that doesn't have a 30s CD
- Disable, which is better than Virus in every way
- Higher potency shields (not by much, but they are) that can scale up to 950 effective potency between the healing and shielding components on demand
- The ability to effortlessly heal two targets on demand with no micromanagement
- An AoE stun (not very useful in raids, incredibly useful in dungeons)
- The ability to reduce their enmity generation for a significant amount of time
- Higher potency DoTs that can't miss (Miasma and Aero can, Bio and Combust can not)
- A passive 5% boost to all healing spells (think of it like always having a slightly weaker over time Divine Seal active)
- And finally the cards, all six of which are exceptionally powerful, have a myriad of uses and applications, and can be used at almost any point in any fight.

Many of these are unique to Astrologian as a whole, yes, but these effects are part of what must be taken into consideration when looking at Nocturnal Sect. So no, I think what the problem really is that the metagame is overly rigid and stubborn to change. The Sect itself is fine.

[AlphaSonic]

snip

All those things that most of the time will be useless because or they are too niche to be useful in most of the situations or they are stupidly too hard to make it function. Who cares about instant casts (that aren't off global cooldown) unless you are getting interrupted or paralyzed. Who cares about being able to cast Helios when you partner can do that AoE healing and you just need to assist your partner if it needs help. Who cares about double target healing when in nearly most of the fights only 1 person are all people take damage.
And most of what you have listed would be useful, if Noc AST would be the main healer (and can be done by Diu AST except the shielding part)

[MiniPrinny]

And most of what you have listed would be useful, if Noc AST would be the main healer (and can be done by Diu AST except the shielding part)

And... what exactly is stopping a Nocturnal AST from doing this? Between the boosts to the Ewer, the regen-centric healing style of White Mage, White Mage's higher damage output than both Scholar and Astrologian, and finally the sheer fact that any group worth their salt will take a Machinist or Bard to restore MP during phase transitions because you're going to be taking a White Mage or Astrologian even with a Scholar... I don't see the problem.

[FeliAiko]

Snip.

- Lightspeed and Synastry are nice, but they're mainly niche skills. Synastry only became good when it got the Divine Seal type effect added onto it, which is how I see most ASTs use it, not for the dual-heal element. Incidentally this makes Diurnal better for Syn, as it makes your HoT ticks stronger.

- Ben II procs aren't instant, they just remove the cast times. You're still locked into the GCD when you use them, unlike actual instant heals like Lustrate and Indom.

- Indom (400 pot) is better than Helios (300 pot) on top of being instant cast and MP free.

- Disable is certainly not better than (Super)virus. The only time it's better is when there are specific enemy attacks that are potency based and not main-stat based. Examples are in A4S and Sephirot Extreme adds.

- Yes ASTs 2 DoTs have higher potency, but SCHs have Bio II, Bio, and Shadowflare and have an easier time maintaining those.

- Fey Wind is better than AST cards as it's a consistent reliable buff. Meanwhile to get the most of AST cards requires a lot of set up and RNG in your favour, which still ends up falling short of the DPS gain Fey Wind brings.

So no, I think what the problem really is that the metagame is overly rigid and stubborn to change. The Sect itself is fine.

The devs themselves have admitted that Noct is lacking compared to SCH's overall toolkit (primarily because of the Fairy), to the point they think the only option they have left is to boost the power of AST cards.