diurnal sect or nocturnal sect which do you like better

[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.

[LDR]

I preffer to go Diurnal

despite maining SCH for ages i do preffer HoT over shielding tbh if only because for the way I play it gives me more room to do other stuff.
i just never got on with the WHM kit much so i went SCH initially and learnt from there

strange how I feel the AST kit is closer in similarity to the WHM kit yet i feel the least synergy with WHM and more with AST on equal level to SCH

ive tried Noct but i often feel like, by the time ive shielded, gone cleric and DoT'ed its gone and i have to go back to healing.

[LadyVal]

*snip*

Wait, what? There is no way your shields are stronger than SCH. If I crit adlo for 8,000 damage, my shield nullifies 16,000 damage. If you put up a shield for 8,000 damage, you prevent 10,400 damage. Even with smaller numbers my 5k crit will prevent 10k damage and your 5k shield will prevent 6.5k. Our shield don't double potency when they crit, they just make a shield that is double what the crit amount was. I admit I am bad at math so if you can break down how AST shields are stronger in terms of numbers, then please do.

(Also maybe don't list Bio as an example of a DoT you get that can't miss as an advantage over SCH since... you get that from ACN/SMN/SCH.)

[Sapphidia]

I admit I am bad at math so if you can break down how AST shields are stronger in terms of numbers, then please do.

Obviously a guaranteed Crit adloquium will be stronger, but you can't look at the -maximum- shield size when comparing them, you have to look at the average, and that's dependant on Crit Chance. Scholar shields are 100% of the heal amount normally, but 200% of the doubled heal amount on a crit. AST shields are always 130% of the heal amount regardless of whether it crits or not. Obviously in the unrealistic situations of having 0% crit chance, AST will be around 30% stronger shields than a Scholar, and in the situation with huge amounts of Crit chance the scholar will win out.

Not sure of the exact break point of crit as I don't have time to do the math just now as I dont have heal potencies to hand, but it's likely somewhere around 25% crit chance where a Scholar starts doing on -average- more shieldage than an AST, but it's not clear cut. AST has the advantage in lower gear levels or where crit isnt particularly common on gear in a particular tier, Scholar has the advantage when geared to the hilt with high crit.

And even so, although Scholar -can- always push out much higher shields, AST has the advantage of always being able to guarantee that their shields are a base amount higher than the weakest scholar shield. I guess it depends on what's better for an encounter - a small shield that's sometimes randomly a stupidly huge shield, or a fairly consistant medium sized shield.

[Ragology]

(Also maybe don't list Bio as an example of a DoT you get that can't miss as an advantage over SCH since... you get that from ACN/SMN/SCH.)

AST can't access bio since they cross class CNJ and THM.

[Ghishlain]

Wait, what? There is no way your shields are stronger than SCH. If I crit adlo for 8,000 damage, my shield nullifies 16,000 damage. If you put up a shield for 8,000 damage, you prevent 10,400 damage. Even with smaller numbers my 5k crit will prevent 10k damage and your 5k shield will prevent 6.5k. Our shield don't double potency when they crit, they just make a shield that is double what the crit amount was. I admit I am bad at math so if you can break down how AST shields are stronger in terms of numbers, then please do.

If you don't include Crit, Noct AST shields are stronger by approximately 13%.

However you can't ignore Crit when calculating the two side by side because Crit provides such an insane bonus to Adlo that it wouldn't be a fair comparison to not include this RNG component.

Overall as long as the SCH has 10% Crit, their average Shield strength will be better than Noct AST Aspected Benefic.

You can find my theorycraft / math about this on this thread here.

Also I disagree with Miniprinny about the fact that Disable is "always better" than Virus. Virus will win if the tank buster is approximately every 90s+ since you'll get a Supervirus of 15% off on each tank buster versus Disable's 10% every tankbuster. Likewise, if a tank buster is every 60s that means you'll get Disable on every tank buster whereas Virus every other tank buster. It's all a matter of circumstances. However, if you compare the two side-by-side, Disable provides 10% mitigation for 18s total every three minutes and Supervirus provides 15% mitigation for 20s total every three minutes and therefore Supervirus is generally superior.

Overall, at this point in time Noct AST provides a mitigation kit that's different from how SCH provides mitigation because of the way the two are designed.

[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.

[LadyVal]

*snip*

I see! This makes a lot of sense. I suppose it would be easier to assume through experience that AST has better shields because you're not relying on crit and have a higher baseline, especially in lower-level content where crit is a minimal stat. Your last statement makes a lot of sense too.

AST can't access bio since they cross class CNJ and THM.

I only added this because the original wording makes it sound like she is saying AST have better DoTs that cannot miss, with Bio being one of them.

*snip*

Aha, that makes a lot of sense. Even looking through your numbers it seems like, as Sapphidia said, it only makes a difference once you pass that 10% crit margin, so you would really need to have a lot of crit to reach that point. And even then you really need to keep your crit maxed out to see large differences, it seems. Thanks for the link, was an informative read!

I guess now all I'm left wondering is why AST shields and regens compete with SCH and WHM, and why the system can't just let players keep whichever buff has the higher potency, instead of always replacing each other regardless of potency. But that is for another topic I suppose. :P