3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

[Marxam]

Still no mention on AST with Nocturnal Sect. It is honestly the single most broken skill and coupled with the fact that you now have to deal 15% damage to interrupt casts. They either need to address how barrier heals work or simply reduce the amount it heals in PvP because running and healing with a barrier to mitigate is too unfair for most opposing teams. Speaking from experience whenever I see an AST in the opposing team I get another dps with me (I'm war) to help take them down asap. So you basically we've resorted to a "Kill healers first" strategy which is what Yoshi doesn't want teams to resort to.

[RiceisNice]

[QUOTE=Marxam;3622009]Still no mention on AST with Nocturnal Sect. It is honestly the single most broken skill and coupled with the fact that you now have to deal 15% damage to interrupt casts.[ /QUOTE]

A Nocturnal astro lacks healing capabilities from my experience. The moment the fight starts dragging on and your entire party starts needing heals, they start ot fall behind on it. Though with the adjustments to cast interrupts still bother me in relation to nocturnal astros, the hp threshold becomes even higher to the point of it becoming surecast.

[tehomegaking]

[INDENT]

• Damage received is less than 15% of max HP → Casting succeeds.
• Damage received is 15% or more of max HP → Casting is interrupted.
• Sleep/Stun/Silence → Casting is interrupted (no change).

You placed so much power in casters hands due to the low availability of casts through interruptions, this change is basically removing the interuptions for the most part while leaving their skill sets un-changed. I can't see how this can lead to anything but extreme imbalances. Yes this will address the issue with low skilled players being useless, but at what cost? Good healers will be nigh on invincible, blms will literally be walking gods, cc machines with insanely powerful, consistent damage.

To me this is just saying, okay our original system (which worked) is too daunting for too many players, so lets scrap the aspect that people find the hardest, while keeping everything else the same. I can't see this working, if you are going to make such a dramatic change, you need to do a total re-balancing, a partial one like this will only lead to heavy class imbalances as you are just throwing a wrench into what was a finely tuned system. To me it looks like you are trying to give people what they want (freecasting with occasional interrupts, standard mmo fare) while desperately grasping to hold your original system/vision in place. I don't think you can mix the two, it's one or the other. I hope if you do decide to give the people what they want, that you come to a pvp system very close to WoW's 3.3.5a patch... that was pvp as it should be.

[Fyce]

Still no mention on AST with Nocturnal Sect. It is honestly the single most broken skill and coupled with the fact that you now have to deal 15% damage to interrupt casts. They either need to address how barrier heals work or simply reduce the amount it heals in PvP because running and healing with a barrier to mitigate is too unfair for most opposing teams. Speaking from experience whenever I see an AST in the opposing team I get another dps with me (I'm war) to help take them down asap. So you basically we've resorted to a "Kill healers first" strategy which is what Yoshi doesn't want teams to resort to.

Noct.AB was already nerfed (shield halved in PvP). If you nerf it even more, then Noct AST will be completly useless in PvP.
It's already quite vulnerable to DoTs and an AST doesn't have the tools of a WHM to get rid of the harasser tank (Fluid Aura+Sleep combo).

N.AB has rougly the same potency as a Benefic in PvP. You can't just spam that and keep everyone alive, the enemy DPS will outdamage your healing/shielding output anyway.
In short terms, a Noct AST doesn't have much besides Noct.AB and that's the main reason while you'd even consider going Nocturnal. You'll be able to heal through fluff damage quite easily, but any focused burst will eat one or more of your cooldowns (Lightspeed, Equanimity, Synastry...). Any CC coming your way at this very moment will mean the death of your teammate(s), and you can't count on regens to help your team endure the damage while recovering from CC.

Just like SMN is a noob killer (big predictable burst which will only surprise oblivious players), a Noct.AST will be a piece of cake to play against noob DPS who can't focus on something. It's balanced by the fact that this doesn't work as well (in fact it may not work at all) against good and experienced players.