How would you change Nocturnal AST to be competitive against SCH?

[Rawrz]

or.............. You could give WHM a chance to shine as the off healer.

I still feel that pushing a nocturnal AST into the off heal slot, when with a WHM cohealer, is one of the reasons people feel Noct AST is so weak. They are trying to perform a role that they aren't equipped at. Diurnal AST would make a better off healer than Nocturnal (Increased DPS and Regens.) Noct Asts have the choice between minimizing overheal and preemptive mitigation with shields or raw HP catch up with Ben II/Helios, making them efficient at main healing with Noct's healing potency buff.

They do not have as many instant cast abilities that they could pop off right after Cleric Stance, but from a main heal point of view its okay. They have 2 powerful DoTs (Combust II is the most powerful Healer DoT in the game) both of which can't miss if you don't gear for accuracy. If you do build some accuracy, you can put all your DoTs out in a single Cleric Stance lock out.

Noct Aspected Ben ~> Cleric Stance on~> Combust II ~> Combust ~> Aero ~> Cleric Stance Weave off ~> Noct Aspected Ben

You can increase DPS without risking a cleric stance lockout with cards. ASTs have the power to sustain the most DPS heavy healer in the game, WHM, into the off heal role. One ewer is a balance.

Just a few things I think about. I always love to see a good AST heal. Too bad we can't share a mind bonus just yet, as sch and ast. :c

I just find it funny that WHM is always the main heal in every party, when they have a really good DPS and HoT heal kit.

Ast does need a buff to their Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation while in nocturnal to synergize with their shielding aspect, but other than that I wouldn't touch it.

[_slowpoke_]

or.............. You could give WHM a chance to shine as the off healer.

WHM cannot "shine as an off-healer" because they don't have the MP solvency for sustained DPS in longer fights, you will simply run dry after just a few minutes without extensive outside assistance, and the same is mostly true for AST (unless you keep throwing Ewers on yourself, and that's the shittiest possible thing to do with an Ewer in raid content). That is a major part of why SCH is the dedicated off-healer and will continue to be - basically infinite MP while DPSing, there's no contest here.

[Rawrz]

WHM cannot "shine as an off-healer" because they don't have the MP solvency for sustained DPS in longer fights, you will simply run dry after just a few minutes without extensive outside assistance, and the same is mostly true for AST (unless you keep throwing Ewers on yourself, and that's the shittiest possible thing to do with an Ewer in raid content). That is a major part of why SCH is the dedicated off-healer and will continue to be - basically infinite MP while DPSing, there's no contest here.

Maybe SE should look into that, if you really want to achieve Balance by all three equal opportunity at the main heal and off heal slots. I accidentally deleted the part when i said that, maybe, AST could share luminiferous aether, like a goad that hits a party member as well as yourself, while formatting to bypass character limit.

Offensively, MP is a ridiculous struggle for WHM, but both AST and WHM gear heavily for piety. The cards are stacked allot worse for AST, since their heals are the only things subsidized, which i feel their mp management is centered around. A little push towards mp recovery or subsidation would go a long way. (Something similar to the cure 2/3 proc while under the effect of cleric stance, between Aero, Aero II, Aero III and maybe a 100% chance to lower the cost of Stone III by half after casting stone II.)

Maybe in 4.0 we'll see some exciting interactions between the (4?!) Healers.

[_slowpoke_]

Maybe SE should look into that, if you really want to achieve Balance by all three equal opportunity at the main heal and off heal slots.

Uh, but why would you do that? Having semi-specialized healers is a good thing, removing this would not only severely homogenize all healing jobs, but also make the healing meta in this game extremely uninteresting. The problem is not that the main healers can't off-heal, the problem is that we only have one job that is viable for off-healing, and the only other one that could theoretically fill the slot is a broken mess. As I've said multiple times before, it is unlikely this will change before 4.0 (or even later) because a) that's the earliest they can fundamentally redesign Nocturnal AST (since buffs won't cut it), and b) it's the earliest we can get another healing job (though I suspect we'll have to wait way into the expansion for that because SE have said they won't do 3 jobs at once again, and I suspect the first job they do in the next expansion won't be a healer).