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

[Supersun]

Why does Scholar's SSS have the lowest requirements when Scholar can get 450 potency with oGCDs and Ast has nothing consistent to match it?

Arrow can probably make up a lot more than 450 oGDC every minute.

[Rennies]

Possibly, but I said consistent. 2 out of 6 cards will give you a DPS boost.

[Supersun]

Possibly, but I said consistent. 2 out of 6 cards will give you a DPS boost.

Yeah, but you can also wait for a balance to pop up before you begin, royal road it, pop a mind potion and actually have something of a semblance of an opener.

[Rawrz]

Possibly, but I said consistent. 2 out of 6 cards will give you a DPS boost.

Your first card is 100% guaranteed. They made it so you don't lose your cards upon entering a duty for this purpose. If you spread a 5% balance to the party on an opener you get back 5% compounded with their buffs... for 30 seconds. At minimum, you can buff yourself with these same cards. Enhanced balance feels pretty good, even on yourself for solo sss. Combust II is an absolute marvel. With a whopping 45 base potency, you don't have to compare it to combust to see which is more damage effecient. On scholar you have to say, zoom doom is coming. Is it more dps effecient to Miasma now (18 seconds, 20 for with cast), bio (15 seconds, or 6 seconds With energy drain), burst Aero for Windows between the 9 and 12 second mark with energy drain, or just broil if others can't beat it's potency. AST will always be able to put up combust II, over combust so long as it will be on the target for at least 15 seconds. If not you have a 200 potency nuke.

[Jukebox12]

Would love a dps increase. That is i feel is needed until 4.0

[zuzu-bq]

I think they'll focus more on balancing Nocturnal AST for 4.0. So Unfortunately we'll stick with SCH meta until next raid. Outside than that Nocturnal isn't a bad healer by design, its just SCH that is too strong.

[Rawrz]

I think they'll focus more on balancing Nocturnal AST for 4.0. So Unfortunately we'll stick with SCH meta until next raid. Outside than that Nocturnal isn't a bad healer by design, its just SCH that is too strong.

This is exactly what Kabzy was trying to explain wasn't true. AST is a great main healer with it's diurnal sect. SCH is a great off healer with it's fairy and aetherflow management. AST is a much weaker off healer, because its selling role is to main heal. SCH do not main heal, not because they can't, but because WHM/AST are much stronger main healers and less adapted to off heal. WHM and AST should compete for the main heal slot. SE needs to introduce a healer, who like SCH, can off heal very efficiently, but might struggle compared to AST/WHM main healing, so that SCH can be balanced by this fourth healer. AST cannot be an excellent main healer and off healer and expect to call it balance. A buff to time dialation and celestial opposition in nocturnal is all I'd be behind.


Tldr:
SCH isn't broken. It needs another healer who can compete with it in the off heal slot. AST having every role isn't balance and what is causing it's jack of all trades issues.

[Esmir]

While not broken, its identity is extremely strong. Let's apply your logic to focusing AST as an off healer with the main healer idea being removed.
IMO, WHM being the main healer is its identity. I feel SE struggles to balance AST as a main healer due to the fact it can buff while having WHM level healing. That idea in itself is dangerous for the health of WHM and AST.

WHM= burst healing, regen
AST (diurnal) = burst healing, regen, buffs
SCH= mitigation, dps, faerie

Give AST too much healing and proper balancing, bye bye white mage due to it's additional buffing nature. I feel that AST's best chance at proper balance would be to compete with SCH simply because SCH is a strong, healthy competitor.

Thanks for reading!

[Kabzy]

-Snip-

It's interesting that you talk about job identities, because that's the one area that they failed on with AST, and it's most likely the reason that this job has been atrocious to balance.

Buffs won't help Noct. Sect at this point. It is widely recognised that SCH excels in its' role due to the fairies presence. If you look at SCHs healing identity, it's all about shielding, and AST is already more potent in that, outside of D.Tactics.

This is why the best solution would be to have a fourth healer that can compete with SCHs healing output while in Cleric Stance. It would be a little much to give AST yet another new toolkit to deal with that too.

[Esmir]

Thanks!

My idea:

Make celestial opposition regen like the faerie. OGCD same CD as Eos.

Have a stronger healing potency to make up for the lack of faerie. Or have a higher number of uses of essential dignity. AST then has the "speed" identity maximized that they seem to want.
One difference from SCH: Less dmg than SCH due to being more "healer" focused.

The comparison is now:
Sch= mitigation, stronger dps, faerie regen, faerie heals, atk speed buff
AST= mitigation, weaker dps, "faerie" regen (CO and CU), buffs, Fast(er) casts, stronger heals

Done! This keeps AST with a stronger identity that is competitive to SCH, and strong enough for AST x SCH comps in Duty Finder.