Quote Originally Posted by Atoli View Post
As for changes to shields, well, we all knew they'd be coming at some point since Noct AST was so inferior to SCH.
Common misconception.
Nocturnal Aspected Benefic' shield is ~14% more potent than Adlo's (341 potency shield vs. 300), and Nocturnal Aspected Helios is ~26% better than Succor (189 potency shield vs 150).
Not to mention the fact that Aspected Benefic is instant, which is a big deal in itself.

Only Deployment Tactics and Adlo crits are "superior" to what AST has to offer. But this is relative as Deployment Tactics is only used on specific scenarios to reduce raid damage, while AST can just heal through that (unless very specific scenarios where the HP pool of the party isn't enough to survive a mechanic without DT, but that's quite the exception), and as Crit adlos are unreliable because of RNG, so in the end they just serve as a way to ease a "heal check" mechanic and improve DPS as you can switch in Cleric without having to care about healing someone, the shield already serving that purpose... but you still never plan your strategy around them, it's just "nice" when they happen.

So, if they buff N.AST's shield to the point where DT and Adlo crits aren't impactful enough to make the cut, the "shielding apsect" of healers might very well be put in the hands of N.AST.
For example, if Nocturnal Aspected Helios's shield passes the 200 potency, then it'll become just 100 potency away from a DT'd Adlo, which is quite scary if you think about it. Crit Adlo with Deployment tactics will obviously remains the most epic thing to pull off, but way too unreliable to take in consideration when comparing the two jobs.

I think we'll have to wait until we see the patch notes, because right now there's absolutly no way to even try to speculate about how much N.AST will get buffed. I don't think they will make the AST better than the SCH in the off-heal spot, but they'll probably be very close. We'll see.