AST buffs in 3.4 Changes to Barries and Cards.

[Rennies]

Can confirm they commented on being interested in feedback regarding B2 proc on the JP board. That was months ago though, so who knows where they went with it, if they even did anything.

Anyway, pretty excited. I want these patch notes.

It's likely that they knew for a long time they'd be making a larger set of changes, and they wanted to save the B2 proc change for the patch 3.4 adjustments

[ZAZX]

CO is probably going to change to be a more noticeable effect. Right now it relies a lot on invisible power. You're hardly going to notice the damage gained from 5 extra seconds of a Balance card or 1-2 extra ticks of your 40 potency regen.

If you're using CO purely to extend cards, you're a fool. It's very useful when you factor in extending Synastry, Lumin. Aether, and Lightspeed.

Five extra seconds of Lightspeed is INSANE. Ignoring the burst healing potential, when combining it with Swiftcast you can raise FOUR people in less than twenty seconds for a total of 75% less mana spent while your off healer covers you. I've done it before and it feels glorious.
Five extra seconds on L. Aether can get you an extra tick of mana refresh, maybe two if you time it correctly.
Synastry is just a longer Divine Seal with its bonus benefits.

On top of that, CO's CD timer lines up well with all three of those buffs. It's an intentional design that so many people miss and it saddens me.

I've mained AST since 3.0 and CO is by far my favorite skill. For the casual Astrologian it may seem lacking, but for the raiding one it's an essential part of our toolkit.

[KarstenS]

Only Deployment Tactics and Adlo crits are "superior" to what AST has to offer.

There is way more than this.

Best example where I really feel what Noct AST is lacking is in A8S (we are running WHM/Noct AST combo). I also think, they had not really looked at how this combination of healers is working in this turn.

The first two phases are no big issue.

But starting with Brute Justice the utility of the Noct AST is falling far behind the SCH.

While the SCH has deployment Tactics (perferred on WAR in defiance + Convalescence) OR Succor + Fey Covenant for the rounds of short-, long, short needles, the Noct AST has nothing else than Aspected Helios and in one of the rounds he can refresh Aspected Helios while under Lightspeed.

We had alot of deaths before we figured out an mostly successfull way to workaround this missing amount of migitation, including def CDs, Chakra, no Blood for Blood during needles after the first intermission and finally some VIT5 materia for classes without def CDs or Chakra.

One thing that also hurts is the way Collective Unconscious is working.

The big point of Sacred Soil is: Its fully separate. You place it and can continue with other actions. You can refresh Succor/Adlo, heal or deal damage while the shield is up. Also you can use Whispering Dawn at a different time than Sacred Soil. Collective Unconscious is Scared Soil and Wispering Dawn in one ability and you are not able to perform any other action during the time the shield is up. BTW: Whispering Dawn can be buffed by Mantra and Fey Illumination. As Collective Unconscious is an ability, it will not get buffed.

Big point for Fey Illumination: It is buffing both healers. So Divine Seal or the Buff of Synastry can be used another time.

Also: A SCH can stack all his migitation together the same time or in a combination you need it (looking at the very last phase of A8S, where I think we will not be able to survive the same amount of time, like a SCH could make it possible).

[tjw]

-snip-

Karsten has the gist of it. It comes down to the SCH kit having far greater synergy with itself and with the co-healer than Nocturnal AST has. Yes, Nocturnal Field is naturally stronger than Galvanise, but the entire skillset of Eos outweighs that strength of Nocturnal Field. Time Dilation has no effect on a Nocturnal AST's healing throughput, and by extension, CO as well, so that's two utility skills that are wasted on Nocturnal AST. The mobility factor of instant cast shields is negated by Lustrates and a placed faerie heal turret. The rest of the SCH's toolkit (deploy, emergency, indomitability, virus, eye for an eye, and increased uptime of DPS) outweigh the few strengths that the Nocturnal AST brings to the table.

[Valknut]

Snip.

I think Disable and Super Virus are pretty comparable no? EIther way, Sch's keep pointing out the instant shields and higher potency's but ignore the fact that an instant shield isnt better then a cast time shield when everyone knows when the dmg is coming.

Th fairy is going to be the hardest thing for N.ast to overcome. They lack the Mana management and huge amount of healing/buffs that it provides at an extremely consistant rate. Math says Selenes buff = an Aoe card, and the Aoe card isn't a 100% thing. An SCH's arent even using Selene so what does that tell you.This on top of SCH's higher up time DPSing. SCH has everything any healer ever wanted needed plus a bit. For having such a high amount of utility/healing/mitigation it really isn't lacking anywhere.

[tjw]

I think Disable and Super Virus are pretty comparable no?

Remember what I said about synergy? In a bubble, Disable is comparable to Virus, and in some cases superior (see: darkness damage). However SCHs can combine Virus with Sacred Soil, Fey Covenant, Deployment, Eye for an Eye, heck even a Fey Illumed and Dissipated Succor for some even more mitigation. ASTs have CU which is less reliable than Sacred Soil, and the off chance of an expanded Bole and Synastried Aspected Helios but then their mitigation steam runs out.

[Fyce]

The design of the two classes is very different, making comparisons in a vacuum like that is worthless.
N.AST has a better healing power than SCH when it comes to sustained healing and MP management. SCH can't afford to top its party after every mitigated mechanic as using Emergency Tactics+Succor is a huge mana loss. You could use Indom, but that cuts you from any instant group healing and uses a flow stack... and it won't be available everytime. Using a Helios after a mechanic is way more affordable.

The intended way to deal with stuff as a SCH is to mitigate as much as possible through the use of its huge cooldown toolkit, and then letting the WHM deal with the post-mechanic damage (or poping Whispering Dawn for good measure) while going in Cleric to get back DPSing.
N.AST's toolkit is much more reduced, but post-mechanic heal being both powerful and affordable makes up for the increased damage the party would take. It also ease the WHM's job where Medica+Helios would do the job instead of a situational Cure III. I'm pretty sure that the WHM would be able to DPS way more with a N.AST than with a SCH due to simply sharing the party-heal duty. It does require extremely good coordination tho'.

Mitigating or healing damage share the same goal, so, as long as you can leave your party above 0HP after a mechanic, it doesn't really matter what you do to achieve that.
The issue with N.AST is that its sustained DPS wasn't good enough to make the cut compared to a SCH, but the way they both maintain their party alive was fine. So, now, with buffs to the cards, this DPS issue might get more or less solved, and the buffs to shields will allow for more overall mitigation, ensuring that it's enough for probably every upcoming mechanic.

[KaiserDrill]

I was thinking of possible ways for the devs to make Astro Noct stance stronger, without insulting scholars, and also without being unbalanced. What if noct stance allowed the astro the benefits of cleric stance dps, but the shields no longer heal, however still having the non-cleric stance or slightly reduced from its current numbers on the shield. Also give the option to swap in battle,but make it so the shields drop off if you change to diurnal.

[zuzu-bq]

Snip

Nice to see someone that understands the design between the jobs. Thats rare on the healer forums.

Nocturnal AST kit doesn't only make him a unique healer completly different form his Diurnal counterpart and SCH but also makes his co-healer heal differently just like SCHs have to do a few stuff differently depending with who they're paired with. My group run the WHM AST duo and my WHM does a lot of stuff different than he'd do with a SCH so they can complement themselves properly. Is it weaker than having a SCH, surely is and we miss the power to have Sacred Soil and Indomns but its been working on all Savage turns and the upcoming buffs will be welcomed since we were mainly afraid about early progression on Creator. Noct AST do have some few advantages over SCH though but pretty much anything that isn't J Waves make that stand out.

Snip

Yeah we felt also something lacking on A8S with our duo. But we managed to turn it away by looking for how other player could help the maximum to help healing, timing Apocatastasis, Rend Minds, Untraited Viruses, Untraited Mantras and Divine Veils differently than a party with a SCH would do, playing with a job out of the box we had to twist our thinking out of the box as well. We had a run were our WHM died on J Storm by healers' mistakes and our AST healed 9 waves alone without anyone dying and kept everyone else alive until the 11th wave. A SCH wouldn't be able to do that.

I think Disable and Super Virus are pretty comparable no?

You can indeed compare them just like you can compare Collective Unconscious with Sacred Soil. But can't forget all those abilities stack together on a AST SCH duo. Virus and Disable together and both shield bubbles together.

If you're using CO purely to extend cards, you're a fool. It's very useful when you factor in extending Synastry, Lumin. Aether, and Lightspeed.

Can also extend Mind Potions! And people still asks for buffs tsk tsk.

[Rennies]

If you're using CO purely to extend cards, you're a fool. It's very useful when you factor in extending Synastry, Lumin. Aether, and Lightspeed.


Five extra seconds on L. Aether can get you an extra tick of mana refresh, maybe two if you time it correctly.
Synastry is just a longer Divine Seal with its bonus benefits.

On top of that, CO's CD timer lines up well with all three of those buffs. It's an intentional design that so many people miss and it saddens me.

I've mained AST since 3.0 and CO is by far my favorite skill. For the casual Astrologian it may seem lacking, but for the raiding one it's an essential part of our toolkit.

:P I primarily use CO for the mana regen increase. It still feels like it could potentially be something much more interesting though.