White Mage just might be okay

[Raminax]

You are correct the tooltip does say 200 (up from 190) in addition to the base 15% healing buff [1.5*(200+140*6)=1196 potency a different of 146 potency between WHM and AST; virtually an additional tick...

I'll correct my previous posts.

Sorry if I came off as a bit aggressive, by the way. Was a bit grumpy.

[Alkimi]

Isn't SCH's supposed new "utility" garbage though? Chain Stratagem I mean. Last I heard it's just bad because it doesn't do what litany does, aka multiplicative vs additive.

Example, with a base crit of 10%, litany adds to this (10+15=25%), while stratagem multiplies it (10*1.20=12%). I'd hardly call that utility.

We'll have to wait until it can be properly tested but the way it's worded would suggest that.

For example if you have a 30% crit rate then you have a 30/100 chance of a crit. Chain Strategem will change that to 30/80, or 37.5%. However if your crit rate is really low to begin with it, it will do very little.

So the more crit your party has the better it is. Everyone except MNK lost Internal Release so crit rates will be lower in general.

[Sebazy]

Was talking about savage in that case, i did every extreme and savage asap as AST - way too many people said you cant to it as AST. Stuff like that gets me fired up to hang in and spread the love xD

Are you actually saying you cleared A4S within 3.0 as AST?

Where's your Gobwalker =(

WHM will be absolutely fine in 4.0, it's just too HPS centric for most peoples tastes as things stand right now. Even I'd be hard pushed to defend it's value in more trivial content and late/post echo savage.

AST in 3.0 was an undertuned play it safe mess that was thrown face first into the hardest main raid tier this game is likely to ever see. In a perfect dream world run, it could clear the content. But with real people making real mistakes in the real meat blender that was A3S, it just wasn't happening until people got significantly more gear, it just couldn't catch back up the moment anyone put a foot out of line or missed a cooldown. Fiery Tail's group demonstrated that well sadly =(

[Semirhage]

Totally fine in 4.0 is a reasonable stance to take. I choose to find a full expansion worth of new playstyle leaving my main job at "could be worse" pretty unsatisfying.

[Risvertasashi]

WHM will be absolutely fine in 4.0, it's just too HPS centric for most peoples tastes as things stand right now. Even I'd be hard pushed to defend it's value in more trivial content and late/post echo savage

Totally fine in 4.0 is a reasonable stance to take. I choose to find a full expansion worth of new playstyle leaving my main job at "could be worse" pretty unsatisfying.

I mean if all you want to do is expert roulette and story quest, yeah 4.0 WHM will be able to get the job done. With hopefully not too much abuse from DF players.

it's just too HPS centric for most peoples tastes

I keep seeing this coming up so let me say it again... The problem is even here, WHM is outclassed. PLD is a good example of a job shaping up to be the best at mitigation/MTing, while still leaving the others to fill in for higher DPS comps.

WHM can't even heal the best. Supposing SE does release some content that requires extreme levels of healing... AST will still be better (unless adjusted before 4.0 drops). In fact, in such an example, there would be an extreme where AST could meet heal checks and WHM could not (and SE feels this adjustment is necessary when WHM is already being shunned somewhat). That's a big part of why people are upset and saying SB WHM is not fine.

[Sebazy]

I mean if all you want to do is expert roulette and story quest, yeah 4.0 WHM will be able to get the job done. With hopefully not too much abuse from DF players.

What? Progression raiding is what I play this game for (as well as every other MMO I've stuck with since Everquest). I'll be busy working on Omega Savage with my static right from the word go, we are still keeping our healing options firmly open until we see the final potency values and such as well as critically, the actual content we are going to be up against.

As far as the HPS side of things goes, whilst I suspect the Lily system is going to be pretty trashy irrespective of what you're doing, don't underestimate how well PI is going to scale in situations where a WHM is actually spam curing one or both tanks. It'll be usable almost on CD in these situations and will significantly outstrip AST's current potency advantage. Lady cards will be tasty but they suffer the same RNG upon RNG death as Lily II and aren't likely to be dependable for sustained HPS.

And before you play the 'but muh 900 potency Earthly Star' card, I'll be very very surprised if that ability goes live with it's current potency values. I also wouldn't be that surprised to see all 3 healers baseline cure/cureII values get adjusted slightly as well. Despite how close to launch we are, the tooltips we've seen have been incredibly rough around the edges in places. It's kind of unnerving how much tuning Yoshida's team still needs to do.

[Risvertasashi]

What? Progression raiding is what I play this game for (as well as every other MMO I've stuck with since Everquest). I'll be busy working on Omega Savage with my static right from the word go, we are still keeping our healing options firmly open until we see the final potency values and such as well as critically, the actual content we are going to be up against.

You are fortunate to have a static. Fortunately I do too, and yeah, they'll let me take WHM if I really want to, even if everything we've seen so far remains unadjusted. I'll be holding off on my decision on which healer to level first until the dataminers get a crack at the actual patch. And you are right that PI could be useful in situations where there's damage on both tanks (a la T11, Faust, etc), but that still seems pretty niche... just like cure III, really.

Now as to your last paragraph. That is exactly why we are giving feedback, and want to keep doing so. If it's at all possible, we really do not want what we saw to go live. Because if it does go live, even if you already have a static that's willing to let you play whatever, any time you want to PF something as WHM will be very miserable and it may take half a year or longer for SE to move on a serious adjustment.

Even as of 3.4, quite a few static recruitment PFs have locked out WHM, as well as PFs for getting actual content done via pugging. So it's not like we're talking purely theoreticals here.

[Ceasaria]

Example SCH still has all her/his fey's and HoTs; while AST doesn't have anything unique to compete with those utilities

Agree

AST wins in terms of instant heals comparing Earth star vs Indom (but you can use indom more often to get more potency)

Use Indom more often means lose more Energy Drain, which is bad.

AST has Synastry which is OP at 40% single target, but sch has 2 healing buffs dissipation and Fey illumination(and fey buffs every's heals) that can combine for 40% and be used to benefit aoe;

Ok, but AST has Lightspeed too which is very useful.

AST wins with their helio 345 potency vs SCH emergency tactic succor of 300 potency-- still comparable

+ You can spam Helios but you can't spam emergency tactics.

Scared soil and Collective Unconscious are tied b/c of situational benefits -mobility and regen and recast time are the factors.

Agree

of course nobody is touching AST card system..... but in terms of dps... at least SCH has its own form of Battle litany and its a shorter recast than the real thing...

And this is where the future of SCH could be determined.
Chain Stratagem could be better than battle litany or according to some people, it could be just bad because it would multiply your %critical hit.

AST Aspect Benefic saw a nice lil bump! But it can't match the Embrace spam every 3 sec (effective_Hots : AB 199pot/tick Embrace 300pot/tick)

Why compare AST diurne to SCH ?
For me it's simple, I will use my shield 230 +690 = 920 to compete to Fairy potency 250 (and not 300).
So every 12 sec, I have to cast one spell to catch up with fairy heal (920 vs 1000).
if Chain Stratagem is bad, then WHM dps + AST dps will surpass AST dps + SCH dps without a doubt.

And sch retained rouse which increase pet efficiency by 40%!
Last thing we can mention about AST is they do have the RNG potential to use "bad" draws on a 500 potency ogcd heal.... basically every 30 sec u get a potential 50/50....that really nice and dependable over a long fight sequence that you'll get more than none.

Ok

Moral of this story only way SCH gets displaced by AST is if the raid needs the uber AOE HEALS that only the WHM can provide consistently.... otherwise in optimal dps compositions its gonna be AST/SCH or AST/AST....

My conclusion :
- AST Noct better than SCH (shield, heal and DPS team)
- WHM better than SCH because of its own DPS and bring more heal than Scholar.
- AST maybe could be better than WHM (if we go with double AST), but that's mean less skills diversity and LB gauge fill slowly. The problem is the cards effects don't stack.

1st compo : WHM / AST (noct)
2nd compo : AST (diur) / SCH
3rd compo : WHM / SCH
4th compo : AST (diur) / AST (noct)

[OcieKo]

Some things to consider about the AST Earthly Star rage going on.
When does its 60s CD begin, when dropped or when detonated? Im assuming itll be on detonation, making the CE effectively 70s+
Does it have a maximum duration? i.e. Without AST input will it blow up after 15s.
Will the potency boost be a ramp up or flat? (Current impression is flat)

Also please stop comparing lilies to spear... Big difference in reliability of use, its not just is it up or not for AST.
Start looking at MP efficiency and sustain. Pretty sure WHM is still winning this. If fights get more MP intensive, this will become a factor. AST is losing its ONLY reliable MP gain, the remaining one is also a component of our DPS boosting utility. Also you have better MP maintenance skills than lightspeed. Albiet the components on WHM are on 2 different buttons, but on the MP side vastly stronger. Also do we know if the -DMG on Lightspeed is staying in 4.X, if so PoM outclasses it purely for always being an option not just for pure healing segments.
Stop complaining about Fluid Aura losing its dmg, 1 almost all CC OGCD lost theirs, 2 it made CC useless in this game and hard to build into fights due to DR, its purpose was breathing room, now its simply the only thing its used for.
Reliability, seems to be undervalued to non-ASTs, theres a lot to be said for knowing what youll be able to do every minute.
While overall having +healing on diurnal is a buff, the spell speed is being taken away, which does reduce how much of a net gain it is to AST regens. 3.X had spell speed affect potency of DoT/HoT type skills/spells.

Note on if Regens being able to proc lilies: does anyone know if this game has tracking for overhealing in place, since if they did allow regens to proc lilies, pure overheal ticks shouldnt get a chance. As seems to be popular in healer forums "sub-optimal play shouldn't be encouraged by the game".
Lilies will need #s work, but having to use Cure 1/2 isnt the end of the world, both WHMs and Diurnal ASTs are guilty of lazily using unnessary regens and aspected benefics where they really arent needed. I do suspect that 1 lilly 4% joke will get buffed up and likely the 2 lily as well as a result of the previous buff.
Confession: aside from the active tank, 30s can be too short, since it has a low stack limit, maybe a higher proc chance, but also may have to do with preventing it from becoming a reliable aoe heal, more of a 1-2 target to help between the GCD heals while changing back and forth. Also I get the feeling people aren't acknowledging its 30s from MOST RECENT stack applied, not just goes up 30s later goes down. Tho with its attached ability being way shorter of a CD, i think people are putting too much focus in having this EVERYWHERE fully stacked, rather than anywhere very often.
Do take note most of the OGCD heals lilies can reduce the CDs of ALREADY had their original CDs slashed, and pretty significantly. While sure that measly 6 seconds off a 60s CD wont get much more use per fight but, does the same reduction sound better when its 9s off of 90, or 18s off 180... if you look at the total reduction of cooldown from the current, its pretty big.

[Risvertasashi]

Start looking at MP efficiency and sustain. Pretty sure WHM is still winning this.

While WHM did get some love on MP management:
1. WHM spells are still more expensive
2. AST can still extend the new MP recovery action (this was playtested). Even in its current iteration as of 3.4/3.5, this is powerful enough to take an AST from empty to full MP.