balance through Balance

[Caduagm]

more blah blah blah

Not gonna take it serious because in Lakshmi fights you get around 3-4 lords (just so you know) and Scholar has free energy drains if they use eos.

[deos]

[math]

just for fun i wanted to check what the numbers for WHM are under the same conditions

aero II: 7 GCDs * 50 initial potency + 2000 dot potency = 2350 potency/2min
aero III: 5 GCDs * 50 initial potency + 1600 dot potency = 1850 potency/2min
assize: 300 potency * 2 = 600 potency/2min
stone IV: 250 potency * 48 GCDs = 12000 potency/2min
TOTAL: 16800 potency/2min
(note: math is missing PoM influence)

about 10% over SCH and almost 15% over AST, wow
thats way more than i expected

edit: totally forgot to write my on-topic thoughts...
i firmly beleave balance sould be nerfed back down to 10%, not only for the sake of balancing the healer jobs, but also to make other cards viable again

[LegoTechnic]

Not gonna take it serious because in Lakshmi fights you get around 3-4 lords (just so you know) and Scholar has free energy drains if they use eos.

3-4 Lord of Crowns equates to about 6-8 energy drains. This is about right, actually. An off-healing SCH will do as much as they can to avoid casting Adloquium and Succor, so they'll use stacks for their ogcds like Indomitability for AoE moments like after the lotus marks right before the AoE hits and Lustrate or Excogitation to aid tank buster recovery. Assuming no one dies you'll find yourself draining when you have spare stacks at the time of Aetherize coming live, and otherwise keeping your stacks in reserve in case they're needed. If you burn all your stacks specifically on Energy Drain then your viability to actually heal reactively plummets like a rock, which is rather catastrophic if something should happen, like if the other healer should accidentally forget to pop his Vril or something.

And if you can get through the entire fight without using your ogcd heals just using the basic kit + Eos, then you may as well try being a DPS and letting the other healer see if they can single-heal as it sounds like your group is pretty solid.

As to the point, I agree completely that AST's personal DPS is the worst of the group. Lord of Crowns is potent, the potency equivalent of SMN's Fester with two DoTs active (its max), and double that of Energy Drain, but the card cost can both be considered high and random so much like Lady of Crowns it feels more like a bonus than something reliable. Earthly Star suffers from pet-tax like MCH's turrets and does less than its listed 200 pot, which is already less than its equivalent DPS amounts in Assize and Shadowflare (if all five ticks hit). Malefic III is 10 pot less than Broil II, and Combust is 20 potency less than the combined amount of Bio II and Miasma, though it lasts longer and thus needs less gcds spent to refresh to compensate (we won't talk about WHM because it makes us both feel sad). In the end though, the DPS contribution they give with Balance and Arrow offset the personal amount they do, so it's difficult to believe that anyone is going to care much. AST DPS is decent, but if you're spending enough time where your personal DPS deficit becomes noticeable (and you actually care about such things) then you've long since passed the point where you need to either be considering single-healing the encounter or rolling as DPS if your partner is an AST.

[jmanfrw]

I agree that Balance needs to go, tbh. By now, Astrologian's healing kit is so powerful that it can easily compete with the other two even without Balance.

Why would they ever remove balance? the whole cards system is what makes the job, it's the whole theme. Nerf shields a bit because they are insta-cast and so should be weaker than cast shields that just makes sense.

Don't go slashing the unique aspects of the job it's the healing that needs de-tuning, the cards are the utility, the thing to consider when choosing which healers to role with but should come at a cost of more demanding healing. Cards are still RNG so inherently not to be relied on. The new spells have helped game the cards better but it's still all on a die somewhere and to nerf an RNG aspect is always a harsher nerf than any static element, because now that great thing you might get is the meh thing you might get.

[loreleidiangelo]

How sad that so many Astrologians in this thread are equating nerfing Balance with gutting the card system altogether. To me, that's a clear indicator that Balance is poorly designed re: reasonable raid utility and either needs to be nerfed or redone.

[Verdan]

I'd say that Balance actually makes the card system way less fun, because most of the time you're better off lighting the card you got on fire and hoping you get balance next.

[Fernosaur]

Why would they ever remove balance? the whole cards system is what makes the job, it's the whole theme. Nerf shields a bit because they are insta-cast and so should be weaker than cast shields that just makes sense.

Because The Balance has become the absolute center of the healer meta, and it's made it unhealthy as hell. Not only community-wise, but also in terms of gameplay. Balance is a better DPS cooldown than ANY cooldown a DPS has ever had in the history of the game save for maybe Darkside and NIN's poisons, which are a passive now. But Balance gave the same % bonus as Quelling Strikes, can give the same % as traited Blood for Blood, etc, and all this for double or almost triple the duration depending on the Royal Road effect.

Think of this for a moment, a healer can give better DPS cooldowns than what the DPS actually have/had for themselves, and for a longer time.

The problem with this is that the other healers have no answer to this either, so it's pretty centralizing.

Balance being a mini Battle Litany would make it much better than what it is right now imo. Though AST's personal DPS would need to be buffed a bit to compensate.

[Fortune_Cookie]

Balance being a mini Battle Litany would make it much better than what it is right now imo. Though AST's personal DPS would need to be buffed a bit to compensate.

That seems the most likely change with 4.05: Balance back to 10% with a small buff to AST's personal dps.

In the long run, SE will need to find a way to balance AST's healing vs WHM and SCH healing and AST's damage contribution against WHM and SCH damage contribution. More healing vs more dps can never be balanced.

[Rubiss]

I don't think the solution to bring WHM/SCH back to viability is to nerf ASTs or AST's Balance. You shouldn't nerf a job to make the others better. Nerf Balance and AST will go back to being the weaker hybrid groups didn't want because they couldn't bring anything to the group the other two didn't already bring.

Each job needs their own niche to make them viable for any content, to make them unique, and to make them desirable to statics and players in general. Nerfing one will only cause said nerfed job to experience problems; it won't necessarily fix the design flaws with others.

There are definitely aspects of WHM that need to be addressed. And SCH needs A LOT of TLC right now. But nerfing AST is not the solution to fixing WHM/SCH. Just like how nerfing PLD wouldn't be a solution to fix the issues with WAR, or even DRK.

Sorry but SCH was nerfed because they were "OP". That's the solution. So nerf AST and WHM to SCH levels. SCH has to deal with its DPS rotation being nerfed to WHM levels. Time to nerf their healing to SCH levels, thanks.

[Caduagm]

Sorry but SCH was nerfed because they were "OP". That's the solution. So nerf AST and WHM to SCH levels. SCH has to deal with its DPS rotation being nerfed to WHM levels. Time to nerf their healing to SCH levels, thanks.

Time to remove your Fairy then with its abilities, your Deploy, your emergency tactics, your lustrate and your indomitability =]