WHM Main trying AST for static. Help?

[Kethic]

Sebazy sorta hit the nail on the head. With WHM, you can brute force through a lot of situations, and even recover from some really deep deficits. That feels good. With AST, you can Lightspeed for a modest recovery, and stack a bunch of abilities under a CO extension, drop EA precisely, and pray for good cards, but I must be missing the part that makes the class fun. However, I need to be AST for my static, since our other healer is a better WHM than I am.

I realize this is entirely subjective, which is why I was asking for tips, suggestions, personal playstyles, and things people like about AST.

[loreleidiangelo]

Sebazy sorta hit the nail on the head. With WHM, you can brute force through a lot of situations, and even recover from some really deep deficits. That feels good. With AST, you can Lightspeed for a modest recovery, and stack a bunch of abilities under a CO extension, drop EA precisely, and pray for good cards, but I must be missing the part that makes the class fun. However, I need to be AST for my static, since our other healer is a better WHM than I am.

I realize this is entirely subjective, which is why I was asking for tips, suggestions, personal playstyles, and things people like about AST.

Hmmm...things I like about AST. Well, now that the Balance card has been brought in line, to be honest there's a lot less "praying for good cards" than you might think, since none of them except Spire/Ewer and maybe Bole are worth shuffling or discarding under most situations now. Dropping good Earthly Stars before certain mechanics (Charybdis in O1S, the big gravity AOE thing in O2S etc) and detonating it right after the damage goes out is really satisfying, and it basically means that outside of maybe a Medica (Medica II for the O1S scenario since Roar hits after fairly hard) your WHM co-healer won't have to help heal up after that at all. Collective Unconscious works as both Asylum AND a damage reduction, so if you don't have Star up for whatever reason in O2S you can just stand in the right spot during Antilight and put your bubble up to reduce the damage of the gravity AOE and get a good regen going on everyone to heal up afterward.

AST isn't as "brute force" as WHM, you're right, but I guess that's kinda why I like it. You can misuse cooldowns, you can blow through your mana if you're not careful, and in Nocturnal Sect at least you really have to understand the fight patterns, because you need to shield up for them ahead of time - you can't just wait until after and Cure III/Plenary chaser your way through whatever comes out. (yes, good WHMs will precast but so far in the first two fights of Savage it's not necessary - admittedly, shields don't seem to be either lol but I like to optimize myself) Cards are still plenty useful after the Balance nerf, and even though your personal DPS isn't as high as WHM it's not exactly like you can't DPS at all, either. Make sure you are always hitting Draw off cooldown - even if you don't get any immediately useful cards, Minor Arcana is a really powerful tool that gets underutilized a lot. It's almost a free instant Benefic II if you get Lady, and a more powerful mana-free instant-cast Malefic III if you get Lord.

AST is super "busy", and tbh that's why I swapped to it over WHM when it came out in HW. Even when things are begging my healing attention, that Draw button and the things I can do with it are still there nagging me to be pressed, and with the slight mana recovery nerf we got with HW using Lightspeed to save MP during certain movement-heavy or damage/spam-heavy phases is almost necessary. Earthly Star and Minor Arcana lose a ton of value if you're not using them near off CD (imagine only pushing Assize when you're at like half MP, or never using Asylum on tanks to keep them topped up so you can DPS more!), and even I honestly wish I could remember to use Synastry more to heal up after tank busters, especially "double" ones like the Twin Bolt that hits both tanks in O1S (Syn the OT, Bene/Bene II the MT to easily recover the HP of both).

Sorry for the wall of text, but I hope it was helpful. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask, though admittedly I've only done O1S and O2S thus far.