Quote Originally Posted by Heilstos View Post
And I can understand the whole Raidleader from Ultimatestatics, who takes SCH over an Noc. AST after the 4.1 Patch. They don´t want have a "shild" healer, who have lost much Utility and lacking Option to reinforce his shild power.(The group has to adapt to YOU, as an astro, because YOU, as an astro, can not comfort the group, due to the lack of options.)
When you say Ultimatestatics, you're referring to Endless Coil right?

The issue there isn't so much that AST is underpowered, but rather that it's cooldowns and abilities simply don't mesh nearly as neatly with the content at hand.

Indom's faster cooldown easily outweighs Earthly Star's far superior potency with the constant barrage of AoEs that Coil throws at you.

Aspected Helios' slow cast time makes it unwieldy to use compared to succor.

Taken in isolation, AST's buffs are superior, however Chain can be guaranteed to align which Trick and such which allows it to punch far above it's weight.

Even little things such as SCH being able to apply mitigation at a distance with Sacred Soil in a manner which AST cannot.

Compare this to Savage, where Noct is much more competitive in the overall picture. It's also worth looking back to BCOB and SCOB where BLM and SMN swiftly traded seats in the 'meta' despite nothing actually changing initially. It was purely a case of the job not suiting the content (Furthermore, play count the BLMs in Unending Coil).

Yes it is and arguably always has been a bit underwhelming, but that's certainly not going to be fixed by a huge bump on it's shield potencies (Which would cause huge issues with end game content, I really don't get why you keep suggesting these bonkers numbers).

SE need to actually sit down and figure out where they want Noct AST to fit in the grand scheme of things and actually push it in that direction. The change to spear was a good start, but more needs to be done imho.

Ironically, whilst SCH is also back to being a powerhouse, IMHO I think the job still needs quite a lot of attention there too, primarily QoL stuff mind.