Another WHM chicken little sees the sky falling. The sky is an AST.

[Anselmet]

If you were a WHM in 3.4, you would understand where our worries are coming from. No WHM wants to go back to being locked out of PFs because there's little to no reason to bring one over AST again, no one wants to be pressured into switching to AST for their static because you're holding them back otherwise.

SE has proven time and time again that they can't balance healers to save their lives, and we're worried that these changes to AST is just the start of WHM being dragged through the mud yet again.

Okay real talk here, the buff for AST will most likely be negligible. While I do agree that Square sucks at balancing the healers, they are not thaaaaat unbalanced. Sure, there are healers that shine more than others, sure AST might bring a few more things to the table, but at least all three healers can be brought to any content and clear it. If your group is forcing you to switch from WHM to AST because 'WHM is holding you back' I hate to break it to you, its not the class its something else. Are they whining for those dps buffs from cards? Is those little bursts of dps so vital to the group that the dps can't bring the out put needed between their debuffs and buffs? Ya, sounds like its not your problem but theirs. Sounds to me that they need to either a. get better gear or b. go visit a training dummy. And I do remember 3.4 AST buff, it was stupid and the community was stupid. I was a SCH main and I still remember going into content with ASTs who told me they were going to stay in noct stance cuz my shields were garbage now. They were on the same level of stupidity as the groups that wouldn't take WHMs in the pf. Because truth be told, even in 3.4 WHMs were still completing content and groups were still getting past savage and Sophia EX regularly. And that is because the unbalance in healers is negligible in this game. If you cannot clear something with a WHM and SCH then its on player skill and not the balancing issue.

But also real talk, its rather annoying AST is getting a buff. Hopefully its nothing doing with potency. Cuz seriously if it is all I can say is square wtf?

And also its stuff like this that makes me never wanna see another healing class enter ffxiv.

[Tridus]

It's funny when you see WHM complaining about AST but no AST or WHM complain about SCH and the role he has played for years, irreplaceable.

I do. But at this point it's pretty clear that SE considers it a critical bug if SCH isn't the outright best at everything.

It's the same with tanks. WAR got major changes in 4.1 and catapulted to the top, while DRK was just told "yes we've known you need help for months, but it'd take six months to actually fix the problem so we're just gonna tweak some numbers instead."

Meanwhile WHM has a hilariously useless job gauge and a trait that almost nobody would even notice if it was simply deleted. But hey, they're busy doing some kind of QoL help for SCH, so maybe in 6.0?

[Lunaxia]

It's funny when you see WHM complaining about AST but no AST or WHM complain about SCH and the role he has played for years, irreplaceable.

I've always had an intrinsic dislike for WAR/ SCH for this very reason, the apparent favoritism has always annoyed me.

I nearly flung my keyboard out the window when I read SCH and AST were getting further adjustments. At best, WHM is "okay" and usually forgotten about; at worst, it was a hindrance to most groups in terms of utility and optimisation. We're still hilariously inadequate on that front and our lily gauge is embarrassingly useless, the only thing SB has given us is drastically needed mana management and a shield to make us less irrelevant... which SE now seems once again hell bent on reversing.

[Mortex]

That the reason people dont want to play Astro in Ultimate -_- the amount of time you have and the time you need to do what you are suppose to do is just isnt there. You just need to look at the logs to see that.

[Ghishlain]

That the reason people dont want to play Astro in Ultimate -_- the amount of time you have and the time you need to do what you are suppose to do is just isnt there. You just need to look at the logs to see that.

All logs does is show that AST has a low participation number. It means "something is amiss" but it's hard to diagnosis what's amiss without delving deeper into. Also, all I've seen you contribute to this thread thus far is "AST is a steaming pile of dog poop and needs buffs" - yet you've failed to say why you feel AST is in such a terrible spot and provide any sort of remedy to this problem you perceive.

I look at your limited posted history and I see the same thing over and over. Which leads me to the (potentially incorrect) assumption that you're just a salty AST with no credentials or merits to your actual comments.

If you want more productive responses - drop the salt and be more constructive with your comments. All I hear right now is a baby whining that their rattle is blue when they wanted a pink rattle that the other two babies have.

I have my reasons and knowledge to understand why AST isn't heavily relied on in the Ultimate tier, but there's no use bringing that to the table if you can't show you'll have a proper discussion about it.

[Sebazy]

That the reason people dont want to play Astro in Ultimate -_- the amount of time you have and the time you need to do what you are suppose to do is just isnt there. You just need to look at the logs to see that.

In my eyes, the issue with AST in Ultimate is two fold:

First off, it's pretty clear that it cannot compete with SCH for the shielding slot. SCH just runs rings around AST for both sheer survivability and HPS in this encounter, it plain suits SCH's toolkit better and it's obvious that this is the case right from Twin.

To a lesser extent, the same can also be said about WHM vs AST for the regen slot. Whilst AST is more viable here, it still lags behind WHM.

Frankly, I'd be inclined to suspect the fight was just tuned and tested around a WHM and SCH pairing. This is especially notable with the way that cooldowns align towards the end of the encounter. With this is mind, I don't think AST will ever be on a level footing with WHM and SCH as far as Ultimate Coil is concerned, at least not unless it gets over tuned in a manner akin to 3.4 again.

As far as Savage goes? On paper AST is absolutely fine and plenty capable being competitive with WHM. I feel the issue isn't so much potencies, but rather a more simple case of the job just not being particularly pleasant, engaging or rewarding to play. SCH is a great class with tons of depth and potential for top tier players to really shine. WHM is much simpler but brings sufficient resources and pace to lend it an air of brute force to it's play style. With AST you get a plenty decent healing toolkit but with impotent feeling DPS and a buff system that constantly gnaws away at your own personal contribution. I suspect this last detail is why the job often doesn't sit right with many.

So aye, if SE can get AST flowing a little better and help it feel a little more rewarding to play (Stuff such as removing the damage penalty from Lightspeed is the right way to go IMHO) then I think they will be on the right track.

[Connor]

I’m gonna be brutally honest but I don’t understand how White Mage is supposed to compete at all after these buffs.

Don’t think I need to explain why it can’t compete with Scholar, it’s been overpowered for years.

All White Mage brings is more healing, in a game where healing requirements are so low that healers also have to double as damage dealers so they aren’t doing literally nothing.

Astrologian brings party dps increases in a game where the core objective of every encounter is to deal a certain amount of damage to an enemy within a specific timeframe (beat the dps check).

Considering it’s possible to scrape by a lot of content even with no healer (especially if you’re with jobs that can self-heal like Paladin, Red Mage etc), this alone kinda makes the choice obvious.

White Mage’s most often cited gimmick of having Holy for dungeon runs isn’t even anything special anymore. The most common Post-buff Lightspeed / Gravity might not be as strong as Holy with Presence of Mind, but that’s what card buffs are for. Off-gcd abilities like Tetragrammaton and Benediction might provide strong healing, but that doesn’t mean anything if nobody needs that healing in the first place. The same can be said for MP efficiency, it doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t running into situations where you run out of MP in the first place. Even with bad Ewer luck I’ve haven’t felt myself to be in a situation where I simply don’t have the tools to manage my MP. And even if I did, Celestial Opposition with Lucid Dreaming will restore enough MP to continue dealing damage.

Personally I didn’t even feel like the card system was clunky while dpsing, though that’s because I’m a filthy casual who likes to heal/support instead of dps (and typically tries to avoid them as a result). So I was never particularly bothered by gcd clipping while using cards. That’s not to say that I don’t think it’s something that shouldn’t be addressed, but I don’t have much to say for this topic.

Overall I personally don’t understand how White Mage can be considered ‘fine’ in a context where nothing to can do really matters. Maybe I’m just missing something. Regardless of whether there’s any truth in my opinions I know someone appear will tell me how wrong I am anyway.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

Meanwhile WHM has a hilariously useless job gauge and a trait that almost nobody would even notice if it was simply deleted. But hey, they're busy doing some kind of QoL help for SCH, so maybe in 6.0?

I really do wonder what the heck they're doing with that trait. So far they fixed SCHs trait almost immediately, and ASTs hyper Lightspeed is going to be a lot more useful now that Lightspeed is extremely powerful.

Meanwhile WHM gets left with a laughable RNG on top of RNG based CD reduction that is, once again, tied to healing spells we barely use.

It's so sad to be a WHM main these days, because it has become very apparent that SE only cares about SCH and AST, and WHM is allowed to remain barely relevant but still technically "viable". It's pretty obvious that SE sees WHM as a casual job, not a raiding job, and so they allow them to fall behind the other two without caring.

[Miste]

WHM is allowed to remain barely relevant
It's pretty obvious that SE sees WHM as a casual job, not a raiding job, and so they allow them to fall behind the other two without caring.

https://www.fflogs.com/statistics/21#class=Healers

Stop exaggerating as if WHM is this poor victimized healer that can't do anything good and isn't relevant. If it was, then why is the raiding community using them so much?? It looks like a raiding job to me.

I don't know why people do this all the time with WHM. It is a great job and posting things like this downplaying how strong it is is just silly.

The healer balance is very good right now, but AST has needed a QoL fix for weaving for a long time now so I don't get the issue there at all. MP I think is a bit unbalanced simply for how wide the gap is, it is possible to close the gap slightly and still leave WHM on top, but make it so AST doesn't run MP dry just because they mess up one time and forget to CO LD or have to do healer things like raise someone who died.

[EaMett]

Overall I personally don’t understand how White Mage can be considered ‘fine’ in a context where nothing to can do really matters. Maybe I’m just missing something. Regardless of whether there’s any truth in my opinions I know someone appear will tell me how wrong I am anyway.

AST and SCH have a bigger learning curve and overall a higher APM than whm. They're also obtainable at later levels. This means that as game designers for a casual game like ff14 your starter healer (WHM) should be beginner friendly.
Beginner friendly means a few things. A straightforward reaction healing style; you don't have to think too hard about when to place what spell (like earth star, synastry, or shields). A small toolkit as to not overwhelm players. High potency to make up for the lack of skill/experience. Limited class synergies so you don't have to understand how other classes work. Hence the "pure healer" is born.

Because of all this WHM is probably just in the right spot in their eyes.

But low and behold. They decide to make non-casual content and everything falls appart. In ultimate the shear numbers of a whm in good hands becomes significant enough that the rng nature and lower potency of AST skills doesn't afford them a slot. They probably decided on AST buffs mostly for the next ultimate and it's screwing with the casual content balance.

SE's failure comes from them wanting all healers to be able to heal all content. Because of this they can't place healers in specific roles (sch heals party, whm heals tanks, vice versa, etc.). They finally managed to get a semblance of balance for all the current casual content. But now they're introducing hardcore stuff and their balance is no longer appropriate.

They're also struggling on coming up with new healer concepts because of this. SE either bites the bullet and changes their stance on "all healers can heal all content" or we wake up and see whm for what it is: a mix between a learning class and the rdm of healers.