Some 4.3 feedback from a healer

[Sylvain]

Yeah? Then tell me; why does Lightspeed shouldn't be a DPS cooldown and Presence of Mind should, if both were made, intentionally, to heal in a critic situation?.

Well technically making skills instant doesn't increase their dps except for gravity and even then, in single target maleficIII still does the most damage.
On the otherhand casting faster does increase your dps.

Now you can use it to weave 1 or 2 more maleficIII while moving per LS but unless the fight is in farm mode (which means that technically your 2~3 more malefic aren't needed) I find this to be a waste. (but that's just me)

[Riyshn]

I think they should reduce the healing bonus duration to 15~20sec. 30s is just too long, it's an emergency skill, an emergency doesnt last 30sec.

Why do you see it as an emergency skill? It fills a similar role as a Tank's Immunity ability; it can be used an an Oh Shit button, yes, but it's much stronger when used tactically, at a planned moment where you can make the most use of the extra Aetherflow stacks and will take the least hit from the lack of fairy heals.

I will agree that the ability seems to be at odds with itself, granting a healing bonus while also giving you more usage of all the Abilities that aren't effected by that bonus. I'd prefer to see an adjustment to the interaction with Aetherpact to allow the fairy gauge to be filled while under the effect of Dissipation before a buff to this aspect, though. The healing buff is still useful for things like getting a large Deploy out (personally, I use it for that going into the first LoJ in God Kefka), or even buffing lesser shields, like a Succor in between spammed raidwides.

Also, "an emergency doesnt last 30sec" sounds like someone who never healed A2S. ...or A7S. ...or A8S. A12S. O3S. The first minute and a half of O8S-God. There have been plenty of fights that have space to make use of the whole duration of the healing buff.

[Elamys]

Yeah? Then tell me; why does Lightspeed shouldn't be a DPS cooldown and Presence of Mind should, if both were made, intentionally, to heal in a critic situation?

The reason AST didn't do damage like this before isn't because our casts got faster or because our potencies got increased, it's because our MP prevented us from doing so. Spamming Gravity was far too draining. Both Thin Air and now Lightspeed are intended to be MP management cooldowns more than anything, not DPS or even healing cooldowns.

Moreover, the usefulness of a cooldown to increase the speed of healing spells is suspect at best, though AST had been behind in that department in comparison to WHM, which has numerous instant spells, while AST really only had Essential Dignity and Earthly Star (if it was set up already). As you mentioned, it was best to click it off in about 2 casts just so you could go back to DPSing. You shouldn't really be comparing Presence of Mind and Lightspeed because I think Thin Air is much more what Lightspeed's usage has now been modeled off of.

When you look at Lightspeed's design as being intended to help an AST manage MP, it makes a lot less sense why we are able to do so much damage because of it. Remember, AST had the weakest MP management before because you want to minimize Ewer usage as much as possible. We basically only had Lucid Dreaming and some usage of Lightspeed, but a 25% MP cost reduction wasn't nearly as useful as it is now.

WHM has specifically been designed to be the pure healer that also brings in a lot of damage, as Square Enix has claimed. AST brings so much party damage to the table with cards that its personal DPS should not rival WHM. I don't think they intended for this to happen, they just wanted to reduce the clunkiness of the ability, but regardless, it is what has happened. As far as solutions to this, I don't really want them to revert the changes since they are good from a playstyle perspective, probably would rather have them reduce potencies.

[Caduagm]

The reason AST didn't do damage like this before isn't because our casts got faster or because our potencies got increased, it's because our MP prevented us from doing so. Spamming Gravity was far too draining. Both Thin Air and now Lightspeed are intended to be MP management cooldowns more than anything, not DPS or even healing cooldowns.

No? The reason why AST didn't do damage like this was because the clipping (the healer with the most oGCDs in the game and having nothing to weave them, lul) issues it had (we can confirm this because double refresh meta didn't give AST mp problems). Since, probably, we are discussing about savage, there are 2 fights that the benefit of casting Gravity is beneficial: O5s and O7s. AST's damage is now average better than WHM on Sigmascape and, in some cases, better than SCH.

[Sebazy]

The reason AST didn't do damage like this before isn't because our casts got faster or because our potencies got increased, it's because our MP prevented us from doing so.

I think you're underestimating just how significant the cast time change to Malefic is =(

Have a look over this - The opening phase of the new EX Primal.

We were both pretty settled into the fight by this point and had been farming together for a few hours, so we both had a fairly solid plan for phase 1 and were playing fairly efficiently together, I was still overhealing more than I needed to, but I was getting all my GCDs in and wasn't canceling casts or moving needlessly.

The first thing to note here, is the number of GCDs we got off between us. I managed 29, he managed 30. That looks pretty even right? Look a little closer and there's actually a bit of a disparity going on here. If we zoom in further, to the first 15 seconds, you can see that I'm actually ahead by an entire GCD thanks to PoM. However, for the next minute after that, he proceeds to claw back two full GCDs, effectively 5 seconds worth of extra time because I'm still clipping on an unhealthy percentage of oGCDs whilst he is not anymore.

It's also worth noting just how many more oGCDs Valle cast in that opening phase, prior to these changes, the majority of those oGCDs would have been eating into his GCD count at very rough rate of around a third of a second or so per time. It'd be a pretty safe estimation that in an identical setting pre patch, I'd have ended up 2 or maybe even 3 GCDs ahead.

Lastly, not only does it make it trivial to weave in oGCDs efficiently, it also makes AST decently mobile whilst still blasting. It take's careful stutter stepping to be somewhat mobile whilst DPSing on WHM.

I suspect this change has been far more beneficial to AST than SE ever anticipated. I think the Lightspeed change was long overdue and I don't begrudge that at all, but I do think that the malefic change is proving to be a bit too strong.

[Gravagar]

[...]
Also, "an emergency doesnt last 30sec" sounds like someone who never healed A2S. ...or A7S. ...or A8S. A12S. O3S. The first minute and a half of O8S-God. There have been plenty of fights that have space to make use of the whole duration of the healing buff.

re: your earlier reply, I do agree that Dissipation has never been better than its current version. It's mostly thanks to changes to other abilities (summon, aetherflow CD reduction), but... to me, "+3 stacks, +20% succor/adlo/physic, -15s flow CD" is a hard sell when the downside is "-2500 potency worth of embraces, no WD / covenant / illumination / fey onions for 30s, -1200 MP and 3s cast time when it ends." Both sides of this equation have been buffed considerably till now, it is true. I just think it's, at best, a mediocre bonus, and at worst, capable of completely ruining my pre-planned fairy CD usages. Those pre-planned uses are why I think the fights you mentioned aren't the best examples- I sure as heck will have a lot more emergencies to clean up vs God Kefka if I use it around when I deploy adlos. (I deploy pre-pull for a free LB bar on the first ultima, then on every Forsaken after the first - covenant, SS, and succor are all I need for LoJ since the rest of my party is helping as well.)



I think the best possible use of Dissipation is for huge deployment crit shields, like you mentioned. I'd rather have a crit rate bonus for my heals than a potency bonus, though. I mean, I don't want it to be something you just throw out when it's on cooldown (like Rouse now that it doesn't buff any cooldowns - I don't think scholar needs anything else like that), but hey, maybe once or twice in any given fight? Or... in any given year? (I've gone an entire year without using Dissipation before...) Honestly it's probably a lower priority to fix than lilies, since at leastDissipation doesn't hold part of your UI hostage, and it actually seems to do something sometimes.

[Riyshn]

re: your earlier reply, I do agree that Dissipation has never been better than its current version. It's mostly thanks to changes to other abilities (summon, aetherflow CD reduction), but... to me, "+3 stacks, +20% succor/adlo/physic, -15s flow CD" is a hard sell when the downside is "-2500 potency worth of embraces, no WD / covenant / illumination / fey onions for 30s, -1200 MP and 3s cast time when it ends." Both sides of this equation have been buffed considerably till now, it is true. I just think it's, at best, a mediocre bonus, and at worst, capable of completely ruining my pre-planned fairy CD usages. Those pre-planned uses are why I think the fights you mentioned aren't the best examples- I sure as heck will have a lot more emergencies to clean up vs God Kefka if I use it around when I deploy adlos. (I deploy pre-pull for a free LB bar on the first ultima, then on every Forsaken after the first - covenant, SS, and succor are all I need for LoJ since the rest of my party is helping as well.)

1750p of Embrace heals, technically. Because of pet potencies. And... yeah. It's an ability that you need to think about when you want to use. Why is that a bad thing? You don't use Dissipation when you plan on using one of the fairy skills within the next 30 seconds. Same way an AST doesn't use Sleeve Draw when Draw is nearly off cooldown or their slots are already full, or a MCH has to be careful of when they Overheat, or a SMN wants to be careful with the timings around Summon Bahamut and Rouse. The extra healing/shield from just 2 Succors from the healing boost already makes up about as much healing as Embrace and is AoE, or if you need it single target, the 20% boost plus extra stacks is way more than 1750p if you actually need that on the tank.

The MP cost of resummoning is already made up by a single Energy Drain from the stacks it gives you, as well as the accelerated Aetherflow use. And yes, it requires actually the cast to actually resummon, but that doesn't have to be a full 3sec hardcast; Swiftcast exists for a reason, and it's not like we're hurting for oGCDs to use to make use of that time.

[KDSilver]

that the malefic change is proving to be a bit too strong.

Yet needeed, because that clipping was awful.
But a Malefic III reduced potency should have come along with this change, indeed.
I think it should be fixed soon, they aren't blind.

[Heilstos]

Yet needeed, because that clipping was awful.
But a Malefic III reduced potency should have come along with this change, indeed.
I think it should be fixed soon, they aren't blind.

I dont belive that Malefic I- III is going to be nerfed. The Sch is not getting any nerfs, aswell. (At the moment the SCH is very dangerously close to the WHM (or is a bit better). And the SCH has two Raidgroupbuffs which are not charged by RNG. And if you ask me that should not be the case. But the developers not be so blind, or what do you say Shinru?

Is there a place where AST/WHM can Raid hand in hand? If you ask a lot of Raidleader (not everyone) there is noway. Because the SCH has to much for the table (Fairy, critlo, Buffs, strong OGCDs....), that WHM/AST not have.
But I digress ... so I come back to this regression from Shinru.

That change is only powerfull, if you use spellspeed. Anyway the GCD blocks that dmg increase. This circumvention of the clipping has not been a stupid idea of SE. This is pleasant during the levelns. In the Innis anyway and even in the raids a nice change. This gives the job but also a fancy touch. And for the Lightspeed DPS faction here in the forum. If you use a CD for damage. Then they are missing for healing. So an astrologer must be strong-willed, not to succumb to those sweet ones. God Kefka is a great teacher for us AST.^^

That change was great for us astrologains. Most players wanted to get that astrologer a proper vein. And that's a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, these changes do not matter to the SCH players. Because these surely have their place in any raid group. And is this the right way to speak the scholar of absulutism? Now the WHM is shaking and I do not like that. Should it not be in a blunted status so the player behind the class is the more important.

I can barely handle this fear of isulation and complaining to the developers is not fair either. Is it then the solution to weaken after weakening? Just so that the status remains pou?

But at least I agree with Sebazy. But as long the WHM or the Nocturnal AST have no answer to the endless power of the SCH; must the WHM or AST just lose out. And I see no hope from the side of the Nocturnal AST with pushed 50 sec. shield that breaks after 3-4 hits.

But I hope the WHM find an answer to the scholar to stand up. I as Astro have found my sneeze. But I want a strong scholar AND white mage as a co-healer!

[KDSilver]

What the...
I was talking about Malefic III and its adjustment only but whatever. '-'