For AST changes, just potency buff malefic and combust...

[Sunako]

I would just only buff combust potency to 60, I think malefic is fine since it have only 1.5sec cast time.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

No, you need to leave their personal DPS alone. We can't have another situation where AST is doing as much DPS as WHM while also bringing more utility, high personal damage is WHMs identity (as flimsy as it may be), so if AST gets a damage buff at all, it should be in utility.

That being said I think AST is fine where it currently is. It really just needs better MP management

[Verlyn]

Raid DPS is most important because balancing raids has to be their priority. No matter what, all classes can perform well in story/normal content, so they try to balance for high end content, where balance makes a noticeable difference. In the future I wouldn\\'t mind then scaling HP on mobs depending on what job is being used for content.

The reason I didn't want to argue why raids are cornerstone of balance is because we have 100% polar philosophies on that matter. I know well enough why they balance for raids, I just don't agree with it.
At least we can agree on the Draw/Undraw thing.

I don't think SCH\\'s kit revolves around the fairy. Embrace is basically random now. You only use WD, FI, and consolation with seraph. SCH revolves more around Aetherflow than fairy. It always has, by back in the day the fairy was a lot stronger. Even the gauge for SCH is really disappointing.

You have like six skills ordering the fairy around, one skill that sacrifices the fairy for a buff, one skill that transforms the fairy into a better fairy. That's a pretty significant part of SCH's kit. Embrace being random is just a technicality. But Aetherflow is also a not insignificant part of SCH's lore (due to its origins as ACN) so it's not like skills that interact with it don't count.

[YusiKha]

No, you need to leave their personal DPS alone. We can't have another situation where AST is doing as much DPS as WHM while also bringing more utility, high personal damage is WHMs identity (as flimsy as it may be), so if AST gets a damage buff at all, it should be in utility.

That being said I think AST is fine where it currently is. It really just needs better MP management

Nobody's asking for AST to get to WHM levels of pDPS. A small potency increase on Malefic or Combust would increase AST's viability (especially against easy WHM and brain-dead SCH), as well as making solo content more bearable.

[FusionSamurai]

The reason I didn't want to argue why raids are cornerstone of balance is because we have 100% polar philosophies on that matter. I know well enough why they balance for raids, I just don't agree with it.
At least we can agree on the Draw/Undraw thing.



You have like six skills ordering the fairy around, one skill that sacrifices the fairy for a buff, one skill that transforms the fairy into a better fairy. That's a pretty significant part of SCH's kit. Embrace being random is just a technicality. But Aetherflow is also a not insignificant part of SCH's lore (due to its origins as ACN) so it's not like skills that interact with it don't count.

I don't know how you can disagree with balancing around raid content. Its the only content where job balance actually matters.

You have Illumination, Whispering Dawn, Consolation, Blessing, Union. Union is a pretty bad skill now and rarely gets used. Blessing is alright. You can't control Embrace and Embrace got nerfed into the dirt. SCH has always moreso revolved around their oGCD healing capabilities, rather than being a fairy healer. Its the power of their aetherflow based heals that makes them so absurdly strong. The fairy was just a really REALLY big plus, which is severely nerfed because of the 5.0 changes. (Making fairy skills work as SCH oGCDs).

[CrimsonGunner]

i think you guys need to forget potency increase since its just a band aid and not a real solution for you.
i think your will have a better time spent pushing for the changes you want SE to do with the card system since i believe SE will listen if it see how much it bothers its playerbase.
true it wont get a complete rework until another expansion but you might get better QoL changes that will help you more during this expansion then a small potency fix.
but again this just my own opinion

[Crushnight]

Cool these changes solve AST getting back to being the go to WHM because these will shoot up their pDPS like nothing else and is the absolute worse thing you could do for AST and further highlights WHM's biggest flaw since 3.0 of very easily being subject to powercreep.

This also doesn't solve this:



We're what week 9/10 into this tier that is an abysmal difference between healers and it is not a numbers problem it is a fundamental design problem. AST HAS lost a lot of appeal by a lot of players yet the devs refuse to acknowledge it, at this point those that actually like the changes and want to use AST in content where their kit could be used to its fullest are a bigger minority than those who mained AST in SB raids, AST has dipped to being the worse to play healer since HW even WHM in SB had a better distribution than AST has now and WHM was considered inferior throughout the entire expansion including it's lily mechanic(the why did you bother of job gauges in SB).

Core issues need to be addressed with AST and only 1 of them have they acknowledged
-Noct being too inferior to Diurnal (they have never fixed this in 4 going on 5 years so i have little hope that any new changes would change this)
-AST is horrible to play for controller players especially it's opener and every 6 mins into a fight (This is a major mess up to me because giving that much favoritism to keyboard and mouse players is wrong, SCH has always been better on Keyboard and mouse but never did it feel required or my kit actively fight me to get them).
-Having another MP restoration ability (the easiest to fix but it is a core issue that got past Media Tour, 5.0 Launch, Savage Launch and is still not being addressed by the devs so who knows if it would even be looked at).


I REALLY REALLY HATE TO SAY THIS but i think we need a new developer on the job design team that actively works on healers, other roles should also have a dedicated developer working on a singular role while having 1-3 people who oversee it all and how jobs could mingle together and work balance from there.

Also 76% of your draws are fishes for a seal if you try and get 3 seal divination it is more consistent than the 92% for aoe balance but big difference between the two, the latter felt more impactful in the grand scheme of things, if the developers could replicate that with the new system i doubt it would be as hated as it is but because it feels pointless to use the cards (AST's entire gimmick) for divination especially 3 seal divination, it is up there as one of the worst changes to a job i have seen.

Those are just the core issues i could go on with Collective Unconsciousness, Horoscope, Neutral sect interaction with Noct, Card buff and divination (potency), Synastry, Draw and Play interaction, the opener etc.

[Wawachume]

I don't know how you can disagree with balancing around raid content. Its the only content where job balance actually matters.

Not...entirely, I'd say. :/

Raid balance is definitely where most of the attention should focus, not because it's more important, but because it's more finicky. Outside of raids, a difference of 3% or whatever in something---that is, a difference that's only perceptible when you analyze a computer log---doesn't matter much.

But if the gap grows wide enough that it's perceptible by the players directly, then it can be a problem. We don't want people doing solo content, let alone dungeons, on AST, thinking the whole time how much less tedious it would be on WHM, and wondering why they're punishing themselves.

You also have to take varying skill levels into account. Non-raid balance may not matter to raiders, because they think dungeons are easy enough that any class can do them. But us dungeon players...maybe you haven't heard, but, uh, sometimes we kind of suck. The extra healing and damage from WHM can make a difference for us. D:

I will grant, though, that there's probably a strong placebo effect here. People look at things like raid logs, community perceptions, and tooltips, and perceive a job as much less effective, when a blind test might not reveal much difference.

But ultimately, I think the real problem here is that pDPS is just really hard to balance against rDPS in a game with variable party sizes. As the number of players in your party increases from 1 to 4 to 8 to 24, the relative value of rDPS is going to increase also. I only see three potential solutions to this.

1. Give WHM some kind of rDPS buff.
2. Make AST cards not affect damage, and delete chain stratagem.
3. Come up with some way for AST and SCH rDPS buffs to scale negatively based on party size, such that they're comparable to WHM's pDPS contribution regardless of party size.

[FusionSamurai]

Cool these changes solve AST getting back to being the go to WHM because these will shoot up their pDPS like nothing else and is the absolute worse thing you could do for AST and further highlights WHM's biggest flaw since 3.0 of very easily being subject to powercreep.

Yeah. They did this during sigmascape when they reduced Malefic's cast time to 1.5s. It gave them several hundred DPS because they no longer had caster tax.

at this point those that actually like the changes and want to use AST in content where their kit could be used to its fullest are a bigger minority than those who mained AST in SB raids, AST has dipped to being the worse to play healer since HW even WHM in SB had a better distribution than AST has now and WHM was considered inferior throughout the entire expansion including it's lily mechanic(the why did you bother of job gauges in SB).

The difference between them isn't nearly as big as you're making it out to be.

-Noct being too inferior to Diurnal (they have never fixed this in 4 going on 5 years so i have little hope that any new changes would change this)

It is literally impossible to make Diurnal and Nocturnal equally good. It just can't happen. The problem is when one exacerbates the already hilariously bad MP economy of AST.

-AST is horrible to play for controller players especially it's opener and every 6 mins into a fight (This is a major mess up to me because giving that much favoritism to keyboard and mouse players is wrong, SCH has always been better on Keyboard and mouse but never did it feel required or my kit actively fight me to get them).

Every class is better on keyboard/mouse. Sleeve draw is a pain on console, yeah. Should be fixed. One of the best SCHs in deltascape was a console player, so its always been playable at near max level on console.

Those are just the core issues i could go on with Collective Unconsciousness, Horoscope, Neutral sect interaction with Noct, Card buff and divination (potency), Synastry, Draw and Play interaction, the opener etc.

Collective is alright, could use a buff.
Horoscope is stupid good.
Neutral is amazing in both sects.

[FusionSamurai]

Raid balance is definitely where most of the attention should focus, not because it's more important, but because it's more finicky. Outside of raids, a difference of 3% or whatever in something---that is, a difference that's only perceptible when you analyze a computer log---doesn't matter much.

That's literally my point. Damage is entirely irrelevant outside of raids. If a class doesn't do much damage, it only matters when trying to do raid content.

You also have to take varying skill levels into account. Non-raid balance may not matter to raiders, because they think dungeons are easy enough that any class can do them. But us dungeon players...maybe you haven't heard, but, uh, sometimes we kind of suck. The extra healing and damage from WHM can make a difference for us. D:

You know, at least you admit you suck. There are so many players who play badly in dungeon content who don't know or wont admit they are doing badly. Props to you, good sir. Raids are what really matters though. If you buff for dungeons it can throw balance off in raids, where it really matters. Imagine them buffing Afflatus Misery to 1,500 potency because WHMs felt they weren't doing enough damage in dungeons. (Would never happen, role with me here.). That would absolutely break WHM in raids, to the point that it would be optimal to just spam lily abilities and misery as much as humanly possible. WHM damage would be stupid high. They have to balance around that first.

But ultimately, I think the real problem here is that pDPS is just really hard to balance against rDPS in a game with variable party sizes. As the number of players in your party increases from 1 to 4 to 8 to 24, the relative value of rDPS is going to increase also. I only see three potential solutions to this.

They are all very close and comparable right now. AST will outscale WHM probably next tier, and will be a bit better in the third tier this expansion.

1. Give WHM some kind of rDPS buff.

WHM damage is already stupid high. They don't need any kind of buff.

2. Make AST cards not affect damage, and delete chain stratagem.

Then there is 0 reason for cards to eixist.

3. Come up with some way for AST and SCH rDPS buffs to scale negatively based on party size, such that they're comparable to WHM's pDPS contribution regardless of party size.

that is a lot of developer time and resources for something that doesn't matter.