New healer: Sage. Barrier healer.

[Zolvolt]

While astro is gonna maybe lose stance I must laugh at to this day how ignorant and stubborn these scholar lovers are stating how scholar have the biggest shields , let us see both aspected helios and succor migitates 125% block however aspected helios slighty is better because it has has a 200 pot and and succor 180, now aspected benefic vs alco , aspected benefic is a 200 pot heal with a instant 250% migi block. scholar alco is 300 pot with a 125% only block and that is only when you get a cata for the extra 125 shield for the 250% only then alo win, else in the end aspected benefic still wins. lets not forget noct field + celestial option shields all stack for a 250% migitation for the entire team, can a sch do that? Finally 2 ast both netrual sect with celestial op/nocturnal balance ,celestial opposition all can stack for a total of 7 regens and 4 shields a whopping 50k+ tick or regen while a whooping 500% migitation, so please stop crapping on ast noct stance and just face the fact ast is always the best migitation. people are just so regen obsessed that they fail to see nocts power. Just look at my rdm friend with 110k something hp and I cover his whole bar with just my ast.

Ty for trying to educate people. Even top end players to this day think sch shields are higher potency when they are not and while deploying a crit adlo is still more aoe shield than a asp helios, its still not as not significantly bigger since you can't deploy cata and a crit asp helios would be just as good.

[Rymi64]

I feel like all healers will have at least one regen or shield like how we have it now

[HyoMinPark]

Ty for trying to educate people. Even top end players to this day think sch shields are higher potency when they are not.

So your only issue with that is that you better have all of those cast pre-pull since you can’t swap sects mid-combat, thereby taking away a lot of that shielding power you’re boasting in this image.

While the shielding power is impressive in that image, without the ability to swap sects mid-combat, you lose out on a lot of it. He’s got both Diurnal and Nocturnal shielding on there for Aspected Benefic and Neutral Sect. That is impossible in actual combat since you are locked to a single sect the minute a boss is pulled. So, boast about it all you want, but realize the limitations as well.

[Absurdity]

snip

It's something I mentioned before as well.

However for me it's less of a "look at how powerful shield AST is" and more of a "look how terrible SCH design in ShB is"


-your powerful heals are tied to both a cooldown and a resource which at the same time competes with your dps and mp regen
-your shields are nothing amazing
-your downtime filler is an absolute snoozefest
-your gimmick fairy is more of a hindrance than a benefit

while deploying a crit adlo is still more aoe shield than a asp helios, its still not as not significantly bigger since you can't deploy cata and a crit asp helios would be just as good.

This is the thing that makes me sigh every time, a lot of scholars waste recitation on a crit adlo instead of using it on the significantly superior option of casting indom or excog for free.

[IceBlueNinja]

While the shielding power is impressive in that image, without the ability to swap sects mid-combat, you lose out on a lot of it. He’s got both Diurnal and Nocturnal shielding on there for Aspected Benefic and Neutral Sect. That is impossible in actual combat since you are locked to a single sect the minute a boss is pulled. So, boast about it all you want, but realize the limitations as well.

but having 2 ast makes it possible hehe

[HyoMinPark]

but having 2 ast makes it possible hehe

If double AST was meta, then you’d see it more frequently. But somehow...you don’t. Besides, blowing all of your big healing and shielding CDs at the same time would be a horrible use of resources in any serious encounter. It would make some mechanics too mitigated, and leave others with nothing. Nice try, though.

The developers have had 3 expansions to get Nocturnal Sect “right”—or the hybrid aspect “right”, if you’d rather think of things that way. They have failed each time. The duality/hybrid nature of AST has always been a balancing nightmare: make it too strong in one sect, and you oust the accompanying healer—especially when you factor in AST’s rDPS gains. Make it too weak, and AST is ousted (see early ShB and how terrible both Diurnal and Nocturnal AST was in terms of healing versus WHM and SCH) or one Sect becomes staggeringly superior (this has been the case with Diurnal versus Noctural for ages—even after countless buffs to Noct to make it “better”, Diurnal has always been the more MP and resource efficient of the two. Even now. This was an inevitability, and it has very little to do with people being “scholar lovers”. People that see this are just being realistic. And understanding the struggle this job has gone through in terms of balancing for 6 years.

Ty for trying to educate people. Even top end players to this day think sch shields are higher potency when they are not and while deploying a crit adlo is still more aoe shield than a asp helios, its still not as not significantly bigger since you can't deploy cata and a crit asp helios would be just as good.

The issue here is getting it to crit on all party members. Whether or not an Aspected Helios crits is RNG. It will crit on some party members, and not crit on others.

[Absurdity]

If double AST was meta, then you’d see it more frequently. But somehow...you don’t. Besides, blowing all of your big healing and shielding CDs at the same time would be a horrible use of resources in any serious encounter. It would make some mechanics too mitigated, and leave others with nothing. Nice try, though.

And why would you when you're most likely gonna have neutral available for any mechanic that might actually need shields?

[HyoMinPark]

And why would you when you're most likely gonna have neutral available for any mechanic that might actually need shields?

Just to emphasize—it would be unlikely to ever need both Neutral Sect and something like, for example, CU for a mechanic. Between other party members’ mitigative tools (Reprisal, PoA, Dark Missionary, Heart of Light, physical ranged mitigation, Addle, you get the point), blowing both on a singular mechanic is a waste. Neutral would be preferred for one—alongside 1 or 2 other tools depending on the severity of the hit—and then CU on the next, alongside 1 or 2 other tools.

However, we do need to consider SB Ultimates, where you don’t have Neutral to rely on. Not that that’s a huge issue. CU’s cooldown reduction has made UCoB mitigation extremely easy. It’s up for so many raidwides and hard-hitting mechanics in there that AST is just *chef’s kiss* in that fight.

[Gemina]

Ty for trying to educate people. Even top end players to this day think sch shields are higher potency when they are not and while deploying a crit adlo is still more aoe shield than a asp helios, its still not as not significantly bigger since you can't deploy cata and a crit asp helios would be just as good.

That's just it, they have Critlo. It is quite literally utility within itself. It's actually crazy to think that it has been nerfed because it is still crazy powerful, which is why it is probably still tied to RNG. Recitation + Succor is a somewhat weaker version of a critlo they also have at their disposal. SCH just always has a response for unavoidable AoE damage, and through various methods which really makes them feel like a tactician opposed to the fewer fallback choices AST has. IOW, SCH has its identity set in stone as a primary mitigation healer.

While the shielding power is impressive in that image, without the ability to swap sects mid-combat, you lose out on a lot of it. He’s got both Diurnal and Nocturnal shielding on there for Aspected Benefic and Neutral Sect. That is impossible in actual combat since you are locked to a single sect the minute a boss is pulled. So, boast about it all you want, but realize the limitations as well.

I've been thinking that this might be a good thing for AST because of the limitations it faces as a result of not having access to both sects during combat. Shoed into the "pure healer" branch role, they can focus on making AST its own job, which is what needed to happen in the first place.

[Absurdity]

This is exactly what I mean. You simply don't need noct AST for most fights since you still have access to shields through neutral sect which will most likely be all the shielding you'll need if combined with other mitigation tools, if you even need any shields at all.


This is however also my fear for the rework, that shields will stay unnecessary for most encounters if you mitigate them properly, making double regen healer the more useful option.