How could you do this to AST?

[HyoMinPark]

And they may change that now so they don't hurt Sage and Scholar being able to work together.

I’m guessing they will likely have skills that work similar to Neutral and allow for stacking—but the “generic” skills will likely still not stack. If I’m to go off of the way they’ve designed healers up to this point. Perhaps I will be surprised, but I’m not going to have any expectations until we learn more.

amen sister noct rocks only people who hzve no sense never took the time to realize nocts potential

If Nocturnal had potential, they wouldn’t be getting rid of it after 6 years of buffing it and readjusting it every other patch. If Nocturnal Sect had potential, it wouldn’t have to be readjusted so much. If Nocturnal Sect was better than Diurnal, it would be meta. But which Sect is meta? Diurnal. Which Sect is dropped the second you no longer need shields to live? Nocturnal. MP and resource wise, Diurnal skills are always a better use of your healing GCD.

Perhaps you haven’t played this game for as long as some AST mains, but I’ve played it for over 5 years and been present for nearly every overhaul and adjustment Nocturnal Sect has received since HW, and it has never been the more efficient option over Diurnal Sect. This efficiency (and lack thereof) has been proven by repeated testing and maths many times over. Noct AST has only ever been the go-to for solo healing Savage and Ultimate fights. That’s it. In a dual healer comp, AST is always better in Diurnal Sect.

Classify me as a “Noct Sect hater” all you want. I’m not hating on a stance I used to “rock” quite frequently in PF simply because I wanted to. I’m just not blind to the fact that it is less efficient than its Diurnal counterpart.

[IceBlueNinja]

Agreed. It has been the main cause of the healer imbalances, and I'm glad they're finally addressing the fact that the Sects have been a failed idea (they did try, I will always respect them for that).


You mean the Pigeonholing that has been there since AST's release? Nocturnal Sect has always been a trap due to being fundamentally weaker than SCH, and AST's abilities since Stormblood have been pushing it into a pure healer role. The devs are unable to effectively balance AST without causing major issues in the healer balance. Make Nocturnal too strong, you throw SCH out of the meta. Make Diurnal too strong, and WHM is forced out. Make either too weak, and AST can be tossed out.

That has been the flaw since release, and anybody who has been here since HW can recall those days where they were basically "rebalanced" almost every patch. It caused massive chaos. Even in SB you saw AST's balancing caused chaos. Here in ShB it too caused chaos. Let's just be honest with ourselves here, AST has been in a dire need for a rework since release, simply because the Sects made it impossible for any semblance of healer balance to exist. AST needs to be its own healer, not a carbon copy of another, not a hybrid.

then what do you call sage then? hybrid means it is made to cover a role not fully but at least decent it was like the rdm version healer to say . i hope sage shields amd i bet it will be better and more effective than sch that class need to vanish period worst stressful healer ever

[Miste]

Like Hyo said, I also saw this coming a loooong time ago. I knew when they brought in a 4th healer, an even number, they also would likely even out the playstyles so that they would be able to balance better, 2 vs 2.

They already couldn't balance 3 so I knew it was likely that AST would then lose its ability to change between healer types. I just didn't know which one we would lose, guess it is Nocturnal which doesn't surprise me since they seemed to have issues more often with Nocturnal Sect balance.

I think there were more players who played/preferred Diurnal AST as well? But I don't know how true that is for ShB necessarily since I stopped playing AST at ShB I kinda stopped paying attention as much.

Obviously people who prefer Nocturnal Sect and like being a shield AST are losing out :/ which does suck though.

AST having the ability to switch between types was basically a band-aid for the fact that when they added AST they had an odd number of healers, it made sense to have it able to switch between types when there were only 3. So it wasn't like it wasn't a good idea at the time on paper, but it has caused a lot of balancing issues.

[Rosa_Frandlia]

Being a pure healer doesn't mean no shields. Look at Temperance on WHM and you can see it has a damage mitigation tool and also has Divine Benision. AST will likely get a rework to have these tools, just on a cool down similar to WHM and AST current abilities that give this in Diurnal mode.

I just hope AST doesn't get the SCH ShB gutting or the WHM SB gutting along with the predicted loss of sects of all its other skills and like WHM got an AOE shield back in ShB AST gets something similar to Royal Road to spread cards.

[SweetPete]

And they may change that now so they don't hurt Sage and Scholar being able to work together.

I highly doubt it. Shields stacking will be pretty op. Being able to stack them continuously anyway. Ast neutral sect and sch was not able to stack continuously so not op. I’m sure they will make it that you can only have 1 regen and 1 shield healer per group.

[IceBlueNinja]

I’m guessing they will likely have skills that work similar to Neutral and allow for stacking—but the “generic” skills will likely still not stack. If I’m to go off of the way they’ve designed healers up to this point. Perhaps I will be surprised, but I’m not going to have any expectations until we learn more.



If Nocturnal had potential, they wouldn’t be getting rid of it after 6 years of buffing it and readjusting it every other patch. If Nocturnal Sect had potential, it wouldn’t have to be readjusted so much. If Nocturnal Sect was better than Diurnal, it would be meta. But which Sect is meta? Diurnal. Which Sect is dropped the second you no longer need shields to live? Nocturnal. MP and resource wise, Diurnal skills are always a better use of your healing GCD.

Perhaps you haven’t played this game for as long as some AST mains, but I’ve played it for over 5 years and been present for nearly every overhaul and adjustment Nocturnal Sect has received since HW, and it has never been the more efficient option over Diurnal Sect. This efficiency (and lack thereof) has been proven by repeated testing and maths many times over. Noct AST has only ever been the go-to for solo healing Savage and Ultimate fights. That’s it. In a dual healer comp, AST is always better in Diurnal Sect.

Classify me as a “Noct Sect hater” all you want. I’m not hating on a stance I used to “rock” quite frequently in PF simply because I wanted to. I’m just not blind to the fact that it is less efficient than its Diurnal counterpart.

go check my post in about sage job maybe thay may open your eyes on why noct is awesome

[Piarkire]

I highly doubt it. Shields stacking will be pretty op. Being able to stack them continuously anyway. Ast neutral sect and sch was not able to stack continuously so not op. I’m sure they will make it that you can only have 1 regen and 1 shield healer per group.

Actually, both of those can stack with each other but not on top of themselves; I've physically tested this. Best that happens is that they get refreshed.

[Zolvolt]

The amount of misinformation on noct being bad is blowing my mind rn. Noct's ability to mitigate and remove damage with ogcd's is pretty strong. Diurnal doesn't even get damage mitigation unless they channel their bubble. Their shield potency is higher than sch's. And saying noct is worse than double regen just are spending too much time hard casting asp.helios and not enough time OGCD healing mechanics. That being said sure double regen will be good on easy content. But don't act like noct ast doesn't have a very welcomed place next to whm.

[Enla]

I highly doubt it. Shields stacking will be pretty op. Being able to stack them continuously anyway. Ast neutral sect and sch was not able to stack continuously so not op. I’m sure they will make it that you can only have 1 regen and 1 shield healer per group.

I doubt they'll restrict it that heavily. It's really not in their best interests to do so especially if they never allow shields to stack in the first place.

[HyoMinPark]

go check my post in about sage job maybe thay may open your eyes on why noct is awesome

I’ve already been reading your posts—and responding to them—in the other thread about Sage. I’m still not convinced.

If you’re referencing the post with the crazy amount of stacked shields you made in that thread—I already replied to it. As I said there: better get all of those prepped pre-pull because AST cannot swap sects in combat, thereby losing the ability to stack that many resources at the same time. Double AST is not a meta comp, so even if you ran two ASTs, you would never blow all of your major healing cooldowns like that at the same time anyways. That is a terrible allocation of resources.

The amount of misinformation on noct being bad is blowing my mind rn. Noct's ability to mitigate and remove damage with ogcd's is pretty strong. Diurnal doesn't even get damage mitigation unless they channel their bubble. Their shield potency is higher than sch's. And saying noct is worse than double regen just are spending too much time hard casting asp.helios and not enough time OGCD healing mechanics. That being said sure double regen will be good on easy content. But don't act like noct ast doesn't have a very welcomed place next to whm.

Please don’t act as if Nocturnal Sect is the more valued of the two Sects. It has never been more valued over Diurnal Sect in the 6 years AST has existed. If it was so valuable and so good, then why is it readjusted multiple times per each expansion? Why is it not the norm for the job? Why is it not meta? No one is saying that Noct AST is weak—they are saying that it is not as valuable or as efficient as Diurnal. Standard healer comps are still WHM/SCH or DiAST/SCH. While WHM/Noct AST exists, it is most certainly not the norm or the meta.

Personally, I think you’re the one who is a bit misinformed here. That, or you are blinded by your love for the sect and unwilling to look at what has been proven again and again. Diurnal AST has always been the more efficient and more desired of AST’s two stances.

Actually, both of those can stack with each other but not on top of the same thing; I've physically tested this.

They never said that they don’t stack—they said that they don’t stack continuously. I’m guessing they what they meant is that: Neutral Sect is an ability with a 20-second duration on a 120-second cooldown. Therefore, every 2 minutes, you have the ability to cast shields that stack for a total of 20 seconds (the shields last the standard 30 seconds). However, you do not have the ability to do this constantly during a fight. Continuous stacking of shields would be overpowered, especially when paired with AOE mitigation from other jobs.