Goodbye Nocturnal Sect, Goodbye my world

[Liam_Harper]

I know some people liked Noct sect and I respect their opinion on what they found most enjoyable. Hopefully they can find some fun in Sage or still enjoy the current AST.

But speaking personally, for me Noct can rot. I won't miss it one bit. It was the rubbish lower-potency noodle stance that I always resented on the rare occasions I had to use it. It was the bad player trap, the "oh, I have a WHM co-heal in this easy MSQ content, I better go Noodle Sect and spam Asp-Does-Barely-Anything". Noct is only better if you need constant shielding, which is far too rare. I hated Noct.

Personal opinion of course.

[Recon1o6]

I know some people liked Noct sect and I respect their opinion on what they found most enjoyable. Hopefully they can find some fun in Sage or still enjoy the current AST.

But speaking personally, for me Noct can rot. I won't miss it one bit. It was the rubbish lower-potency noodle stance that I always resented on the rare occasions I had to use it. It was the bad player trap, the "oh, I have a WHM co-heal in this easy MSQ content, I better go Noodle Sect and spam Asp-Does-Barely-Anything". Noct is only better if you need constant shielding, which is far too rare. I hated Noct.

Personal opinion of course.

So here's the big question
Instead of removing it for a regen/barrier distinction that doesn't actually exist, why couldn't it have been buffed to bring it up to diurnal's strength?

[Silver-Strider]

So here's the big question
Instead of removing it for a regen/barrier distinction that doesn't actually exist, why couldn't it have been buffed to bring it up to diurnal's strength?

They tried that and it made AST's shields stronger than SCH's. It was impossible to balance it properly as a result.

[Rilifane]

So here's the big question
Instead of removing it for a regen/barrier distinction that doesn't actually exist, why couldn't it have been buffed to bring it up to diurnal's strength?

They had years to do that and failed time after time to balance it with Diurnal and the other to healers.
Time to admit defeat and delete it.

[Enla]

So here's the big question
Instead of removing it for a regen/barrier distinction that doesn't actually exist, why couldn't it have been buffed to bring it up to diurnal's strength?

As others have said, Noct basically made the healers impossible to balance when paired with SE's design philosophy surrounding healing in FF14. It was actively holding back healer design as a whole because every little change to AST could have a rippling effect and make SCH or WHM irrelevant in some way. In any other game this would likely not have been much of a problem, but when the design team already has issues with healer concepts to begin with it basically was just one big old monkey wrench that could never be reliably fixed.

Personally the only time I found Noct useful was during dungeon pulls with undergeared tanks. Specifically in Bardam's Mettle during a few of those long pulls. Beyond that though? It really wasn't very useful and actively gave me grey hair as a SCH main back before SCH was pumped so full of oGCDs that we no longer cared about our shields being constantly overwritten.