What Do We Want to See? - AST

[PercibelTheren]

Personally I see this as a bit of a selfish request, which is fine, but it will likely never happen. Astro's should be limited to a certain type of healing. And Astro's being the healer that excels are planning out healing for future damage is where they shine and it should be emphasized. There is zero reason to go back to the frustration that came from clueless astro's going nocturnal spec and causing problems for their co-healer scholar because the astro wants to be a shield healer and in turn would negate the scholar's ability to shield (they didn't stack then). Nocturnal as it is is great. The shields actually stack and provided meaningful assitance to our co-shield healer.

I agree that it is fun to choose how your heals act, but giving astros back a watered down version of scholar isn't the answer.


You make a lot of points that are interesting and points I agree with. But the two above, well I have already said my piece. We are in agreement that the changes to astro now are not okay.

Edit: had to post in 2 replies because rules are dumb

I disagree because I think the whole shield/regen healer split is incredibly dumb as premise. That and it's also a lie. If you look at SCH and SGE, they have so much free pure healing and regens that they are just straight up better than the designated "pure" healers. Unless they somehow make fights require an insane amount of healing throughput, I guess. What I'm seeing is parties just running two shield healers and not even bothering with AST/WHM regularly.

That and the whole split will look really silly if/when they decide to add a fifth healer into the mix.

[Ari_Calithiel]

I disagree because I think the whole shield/regen healer split is incredibly dumb as premise. That and it's also a lie. If you look at SCH and SGE, they have so much free pure healing and regens that they are just straight up better than the designated "pure" healers. Unless they somehow make fights require an insane amount of healing throughput, I guess. What I'm seeing is parties just running two shield healers and not even bothering with AST/WHM regularly.

That and the whole split will look really silly if/when they decide to add a fifth healer into the mix.

Your point does not make a lot of sense to me. The pure regen healers also have shielding capabilities (WHM in DT). And if all the shield healers could do was shield, they would struggle in basic dungeons to keep up. As far as healing throughput, if my co-healer played sage and never touched their shields, I would dance circles around them with the amount of healing I could do on either WHM or AST. And the reason parties run 2 shield healers is due to the mitigation, not the fact that either has better healing output than AST or WHM. SGE and SCH both have mit on 30sec CD that stacks plus 120sec mit that both classes have. AST and WHM struggle in mitigation, especially WHM as their only mitigation is 120sec CD (AST at 60sec). The logic with running SGE/SCH together is why heal more if you can just lower the damage being taken? It has absolutely nothing to do with shields.

AST does not need to have the option to shield. It needs more of what it does best, delayed, preplanned big heals. They are not WHMs in that they should spam heals, they are planners. And that is where the focus should be. I really do not understand people's hang up on Nocturnal sect other than for just the "well this is neat" little bit of fluff.

And your bit about SCH having tons of free healing, runs fall apart if the only healer alive in Savage progression is a SCH or a SGE and there is no way to rez their co-healer in time. My SCH co-healer could not keep up with healing on P8S when I died to dumb (me on WHM at the time) during the phase with tons of raid wide aoe going out. SCH and SGE do not have the burst heals the way AST and WHM do. Scholars and Sages rely on things not spinning out of control in order to shine. Scholars will likely have an easier time come DT with Seraphism (likely Sages too with theirs).

I think it is fine that there is a separate identity between healers. I would love to see other sections of healer types. Maybe one that heals off debuffs or one that is purely regen healing like the druid from wow. There is no reason all healers should do the same as each other. Having a few abilities that dip into the other side is fine, but there is no reason to homogenize the healers more which is what nocturnal spec would be doing.

Edit: I would really love a pure dps healer that only heals from smashing the boss. Don't know how that would work, but it would be fun.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]That and the whole split will look really silly if/when they decide to add a fifth healer into the mix.

Not to mention that when Noct AST still existed in ShB, people were fine anyway when SCH for whatever reason paired with Noct AST. All they did was... the same as today: designate one of them to just not use their AoE shield to avoid overwriting. Spreadlo was only the exception. That was literally the only part of their kit that conflicts with one another - GCD shielding. Was it optimal? Not really... but it was certainly viable.

Depriving Noct AST aka a playstyle to conceive SGE - brand new copy pasta job - only to see same prob persist was one of a total joke of a decision they've made in their track record, and I'm afraid that would just continue to pile up in the future.

[Ari_Calithiel]

Not to mention that when Noct AST still existed in ShB, people were fine anyway when SCH for whatever reason paired with Noct AST. All they did was... the same as today: designate one of them to just not use their AoE shield to avoid overwriting. Spreadlo was only the exception. That was literally the only part of their kit that conflicts with one another - GCD shielding. Was it optimal? Not really... but it was certainly viable.

Depriving Noct AST aka a playstyle to conceive SGE - brand new copy pasta job - only to see same prob persist was one of a total joke of a decision they've made in their track record, and I'm afraid that would just continue to pile up in the future.

So... either Sch doesn't use their kit or Ast doesn't use their kit. What is the point of having Ast with nocturnal at that point? It would be far more beneficial to a team to have healer with regen and a separate healer with shields than have two shield healers with one being unable to use gcd heals. What happens when a run starts to go sideways? You are sitting there stuck with one healer unable to spam their aoe because, you know, shields don't stack. Unless you solely do normal content, this would be massively unfeasible and I don't see any group that would be willing to do it. SGE/SCH works because SGE has the capability to spam heals that aren't shields should the need arise (even if they are a weaker version of medica I or helios). I don't understand this take.

And how is SGE a copy pasta of AST with nocturnal? Because they can shield and have a regen skill? SGE is equipped with more mitigation than AST, has a reapplying shield (Panheima), and a laser cannon that heals the party not to mention a ton of other abilities the AST doesn't have as well as AST skills that the SGE does not have. SGE is the dps healer. AST is the pre-planning healer. Just because a few of the abilities are slightly similar does not make them copies.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

So... either Sch doesn't use their kit or Ast doesn't use their kit. What is the point of having Ast with nocturnal at that point? It would be far more beneficial to a team to have healer with regen and a separate healer with shields than have two shield healers with one being unable to use gcd heals. What happens when a run starts to go sideways? You are sitting there stuck with one healer unable to spam their aoe because, you know, shields don't stack. Unless you solely do normal content, this would be massively unfeasible and I don't see any group that would be willing to do it. SGE/SCH works because SGE has the capability to spam heals that aren't shields should the need arise (even if they are a weaker version of medica I or helios). I don't understand this take.

And how is SGE a copy pasta of AST with nocturnal? Because they can shield and have a regen skill? SGE is equipped with more mitigation than AST, has a reapplying shield (Panheima), and a laser cannon that heals the party not to mention a ton of other abilities the AST doesn't have as well as AST skills that the SGE does not have. SGE is the dps healer. AST is the pre-planning healer. Just because a few of the abilities are slightly similar does not make them copies.

GCD heals did not stack. But oGCD still does, which what made the comp viable, although wasn't optimal back then. Earthly Star? Opposition? Essential? Overpowered Noct Intersection? Yeah they all do. Neutral was also there. SCH/SGE do not see much of an issue today because they're both mitigative & HPS monster with the latter having literally every single piece of their action littered with questionable heals even when they're not properly used. (Pan)Haima & Holos are probably the more egregious examples. Noct AST back then only had Helios & Neutral to fall back on should they needed to pump out heal when their SCH mate was down for whatever reason.

Also my copy pasta comment was referring to how SGE is quite literally a carbon copy of SCH minus opportunity costs. The only similar part about Noct AST and today's SGE is literally only their fully mobile ST GCD shield.

EDIT: to be clear, my comment to Percibel was mostly me lamenting how pointless SE's attempt to split the healers in Regen/Barrier dichotomy. If Noct AST stayed throughout 6.0 - today, there really won't be any harm at all. Most people would probably still go Diurnal. Nocturnal probably won't be optimal, but still viable, which is my point. It's not broken, and some did enjoyed that 'playstyle'. The only few QoL they needed was to ensure only stronger barrier remained intact & maybe try to build a way for ASTs to dance between sects with added risks, if the player want to.

When SGE shipped out and people still able to pair both barriers together, albeit by designating who to prioritize GCD shielding (aka the same way as old Noct AST + SCH comp did in the past), it begs the question... then why do we even remove Noct AST at all if that same problem just jumps ship to today's SGE? (and in addition to that, being a carbon copy of an existing job instead of something fresh in that new design space... but that's a rambling for another thread) All of this just screams "Noct AST was removed for absolutely no reason".

[Ari_Calithiel]

GCD heals did not stack. But oGCD still does, which what made the comp viable, although wasn't optimal back then. Earthly Star? Opposition? Essential? Overpowered Noct Intersection? Yeah they all do. Neutral was also there. SCH/SGE do not see much of an issue today because they're both mitigative & HPS monster with the latter having literally every single piece of their action littered with questionable heals even when they're not properly used. (Pan)Haima & Holos are probably the more egregious examples. Noct AST back then only had Helios & Neutral to fall back on should they needed to pump out heal when their SCH mate was down for whatever reason.

Also my copy pasta comment was referring to how SGE is quite literally a carbon copy of SCH minus opportunity costs. The only similar part about Noct AST and today's SGE is literally only their fully mobile ST GCD shield.

EDIT: to be clear, my comment to Percibel was mostly me lamenting how pointless SE's attempt to split the healers in Regen/Barrier dichotomy. If Noct AST stayed throughout 6.0 - today, there really won't be any harm at all. Most people would probably still go Diurnal. Nocturnal probably won't be optimal, but still viable, which is my point. It's not broken, and some did enjoyed that 'playstyle'. The only few QoL they needed was to ensure only stronger barrier remained intact & maybe try to build a way for ASTs to dance between sects with added risks, if the player want to.

When SGE shipped out and people still able to pair both barriers together, albeit by designating who to prioritize GCD shielding (aka the same way as old Noct AST + SCH comp did in the past), it begs the question... then why do we even remove Noct AST at all if that same problem just jumps ship to today's SGE? (and in addition to that, being a carbon copy of an existing job instead of something fresh in that new design space... but that's a rambling for another thread) All of this just screams "Noct AST was removed for absolutely no reason".

So to summarize, because they removed an ogcd single target regen and an ogcd aoe shield (that was weaker by 35% than scholar and sages gcd shield) everyone is up in arms? These abilities that had a 30 sec and 60 sec cd respectively? I don't get it. Earthly star still exists and was unaffected by the sect. Collective unconscious now actually got buffed to include the regen and the mitigation. But because we don't have 2 ogcds, everyone is upset. This seems like a bit of a silly gripe. We now have the ability to apply shields, albeit gcd, with the new nocturnal which stacks in times of emergency and there have been a few moments where it was needed in the recent tiers.

Now to the point of SGE/SCH combo. I took a quick peek at FFlogs site and the number of recorded SGE/SCH logs for savage in the last tier (Anabaseios) were 42. The number of WHM/SCH? 430. The number of WHM/SGE? 871. I am not sure why I keep seeing people talk about SGE/SCH as if it is some godly combo. It is decent, but as I stated in a previous reply, they do not handle things going off script well. Heals need to be more planned out in order for it to work well as neither job has the ability to pump heals should things go off track. I know because I completed P5S-P7S in a SGE/SCH combo. The mit is great, but if our team lost their minds, recovering was hell. Additionally, SGE's extra little heals they do on both Panhaima and Holos (which you mentioned) are not the primary reasons you use them and are honestly not even very big. Holos has a cure potency of 300 with a small shield and the mit and is on a 2 minute Cd. Panhaima has 5 shields with 200 potency heal a piece with the leftovers at the end of the duration only healing for 100 potency a stack. These aren't big numbers when translated into direct heals. They likely exist as SGE does not have the monsterous shield potential as SCH.

SCH and SGE differences... they are similar, sure. But the way they should be played and their kit differs enough so that they are separate. If I were to go in depth on this, it would turn into a novel.

To your comment about how AST having nocturnal would cause "no harm," you have to think about it from the devs point of view. They now have 2 dedicated shield healers. And then there is AST. If AST keeps Nocturnal, then WHMs will want a similar spell. Then SGE and SCH will want to be able to pump heals like AST and WHM. Then there is no split and all healers are starting to become the same. You know this is true because people are already crying for AST to have some kind of special movement speed ability now that WHM has a yeet. And honestly, there is no need for nocturnal AST. It is truly just a watered down shield healer, a jack of all trades, master of none. It's current iteration is a stronger, smarter version of how it should be. Maybe the request would be to have it affect the ogcds during its duration rather than to request the whole sect back.

Also, you speak of healing as people should only be ogcd healing but then say that SGE players and SCH players who raided together would "assign" who to shield. This doesn't happen. You still don't want to gcd heal even with this combo. The only time I would shield anyone during my SGE/SCH combo was if the player walked into stupid and was about to die, had just rezzed and I had no stacks, or was the tank and my co-healer and I agreed before hand who was doing what. And according to you, Noct AST was only interested in the 2 ogcd abilities you mentioned above. So why is Noct AST even necessary for 2 ogcds that you could have alternate effects to?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

So to summarize, because they removed an ogcd single target regen and an ogcd aoe shield (that was weaker by 35% than scholar and sages gcd shield) everyone is up in arms?[...]

I never implied that everybody was up in arm because of that solely. There might be more reasons why people get upset of its removal, so please do not put words in my mouth. I was just pointing out that it was not optimal but still possible & not game breaking in any way. They should expand on that rather than just straight up deleting elements like they always do.

Now to the point of SGE/SCH combo. I took a quick peek at FFlogs site[...]

Ever considered that the words of a job dev describing their vision of Regen/Barrier dichotomy may be affecting how general mass interact with the role? This was especially true early expac where I often seen folks limiting the healer slots to WHM/AST + SCH/SGE. Over time, this practice died off, but by then, it was already ingrained too deep in the mass perspective that "1 regen 1 barrier good; double regen/barrier bad" (paraphrase). They are still viable regardless how you describe them to be more punishing to mistakes (I partially agree to that) as Noct AST + SCH certainly did, and that's been my point. I care less about conversing how optimal/unoptimal they are.

To your comment about how AST having nocturnal would cause "no harm," you have to think about it from the devs point of view[...]

I don't remember seeing WHM asking for Nocturnal (shields) flavored spells back in ShB. All I remembered was WHM asking for utilities that can mean many different things than just mere shields, and they did sorely needed more utilities than just Temperance.

Also, you speak of healing as people should only be ogcd healing but then say that SGE players and SCH players who raided together would "assign" who to shield. This doesn't happen.

When I mentioned "designating who to prioritize GCD shielding", I meant "when something hits the fan & either SCH or SGE cannot afford to ignore the mishap without one of them biting the GCD heal". I hope that clears up the misunderstanding.

I also never said that I only find the interest with the 2 ogcds you kept mentioning. Not sure why would you ask me that last question when I believe I've been super clear about how Noct AST+SCH was not optimal but still viable, so why remove (not a question to you btw)? To accommodate the Regen/Barrier split? If so then they have failed in every front but naming/title because double barrier/regen remains viable but at the cost of a playstyle remembered as "Noct AST" - a cost that should not even had to be paid, but they scapegoated it anyway just because.

[Ari_Calithiel]

I never implied that everybody was up in arm because of that solely. There might be more reasons why people get upset of its removal, so please do not put words in my mouth. I was just pointing out that it was not optimal but still possible & not game breaking in any way. They should expand on that rather than just straight up deleting elements like they always do.

Not sure why you are bristling here. You brought up those 2 ogcds. And during the age of nocturnal sect, the only ogcds that were affected were celestial opposition, celestial intersection, and collective unconscious. We have the benefits of both sects in collective now with the regen and mit. And to expand on nocturnal sect in future updates would be to encroach on the shield healer domain and to have AST sitting in a position where it is both and neither shield healer nor regen healer. It's shield healing was sub-par to that of a SCH and to that of the SGE. If they were to continue down that route, we would likely have spells that can do shield or regen but are not the best in either healing type. That sounds terrible to me. And as I keep saying, AST's identity is its ability to pre-plan heals.

I don't remember seeing WHM asking for Nocturnal (shields) flavored spells back in ShB. All I remembered was WHM asking for utilities that can mean many different things than just mere shields, and they did sorely needed more utilities than just Temperance.

Except WHM's have been asking for shields... which is why they are receiving them in DT. AST only worked with nocturnal spec because it was the odd healer out. But now there is a clear divide with the addition of SGE.

I also never said that I only find the interest with the 2 ogcds you kept mentioning. Not sure why would you ask me that last question when I believe I've been super clear about how Noct AST+SCH was not optimal but still viable, so why remove (not a question to you btw)? To accommodate the Regen/Barrier split? If so then they have failed in every front but naming/title because double barrier/regen remains viable but at the cost of a playstyle remembered as "Noct AST" - a cost that should not even had to be paid, but they scapegoated it anyway just because.

It is not a viable combo. I explained this in a different reply, but AST's only spammable aoe is helios and A. helios. Helios is a much weaker version than A. helios. If an AST was to go noct, and spamming heals was needed, AST would not be able to deliver as well as a shield/regen healer combo. Shields overwrite each other and if a SCH and noct AST were to spam their aoe at the same time, the party would lose out on the healing from one of the healers shields. In fights like P10S or P8S part 2, every bit of healing matters greatly. Additionally, if an AST were to in a panic aoe heal after a SCH spreadlos, that spreadlo is gone. Nocturnal sect was a neat ability that just does not work really well. It was not as popular a combo as it is made out to be. Sure it was viable in a sense, but why keep something that isn't really adding anything to the identity of the class? It is not meant to be a shield healer. Its identity is a pre-planning, foresight healer. And we still get to keep the shields every 2 minutes. So I still don't get the fuss.

[ASkellington]

So... either Sch doesn't use their kit or Ast doesn't use their kit. What is the point of having Ast with nocturnal at that point? It would be far more beneficial to a team to have healer with regen and a separate healer with shields than have two shield healers with one being unable to use gcd heals.

This is false.

1. Only A. Benefic and A. Helios are unable to be stacked with SCH/SGE. 2 abilities we don't even use.
   
2. SCH has plenty of non-GCD heals (and so does SGE) to the point where they are better together than WHM+AST or with one of them because they can both mitigate and heal with little to no downsides.
   
3. AST still has Helios to spam heal the party and Benefic 2 to do the same with a tank if needed.

Nocturnal AST is a non-issue.

Further Nocturnal Sect was apart of AST until EW and shouldn't have been removed, rather changed to where it could be toggled in combat so AST could be a stance dancing healer which is a play style we don't have in the game for healer yet and one that I think would suit AST, as they could switch to Noct Sect to mitigate an attack that they know is coming, and go back to Diurnal when they need the healing.

I've even mentioned that having both back could address the cards issue, as one sect (Diurnal) could have defensive/utility cards while the other (Nocturnal) could have the more offensive ones, keeping the RNG and separating the two as that seems to be everyone's hang up (I personally don't care).

I'm not gonna die on the hill of it should return no questions asked, but I'm also not going to not ask for a part of my kit that I did not ask to be removed to come back when I have the oppertunity to ask for it.

[Ari_Calithiel]

This is false.

1. Only A. Benefic and A. Helios are unable to be stacked with SCH/SGE. 2 abilities we don't even use.
   
2. SCH has plenty of non-GCD heals (and so does SGE) to the point where they are better together than WHM+AST or with one of them because they can both mitigate and heal with little to no downsides.
   
3. AST still has Helios to spam heal the party and Benefic 2 to do the same with a tank if needed.

Nocturnal AST is a non-issue.

Further Nocturnal Sect was apart of AST until EW and shouldn't have been removed, rather changed to where it could be toggled in combat so AST could be a stance dancing healer which is a play style we don't have in the game for healer yet and one that I think would suit AST, as they could switch to Noct Sect to mitigate an attack that they know is coming, and go back to Diurnal when they need the healing.

I've even mentioned that having both back could address the cards issue, as one sect (Diurnal) could have defensive/utility cards while the other (Nocturnal) could have the more offensive ones, keeping the RNG and separating the two as that seems to be everyone's hang up (I personally don't care).

I'm not gonna die on the hill of it should return no questions asked, but I'm also not going to not ask for a part of my kit that I did not ask to be removed to come back when I have the oppertunity to ask for it.

1. Yes those don't stack. So if a boss starts pumping damage or your team decides to commit mass suicide via a boss mechanic, a Noct AST and another shield healer would struggle to compensate. SGE/SCH struggle with this which is why this combo only works with set statics. As for the ogcds from Noct AST, there were 2. Two heals, one aoe shield and one ST regen. So I'm not sure why these two abilities are what have everyone up in arms about. It feels like people want it more for the flavor and idea of it rather than what it actually does. Could you do a set static for Noct AST and a shield healer? Sure, but Noct AST's shields will always be weaker than anything SCH or SGE could do, so why have it?

2. I'm going to include aoe and ST in this count. WHM has 6 ogcd heals (however they receive lilies every 20 seconds which are dps neutral, so this should be taken into account). AST has 8 (but Macro is also dps neutral). SGE has 8 (they also have pneuma which is dps neutral). SCH has 7. These are pretty even across the board considering WHM should never cap their lilies with it being free healing. So I'm not really sure where you get the idea that one job has more than another.

3. I don't understand what you are saying here. I think you are referring to my point about 2 shield healers needing to spam. So when 2 shield healers gcd heal with their shields, the spells overwrite each other. So the only healing you are getting is the base potency of the heal and losing the shield from one of the healers. In the situation, lets say, P8S part 2 near the end of the fight, boss goes nuts and just spams aoe damage. If Noct AST and SCH were healing together, they would need to be spamming aoe heals to deal with this. So the party loses 1 healers shield. But wait! It gets worse. Noct AST shields have 35% less strength than either SGE or SCH. And if a shield healer shields after a SCH spreadlos, say goodbye to the spreadlo because it just got overwritten. And helios is AST's only aoe spamming ability. So there is no way to get around this.

Nocturnal is an issue. The changes made need to remain. If anything, one could argue that the ogcds that were affected by nocturnal in the past also receive the affects under the new nocturnal. But we should never go back to having a second stance so to speak. As I have argued before, AST's beauty lies in its ability to pre-plan heals, and that is where the focus of this job should remain. The only reason nocturnal lasted as long as it did was because there wasn't a 2nd shield healer. It acted like a filler (albeit much weaker version of a SCH). Nocturnal itself is still there and the changes made to it with its ability to stack with other shields is awesome. A spreadlo plus nocturnal shield is nearly a full hp shield and that is freaking awesome. It is still the same potency, so its not a very big shield, but we still have the ability to do so. Additionally, as I said in the reply above, if AST were to receive nocturnal sect again, you know this would cause waves in the other healers wanting to be able to stance dance as well.

Edit: AST does have helios. Yes, but in the situations I'm referring to, it would not be enough. Helios itself is a much weaker aoe heal than its aspected counterpart.