What Do We Want to See? - AST

[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".