What Do We Want to See? - AST

[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?