WOOT! They listened!!!! (AST Buffs)

[Vlady]

What makes noc stance bad? People claim it sucks but no specifics.

[Leiloni]

What makes noc stance bad? People claim it sucks but no specifics.

The total potency including shields is lower than the HoTs of Diurnal. So Diurnal is overall much more potency and since it's still the same mana cost, it's more mana efficient. Also the shields break pretty easily.

[Vlady]

Well that is natural with how regen is suppose to be an overall efficient form of healing over fast shielding and mana hungry ben 2. Scholars are not mana efficient but a powerful aetherflow mana regen mechanic makes it sort of null.

Ive managed to save countless people from eating 3 orbs at once with an instant cast aspect noc heal. Managed to keep tanks up long enough to heal them out of critical situations weaving in noc aspected shield and ben 2. If paired with a strong aoe healer like white mage noc is suppose to be in the position to help manage critical moment healing. It does that well. I do not consider it a stance you pre cast shields like scholar to help mitigate damage but to help smooth out the rough recovery by its instant cast with upfront heal and shield.

If you do not think about it as being a buffer against incoming damage but to help recover and keep those in the critical red of dying with a quick heal+ shield the stance does its job well.

[SuzakuCMX]

*boop*

Aspected Noct Benefic is weaker total potency than Aspected Diurnal Benefic. The Aspected Noct shield is also weak enough that it's almost always a waste of mana unless they were 100% going to die from one hit without that shield, which hasn't currently happened in any content. It also lacks the double-on-crit that SCH shield has so it's worthless for now.

Aspected Noct Helios is only useful if your party was going to wipe from not having the 150ish potency shield since the Di version stacks regen with WHM and will therefore heal for a lot more after a few seconds than Noct would have.

Since the 5% healing buff from Noct is made up for from regens in Di and the shield is currently not worth it, Di is almost always a better choice than Noct.

Not to say Noct isn't capable of clearing content, because it is. It's just not as good as Di.

[Sidra]

Other than Celestial Opposition which just blows in Noct, I don't think Noct is nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The 525 potency instacast heal/shield is really good. I think that in general healing is more useful than shielding. The efficiency of hots will always win unless the shields are actually needed to survive. I think Diurnal is just more universal and Noct is more niche. When we find content with a single target tank buster - Noct will be useful when paired with a WHM or other AST.

Overall I think the changes made are pretty good, and appreciated.

[Sidra]

Of course the instant heal/shield is lower potency than the extended duration hot...

Funny - when I cast Adlo on my Scholar and it doesn't crit, I don't find it useless. And thank God, cause that's like 80% of the time. The only reason SCH use Adlo sometimes for normal or hurried heals is because they do not have a Cure 2 equivalent - if they did, it'd be tankbuster only. Noct Benefic has a purpose, and it serves that purpose well.

Diurnal is overall stronger but just because of the more generic usefulness of the mana efficient hots versus the more niche use of shielding. When there is a WHM or other AST in the party against a boss with a tank buster, Noct will work just fine.

[SuzakuCMX]

Funny - when I cast Adlo on my Scholar and it doesn't crit, I don't find it useless. And thank God, cause that's like 80% of the time.

Adlo is 75 total potency more than Aspected Noct Benefic and you use it for the chance at a crit. It's not USELESS when Adlo doesn't crit but they don't have any higher potency mitigation anyways so might as well use it. AST has Benefic II (651/620 potency) which is 1.68 HP per mana in Noct and 1.6 in Di.

Aspected Benefic is 1.52 mitigation per mana

(At least at level 54 AST, dunno how they fare at 60).

Benefic II is always better than Aspected Noct if they weren't going to die in one hit.

EDIT: Here's the level 60 efficiencies per MP.

Noct Aspected Benefic: 525/707 = .74
Noct Benefic II: 651/795 = .82
Di Benefic II: 620/795 = .78
Di Aspected Benefic: 190/707 = .27 (reaches better MP efficiency than Noct after 12 seconds/4 Tics).

So yeah Aspected Benefic is worse even than Di Benefic II.

[Volsung]

Richard I completely agree with you on the changes. They are a great step in the right direction. I'm happy about lightspeed,ewer/spire, spread, shuffle and diurnal cu.

Would love to see work done on nocturnal sect in general and cu in nocturnal. Nocturnal has issues with stacking where Regens in diurnal dont. On top of other issues.

I'll have to see where they go with cu when it is changed.

also think royal road effects should be looked at. As sacrificing a card should lead to double or more benefit in all cases.

but again a great few steps forward

[Sidra]

But why are you comparing Noct Aspected Benefic to Diurnal Benefic II? When in Noct Stance, you still have Benefic II to use as your core power heal. These comparisons you are doing are irrelevant. The important question is, out of all of the skills, which are you going to want to cast on a tank when Phoenix starts casting Revelation, or Bahamut starts casting Akh Morn? You really wanna use your Diurnal aspected Benefic go right ahead. You just made a lovely numerical forum argument but let your tank die. Me - I'm taking Noct Aspected Benefic.

Diurnal and Noct don't need to be equal to each other, but they need to be able to fill their desired role based on the party composition. Given Adlo has a 300 pot shield, and AST's is 262.5 - I highly doubt the tuning is such that one will suffice and the other won't.

[SuzakuCMX]

*snip*

Because in any content where you need Aspected Benefic to survive a hit (AKA Progression), you'd be better off bringing a SCH because of the chance at a crit + the extra 37.5 potency is going to give you a much better buffer after that hit to heal them back up with SCH's superior emergency healing. Any content where you don't need the shield (AKA anything but progression) the shield is useless so you'll want Diurnal.