How to make Nocturnal Worth It

[jojober]

Hi hi^ ^ I know there have been a million threads about AST and how to change them etc etc, but I had what I think was a good idea. I put this as a reply to a thread in the healer forum, but since Grekumah said to post how we thought changes could be good, I decided hopefully here it has a better chance of getting noticed.

I know most AST, myself included, don't want to be a copy/paste of whm or sch. We want to be our own type of healer. WHM is kind of burst healing, SCH is best for Mitigation. So where can we fit in without stepping on toes? We are supposed to be a hybrid healing job, so let us be, and here's how...

Right now, Diurnal Sect is our go to for most stuff. It is basically a watered down WHM. We have decent heals without all the awesome cooldowns, and we have our cards that are meant to balance the slightly weaker heal kit. What if we flipped that for Nocturnal Sect? Instead of having good heals and minimal card support, what if our cards were as strong as our diurnal heals, and our heals were as minimal as our diurnal cards?

Several times when the question of adding a support role has come up, the answer has been no because that would cause a problem with party/duty finder, and that makes sense to me. We are still healers though, we would queue as such. Then we would analyze the situation and decide when is best to be in heal mode and when is best to be in support mode, much like how whm/sch stance dance with Cleric's. This would of course require the ability to change stances in battle, but to make it so we can't do it all at once, there should be some kind of cool down on that.

How does this make us unique? Instead of burst heals or mitigation heals, we are helping the battle to go faster and or safer. I feel like that is the direction the job was meant to go in the first place. This idea still incorporates the risk v reward feeling that a lot of AST want, and it adds a new level of strategy since we wouldn't be able to flip back and forth.

Now I am no balancer genius, so I won't propose what each card should do in its buffed up state, so I will not even try that. But if anyone has an idea of what would be reasonable to make our Nocturnal Support side work, please lets get some ideas going!

Sorry again for the millionth thread, but I hope you took the time to see it through!

Jojober

[Luvbunny]

If I recall, AST is the flexible healer, it has two stances and can easily become the main healer with Scholar in a party, and become support healer with a White Mage in a party. The card buffs is just icing on the cake, cherry on top - since you cannot rely on this - they are too random, too few and far in between, and the effect is just marginal - it's not bad, but it is not great by any chance either. As it is now, ASTRO cannot heal worth a damn when shit hit the fan, two astro would pretty much spells DOOM in alliance, compare to two WHMs, two SCH, or WHM + SCH combo.

What they really need to change is the stance, make Diurnal is the healer stance, 10% more heal, and adding regen effects. Nocturnal is the shield stance, 5% faster action, shield absorb 25% damage dealt based on user's HP. On top of that they need to make essential dignity on 20 seconds cool down. Helios cure potency should be 350, Aspected Helios should be 250. Collective Unconscious also need to be changed.

Astro buffs is really pitiful, and on a very long cooldown, it's a bonus really - as it is now. If they want to keep the healing potency the same for now, then the BUFFS has to go up, on a faster CD timer. This way you can put AST as the buffer to go with some decent healing capability and will always act as second rate healer to WHM and SCH but with far better buffing that is unmatched by any other jobs. As of now, why would I want a weak buffs based on random chance, or a decent one with royal road assuming you draw a good card. SCH give a much more better buffs, that you can control.

WHM - unmatched healing potential, the best AOE healer in the game, with good damage potential
SCH - damage mitigation, constant steady buffs, and good damage over time.
AST should be - support heal to complement the other two healer classes, with unmatched party buffing potential that is far better than bard, machinist, scholar, or any other classes.

[Shiki_Lockhart]

Post on right section:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/659

[ruskie]

What they really need to change is the stance, make Diurnal is the healer stance, 10% more heal, and adding regen effects. Nocturnal is the shield stance, 5% faster action, shield absorb 25% damage dealt based on user's HP.

This sounds like a nice change one other thing I'd add is something like a crit shield should double the protection. A weaker shield but it would give them a bit more to live with.

[Luvbunny]

Totally agree, if I have two stances to switch, according to which other healer I am getting in party. Then those stances better be GOOD enough so that I can complement the healing style of the other healer. As it is now, AST can't heal as good as the other two healers, can't buff as good as SCH, BRD or MACH - or any other classes (dps or tanks). So what is the point of this job then? A little bit of both healer and buffer, but one that suffers penalty and cannot do either job in any good meaningful way for the party? And let's not go over double AST in party, then you are really in a serious big trouble, may as well vote abandon.

They should just do two stances, HEALER stance and BUFFER stance. If you pick healer stance, healing potency boost by 20%, add regen effect. If you pick buffer stance, action speed by 5%, weak shield (it's doable), 5 seconds more on all buffing timer, draw now is on 20 seconds cool down. Spread on 40 seconds CD. Now you can buffs more, with decent heal + shield.

[jojober]

Post on right section:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/659

Read this Reasoning:

I put this as a reply to a thread in the healer forum, but since Grekumah said to post how we thought changes could be good, I decided hopefully here it has a better chance of getting noticed.

[Shiki_Lockhart]

I won't be so sure about that. Because this thread will move to page 2 3 4 5 or more in a few hours and left in dust because people in general discussion wont go browse for more than 2 or 3 first pages if people don't be active on the thread.

On healer dedicated page will be there to be view anytime in first pages. And believe me, devs will check dedicated threads more than general discussing and try fish the related topics. It is called organization what devs like. They know that X theme will be in the Y dedicated page and pinpoint more what people want.

Do yourself a test, in general discussion search for Astrologian and see how many threads are (probably a lot), then check the date created and then when was last post and last check the page they are in the general discussion.

You will see them hot in first hours or first day then left in dust forever. While the dedicated healer role will be and easy to find. This applies to every role and any content.

If you wanted to make for example that monk temple thread about their rotations visible and people would keep seeing and posting would be hard because the speed of new threads that pop are faster than the posts on them.

Most of people here are just lazy and prefer to look at only one page than search in in the dedicated themes. Other thing you will notice is that devs answer faster in those than general. Sometimes one guy create one thread and second post is a dev. In general you need like 30+ pages of worth to them notice and see if worth answering.

So if you want to help SE and make easier to them see your suggestion here isn't the best place. It is only convenient for the lurkers here to give you more posts and that's all.

[Rajeme]

We actually got a feedback here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3176891

Senpai noticed us!