Quote Originally Posted by Zholi View Post
Uh... the HoTs from Diurnal are going to easily outpace the 5% healing boost from Noct. You know what's more potent than that "massive" Benefic II? Benefic II plus one single bloody HoT tick. Jesus Christ.
When the ticks from the HoT are barely, if even actually healing the auto-attacks from boss mechanics, they're not outpacing anything. I've stated it before, but to get the full potential out of the HoT you'd have to let them go all the way through, and in-between you're spamming your other healing spells to make up for any other damage. When a SCH can drop Succor for better shields just as frequently as an AST could drop Aspected Helios, but doesn't have to worry about MP managment, and the AST can instead use fewer healing spells to keep up with mitigated damage. In the same time it takes a Diurnast to cast A. Benefic, Tick, Benefic II; a Nocturnast has cast Benefic II and followed up with Benefic.

Doing this, as stated by others, front loads your healing. Doing this on my AST in Diurnal I got an average of ~3734 by casting A.B, then Benefic II, and allowing for the initial tick as well as a follow-up, as that would be thereabouts when a Noctast would have completed their casting. Meanwhile, the Noctast cast only Benefic II and Benefic and came out with ~4223 -- a difference of 1.13 Sure, the HoT will continue to tick, but they're more than likely going to be negated or mitigated by incoming damage.

If you allow for more healing with the Diurnast, you would also have to allow for more healing from the Noctast, hence why I didn't wait further for the ticks or use any further spells.

Quote Originally Posted by Cynfael View Post
Thing is, your SCH partner doesn't give a crap about the +5% potency Benefic II cast out of Nocturnal. A 5% bonus to healing spells isn't nearly as strong a contribution as bringing on-demand HoT effects with Diurnal while still being able to use the base kit without the tiny, tacked-on potency buff.

Again, if you're not bringing Noct to cast shields, you aren't bringing it at all.
It's not really that on-demand, though, is it? Once a HoT is set, you can't really recast over it because doing so is clipping, and you're not healing efficiently then. Sure you can stack A. Benefic and A. Helios, but doing so runs into the same problem as the above scenario where you still have to wait on GCD before you can use the next spell, and by then the Noctast has cast cast fewer spells to get more returns.