About AST and why their healing is weaker

[Ghishlain]

as AST we only have the most generic heals available, we have no particular special heal and our 50-60 abilities are pretty much useless and bring nothing, particularly collective unconscious and celestial opposition(its a shame that such ability is used to refresh 5sec extra of mp lol)

we actually dont have that much healing skills at all. and when you look at the skills, most of everything from 30-50 is done for cards. and cards have from very little effect to being useless.

now i would understand if AST could buff well enough, then teams would be like "our dps is almost too low, we have a WHM so we should get AST for extra dmg buffs". But that doesn't work and this part is filled again with a SCH, a freaking summon that has 1 atk. speed skill that is practically better than entire arsenal of AST card skills.

Indeed, when you consider this design practice it almost feels like S-E's original concept was "normal healer, super buffs". Richard pointed out in one of posts way back how the goal for AST seemed to be ending the fight faster via buffs instead of keeping the team up longer via potent heals and MP efficiency. You can see that goal in S-E's design, yet it does in deed feel flawed because of one issue in S-E's raid design.

Arbitrary numbers incoming - If current raid design requires both healers to be able to output 1,500 HPS / healer and AST is only able to output 1,000 HPS at the current item level, that puts a heavy strain on the other healer to make up for the AST's short comings. This will make AST much less desirable as their healing partner will be able to make less use of their kit. You could almost argue that this would need to make the AST buffs achieve God-like levels to sustain this.

But I disagree with that design philosophy because that would make AST the goto healer for farm content and farm content only. The goal is to try to bring AST to a point where they can be accepted into progression content.

stance dancing is also very gimmicy and practically useless. especially when you realize that it will work only with WHM partner,and wont work with SCH or AST anyways. that wouldn't solve anything, well maybe expert dungeons(4players) would be more fun, but they are decently playable with AST already.

I and a few other posters have stated in this past - but at this juncture there is little reason to Sect dance outside of the niche one time use to Aspected Benefic for a HoT then Aspected Benefic for a Shield (or vice versa) for a small and short spike in HPS. The concept itself does sound fun, but at this time won't see a great benefit.

With that being said, why don't we try to make each Sect more appealing and unique?

Right now, we have three spells that are affected by more then just the Sect bonus provided:

1. Aspected Benefic
2. Aspected Helios
3. Collective Unconsciousness

Why don't we extend that further?

1. Time Dilation
2. Celestial Opposition
3. Enhanced Benefic Procs

Make each Sect more unique to each other and give particular beneficial effects in conjunction to the already existing toolkit.

I have an errand to run so I'll see if I can put my thoughts onto paper at a later juncture.

I feel like I'd rather have Bole give 10% healing potency on the target for the duration instead of damage reduction, since then they wouldn't have to change one of the existing CDs we have to be a heal buff.

This made me think - why not have Bole do both?

Bole now gives:

1. A 10% Reduction in Damage
2. A 10% Increase in Healing Potency

It seems like a lot, but I don't think it'll be as broken as one might think. Anyone you'll want to be using Bole on you'll most likely want to heal shortly afterwards too.

I suggested somewhere else that Nocturnal could drop all the shielding thing and have some stacking defense buff added to his aspected skills. Like this:
Aspected skills would heal for some potency and would also add a stacking buff up to 5 stacks. Every stack would give a 2% buff on def/mdef up to 10% and would last 10~15sec. This would also have synergy with Time dilation, thing that we don't have for Noct now.
If you consider this new trait, Bole would get kinda useless, so it could be reworked as a healing buff instead. I'm not sure on how it should work though: Either give the healer a buff on healing spells (this way, the skill would only work for healers, being a personal Mantra) or give the target a healing buff, like a targeted convalescence...

What do you guys think?

I like this idea! Though I would drastically miss the shield too, sadly ; ; And I feel if they gave it both a shield and a defensive buff it would make it too powerful. Unless they made it something like a 170 Potency heal that gives a shield that's double the healed amount (total eHP potency after Sect correction is 534).

/thinks more.

[Zaresin]

What people are meaning by the term weaker heals is that their overall healling options are limited and have only limited use. No raid or dungeon group is a perfect run, there is always a derp moment. What sets Whm/Sch ahead of Ast is their ability to negate those derp moments entirely by having more options available.

The card aspect of Ast is a failure. They traded healing options for an RNG card game that is outclassed by other mechanics of the other two healers and other DPS jobs. It was a bad design flaw on Yoshi P's part. His view was narrow and left the class lacking in any real utility that would benefit the raid/party. Until Ast get more emergency healing tools, they will continue to be pushed to the back burner. We need reliability and right now Ast are not reliable in the least. *Slow clap for Yoshi P*

[RichardButte]

Imagine if they could stance dance and have access to both regen and the shield as was originally designed before the game's release?

Please, no...

Stance dancing is a PITA, and we already have one stance to dance in and out of.

Indeed, when you consider this design practice it almost feels like S-E's original concept was "normal healer, super buffs". Richard pointed out in one of posts way back how the goal for AST seemed to be ending the fight faster via buffs instead of keeping the team up longer via potent heals and MP efficiency. You can see that goal in S-E's design, yet it does in deed feel flawed because of one issue in S-E's raid design.

I did, and I later reneged on the subject when I considered how AST needs to keep the group alive first and foremost, though any content they can queue for, even with groups of players who get hit a lot.

If AST were a DPS class, this would be a whole different story, as the onus of healing wouldn't be falling on AST's shoulders and the risk vs. reward would only be about potentially lower DPS vs. potentially higher DPS.

There's ways they can still TRY for that, and I think I'll make a thread about that right now...

[Lastelli]

I actually don't agree on the part that it must be on the same level as whm/sch as a healer. After all, the current meta in healing involves one pure healer (whm) and one support healer (sch) that mostly do dps. This of course requires a perfect knowledge of the encounter and a very good healer. Just look at A2S and A3S clear videos. Sure, they look indeed very challenging, but nothing a pure healer + support healer can't handle. AST should be that support healer imo, like SCH is now, but instead of doing dps directly while letting the fairy assist the other healer, it should buff his/her companions (healer included) consistently while taking care of what the pure healer cannot do with some kind of unique feature (time based healing magic - pet-like stars - whatever). This could set a new meta for when an AST is in party. Right now, ast as a healer is just a whm wannabe who can trade hots for weak shields when in Noct stance and with crappy cards instead of useful CDs or oGCD abilities and with weaker versions of already existing skills. Nothing in the way ast heals feels unique except for Synastry which is the only skill that somewhat defines its otherwise very lacking personality as a healer...and it's not enough. Honestly, I feel like removing the RNG component from cards while also tweking some of their effects might fix most of AST problems, but I'm not sure they're planning to do it. RNG utility is no utility at all in raid progression and cards could be used 1) to buff your party dps when healing is easier; 2) to buff healing potency for healing checks and 3) to mitigate damage (expanded bole) for big AoEs. Choosing among these 3 options would make AST a very flexible healer and correctly evaluating the trade-off between "healing more" and "making your dps do more damage" using cards would be key and very interesting. Cards now are just "oh, ewer, let me use it on myself, you never know...oh, balance/arrow, let me spread it hoping I can expand it with the next draw...everything else I'll throw on someone random".
Also, I can't see why Ewer and Spire effects are what they are now. We have bards and machinists for that and anyway running out of TP/MP is something that happens rarely or shouldn't happen at all, having a 1/3 chance of drawing a card for this purpose is just useless.

[SuzakuCMX]

I actually don't agree on the part that it must be on the same level as whm/sch as a healer. After all, the current meta in healing involves one pure healer (whm) and one support healer (sch) that mostly do dps.

This is absolutely not true at all in progression content, otherwise AST would be totally fine. SCH stance dances in and out of Cleric Stance to keep DoTs up but that's about it. Both healers still need to be spamming their 400 potency heal on the tank.

This made me think - why not have Bole do both?

Bole now gives:

1. A 10% Reduction in Damage
2. A 10% Increase in Healing Potency

It seems like a lot, but I don't think it'll be as broken as one might think. Anyone you'll want to be using Bole on you'll most likely want to heal shortly afterwards too.

I actually really like that, but you could just get screwed by RNG and never draw a Bole when you need the +10% healing anyways and therefore AST would be back to where they are now. I think maybe Synastry is the way to go in increasing their overall potency + buff card effects a little bit to make them more impactful.

For example: Synastry Recast is now 90s and duration 30s. The target with Synastry on them receives +20% Healing for the duration and all Benefics cast on another player now heal the party member with Synastry on them for 50% of the total healing done (unaffected by the 20% buff). That way, AST has a way to buff their own healing potency when required while still keeping current functionality.

Di Ast: 482 potency per GCD - > 578.4 for the duration
Noct Ast: 399 potency per GCD -> 478.4 for the duration (still fairly weak).

I like this idea! Though I would drastically miss the shield too, sadly ; ; And I feel if they gave it both a shield and a defensive buff it would make it too powerful. Unless they made it something like a 170 Potency heal that gives a shield that's double the healed amount (total eHP potency after Sect correction is 534).

/thinks more.

Could just keep it as it is now and give the stacking defense on top of it (currently it's 525 total I believe).

Also Nocturnal AST would still suck unless it was a huge defense increase (over 20%) because their healing mitigation would still be worse than WHM/SCH....and it would also increase WHM/SCH healing mitigation by the same %.

They could just change Noct stance to also increase the power of the effect of cards in Noct stance to be +50%, to cement Noct AST as the farm-content healing stance and make Diurnal the progression-based stance.

[Yhisa]

Hmmm I given it some thought and been trying things out in game, ast needs its own identity the whm and SCH stance + cards are all wrong relying on RNG as a healer is very bad... Be OK for a dps role but for a healer its kinda bad design, even know its fun but its bad to heal with a RNG mechanic tied to a healer

[Yhisa]

Me personally thing this healer is in a very very bad spot due to these reasons

1) if u buff our healing + damage we will replace WHM
2) if u buff our support + damage we will replace SCH

And this is due that we are too similar to those depending on what sect we in... We need our own identity that makes us feel unique and not like the other healers and here is why

WHM have got HOT's , Raw healing power and damage with powerful cooldowns to boost there healing

SCH have got Shields , Pet, Powerful support cooldowns to boost party DPS, Mitigation or healing and damage base on dots

Now with these 2 healers u would think why do we need a 3rd healer when the current 2 healers already provide everything a party needs and thus why no one would take an AST over the current healers we already got

[SuzakuCMX]

*snip*

WHM will still have more CDs to boost healing and better AoE healing and better MP management.

SCH will still have way better MP efficiency and more utility related to increasing heal efficiency.

I don't see anyone advocating for increased AST damage in raids outside of buffing Balance.

[Yhisa]

WHM will still have more CDs to boost healing and better AoE healing and better MP management.

SCH will still have way better MP efficiency and more utility related to increasing heal efficiency.

I don't see anyone advocating for increased AST damage in raids outside of buffing Balance.

You reading my post wrong currently there is no need for a new healer due to the current healers are far better in everyway this is what I'm getting at, sure u can throw a healer to provide buffs, on paper it may sound cool but in reality it just won't work to me the only way u could have a 3rd healer in this game is if u rework all 3 healers again

Whm and SCH have got soo much utility that there is no reason to replace either one in a raid because they can provide everything on demand and due to this any new healer u make WHM and SCH will still be the meta healing combo no matter what type of new healer u put into the game

[SuzakuCMX]

You reading my post wrong

No I'm not. I was talking about how even if AST had heals near equal with SCH/WHM without the CDs to boost them, AST would still not be able to replace WHM/SCH totally, contrary to what you think would happen.