AST and the new Expert dungeons

[Evanoel]

I suggest for the OP to take Diurnal stance. It's more efficient in MP cost than Noct, especially the Aspected Helios. If your party constantly gets heavy damage then it's not AST's fault, other healers will struggle as well with that kind of party. There's always Lightspeed+Helios+Helios+Helios if somehow needed but personally, up until now, I've been running ex dr as AST and I've never used Lightspeed in that fashion.

As for MP management, well, one thing that I noticed that if you spam Benefic II, you'll run out of MP in no time. So, for me, I'll just use AB, AH (in Diurnal stance) and Benefic I, occasionally Benefic II, If Enhanced Benefic procs, I can put a burst healing for up to 11K HP (Benefic I+Benefic II). About LA, like everyone said, you should use it with The Spear if possible, if not use it when your MP is at 70%, 50% if CO is still up. Also, if you draw The Ewer, don't burn it, use it on yourself. It helps a lot!

[Erim-Nelhah]

If you mean while healing, then yes, that's awful.

But when a healer is in a good party and is sitting at mostly full mana, they should absolutely be jumping into CS and adding DPS to the fight.

Hang on, are you implying using CS in a dungeon is bad? Cause I spend more time in CS than out of it on my SCH, and I promise you it's not a bad thing.

I think you've both misunderstood him:

It's not that usual to see a sch or whm who uses Cleric stance in dungeon.

Bolded the important word. He said it in a wierd way, but what he said is basically that he rarely sees a healer using cleric stance in a dungeon.

--Erim Nelhah

[FoxyAreku]

Which is weird. Especially for scholars. But I guess lots of healers are lazy.

[Mclyde]

I think you've both misunderstood him:



Bolded the important word. He said it in a wierd way, but what he said is basically that he rarely sees a healer using cleric stance in a dungeon.

--Erim Nelhah

Yep ! 'scuse me for my "english"

[Zaj_Quilos]

the only real problem i would expect as an AST in expert dungeons or i guess any dungeon is the tank pulling a shit ton of monsters. otherwise its fine.

[Yhisa]

Nah we be fine ... Until we have a STR using tank who don't even know how to use cooldowns just to put healing stress on us for minor DPS increase for themselves .... Or mega crap DPS who stand in crap they shouldnt be in or doing soo low DPS that it feels like ur in the duty for eternity ..... Any healer have this issue but u can see it more with AST if the group is bad... And due to ignorant tanks/ DPS they will blame the healer ... It's a commen fact if everything goes wrong just blame the weakest link or just the healer xD

[Risvertasashi]

-snip- If your party constantly gets heavy damage then it's not AST's fault, other healers will struggle as well with that kind of party. There's always Lightspeed+Helios+Helios+Helios if somehow needed but personally, up until now, I've been running ex dr as AST and I've never used Lightspeed in that fashion.

As for MP management, well, one thing that I noticed that if you spam Benefic II, you'll run out of MP in no time. So, for me, I'll just use AB, AH (in Diurnal stance) and Benefic I, occasionally Benefic II -snip-

A couple things worth noting.
1. While the bolded is somewhat true, the issue is that AST's threshold for struggling is much lower than the other two. (and, yeah, you're never going to need aoe heal spam in a dungeon).
2. Unlike WHM with Regen, Diurnal AB is actually not MP efficient (generally). Benefic spam is better. You only want to use AB when it lets you avoid casting Benefic II.

[Alahra]

(and, yeah, you're never going to need aoe heal spam in a dungeon).

There's potential need for significant AoE healing in Fractal Continuum if DPS don't focus-target well or generally just take awhile to kill things. On one of the pulls before the second boss, you can end up with one of the proto-Ixal things and the proto-Naga, both of which can do significant AoE damage (sometimes back-to-back). It can be a bit rough on AST at lower item levels. The pulls with the Dallahan-types in Vault can be a bit rough too (Vault in general can be taxing because of the last boss, too, if people aren't dodging well--sometimes all you can do is a few Helios in a row).

All of those can be stunned but most DPS don't pay much attention to stuns and silences in 4-mans from my experience.

Other than that, no, major AoE isn't a big deal generally in dungeons.

[Tashim]

The issue, is that with a good sch, a tank can pull two groups at a time, and get a bonus 900+ dps out of a scholar and clear the dungeon very fast, while an Astro will be very hard pressed to heal those pulls, let alone finding the mana to help dps them.