Learning how to properly play AST

[FoxyAreku]

I've healed A1S as both a scholar and astrologian and it was way easier as a scholar due to lustrate and adlo crits, and sacred soil is way easier to use than CO for jumps as well, even if it lacks the regen. I know you may say it's just me, but that can't be since as I stated earlier, none of the big name raiders use astro in savage.

AST isn't bad in it by any means. As I've stated multiple times, it's not bad in any fight. Scholar/White mage is just better. That's really all there is to it.

You're correct. It boiled down to 'Sure, an AST can match a WHM, but you need to do so much more work for it and be lucky to have the stars align. Comparing to SCH is pretty pointless.' You could sort of say WHM is the pubstomper healer, but WHM and AST even out in a vacuum at higher skill levels.

Noc AST becomes better than SCH when you make high mobility requirements, fights with a lot of setup and small burst segments and/or have fights that benefit a lot from having instant-cast shields. The latter is really just a few cases in T10 (double Prey), the former two are, as Namo said, more apparent in Thordan where DPS over the whole fight isn't such a big requirement compared to burst DPS on the checks (given, I have not done the entire fight yet but I know where the idea comes from). As Noc you sacrifice a ton of HPS for instant cast shields and mobility, in a game that is so slow and scripted you really don't need it for anything else but Frontlines, and tuning fights towards this mobility/rate of resisting interruption isn't fair to not only SCH and WHM, but also to BLM and arguably BRD/MCH/SMN.

I think Thordan might be the first fight where I prefer Noc over Diu when pairing with a WHM (without noc being a necessity), all things considered.

Instant cast shield in noct stance is my favorite thing about astro, as someone who has played scholar for going on two years now it makes me so happy, I'm actually one of the few who will use noct in most content just for fun because of it. It just feels so tight and awesome.

Anyway, thanks for your posts, and being so reasonable, you gave me a lot to think about. I can't think of anything else to add.