Learning how to properly play AST

[FoxyAreku]

Don't. Really, go ahead and number crunch, but you'll never get a spreadsheet consistent with a fight unless it is like.. Faust 2.0 or something. And AST ogcd/cooldown isn't 'ridiculously low', they are on par with WHM. What is low is the amount of healing AST can do directly through OGCD/ability (WHM Assize/Tetra/Bene vs AST Essential Dignity vs SCH Lustrate).
Most people forget Celestial Opposition becomes powerful the moment you get to combo it into your other abilities, but this has the innate weakness of blowing all your abilities just for potency, the same way you'll almost never see a situation where you need to stack PoM and DS as a WHM. CO 'can' be a 300 potency heal if you combo it in CU (80 per target for A.Helios), almost rivaling Assize. It 'can' be giving you extra Benefic 2s worth of mana (Lightspeed combo), it 'can' give you more single target potency (Synastry/Aspected Benefic). The same way Time Dilation 'can' give you 5 Aspected Benefic, 5 Aspected Helios and 5 CU ticks, which is a total of 1650 potency (rivaling Lustrate potency-wise).

But that requires the Astrologian to have both a need for those combos and be in Diurnal, on top of coordinating to pull them off. If all those 'can's don't show the exact reason people tend to prefer WHM over AST still, I don't know what else.
AST vs SCH is a non-debate because SCH is the best pseudo-DPS/Healer hybrid of the three. You only need them for burst/mitigation checks and otherwise a SCH is just a DPS with an easier rotation and lower output.

Yeah, you pinned the nail on the head really.
Honestly this whole conversation has just gotten kinda silly, I don't understand all the needless white knighting people do for astrologian on this forum. Really, it'll probably always be the worst. But that doesn't mean it can't be good, and it is. I just think it wouldn't hurt for it to be put on par.

[Nekotee]

The thing is.. That you and only you don't see it on par with the other
The AST is not the worst, he has his shining moment like the whm and SCH has

Everything is situationnal

And azure show it quite well how AST can make up the difference with both healer

[AzureFlare]

There are just some glaring annoyances with AST that people would like different, and in their zealotry people forget that AST isn't that weak on the healing front at all. I don't blame them though, I've seen people only ever using CO on AoE cards, people only ever using AoE cards to begin with, people using Time Dilation on a halved potency card, you name it. Some of the skills aren't as clear in how they should be used and it is easy to get stuck in the mentality that CO/TD = solely card extension.
At least with TD, it becomes a really interesting option to toss a blank Bole on the MT and extend your HoTs with the bole. Boom, pretty good mana-saver right there. Or you could wait and extend only an Enhanced Balance for damage. It doesn't have the comfort of a fairy free-healing, Medica 2's superior range or a disjointed AoE heal (Cure 3/Whispering Dawn), but we have other comforts like lower base manacosts. Comfort can be added without severely affecting potencies, too.

Other obvious stuff is Royal Road baiting (double/triple Ewer/Spire), Spear being really situational (and fairly useless using its own RR buff), Shuffle giving the same card, interactions with Noc shields being lackluster compared to Diu HoTs, Spire being really situational, arguably not needed the way SE's TP design is going. But after giving it second thoughts, stuff like 'let's make CO also have an AoE heal like Assize!' would make any skilled AST blatantly overpower any WHM. Tackle Nocturnal potencies, comfort and reliability, don't tackle global/Diurnal potencies.

On topic: don't get baited into the mindset which number crunchers or fanatics lay out for you too much. Most of them would grill you for even thinking about using Spread on a Bole or a Spear. A skilled AST makes the most out of the situation and doesn't expect the situation to magically convert to how you want it. Test around with your abilities (especially interactions between them) and see how it fits you. If you struggle with a situation, try a different combination the next time. Sometimes, you'd be surprised how useful it can be to never even Royal Road or Shuffle a card, other times you want to RR every second/third card. Practice and make it your own.

[Staris]

AST Vs WHM is fine.

The bigger problem is the strength of SCH making WHM in some situations better simply because MND buffs SCH.

I mean lets face it if there was a fight with low AOE healing, and/or large uptime on aoe targets, like a harder A2S, 2 SCH could be more ideal than any other combination, and that's broken.

[AzureFlare]

AST Vs WHM is fine.

The bigger problem is the strength of SCH making WHM in some situations better simply because MND buffs SCH.

I mean lets face it if there was a fight with low AOE healing, and/or large uptime on aoe targets, like a harder A2S, 2 SCH could be more ideal than any other combination, and that's broken.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Thank you everyone for your feedback on how I can be a better healer in my AST job. I have been trying out everything and I have seen some improvements :-)

That's wonderful to hear! May you have many enjoyable healing runs in the future. Don't forget about looking the part!

[NamoNanamo]

@Namo

And yeah it work on all cooldown before and after the card
But cooldown must be use only a few sec before/after the card
If there is 30sec left on swiftcast CD the spear won't work
60 * 0.8 = 48 sec

? It doesn't work like you said. IF you use A CD BEFORE the spear, you don't have any reduc cd. I've redo Tested with swiftcast and it shows me the same result. My experiment is simple.

SPAM Draw to get Spear=> Swiftcast=> use spear 0.5 sec after=> Look timer=> It doesn't change anything. So it doesn't work even if you use it a few sec before the card. BUT, Be careful, the recast time will show you the recast timer "48sec" but it's not the real timer. If you want to see it, put your mouse on the spell, use it, look at the picture and you will see the real cd.
So i'm confused, You don't seems to understand me. I didn't use a chronometer but I will.

My AST had like 4/5 ilevel différence with the whm
And I was able to heal more than him
And after test my spell were stronger than his (cure vs benefic)
And I was diurnal

Plz, don't say things like, it hurts me a lot.



I've done and down Thordan with my Ast Noc Shield And It's pretty good. You need to move a lot so you can use aspected Benefic while you run. Light Speed is fantastic when you need to aoe heal while you run ;o.
Synastry is fine. CU always help a bit. And I got my Heavensmeter.
Clearly, Ast is a good choice for this fight. And the arena is little so you can aoe (heal/shield/card) without miss someone. And there was multiple down time that let you prepare your card.
Thordan is really friendly for Astrologian.

@AzureFlare Stuff

I mostly agree. But you can use time dilation on halved potency card. It's not that bad. You need to adapt. Rng is rng :x
For the lower mana cost. Only for benefic/II, helios/Aspected helios and Gravity.
Aspected benefic cost more than regen. And whm got Free cure/Assize. And stone III MaleficII cost the same.

But, Ast got co/ewer/Aether combo.

It's maybe something but I play Noct Sect, I used A lot of Aspected Benefic and you need to be careful about your mana consumption.

[FoxyAreku]

The thing is.. That you and only you don't see it on par with the other
The AST is not the worst, he has his shining moment like the whm and SCH has

Everything is situationnal

And azure show it quite well how AST can make up the difference with both healer

Actually, it's pretty widely accepted that AST is the worst in regards to DPS and healing throughput. Especially when it comes to alexander savage, there's a reason none of the big raiding groups use it (at least last I checked, someone might have picked it up, but I doubt it). I think you misinterpretted Azure's post, as if anything it hurt your argument more than helped. That ridiculous amount of setup just to do what a white mage can do by pressing one button? This is what I'm talking about.

Like...can you mention even one way that AST is better than scholar or white mage? Because I can't think of any. The perk of it is buffing other people, but there are times in savage where Scholar can do more damage than an AST can with the buffs factored in (mainly in A2, but still), and for throughput, Scholar beats it out very heavily in every possible situation short of them having zero aetherflow. (Of course, this is comparing to nocturnal, since that is supposed to be the scholar replacement stance) and white mage isn't even a contest since white mage is the god of throughput.

Like...I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude here, but you keep saying AST isn't the worst healer, yet don't bring up any way that it's better than a white mage or scholar. Look at it like this: If you don't think AST is the worst, than which healer do you think is the worst? Because there always has to be a bottom of the barrel. Perfect balance is impossible.

Once again, being the worst does not mean it is bad. Please accept that.

[AzureFlare]

Stuff

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.

[Nekotee]

@Namo

Oh ok thx for check for the spear
Then this card is even more harder to use
(I was pretty sûre that it work even on CD that be used... But since i did not use spear in a loooong time...)

@Foxy
A situation when AST is better than the other ?
Pretty easy
Alexander 1 savage, the double prey + plasma is a piece of cake for the AST because of synastry
The jump are easily deal with his collective unconscious
Popping lumAether right before and flashing CO make everything easier

But one thing I completely agree with you is the DPS...
SCH and WHM are both far far better

...

Oh good to know that noct AST is good for thordan
Now i need some more experience with the fight...
I only know it on paper....