Learning how to properly play AST

[TatoRazzino]

I haven't posted here in a while, but this thread caught my attention and I actually have some doubts about AST's DPS numbers. I apologize in advance for the (really) long post, but I think it will be useful for AST players or someone that is wondering if they should play AST.

It would be pointless to compare both WHM and AST with SCH, since SCHs branch from a DPS class and they also have more MP control, which allows them to continue DPSing for longer than the other two healers; what I'm really curious about is the comparison between WHM and AST, because I haven't seen any actual numbers that show that AST has a noticeable lower output when compared to WHM.

It is a known that there is a shortage of skilled AST players in end game content due to the fact that the job was considered to be weaker than WHM and SCH, which made all the professional groups choose the 2.x healing meta; the community followed the trend and the AST is still the healer that is used the least, even though its healing output is now much higher than it used to be. My point is: is there any actual data from AST DPS output to support the claim that they do less DPS than WHMs in actual content?

Looking at the DPS toolkit both jobs have may be misleading. I'll post here the math I did, and I would like to see some comments on that. Keep in mind that I'm not willing to start a war, I'm actually asking for data to work with. If anyone finds any problems with my math, please comment.

If we start with the WHM toolkit, we have the following DPS skills:

- Stone (140 potency, heavy effect)
- Aero (200 combined potency)
- Fluid Aura (150 potency, off-GCD, short range)
- Stone II (170 potency)
- Aero II (250 combined potency)
- Holy (200-100 potency, AoE around the caster)
- Stone III (210 potency)
- Assize (300 potency, off-GCD, AoE around the caster, restores 10% MP)
- Aero III (370 combined potency, AoE) [Edit: I made a mistake when calculating Aero III's potency in the first version of this post, but AzureFlare corrected me. I'm going to adjust the values in the whole post]

Now let's look at the AST toolkit, which is far more simple:

- Malefic (150 potency)
- Combust (240 combined potency)
- Stella (100 potency, heavy)
- Combust II (450 combined potency)
- Gravity (200-100 potency, AoE)
- Malefic II (200 potency)


In a single target situation, if we take a sample of a 2 minutes fight with a 2.5 GCD (I'm considering the default timer, which is obviously reduced by spell speed or Presence of Mind or Diurnal Sect), we'll have a total of 48 GCDs.

For WHMs:

Using Stone I and II seems pointless since they're weaker than Stone III, and using Aero seems like a DPS loss unless you're trying to weave your off-GCDs, so the skills I'm considering are:

Aero III: since it lasts for 24 seconds, you'll use that 5 times in a 2 minutes fight (120/24). The total potency will be: 1850. Aero III has a 3s cast time, so I'm considering that it not only uses 5 GCDs but also delays the entire GCD (even if we use Swiftcast, we can only use it twice in 2 minutes so we still have 1.5s of delay). For that reason, I'm counting the 5 times you use Aero III as 6 GCDs.

Aero II: it lasts for 12 seconds, so you'll be able to use it 10 times in 2 minutes. Total potency: 2500

Fluid Aura: we can use it 4 times in a 2 minute fight, so the total potency is 600.

Assize: we can use it 2 times in a 2 minute fight, so the total potency is also 600.

Unless we want to delay the GCD even more, we'll need 6 windows to use all of our off-GCD skills. Since we can use Swiftcast 2 times, we'll only have o use Aero four times to keep the GCD running. The total potency for Aero would be 800.
The total amount of GCDs used were 20 (10 for Aero II, 6 for Aero III and 4 for Aero). That leaves 28 GCDs open for Stone III. The total potency for Stone III would be 5880.

So, basically, the total potency for a full WHM rotation, keeping all the DoTs up and weaving all off-GCD skills without delaying the GCD so much is: 12230. We have to keep in mind that we were assuming a 100% hit rate, and we're using Assize for DPS, which burns a healing cooldown, and we're having to move close to the enemy to be able to use Fluid Aura.

For ASTs:

We can also cross-class Aero, but since it has the same potency as Malefic II, I'm not considering that here. We're also not using Malefic or Stella, since they do less DPS than Malefic II. Considering the same amount of GCDs, we have the following:

Combust II: we can use it 4 times. Total potency: 1800

Combust: we can use it 6 times. Total potency: 1440

Malefic II: we can use it 38 times. Total potency: 7600

Since all the ASTs skills only take 2.5, there's no GCD to delay and by using both Combust and Aero, you have more than enough time to Draw/Use cards. The total potency for the AST toolkit would be: 10840.

That's 12230 (WHM) versus 10840 (AST); a difference of 1390 potency in favor of the WHM. At the moment (ilvl 207, eso weapon, Foe Requiem), my Malefic IIs hit for around 2K (average), so I'm gonna use 10:1 as a damage : potency ratio to make the calculations easier. That leaves us with:
122300 damage for WHM and 108400 for AST. If we do a damage/time calculation we have: 1019.17 DPS for WHM and 903.33 for AST. A difference of 115.84 DPS.

AoE numbers are harder to calculate in this level of abstraction since they depend on a lot of variables (number of targets, for example), but it seems clear that a WHM will have the upper hand since Aero III and Assize hit multiple targets. Holy and Gravity are pretty much the same, but Gravity has the advantage of keeping the caster in a safe spot.

Nevertheless, if we're considering only the numbers, we can assume that a WHM will do more DPS than an AST in this abstract, ideal situation (which we would have in a dummy). If we add Presence of Mind to the equation, the WHM numbers will go up, but I chose not to do that because (to avoid creating numbers that are even more biased) I would have to consider the difference between Diurnal/Nocturnal cast times for AST and the fact that it is possible for ASTs to buff themselves with Balances or Arrows.