Suggested changes to AST Design to bring it in line with WHM/SCH

[TatoRazzino]

I didn't say WHM is harder in all aspects, I said it's harder to reach high DPS numbers due to the fact that they have more off-gcd DPS skills, their combined DoT potency is lower and every single DPS move can miss. ASTs have similar potency with only two DoTs and a burst spell, and the DoTs can't miss. For the healing part, WHM is easier in my opinion.
There is no secret formula to play AST, it just requires more insight on the other jobs in order to use the cards efficiently. Browse through the forum and you'll see repeated topics about basic card strategies and lots of tips are completely misleading (e.g. spear being useless, bole being too situational etc.). Every encounter changes how cards are optimally used, so AST is a very demanding job and most people are not willing to put the required effort. Not to mention the fact that some of th complaints are like this "I can't heal The Aery" and so on.

[Mibgestalt]

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I guess, but I feel like it's easier to find those GCDs for DPS as a WHM. DPS isn't in a vacuum.

And I don't feel the complaints about cards being situationally useful are unwarranted. I'm sure we've both drawn a card that is entirely useless at a certain point during a fight, and then shuffled into the same card, only to right click it off. This is the core mechanic of our class, but far too often it feels like it's not DOING anything. Sometimes it's ACTUALLY not doing anything (Spire in most situations), sometimes it just FEELS that way (Oh yay, the Spear, I hope the ___'s CDs are almost up), and I think that is what has people frustrated.

And I understand the "adapt on the fly" "RNG" design, it's not particularly confusing to me, but drawing a dud twice in a row isn't fun or exciting gameplay. There's no foresight or insight or strategy that can mitigate it. It's just our core mechanic being useless for 30 seconds. I think people feel like it happens too much.

Putting such a random system on a healer was gonna be rough from the beginning. For DPS a random system averages out, but for healing at the top end, where every big CD and most heals are planned in advance, having so many support buffs that you can't rely on is a tough sell. The Arrow and The Balance are the favorites because there's almost never a time where they don't do their full impact, not just because of the MAD DEEPS.

Personally I never understood why the whole mechanic wasn't tied into MP in exchange for more control over it, instead of just pressing it and hoping something good comes out, but I guess it'd be even more difficult for people to pick up in that case.

[LegoTechnic]

The only thing I want from AST is a better mana regen mechanic.

[Velox]

The only thing I want from AST is a better mana regen mechanic.

The they would have to raise the MP costs to match WHM. Right now part of AST's MP management is the passive fact that they heal for the same potency as WHM and costs less. That's why SE didn't increase the costs when they increased the potency. So that killed 2 birds with 1 stone.That's why ASTs overall mana management is greater or equal to that of WHM.

[TatoRazzino]

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In raid situations, cards are hardly ever useless. The Spear is always going to help MCH, BRD and NIN, and it's almost certain that your SMN or DRG has an off-GCD waiting to be used. TP and MP are welcome in almost all encounters, but that's specially true for A2S. The Bole is always well used on your MT and it helps with MP maintenance; sometimes, they can even drop their tank stance to do more DPS if they have a Bole. If you don't want to do any of those, Royal Road them and you'll have a better effect for the next card. The worst case scenarios happen once or twice in a raid night, nothing major.
In dungeons you won't benefit from the cards, because the RNG factor requires time to be bypassed. The thing is, you don't need all of your draws to be 100% useful to add noticeable utility and overall dps with your cards. The 3.07 buffs took care of that. If people need to see flashy numbers to know they're helping, they're going to have a hard time playing AST. WHM/SCH should be a better option for them if that's the case.

@Lego

About thde MP Regen, AzureFlare has shown that timing Celestial Opposition with Luminiferous Aether creates an effect similar to using Shroud and Assize. Other than that, you can draw Ewers and tace car of that problem. There's also the aspect that Velox mentioned. Any more buffs in this aspect would unbalance the job.

[Miunih]

This is a point that has been made by a lot of people: WHM is easier. Another thing: raiding as a WHM didn't require a job learming curve, only an encounter one. People started as WHM/SCH not because the AST was bad (it was impossible to foresee that before the actual fights), but because it is always safer to use the combination you're already familiar with. The groups that used AST faced three problems: unbalanced new job, learming curve to a different healing style and encounter learming curve. Some people simply gave it up and now the job has a bad reputation. It's impossible to say what aspect was the most important, but the result is the same. Now, months later, people are still crying about a job that's perfectly fine instead of actually trying to learn it.

That's why we used Drk in A3/A4S World First clears, including Lucrezia as well, and most that followed. It was a totally new class, but it outclassed paladin, which was a 1.0 class. Learning a class, especially in this game, is very easy, and ast is pretty easy as well. The problem is ast does not compete with neither whm nor sch, and will still not be used in end game progression that aim to be the top 5-10. It just does not keep up.

Funny enough, everyone everywhere whined that Drk was shit and pld was amazing, just like now when everyone says ast is fine, while in reality it's a severely underperforming class that no top group will take to progression.

[Miunih]

The they would have to raise the MP costs to match WHM. Right now part of AST's MP management is the passive fact that they heal for the same potency as WHM and costs less. That's why SE didn't increase the costs when they increased the potency. So that killed 2 birds with 1 stone.That's why ASTs overall mana management is greater or equal to that of WHM.

Actually, Aspected benefic vs regen alone is like 5k mp different on a fight, why? Cause AB is 18 seconds and regen is 21 seconds (a whole global).

Btw, that's 12 globals every three minutes. That's 12 Malefic II's.. That's what, 20k damage? Over a 13 minute fight that's almost 80k damage, on single target damage spells alone. Over the fight alone you'd need a maximum of 6 globals to compensate for the lack of regens on tank as well. Now no one has 100% regen uptime, so lets make that 4. Another 4 globals lost. Doesn't sound much? Well neither does that 20k wipe in week 1. Neither does the 7 minute difference between world first A1S. Neither does the actual kills that END on actual enrage (most of the kills have enrage going off, yet killing it in the nick of time). Every single global counts in progression, and that's something that AST cannot provide cause it gets behind on healing easily.

MP isn't the issue, global starvation is. We're talking about one single spell here, not even all of them, not the lack of potencies that could be converted into DPS globals as well. All added up you're literally talking about hundreds of globals you're NOT doing compared to either whm or sch. It's rather ironic for a time based class to run out of time. DS + Regen on the tank for 21 seconds, he has conva and DS runs out, another regen on him. That's like 15+21=36 seconds of power regen. Regens that completely nullify tank damage, aka, you can be in cleric doing that dps! Better healing numbers, or knowing how to manipulate/co-ordinate them, mean you can dps once again more. In this case it's Healing Potency = Globals. Less healing required, less cures required, more globals spare. This is why gear is so good.

This translates into literally everything. Assize vs Lightspeed. Lightspeed still eats globals, it just allows you to put ocgd in, assize is an ocgd already. Critlo's vs non-critable Ab's. Crits mean you spare more globals which is translated into dps/other heals. Lightspeed vs presence. Lightspeed doesn't increase globals at all, presence does. DS vs Synastry. DS is every 60 seconds vs 90 seconds. That's THREE DS instead of TWO Synastry. Healing potencies are translated into globals over time once again. Asylum vs CU. Asylum is an ocgd in the first place, it's 24 seconds, shoot and forget. CU Eats AT LEAST one global, only 15 seconds if you pulse it once, you need to MOVE into place for it. Rip all your globals.

All those things together puts ast behind. Where AST is supposed to be the quick and swift healer, it's ironically the slowest one where you spend the most time achieving the same.

All those globals translate into pure dps and raid survivability. All those globals translate into one single thing, beating that enrage timer to the second. Aside from Nisi, every fight in the game is easy and learnable in no time, which means you optimise to do the most dps to beat the enrage. AST cannot do this, and that's why AST will not be used in any hardcore endgame progression, unless SE changes something. I'm pretty sure most people do not realise at all that GCD is a resource because it doesn't have a bar. There's HP, without it you're useless, there's TP, without it you don't do dps, you're useless, There's MP, without it you start dying, there's gcd, get behind and you start dying/lose dps. Ast has all but the latter one.


Also, note that using an ewer on yourself would beat the purpose of bringing an ast in the first place, you bring them for dps buffs ^.^

[DarkmoonVael]

Quite a lot of these suggestions are "make it exactly the same as whm and sch ability". If this is the case, then AST other abilities would need to be weakened. Balance isnt give AST the things that makes SCH and WHM unique + much more.

A.Benefic in Diurnal has an initial heal unlike regen which is when the regen doesn't last as long as WHM regen. The base shield of nocturnal is slightly higher than Adlo and is instant cast, it does not need, nor should get, Adlo's unique trait.

With collective unconscious i dont think you understand how powerful this ability is especially compared to sacred soil and asylum. With CU you get both damage mitigation and a stupidly powerful regen in one. Its a little hard to be able to use properly, but thats not an issue considering the power you get from it. Sacred soil you say has no drawbacks, this is entirely incorrect. Part of the skill of SCH comes from utilising your aetherflow stacks correctly, sacred soil used a stack which can also be used for lustrate, indom and energy drain, and usually these three are a higher priority than sacred soil in raids, except for a few niche circumstances. Asylum compliments the WHM toolset and is not as powerful as CU. CU in its current form has to have some form of skill tester to be able to use, and in this case its rooted to the spot.

Synastry is currently the most powerful healing cooldown in the game, it needs no buffs and no changes. This is the one ability that really makes AST shine when used correctly.

Lightspeed and LA interact with Celestial opposition. Any buffs to their duration would make them highly highly broken without Celestial Opposition nerf.

Stella is broken as hell in your suggested changes. Only one ranged class in the entire game has a stun, MCH, and that has to be done from melee range and is on a long cooldown. A ranged healer with a ranged stun breaks a lot of the game.

Give AST combust 3, nerf its card beyond comprehension. Its simple, really really simple. AST is currently balanced around its own personal contribution to dps and its cards contribution via buffing others. Give them more personal dps, nerf their cards. This is called balance.

All in all, these suggestions are not balanced in the slightest. It doesnt bring AST inline with WHM or SCH but instead makes them into a stupidly, absurdly powerful class.

[Ryan2714]

Few things i like to change about ast, but think ast is doing ok atm
Stella : i would like if this skill have more effective like
_Become an instant cast skill with bind and heavy effect (10s/15s), also increase the potency to 150 and add 30s cooldown
Or
_Become an instant cast skill with potency of 100, but increase to 300 if target have a combust and combust II effect (100 for each effect), also create a super nova deal 1/2 of the damage to nearby emenies and stun them for 4s if use on a target have both the combust effect, also have 30s cooldown.
Gravity:
_keep everything the same as before, just add a 5% slow effect for 4s
Or
_Grant a gravity stack of 5 stacks max, each stack increase the damage by 10% and decrease the castime but also increase the mp cost.

[Ryan2714]

Celestial Opposition: Keep everything the same but will be nice if
_Decrease the cooldown
Or
_Add a unaspected damage with a potency of 300
Or better
__Add a unaspected damage with a potency of 200 and have a addittional effect depend on the held card, or the effect of the card buff ( held card check 1st)
_ Balance : increase the damage potency to 350
_ Arrow : add a cure potency of 300
_ Spear : increase the stun durration from 4s to 6s
_ Bole : create a shield equal to 15% max HP
_ Ewer : Restore 10%-15% of max mp
_ Spire : Reduces enmity by half