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

[Starbirth]

SE did a good job at addressing AST's faults in terms of its healing potency on skills and the problems with its CDs like Lightspeed. The problems that still plague AST come from its card mechanics that suffer due to rng and fiddling with trying to get the best possible outcome with the cards you get during fights. The rng can completely screw you over and cause your value as a healer/support to become lower than WHM/SCH. During dungeons this isnt a big deal but on difficult 8 man encounters the skill cap for AST shoots through the roof compared to easier instanced content while your trying to weave cards into healing.

My advice to SE would be to change it so that AST can focus on healing during encounters more by making the cards permanent buffs. Obviously there would need to be changes to the potency of individual cards and there would need to be a cap on how many cards you can put out but redesigning a mechanic based on 4 skills is easier than redesigning an entire class.

I imagine it would look like this

Draw = same


Spread = Add the currently drawn card to your spread. You can permanently affix the card to a party member that stays until you die. Max cards in spread: 3


Royal Road = Cast on a party member that is under the effect of a card in your spread. The effect is based on which card they are under. CD = 300 seconds.

Bole/Balance: 400% potency for 10 seconds
Arrow/Spear: Gain The Arrow if under The Spear and The Spear if under The Arrow for 15 seconds. This affects all party members under either card.
Ewer/Spire: Spread The Ewer or The Spire to all party members for 20 seconds.


Shuffle = same but with a 10s CD.

Balance changes. The upside is they stack with all other effects that are similar.

Bole = 5% damage reduction
Balance = 5% damage increase
Arrow = 10% skill/spell speed
Spear = 10% skill/spell recharge
Ewer = 10 mp refresh
Spire = 10 tp per second

[TatoRazzino]

My advice to SE would be to change it so that AST can focus on healing during encounters more by making the cards permanent buffs. Obviously there would need to be changes to the potency of individual cards and there would need to be a cap on how many cards you can put out but redesigning a mechanic based on 4 skills is easier than redesigning an entire class.

The problem with your design is that it wouldn't solve the problem. Adding a permanent 5% damage buff to a MNK and a 5% speed to a BLM would raise overall DPS performance so much that it would defeat the purpose of having multiple jobs. AST would become mandatory and WHM would be left out in the current meta.

[Starbirth]

Honestly I never liked Balance or Arrow just because they are the cards you hope for due to their importance in the dps meta. I would gladly see them changed to something else.

[Valesti_Peleiades]

The sentence I quoted came DIRECTLY AFTER a sentence where you said that your SCH co-healer preferred healing with AST. Since you didn't separate the 2 statements with a paragraph or some other contrastive phrasing, the rules of logic required me to interpret the two statements as related. And you QUOTED a post directly comparing WHM to AST and responded that AST benefits from FI. So your response appeared to claim that your SCH co healer preferred an AST partner *as opposed to WHM* because AST receives the FI buff. Which is obviously absurd, hence my snarky remark.

[TatoRazzino]

The sentence I quoted came DIRECTLY AFTER a sentence where you said that your SCH co-healer preferred healing with AST. Since you didn't separate the 2 statements with a paragraph or some other contrastive phrasing, the rules of logic required me to interpret the two statements as related. And you QUOTED a post directly comparing WHM to AST and responded that AST benefits from FI. So your response appeared to claim that your SCH co healer preferred an AST partner *as opposed to WHM* because AST receives the FI buff. Which is obviously absurd, hence my snarky remark.

The "Another thing:" is a contrastive phrasing in that kind of context. Are you sure you're going to try to use linguistics/grammar to bullshit your way out of a post in which you were a jerk?

[AzureFlare]

Got bored today and after reading some Reddit posts, decided to compare Diurnal Aspected Benefic and Regen once more (since this was such a huge debate) and spreadsheet the results.

Results are here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1313856536

For whoever doesn't know how to interpret them: Diurnal Aspected Benefic is better if you need the potency fast or save global cooldowns, since it will save you 4 globals but cost you 34 mana (WHM has to use Cure 2s to catch up ASAP). Regen is better if mana is the issue, but it costs a lot of time. You can decide to make up the difference using Cure instead, but you'll still lose about 12 globals (factor in a Freecure) while saving maybe 3000-3100 mana (spreadsheet doesn't include Freecure, and the worth of Freecure is about 680 mana if time is not an issue). In those 12 globals, you're either doing DPS as AST or closing in on the mana advantage by casting your lower-cost Benefics (and forcing the WHM to cast either more Cures and hope for Cure 2, or have them Cure 2 for full cost).

Suffice to say in the current meta, Regen is far weaker than DAB. Ergo: Regen >>>> Diurnal Aspected Benefic in the current meta is false, especially looking at global cooldowns triggered. In that case, Diurnal Aspected Benefic >>> Regen.

Important note: the globals are exactly that, calculations in globals. A global is worth less time for Diurnal AST than for WHM, so I'll be editing this post later to show the actual time difference.

Edit:
The global cooldown for Diurnal AST with no additional spellspeed is 2.37s, compared to 2.5s for WHM. Let's assume that the fight is indeed 21minutes (gosh) and you need to do around 72.1k potency healing ASAP, so AST will spend 70 globals and and WHM will spend 74 globals (catch up Cure 2s). In 21 minutes, AST will have 531/532 globals or something, WHM will have 504/505 (might be 1-2 off on both)
AST will have a total of 461 globals to spend on other tasks, WHM will have 430 to spend on other tasks. In that 21 minute fight, you'll save 31 globals as AST. Bring down the fight to a more realistic length if you wish, but the truth remains: you're saving a lot of globals thanks to Diurnal compared to WHM.

This is just a one-on-one comparison Regen vs DAB, I know different rules apply once you factor in Divine Seal, Synastry, Time Dilation(sometimes), but that wasn't the point of this comparison.

[Vlady]

What is the point of so many side by side comparison for the spells. It has been done to death. Astro is the stronger single target healer and white mage in aoe. Seems about the best se will do to balance a third wheel healer they put in the game. If they see astros are in all levels of content I doubt they will do anything else the rest of the expansion. Astro is equal to scholar and white mage now in viability.

[Acistian]

The only real major request I'd ask for regarding AST, is to have a mana reduction to Nocturnal while in this stance, since shield healing is more preventive, and tends to take more mana consumption in the long run (when you factor in the extra healing afterwards of an AoE damage take), compared to Diurnal.

[AlphaSonic]

What is the point of so many side by side comparison for the spells. It has been done to death. Astro is the stronger single target healer and white mage in aoe. Seems about the best se will do to balance a third wheel healer they put in the game. If they see astros are in all levels of content I doubt they will do anything else the rest of the expansion. Astro is equal to scholar and white mage now in viability.

The problem about being the best single target healer is that... Who cares? If i want big AoE heals i have WHM, the only utility for being the best single target healer is that you can recover tank hits easily, but so does WHM and SCH with their instant heals.

[Nekotee]

Synastry, lightspeed, benefic II instant, essential dignity, and card sometime

Make the AST not only a strong single target healer
But a two target healer

The other can achieve that but with less ease