AST's weakness in end game

[Miziliti]

Been playing AST for a while. I have no problem healing all the way to Alexander normal and new 60 dungeons. As for ex raid, I don't feel AST is in a good condition. I thought about it many times, and here is my concern.

1. Buff vs. DPS: I'm still in debate with which is more crucial, and I find it hard to actually do both. There's not enough time for me before going back to focus healing. Rng cards often appear to be useless, and my royal road and shuffle is on cd. Without expanded royal road, single card buff feels insignificant in a full party. Sometimes I completely ignore draw to just dps.

2. Cleric Stance back to healing: Ex raid is filled with unavoidable AoE's all the time. WHM can stance dance back for a quick assize, and SCH can dance back for an indomitability. AST have lightspeed for instant cast, but cd is long. I find that I often have less time to dps because I need to turn off stance earlier than the other two healers to counter possible party death by factor in cast time.

3. Collective Unconscious is not useful at all: In order to provide a full duration field, I must not move or cast anything at all or the field goes bye bye. The size is kind of small, tank is often not covered by it at all.

4. Diurnal vs. Nocturnal: Diurnal Aspect bene/helios and regen won't replace each other, but nocturnal field and galvanize will replace each other.

5. Nocturnal makes AST's live extra hard: one thing that makes me comfortable at dps with SCH is eos/selen's help. SCH can pop galvanize, go dps for a while, and not worry about heal. Diurnal Aspect provide regen for me to dps at ease, but I cannot dps in nocturnal without being stressful at fearing co-healer might need help. If I can change sect in mid-battle, nocturnal might have some use.

I really like AST, but AST is in need for some change.

[AzureFlare]

1: Why not both?

2: That's why there are cards. Also, Diurnal gets more globals than WHM does in the long run.

3: Tap and go. Channel 3 seconds max and you have about the same potency as Asylum and if timed right you mitigate too. Tell the tank to move their behind in the shell and be a man getting as close as you can. Can also combo it with CO and/or TD.

No comments on the other points, Nocturnal is a mere shade of what a SCH can do bar hyper mobility. Only thing I'd argue is to tell your partner to suck up being the off-healer or rotate Clerics/DoTs because Nocturnal is the better fulltime healer (WHM/Diurnal AST have Regen/AB to simulate the fairy heals).
Should there be changes? Maybe, but you're selling it short really badly here.

[Sunako]

Since draw card is ogcd try use it between aspected bene/combust/aero/lightspeed/benefic 2 proc so it wont clip casts and waste your dps/healing.

[Mizi]

IMHO:

1. Always draw cards, even if they are useless by the by you drew them, but draw whenever it's available. I'm not saying that the WHM and SCH are bad, on contrail, but having cards is our differential.

2. We have more instant healing than the others, even thou the potency isn't that great, but still instant healing. Give regen or shield, go Cleric Stance, apply DoTs and back to healing.

3. As AzureFlare said, you don't have to keep it up until it's finished. Keep it up at least until the PT gets the buffs and use Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation, if needed. Plus, it stacks with other buffs.

4. My preference is to play as Nocturnal as much as I can - except if there's a SCH in the PT. Nocturnal's barrier isn't as great as the SCH, but it's enough to buy me some time before I heal the tank.

5. SCH only overpower a AST, on Nocturnal, because the Crit buff that they have on their barrier. Nevertheless, I think Nocturnal is underestimate.

[Nekotee]

How many face do we ned to slap to make people understand that AST is fine XD

1) as azure said... Why not both ?
It's pretty easy to draw card on dps, and casting right after drawing allow you to have 3 second to think about the use of your card. Because all card are useful in a fight xP

2) if you have trouble with the cleric dance practice it more or learn each second of the fight, but it's true that AST must choose when to switch far more in advance compare to both the 2 other heal

3) usually when your using CU there is a reason (huge raid attack incoming) so it never go to waste. You MUST trust your co-heal et because it's him who will work. And if the tank is not protecteur then it's maybe your fault because you didn't place yourself accordingly.

4) i don't see the problem here...

5) noct have no problem at all... I did not like it at first, but there is fight were this theme is perfection !
And if you fear for your co-heal then you do not trust him enough... And that's a problem !

And you need to remember that in Alexander savage 1, AST is the king healer... Hands down
Synastry make all the hardest parts a piece of cake !

In A2S the AST can be a good main heal
It eat to much mana to aoe

...

@Mizi i agree a lot nocturnal is so underestimated right now...

[Neela]

@Mizi i agree a lot nocturnal is so underestimated right now...

Hmm yeah i had this discussion with my fc-healers too... which stance to be on default.
On my point of view it's strongly based on which healer cls people played before Ast.

Our WHMs like Diu more than Noc - me on the other hand, coming with an Sch as main,
is used to play with shield/pre-heal skills so i definitly prefer Noc over Diu... so yeah...

in the end you should get used to both but im with you that most people underestimate
Noc in the first place. : /

[Mizi]

Hmm yeah i had this discussion with my fc-healers too... which stance to be on default.
On my point of view it's strongly based on which healer cls people played before Ast.

Our WHMs like Diu more than Noc - me on the other hand, coming with an Sch as main,
is used to play with shield/pre-heal skills so i definitly prefer Noc over Diu... so yeah...

in the end you should get used to both but im with you that most people underestimate
Noc in the first place. : /

I only see two stances where using Diurnal is better than Nocturnal.

1. You have to DPS, since Diurnal increases the Attack Speed;
2. You have a SCH as a pair.

Otherwise, it's full Nocturnal. Stoneskin + Aspect Benefic = No heal for awhile haha /sit or /mdance meanwhile lol

[Nekotee]

I did not and still don't like to play as whm (ok no it's so fun in DPS and whm is my favorite spiritbond class)
I come from a SCH background in 2.0

And dispite that I do like diurnal for the huge cast speed and the confort of multiple regen aspected helios + benefic and the tank is fine for 10 sec or more depending of his brain and view of CD
I found it easier to play in diurnal and trickier in nocturnal...
It's harder, mana extensive but you can do great and save so many lazy Ass...

[Kerrigen]

Collective is fine for what it is but its CD is way too long for current endgame fights' pacing (ie it won't be up for every Cascade, let alone every series of six splashes while Soil will), and its range is maybe a tad too short when you take some of the bosses' hitbox into account. It's a common complaint within the JP playerbase.

Nocturnal doesn't compare with SCH at all. Whoever designed AST never thought about what actually makes SCH good and desirable (powerful HoTs on top of shields and mitigation tools that free up a lot of globals for DPSing). It's like AST was designed with stance-dancing in mind (enabling putting up shields when you do need them then going back to the more efficient Diurnal Sect - it's even designed so that HoTs stack while barriers don't, go figure) but they said 'nope' at the very last second.

You said it with your own words but you're right in that AST's main problem during endgame fights is that it needs to spend too many globals healing, which significantly hurts its DPS potential and overall contribution. The cards were probably designed to compensate for your lower DPS but you can't rely on them which doesn't gel well with an endgame where every fight is hard scripted and there's little place for improvisation. Now that would be fine if there was more control over the cards because I feel like AST was somewhat designed for healers who don't like to DPS and it would be a fine niche.

You should check Miunih's thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-with-WHM-SCH), it's very insightful on why AST has problems in high-end content even though I don't agree with their proposed changes.

[AzureFlare]

I only see two stances where using Diurnal is better than Nocturnal.

1. You have to DPS, since Diurnal increases the Attack Speed;
2. You have a SCH as a pair.

Otherwise, it's full Nocturnal. Stoneskin + Aspect Benefic = No heal for awhile haha /sit or /mdance meanwhile lol

Diurnal's potencies far outbeat Nocturnal's potencies, giving you more healing for the same mana, so more mana to spend on DPS. It also synergises way better with TD and CO so you got those options left open if you get a bad Draw streak.
Don't get me wrong, I love nocturnal, and it is underestimated. On paper though, Diurnal beats Nocturnal in nearly every aspect, and in most fights you should be doing around what 'on paper' requires you to unless your team is derping hard. And likewise, scholar beats nocturnal hard.

I do hate how most WHM I come across automatically assume to be the main healer though. Switching who DPSes on an AST + WHM comp is so much better than WHM lazying Cure while the AST is juggling mana. And Nocturnal AST is the better tank healer after using Regen in N.AST + WHM comps.