AST's weakness in end game

[TatoRazzino]

Y

I think some people are missing the boat, or maybe making it too complicated. The problem is that a Diurnal AST is a reasonable substitute for a main healing WHM, but is nowhere near as good as a Scholar for the off heal/dps/shield slot. So it's 2 healers vying for 1 spot much like PLD and DRK. So first, let's take a look at what makes SCH ideal for that role in the current meta:

1.) Fairy makes life easier on the main healer resulting in extra safety and usually allows the main healer to also add dps while the SCH barely leaves Cleric Stance
2.) Strong Single Target mitigation with Adlo/Virus (if used on single target)
3.) Strong AOE mitigation with Spread Adlo/Soil/Fey Covenant
4.) Very strong single target and AOE DPS while having unlimited mana to do so.

Now, when you put a Noct Astro in that slot - number 2 is the only area where they hang. Aspected Benefic and Disable perform similarly enough to Adlo and Virus to be equal in terms of clearing content for single target mitigation. But in all 3 other areas they are considerably worse. No fairy literally takes some dps away from the WHM/AST main healer. AOE shielding is considerably worse. It's impossible to AOE without running out of mana fast, and even on single targets, extended DPSing like in the first phase of A1 or Thordan leaves you in a pretty bad place MP wise. It ends up being a really bad substitute for a Scholar for the things we usually use a Scholar for. Even with the cards, it's an overall weaker party DPS than X/SCH while having weaker AOE shielding without bringing something additional to the group to compensate. A lot of people attribute it to cards versus Fey Wind, but I actually think the cards in their current form are better. It's the SCH doing more than the AST, and the main healer doing more with the SCH because of the fairy that the Noct AST in the offslot can't make up the difference for.

And with current gear the AOE shielding doesn't matter too much. But in early progression those A1 landings and Cascades it really hard in relation to HP creates a massive disparity between the two jobs.

My Suggestions which are simple but should fix the problem.

1.) 5% Bonus in Noct stance also to effect damage
2.) 20% MP reduction on Malefic II
3.) Aspected Helios in Noct changed to full Shield (300 potency, no hp healed)

I'll have to disagree with you in one point. Not your commentaries on how AST is not as strong as a SCH as a healer/DPS hybrid, but I'll disagree with you when you propose any changes to AST. We have to face the fact that SCH is a job that branches out of a DPS class and their healing tools only come after getting to level 30; you can heal as a CNJ, but ACN makes a poor substitue of a healer. Those characteristics are core to understanding the SCH as much as they are when we analyze the transformation of MRD into WAR and the transformation of a GLA into a PLD. DRK/AST came out with toolkits that focused on damage mitigation/healing, and you can see that easily by looking at how their toolkit evolves level after level. You can also see that WAR/SCH can't replace PLD/WHM as well as DRK/AST, simply because the last two were designed as main-tanks/healers. If you ignore their DPS toolkit and just focus on their healing spells/skills, you can see that WAR/SCH doesn't have a complete toolkit to main heal. They can, but it takes considerable effort to do it. In my opinion, that's not a problem, and I bet our next tank/healing job will compete for the off-spot of the meta. We just have to give it time. Until then, we can use PLD-WAR/WHM-AST for heavy damage fights where no DPS check is tight, since they offer the safest mitigation/HP restoration combo.

EDIT: another thing that I just remembered: in SCoB, the meta for lots of the fights excluded an off-tank, as lots of groups (even in the beginning) took only one tank to T8-T9. The chosen tank was PLD.