Things currently wrong with frontlines that the community would like to see fixed

[Cidel]

AST may be the best healer out their right now but...

I still agree with mostly everything you said about AST, SMN and SCH, but this one bit, I must disagree with.

Its hard to pick out a "best healer" due to all healers shining in different aspects in PvP- and then breaking it down further into different scenarios (4v4, 8v8, 72-man chaos, etc.) AST is simply the most potentially tankiest healer, and mobile healer, only slightly above SCH in both respects (which I daresay, has more features that make it a more likely candidate for a "best healer" in PvP). Kyani outlined exactly what makes AST look "broken" and a "noob trap;" the problem is that many players (specifically, DPS) seen AST shrug off assaults that may have worked against shield-less WHMs and cry foul when in reality healers are tanky period- its just that WHM is a hell of a lot squishier than the other 2(in return for larger healing potential)and a lot of players hold healers to this standard of kill-ability for whatever reason.

Personally, I love the stigma of players thinking it takes a full party to kill one AST; it just goes to show the quality of most FL players.

[TheWaywardWind]

Personally, I love the stigma of players thinking it takes a full party to kill one AST; it just goes to show the quality of most FL players.

The problem with your post is that healers are essentially tanks in Frontlines, so which ever one has the best ability to fulfill their specific role (an excellent tank and healer combo) is the one that would widely be considered the best. Scholar may get points for the fairy and various other abilities (E4E, virus), but too many of their skills require parties to be lined up perfectly for them to use, and the vast majority of them do not mitigate enough to make much of a difference. Succor is the exactly the same as Aspected Helios (with the exception of some crits that may happen), but the difference is that AST has a stronger Cure II which has no equivalent on Scholar, the ability to instant-shield (which, on average, is stronger than Adlo), and doesn't have to worry about micro-managing a fairy which runs all over the place.

Plus, AST can buff its healing at any time without sacrifice anything and synastry is great in PvP. Plus a balance on someone with battle fever is ridiculous. If all healers still had the ability to Stance Dance in PvP, I think we'd definitely see a similar instance in PvE where Scholar comes out on top in many instances.

However, you're removing its most vital assets as a class - it IS essentially half DPS, after all. With no cleric stance, what makes SCH shine in PvE is glaringly absent in PvP. It becomes a decent healer with more to handle. If Scholars still had their outstanding DPS capabilities I'd agree with the idea that it could hold the title, but alas, that was severed long ago.

All of this, too, is without even looking at the PvP skills offered (retrogradation OP af).

Besides that, the argument that "AST can't heal as well as the other two" simply isn't using it correctly.

As I stated before, AST is good but definitely not invincible. Anyone who believes it is "invincible" just really doesn't know how to counter an AST properly. It's largely the same for all healers, the difference with AST is that you can't just, as a DPS, spam weak GCD abilities and expect it to die like you can if you're fighting other melee DPS (which is what mostly people bitch about, anyway.)

All resources are finite; the difference is that AST has more in their toolkit for mobile healing and instant heals that make them outlast any Scholar and White Mage when being attacked. With AST, healing instantly is never a problem unless your MP runs out. Unless you have Lustrates or saved your Tetra/Bene, you're going to have a harder time. It's just the way it is.

[Kyani]

Okay, Dimitrii - you are a summoner. You have exhausted Dreadwyrm Trance and Cometeor, but did not kill anyone, so your LB bar is under half full. What do you do to be useful for the rest of the fight? Your options are

- Bio/Bio2 people and hope it helps (0 direct potency)
- Try to bind targets (20 Potency)
- Miasma priority targets (35 Potency + dot)
- Spam Ruin II (strictly better than Ruin) - 80 potency
- Cast a few Ruin IIIs (120 potency, then you're even more useless than before)

Let's get this straight: the absolute best possible case for Summoner is being able to Scathe (with a cast time) a handful of times before losing access to the little utility you have. Every other option is worse than Black Mage's filler panic-mode nuke at applying kill pressure. Are unboosted weaponskills amazing? No. But they're a hell of a lot better than any of those at actually killing someone. A completely unbuffed (no HT) Full Thrust combo is twice as much potency as 3 Scathes / Ruin IIIs, with the last hit being a significant amount of pressure by itself.

[Cidel]

snip

See, by your logic, "whichever [healer] has the best ability to fulfill their specific role (an excellent tank and healer combo) is the one that would widely be considered the best," we're back at square one because it's already been established in other threads and by Kyani here that AST's balance in that department is fairly skewed in favor of survivability (tank) over heals. I'm aware that healers often need to take on the role of tanks in PvP; but that's not the case all the time and if being focused on isn't part of the equation, they have to work harder to (and more often than the other 2 healers, are unable to) keep up with party-wide damage, especially if they have chosen the tank stance (Noct) over healing (Diurnal). If you're going to try to continue arguing that AST will keep up with the other 2 (as equally skilled) healers on keeping more than one person alive, I really don't know what kind of matches you're selectively remembering.

...and doesn't have to worry about micro-managing a fairy which runs all over the place.

micro-managing the fairy gives SCHs their high skill floor for their(rewardingly) high skill ceiling. Just because that aspect is there doesn't make them any less a powerful healer when its done right.

But anyway, I'm not going to go on about SCH vs AST here. The latest "FL tier list" (supposedly joke)thread already had some healer strength discussion in there.

Edit: didn't even read the stuff on the 3rd page. Kyani has a good write-up on what SCH is capable of.

[TheWaywardWind]

micro-managing the fairy gives SCHs their high skill floor for their(rewardingly) high skill ceiling. Just because that aspect is there doesn't make them any less a powerful healer when its done right.

Edit: didn't even read the stuff on the 3rd page. Kyani has a good write-up on what SCH is capable of.

See above. If you're unable to play to the classes full potential, that's peachy, but that's a you problem. Scholar does not magically outperform Astro in PvP just because you have not seen any Astros not take advantage of its skill sets.

And anyway, I'm not gonna argue with you about it all day. Most people agree AST is the meta of healing, so.

[Cidel]

See above. If you're unable to play to the classes full potential, that's peachy, but that's a you problem. Scholar does not magically outperform Astro in PvP just because you have not seen any Astros not take advantage of its skill sets.

If you're unable to play to the classes full potential, that's peachy, but that's a you problem. Astrologian does not magically outperform Scholar in PvP just because you have not seen any Scholars take advantage of its skill sets.

See what I did there?

Astro is not nearly as limited.

I chuckled. If you think so champ.