Astrologian impossible to balance as it is

[Sidra]

I remember you have a regen called "Fairy"

True fairy works much like a regen. But that's irrelevant to the point. I'd still trade A Regen spell for Adlo 95% of the time, whether the fairy existed or not.

[Lyrica_Ashtine]

I am not sure I agree with the premise of this thread, as I find AST to be pretty well balanced atm. With respect to Diurnal vs Noct - one thing to consider is shields are niche while regens are universally useful.

If you've read the whole thing, you would have known the issue with Nocturnal Sect isn't limited to mitigation purposes.

[Sidra]

Overall I think A3 is an amazingly designed fight and super fun. It does take a lot of time to learn and is difficult, but that doesn't mean it poorly designed. A4 is poorly designed. Every single one of your examples I agree with in fact but disagree with that that fact means poor design, although you'd get no argument from me if they swapped the order with A4. I think super tight DPS checks while dealing with mechanics is the ultimate way to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the team, as all 8 players can contribute to dps while also also dpsrotationing/healing/mitigating while simaeltaneously having raid awareness and moving. It's the ultimate in game check of player skill.

And of course the better gear slots come from there and 4...the best gear should always come from the hardest stuff, this is true for any game with gear, really. I can agree to disagree on the design of the fight - but not sure where else you'd want pants, bodys and weapons to drop from.

Note, we have only recently beaten A3 and a lot of time went into learning it - so this isn't from the perspective of a supergroup who walked through it week 3. But all those wipes and messups led to some entertaining nights, and it took us longer to clear than most groups. I enjoyed the process, and if you don't you probably should not be raiding. Also note that the dps checks are much less now, you can miss up a digi or have someone die and still win the fight, which wasn't possible in i190 when it was released.

[TatoRazzino]

Overall I think A3 is an amazingly designed fight and super fun. It does take a lot of time to learn and is difficult, but that doesn't mean it poorly designed. A4 is poorly designed. Every single one of your examples I agree with in fact but disagree with that that fact means poor design, although you'd get no argument from me if they swapped the order with A4. I think super tight DPS checks while dealing with mechanics is the ultimate way to squeeze every ounce of productivity from the team, as all 8 players can contribute to dps while also also dpsrotationing/healing/mitigating while simaeltaneously having raid awareness and moving. It's the ultimate in game check of player skill.

And of course the better gear slots come from there and 4...the best gear should always come from the hardest stuff, this is true for any game with gear, really. I can agree to disagree on the design of the fight - but not sure where else you'd want pants, bodys and weapons to drop from.

Note, we have only recently beaten A3 and a lot of time went into learning it - so this isn't from the perspective of a supergroup who walked through it week 3. But all those wipes and messups led to some entertaining nights, and it took us longer to clear than most groups. I enjoyed the process, and if you don't you probably should not be raiding. Also note that the dps checks are much less now, you can miss up a digi or have someone die and still win the fight, which wasn't possible in i190 when it was released.

In coil, some body/leg pieces dropped from the second fight and the other piece dropped from the last one, so this has been done before.

And I wouldn't mind progressing slowly if my static wasn't spending 90% of the time looking for subs/replacements instead of progressing.

I believe that A3S is poorly designed, but that's my opinion. I don't believe in vacuum design, which is the design choice for a lot of content in games since games have existed. But that's my bias.

[FeliAiko]

He said that Diurnal is kind of like a WHM, not a substitute for a WHM (and the same goes with SCH).

Him saying 'kind of like a WHM' is the same thing as me calling it a 'WHM-type', so all you've done is attempt to play semantics. The fact that D.AST clearly leans more towards a main healer role (the WHM's strength), while Noct (albeit on paper, not so much in practice) leans more towards an off-healer role (the SCH's strength), reinforces this point.

He used the WHM/Noct x Diurnal/SCH composition as an example of how you could use the Sects. He never said anything about being optimal

He used it as an example of how the Sects should be properly utilised, as that was the question posed to him.

Can you give us an example of what the proper utilization would be?

So according to Yoshi's response, the proper way to utilise the Sects, is to use Diurnal with a SCH and Nocturnal with a WHM. Which, as I said before, is a logical decision you'd expect people to make, considering how they've just been told how one stance is 'kinda like a WHM' (i.e. WHM-type) and the other is 'closer to SCH' (i.e. a SCH-type).

Also, he said raid dungeon, which is a label that’s not related to Gordias (Savage) only: all normal Gordias content and Void Ark – not to mention the Coils and the three Crystal Tower duties – are raid dungeons.

Let's not pretend that high end-game content like Savage isn't the biggest (if not the only) factor when it comes to how they create and adjust Jobs in this game. Which makes all the sense in the world, as that's the only medium where you'll get to see the Job at full potential. That's why whenever balance issues come up they always mention stuff like waiting for feedback from raids before they consider making adjustments. How it performs in DF-content is minor since that's tailored to where any Job can do decently enough as long as people know how to press buttons.

[Judge_Xero]

I haven't seen it mentioned at all in this thread but it would be hard to compare the 3 healers without breaking apart their separate functions.

DPS
Healing
MP Recovery/Effeciency
Party Support
(Is that it?)

Then break it down over the 4 Healers (ASTN and ASTD, WHM, SCH)

Then you can pinpoint the exact area they are lacking and/or at an advantage. Then decide if it's possible another class can fill in that niche area or not.

[Kerrigen]

You forgot mitigation, which is a big, significant part of a healer's tookit that can't simply be thrown under a 'support' category. Mitigation is very, very important in high end content until you overgear it enough.

[Vlady]

If they truly want to allow nocturnal and scholar shields to stack then put a mitigation cap on it total amount the shield cannot add a hp buffer more then 50% of the targets health for warrior and maybe 40% for dark knight and paladin. Then let the shields stack up to that threshhold and allow the leftover bubble to be converted into a hot or something.

[Milestailsprowe]

Stance Dancing Warrior style between sects would fix everything

[Vlady]

Stance Dancing Warrior style between sects would fix everything

Maybe it would. It would let the astrologian shift to nocturnal to rev up a mitigation spell then go back to duirnal to output healing that would allow them to play the scholar side much more easily. Still a dps issue since scholars are brought more for its additional dps then pure mitigation.