Quote Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind View Post
The Ugly:

- Nocturnal Sect, for the large part, is still a mess. It's skills don't work well in sync with AST's toolkit, Square. Time Dilation is objectively better with Diurnal, as you get to extend buffs AND HoTs. So is Celestial Opposition. The only time Nocturnal was better was in PvP, and you just took that away. Why haven't you fixed this yet?
A suggestion I've seen parroted about a few times that I think is an excellent suggestion is to make Nocturnal Sect the Astrologian's "buffing" Sect, where the role focuses less on healing (much like the current SCH/WHM dynamic where the WHM handles the brunt of the healing), and focuses more heavily on keeping rolling buffs going to support the party. The ideas were things like, Draw CD reduced by half while in Nocturnal Sect and Shuffle being able to be used repeatedly while in Noct Sect. Other card/buff-related changes were suggested for TD/CU/CO as well. I liked these suggestions, because when you talk about what a SCH brings to the party it's very rarely their mitigation SPECIFICALLY that's mentioned, it's usually that coupled with their ridiculously-sustainable relatively accuracy-free DPS along with their superior mana regeneration to upkeep it. (Not to mention Selene's comparably weaker - but considerably more consistent! - AOE haste boost that can be used independently of the SCH's own actions.) Looking at the "bare bones" AST toolkit while in Noct, they have access to most of SCH's primary mitigation tools, they just don't have the sustained capacity for SCH DPS, so if the devs were to translate that discrepancy into an increase of party-wide DPS via card buffs, then I think that AST would fulfill a similar niche to SCH in raid, but with a different playstyle.

Honestly, "weaker heals with awesome buffs" is how the job was originally advertised to me (original potencies reflect this), it's just that it seems like the devs couldn't figure out how to balance the card buffs right so they just boosted heal potencies instead. :/ It's kind of a shame, really - I'd love to play a more technical, challenging healer job if the support payoff was actually worth it.