Starting out as AST30... for the first time

[Arielyanna]

I haven't leveled AST since unlocking it sometime ago and now, thinking about working on it. Any tips/advice etc I should know about before blundering through a DF party?

Apologies if there's a thread etc like this already...

[DarkmoonVael]

Essntial dignity is OP. Scales inversely with target HP, making you the brinkmanship of healers.

Remember to switch on your sects.

Card will still screw you over big time when they want to.

Diurnal sect>>>>>>>>>>>>>>nocturnal sect for 4 man. Dont ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever use nocturnal sect when paired with a scholar.

Until lvl 50 AST is a stupidly powerful healer. Its healing drops off post 50 compared to the other two healer due to only getting one additional healing ability post 50.

If this is going to be your first healing class, try out cnj first. If its isnt, its all good .

Diurnal AST plays a lot like whm up to lvl 50. Once you start getting all the post 50 abilities, healing as AST starts feeling more unique.

Use and abuse synestry. Put it on your tank to increase throughput on them by a huge amount.

Other than that, levelling an AST to 50 is pretty much the same as any other healers.

[Roxas_Andrade]

Essntial dignity is OP. Scales inversely with target HP, making you the brinkmanship of healers.

This! While leveling up, maybe you will see yourself in Cleric Stance the whole time, only clicking it off to ED the tank and maybe fulling healing him.

Remember to switch on your sects.

You only get Noct at 50, and for the DF, people usually don't wait for you to switch sects to shield and come back to diurnal. Either speak with your party first or stick to Diurnal.

Diurnal sect>>>nocturnal sect for 4 man. Dont ever ever ever use nocturnal sect when paired with a scholar.

Amem to that!

If this is going to be your first healing class, try out cnj first. If its isnt, its all good .

Cleric Stance, Protect and Stoneskin are important. Swiftcast too. People discuss about Aero and Bliz II, I'd choose Aero.

Other than that, remember Draw is a 30sec cooldown, use your cards whenever you can because they're easy to draw again. Don't hold cards waiting for the perfect combination, use them up!

[Reinha]

It's similar to a WHM in the beginning. Use Diurnal Sect, put Aspected Benefic on tank and turn on Cleric Stance to dot things. AB is your strongest heal aside from Essential Dignity so don't forget it. While dotting things you can turn off CS, use ED on the tank and turn CS back on within one global cooldown to buy more time for your own dps. Aurum Vale will be a piece of cake for you because you will have a Medica II equivalent at that point. Lightspeed can be used to save mp or heal while dodging. It also makes resurrecting faster if your Swiftcast is on cooldown.

Card management is simple in dungeons. The goal is to get as many DPS cards as possible whilst using mp cards, tp cards and cooldown reduction cards for Royal Road to enhance them. Damage reduction cards (green) help group dps indirectly by making your job easier and giving you more time to dps.

When you Draw the Spire or the Ewer

use Royal Road. You won't need extra mp and unless the dps are doing heavy aoe you won't need the yellow tp card either. If you already have a Royal Road buff waiting, Redraw or click off the card buff so the Draw cooldown can begin for the next card.

When you Draw the Arrow or the Balance

you can use them on a dps player as they are or expand them to everyone with the previously mentioned Royal Road. You can also save them for a later enhancement or situation by using Spread.

When you Draw the Bole

either use it on the tank, Redraw another card or put in Spread for later. I don't recommend Royal Roading it because it gives the weakest enhancement for the next card (50% instead of 100%).

When you Draw the Spear

either Redraw or Royal Road it for double duration on the next card. This card is pretty useless in 4 mans because the fights are too short for a cooldown reduction to matter. There's lots of running around between fights where your cooldowns will sit recharged and unused anyway. If Redraw and Royal Road are both unavailable then use on the tank or yourself. Dps gain the biggest benefit from this card when you are just about to engage a boss.


Spell descriptions.

[GeekMatt]

This advice is meant for low level + building good habits.

In the first couple levels when you draw cards you have no options other than to click it off or use it, and this is a good thing because it helps teach you which cards help which party members in different situations—every card can be beneficial if applied to the right person in the right circumstances, but it's hard to learn that later on when your mostly following a simple watered down priority system (namely The Balance > everything else), so you'll want to know when to change up priorities in any given situation. The first few levels are the best time to learn when a card is beneficial to a player. The advice above is good, however it's important to keep in mind that a cards value varies situationally. You'll also want to learn to keep Draw on Cooldown and to use your cards as quickly as possible so that the Cooldown timer can begin asap. This gets easier with experience. If you Rez a physical DPS/tank, they could use TP, so Spire is good if you have. A revived Magic DPS/healer can probably use mp, so Ewer if you have it.

In the early levels it doesn't matter as much, but later on you'll want to be aware that certain cards can actually hurt DPS. For example a BLMs rotation is based on efficient use of MP, and giving them a bunch of MP unexpectedly can confuse that. Similarly increasing a MNKs attack speed can make managing his rotation harder. This isn't just a matter of knowing each specific job though, my GF is a badass MNK > BLM who loves the increased attack speed on both, even with lei lines active so long as she isn't caught completely off guard.

If you've played WHM then you should be comfortable with the healing, if not then that's ok but you will want to acquire the crossclass skills at your convenience. Keep Diurnal Sect on always and be careful with your Aspected abilities (Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios) because they apply Heal Over Times to your targets and if your tank encounters new enemies while the HoT is active on him, the enemies will run straight to you before he can get aggro. I apply Aspected Benefic as soon as the tank has stopped moving and established some aggro, and don't apply it again if I think it'll last longer than the enemies do. You'll find hectic moments when everyone is at low hp, possibly as early as Brayflox and the damage is made more straining by the poisons. In these cases use LightSpeed with Helios to pick up the party quickly at low MP cost, and if a player's near death don't hesitate to pick them up with Essential Dignity, the Cooldown time on these two abilities aren't so bad that you should regret using them in any bind.

Lastly if your DRK has this buff active then you won't be able to replenish his mp, so don't try.