I am new to Astrologian, which stance is best for solo healing?

[Krissey]

My friend told me "They" have done the math and someone Nocturnal Stance is never worth it.

Is this true? Which is the best stance for 4 man dungeons. I haven't touched Astrologian until this patch and I'm really loving the class. I had heard early on they were weaker healers than the other two and thus had a bad stigma on them.

How does the class fare now in 3.2? Does it matter which stance for 4 man dungeons or just do what you want?

[Nekotee]

Yeah due to the spellspeed boost of the diurnal, it worth it EVERY time in solo or 4man content

Nocturnal is most of the time used in 8man content to take the SCH place and mitigate some raid damage
=> personnalité i also use it during dragon treasure map and pvp

...

Ast WAS à weak class... But it's in the past now.
Thanks to the multiple ajustment it is become the best heal... And snatched the whm crown

[Krissey]

Yeah due to the spellspeed boost of the diurnal, it worth it EVERY time in solo or 4man content

Nocturnal is most of the time used in 8man content to take the SCH place and mitigate some raid damage
=> personnalité i also use it during dragon treasure map and pvp

...

Ast WAS à weak class... But it's in the past now.
Thanks to the multiple ajustment it is become the best heal... And snatched the whm crown

Thanks for the response! So far I've been loving this class. I just hit level 50 last night and it's been amazing. I don't feel I am lacking in any way for any situation either. It seems like a well rounded class. I enjoy the Diurnal Sect, I was just wondering if Nocturnal Sect was as useless as my friend made it sound.

[Nekotee]

No... Nocturnal is a really strong stance as well.
But could be seen as a bad one if you play too much in diurnal XD

Because if you're diurnal everytime you will get used to the 5% speedcast bonus and going nocturne will look slow and heavy
While it is as fast as the whm spell
And the 5% healing bonus of the noct give you a higher potency than a whm.
Plus you got shield !

Noct is very powerful to play but not in most content.
Since HW launch is switched to AST and I become more and more in love with this awesome job

[HPDelron]

Take with this a grain of salt, because my healing main is SCH and I've only got a AST at 55 so far but:

Diurnal is going to net you higher overall potency.
Nocturnal is going to net you higher burst output and shields.

If efficiency and overall output is your primary concern Diurnal.
If you need to deal with closely spaced large damage spikes Nocturnal.

In general I've been defaulting to Diurnal. I'm struggling to think of many 4-man encounters off the top of my head where I'd want to use noct. The last boss of the Vault seems like he might be one since he puts party damage up at rate higher than what a HoT can keep up with.

[Ghishlain]

Nocturnal isn't useless but because Diurnal is the superior sect to use, it's better just to use the more powerful sect, thus leaving Nocturnal in the dust. There are times where Nocturnal is more beneficial than Diurnal but those situations are very few and far in between.

In 4-mans you can pretty much get away with either that suitable for you. Just know that Diurnal is regarded as the better Sect to play in.

[Krissey]

Nocturnal isn't useless but because Diurnal is the superior sect to use, it's better just to use the more powerful sect, thus leaving Nocturnal in the dust. There are times where Nocturnal is more beneficial than Diurnal but those situations are very few and far in between.

In 4-mans you can pretty much get away with either that suitable for you. Just know that Diurnal is regarded as the better Sect to play in.

Okay, great! Thanks for the response! Of course we are forming a static and need only 1 or 2 people more to finish our static so of course in 8 man content the Sect will come down to whatever the other healer will be. If SCH I always stay Diurnal, and if WHM then I would go Nocturnal.

[Mendalas]

One cool thing you can do in 4 man dungeons as an AST is switch to noct in between pulls to get a shield up on the tank then switch back to diurnal before you get thrown into combat. This way you can dps more before the tank needs heals. I usually do this plus a stoneskin so I can pump out some mad deeps.

[Nekotee]

You can do it without noct as well
As long as the tank is under aspected helios, aspected benefic and if he rotate his CD correctly you can DPS freely XP

...

Noted that on some 8man content whm + diurnal is sometime better
Like A1S for exemple
But this is rater !

[BrielleBeaudonet]

FWIW, I recently picked up AST and leveled it to 60, learning some of these things along the way.

Spell speed boost from Diurnal is VERY noticeable, and in general, I feel like I get a lot more mileage from the Regen effects than the Nocturnal shields.

By the way, there's a cool trick I picked up in this very forum that can be used at Level 60 to completely trivialize dungeon healing. It helped me realize AST's identity as the "regen healer," next to WHM's "burst healer" and SCH's "shield healer. Give it a try once you've unlocked the relevant abilities!

It looks something like: Collective Unconscious -> Synastry -> Aspected Benefic -> Lightspeed -> Aspected Helios -> Time Dilation -> Celestial Opposition

That might not make sense to you quite yet, but with this sequence, you can give the tank 3 suped-up Regen effects ticking simultaneously for 20 to 40 seconds each. You can then switch to Cleric Stance and DPS for days. You could also slide in a card, like Expanded Balance, before Time Dilation to give a damage boost to the whole party and just completely wreck dungeon pulls.

I haven't used my AST much in harder lvl 60 content, but I imagine this would be pretty wasteful in that setting.