Does Adloquium need a minor fix?

[Ghishlain]

Please keep in mind when I say this, that I'm in no way being snarky or sarcastic. But, what other advantages do you feel they have? The only one I can think of is spammable Helios in fights where there is a lot of AOE damage going out consistently. But, normally those situations only happen in Alex or Extreme Primals where you usually have a co-healer.

Noct AST vs SCH is less about outright advantages and more about situational advantages that each can provide. In fact, the one "advantage" you posted for Noct AST is actually also about situational advantages too. For example:

Aspected Benefic vs Adloquim
Aspected Benefic provides more consistent shields at less MP cost at instant speed versus Adloquium. Adloquium has an RNG chance to provide insane amount of mitigation and of course, the bonus of being able to be Deployed for incredible shenanigans (a bit more on this later)


Aspected Helios vs Succor
Aspected Helios will always be 5% more potent than Succor due to Sect bonus so Aspected Helios will always win. Succor's 0.5s cast time advantage can be negated with proper planning. Likewise, Deployed Adlo (especially Crit) completely crushes Aspected Helios but can only be used once every 2 minutes.


Disable vs Supervirus
Disable can be used every 60 seconds, Supervirus every 90s. Disable reduces 10% potency for 6s and Supervirus reduces 15% stats for 10s. At a glance Supervirus is superior in every way but Disable can be situationally better if Tank / Raid Busters are coming every 70-80s. Cascade from A3S comes to mind. AST is able to Disable every single Cascade but SCH can only Supervirus every other one, making Disable much more appealing.

Additionally, Disable can reduce attacks that Supervirus cannot because those attacks aren't stat-based. I actually personally do not know much about these attacks, but I believe they're defined as "Darkness" attacks and am curious to know more about these if people have more information. Quick Google on "FFXIV Darkness Attacks" brings up everything DRK related, lol..


Collective Unconsciousness vs Sacred Soil
Like the Disable vs Supervirus above, your mileage will depend on the fight. To reuse the Cascade example again, SCH will have Sacred Soil up for every Cascade but AST will only have Collective Unconciousness up for every other Cascade, making Sacred Soil more desirable if Aetherflow stacks allow for it.


Fey Wind vs Expanded Balance/Arrow
I only bring this up because if people argue that Adlo is better on the power of RNG, then Expanded Balance / Arrow is better than Fey Wind. If RNG favours you, your Adlos will be significantly better for mitigation. If RNG favours you, your Draws will be significantly better for your rDPS. If anyone's going to argue RNG in any way shape or form, you'll need to argue that with all aspects of the kits too.

You actually have a better chance drawing Expanded Balance / Arrow every minute over getting a Crit Adlo at the right opportunity with current gear scores anyway.


Burst AoE vs Sustained AoE Healing
SCH wins with the power of Indomitability, especially if you need fast heals, combine Indomitability that with Emergency Tactics and Succor for 700 Potency of healing in about 4 seconds. But once they use that steam, they're out for 30s. AST has better sustained just with Helios. Of course any fight that'll require that much burst AoE healing at once, you'll generally have a co-healer assisting as well that can assist in that endeavor (as you have mentioned).


Noct. AST has better Wipe Recovery
SCH by design is limited to several cooldowns whether through their fairy or their own kit as well as the fact they're limited by their Aetherflow stacks. If a SCH is put into a situation of intense healing requirement, they will falter once their resources run out and they're sitting on nothing but Physick, Adlo, and Succor with Adlo being a very inefficient heal outside of Crits and Succor being a fairly expensive MP for its effect. This is versus Noct AST which has an arguably similar MP pool to play with and can hit their more MP efficient Helios for raid heals and have access to their Benefic and Benefic IIs at any given instance. Take into account that the AST healing kit also heals for at least 10% cheaper MP than every other kit in the game too (though doesn't necessarily mean they consume less MP *Points to Fairy post below*)


Fairy allows for a lot of free healing at no MP or GCD cost to the SCH
One of the biggest things running in SCHs favour. There's no way Noct AST can compete against something that basically says to the SCH "Gives 4,000 potency healing per minute for 0MP and 0GCD use". Syanstry will give AST a fairy-like effect in the sense that they can heal two targets like a SCH would be if they try to make up that 4K potency (6K if you consider the entire 90s recast of Syanstry), the AST is going to run out of MP very fast.

====

What gives the SCH kit the edge is the flexibility and synergy it has with other kits. It can DPS hard, it has a lot of healing at no cost to the SCH, and it has a lot of solutions to a myriad of problems (as long as all those problems are slamming the SCH at the same time). SCH and WHM mesh very well due to how the kits interact with the fight while WHM and AST synergy is something that kinda needs to be forced. AST kit is arguable the better main heal kit over WHM but you don't have two main heals in a group either. WHM off healing options aren't great, making it more difficult to make WHM + AST work. AST + SCH or WHM + SCH the much more viable option just on the strength of the SCH kit and how it synergizes with WHM and Diurnal AST.

TLDR: Noct isn't bad persay - it has a lot of situational abilities that can perform better when looking at similar skills in the SCH kit. However, lack of Synergy with the WHM kit and other ASTs and the solution building framework SCH has make it difficult to slot into a role that's suppose to replace SCH.

[Eloah]

lol, digital hugs acceptable =p *Pets da Lala*

Awe

[Kabzy]

I think this is a case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Your suggestion was to lower MP costs, but MP isn't even a problem for Scholars. And the crit thing is just your personal luck, I find that my crit rate is pretty high. I agree with the dude who said we need to hush about Adlo, that's one move we definitely don't want the devs to re-evaluate.

But really Scholar has been in a good place for a long time now. We're certainly not lacking in instant cast spells and easily retain the best MP regen out of the healers. AST changes are tricky cause of the sects, but if any healer role does need an update I think it's WHM. It doesn't bring the utility that a SCH/AST combo can provide, especially if they make the mind bonus universal too.

[Tint]

but if any healer role does need an update I think it's WHM. It doesn't bring the utility that a SCH/AST combo can provide, especially if they make the mind bonus universal too.

haha, so true. i think the devs have not realized that the people want the mind bonus to increase their DPS, not the healing xD so selene and ast dps buffs on top of the mnd bonus to increase the dps even further. and whm is the only one who really needs the piety bonus. if they change the party bonus it's just another nerf for whm. how often did they nerf the whm now?

[Kabzy]

haha, so true. i think the devs have not realized that the people want the mind bonus to increase their DPS, not the healing xD so selene and ast dps buffs on top of the mnd bonus to increase the dps even further. and whm is the only one who really needs the piety bonus. if they change the party bonus it's just another nerf for whm. how often did they nerf the whm now?

I don't think it's so much that they nerfed WHM, they still have the highest healing output of the three. But when an Astrologian can dish out near identical healing output, plus buffs it seems a little unfair. In fact I'm rather surprised that there hasn't been an outcry from all the WHMs. I do wonder what exactly a WHM brings to the group that a Diurnal AST cannot.

[Katlyna]

I don't think it's so much that they nerfed WHM, they still have the highest healing output of the three. But when an Astrologian can dish out near identical healing output, plus buffs it seems a little unfair. In fact I'm rather surprised that there hasn't been an outcry from all the WHMs. I do wonder what exactly a WHM brings to the group that a Diurnal AST cannot.

Cure 3s regen factor is larger making certain content less intense. But an Astro properly playing can keep pace entirely even missing the extra regen, but it does sometimes mean you need one extra GCD to cover. Likewise if your run Scholar+Astro you loose the Mind bonus WHM brings. There are a few other factors which white mage bring in secondary skills but I concur, the line between Whitemage and Astro is getting very fine. Note that EVEN if white mages are behind at this point. There is still a stigma on most servers that Astro's filling for white mages is subpar!

[Tint]

I don't think it's so much that they nerfed WHM, they still have the highest healing output of the three. But when an Astrologian can dish out near identical healing output, plus buffs it seems a little unfair. In fact I'm rather surprised that there hasn't been an outcry from all the WHMs. I do wonder what exactly a WHM brings to the group that a Diurnal AST cannot.

oh, we had such an outcry:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...thing-anymore.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-to-white-mage
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...rologian-buff.

probably time to necro one of them instead of pirate this topic here ^^;

[Kaurie]

I don't think it's so much that they nerfed WHM, they still have the highest healing output of the three. But when an Astrologian can dish out near identical healing output, plus buffs it seems a little unfair. In fact I'm rather surprised that there hasn't been an outcry from all the WHMs. I do wonder what exactly a WHM brings to the group that a Diurnal AST cannot.

-Cure III is a huge one, this is incredibly useful if you need to heal splash damage on a tank, off-tank and/or melee. Encounters that I have seen them especially useful are T11 and A4 (at least normal, I never made it to A4S)

-I believe the AoE heals on WHM have a farther range than AST?

-WHM has the highest burst DPS of all 3 jobs

-IMO WHM procs are better than AST procs, in that I'd rather have Cure II be free MP than Benefic II be instant cast

-WHM can cross class E4E, awesome skill

The big one though is Cure III - that skill is just great.

[Kabzy]

-Snip-

Out of all those points, I reckon E4E is the only one that actually stands out, and even then you could argue that AST can counter that and bring their Disable. Having raided with an AST for a while now, I can easily say Cure III is irrelevant. We've never needed it. Not to say it itsn't a great ability, but fights simply aren't so brutal to make Cure III a requirement.

As we are talking about main healers, even WHM having the best burst DPS comes into question. Firstly, they may not get an opportunity to DPS that much in the first place, and AST has the reliability of their two main DoTs never missing. As for procs, again I hardly ever see ASTs short of MP now with the buffs to LA. Taking all that into consideration I still think it's much more valuable having an AST in the group that can buff everyone and has one of the best healing CDs in this game.

[FoxyAreku]

Scholar MP is also near limitless, while white mage and AST have MP problems in heal intensive fights, so I don't see a reason to fix it.