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.

[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.

[Rawrz]

Scholar MP is also near limitless, until they have had to raise two or more times

Changed it a little xD

[zuzu-bq]

Noctural Astrologian will stop looking bad to your eyes when you guys stop trying to make it work like its a Scholar.

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.

This analysis is pretty good and points out what I like to show to some friends when they start comparing SCH and Noct AST in the wrong way. I'd probably add a coment on the CU regen for Nocturnal that is really strong. Even though Nocturnal AST is not a bad healer, SCH excels it mostly because on how encounters are designed in general for FFXIV. I think I would only see a good Nocturnal AST sruggle on current fights if we put them on A8S to be honest. Maybe not even there. That being said SCH also has better synergy with his possible partners than Noct AST has with his only non-repeatable job match-up WHM. We can only wait what next encounter designs and expansion's abilities and spells will show us.
About Darkness damage: sadly even Disable doesn't work on it. Its more off "pure" damage and can only be mitigated by shields. So huge against Darkness Damage like J Kick SCH is king with Deployment and AST is king if its constant damage like Sephirot ads.

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.

Depends on what you're aiming to do with the mana pal. You can spam Adloquium and/or Succor and watch as you go OOM quicker than AST does. Not onmly that but WHM and AST both have random-like triggers that involves mana, for WHM being Freecure, Overcure, Enhanced Medica and Esuna proc and for AST being Ewer while SCH healing capabilities depend on a combination of MP and Aetherflow management, if you balance these two badly you'll end up seeing yourself with less mana than you should.

[FoxyAreku]

Depends on what you're aiming to do with the mana pal. You can spam Adloquium and/or Succor and watch as you go OOM quicker than AST does. Not onmly that but WHM and AST both have random-like triggers that involves mana, for WHM being Freecure, Overcure, Enhanced Medica and Esuna proc and for AST being Ewer while SCH healing capabilities depend on a combination of MP and Aetherflow management, if you balance these two badly you'll end up seeing yourself with less mana than you should.

Anyone can use their mana inefficiently, that doesn't change my point

[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.

[Kaurie]

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.

Disable is nothing like E4E, and I feel you are greatly underestimating the value of Cure III. That said, the more recent raids have not needed it as much, likely due to keep the 3 jobs relevant. In A4, for example, when both healers have to stay away from everyone and both tanks + 2 melee get hit with splash, cure III is amazing. Where I saw it work the best was in T11 when the two adds showed up - and you had the 3 physical DPS get splash damage constantly, as a healer you needed to place yourself away to reach both tanks + not get hit by mechanics, and Cure III meant you could easily top off all 3 DPS in 1 go - leaving your cohealer to heal the tanks or whatever.

I should say, that I am not saying WHM >>>> AST, I am saying WHM has advantages over AST just as AST has advantages over WHM. They are both very relevant.

In terms of DPS, the reason that they are main healers is why WHM shines. They only get to DPS for short bursts, and that high burst gives them a bigger edge. That said, even if you look at FFLogs of Savage - WHM only beats out AST by about 20% and it's not incredibly significant (220 vs 180 for 75th percentile, for example)

[zuzu-bq]

Anyone can use their mana inefficiently, that doesn't change my point

And the same goas for the fact that anyone can use their mana efficiently. You just killed your point youself dude.

[Kabzy]

-Snip-

Like I said, I'm not saying Cure III isn't a great ability, I'm just saying that it's not a requirement for any raid and so it doesn't have the value of giving WHM an edge over anybody. Disable and E4E are not similar, yes, but they are both mitigation tools and I was merely pointing out that they do both still have options.

I agree with you completely on the DPS thing, however I personally do not think that slight increase in numbers outweighs the party buffs from AST. I haven't done any calcs but assuming AST starts off with an AoE balance and maybe gets more in the fight, I reckon that may more than make up for WHM and it's arsenal of missable DPS abilities. I could be wrong, this is just my opinion, but if the mind bonus also becomes universal I would not want a WHM co-healer if I could have an AST. The ability to heal near identically and do so much more far outweighs simply having the crown for biggest heals. (For the record I am talking about raiding only.)

Edit: Lol we're not even talking about Adloquium anymore. I think that's a sure sign that it does not need any touchy touchy!!

[FoxyAreku]

And the same goas for the fact that anyone can use their mana efficiently. You just killed your point youself dude.

What? That literally doesn't make sense lol, did you even read my initial post?

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.

Now please tell me how near limitless MP used efficiently is somehow the same or worse as very limited MP used efficiently...? No matter how you look at it, the scholar will always be in a better position than the other two classes as far as MP goes. Do you even know what we're discussing or are you just trying to instigate a debate for no reason?