Thread: 3.3 AST adjustments

So...Nocturnal Aspected Helios will soon give a 120% shield off the value of the amount of HP healed (like how Nocturnal Aspected Benefic does with it's heal, just 10% less), and Spread CD is to be reduced to 30 seconds. Apparently some random bug where you could keep channeling Collective Unconscious despite being knocked up into the air will also be fixed? (lol)

Thoughts? As I said in the main 3.3 thread, I think SE is showing more and more that they don't really understand what the issue with Noct AST (I'd go so far as to argue AST as a whole) really is. While some of the community rebalance suggestions have been outright ridiculous, others have been reasonably well thought-out and fall into SE's apparent design pathos of wanting all of the healing jobs to be fairly homogenized re: their base toolkit.

This isn't meant to be YET ANOTHER "AST suggestions" thread, as frankly we could theorycraft and dream balance until we're blue in the face and SE likely won't do a thing that we suggest, but I AM curious to see if anyone thinks that these AST changes will have any impact on Noct AST's raid viability as a whole.

Noct.AST is actually very very powerful......as the main healer along side a sch.....in certain content....sigh (ok maybe not very very powerful...more like useful.....ish......depending on the person using AST). If you are going to do the absolute healing designation role of SCH dps and other healer just heals, it can be far easier to main heal on a Noct.AST, but this does require communication between the two healers when it comes to things like deploying adlo, as you dont want to overwrite it with A.Ben.

Other than that the spread adjustment is very very welcome. It will be used more for phase changes or mechanics in raids where the card you have drawn needed to be saved for 10-20 secs until its use become optimal.

Changes in Noct shields are welcome, but will see little use (kind of explained this above). AST will probably never be able to replace a SCH in raid in Nocturnal unless the devs do some serious overhauling of the healers.

Also to make Nocturnal AST viable, it may require a fourth healer to be introduced into the game that can pull off the healing/dps thing SCH can, but have this new healer more of a regen based one, so you end up with Shield main healer (N.AST and regen SCH replacement).

CU changes are....um......meh (yep they are a nerf, not sure how it will impact gameplay though).

Also were the changes to Nocturnal Aspected Helios 120% and not on par with Aspected Benefic 130%?

EDIT: yep its 120%

Originally Posted by DarkmoonVael

Noct.AST is actually very very powerful......as the main healer along side a sch

Oh my god no. Running ast on noct sect alongside a sch is possibly the worst thing you can do besides curing in cleric stance.

Originally Posted by Alistaire

Oh my god no. Running ast on noct sect alongside a sch is possibly the worst thing you can do besides curing in cleric stance.

No it really isnt. And people need to get this out of their head. Please read carefully what i have written and how i elaborated on this rather than quoting me out of context with an ulterior motive of trying to make an issue out of a non-issue.

There are places where if you run AST/SCH, with the scholar leaving all the healing for the AST, it can be more beneficial for the AST to run Nocturnal sect over Diurnal Sect depending on the encounter. I have done this, i know others that have done this.

Do not try and crassly conflate a raid group making a conscious decision to run an instance like this with voice communication and absolutely defined roles with what you are trying to; this is with the average DF person just making bad choices with which sect to run depending on which co-healer they are presented with.

Deliberately quoting out of context is poor form indeed. The fact that you have deliberately cut off half of the sentence you quoted just show you are here to do nothing other than partake in a very crass point scoring manoeuvre.

Nocturnal AST isn't weak at the current patch (3.2) and this buffs are fair considering the feedback that the players are giving about the high AoE damage that happen on later Savage floors, specially A8S. The real problem about SCH vs NoctAST dilemma is that SCH has much more to offer to a party than the Nocturnal AST. But this doesn't mean they can't progress savage, just that SCH is much more powerfull.

A friend has been progressing Midas Savage on Nocturnal for a while and he is currently working on A8S. As a SCH I've been discussing with him how he could use Synasty in the best way so Aspected Helios would shield the party for some AoE spams. With this changes, a Synastry Aspected Helios Shield will get close to a Deploy Adlo, and you can even "spam" it during Synastry duration! This is really cool and can only add to Noct AST effectiveness and some few advantages over SCH as well. Please understand that Noct AST isn't bad, its just SCH that is much, much better for a solid progression on early stages of a raid tier.