Thread: 3.3 AST adjustments

N.A.Heli boost is welcome as always

Spread buff has me drooling


Already OP becomes more OP, I accept

Spread buff is nice. CU nerf is odd but understandable and can be worked around.

Noct AST will remain garbage as it stands. Has been discussed over and over, having just a slightly more MP-efficient option with near-equal potency compared to Benefic 2 and slightly stronger healing/shielding does not make up for a fairy that heals about 200 potency/3s (tick) without need for re-application (unless you use dissipation), easier MP management and more personal DPS in the long run.

It isn't just Noct AST being incredibly far behind any other healer/diurnal sect, but on top of that you need to be far more concentrated and try much harder to get your full worth out of N.AST.. to be surpassed by any other healer with ease. Take all the stuff diurnal AST suffers from (no I'm not saying it is bad, I dare say D.AST/SCH is the strongest comp but that is my own, incredibly biased opinion), amplify them and you have nocturnal AST as just a main healer. Mismanaging Cleric Stance while optimizing, running out of MP, recovering from a hit you didn't preshield, taking advantage of both the heal and the shield of aspected spells are much harder. This is added on top of telling your members to get their butts into your bubble, stacking close for cards, checking what cards to use when, having no instant OGCD AoE healing in case shit goes down.

I honestly don't know who could defend the existence of both SCH or N.AST compared to the other. Indomitability is incredibly strong and with Eos out a SCH can easily heal equal to a WHM/D.AST depending on the fight lay-out (possible Cure3/CU/Asylum stacking, double/triple regen possibilities), which N.AST simply can't do because it has no answer to both Whispering Dawn and Indomitability. And that is disregarding the inexistence of E4E and Fey Covenant.

Originally Posted by giantslayer

I would like to remind everyone that they already gave faeries a ~35% nerf to all their healing potencies scaling from 50 to 60 and severely nerfed Selene, who used to give something like a 20% buff to the party's spell speed or skill speed (alternating every 30 seconds).

If you factor in the faerie nerfs, SCH got nowhere near the bump from 50 to 60 that WHM did. I'm not complaining because SCH is in no need of buffs. I just wanted to remind people talking about nerfs and how powerful the faeries are that they already nerfed faeries pretty hard.

Indomitability says hi. Also, 200potency/3s is still ridiculously strong for not needing to spend one out of 6/7 globals reapplying, at the cost of not being able to apply to other targets.

I know this might sound a little extreme but what if they just removed the Sects and have the Aspected spells be HoTs? Then just give them an oGCD group shield & heal? That would also give them one more open slot to do whatever with, like another oGCD heal or a way to spread DoTs or another ability unique to them.
The only issue I would see with removing the Sects is the loss of the +5% to Attack Speed or Healing Magic Potency.

Or, maybe switching the buffs you get from the Sects? I think being able to cast Shields before an attack quicker or having stronger HoTs would be better.

Yeah, the power of constant shielding that Noct AST will gain is pretty superior than SCH's. But SCH is a powerhouse of utility, they have a lot of stuff they can just use at the same time and don't get punished by it because other healing is doing most of the jobs. Noct AST doesn't have that powerhouse of brust and utility, so I think that making him having more powerfull constant stuff is a good decision and work around making Noct AST stand out into something. I'd say Noct AST by now its better than SCH to mitigate long moments of AoE spam like J Waves(A8S). But since SCH has their utility and a lot of powerfull OGCDs they're better overall on most other situations. I'm glad Noct AST has something to stand out now. How they'll be on next raid tier will depend more on fights design than anything else.

The real problem of all of this all aren't actually int the jobs themselves, but how healing should be done by design. We just need more complex healing mechanics instead of plain free damage spam.

Originally Posted by AzureFlare

CU nerf is odd but understandable and can be worked around.

for the what? 3 instances where players get knocked in the air? Neverreap, World of Darkness, um...

No big deal.

Originally Posted by Alistaire

for the what? 3 instances where players get knocked in the air? Neverreap, World of Darkness, um...

No big deal.

It isn't just that, it is also about bringing it in-line with how spells/abilities should behave that makes sense for the player. Given this is the first true 'channel' and it works in the form of a buff, CU has some really unpredictable behaviour like not having it count as an action, persisting through knock-ups (no longer the case later), persisting through some weird knockbacks, being able to turn off Cleric Stance while channeling it should you forget and still benefit from the full heal, and such. It is a pretty broken ability (broken, not overpowered/underpowered) in quite a few aspects and I can see it becoming a make-or-break point later in content and getting incredible backlash later if they don't bring it in line to how they want it to act now.

Imagine CU cheesing some raid mechanic completely and AST being the de-facto healer for that fight just for the cheese, and SE would nerf the ability later. That'll bring some crazy backlash. It was already semi-present in Seph Ex's knock-up and Ravana's Bloody Filler being the main offenders, but in Seph Ex you can just use it sooner or let a SCH's fairy do all the work while weaving abilities during the miniscule-damage phase aka 'if you aren't in cleric now you better be low on MP' and during Bloody Filler you didn't really need it unless your team was bad and had 3/4 swords up.