Quote Originally Posted by Reinha View Post
Using an oGCD (Lightspeed) to make every AoE heal to land 2.5 seconds earlier is a boost though. It increases healing rate in the moment it matters, even if the AST has to pay for it later by not landing any GCD heals for 5 seconds. If a WHM or a SCH uses swiftcast they only gain that burst for one heal, then they have to wait for the global cooldown + cast time of the next heal. AST can keep throwing instant heals until danger is over, essentially gaining one extra heal on top of the usual rate of heals. At the same time they are saving some MP. While Lightspeed may look like a Swiftcast, it's effect lasts longer and that's where the cooldown's strength lies.

Here's a demonstration of what I mean (and my amazing Paint skills ) using some example spells:



The red part is where SCH could use Succor over and over but I think most agree that Succor spam is not very efficient. The yellow part is on the left side for clarity but healers would likely start pre-casting the first heals so they land right after damage has been taken. For SCH Deployment would be used before the hit and the rest right after. For AST you could replace the A. Helios with CU if it's up, and then cast A. Helios in place of the first Helios.

EDIT: Changed pic a bit because I play SCH so rarely I forgot a few spells
I appreciate the depth you have gone in your response.

However, it still is not the same type of boost you get from swiftcast>medica/emergency succor + assize/indom, for the sole reason AST has nothing like assize/indom, so its physically impossible for AST to get that same burst aoe healing in one GCD that WHM and SCH can do. Lightspeed is an amazing cooldown, but its not the equivalent of assize/indom for an AST, soley because on how it interacts with the GCD.

You are correct in saying that AST can use lightspeed for a different style "burst" healing (i would be more inclined to call it spam healing rather than burst, as it doesnt compress the healing output over a shorter time like using an oGCD heal would do alongside a GCD one - and before anyone tries to argue against this, you usually get 4-5 abilities out under lightspeed, but then have to deal with triggered GCD>cast time> spell going off at the end, it frontloads the healing under lightspeed, but then once lightspeed ends, you are left with a period nearly equal to 2GCD's until your next spell goes off), but it still has a healing output during this time that is entirely GCD dependent, and becuase of its GCD dependency, the average healing done by the AST over this period doesnt change with or without lightspeed. On a technical level it changes when the heals land, which is perhaps more important to be talking about. But if we were to compare say 6GCDs of AST healing using Helios to 6GCDs of WHM using medica and then one use of assize during this, then the WHM has a higher healing throughput. Thats the kind if healing boost i am talking about .