Thread: AST buffs in 3.4 Changes to Barries and Cards.

As a bonus to Nocturnal Sect exclusively? Allowing the cards to be used on enemies for debuffs would be fun, and would add another layer of complexity to the kit.

Bole would be a damage taken increase of 5% (don't even start with how OP it sounds, Scholar ATM brings more damage overall because of how much healing the Fairy takes care of for you).

Balance would be a damage dealt decrease of 5-10%.

Arrow would be a slow of 10%.

Spear would fully cancel the cast of an enemy (like Hot Tail/Wing) and render them "frozen" for however long they would have been casting. Sounds impractical, but so does the current Spear- at least you'd be able to see this Spear's effect.

I have no idea what Ewer/Spire could do though.

Well, Arrow would still be usable on allies. ;p

Balance would be a weaker disable, yes. Just as expanded Bole is a weaker Sacred Soil that doesn't have positioning requirements, and as Arrow is a spell/skill speed buff without actually buffing your spell/skill speed stats.

Spear certainly looks powerful. I think the "action stopping" effect fits the card's theme. You'd be caught off guard by someone's penetration (o.o) and frozen by the element of ice. But why would you hold a Spear over a Balance card when you could simply... do the mechanics correctly? Spear could offer more time to focus on your rotation instead of dancing around like we are so used to doing. This would benefit Black Mages a lot.

I think Scholar should keep the part of its identity where it has excellent (albeit inconsistent) shields.

My wishlist:

• Nocturnal Stance increases ALL potencies and mana costs by 5%.
• Allow shield stacking if of different type. However, a given attack will only consume the largest shield, ignoring all smaller, giving this feature no added protection against one-shots. The largest shield at the time of the attack will always be used. However, when one shield is affected, all others on the target are affected by an internal cooldown of one second. Newly applied shields refresh this cooldown, but the resulting absorb will again trigger it. This gives it no added protection against one-shots or near-one-shots. This internal cooldown will affect only shields of the same type (flat damage, or %HP). (At this time, %HP shield stacking is still not supported.)
  
  
• Nocturnal Celestial Opposition now adds roughly the same % effect as Diurnal Celestial Opposition, duplicating 25% of all your shields applied to each ally affected. Due to the above limitation, there is no added safety from a one-shot raid wipe, but there is added safety over multiple blows.
• The 10% damage reduction from Collective Unconscious can now be acquired as a 10-second buff without remaining in the zone of effect, and may be refreshed by reentry.
  
  
• Ewer and Spire combined; one of the two removed. OR, Spire now reduces mana and TP costs by a large percent, while Ewer simply generates MP and TP over time.
• Expanded Royal Road now has a variable efficiency reduction, scaling with the amount of players affected. 100% at 2 players, 67% at 3 players, 50% at 4+ players.
• *mumble mumble slight Bole buff*

Alternatively, a laughable pipedream:

• Allow Sect swapping in combat. Beginning as a cast of 2 GCD's length, off the global cooldown, the opposite Sect's cast is reduced over 90 seconds without use to an instant cast, still off the global cooldown. This rate is affected by cooldown-reducing abilities.
  
• Most cards have been redone, and now resemble strong abilities of their own instead of more standard buffs. They are usable in almost any combat situation, but they demand team coordination and positioning to maximize their effects. Assume balance, though I didn't bother with the technical details here.
• Bole - radiates healing and shielding to or from the target. Damage that would kill the target is instead spread to nearby allies, to a cap of 80% of the target's health, while healing all overhealing done to the target is split among nearby allies based on range and missing % HP. [Used in AoE, this balances out your crits dealt and taken, acting as one huge HP pool.
• Ewer - Based on %TP and %MP, a portion of the target's TP and MP generated will duplicate to nearby allies based on proximity and missing percent, or a portion of nearby allies' MP and TP generated will duplicate to the target.
• Balance - increases all the target's stats by 5%. [Can now be used on tanks to push out a save, or carries a similar damage weight to before through increased Critical, Speed, Determination, and primary output stat.]
• Arrow - Used on an ally, it increases Haste by 10% (increases Attack Speed and periodic damage done, non-snapshot). Can now also be enemy-targeted. Used on an enemy, it causes all strikes to instantly hit an additional time for 10% damage, and all debuffs to last 10% longer. Does not trigger any diminishing returns. [Now as good as Balance was, with added weight for proc-dependent jobs.]
• Spire - Used on an ally, it decreases all MP, TP, and CD costs by 20% for 20 seconds. Can now also be enemy-targeted. Used on an enemy, it generates MP, HP, and TP per strike dealt to the enemy. (Formula used takes into account relative potency.) [The new "go ham" card.]
• Spear - Causes all procs (including from crits) and bonuses to increase nearby allies proc chances and bonuses (combo and positional), split based on proximity and affinity. [The higher the base proc chance, the less the bonus. Still, can, say, feed it to a single MCH during ammo phase to spill over proc chance for a BRD's Bloodletters or a SMN's pet-based Spell Speed procs, or even to proc some RNG healer effects.] [If no affinitive allies, will gain these bonuses/procs for and from oneself.]

Originally Posted by Nekotee

Gurl please

At least we have some fun and challenge beside a mindless cure-spammer and an angry fairy enslaver !

If rng is your main concern about ast then you didn't even open your eyes on this royal class road
Whm shall fear for their Ass <3

...

Ok i admit that RNGesus is favorably blessing my Ass because i always had the card i want/need what i have to have it xP

As I play all three, then the whm 'ass fearing' is immaterial.
If I was concerned about the other healer classes being somehow threatened by the Ast, then I'd not be campaigning to make it better.

It's not royal road, spread, shuffle etc, it's the fact that they've introduced rng into the selection of a class's skills. This is a gimmick. Selection of skills should be down to the player, not a roll the dice rng, ooh look what I got mechanic.
That pot luck is bad enough in ftp games with lockboxes, and has no place in a structured mmo class.

To me they looked at the Ast and tried to go for either a Whm lite or Sch lite. This was a missed opportunity to introduce a truly different type of healer.
But that chance has gone unless there is a major re-imagining of the class, unlikely.

What can be done are revisions to the Nocturnal sect, which needs a good looking at.
The devs tried to combine both pre-emptive and re-active healing in this class with the two sects - and have ended up with a lop-sided bias.

They've also painted themselves into a corner in making this third healer a me too ranged class with little real differentiation. It's now a very fine balancing act to get players to use all three.
Playing this class purely out of boredom with the others doesn't give you that much of a change to be honest, particularly compared to the whm which you have referenced.

Hopefully the next healer class will have real differentiation - a battle cleric or similar. An in depth re-working of the Nocturnal sect could go this way, but I fear any changes will just be tinkering with the class.