Changelist for ast ^_^

[Nekotee]

The garanted crit will be sooooo useful !!!
Now high crit build on ast can be real fun. (boum 14k healing)

And rennies a Slut'qote like me cannot say no to licking ! *Wink*

[Rennies]

Mmm, crits. Tasty. Almost as tasty as Neko's lips.

[Seoulstar]

I wonder how many people will this make return or have an interest in AST..I'm glad I stuck with the job from the start. These buffs look soooo nice.

[Teraluna]

OOF!
That's a substantial list. The stars have definitely aligned for the Ast in this patch.

Always liked the card rng......(ok I still don't believe it's right. But it's not changed so it's a case of fought the battle as best as I could, lost, live with it).

Now, what about the effect of these buffs to the Astro on the other healers.......?
I've said before that SE have painted themselves into a corner by making this third healer similar to the others in terms of a ranged healing class.

Balancing all three would be the target, but has the Astro leapt ahead to the detriment of the others, (particularly the WHM)?

Will be interesting to see the choices people make.

[Fernosaur]

Now, what about the effect of these buffs to the Astro on the other healers.......?
I've said before that SE have painted themselves into a corner by making this third healer similar to the others in terms of a ranged healing class.

Balancing all three would be the target, but has the Astro leapt ahead to the detriment of the others, (particularly the WHM)?

AST + SCH is the new meta. Bye bye White Mage.

I don't really believe it's as simple as that, but I do think it's a little bit concerning how little utility WHM has now in comparison to AST+SCH. AST and SCH can now reduce the damage taken by the party by 25ish-30% with SS, CU and expanded Bole, not to mention the big boost to Bole's mitigation, and of course, to top it all off, the ridiculous buff to Balance.


I understand they made these changes to make NoctAST as desireable as SCH, but the nature of the DPS increase provided by AST (all of it being dependant on RNG) and its continouous inability to consistently DPS throughout a fight due to MP management problems are not solving anything. The bigger barriers are very nice (intimidatingly nice, if I say so myself as a Scholar player), but I'm afraid this isn't tipping the scales in favor of NoctAST, just in the detriment of WHM

I still don't think WHM will just disappear, cause it's a very, very convenient job for progression. But I can definitely see a lot main healers dropping WHM in favor of AST.

[Eisenhower]

I still don't think WHM will just disappear, cause it's a very, very convenient job for progression. But I can definitely see a lot main healers dropping WHM in favor of AST.

Aside from weapons, it's quite convenient that players can gear up all three healer roles at the same time with the use of savage or crafted gear. Tomestone gear depends a bit on the patch, I guess. Getting BiS is another matter, naturally. But with the changes listed, I get the feeling I can flex comfortably between WHM and AST during progression until I grab a weapon at least.

[Fernosaur]

Aside from weapons, it's quite convenient that players can gear up all three healer roles at the same time with the use of savage or crafted gear. Tomestone gear depends a bit on the patch, I guess. Getting BiS is another matter, naturally. But with the changes listed, I get the feeling I can flex comfortably between WHM and AST during progression until I grab a weapon at least.

I agree. This is also made more convenient by the lack of job-specific tome gear like it happened in 3.0.

Don't get me wrong, compared to PLD back then, WHM is in a much, MUCH better spot, since all the support AST now has is not needed like the extra damage from DRK was back then for Gordias progression. But I think WHM will slowly see less and less use as AST players become more reliable and efficient at playing the class.

[zuzu-bq]

I still don't think WHM will just disappear, cause it's a very, very convenient job for progression. But I can definitely see a lot main healers dropping WHM in favor of AST.

It won't, their playstyles are still very different even though people insist in comparing Diurnal with WHM.

As for changes:
Every AST should use Mind Potions now that you can extend them by 10s. Almost doubling their duration.
Also I did some math, Aspected Helios on Synastry will shield equivalent as Deployment Tactics. Can't use the Deployment Tactics argument anymore healer forums, I know thats your favorite.

[Ghishlain]

Also I did some math, Aspected Helios on Synastry will shield equivalent as Deployment Tactics. Can't use the Deployment Tactics argument anymore healer forums, I know thats your favorite.

It's still relevant as deployed Adlo in bleeding edge progression will allow low ilvl parties to survive that raid buster mechanic where as Aspected Helios won't do the trick. This is because Adlo synergizes excessively well with a WAR who's under Defiance and Convalescence. To put that into perspective:

Adlo base shield = 300p * Defiance (1.2) * Conv (1.2) = 432p
Aspected Helios = 150p * Noct Sect (1.1) * Shield Bonus (1.5) = 247p

Mantra ignored since it benefits both Adlo and Helios equally in this scenario. Additionally, Fey Illumination and Synastry are both ignored as well since they give the same bonus and chances are if you're an AST partnered with a SCH you aren't in Noct.

Adlo is still 74% stronger in this scenario.

You can make the argument that Disable can mitigate another 10% on top of Soil / CU that Supervirus can't if it's Darkness damage but I'll save judgement on that until one sees the type of raid that's released in 3.4.

What Noct gives now is consistent mitigation versus SCHs more raid buster stopping CDs (this is only from a mitigation standpoint though, don't really want to delve into what the rest of the SCH kit gives them).

The changes won't be a substitute to SCH for bleeding edge progression but it'll certainly be much more viable to run WHM/AST if so desired for the non-bleeding edge progression groups. [EDIT] I'm actually going to renag on this comment. Depending on how the fights are designed the consistency of Aspected Helios may overwrite the necessity of Deployed Adlo depending on the fight designs and just when/where the raid busters occur / how often then occur. But if there's a massive raid buster that can only be survived with a fully buffed Adlo going out, well, you know what that'll mean for Noct vs SCH in that scenario.

[zuzu-bq]

Adlo is still 74% stronger in this scenario.

For this scenario yes. And my scenario isn't that one, is it?
Also you can't compare Synastry with Fey Illumination, the two buffs work differently.

We might even see AST/AST combos in order to make fflogs explode, in scenarios where the Limit Break reduction doesn't matter.

Sadly enough, people already do that.