AST melds

[randysquirrel]

If you're going to raid, acc followed by either crit or pie, depending on your role as mh/oh and your personal heal style

if you're not going to raid, meld whatever you like

[BiggiePoppler]

Just getting into melding and I'm curious about ACC. It seems to be an all or nothing stat am I wrong? Put lots and try to cap it or nothing at all and use something else?

The other thought I had is, the negative from missing a few Malefic II and the cost to resources (time and mp) vs not having stronger Critical Heals when they go off. To me the worse of the two is missing spells, its not like we still couldn't heal without focusing on Crit, or does stacking crit really really improve healing potency overall?

[Rennies]

Crit has the best effect on healing out of all secondaries.

[Katlyna]

Hum you're playing diurnal right ?

As a Noct Ast main since a few months im going for:

Crit > Piety > Det= SS, melding Acc and thinking to put +120 acc on my 240 relic

I play both Diurnal and Noct. After breaking into the patch more I've kind of flipped around some and prioritized SS = Piety > Crit > Det. Because lots of Piety allows for notable corrections. I know that statistically in a non stop damage world Critcal bonus is statistically the most powerful. The problem is Crits benefits are all too often lost to overheals, because damage is predictable and critcals heals aren't required to clear content. If critical heals aren't required to clear content then in my eyes you want the stats which provide the highest ability to error correct. And those two stats are SS and Piety.

This patch Piety is showing to be highly valuable for two reasons. One many players are new to Astro and not playing them super efficiently, so extra piety = golden to help preventing running out of mana. Second the content most folks are playing (early raiding to no raiding) allows for quite a few party deaths while still clearing, where again Piety excels at correcting. Piety is also fantastic for helping extend yourself as far as you can into savage runs while learning the content (again by correcting multiple deaths). So for all these reasons I'm finding myself promoting Piety fairly significantly (and most of the other astrologers are concurring in our large FC).

Spell speed vs Critical stacking as I've always said is personal taste. I've done the raw math and if you look at stacked Spell speed vs Critical bonus; you are comparing extra time for movement, faster heals, and throughput vs extra raw throughput. The question for a person personally do you want the highest raw throughput or utility + throughput.

Also I looked at that reddit thread and for Astros it is not accurate (for either stance). Stacking more spellspeed continues to provide incremental gains in healing throughput and damage. The thing that people often miss with spells speed is if you calculate the number of times you cast over your average 8 minute fight, and then subtract out the gains of stacking spell speed. If you do the math correctly you'll find you have somewhere around 8-10 seconds more time than someone without any extra Spellspeed. This translates to 4-5 extra heals, damage casts, or movement.

Again critical bonus will net more raw healing (unless its lost to overheals). Likewise critical bonus is fantastic if you are mostly doing raw damage. Players who only run dungeons may find this absolutely ideal. Likewise some raiders who are doing minimal healing will likely find critical bonus most powerful during the front end of savage raiding.

But those are my thoughts after getting into the patch more. At the end of the day the question you have to ask yourself is do you need more healing, utility or error correction in your current content. If you prioritize your stats by those thoughts, then you'll find yourself happy with how you stack up your materia

[Katlyna]

One last thing to note. If you are not running out of mana... then Piety should drop to the bottom of your list! Quite a few people noted they are good on mana and if you are great! Put your preference of SS or Critical bonus ahead of Piety <3

[Nihility]

for AST at the moment i'm finding your either going to want to go full on accuracy to contribute personal dps as much as possible
or for healing i'm finding

Piety increases both your max mp and your mp regen so you can safely overheal much longer. While it's not the most efficient tactic it is a very effective one
or
spell speed right now can get a noticeable effect if stacked up, both stances benefit from it pretty equally, it can help get more benefic II procs ready to roll. It's just a pretty solid all around stat for AST

[Taika]

spell speed right now can get a noticeable effect if stacked up, both stances benefit from it pretty equally, it can help get more benefic II procs ready to roll. It's just a pretty solid all around stat for AST

No it's not. Both SpS and Det are pretty useless right now compared to Crit for all healer jobs. There is no "choice" between Crit and SpS or Crit and Det. Crit is objectively the best.

Please see the actual testing and its results from this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...mulas_and_more

[Rawrz]

http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/WNQS

This is the bis I made for our WHM. The only thing that changes between it and my SCH bis is Relic. She went 60 acc, 60 ss, 120 piety while i went 120 acc and120 crit therefore she has to meld every slot but one with acc, leaving one for piety. Food also separates the build. I feel it would apply to AST as well. (SCH build: http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/WNQQ I wanted a min of 680 piety to hit around 13k mp so I chose the scripture top over Alex.)

[Watachy]

Interesting reply

You definitely got a point, and it's my personal choice to go for crit and then go for piet/SS, my reasons to go this way:
- Im raiding with a really good WHM which got almost 1000SS so she's basically reacting more than i do, im just a "replacement" to a sch and basically shielding before a raid AOE damage
- Im supposed to be "the offhealer" of our party, so i just go for crit to provide potentially more shields and more DPS
- Since the stats on the healers gears got a lot of SS/crit this patch, obviously im going to get more SS than last patch. I was around 600SS and sometimes i was lacking just a bit to provide the party from a wipe ^^

Im completely agree with your point of view on SS, it's actually a really good thing to put on your AST, but it's the way you wanna use your AST that gonna need some adjustements on your stats.
Crit has always been and we always be a good thing on the Noc Stance since you're gonna improve your shields and that's the first thing i want to do with my AST ^^

Edit: About PIET, in progress you gonna need a lot of PIET and i don't know if you do but DPSing as an AST is really ManaEating at some points, so going for PIET is also a good thing too.

In this Patch im going for: Crit > SS = PIET > Det ^^

[Katlyna]

You definitely got a point, and it's my personal choice to go for crit and then go for piet/SS

Sounds like you know exactly what you're after and why. And that is usually when you're making the best decision IMO. I really enjoy discussions like this as they show how different people think and conquer challenges. And they also show that while playing an interesting class like the Astrologer. There are a number of different correct ways to play depending on your roll and content. Its probably one of my favorite things about the Astro. seeing other people play the class a bit differently than I do, while still doing just fine. I wish some of the other classes had more reactive "choices" to handle content like Astros do right now. It would make the game more fun <3