balance through Balance

[Yhisa]

u all confusing potency with ast....

DIURNAL SECT (regen stance)
200 potency on aspect benefic

NOCTURNAL SECT (shield stance)
140 potency on aspect benefic

[Ilenya]

u all confusing potency with ast....

DIURNAL SECT (regen stance)
200 potency on aspect benefic

NOCTURNAL SECT (shield stance)
140 potency on aspect benefic

Do all of us a favor. Take a picture of the tool tip and post it, please. Actually, if anyone could, that would be great.

[NamoNanamo]

Do all of us a favor. Take a picture of the tool tip and post it, please. Actually, if anyone could, that would be great.

[IMG][/IMG]
.

[MsTanya]

The 140 potency is for the regen effect in diurnal. The base heal is 200 potency in both sects. Please learn your tooltips and thank you Namo for screencapping it.

[Ghishlain]

@Yhisa - While I can appreciate your passion for the job as you have shown in the past back in the 3.0 days, you should really brush up on what has changed and try not to spread incorrect information. (ie. Aspected Benefic only healing for 140 potency, Nocturnal only giving 10% healing bonus)

[edit] oops, beaten, heh.

[Furious]

WRONG

aspect benefit is 140 potency in noct sect... which is 154 potency with the 10% buff from nect sect

also i said i was wrong about the mp or did u not read the following comment? cant edit on mobile

WRONG

Who's surprised at this point though?

[Ghishlain]

WRONG

Who's surprised at this point though?

To be fair to Yhisa, you're not totally accurate either in your post.

Nocturnal Aspected Benefic is a 230 potency cure that shields for 575 potency once you allow for the Sect bonus and costs 1,440 MP according to the above tooltip (not 960)

What's actually really discouraging about the single target shield power is if you even take into account critadlo, the shield is only 840 potency (300 potency X 1.4 crit multiplier x 2 for Adlo bonus). When Aspected Benefic Crits it's 805 potency (230 potency X 1.4 crit multiplier x 2.5 for Aspected Benefic modifier) so critadlo shield is only ~4.3% potency stronger when you compare critical heals.

...and let's not even get into Succor vs Aspected Helios.

[WayofTime]

Stepping back from the numbers for heals...

I think that changing The Balance so that it is 10% or 15% instead of 20% would be a good idea. Should it be removed? No. Is it the central identity of the class? Also no, it's the cards that are the central identity. If you remove The Balance, you need to replace it with another effect. Honestly, I am not sure where people are coming from when they say that The Balance should be removed.

If we have a 10% Balance, then we can safely use The Arrow as a useful card (compared to fishing for Balances). At this potency, they'd have roughly the same effect. I'd argue that, barring TP and MP issues, Arrow would be better situationally because it means you can both buff healing at the same time as well as fit more GCDs into the same attack window. Heck, I'd argue that the values for The Arrow and The Balance could be swapped. Mainly because The Arrow with a high attack speed potency would cause TP/MP issues unless your party comp has good self-sustain.

So yeah, 10%-15% Balance would be something I would be willing to have as an Astrologian main.

Edit: If they wanted to make an interesting effect, they could make a card that would instead increase the healing potency of all healing magic cast by the target, or maybe cast on the target. Would be a nice pairing if we wanted, say, an AST/(WHM or SCH) party, where the AST could directly increase the healing potency of the mage with stronger healing spells. That said, it would also be highly situational, but I feel I'd prefer that over The Spear.

[MoroMurasaki]

Stepping back from the numbers for heals...

If we have a 10% Balance, then we can safely use The Arrow as a useful card (compared to fishing for Balances). At this potency, they'd have roughly the same effect. I'd argue that, barring TP and MP issues, Arrow would be better situationally because it means you can both buff healing at the same time as well as fit more GCDs into the same attack window. Heck, I'd argue that the values for The Arrow and The Balance could be swapped. Mainly because The Arrow with a high attack speed potency would cause TP/MP issues unless your party comp has good self-sustain

Thank you for getting back on topic!

I love all these ideas. Personally I don't think 15% from 20% is enough, it really needs to be reduced to 10% at most. Basically the damage gained by Balance would need to be something that a strong player of another healing class could conceivably output on top of that AST's personal DPS.

The end result of this conversation is basically summed up in a few points.

All healers must be able to heal all content with all party compositions assuming sufficent player skill.

AST is just as (if not more in terms of their comparison to SCH) capable of healing anything in the game right now.

AST brings the most DPS to the table with Balance, more at this point than either other healer could generate even with max DPS uptime.

AST can perform the same essential function that WHM/SCH do but then has this buff ON TOP OF THAT.

There is no change necessary to the rest of AST's kit at this point. If they're having trouble healing without the quicker clears brought on by Balance then tune their kits up but I don't think that should be necessary aside from perhaps some care around their MP management. Either way the changes need to start at Balance.

Edit: I want to play AST. I am leveling it right now. The thing that keeps me from fully enjoying myself is the idea that I am just keeping everyone up while fishing for Balance. I want to use the whole kit and I don't want to feel like a poor player just because RNG didn't give me my one viable card.

[MintnHoney]

one viable card.

I assume avoiding this feeling is the reason why they removed the AST cards from player view.
Honestly, I've never felt this pressure. I've only received one complaint, and it was from a DPS who was unhappy that I hadn't used a card on him specifically (it was a series of ewers, spears, and a single bole that run).
I believe that, if you're just fishing for the Balance, you're wasting your party's potential, and you're failing to perform a function that an Astrologian can perform really well: helping jobs feel special. Especially as of this expansion, each job has a card or two that's really useful to them. For Samurai, it's the Balance. For Bards, the Arrow (shocking, right?). For Summoners, the Spear (surprise, Bahamut likes these).
I would say, just try to emphasize each job's individuality, and avoid thinking only about "efficiency," because, in the end, DPS is not supposed to need you to succeed anyway.