[Request] AST MP cost reductions please

[Sylvina]

It's my understanding that shield applying heals are best cast right before raidwide damage, and then you cast the non shielding aoe heal after if you need to.

[Pomelo]

Ewer and Lucid Dreaming.
Lightspeed is SUCH a good reduction. Like if you need to cast a few AOE heals (which are your big MP costs) you may as well use Lightspeed, you can click it off if you like afterwards or extend it with Celestial, like everything else in the AST kit.

[Serilda]

Why is LD seen as burning a cooldown? It's not an emergency button. Use it. CO is better used than saved too; if you line up some good cards (easier than ever at the moment) and LD you can do wonders with MP restore while also helping the party.

[Ametrine]

You missed the part where SCH's basic, GCD healing recieved a nasty nerf in a massive MP cost increase at 4.0, and Aetherflow's MP recovery was severely cut down from 30% to 10%, so this "buff" is actually bringing SCH back up to the level of AST and WHM. Basically, 4.0 way over nerfed SCH, and it's getting little buffs to find the sweet spot.

ALSO, Astrolgian sects give ALL healing spells better potencies without increasing MP costs, so AST heals are comparatively cheaper, and you have the short, potend oGCD Essential Dignity and can store a Lady of Crowns. ALSO ALSO, you have Lightspeed as a clutch heal situational skill that slashes MP costs on top of Lucid Dreaming and Ewer.

Yeah, man, AST isn't hurting and won't be set aside by tye meta after 4.1.

[Opus]

Thin Air is OP.

[MoroMurasaki]

Lightspeed is amazing and using it for stacking AoE heals or a raise can save you lots of MP.

Also remember Collective Unconscious has a HoT which you can access even in Noct stance, not to mention the sweet shield-bubble that it is.

AST (more than WHM for sure and perhaps more than SCH in some ways) requires a bit more thought about your MP management. Less of the MP reduction/return is frontloaded into parts of your kit you would be using anyways (Assize, Aetherflow) and in my opinion it's more reliant on the AST making the most of their kit so they don't need to Ewer themselves.

That being said on WHM I got an Enhanced Ewer in Susano EX from my cohealer the other night which pretty much saved us from a wipe. Sometimes it's a good idea. Don't be scared to use it.

[Ametrine]

It's my understanding that shield applying heals are best cast right before raidwide damage, and then you cast the non shielding aoe heal after if you need to.

This is exactly correct.

[Miste]

I don't think AST needs help or buffs in the MP department.

I mean I raid savage on AST and I don't have MP issues unless there were simply too many deaths or mistakes in which case any healer would likely run out. I mean Ewer sometimes does pop up when you need it and like other posters said LD + CO is a good combo.

So I don't know, in my experience AST is fine when it comes to MP. Not as good as WHM of course, but still totally fine for all content.

[BillyKaplan]

Most of what people have said so far still rings like it needs to burn too many cooldowns just to maintain my mp. Lightspeed is an emergency button in my book and the mp cost cut on it ties in with what it should be used for, but it feels wrong to use it just for the sake of MP management. Burning Essential Dignity to get the cooldown on it down feels wasteful as well.
And nothing brought up in this thread negates the main point that AST's mp management is still locked heavily behind RNG, and many points brought up here are basically 'well if you get lucky it will all work out well'.

At the end of the day, the reality of the matter is that when I run BLM, it's the ASTs I have to Mana Shift before any other healer (used to be SCHs, but they changed them since), and that's in dungeons, raids, or the extremes I go into.

[Vaer]

Most of what people have said so far still rings like it needs to burn too many cooldowns just to maintain my mp. Lightspeed is an emergency button in my book and the mp cost cut on it ties in with what it should be used for, but it feels wrong to use it just for the sake of MP management. Burning Essential Dignity to get the cooldown on it down feels wasteful as well.
And nothing brought up in this thread negates the main point that AST's mp management is still locked heavily behind RNG, and many points brought up here are basically 'well if you get lucky it will all work out well'.

Thing is if you get the full benefit from it when you use it, it's not really wasting it. Wasting it is holding onto it thinking you'll need it later then never use it. (I see a lot of players do that) If you hold LD for 2 full minutes you could have used it twice and got twice the amount of MP from that one skill.

LDream is only 2 minutes and it gives a lot of MP. Not to mention with proper use of Earthly Star (insane amount of healing that costs 0 MP, only 1 min cooldown, instead of spamming helios you can just use this for stack markers and save a lot of MP and Dignity which also costs no MP which has a low cooldown can be used to manage MP. If you end up flipping the arcana (because you don't need either card you draw) into the healing card that is another MP free heal.

Usually when I see healers run out of MP it's usually:
A) People dying like crazy (this isn't the specific job's fault, people just need to stop dying)
B) Overhealing (healers that keep regens/spamming shields when there is going to be no damage at all, wasting MP)
C) Not using Lucid Dreaming until they are completely out of MP (Bad idea, unless you are churning through MP so fast that you unintentionally dump everything in 2 minutes after using LD in which case you might want to check what you're doing)
D) Aggressive DPS (Using too many Holy/Gravity/Miasma II and bottoming out but usually they'll just pop LD and get all their MP back by the next pull so no problem there)
E) Tank is undergeared af/no cooldown and pulls to the wall causing perma Cure II/Benefic II and Adlo spam.