[Request] AST MP cost reductions please

[MoroMurasaki]

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.

It sounds kind of like you just don't want to have to think about MP when you're healing. You use your cooldowns and oGCD abilities on any healer (WHM included) to manage your MP while keeping the party up. It's not like WHM's have a stronger mp regen tick or anything, it's all just a combination of oGCDs and CDs.

If someone sat on CDs on WHM the way you advocate for sitting on them for AST I bet they would see some MP issues as well... because they wouldn't be managing their MP.

At the end of the day if you want to feel like you have near-infinite MP play WHM. If you want the utility of cards play AST. You don't get both.

I love a couple AST mains on this forum but some of y'all are just greedy.

[Snow_Princess]

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 anemergency 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.

It depends .. if you are talking about a 2 healer setup and need to mana shift an ast, who is using CDs and such, it means they are HARD CARRYING and you should be doing that regardless. (or people are dying repeatedly) I also did run a DF once where a whm never used assize, so yeah it is CD management. I been in many situations where I am the only one raising people, sometimes the one doing most of the healing + raises while the other healer is being a DPS bot mostly.

[Cenerae]

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.

Everything that restores mana for a healer has a cooldown.

Assize and Thin Air for WHM have cooldowns.
Aetherflow has a cooldown, and by extension, so does energy drain
Lightspeed has a cooldown, as does Ewer since it's locked behind draw/sleeve draw.

Now, I don't raid savage (but you already had a reply from a savage raiding AST), but the only times I feel pinched for mana is when I'm going Gravity trigger happy, or if my group is derping and I have to resurrect several people over the course of a fight. Lucid Dreaming plus Celestial Opposition gives you such a huge amount of mp back that I've never had problems, and that's completely ignoring the existence of Ewer.

And this is coming from the point of view of someone who can and will constantly cast Aspected Helios in Nocturnal sect in 8 man content just to ensure we have a bubble shield for every big aoe, even though we don't really need them. You can't judge a job's mana management by how often you're mana shifting them as a DPS, because all that shows is which healer is actually casting spells and which one is sitting there twiddling their thumbs (for example: any healer that queues into o2 normal and is not of the 'I should DPS' persuasion)

Don't think of your cooldowns as tools of last resort. They're tools to be used, same as every other cooldown in the game. If you're not making full use of your tools, then you're not making full use of the class. I would generally consider AST to not have the same sort of mana tools as WHM (who have absurdly cheap regens, and Thin Air to save absolutely massive amounts of mana), but it's hardly suffering. Feel bad instead for the SCH, because while they have free fairy healing, they only have Aetherflow to recover mana with outside of the shared tool of Lucid Dreaming, unless they want to burn charges on Energy Drain (which means less uses of their most important spells).

[Kurando]

In most duties if you are good with your MP management then Lucid Dreaming is more than enough. Yes occasionally you may feel having a Ewer is necessary, but if you are either over DPSing that you run low on MP or are healing ineffectively (i.e. lots of AOEs, or constant Benefic II etc) then that's a learning issue to be fair. The fact that more MP can be restored by other allies (more accessible Refresh and Mana Shift) is just a bonus, nothing much in terms of AST MP has changed much after Stormblood and the management is still there regardless.

[KDSilver]

I think everyone alreary told you what's wrong.
If you have problem with your mana management, it doesn't come from mp cost but what your doing and how you use your spells.
If you're overhealing, casting a lot of unecessary heals, don't use lightspeed, largess and couple celestial opposition with lucid dreaming, then that's explain a lot of things.

You should try to watch and read some guide.
But Astrologian right now really has no issue with mana.
And even if you have to raise, you still have ewer.

"Lightspeed is an emergency button" => it's not.
Nothing is an emergcy button on healers. If you see your spells like this, you'll have trouble healing.
Healing is like tanking or dpsing. Nothing is being left "just i case", but you have to burn it, couple some and make like a "rotation" of cooldown.
Lightspeed is one of those astrologian skill you use for mana management as well, when you have to make a lot of aoe heals.

[Yeol]

[Request] AST MP cost reductions please

AST actually has lower MP cost on healing spells than WHM and SCH. If they make AST MP recovery any better or reduce MP cost, the job will be broken.

The other two jobs have alternative ways to recover MP because they spend alot to begin with.

Any healer will run into MP issues if party members are taking unnecessary damage and dying a lot. Let's not forget overhealing as well.

[Ghishlain]

AST already gains a passive MP cost reduction on their Benefic (20%), Benefic II (10%), and Helios (10%). The healing spells that are more expensive are Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios - neither of which you should be spamming. Also AST has the strongest oGCD AoE heal in the game on a 60s CD in the form of Earthly Star and Essential Dignity is on a 45s cooldown and is basically as powerful as Tetragrammaton which is a 60s CD.

While the AST kit does indeed have the lowest MP regeneration kit of the three healers at this time, they also have quite a few tools at their disposal to use less MP too. Just play smarter and make sure you aren't overheal often as that just proves to be a huge waste of MP.

[edit]

To elaborate on what I meant before in regards to Assize - the more aggressive you are with your heals as WHM, the more lilies you have, the lower the cooldown on this baby gets, the more MP refreshes you get over the same time-frame. And that's alongside Lucid Dreaming.

Three Lilies grants a 20% CDR on Assize, thus increasing the amount of MP restored per minute by about 25% (Assize with CD of 48s means you get 1.25 Assize every minute). For me at 18,726MP this means I get an additional 468MP / minute if I burn 3 GCDs spending Cures to generate three Lilies (which has the potential to overheal) and costs me 1,800MP. I also lose three GCDs worth of DPS (750+ potency) to do this. To me that's not worth the trade off to get Assize off CD faster.

[BillyKaplan]

The healing spells that are more expensive are Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios - neither of which you should be spamming.

Belatedly, these are exactly the two spells this thread was about, not the kit as a whole. And spamming is relative to a situation. I get this much more on Nocturnal AST, admittedly, as shields need more maintenance than regens.

[Ghishlain]

Belatedly, these are exactly the two spells this thread was about, not the kit as a whole. And spamming is relative to a situation. I get this much more on Nocturnal AST, admittedly, as shields need more maintenance than regens.

You shouldn't be reapplying shields once they fall off and focused more on your more MP efficient healing spells. Benefic II is approximately 24% more efficient in a potency/MP cost and the only reason you should be applying Aspected Benefic shields over Benefic II is to either ensure a tank buster doesn't wipe your tank off the planet or if you don't think your Benefic II will finish casting before a raid buster goes out. One could make the argument that the instant nature of Aspected Benefic allows for less GCD clipping for abilities but I feel that's a different topic of discussion too.

[KaivaC]

snip

I tend to main as a Noct AST and I echo many of the sentiments that other users have said. MP management is only a problem if you're spamming Gravity, constantly throwing out AOE heals when it's not necessary, and waiting until you're dangerously low on MP before using LD. I've never thought about using Celestial Oppression to extend buffs...and I have not had MP issues. Even when I die, I can easily throw up my LD, or I wait it out and do what i can until it's available. The problem I'm seeing is that perhaps you don't plan it out. AST is not so much RNG as it is that you have to think ahead.