AST change

[HyoMinPark]

This is hard for me because I dont main AST. I play it occasionally but not enough to be an expert. But my thoughts on some of Yoshi-P's excuses as to why they didnt add another healer is because they are having a hard time finding another unique playstyle. I saw that their reason to add another tank is to have 2 MT and 2 OT. I think this could apply to healers as well by having 2 MH and 2 OH. The two MH would be Scholar and Whitemage. I think AST is a very good class and I enjoy it very much. Here is my idea to take AST out of SCH and WHM's shadow and make it its very own OH.

“Main healer” and “Off healer” died off in HW, and I’d rather not see it return.

I’m a far bigger fan of healers sharing the healing responsibilities, not one being a main healer while the other just does DPS all the time.

Diurnal Sect becomes an ability that lasts 30 seconds that empowers ALL of their heals not just Aspected. Gives them a Regen effect of 140 potency for 21s. If the target already has Regen on them, the Regen will stack but for half the duration but 250 potency(making it a more powerful Regen but much sorter).

So basically AST's are no longer in the WHM's shadow when they use that ability and in fact it enhances the WHM because if the target already has Regen it puts another stack of Regen but a more powerful one at half the time.

With that in mind the AOE one would have a Potency of 40 for 30 seconds but the stacked version would be 80 potency for 15 seconds.

This would allow AST's to strategically use their Diurnal Sect when partnered with a WHM for amazing effects or if they are with a SCH they could get the stacked effect but they would have to put both regens instead of just 1.

AST isn’t in WHM’s shadow. It’s the other way around—WHM is in AST’s shadow and has been since Creator; because AST can do everything a WHM can, and it provides utility (which WHM cannot). Empowering AST’s regens would serve to make WHM even more unwanted in optimized groups, and it would honestly serve little purpose, as their healing is already fairly strong currently in Diurnal Sect (healing in general is overpowered in this game).

WHM is generally considered the “raw, pure healer”, and the devs spout that its “burst healing” is its utility; but there’s not enough outgoing damage in even the hardest fights to warrant the amount of burst healing that they currently provide. If a fight does 1 million damage, you only need to heal 1 million damage; WHM may be able to heal 2 million or even 10 million damage, but it’s all wasted after that first million is satisfied.

Nocturnal Sect will also be an ability that lasts for 30 seconds like the change above. It will have a similar effect but with shields. The shield will stack with SCH or its own if still on the target. The only difference is while there are two stacks of shields on the target they take 20% less damage from all sources. This may seem powerful but remember this buff only lasts for 30 seconds and Nocturnal is all about mitigation where as Diurnal is all about speedy HoTs.

Between a SCH’s Deployed Adlo and an AST being able to mitigate 20% just about every other raidwide AOE, what would be the point in bringing WHM or any other healer? This suggestion breaks AST even further, and just makes it more meta than it currently is.

You’d have to give this a seriously long cooldown for it to not be completely broken—it’s already overpowered even if it did have a cooldown similar to Deployment Tactics, because now SCH/AST can plan to alternate shielding for several raidwide AOEs and reduce the need for more healing...which would defeat this idea of a “main healer”.

Maybe when you use Aspected benefic it casts the same card buff you last used, onto the newly healed player.

This would also further hurt WHM and/or a new 4th healer provided the 4th healer doesn’t have an answer to Balance. AST is so strong because of its cards, Balance in particular—it doesn’t really need them empowered further.

Maybe Aspected benefic causes the target to move faster but it has a damage aoe that slows and deals damage to all targets near the target you healed. Sort of like a Gravity spell.

In higher end content, the CC wouldn’t be particularly useful, as most bosses are immune to slows. Personally, I don’t see the need for increased run speed, but that’s me. I tend to stand still in fights and only move for mechanics/if I have to.

Maybe you can make Aspected Helios a targeted ground aoe heal so you can cast it on the ground and it does two or 3 heals. First heal being instant while creating a Halo effect on the ground and others who are outside of it can run inside to get the remaining second and 3rd heal while every time the heal goes off any enemy inside will also receive damage.

I’ll repeat what I said before: giving AST more healing serves no real purpose unless content is changed to balance it out—i.e., things need to hit harder a lot more frequently than they do now. Right now, there just simply isn’t enough damage to warrant massive amounts of healing that HoTs can’t cover. Even in the hardest fights.
I personally don’t count “White Hole”/Cleansing Strike/“Reduced to 1 HP” type mechanics as decent healing mechanics; but that could be because the devs went a little nuts with them this expansion, and they result in more overheal usually than they should.

That said, AST already has an ability like this: Earthly Star. And it is ridiculously strong—750 potency AOE heal under Giant Dominance every 60 seconds that blows anything WHM can do out of the water. And it can be pre-planned and timed to blow up immediately after a raidwide, removing the need to cast GCD heals.

No no no I completely understand. I wouldn't dream in a million years that they would use the numbers I put there. I was just putting something there as an example to showcase how the ability will work. To defend myself just a little bit though when I say Off heals I don't mean a healer that cant solo heal something. I mean off heals as a job that can do other stuff besides just healing such as debuffs(gravity), buffs(cards), enhance(sect abilities). I get where you're coming from though and I hope maybe my further explanation helped change your mind a little bit.

AST and SCH both already do both of these things: AST provides card buffs (and ways to manipulate said cards, either by spreading them to an entire party, increasing their potency, or by extending their duration) and SCH provides Chain Stratagem/Fey Wind. Both of them have extremely powerful heals: Indom is ridiculously strong and SCH’s are adored for their Deployed Crit Adlos; and AST has both Earthly Star and Collective Unconscious, the latter of which is the strongest regen in the game.

The only one that doesn’t have a type of utility is WHM, and that’s why it suffers. It only has raw healing, but the amount of raw healing it brings simply isn’t needed (except perhaps outside of prog—WHM is used a lot in Ultimate prog because of its healing and AST has MP problems...however, progging an Ultimate on AST isn’t impossible and very much doable; WHM is simply “safer”).