SCH and AST

[Saefinn]

After my disappointment with SCH, I decided to look into what other healers got (or lost) and AST ended up attracting me. Looking at some of the complaints: the card system, I didn't play a lot of AST so the changes don't affect me but I very much understand why AST's are complaining, they liked the way it worked and why change it? It's too busy and it doesn't heal so well.
If anybody has seen my SCH complaints they mostly boil down to being bored and healing too well. I missed having to think harder for my heals back in 2.0. So you can imagine seeing complaints like this attracted me to trying AST.

From an outsider perspective, I think the card system is enjoyable. The buffs it gives are stronger than the DNC equivalent at a base level(I am maining DNC at the moment) but may not be as powerful as they were before (with Royal Road removed). 2 min cooldown on Divination seems long, but I kinda get the feeling that was balanced around DNC's Technical Step too, which is a 5% every 2 mins (but gets a DPS move on top). Not gonna lie, it seems like it's an AST version of the DNC buff. Flat damage boosts and a system that's about matching symbols that affects potency. And it works nicely for DNC at least.

But the way I've been rotating it is building unique seals for Divination and then whilst Divination is on cooldown, take advantage of Lord/Lady of Crowns. I felt I wasted fewer cards with this system. Though that could be because I was a less experienced AST, I don't know how much wastage experienced AST's got. Healing was harder than it was for SCH, but I was also a lot busier and I still weaved in buffs and DPS skills and I liked that. A friend did big pulls in a dungeon and whilst I did fear for her life a couple of times, I figured how I might balance AST to keep her alive and still DPS & play cards, as I was determined to do stuff between heals. I DPS'd less mind you, but I also gave DPS boosts to the party SCH and WHM lack. I don't know how that'll differ once I am better at the job.

But coming from a SCH main, it honestly feels like I'm going to prefer how AST plays, without trying to downplay any of the complaints careers AST's have, because they are perfectly valid. What you liked about your job what completely changed and feels underwhelming in comparison to how it was before for you.

At least, these are some of my impressions coming at AST from somebody who didn't main it or play much of it. However, I kinda feel that instead of reworking AST's card system, that effort could have been given to SCH and/or WHM to give them something more to do in their downtime that's not DPS. Thus addressing people's concerns rather than making more of them.

[HyoMinPark]

The buffs it gives are stronger than the DNC equivalent at a base level(I am maining DNC at the moment) but may not be as powerful as they were before (with Royal Road removed).

AST buffs now are a shadow of what they used to be. AOE Balance was +5% to the entire party for 30 seconds (and could be extended to 40s with the old Celestial Opposition, plus an additional 15s on a single player with Time Dilation). Now we have +6% to a single person for 15 seconds with no way to extend them, spread them, or enhance them. And the Draw timer is still cooldown the same outside of a Sleeve Draw window. So their buffs are pathetic compared to what they used to be. The original problem was with Balance being too good—but now every card is a crappier Balance, and all equally lackluster.

2 min cooldown on Divination seems long, but I kinda get the feeling that was balanced around DNC's Technical Step too, which is a 5% every 2 mins (but gets a DPS move on top). Not gonna lie, it seems like it's an AST version of the DNC buff. Flat damage boosts and a system that's about matching symbols that affects potency. And it works nicely for DNC at least.

This is incorrect. Divination is 180s, which is 3 minutes. It lines up with DRG’s Battle Litany and BRD’s Battle Voice. It will not line up with every Technical Step outside of the opener, and at the 6 minute mark in a fight where all raid buffs line up again.

But the way I've been rotating it is building unique seals for Divination and then whilst Divination is on cooldown, take advantage of Lord/Lady of Crowns. I felt I wasted fewer cards with this system. Though that could be because I was a less experienced AST, I don't know how much wastage experienced AST's got.

With the old AST, once you got Minor Arcana at level 66, you didn’t waste any cards. If you weren’t going to hold them in a Spread or Royal Road them for an Extended/Enhanced/Expanded effect, you used them on Minor Arcana. Original Lady of Crowns was a free, oGCD heal (perfect for quick top-offs during Malefic spam), and Original Lord of Crowns was an oGCD damage ability. With Minor Arcana, there was no wasting of the cards. They just didn’t buff party members.

[Saefinn]

AST buffs now are a shadow of what they used to be. AOE Balance was +5% to the entire party for 30 seconds (and could be extended to 40s with the old Celestial Opposition, plus an additional 15s on a single player with Time Dilation). Now we have +6% to a single person for 15 seconds with no way to extend them, spread them, or enhance them. And the Draw timer is still cooldown the same outside of a Sleeve Draw window. So their buffs are pathetic compared to what they used to be. The original problem was with Balance being too good—but now every card is a crappier Balance, and all equally lackluster.

I can see this being a fair argument for why it is worse in terms of its effects versus Stormblood. And the fair argument for them to get buffed. My main impressions were more in how the job played because I will admit my ignorance in how potencies affect the role because it is a job I previously didn't play an awful lot of.


If I am to compare to how my main healer, SCH, feels to play the following changes, I think AST 'feels' better at the moment. As soon as I jumped into roulettes with my SCH I got bored. AST I didn't, because I had more to do. But I realize there are still staggering problems that need to be addressed, though arguably it is the case of all healers.

This is incorrect. Divination is 180s, which is 3 minutes. It lines up with DRG’s Battle Litany and BRD’s Battle Voice. It will not line up with every Technical Step outside of the opener, and at the 6 minute mark in a fight where all raid buffs line up again.

My bad, 3 minutes. Then yes, I can definitely see how this is worse.

With the old AST, once you got Minor Arcana at level 66, you didn’t waste any cards. If you weren’t going to hold them in a Spread or Royal Road them for an Extended/Enhanced/Expanded effect, you used them on Minor Arcana. Original Lady of Crowns was a free, oGCD heal (perfect for quick top-offs during Malefic spam), and Original Lord of Crowns was an oGCD damage ability. With Minor Arcana, there was no wasting of the cards. They just didn’t buff party members.

Ah, my AST was 65 in SB, so I just missed Minor Arcana and before that, mainly tried it out in HW. I've now got it 71 in ShB on my alt.

[Tinytiger]

I've been leveling AST and SCH side by side. Every time I unlock a new dungeon I do it on one job, and then the other. And I have to say; healing on SCH is way easier than AST. As SCH it's easy to pull from boss to boss, or as far as the dungeon will let you. Just toss down a soil, excog, fey illumination, whispering dawn, let your fairy offheal, and you can even toss in AoE dmg without loosing your tank. As AST you need all your cds and Bene2 spam at half the pull size, with no chance for any gravity in between. I understand that they want us to heal more this expac, I just wish they would give AST some more spells to actually heal with. SCH has so many cooldowns to rotate through... Fey Illumination, Dissipation, Recitation. AST has Lightspeed...
I don't want this to come off as a rant that SCH is too powerful, I just want AST to be brought up to par. I really don't understand the design decision behind some of these spells. For example why is Collective Unconscious a 90sec cd when it does half as much healing as Soil (which is a 30 sec cd and doesn't need to be held). Why is Celestial Opposition a 2 minute CD when it's healing over time is even less than Whispering Dawn (which has a 1 min CD). Why is Divination a 3 min CD when Chain Stratagem is a 2 min CD...

I really hope they give AST some more spells. It feels like we lost a lot and didn't gain much to compensate.

[Physic]

I hadn’t been able to put it into words but that’s exactly what playing ast feels like now:

You’re working a lot and somehow not really doing anything

Even if they intend to keep this new system at least make the buffs last longer or make them worthwhile. No ones winning a fight or finishing it quicker bc of a 6% or 8% 15 second buff every three minutes. Like no.

the reality is, ast became doomed when they decided they want to lower class synergy. The buff is garbage because they want there to be no advantage to selecting an ast over another healer. This means the buff is tuned so that a really great coordinated team, making use of the buffs might catch up to the difference between ast dps and another healers dps. This means, for most situations, the buff ends up really low.

before they may have tried to give ast more situational buffs, unique utilities, or have the random element balance this, but they decided they want to reduce random, and they don't want some situational synergy popping up that becomes meta, or people never using said situational skill.

the main problem, is with these limitations they have imposed on themselves, it would've hard to make a job with ast's main concept fun. It's designed to be a reactive tactical synergistic buffer/healer.

[Saefinn]

I've been leveling AST and SCH side by side. Every time I unlock a new dungeon I do it on one job, and then the other. And I have to say; healing on SCH is way easier than AST. As SCH it's easy to pull from boss to boss, or as far as the dungeon will let you. Just toss down a soil, excog, fey illumination, whispering dawn, let your fairy offheal, and you can even toss in AoE dmg without loosing your tank. As AST you need all your cds and Bene2 spam at half the pull size, with no chance for any gravity in between. I understand that they want us to heal more this expac, I just wish they would give AST some more spells to actually heal with. SCH has so many cooldowns to rotate through... Fey Illumination, Dissipation, Recitation. AST has Lightspeed...
I don't want this to come off as a rant that SCH is too powerful, I just want AST to be brought up to par. I really don't understand the design decision behind some of these spells. For example why is Collective Unconscious a 90sec cd when it does half as much healing as Soil (which is a 30 sec cd and doesn't need to be held). Why is Celestial Opposition a 2 minute CD when it's healing over time is even less than Whispering Dawn (which has a 1 min CD). Why is Divination a 3 min CD when Chain Stratagem is a 2 min CD...

I really hope they give AST some more spells. It feels like we lost a lot and didn't gain much to compensate.

As a Scholar, I've felt they heal too well for some time. I remember HW complaints about them being OP and it had its novelty for a while being so. But I am a 2.0 Scholar who misses having to better utilize his damage mitigation and faeries to optimize my heals to make up for the fact our base heals weren't as strong as WHM's. But it came to the point where the healing aspect for SCH felt much easier because shields are effective and they can get people to full health very quickly. Hence my bit above about AST feeling weaker being attractive to me. But of course, I wouldn't gimp any of the jobs either. If I were to have my way, I'd probably bring down SCH healing in favour of better mitigation and if AST still needed it, a boost. The impression AST has given me in terms of heal is that its advantage is in versatility (but in practice is a lesser SCH or lesser WHM in terms of heals), but SCH was more focused on mitigation and WHM more focused on pure healing. However, it feels in attempts to balance they've kinda screwed with that.

[Xelanar]

I honestly can live with AST having to heal more intensively or even spam heals compared to other classes. They were underdogs at first in Heavensward - but holy where they fun to play back then.
They are underdogs now too, the difference being they are now underdogs with an uninteresting set of skills.

The new card system may be more efficient in terms of reliability now, but why? Because they made all 6 cards the same, so my decision making now consists of 'do I buff ranged or melee' - which is not even a decision, since the card you draw hands you the answer already. And once you realize that previously offensive cards(spear, balance, arrow) all buff melee and utility ones(bole, spire, ewer) all buff ranged, it becomes even easier to pull off.
But the worst of it(for me) is how unsatisfactory handling cards feels now. What was a core mechanic of the job now became a simple 'slap card on player'. Done.

Divination is far from feeling impactful either. Collecting all the symbols every three minutes is not an issue at all. It IS an issue however on a pull. Why? Because seals can only be collected in combat. So having Divination ready just after the pull requires Sleight of Hand and Redraw to cooperate. You get one card from drawing, three from redrawing and another three from sleight of hand. Thats seven - or eight if you waited for Draws cooldown to wear off before pull. If they fail to deliver, you just crippled your raids DPS by up to 4% on what could be considered the DPS haviest phase of a fight.
But even if it were possible to start with Divination up every single time, it does not make the skill any more interesting to use, because by the end of the day it is just your card buff on the entire party instead of one player.

In terms of healing spells AST is pretty boring now too - most of the time.
They took some of Collective Unconscious' HoT Potency away and put it on what they called 'reworked' Celestial Opposition, basically splitting one of our Abilities in two. And since they have different cooldowns, they can not even be used together all the time, leaving you with 2 weak skills that feel crippled on their own.

For me personally they stripped AST from its class identity: cards and time manipulation. One got its fun factor gutted and the other was removed entirely, leaving us only with tons of AoE Heal effects that are either weak on their own, boring to use or both (Earthly Star being the exception).

I do like the idea of converting AST to a sort of hybrid with HoT and shielding effects at the same time by adding Celestial Intersection and Neutral Sect. While Celestial Intersection is fine by itself, Neutral Sect is only good on paper. After casting Aspected Skills once under Neutral Sect - what purpose is there for casting them again? HoTs are already ticking so no reason to, leaving you benefitting from both Sects up to a maximum of two times during Neutral Sects 20 seconds. In other words: While awesome on paper, Neutral Sect is a gloryfied 20% increase in healing magic potency and a huge Amount of excess healing if used to spam aspected skills.

[EaMett]

Personally, I think consolation would've been better if I could only use it once, but it was a bigger heal/shield. I don't see why I would ever need to succor twice in quick succession like that, as well as everything else Seraph offers is underwhelming. Seraph was not worth losing everything we lost. I love the idea of SCH having their own version of bahamut, but I honestly forget to use her most of the time, because when I do, she doesn't make enough of a difference.

You can use it literally any time you would generally want a succor shield. The double stack is great for every situation you would otherwise succdeploy (since we no longer can) and more. On Titania ex you can essentially negate all the first portion of the big add phase damage and build gauge back to tether the tank afterwards since you should be depleted from fey union on the little add phase.
You can use her early to pad your pull shields and build gauge off the bat as well.
You can use her on trash pulls as extra mitigation when you have no gauge.
Etc. Etc.

The fact you can’t fey union with her up also means you need to give it some thought.

I maintain that seraph is a really cool mechanic.

All our non crit shields feel weak atm but it’s the same as usual for an expansion. It’ll scale well with gear as it has in the past.

[HyoMinPark]

the reality is, ast became doomed when they decided they want to lower class synergy. The buff is garbage because they want there to be no advantage to selecting an ast over another healer. This means the buff is tuned so that a really great coordinated team, making use of the buffs might catch up to the difference between ast dps and another healers dps. This means, for most situations, the buff ends up really low.

As of right now, it doesn’t look as if AST will make up for WHM’s personal damage with its cards. WHM right now can pull upwards of 7,000 DPS, while AST sits at a little above 4,000. Even in Alphascape, AOE Balance was only ~1,000 rDPS if you had really good RNG. I don’t see these single-target cards or Divination making up the difference of ~2,500+ rDPS to make the job competitive. With regards to healing, level 80 SCH is busted to the point where they can solo heal while the WHM turrets DPS—which was the only advantage Noct AST had (it was really good at solo healing).

[gerrylix]

Ast feels so badly designed right now that you could probably just ignore the cards and call the job "Tiny Whitemage"
It's so boring right now to fish for cards that i want to pull out my toenails while healing and i have healing experience that goes way back to guildwars 1 release and normally love it to bits.

AE heals with 15y range are also pretty underwhelming compared to other job ranges.

Seeing a job being butchered so much, for no reason, really hurts in the brain.