Quote Originally Posted by HyoMinPark View Post
Posting limits are annoying...

Again, I simply have to disagree with you that it’s the sects at fault here. More so than issues with potency.
While fights are scripted, people are not. Its hard enough keeping DF players in range of a precast Cure III during a stack because its like they're physically repelled from one another upon receiving damage lol.
To elaborate on why I left out Horoscope and Earthly Star, Both have minute long recasts that need to be primed/prepped before damage happens. Yes, Earthly Star is incredibly powerful ... Conditionally. It is dependant on how your party reacts to its presence.
I've dropped Star before the Stack marker in E2N only for the entire party to move out of it because the one with the stack marker stopped on the wrong side of it.
Cant always just yell at people for being 'bad' too because certain party settings for animations render the Star invisible. I have a decent PC and play with most everything on max except party animations, which I turn to limited because I hate that bosses vanish into a pile of particle effects.
The only hint that theres a Star active is the dim outline of the radius marker when another AST drops it. Its easy to miss on Limited, impossible to even see at None.

To get the best use out of Star requires the party co-ordinating properly and being able to see it at all. I've lost count of the number of dungeons I've run where everyone likes to sit in opposite corners from each other unless something actually forces them to move together. And even when they do, they all but sprint back out instead of just staying there.
Assize/Rapture/Indom/FB don't have that problem. Doesn't matter what the party is doing, those spells will be just as effective in every party. Not so for Earthly Star, its use is dictated by whether or not party members can even see it, let alone stand in it.
Visibility via settings is something that needs a fix too though lol.

Also, the fact that raidwides tend to happen multiple times per minute means there are often times when neither Star or Horoscope are available.
I'd appreciate tools as an AST that aren't heavily reliant on the party understanding how my stuff works or is required to be primed before utilizing. There's a gulf between parties who understand the limitations of Star and those that don't care. Neither of the other healers suffer that.

Another example of ASTs problems with relying on Star is bosses like Tycoon. In the event someone touches the beams, our ability to respond to that is extremely limited compared to SCH and WHM. We shouldn't have to depend on the party playing perfectly.

That got a bit long winded .. Sorry. But I hope it at least shows you where I'm coming from in regards to AoE healing.

On potencies specifically, I didn't say changes there would be unwelcome or unhelpful. I do agree we need better potencies and improving them will ease some of the burden.
But just straight beefing the potencies isn't really a perfect solution. We shouldn't be beholden to long cooldowns to do what the others can do at a baseline.
Popping Neutral Sect makes feel just as strong as my SCH and even lets me dump Gravity bombs to such an extent that it gets close to what I can do with Holy spam... Except I can do that Holy spam (even without the stun after the DR kicks in) and not need to blow Temperance to open a window long enough to cast an AoE.

I would actually love to see CU have no recast. Considering it stops us from doing anything at all, being able to snap it on and off at will would be interesting.
CO's potencies look like its intended to be an AoE version of CI. The roadblock here is its cooldown. Changing that to match CI while also making it share the recast with it could be an interesting way to make it more useful without needing to just buff potencies through the roof to justify the recast.

None of this is getting into the other glaring issues, which have been repeatedly mentioned but include things such as the cards, Divination, and Sleeve Draw windows affecting gameplay. Not to mention, AST’s personal damage and raid damage—I’m fine with AST having lower personal damage, but it needs to have the raid damage to compete with WHM. As of right now, it has neither. There is honestly no competition between the two.
I only brought up cards due to this quote from you.
Do cards need a potency buff? Maybe. Next week will tell us if SE agrees.
I'm not sure why you'd need to hold Lightspeed to enable Sleeve Draw to be used effectively. Malefic leaves us with a full second to do a Draw. Sleeve Draw charges put Draw to 4 second recasts.
The 4 second recast on Draw means I can Malefic, draw, Malefic, Redraw/Play/MA and repeat. Lets me double weave even at my latency, but since the next card is a full 4 seconds after the last Draw, theres plenty of time to fit Malefics between fiddling with cards even without them being instant.

My assessments are based on my own experiences with leveling AST in ShB, comparing it to the iterations I have played in the past, and my comparison of it when I leveled ShB WHM immediately afterwards. I’m not basing them off of nothing. I’m not sure if this was your intention, but you’re almost making it sound as if my assessments have no basis to them—as in, I haven’t “experienced” the healers this expansion. I assure you, I have (with the exception of SCH, but it’s always been my least played of the three). If I am misreading your statement here, then I apologize.
No apology needed. I have a terrible habit of being terrible at explaining things properly. My statement about playing all 3 was only to give you context in how I arrived at the conclusions I did. There were no allusions to your experiences intended.
What is truly gained by only using Sleeve Draw under Lightspeed? I'm actually genuinely curious. Aside from the obvious double weaves, of course.

While I dislike the new card system because it destroyed the very thing that initially attracted me to the job, I don’t think that’s AST’s biggest hurdle right now. It’s one of their hurdles, but it’s the healing potencies and damage potencies that are hurting it far more right now in addition to clunky gameplay that even high-tier ASTs have issues with. If you got that from my (very long) post talking about its healing inefficiencies, I’m honestly not sure how that is. Perhaps it’s from another post in another thread I’ve made discussing the card system?
It was only that you specified Cards and everything surrounding them but were more general about other issues in the statement I quoted above this one that led me to believe that.
I think we both agree potencies need buffs, But as for cards ... Well, i'm afraid we shall have to agree to disagree on that, as I quite like the new cards.


As for Dummy numbers, they are a part of the picture. Not the full picture, but those numbers are important regardless. They show what the job is capable of when it just sits down and does damage.
Provides a bit of a goalpost to aim for in personal optimization. Knowing the theoretical max allows one to tweak and adjust in an attempt to reach it.


By the way .. My suggestion for Neutral Sects effect to be baseline could easily be resolved by making the effect a Trait with the Sects being used to enhance one aspect over the other instead of choosing between them. Making it a high level trait eliminates the need to fix lower level quests that required a specific Sect.
It's kind of supported in the Lore based on the dialogue with Leveva in the 80 Job Quest.

Such a change is an immediate power boost for AST before any Potencies get altered.
Potencies are a problem, one I never denied.
But I still believe the root of ASTs weakness lies in underwhelming Sects.
Its been a pleasure to debate this with you though :P