How could you do this to AST?

[Cidel]

This is unexpected but still not entirely surprising. AST seems to had been created as an intermediary healer between WHM and SCH. Since you bring two healers to just about everything they didn't want to lopside a 2 HoTs to 1 barrier healer and vice-versa, so they let AST be either as needed.

This seems like probably the easiest answer to adding yet another healer and not having to go through the headache of creating a different-but-similar healing gimmick (I honestly wouldn't put any faith in their battle team to properly balance that anyway). If anything though, now I expect healer balance to be even more cutthroat/homogenized since they've delegated two healers to two separate "styles." And Twelve help the forums if WHMs once again consider themselves inferior to ASTs in any way.

On a side note, I'm not torn about losing Sects/Noct. Was never my favorite stance. The appeal has always been the cards for an extra layer of activity whilst healing. If that gets taken from AST- then that'd be something to complain about.

[Piarkire]

They never said that they don’t stack—they said that they don’t stack continuously. I’m guessing they what they meant is that: Neutral Sect is an ability with a 20-second duration on a 120-second cooldown. Therefore, every 2 minutes, you have the ability to cast shields that stack for a total of 20 seconds (the shields last the standard 30 seconds). However, you do not have the ability to do this constantly during a fight. Continuous stacking of shields would be overpowered, especially when paired with AOE mitigation from other jobs.

I do believe I'm not going too far out on a limb to say that Neutral Sect, and by extension Celestial Intersection, has done quite a number on nocturnal sect and probably necessitated its' removal.

I think what's going on with AST, as many have said, is that it's trying to balance itself to be useful in everything which naturally is going to shaft a lot of people who play a specific job out of high-end content. The case that its' nocturnal potencies are slightly higher than a scholar, and thus stronger shields, somewhat proves this.

While I don't exactly condone the strategy used to solve it, I personally expected this one.

[Zolvolt]

The amount of misinformation on noct being bad is blowing my mind rn. Noct's ability to mitigate and remove damage with ogcd's is pretty strong. Diurnal doesn't even get damage mitigation unless they channel their bubble. Their shield potency is higher than sch's. And saying noct is worse than double regen just are spending too much time hard casting asp.helios and not enough time OGCD healing mechanics. That being said sure double regen will be good on easy content. But don't act like noct ast doesn't have a very welcomed place next to whm.

[IceBlueNinja]

The amount of misinformation on noct being bad is blowing my mind rn. Noct's ability to mitigate and remove damage with ogcd's is pretty strong. Diurnal doesn't even get damage mitigation unless they channel their bubble. Their shield potency is higher than sch's. And saying noct it is worse than double regen just are spending too much time hard casting asp.helios and not enough time OGCD healing mechanics. That being said sure double regen will be good on easy content. But don't act like noct ast doesn't have a very welcomed place next to whm.

It is ok friend you and I know what noct can do and we enjoy doing it. I already made information of ast vs sch migitation, if sheilds are not all that as these dirunal obessed ones claim to be am guessing they claiming sch is pointless in this regards which idc I do not even play that healer cause its just (lol zone). my gripe is not about dirunal and why its prefer its more how people about this ast vs sch migation claiming sch to be the migitator which I done countless experiment and see in the end ast migitation wins to top it off regens provided anyways in noct sect using neutual sect u can celestial opposition helios and benefic and that is still 3 regens in noct sect. It may not happen on forum or do but in game certainly noct get bashed alot by players and ofc first thing too is sch is the better barrier har har har. gimmie another ast and we choose either sec and able to stack all our spells for 7 regens and 4 shields total as shown on my picture some where in this post page 3 I think. Aint no point trying to change their ways let just enjoy our class while its still great. Noct saved my behind in so may ways that I can be on a 6 vurn stack *example copy factory last boss with that annoying thing where he go in the air and bombards you, am bad at dodging it and ofc by even at least 3 vurn i may certainly die in dirunal but noct nope still living fine. or that grand comos where my tank+ dps died because they was all new and burn all the stuff i manage to barely got the last sofa and had to survive a TB that does hit tank very nasty themselves. i had full and survive with 10% hp because of the noct block bubble and was able to pop dignity to top off fast, Had I probably be in dirunal it be a wipe but it was not for i got to pick up my tank then the 2 dps eventually and we cleared same for yojimbo where everyone but me got kill by them lightning orbs of being too bunch up close being they apparently was new to the fight. I was able to tank jimmy pick up the tank and the whm then I astral statis the dps up since whm was just recovering landing me all 7 comms.

[Liam_Harper]

i had full and survive with 10% hp because of the noct block bubble and was able to pop dignity to top off fast, Had I probably be in dirunal it be a wipe but it was not for i got to pick up my tank then the 2 dps eventually

If only Dirunal AST had a shield attached to Celestial Intersection, shields with Neutral, its bubble had 5 sec of damage reduction and it also had Essential Dignity...

Shame.

[IceBlueNinja]

If only Dirunal AST had a shield attached to Celestial Intersection, shields with Neutral, its bubble had 5 sec of damage reduction and it also had Essential Dignity...

Shame.

lf only noct ast had a regen attached celestial intersection and netrual aspected benefic and aspected helios also give regen double shame.

[EaMett]

This has probably been said but I'm willing to bet that AST will hold onto Neutral sect (and may even expand on it). If that is indeed the case, going WHM/AST will very likely be more than viable for savage and potentially ultimate (although that last one might be a steeper learning curve).
We'll only know for sure when the press tour happens.

[Gemina]

I am deeply disappointed by the decision to make AST a pure healer as a player who always play noct ast in savage content along side my whm friend. I know this may be a selfish personal reason but in order for the two of us to continue playing savage content together one of us must now change jobs and as the shield healer it is going to fall to me. In order to play high level content with my friend, I will have to give up my favorite job. Never has this decision been forced on a player before now. You can play any job combination in any party as long as everyone is a different job and this has been the case since ARR. Now we are making it an actively bad choice for Whm and AST to play together and actively bad choice for SCH and SAGE to play together. While its discouraged to have 2 phys R and 2 casters its not an actively bad choice. This hurts.

I think this is such a bad decision for so many reasons. Currently on live any healer combination can play together optimally and effectively. Going forward there are 2 healer combinations that will be lacking due to a loss of shields or actively hindering each other by having non-overlapping shields. We already all hate groups that lock out 1phys r and 1 caster and wait in PF for decades. I fear this will be the new case with healers. Additionally the party match making are going to treat shield healers and pure healers separately as well in order to fill a party. I am worried about this as well since currently on live most of the content you queue for can be done with any healer combination even doubles, so why are we making changes to increased the wait time for these duties?

I just have these concerns and am also upset about the AST change.

Healer adjust?

I say that only in partial jest, because from my perspective it is completely true both from an in-game view when engaged in PvE, but also when dealing with the myriad of changes healers have undergone over the years. Healing truly is a role that is meant for those who can quickly accept and adapt to change, but also simply enjoy doing it without much expectation for a reward. That reward is kind of found when you make clutch saves. There is no achievement or title for it in the game, but the player(s) you keep from falling when they otherwise would have is always appreciated.

It is understandable to be concerned and also expected. It is far to early to pass judgment now, so I would advise on not creating a bigger hole to climb out of by overreacting. I also wouldn't worry about party comps much. One player per job will always be preferred, but not always possible. Just how it goes. The healers will be viable in any composition, that is one thing I can guarantee.

[ItMe]

It's funny, because for the past few weeks* my fiance and I have been working on making matching AST glams together where one is a "diurnal glam" and the other is "nocturnal glam" but they still look like mirrors of each other.
Now that a 4th healer has been confirmed and we know they're reworking the barriers out of AST our glam concept kinda falls apart.
We're still gonna finish it and use it and have fun.
I'm not bitter or anything, after all, how can I be without even trying the new AST.
The glam will just be a relic from another era.


* weeks to make a glam?
This is in part because we decided we wanna rock that HW relic for our weapons and boy is that a stiff poetics farm.