How could you do this to AST?

[Heilstos]

In times of ARR, I was always annoyed when, as a SCH, I had to heal with another SCH. It was green that the shields weren't stacked. So I played WHM because medica II stacks. When the AST came up with the promise to bring Yoshida a flexible healer into play, I was happy and still am. But now my fears are back.

What does it mean for us:

1) Story-relevant content MUST be able to be created without shields. Because the DF can put together an AST with a WHM. We now have a case where you just don't have any shields with either healer in place. (Except for neutral stance here)
2) For the raid scene it will say that a healer player is forced to choose a healer from each column. So to be more precise you have to choose a "shield" healer, ie SGE or SCH. And in order to use the "pure healing" you have to go for AST and WHM. For many high-level players, this won't be a problem. At least that's what I suspected. But for the people who have a MAIN job. It's a slap in the face, because the healers don't have the freedom to choose the job that the tanks have because of these "pure" vs "shield" thoughts. This makes me a little sad for the moment.
3) I read in some threads that the balance of the two stances is difficult to know. The current status of the AST showed that this could be done well. And both stances could feel their job to a great extent. And I think the balance team did a good job here. So it didn't feel like a nightmare. Instead, we had more problems with the time extension capabilities in HW / SB, which completely disrupted the balance between Noc and Diu. (Here I have to say in favor of Diu!)
Every stance feels its demands at the moment.

All in all, SE doesn't make friends among the AST players. Special for the nocturnal players, because the dev finally managed to conjure up a strong Noc AST with SHB. And I'm speaking from years of experience. I think it's a shame that the AST's flexibility is being sacrificed for the SGE. But if this sacrifice has to be accepted so that one can have a 4th healer, I am happy to accept this.

And for the Noc Ast players: I know it feels like the AST had to bleed just like the DRK to SB. If you enjoyed the "shield" aspect of Nocturnal so much, try the SGE with the hope that you won't have an annoying card game. But of course with all the positive things that made the Noc AST so special.

[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.

[IceBlueNinja]

If you’re referencing the post with the crazy amount of stacked shields you made in that thread—I already replied to it. As I said there: better get all of those prepped pre-pull because AST cannot swap sects in combat, thereby losing the ability to stack that many resourcesDouble AST is not a meta comp, so even if you ran two ASTs, you would never blow all of your major healing cooldowns like that at the same time anyways. That is a terrible allocation of resources.



Please don’t act as if Nocturnal Sect is the more valued of the two Sects. It has never been more valued over Diurnal Sect in the 6 years AST has existed. If it was so valuable and so good, then why is it readjusted multiple times per each expansion? Why is it not the norm for the job? Why is it not meta? No one is saying that Noct AST is weak—they are saying that it is not as valuable or as efficient as Diurnal. Standard healer comps are still WHM/SCH or DiAST/SCH. While WHM/Noct AST exists, it is most certainly not the norm or the meta.

Personally, I think you’re the one who is a bit misinformed here. That, or you are blinded by your love for the sect and unwilling to look at what has been proven again and again. Diurnal AST has always been the more efficient and more desired of AST’s two stances.





You and people always taking and over estimating about how good double regens are with whm and dirunal as is sicking but there many a times mistakes happen and say tank mistakely makes the party get hit by a tb cleaves party amd even at full hp and your all so mighty double regen heals does what then? however by miracle love whenam in noct while noct or entire party if i had migi the party right with celes and noct field. even light party dungeons and trials i live something with noct that usually kill in one hot example again tb. i bet if SE follow the same prinicipal and not let whm and ast regens stack like the sch ast noct field people probably then stop crapping on it and hope they do it too. you can throw the 3 ergens kn big trash pulls and the tank base on gear and dungeon can be still torn up fast on huge trash pulls. finally having to throw benefic amd helios over and over seem more an mp burn than spamming noct aspected for regens with their short 15 secs do not please . regens was more better when they lasted 30 seconds.

[IceBlueNinja]

this is @hot

[Liam_Harper]

I don't mind Noct going if it needs to, but I'm very disappointed they took the non-existent "shield/direct" healer divide to build on instead of working on individual class playstyle. Shield or Direct is not a playstyle, it's a piece of a toolkit. There's no rotation or core class mechanics to build around. Your heals simply have a shield attached, a HoT or more heal.

The only thing this serves to do is potentially force healer comps. Especially if shields don't stack and we end up with Savage fights on a difficulty of e11s cycles or e12s, you don't want to bring WHM/AST or SCH/SAG. There's also the consideration of whether they fail to address WHM's mobility, making AST straight up better to fit that pure role. We'll have to see how it plays out, but there are a lot of potential problems and once they release an expansion they tend not to address them until the next one.

It does yet again confirm the devs don't know what they're doing. There are still no mentions of engaging dps, building on class gameplay, better pets or card systems, fixing core issues like clipping or ghosting, or expanding the toolkit. In fact a shield/pure divide could easily mean pruning the toolkit as they trim away anything that doesn't fit the intended category.

As I said above, but you seemed to ignore: No one is saying that Noct AST is weak—they are saying that it is not as valuable or as efficient as Diurnal. Standard healer comps are still WHM/SCH or DiAST/SCH. While WHM/Noct AST exists, it is most certainly not the norm or the meta.

WHM/SCH is not really a typical meta comp. With no AST, someone has to bite the bullet and heal and that means dps tax. It exists and works fine but it's slightly less optimal than Noct/WHM.
Generally for midcore/hardcore it's SCH/DirAST, WHM/DirAST or WHM/Noct (depending if you need shields). Basically AST + Other. Casual doesn't matter because people just healbot.

[IceBlueNinja]

even when noct ast die i had a great experience with it and if sage is the new barrier heal am all for it especially of as someone mention a shield that is like apsected bene which mean instant cast unlike sch who must spend time to cast alco and i would even laugh more if like noct ast sage sheilds surpasses schs overall. My gripe with most sch players is why migitate after damage? the idea i get of the term is to do it before big damage happens then your regen partner top off the rest of hurt regens to keep other things flowing. Sch overall too is too resource heavy with that aether flow make to use most of their strong heals is just too much stress whm ast and sage hopefully is always gonna be my go to.

[IceBlueNinja]

I don't mind Noct going if it needs to, but I'm very disappointed they took the non-existent "shield/direct" healer divide to build on instead of working on individual class playstyle. Shield or Direct is not a playstyle, it's a piece of a toolkit. There's no rotation or core class mechanics to build around. Your heals simply have a shield attached, a HoT or more heal.

The only thing this serves to do is potentially force healer comps. Especially if shields don't stack and we end up with Savage fights on a difficulty of e11s cycles or e12s, you don't want to bring WHM/AST or SCH/SAG. There's also the consideration of whether they fail to address WHM's mobility, making AST straight up better to fit that pure role. We'll have to see how it plays out, but there are a lot of potential problems and once they release an expansion they tend not to address them until the next one.

It does yet again confirm the devs don't know what they're doing. There are still no mentions of engaging dps, building on class gameplay, better pets or card systems, fixing core issues like clipping or ghosting, or expanding the toolkit. In fact a shield/pure divide could easily mean pruning the toolkit as they trim away anything that doesn't fit the intended category.



WHM/SCH is not really a typical meta comp. With no AST, someone has to bite the bullet and heal and that means dps tax. It exists and works fine but it's slightly less optimal than Noct/WHM.
Generally for midcore/hardcore it's SCH/DirAST, WHM/DirAST or WHM/Noct (depending if you need shields). Basically AST + Other. Casual doesn't matter because people just healbot.

idk but when i move from crystal to aether most savage tend to be whm/ast combo and ofc am the ast but to me it is the best duo healer combination always vs ast/sch . honestly i always prefer another ast ot whm as my co healer lol.

[Recon1o6]

Ofc noct was inferior to diurnal. They never tried to make it equal. Oh look mp penalties for playing in noct, whats that you want to stack with sch? cant have that!

The fact we aren't having job quests anymore also seems to me that they just don't care about lore, individual playstyles or fun anymore, just "balance"

[HyoMinPark]

You and people always taking and over estimating about how good double regens are with whm and dirunal as is sicking but there many a times mistakes happen and say tank mistakely makes the party get hit by a tb cleaves party amd even at full hp and your all so mighty double regen heals does what then? however by miracle love whenam in noct while noct or entire party if i had migi the party right with celes and noct field. even light party dungeons and trials i live something with noct that usually kill in one hot example again tb.

If a tank cleaves the party, it has very little to do with shielding if they’ll live, and everything to do with what they were hit by. If the party is cleaved with, say, Twinania’s Plummet in UCoB, they may survive based on damage variance or their own defense stat (it is possible for DPS players to live a Plummet with no shielding and syncing down current gear in that fight). If the party is cleaved with a tank buster, say, Bahamut Prime’s Flare Breath, they are all dead because even tanks require cooldowns to survive that hit. Healers and DPS certainly don’t have the defense or HP to take it. Having shields literally wouldn’t matter in either situation. The tanks in my static have cleaved us with Plummet on more than one occasion while learning that fight, and we live without shields.

Savage is much the same way: some cleaves we have survived without shields. Others just outright kill us. Fact if the matter is, any tank cleave in high-end content is likely to just kill any non-tank despite shielding or other mitigation.

In 4-man content, shields on the party are even more irrelevant because light party content is non-threatening to every role. Poor example, in my opinion.

i bet if SE follow the same prinicipal and not let whm and ast regens stack like the sch ast noct field people probably then stop crapping on it and hope they do it too. you can throw the 3 ergens kn big trash pulls and the tank base on gear and dungeon can be still torn up fast on huge trash pulls. finally having to throw benefic amd helios over and over seem more an mp burn than spamming noct aspected for regens with their short 15 secs do not please . regens was more better when they lasted 30 seconds.

In a dungeon pull, your Nocturnal Aspected Benefic will be torn through in seconds by any sizable pull. In order to upkeep your mitigation, you would have to spam it on the tank. Conversely, stacking regens would mean you’d have to go through your ED charges and cast Benefic II less on a tank because of HoTs sticking. I have stacked Di A.Benefic, Di A. Helios, CU, and COpp on a tank for a meaty pull, and been able to basically ignore them for a bit.

But I’m not sure why I’m continuing to hold a conversation with someone who clearly only wants to see what they want to see. You lack a lot of healing experience in the grand scheme of this game, and information on just how much of a pain it has been to balance AST with its hybrid identity. If you educate yourself on these things and want to discuss further, feel free to contact me.

[Mavrias]

this post is even funnier when you know that diurnal is vastly superior to noct to the point that pretty much the only situation in which you run Noct outside of very early prog is if there are two ASTs in the group. Most of the time any absolutely necessary shielding is handled by Neutral sect in WHM/ AST comps.


its partially due to fight design though to be fair. shields will always be inferior to HOTs when damage will not kill without a shield.