Quote Originally Posted by Renathras View Post
I mean, yes but also no. The answer's a bit nuanced.

Even IF WHM had the same party buffs as AST, AST would still be the meta choice because it has the party buffs AND mitigation potential. The slightly higher personal DPS that WHM brings wouldn't make up for that. With AST you get 0.5x a second Barrier/mitigation healer AND you get party buffs.

SCH is the given choice because it has both. AST and SGE are roughly interchangeable in the second slot because SGE offers a bit more additional protection for prog while AST offers more party damage and half the mitigation anyway. WHM has literally none of the things the meta cares about.

I do agree that SCH/SGE works well because it's easy to not overlap incompatible shields. Adlo > Diagnosis > Prognosis > Succor is the order of precedence, which arguably also favors the strongest shields anyway, and Adlo's crit secondary shield, EuDiagnosis' crit secondary shield, Holos, Panhaima, and Consolation/Seraph shields (and Neutral Sect) all stack just fine.[/hb]
The answer for what is meta and why is usually lacking a lot of nuance.
If people go for strong comps it's "Would we survive? Yes -> More deeps" - which ironically meant that people switched off AST early tier when mitigation would matter most because their buffs weren't nearly as strong from the lack of gear of the rest so WHM brought less mitigation on paper but more than enough to survive in practice and the reliable dps.
There's also a long list of mechanics or chains of mechanics where you can't use CU for mitigation because it wouldn't catch enough people. Especially on the problematic mechanics that are most likely to kill people from damage taken like Ruby 5, Cachexia 1, towers & birds, all Harvests, Hippo jumps, Fourfold, Snake 2, NA1/2 except for stack, towers. That often leaves huge gaps when you can't use it fur survival.
You can't rely on CU for survival in these cases because you'll not catch everyone and it needs additional single target shields/ mit from someone else for them to make it work which isn't always available or feasible to apply in time on the right target.
AST is nowhere near a second barrier healer. WHM is lacking mitigation but AST isn't that much better off to consider it the healer that brings "half the mitigation", that's just exaggerated.


And the priority for shields in terms of opportunity cost/ efficiency would be:
EDiag (since SGE gets a damage return from Toxikon) > Adlo > Physick (since SCH fairy keeps healing) > Diagnosis
ET Succor + EProg works just fine most of the time too, if someone really doesn't want to coordinate properly then you're, Succor + Prog works and is easy. But I have yet to see a single time when we both need to spam GCD aoe heals, including on the "cursed boss for SGE/ SCH".
But for ease of use, Adlo + Diagnosis and Succor + Prognosis does the job.