Please buff AST

[Renathras]

Ast needs a dps buff, it brings less damage than all of the other healers for 3 times the effort.

AST does more damage than WHM in a decent 8 man party because of all the buffing it does. The balance point for this is that it does less personal DPS. If AST did the same personal DPS as WHM, no one would ever bring a WHM to anything since AST would always be the better choice - in a bad party, you're no worse than a WHM, and in a good party, your own damage is equal to a WHM's and you buff the party, increasing their damage as well, making you the best healer without exception.

SCH also does "3 times the effort" and has this same issue, it just does more personal DPS than AST because it's party buff (Chain Stratagem) doesn't boost the total party's overall DPS as much as AST's buffs do.

The balance is that Healers all are supposed to do approximately the same damage in an 8 man party. No one can do significantly more damage or you have the community treating them as nonviable. We see this with Tanks whenever one is doing 100 or so DPS less than the others, suddenly it's "literally unplayable". The reality is, balance is never perfect, but that's what the Devs are aiming for.

Hence why I said AST could use a buff to its damage for solo instances/etc., since that's where the problem is.

In 8 man parties, AST's overall damage contribution is fine since the buffs get their full effect when acting on 7 other people instead of just the AST.

[NobleWinter]

Just give Astro Cards a secondary effect when they are used as a self buff to boost Malefic Potency. It shouldn't be enough to warrant using them on yourself when actual DPS are present but solo duties won't take an eternity.

[Renathras]

Just give Astro Cards a secondary effect when they are used as a self buff to boost Malefic Potency. It shouldn't be enough to warrant using them on yourself when actual DPS are present but solo duties won't take an eternity.

Well, that was (among) my suggestion on page 1 that Zolvolt replied to:

To be fair, AST could use a buff to its damage for solo instances/etc. Something like using cards on itself can stack (though that might be a newb trap...) or that thee[sic] effects are doubled or tripled if played on itself or if used on itself when its not a member of a party. Then again, in ~8 months we'll see the rework, so who knows?

Current AST Potencies of its basic attack spells:

Fall Malific: 250 potency
Combust III: 55 potency per 3 seconds over 30 seconds, 550 total potency (no initial tick)
Gravity II: 130 AOE potency
Earthly Star: 310 AOE potency (larger detonation)*
Macrocosmos: 250 potency (first target; 40% less all others)*

Current WHM Potencies of its basic attack spells:

Glare III: 310 potency
Dia: 65 potency initial damage + 65 potency per 3 sec for 30 seconds = 65 + 650 = 715 total potency (was 60 / 660 total before the patch)
Holy III: 150 AOE potency
Assize: 400 AOE potency*
Misery: 1,240 AOE potency (first target; 50% for all others)*

*Note that Misery doesn't really factor in here since it's damage neutral with Glare anyway - we're talking about solo content, so WHM doesn't have any self-damage buffs to apply to it to boost the damage over Glare casts. Assize and Earthly Star/Macrocosmos should VAGUELY come out as equal-ISH over fights, especially since this is again the solo case. 3x Assize per 2 mins = 1,200 potency, 1x Macrocosmos + 2x Earthly Star = 870, so consider if you think the power of approximately (slightly more than) an additional single Glare cast is a huge gap or not over a 120 second time period.

To get Malific to Glare you need an additional 60 potency (60/250 * 100% = 24%)
To get Commbust to Dia you need an additional 165 potency (165/550 * 100% = 30%)
To get Gravity to Holy you need an additional 20 potency (20/130 * 100% = ~15%)

So you basically need to have AST Cards, when used on the AST when the AST isn't in a party to have ~5x the effect they normally do (assuming they get the +6% cards and that Diviniation counteracts the periods when they aren't under a Card buff). I'm not sure you'd STRICTLY need to have the "when not in a party" effect, per se, since it would still benefit the AST to put the Card on anything other than themselves (or their co-healer) if in an 8 man party anyway. I think...

Note the other Healer numbers, for the record:

SCH:
Broil IV: 295
Biolysis: 700 (no initial tick, 70 per tick)
Art of War II: 180 AOE (the highest of the Healers for AOE)
Ruin II: 220
Energy Drain: 100 (x3 for a full Aetherflow stack spent on it)

SGE:
Dosis: 330 (highest single-target spamnuke of all the Healers)
Eukrasian Dosis: 700 (no initial tick, 70 per tick)
Dyskrasia II: 170
Plegma: 600

*Note that Toxicon and Pneuma are exactly damage equal to Dosis, with 50% and 40% falloff, respectively for additional AOE targets.

So how all this stacks up kinda depends on how you want to look at it, but basically, AST does much lower damage because the power of its buffs - it has a partywide 6% every 2 mins + 6% (when well played) Cards every 30 sec/2x per min/4x per 2 min cycle. Conversely, SCH has Chain Strat, which is a 10% crit chance for all party members on a single target. Note that Crits are worth ~45% more damage, so the extra 10% chance for one maths out to something like 4.5% more damage expected on average. For parties with less crit, this number is less than that.

WHM and SGE have no party damage increase abilities, so they are reliant entirely on their personal damage in a party to be equal to the contribution AST/SCH give, and are often a bit behind even there, especially late in the tier once everyone's geared up and knows what they're doing in the fights.

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Anyway, point being, for the purposes of solo encounters, AST getting a 3x-5x boost (probably 3x or 4x) when using Cards on itself would probably bring its solo damage more in line with the other Healers while not changing too much in party situations, as long as something in the game would tell new players that using them on other people is better than on themselves when they have the option. The multiplier needs to be small enough they aren't outdamaging Tanks, but large enough they're more or less in line with the other Healers.

[Katish]

They excel at party play, not everything needs to be DPS neutral...There's already enough homogenizing to begin within healers. This would lead to why bring X when you can bring Y and they can do everything. (Note this is already a thing to a degree, this would be furthering that.)

Instead of damage we should be focusing on differing the healers...That's the main issue tbh.

[IDontPetLalas]

They excel at party play, not everything needs to be DPS neutral...There's already enough homogenizing to begin within healers. This would lead to why bring X when you can bring Y and they can do everything. (Note this is already a thing to a degree, this would be furthering that.)

Instead of damage we should be focusing on differing the healers...That's the main issue tbh.

I would agree that homogenization is an important issue however that doesn't mean that we should overlook other QOL issues which can also be seen as significant, one of which is soloing anything as an AST.

There are a number of changes that people have suggested which may be relatively easy to implement, that could be something that SE would consider in the short term whereas addressing the homogenization issue would likely require major job redesigns.

[Katish]

I would agree that homogenization is an important issue however that doesn't mean that we should overlook other QOL issues which can also be seen as significant, one of which is soloing anything as an AST.

There are a number of changes that people have suggested which may be relatively easy to implement, that could be something that SE would consider in the short term whereas addressing the homogenization issue would likely require major job redesigns.

I agree with what you are saying but, keep in mind it's Square. Pushing QoL updates delays the real issue...and knowing Square they would chock it as we fixed it in QoL patch...when addressing the true issues at hand. (Even when they didn't even touch the subject). There's also the issue when doing QoL updates and then having to rego over them in major updates which equates to more work as well. The bigger picture is what needs to be touched, and it hasn't been touched upon in forever.

One could argue most of their "MAJOR" patches are QoL, but I wouldn't go that far, they do have significant changes, just none that usually address critical issues. More like, they invent new ones. Then the question is how to go about it? Small patches that outline design choices in: skills, utility, etc... in small changes to showcase what it might look like in a major patch. This allows them to draw feedback and work to the betterment of the healer role.

[IDontPetLalas]

I agree with what you are saying but, keep in mind it's Square. Pushing QoL updates delays the real issue...and knowing Square they would chock it as we fixed it in QoL patch...when addressing the true issues at hand. (Even when they didn't even touch the subject). There's also the issue when doing QoL updates and then having to rego over them in major updates which equates to more work as well. The bigger picture is what needs to be touched, and it hasn't been touched upon in forever.

One could argue most of their "MAJOR" patches are QoL, but I wouldn't go that far, they do have significant changes, just none that usually address critical issues. More like, they invent new ones. Then the question is how to go about it? Small patches that outline design choices in: skills, utility, etc... in small changes to showcase what it might look like in a major patch. This allows them to draw feedback and work to the betterment of the healer role.

and I agree with what you just said as well. If we had a dedicated healer designer I don't think we would be in this state, as others have pointed out in a prior post this game has a relatively small number of job designers in comparison to other games and people can only be stretched so far. I would definitely prefer to have some small changes to get feedback and adjustments.

[Renathras]

The sad thing is, there are some pretty minor fixes that would actually make it work fairly well.

"Cards played on the caster have 3x effect" isn't hard to implement. Even 2x. It could be a slight noob trap, but at some point, people have pretend there's a modicum of brain cells firing in player's brains, not to mention AST players tend to be those who want a higher difficulty Job and are going to think about things like this a bit more and want to buff allies.

...though not ALWAYS true, as a rule, there are few really terrible AST players; probably since it's neither a Job you can start at level one and go with nor a Job that starts near [the current] level cap for people wanting a quick entry to the role, and it also requires a 20 + (after the 2.5 patches worth of experience) leveling detour for a new player, or is an alt leveled up deliberately by a higher level player. Point being, people more know what they're getting into and are in it for the long haul with AST, and somehow this tends to result in decent players most of the time. Not all of the time, of course. But anyway, AST's tooltips are often complex and convoluted AF anyway, so again, I think AST players could understand "This is for when I solo, when in a party, I should be using these on the Red Jobs".

[IDontPetLalas]

AST starts at level 30, Sage starts even higher, and it can be argued that it's skills are even more cryptic. You didn't provide specific example of why you find AST to be convoluted, there could be , though can't think of ones that I had particular issues with. I would point out however that the concept of a skill that can be used while soling is already used in Blue Mage (Basic Instinct) so it isn't as though this is an entirely new concept in FFXIV.

Also- there are terrible players in every job. AST starts at level 30, Sage starts even higher, and if you want to go down route- anyone can use a job skip on any healer, so there's always a way to start any healer that way, and consequently there is no way to know if that is why someone is "terrible". However I don't see why this should factor into or hold back buffs to AST.

[Renathras]

AST starts at level 30, Sage starts even higher, and it can be argued that it's skills are even more cryptic. You didn't provide specific example of why you find AST to be convoluted, there could be , though can't think of ones that I had particular issues with. I would point out however that the concept of a skill that can be used while soling is already used in Blue Mage (Basic Instinct) so it isn't as though this is an entirely new concept in FFXIV.

Also- there are terrible players in every job. AST starts at level 30, Sage starts even higher, and if you want to go down route- anyone can use a job skip on any healer, so there's always a way to start any healer that way, and consequently there is no way to know if that is why someone is "terrible". However I don't see why this should factor into or hold back buffs to AST.

Okay, fine, don't make any changes. Happier?

If someone's making an argument that you might actually agree with, maybe go with it instead of trying to nit-pick?

"...though not ALWAYS true, as a rule..." already notes there are exceptions. So saying there are exceptions isn't actually a counter-argument.

I also didn't use this as a reason for factoring into, nor holding back, buffs to AST. I used it to argue that something SLIGHTLY convoluted/newb trappy shouldn't be an argument NOT to do it.

I noted SGE started even higher. I even explicitly mentioned that in part of my post. You mention this twice - what argument are you countering? Did you think I didn't know SGE starts at a higher level than AST? Did you not see in my post me noting that SGE starts "even higher" than AST? Not just "even higher" but MUCH closer to the level cap? Do I need to spell it out more clearly?

Did you read my post before replying to it?

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I agree Basic Instinct exists (and this was also the original intent, arguably, for Cleric Stance and Tank damage stances; the OG design in 2.0 was probably for these to be mainly abilities used when soloing, not optimization dances); using AST Cards for this is the better solution to me since (a) they already exist and (b) AST has enough button bloat already. Some trait that gives your Card buffs on yourself 2x effectiveness is a pretty small change that doesn't muck with any balance or game design issues or anything overall, could create some niche optimization cases rarely, and plays into the existing system without issue. It's a minor change that fixes the existing problem of AST's low soloing damage without mucking with the rest of the game or contributing to button bloat and the odd nature of Basic Instinct.

Honestly, Basic Instinct should be a Trait (for BLU) that you learn, since it has no effect when you're in a party and is just a tied up button when you are. Would also open the door to "Learning Traits" as a thing for BLU, which would be kind of cool in its own right.