Astrologian "BUFFS"

[Parawill]

Your right, we don't and you make a good point. We don't have any buff cards to help healers. Maybe they could do something like changing Balance from "+attack power" to "+action potency". Or instead of Bole's defense boost how about "Increase HP recovery by actions".

I've introduced Reflect in some of my suggestions, but I have no idea how to implement it. The only reason I introduced Reflect was because since Astrologian is a buff-like class (despite it oriented around cards), adding a reflect effect would be interesting. Maybe instead of a flat shield it's just flat mitigation + reflect % of damage.

Aside from that I actually thought about reverse cards like reverse reads in tarot. At first I was thinking of opposite effects, but in tarot reading it's not necessarily like that. For example (not a tarot example), a non-reverse Bole will be its regular effect; however, a reverse Bole would be increased healing. Ewer can keep its refresh, but in reverse it can boost magic defenses or reduce magic damage the boss will do (debuff).

This may over complicate things, but hopefully it may spark even better ideas?

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

Support is not an excuse for gimping. This is a design fallacy that keeps cropping up with certain classes. In reality, most (if not all) jobs already bring support at no extra cost. DRG has the too-good-to-be-true battle litany, disembowel, CC mantra; WAR has mitigation and slashing debuffs; NIN has TP refresh that they can actually control; SCH's fairy and its abilities such as magic defence on Eos and AOE Esuna + haste on Selene also come with zero penalty. So why is it that ranged and AST specifically have to suffer for their extra tools? It's obvious that there's no true support classes and no support role in this game at this moment. So the logic "AST is support so it has to be weaker" simply doesn't work. Both BRD and AST have to perform in their own roles first, and bring extra abilities to differentiate them from others in their role second. I mean, ranged have damage penalty integrated into their weapon damage already, they don't have to suffer extr... but I'm trailing away. So AST.

RNG gods do not love you. You can't design a game like this around RNG. It simply doesn't work with the battle design. Everything is premeditated. We know when there's gonna be a tank buster, when there's gonna be a burn phase and when the boss is going to jump. All the other classes got abilities to answer those specific situations at completely predictable times. Making AST's card buffs largely random means just one thing: they don't matter. You can't design fights against random toolkits. When Akh Morn comes out, you either have your HG, or a bunch of your cooldowns saved specifically for it. You know what you won't have? Bole. It just didn't come up! I WHM'd A2 the other day with an AST co-healer, he was getting Ewers for days and maybe one or two Balance and Bole. MP regen is nice but I already knew how to manage MP in that fight and Ewer did very little for me. It doesn't take a star reader to predict that RNG-based abilities effectively amount to nil because you can't put them up when you actually need to, and if you end up doing so, you just got lucky. Yes, every card is useful, but in many situations their usefulness ends up being negligible simply because you can't reliably answer to problems at correct times. It's like using Goad in a 2-minute fight against single target. Yeah, you're helping... But I wasn't running out of TP anyway. That's the elephant in the room of course. Cards are flavour. Any of those buffs would be good on paper and probably would've been reasonable grounds for reduced healing capability if you could control them like Ninja controls their Mudras, RNG knocks the wind out of them way too hard.

Spear is bad. So bad. Now, what the hell is going on with the Spear. It seems like it'd be the talk of town, eh? Reducing cooldowns! Once again practical applications are very limited. It doesn't alter how you play with most large timers. If you reduce Hallowed Ground cooldown, it's just a bit really, you will still want to hold it out against Akh Morn 4, or against Final Liberation, or against specific situations. Same with Battle Litany. You want Battle Litany for a burn phase, not whenever. On Mudras it straight up doesn't work because anything less than a 20s reduction will bring no results for that ability. If you put it on a BRD or a SMN at the wrong time, you've just ruined their CD alignment plans. So in other words, it does not meaningfully alter how we play. It helps to make things like Leg Sweep / Mercy Stroke / Repelling Shot / Essential Dignity et al. come up faster, I guess. Overall, doesn't feel like the strongest suit (har har).

"But don't just make AST the same as the other two healers!" Why not? It already is! You got your basic cure, stronger cure, AOE heal, regen, AOE regen, raise and esuna. At its most basic, all healers are expected to perform these functions in similar capacity. There's a few flavors here and there, like SCH's AOE regen is stuck on Eos, WHM's got Cure III and AST can alter the effect of Aspected heals. The little diversity while maintaining similar throughtput is all we need really. Nobody ever complains that DRG, MNK and NIN's abilities boil down to 1-2-3 in various configurations, right? So why here? No, the real problem with AST isn't the baseline healing, it's

Uncool cooldowns. It feels like whoever designed the cooldowns for AST didn't actually communicate with battle designers for this game because they feel like they are either made different for the sake of being different or are trying to solve problems that do not exist.
Lightspeed. Well, enough has been said about Lightspeed. It could've been AST's Presence of Mind, instead it's a MP conservation tool with an extra "heal on the go" effect. So they made it helpful while maintaining originality. Lightspeed has been fixed. It's cool now.
Luminiferous Aether. I mained WHM for months in 2.x series and never once did I say "Gee, I wish my enmity reduction move worked like Quelling Strikes instead". Healers don't frontload if they aren't dumb and put their AOE regen before a bunch of adds spawn. They can get a lot of enmity over time however and Shroud of Saints answered the problem perfectly. Remember T9 and how you could build hate on Nael while nobody else could? It worked there. With LA you have to pop it before you start expending MP, but why? Feels like inconvenience for the sake of difference.
Disable. Virus that works against auto-attacks and doesn't work against continious damage such as Akh Morn or Bahamut's Claw. So in other words, a Virus that's less versatile for some reason. Since AST doesn't get access to any form of Virus otherwise, it's cool to have this, but at the very least it should not proc against auto-attacks. It'd be cool if it worked on... say, 3 next actions over its 10 seconds. Is that too strong? It'd help with fast multiples, it would cover the auto-attack problem and it'd just generally be easier to use.
Shuffle. Make it unable to turn up the same card. Full stop.
Time Dilation. Can't find anything wrong with this one. Synergizes well with the cards, the problem is the cards, works great otherwise.
Collective Unconscious. <Sigh> What is the intent behind this move, I wonder? Making you unable to do anything while this ability is rolling is ridiculous when we look at Sacred Soil (on a much shorter cooldown) and Asylum (doesn't prevent you from healing, damaging or executing mechanics). I can think of very few uses. In Bismarck you can put it up while the second half of your team is hitting Bismarck on the spine and you have nothing to do anyway. But WHM can do this even if they're part of the group going on the boss, and furthermore if your party doesn't do the 4-and-4 split, which is possible, well there goes that usefulness. Next, using it as Sacred Soil. Only works as well on phase transitions, and doesn't work for any other situations such as phase 4 Gigaflare because Scholar would take that time to Adlo the tanks for the next Akh Morn or straight up damage the boss. So, phase transitions. First of all, very few bosses even have screen-nuking phase transitions! Primals do, certain raid bosses do and... well, that's it. In practically every case the attack is so drawn out you have 3-4 GCDs to recover effortlessly after it with a Cure III or Medica II or Indomitability. With Diurnal CU, you'd have to give it time to regen people back and that defeats the purpose. All in all, very unwieldy move that loses to its sisters on other healers at practically every turn.
Celestial Opposition. Hahahahahaha 150s CD stun. Hahahahahahahahaha. Are you serious? Give it an Assize/Indomitability effect, reduce cooldown to 120s. I mean, 150s stun. Hahaha oh my god.
Synastry. Perhaps AST's most unique and helpful ability severely gimped by the fact it doesn't get triggered by HOTs or AOE healing, only Benefics. Very, very useful for double-tank situations or moves like Earthshaker, but doesn't feel powerful enough. In 4-man instances is effectively useless. It needs to be triggered by all the heals an AST can cast (ED can be excluded I guess since it goes up to 1000 potency and that's quite a lot) including those that land on AST themselves AND the Synastry target. In this way it could be used as a little single-target Divine Seal and would probably be considered our real powerful healing cooldown. Reduce healing channeling to 30% from 50% in that case, even! I wouldn't mind if it created more situations in which this ability could be used in the first place.

Nocturnal Sect. Aspected Benefic potency should be 280 (285?) to bring it up to Adloquium level. MP consumption should be reduced in that sect. Possibly make it DPS+shielding stance as a result.
Enhanced Benefic. I've seen good ideas about how to make this trait useful. Resetting Essential Dignity cooldown a-la Bloodletter would've been a godsend. If not, instant Benefic II under this trait should not trigger GCD so that it would be actually... instant, and not simply moved to the front of the cast time, making it only so effective.

tl;dr There's two ways to fix AST, which is undeniably underpowered right now: Make it a good buffer, or make it a good healer. The former under this kinda class design would still be subjected to RNG and that'll forever be its falling. Making it a good healer first is much easier.

[shantishanti]

Hola! I'm no raider and barely do a EX run if the weapon doesn't match my current glamour :-P but I would prefer if the Nocturnal set instead of coping SCH would be unique in the shield department. Something similar to a reflective shield that reflects a percentage of damage mitigated. CU is another skill that to my opinion should live up to its name. What I mean is that depending on the ppl inside the CU the shield should be stronger.

[ArcheDragon]

What they said!

[ArcheDragon]

What Karen said! (Stupid no edit feature for phones)

[Dyvid]

snip.

Sorry but AST is FFXIV take on FF gambler. Taking RNG out of card game you might as well just take AST out of the game too. The gambling nature of the class does give reason to increase the power of the buffs though. I do agree with you on other aspects of your post though.

[Psywyn]

I posted this on another thread that seems to have gone.. my thought:

Focusing more on the cards what I'd like to see changed is reduced RNG

So for example, make 'Draw' in to three abilities

Draw Attack - (draws balance or arrow)
Draw Utility - (draws spire or ewer)
Draw Defence - (draws bole or spear)

To keep things more in line have bole and spear give the same Royal Road buff, spire and and balance and arrow also.

This means there would be much less RNG and more access to the buffs we want in a given situation whilst still retaining some of the random card drawing theme that the AST seems to have.
It would also mean we could prepare a nice AoE buff etc before tougher pulls like savage Faust.

Edit afterthought: Maybe Royal Road could be an ability, like Royal Road: Expand, or Royal Road: Extend. So we do not need to burn our cards anymore with the above idea. To balance you could give it a slightly longer cooldown.

Just a thought

[Eudyptes]

Synastry. Perhaps AST's most unique and helpful ability severely gimped by the fact it doesn't get triggered by HOTs or AOE healing, only Benefics. Very, very useful for double-tank situations or moves like Earthshaker, but doesn't feel powerful enough. In 4-man instances is effectively useless. It needs to be triggered by all the heals an AST can cast (ED can be excluded I guess since it goes up to 1000 potency and that's quite a lot) including those that land on AST themselves AND the Synastry target. In this way it could be used as a little single-target Divine Seal and would probably be considered our real powerful healing cooldown. Reduce healing channeling to 30% from 50% in that case, even! I wouldn't mind if it created more situations in which this ability could be used in the first place.

I agree with most of your post, except for this. Synastry + AE heals/HoTs would be insanely overpowered. They would absolutely have to knock down how much the target is healed for by AE/HoTs to 25% at the very least. Otherwise you could aspected helios and basically have 3.5 helios HoTs running on the tank in addition to his 1. Then drop aspected benefic on the group and you have another 4.5 regens on the tank. And THEN you can cast regular helios for a 1,305 potency cure on the tank, while still raid healing. For 20 sec you would have a near invincible tank unless he got 1 shot.

Now, while that situation is very mana inefficient (was just making a point of how powerful it could be), realistically you wouldn't have to go that far for it to be OP. I think the fact it could be a 1,305 potency heal on the tank while raid healing is too much as it is. Even at a 25% reduction it would still be very powerful and possibly subject to minor nerfs.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

I agree with most of your post, except for this. Synastry + AE heals/HoTs would be insanely overpowered. They would absolutely have to knock down how much the target is healed for by AE/HoTs to 25% at the very least. Otherwise you could aspected helios and basically have 3.5 helios HoTs running on the tank in addition to his 1. Then drop aspected benefic on the group and you have another 4.5 regens on the tank. And THEN you can cast regular helios for a 1,305 potency cure on the tank, while still raid healing. For 20 sec you would have a near invincible tank unless he got 1 shot. Now, while that situation is very mana inefficient (was just making a point of how powerful it could be), realistically you wouldn't have to go that far for it to be OP. I think the fact it could be a 1,305 potency heal on the tank while raid healing is too much as it is. Even at a 25% reduction it would still be very powerful and possibly subject to minor nerfs.

Well I'm not a math guy. I guess HoTs are out then. Or like... For AOE, only take the 50% from one person, not from all 8.

Sorry but AST is FFXIV take on FF gambler. Taking RNG out of card game you might as well just take AST out of the game too. The gambling nature of the class does give reason to increase the power of the buffs though. I do agree with you on other aspects of your post though.

Same thing as with BLU - the game design simply doesn't support the idea.

[Budi]

Alright, adding on my previous post Link.

Now that I have gotten my Scholar to 60, and I have done Alexander (Savage) on both AST and SCH (cleared on SCH) I can give you a better review.

Before anything else, I healed Savage A1 just fine on my AST, but the WHM had to work much more than compared to when I was on SCH.

To no surprise the DPS and Solo-Healing on SCH was better than on AST. Having 9 Energy Drains at the beginning is just too good. I did around 650 DPS on Scholar, while on AST I did around 500 DPS.

Generally AST and SCH have the same potency on their heals, but what makes SCH excel are the way stronger abilities they have.

Cards:
The cards AST has are all meh, even if you have "perfect" card buffs, they barely make any difference. In the Faust fight a SCH does more DPS than an AST with extended Balance/Arrow cards.
Also Bole is bad because you have to use it instead of other cards while Scholars get a free AoE Bole, aka Sacred Soil.

Celestial Opposition and Time Dilation:
Two abilities to make cards slightly better, but still don't make up for the DPS loss.
CO can be used for other abilities like Lightspeed and Luminous, but SCH has way better MP management anyway.

Collective Unconsciousness:
The shied is very situational, and there is a single use for it in the whole A1 fight, but I didn't even bother to use it, because pre-casting a heal had a bigger effect than 10% damage reduction.

Disable:
Cheap Virus knock-off that actually would stack with Virus, but also only works for a single hit. While useful it gives AST nothing that SCH couldn't do better.

Essential Dignity:
It's basically the same as Lustrate, and therefor is probably the only skill that's on par with SCH. Even though being able to cast 3 Lustrates in row has his own uses.

Now about the Abilities AST doesn't have, that SCH does.

Fairy:
A 300 single target cure that costs no MP and can be used while DPSing, dodging, healing other targets, etc.
Then you also get a free AoE Regen and Magic damage reduction with Eos, which in A1 (Savage) is really good.

Eye for an Eye, Virus and Sacred Soil:
SCH have a huge AoE shield, that can be casted from far away, and you can still use skills while it's up. As I said Virus is a "better" version than Disable, though both stack. Eye for an Eye (possibly) adds an additional 10% damage reduction that AST doesn't have.
That's 35(55)% damage reduction (vs magic) for 10 seconds that a SCH can do, compared to the 10% AST can do for a single attack.

Indomitability:
SCH get a free instant cast medica you can use every 30 seconds.

Deployment Tactics:
With this skill you can possibly give your whole raid a 8000 damage shield. Remember that time when Opressor jumps into the air and does the big AoE damage? I had multiple times where the party would literally take 0 damage just by using this skill.

Now if you just compare the damage reduction, AST is complete garbage, but the saddest part is, that AST is also worse at healing in general.
And as mentioned before, the utility cards add is being outshined by the SCH dps capabilities.

TL;DR: Comparing Nocturnal AST with SCH is like comparing Lancer with Dragoon.