Astrologian Needs Changes

So from what you are saying white mage with a 400 potency heal has it so much stronger then an astro with a 380 potency heal and if in nocturnal that potency is lowered down to 6 if you count the bonus from noc stance. Savage is designed with a healer above astro that can heal for 1.5% more? I highly doubt that. The healing difference between both thematically is the same with white mage only really winning out on a stronger and cheaper regen. You had me until you started dipping into where Astro has no problems. Healing as an astro is fine and I hope Se also realizes that. It is the shuffle double pulling the same card twice and the meh weak sauce the buffs are that is the issue. That is possibly the only real issue with astro.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

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While the baseline potency of AST's heals are similar to WHM and SCH, in practice, they are drastically lower over time; particularly because they lack any sort of healing cooldowns (outside of Essential Dignity, which both SCH and WHM have similar skills to) or ability to increase their output. AST's MP efficiency and recovery are also significantly lower than WHM or SCH, as well, further widening the gap in performance. You're also comparing the potency of healing in Nocturnal Sect, which is by far less efficient and potent (over time) than Dirunal Sect; even with a WHM, AST is better off healing in Dirunal Sect, especially since the HoTs stack between them.

AST's healing potential is no where near SCH's or WHM's, especially in a burst scenario.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

So from what you are saying white mage with a 400 potency heal has it so much stronger then an astro with a 380 potency heal and if in nocturnal that potency is lowered down to 6 if you count the bonus from noc stance. Savage is designed with a healer above astro that can heal for 1.5% more? I highly doubt that. The healing difference between both thematically is the same with white mage only really winning out on a stronger and cheaper regen. You had me until you started dipping into where Astro has no problems. Healing as an astro is fine and I hope Se also realizes that. It is the shuffle double pulling the same card twice and the meh weak sauce the buffs are that is the issue. That is possibly the only real issue with astro.

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There's a lot more to it than just potency.
an astro is pretty comparable to a white mage in playstyle

they have spells similar to cure, cure II, medica, and tetragrammaton
and then they have a spell that is like a mana inefficient renew or a really mana inefficient and weak but instant cast adloquiem
and a numerically weaker medica II or succor

It's a decent kit but then you compare to just say a white mage who on top of that has divine seal, presence of mind, benediction, assize, cure III fast stoneskin, and several traits for mana efficiency

play them both and you'll see for yourself it's like your playing a kiddy version of a real healer
and the comparison to scholar is not even really existent they just made scholar a beast in the amount of emergency healing and utility they bring

But the healing is actually passable for what we currently have so it comes to the astro utility
synastry is actually very good with the only gripe that it doesn't work for overhealing at all
disable is very bad, if they reworked it to be "next skill or spell" so the invisible auto attacks during skill casts didn't eat it, it would be ok
celestial opposition is kind of just "ooo pretty sparkles"
time dilation is good if you can manage to get proper cards up
and the cards
spire and ewer are basically useless outside of warrior and dark knight
bole is usually the only card you draw when you don't need it and never around when you do
the spear is garbage for anything but spreading it to make your luminiferous aether cooldown quicker
and the balance and the arrow are amazing (if you manage to get them)

but the issue is you can shuffle around cards for like 2 minutes sometimes just to get one good buff out of it or you may get nothing but spear for an entire fight or you can just draw balance over and over again for an entire fight. It's so random with like 4/6 of the cards being nothing but fodder, if they were all actually really good all the time it would be a different story. Having to choose the right target for each awesome card is a good thing VS "blech i keep getting useless crap!"


so it boils down to choices of
one of the two healers with strong healing, good mana efficiency, good damage potential, and reliable utility
or
the healer with weaker healing, bad mana efficiency, bad damage potential, and unreliable utility

What I would like to see isi some buffs to the cards.
This is what i would do

-Merge ewer and spire, so it becomes -20% MP and TP consumption.
-The bole also increases in 10% the healing received
-Make a card that gives a 10% damage vulnerability to enemies.(It would replace the card lost from merging ewer and spire)
-The spear also reduces the cooldown of your used abilities.

They need to either boost the potency of all cards regardless the RR buffer potency or they need to make a % based chance to drop each card by importance (like you will always have low chance to drop Ewer/Spire, an average chance to drop Bow/Spear and a big chance to drop Arrow/Balance).

Or they really can do anything else, but the point is either we stay with the RNG but we have more potency of the cards or we reduce RNG while staying with the current potency off the cards.

About healing I think we need only 1 "emergency skill" that could be Lighspeed when changed and maybe add a MP gain in one of the others CD to be almost equal to WHM. Nothing more is needed imo

It's probably already been said but I'd prefer it if The Spire and The Ewer would recover TP/MP instead of reducing the costs.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

Yoshi-P said they have accounted for healers being able to DPS in raids.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi-P

Yoshida: For development, such as with Bahamut's Coils, the development team assumes what the item level should be for general equipment on players when they clear a raid. They sum up the basic DPS for four DPS and tanks at that assumed item level and cut that by about 10-15% for the minimum clear DPS.

Once again, healer DPS was not included in the development team's calculation as it was for other jobs, so you should just think of healer DPS as a last way to get your overall party's DPS up to where it needs to be.

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I don't know why so many ppl have misunderstood what he said, the wording is quite clear to me. Had to cut out some of the quote cause i can't post more than 1000 characters, but the main point should be clear.

I'd like to see lightspeed changed to make all spells instant-cast for the duration, and have the cross-class changed from thaumaturge to arcanist, so AST can cross-class virus and eye for an eye. Being the only caster without those two feels gimp.

Spread should work out of combat
Shuffle should give one of the other 5 cards
You should be able to change stance in combat
Nocturnal Sect potency buff should apply to all spells, not just heals.
Draw Card cooldown should be reduced to 15s
Aspected Helios and benefic regens need to stack when cast by other AST, similar to how regen from two white mages can stack.
Benefic2 proc should include a mana cost reduction, either 50%, or 100%. As it is now, the procs are mostly ignored, or saved for predictable burst healing to squeeze more potency out of Essential Dignity.

Even with those, I still feel AST would be inferior to scholar in almost every way, but at least they'd be comparable.

The primary thing that AST are missing, are cooldowns to deal with spike damage.
Virus and Eye would help, but aren't really enough.
WHM gets: divine seal, presence of mind, virus, eye for an eye, benediction, tetragrammaton
SCH gets: lustrate, sacred soil, indomitability, virus, eye for an eye, fey illumination, fey covenant
AST gets: lightspeed (questionable), essential dignity, disable (questionable), bole, arrow.

In fact, the only one that AST can actually rely on, is Essential Dignity. Which, is a fantastic skill, except for its 40s cooldown. Used on a Walking Dead DRK, or Holmganged Warrior at 1hp, it seems to be a 1000 potency heal, which is fantastic. Outside of that, however, is nothing. I don't count collective unconscious, as it's not practical to use 99% of the time. (or maybe I just don't know how to use it).

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Originally Posted by Tashim

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For SCH, you forgot Deployment Tactics and Emergency Tactics. While Deployment Tactics usefulness can be debated, Emergency Tactics doubles the amount Aldo and Succor heal at the cost of not shielding and there's not cost to use it.

I agree with most of your suggestions.


My suggestion:
-Increase Benefic's potency to match Cure/Physick.
-Instead of letting use change modes freely during battle, gives us a skill that will change what mode we're in OR allows us to use the effect of the other mode on the next skill we use.
-Instead of cost cuts, maybe make Ewer and Spire refresh MP and TP, this seems much more helpful.
-Make an ability that spreads the effect of cards to the party outside of Royal Road. This is such an important thing for any kind of buffing class to have and shouldn't be gated behind a 1/3 RNG chance.
-A skill that lets us pick what card we get. There are only two cards that work in any situation: Balance and Arrow, the rest are either really situational, Bole and Spear, or fluff, Ewer and Spire. One suggestion for a skill like that was to have it cycle through the cards and we have to say when to stop and we get what ever card it landed on.
-Allow different card effects to stack on the same character. As of now, cards can't stack, which is a huge negative to a party with 2 ASTs in it.
-Allow us to do actions while under Collective Unconscious. As it it now, it is highly situational and short lived.
-Add a skill to help boost our healing potency. Wee need an Uh-oh button. :B

I don't think they'll raise the potency of Benefic without also raising its mana cost.

@L60, Benefic cost 353 mana, for its 380 potency heal (0.92 mana-per-potency), while cure is 442 mana for its 400 potency (1.1 mana per potency). so in actually, Benefic is more efficient. Its just less potential throughput, but its alot cheaper for what you get.
I think that for what it is, a low-cost, spammable heal, benefic is great.

What AST needs, is burst capabilities.
WHM gets burst healing in the form of divine seal and presence of mind.
SCH gets burst healing from Eos (Fey Covenant), burning aetherflow stacks with lustrate or indominability, regen from Eos as well (which is very strong when paired with rouse and Illumination, so I view it as a cooldown), but also gets mitigation to make the healing required less: Sacred Soil/Shadow Flare, Fey Covenant.
All casters except AST get access to virus and eye for an eye.

What AST gets, is a long cooldown Essential Dignity, and a Benefic2 proc, both of which are only good for a situation in which you'd use a lustrate: a single damage spike. Those don't fill the role of burst healing for 20s to compensate for a large pull, or debuff on a tank, or similar situation. All an AST has for that, is if they're lucky enough to have an Arrow card to use on themself for extra speed. I've taken to saving spread for Arrow just for myself if I know that such a time is coming.

I had forgotten about the card stacking problem, and I agree completely. Cards need to not overwrite each other. I'd go so far as to say I'd like to put two cards on the same person by spreading one first, drawing another and playing them both on one person.
Being able to more reliably get good cards would go a long way to making that useful. Part of that, I think, is that most of the cards aren't that useful. Rather than skipping the "Bad" cards, I'd rather see all the cards "good" in more situations.
Make Bole abit stronger, perhaps by adding a healing received buff to it in addition to mitigation, or a regen effect. (this could be good for Nocturnal Sect AST to have access to a regen, similar to how SCH have access to one.
Spire and Ewer both do the same type of thing, but only apply to one type of class or another. they should be merged.
Also, could probably do another card that provided mana/tp recovery, instead of cost reduction. This would make both cards useful to anyone.
Spear is strong, but very difficult to coordinate. Perhaps it should apply to cooldowns that are in use in addition to ones that are activated during its window. For ones that are in use, I'd only expect it to affect the remaining time, so that its better to use it around then time that cooldowns are activated, rather than being completely useless when it lands right after activation.
Balance is good, and Arrow is good. Neither one is a waste.

I do agree, that a healing potency cooldown needs to be part of an AST toolkit, they're an essential part of WHM and SCH burst heals. Perhaps a cooldown that gave Nocturnal Sect a burst of speed, or Durinel Sect a burst of potency. A little yin to go with the yang, so to speak.