Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

...Which should definitely be changed to lower the cooldown of abilities already on cooldown as well.

Otherwise, you'll likely never use it on anyone except yourself and even then it'll be situational (or it always gets RRed...).

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Spear card doesnt affecting abilities on cooldown is in ACCEPTED BUGS. I hope they fix it soon :3 This card will be very useful in that case.

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Originally Posted by Arcana

Spear card doesnt affecting abilities on cooldown is in ACCEPTED BUGS. I hope they fix it soon :3 This card will be very useful in that case.

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That is actually great news. Thanks for posting.

So spear card SHOULD in truth if it works well affect skill that are ALREADY in cool down? Wow it would rock

Remember guys the 3 new jobs are still new and people are still learning the new jobs

they arnt even out for that long and people all ready critisize them like they know what they are talking about.

Also most people has not really figured out yet how to play the new jobs correctly

i mean do people remember the days when arcanist AKA summoner/scholar
was announced those JOBS sucked as hell but SE made them better and when heavensward came out they became even much better than they were before.

And most importantly dont critisize anyone on what job they are playing and call there job bad if you dont like that job than keep that to your self let everyone play what they are comfortable with.

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

I would think any intelligent raid leader would allow flexibility rather than "you must play XXX job or get lost" :), maybe your raid leader ain't that intelligent too!! :)

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Well said.

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Originally Posted by Arcana

Spear card doesnt affecting abilities on cooldown is in ACCEPTED BUGS. I hope they fix it soon :3 This card will be very useful in that case.

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Ooh, awesome!

Speaking of which, has the bug where an enhanced Benefic II proc is expended when casting it normally reported as well? I might go do that if not...

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Speaking of which, has the bug where an enhanced Benefic II proc is expended when casting it normally reported as well? I might go do that if not...

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I started noticing this yesterday, when chain casting heals on the tank, it actually put me in a precarious position. I saw the proc pop, and as I finished a hard casted Benefic II, I queued Cleric Stance to put in DPS, only to find that the proc had been consumed by my hard cast, leaving me without a catch-up heal.

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Originally Posted by Seryl199

I started noticing this yesterday, when chain casting heals on the tank, it actually put me in a precarious position. I saw the proc pop, and as I finished a hard casted Benefic II, I queued Cleric Stance to put in DPS, only to find that the proc had been consumed by my hard cast, leaving me without a catch-up heal.

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Yeah, just reported it as a bug here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...38#post3084738

Hopefully, they'll get on it. :)

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Originally Posted by Arcana

Spear card doesnt affecting abilities on cooldown is in ACCEPTED BUGS. I hope they fix it soon :3 This card will be very useful in that case.

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Spear Card works fine. Problem is not everybody in your party is even going to know what spear does for them. In order for the spear card to work you essentially have to inform your party that it is up, and then they can use any ability and it will shorten the timer. Its a matter of communication and others understanding why I just used the card in the first place. What it does not do is reset the time if said ability is already on cool down.

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Originally Posted by RoseM

lvl58 AST now. Healed approximately 10 runs of Vault yesterday. My thoughts so far:

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Continue on my own thread. I'm a lvl 60 AST now, healed 10 runs of Ravana EX last time and got my 190 weapon. Thoughts so far:

1. On the healing side, AST can do his job, but his fault tolerance is really low. The reason behind that is AST lacks of burst healing ability. E.g. when the other healer died, I know I can solo heal the party for at least 30sec ish as a WHM, with Divine seal, Presence of Mind, Tetragrammaton, and Benediction, I know I can do that even better as a SCH, with 9 stacks of Aetherflow, Virus, Lustrate, Indomitability, Both Tactics, and Dissipation. But when it comes to AST, all I have is Essential Dignity, and perhaps an Arrow card if I was lucky... Lightspeed? Are you kidding me??

2. AST's mana regen is also the worst among all 3 healers. Your resource would be drained to Raise 1 person during Ravana EX, it's impossible to raise multiple death as AST.

3. On the buff side, AST's cards help with burn phase, but don't have any impact on raid DPS over a long fight. Let's do a math:
3.1 The Strongest DPS buff AST can get is an Expanded Arrow/Balance. The chance of having this combo in 2 draws (1min) is 2/9. Assume we can Shuffle once every 1 min, then this chance increases to approximately 1/3.
3.2 The best situation is AST keeps getting this same Combo every 1min in an 8 mins fight, the chance of this happen is: (1/3)^8=0.015%. Even when you are so lucky, your contribution to the raid DPS is still 20% lower than Selene. Most of the time, AST's DPS boost is just negligible.
3.3 Conclusion is AST is definitely not a DPS booster. If you are brining AST to group and hope she could help your party meet the DPS check like SCH used to do, then it's not going to happen. In fact I found the Most useful card for AST was probably Bole, then Ewer.

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Originally Posted by RoseM

3.3 Conclusion is AST is definitely not a DPS booster. In fact I found the Most useful card for AST was probably Bole, then Ewer.

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You've got more relevant experience than I, but I would never classify AST as a sustained buffer. Though their buff contribution over the course of a battle is relevant, it's their application of buffs in response to mechanics that is most important. Got some adds that need to be burned now? A BLM with Raging Strikes, Foe's Requiem, and Enhanced Balance will make short work of that. Raid wide AoE? Expanded Bole. If you're going to compare to Selene, why not bring both? You'll get a sustained buff during AST's downtime, and a more bursty buff for handling mechanics, which allows DPS to get back on the boss faster.

I absolutely agree, though, that AST's inability to recover from mistakes is very prominent. You reach maximum throughput very quickly due to lack of relevant CD's, and if the encounter's damage exceeds that, it's a fast wipe, no questions.

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Originally Posted by Donarudo

Spear Card works fine. Problem is not everybody in your party is even going to know what spear does for them. In order for the spear card to work you essentially have to inform your party that it is up, and then they can use any ability and it will shorten the timer. Its a matter of communication and others understanding why I just used the card in the first place. What it does not do is reset the time if said ability is already on cool down.

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Even with communication, it's still the WORST card to draw.

I mean, say you're about to blow a cooldown: do you wait for a spear? Do you waste your precious spread on a spear? Is anyone else going to hold off on blowing a cooldown in the hopes that the AST might draw a spear?

The biggest problem I see with AST is that it seems to be WAY too much micromanagement for far too little payoff. Sure, you can spread this, shuffle that, blow cooldowns to extend buffs on a single target because it's not going to reach all of the party members who have the buff on them anyway, but in the end, all the extra time you spend doing all of this still doesn't bring you within the range of usefulness of a WHM or SCH.

@Seryl the point is you cannot rely on your deck. Sure it's all nice if you say you can use an expanded bole + disable + collective unconscious or whatever to mitigate party wide attacks, but you cannot be sure that you'll have bole available when you need it because of rng, even if you factor in Spread. This means that every new mechanic must be manageable even without cards so you can just use a SCH and benefit from the higher healing throughput for all the duration of the encounter without having to rely on rng. Also I'd be playing in Nocturnal since the other healer in my party is a WHM and Nocturnal is very bad atm. It gives weaker shields than a SCH's while being very MP consuming. Not good at all.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

@Seryl the point is you cannot rely on your deck. Sure it's all nice if you say you can use an expanded bole + disable + collective unconscious or whatever to mitigate party wide attacks, but you cannot be sure that you'll have bole available when you need it because of rng, even if you factor in Spread. This means that every new mechanic must be manageable even without cards so you can just use a SCH and benefit from the higher healing throughput for all the duration of the encounter without having to rely on rng. Also I'd be playing in Nocturnal since the other healer in my party is a WHM and Nocturnal is very bad atm. It gives weaker shields than a SCH's while being very MP consuming. Not good at all.

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I'm fully aware of that. This thread of full of things that WHM can do and things that SCH can do. I know that, been playing them since 2.0. I'm here to discuss what AST can do. AST has a chance of providing powerful buffs that can help the party overpower a mechanic that the party may just be able to overcome. If you're looking for AST to SCH or WHM, you're going to be disappointed, every time. Now, if you want to discuss that RNG is too difficult for AST to manage, or that an encounter is too taxing for AST to heal without additionally taxing the other healer, I'm game.

Nocturnal Sect, for example. I'd rather be in Diurnal any day, but if spike damage is really high, there needs to be a healer to mitigate. AST can do that reasonably well, but they lose out on HoT's which really cuts down their efficiency, causing, like you said, AST to use more MP or the other healer picking up the slack.

I'm fine with most of the Draw mechanic, although Shuffle could be a lower CD if only to combat getting shafted on RNG and drawing the same card. Others have suggested that Shuffling a card should remove it from the pool of possible draws, that sounds more reasonable for a 90 second CD.

you have math and a ravana ex healer telling you that AST buffs are negligible and yet you speak of "powerdful buffs".

AST buffs are weak and random. Even if you could choose every single card, they would still not be strong.

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Originally Posted by Nague

a ravana ex healer

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Is this even a relevant qualification? Ravana EX is quite easy.

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Originally Posted by Nague

Even if you could choose every single card, they would still not be strong.

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So Bole + Nocturnal Collective Unconcious is weak? Seems to me it gives more mitigation than what a SCH would be able to do.

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Originally Posted by Seryl199

cut-

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I'm just trying to compare AST to other healers to see the good/bad points of these 3 jobs since I have to choose quickly which one to pick for Alexander Hard. As of now I believe that the weak buffs are not enough to compensate for the weaker heals/shields and rng of the AST. After Lv 50 you get...time dilation and celestial opposition. Thinking about the utility these 2 skills give compared to the likes of indomitability and deployment/emergency tactics. Uncounscious is strictly worse than Soil, I think we can all agree on that. So what is it that an AST can do better then a WHM or a SCH given that it's worse than both at their respective "specializations" I wonder? This is an honest question. Do you think that cards are enough? My answer would be no, but maybe I'm not using them at their full potential, dunno.
As for shuffle, that's the solution I was thinking about as well.

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Originally Posted by Remilia_Nightfall

So Bole + Nocturnal Collective Unconcious is weak? Seems to me it gives more mitigation than what a SCH would be able to do.

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Sadly not. Expanding halves the potency of a buff, so you have 5% damage reduction for bole + 10% for Uncounscious if your talking about party wide damage mitigation. SCH has 10% soil + stronger succor shield (or what about adlo + deployment tactics? should be a great combo but I haven't tried it yet) and virus which I think is better than disable, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not even going to consider covenant. And I'm really missing E4E. If something similar to t13's gigaflare is waiting for us in alexander hard I'm afraid AST will have a tough time.

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Originally Posted by Nague

you have math and a ravana ex healer telling you that AST buffs are negligible and yet you speak of "powerdful buffs".

AST buffs are weak and random. Even if you could choose every single card, they would still not be strong.

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Lol from the way you state that post it makes it sound like rav ex is hard. And he did the fight on astro.... Soooo why do we need whms if ast/sch can handle things?

That satisfying feeling in a random duty when you land a Balance card on a DPS seconds before they limit break and kill the boss.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderThorolund

That satisfying feeling in a random duty when you land a Balance card on a DPS seconds before they limit break and kill the boss.

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Yep been there done that...its amazing

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Originally Posted by Donarudo

Yep been there done that...its amazing

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I see you in all the astro threads spouting praise and misinformation and this just takes the cake, Limit Break dmg is calculated by the partys average weapon ilvl and has absolutely nothing to do with dmg buffs.

All in all the class is fun but it needs some serious tweaking, the cards in particular, before Alex Savage is released

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

So what is it that an AST can do better then a WHM or a SCH given that it's worse than both at their respective "specializations" I wonder? This is an honest question. Do you think that cards are enough? My answer would be no, but maybe I'm not using them at their full potential, dunno.

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I think the cards are enough, but we're unable to manipulate them enough for Draw to be consistently useful. I'm not saying you should get your ideal draw every time, but to at least be able to consistently weed out a bad draw so you can help someone rather than glare at your third Spire in a row would be nice. AST also needs a "catch-up" ability, I hate needing to use cards like Arrow (especially RR'd) on myself to keep up on healing because nothing else in my toolkit helps. Falling behind two minutes on relevant buffs just to accomplish my primary role really sucks the "support" feel from the job when I end up supporting myself first.

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Originally Posted by jumanjilover89

I see you in all the astro threads spouting praise and misinformation and this just takes the cake, Limit Break dmg is calculated by the partys average weapon ilvl and has absolutely nothing to do with dmg buffs.

All in all the class is fun but it needs some serious tweaking, the cards in particular, before Alex Savage is released

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Well you learn something new everyday lol.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

people are under valuing Spire on the forums. 20-30% CD reduction can be very impactfull

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If you mean Spear, yes, it's powerful. However, until/unless they change it to affect active CDs, it will continue to be difficult to use effectively outside of planned setups (which is also difficult since RNG can decide not to hand you a Spear at all).

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

people are under valuing Spire on the forums. 20-30% CD reduction can be very impactfull

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I think you mean "Spear", but yeah, while it hypothetically could be awesome, the amount of coordination required for it is too much and not likely to happen even in the best of circumstances.

Now, if they fix the bug and Spear reduces the timer on cooldowns that were already cooling down when you received the spear buff, THEN it'll be one of the best cards you can draw.

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

people are under valuing Spire on the forums. 20-30% CD reduction can be very impactfull

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Edit: Everyone jumped on that correction, guess I'll butt out. I have a hard time putting Spire to use outside of AoE's or battles that last several minutes.

I'm a little confused on Spear. How is it supposed to work vs. how is it currently working?

Spear is apparently intended to reduce CD time regardless of whether the skill is active or not. Whether it's supposed to reduce the CD by a % of the CD's base recast or remaining recast time I'm not sure

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

I'm a little confused on Spear. How is it supposed to work vs. how is it currently working?

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Currently, if you use an ability with a cooldown on it while under the effects of Spear, the cooldown is 20% less.

Thus, if you want to actually get any use out of it, you need to use Spear on the target and THEN the target has to blow cooldowns. In order to get any use out of the spear, you'd have to be waiting on blowing cooldowns for it right now, which just ain't gonna happen in the course of battle.

However, they've acknowledged that this is a bug and that Spear is also supposed to reduce cooldowns that are already cooling down.

Once they fix it, Spear will be AMAZING because there will never be a bad time to use it during a fight: people will ALWAYS be blowing cooldowns as soon as they happen, so no matter what, they'll get the benefit.

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Originally Posted by Seryl199

Edit: Everyone jumped on that correction, guess I'll butt out. I have a hard time putting Spire to use outside of AoE's or battles that last several minutes.

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yay for confusing card names..... ya, the TP buff usually just gets RR by me.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Currently, if you use an ability with a cooldown on it while under the effects of Spear, the cooldown is 20% less.

Thus, if you want to actually get any use out of it, you need to use Spear on the target and THEN the target has to blow cooldowns. In order to get any use out of the spear, you'd have to be waiting on blowing cooldowns for it right now, which just ain't gonna happen in the course of battle.

However, they've acknowledged that this is a bug and that Spear is also supposed to reduce cooldowns that are already cooling down.

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Ok, so currently if I use Lumin Aether to regen MP and there's 60 seconds left before I can use it again, and throw a Spear on myself, it does nothing for that skill?

But, once the bug is fixed, it would then speed up the remaining 60 seconds?

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

Ok, so currently if I use Lumin Aether to regen MP and there's 60 seconds left before I can use it again, and throw a Spear on myself, it does nothing for that skill?

But, once the bug is fixed, it would then speed up the remaining 60 seconds?

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Exactly.

If you use Spear BEFORE you use LA, you'd get the benefit, but it does nothing if you use Spear after having already cast LA.

But once the bug is fixed, it'll reduce the cooldown of the ability even IF you've already used it and it's on cooldown, making it one of the best buffs in the game, really.

Can't wait to drop Spear on the party during a burn phase to help restore all those CD's, or pop an Enhanced Spear on a tapped out PLD to give him some buffs back. It's the way I imagined Spear would be in the first place. Exciting!

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Originally Posted by Seryl199

Can't wait to drop Spear on the party during a burn phase to help restore all those CD's, or pop an Enhanced Spear on a tapped out PLD to give him some buffs back. It's the way I imagined Spear would be in the first place. Exciting!

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Now, if they could just make Spire and Ewer restore 20% of MP/TP over 20 seconds instead of reduce, there'd be no card I'd be unhappy to draw...

That would solve a lot of AST problems if using Ewer on yourself would regain MP.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Now, if they could just make Spire and Ewer restore 20% of MP/TP over 20 seconds instead of reduce, there'd be no card I'd be unhappy to draw...

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Aye, that would solve the problems with cards. Ewer and Spire are a little useless right now.

Also am I wrong or the party bonus for AST is piety no matter which stance you're using? This basically means that pairing with a SCH slightly lowers both healers' healing capacity. I wonder if it's possible to change the bonus depending on your stance...

edit: I just learnt about celestial opposition food bug. Good God, why? lol

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

I wonder if it's possible to change the bonus depending on your stance...

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It should be.

And the main issue I have with Spire/Ewer is that they're very specific as to their usefulness. Both are completely useless when:

1. The person is dodging AoEs and won't be using any skills.

2. The person is out of MP/TP already.

There's a 17% of an AST being able to help restore TP/MP so I don't feel like this infringes on BRD/MCH very much (especially since this is only one target, or nerfed hardcore if it's spread to AoE).

This way, if they're full but using TP/MP, we restore it for 20 sec as it's being used, but if they're NOT using TP/MP but have some missing, we can restore that, too.

Really, just making the cards less situational is a huge buff for AST...

It would also help if we could see the TP of our party members. I usually just toss it on the tank and call it a day.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Yeah, just reported it as a bug here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...38#post3084738

Hopefully, they'll get on it. :)

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And it just got moved into "Accepted Bugs". Woot!

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

It should be.

And the main issue I have with Spire/Ewer is that they're very specific as to their usefulness. Both are completely useless when:

1. The person is dodging AoEs and won't be using any skills.

2. The person is out of MP/TP already.

There's a 17% of an AST being able to help restore TP/MP so I don't feel like this infringes on BRD/MCH very much (especially since this is only one target, or nerfed hardcore if it's spread to AoE).

This way, if they're full but using TP/MP, we restore it for 20 sec as it's being used, but if they're NOT using TP/MP but have some missing, we can restore that, too.

Really, just making the cards less situational is a huge buff for AST...

It would also help if we could see the TP of our party members. I usually just toss it on the tank and call it a day.



And it just got moved into "Accepted Bugs". Woot!

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We definitely need to be able to see the TP of our party members. It's very strange to design a game where both can be used for the primary resource pool, but only one shows in groups.

As for the TP/MP cards in general, they're really not all that useless. Pop them before/right at the start of a healing or dps intensive portion of a boss fight, or when the tank pulls a large pack of mobs, and that reduction becomes very useful.

Everyone here is complaining that AST has mana issues and they want us to use less of it, however Ewer does just that (I've also seen complaints on Reddit that large pulls use up all the TP of DPS, so again, the buff would be great for them as well). Beyond that, healers are really the only classes that need it, aside from the occasional usage on PLD/DRK apparently, and everyone here keeps complaining that WHM/SCH have better MP regen capabilities, so it logically follows then that you should just use it on yourself every time you get it.

As for the TP, there's a useful thread on Reddit where the OP gathered the preferred cards of various classes (submitted by players of those classes) that I've found quite useful to reference. Some dps classes do apparently find the TP card helpful.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...d_preferences/

I'm not saying people should never RR Ewer/Spire because obviously double duration is very useful, but there are definitely situations where actually using the buff is a good idea (or Spreading a Ewer for when you know a healing intensive portion of a fight is coming up, etc. as an example.) I see a lot of people saying they use Spear to reduce the CD of Luminiferous Aether which is a great idea, but embracing the RNG aspect of the class, you're not always going to get the card you want, so you need to make the best use of the ones you do, so saving and using Ewer is another way to accomplish the same thing.

Edit: And while I'm thinking along those lines, I think the best AST's are going to be the ones who know how to actually make the best use of everything they have. You simply cannot sit there and try to setup the perfect buff combo because it's not going to happen. Even in some of the class quests they mention that you can't control the cards you're dealt, simply what you do with them. If you aren't getting Bole as much as you want but you're getting Ewer, that can accomplish the same thing. Instead of having to heal the tank less, you can spam heal him more for less MP. Or if you really want Balance but you keep getting Spire, maybe RR it and see what you get next and think about using it - a less than ideal buff is better than no buff at all. One thing this class can is really focused on is the ability to keep up buffs pretty consistently, so we really need to do our best to make sure we're doing that. Otherwise, why bring an AST if all you're doing the entire dungeon run is sitting there cancelling/holding on to things to use at the most ideal moment? They can bring other classes for the occasional buff and more reliable emergency healing or healer dps.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

Exactly.

If you use Spear BEFORE you use LA, you'd get the benefit, but it does nothing if you use Spear after having already cast LA.

But once the bug is fixed, it'll reduce the cooldown of the ability even IF you've already used it and it's on cooldown, making it one of the best buffs in the game, really.

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so it would work like this? lets say there's 100 sec CD on an ability, spear reduces 20%, therefore we get 80 sec left. Now lets say its cast mid way, when the ability has 80/100 sec left, it should therefore reduce the 80sec by 20% = 64sec?