Revamping Astrologian

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Originally Posted by AlphaFox

I cant agree with this, then we would see ASTs standing there trying to find the card they want till they finally get it.

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I can see your point but on the flip side of the coin there are many times I'm waiting on a player to catch up or whatever and would like to save the "good" card I just drew until the fight actually starts. We all know how annoying it is to buff the tank and have him sit there till all the buffs wear, then he starts the fight.

All in all, a lot of good ideas. It seems like folks here are seeing the same issues as I am. In regard to the proposed change to Collective Unconscious, 70% does sound rather steep, but I smell what you're stepping in. There needs to be a significant change to the ability if we must.. how is it they say this...ah yes, "become a scarecrow". Then there's also the significantly smaller area of effect when compared to the counterparts, Asylum and Sacred Soil. Sure, it has it's uses at the moment, but it feels limited simply for limitations sake.

I'm all for having existing cooldowns redesigned or buffed as need be, and I'd certainly like to see the cards made more significant. There's another thread all about that issue. If our utility is to be the excuse for our limitations, at least let that utility be worth the cuts we're taking to our kit in terms of potency and cooldown designs.

I have the impression checking the job abilities of AST that SE released this job without the right testings. I hope SE balance this jobs asap because they really did bad job balancing the AST in the developer team (negative point for someone in SE!). I supose they didnt have enought time to test even more deeper this job before the HW release.

I love the job, but anyone who plays it should be know that this job is not OK atm.

I do agree the 70% damage mitigation might be over the top for Collective Unconscious.

I was thinking more of a solo healing scenario, like 4 man dungeons or when the other healer dies in a raid, where the skill should be worth enough for you to stand still and not do anything for the next 18 seconds.

Then again the reason we have this skill is to buy us time for mana/cooldown management and it does limit you and your team's movement so it already has its downsides.

I don't think the other changes would make it OP however.

I committed to make this class my main and leveled it to 60. Last few nights have been doing primals and decided to switch back to Scholar.

The cure potency is just too low. I feel it. I have to heal more to make up for it which means more mana. Lowering our cure potency yet having the same mp cost is really a strain. I found myself constantly using spread on ewer and trying to royal road a second ewer just to make up for this. This consumed two potential raid buffs on myself or my Whm counterpart who was also having to heal more to make up for where I was falling behind. I lacked the ability to patch heal. Synastry was great and saved me mana but the CD was just way too long. Essential dignity CD is also too long. I had to use it on CD to save mana and really lacked any other means of patch healing.

There's too much rng to be a consistent support class. The drk kept having tp issues and sometimes I'd get spire for him sometimes not. Shuffle is pointless because we can draw the same card. The class has so much rng they should have at least made shuffle so we don't draw the same card. I don't need the same card if I shuffle it. Dnt get me wrong, I enjoy the rng of this class but we should have some way to reduce it. I can't do anything when I draw the same card over and over.

We have no way to patch heal. Collective unconscious is impractical in movement heavy fights. On my scholar I could E4E the tank reliably for consistent mitigation. Virus also didn't just mitigate a single hit and would last a full 10 seconds to help with hard hitting adds. On astrologian I would be praying for a bole when our tank was getting trucked and even if I got it up it still didn't feel like enough. I just felt like I was being carried too much with the healing when I never felt like that as a dps scholar.

I hardly used royal road. The buffs I did get were too important to get out. I didn't feel comfortable eating a card for royal road without first using spread to hold the card I'd be buffing. The CD on spread is also too long so I was really at the mercy of rng in using whichever card became available. I loved getting 6 ewer in a row because of how fast I'd go oom otherwise but I shouldn't need to use that many on myself.

My team was struggling to meet dps checks. One dps had an i145 weapon so it became necessary for me to dps. Unfortunately I didn't have any way to support my cohealer while I did so. No virus, no E4E, and as I said, my insta heal was always on CD. The cards were just to unreliable too make to for the dps I could have done as a scholar by using them to buff the raid. Synastry was only useful if I was actively healing so I had to save it for after my Whm started to fall behind when I was in clerics and had to switch stance to heal. It would take much longer to help catch up with topping off the raid than it would have on my scholar.

That said, that class is super fun. I love doing 4 man content with it. Seeing the dps go ham with the buffs is very satisfying. For ARR lazy healing the class would be fine. But for progression raiding whm and sch just bring too much that astrologian just doesn't when looking at all the post 50 skills they got. Astrologian is very much meh on being a reliable support or healing class.

A shorter CD on draw, spread, shuffle and no CD on royal road would help a lot. Buff potency and lower mp cost of skills. We have too little in the way of mana refresh. Increase potency of our dots. It just isn't enough when scholar has bane and shadow flare.

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Originally Posted by PetiteMalFleur

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Are you using Luminiferous Aether. While your post is decent I didn't see any mention of using this ability. By reading the ability it says it reduces enmity, however cast it and then read what the tool tip says on your buff bar. Its a mana regen. As far as it not being reliable I would disagree with you. Sure its hard to heal as a AST, but I am speed running most current dungeons right now. However, make no mistake, AST needs a little help from the dev teams even though I am sticking with this to the end.

Edit: Also as somebody taught me using spear and then Lumi will reduce the recast timer to 96 seconds instead of 120.

Second Edit: Also when you cast Aspected Helios and then Aspected Benefic you should follow that up with Time Dialation it extends the duration of both abilities by 15 seconds which in turn gives you a 45 second Aspected Helios , and a 34 second Aspected Benefic. I generally put this on the tank.

Everything I have seen with AST is literally about NOT over healing. All this job is doing is forcing you to understand that each situation doesn't always need big heals or more HoTs.

While I see a strain with mana use I have always had sufficient mana to see through to the end of a fight due to using every tool available to me as an AST.

Indeed it does, ended up testing this last night with my watch, enhanced spear before Aether 84secs, so I am certainly throwing spear into my spread and holding that. However even with Spear and Aether, doing the two new dungeons I found my MP running out. Only reason we beat (dont recall name, Vanu dungeon?) the final boss was because the bard was able to play his song and I am sitting at 12.4k MP. The other dungeon my MP ran out last second as he died overall I am happy but could use a few tweaks.

Lol. If any of these asinine ideas go through goodbye any other healer. It's good to know that you cleared all turns. Glad I can see that people who can mechanically learn jump rope mechanics can still have not a single clue on balance.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Lol. If any of these asinine ideas go through goodbye any other healer. It's good to know that you cleared all turns. Glad I can see that people who can mechanically learn jump rope mechanics can still have not a single clue on balance.

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oh the irony.
Vlady, Master of Balancing Threads, heres one example: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-real-content

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Lol. If any of these asinine ideas go through goodbye any other healer. It's good to know that you cleared all turns. Glad I can see that people who can mechanically learn jump rope mechanics can still have not a single clue on balance.

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Please list why you are so against any of these changes. I like constructive criticism and all but right now your comment is kinda useless since its aimed at me on a personal level, rather than the topic at hand.