What do you want to see on Astrologian?

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that stance-dancing is just something that "overgeared" healers do. Also consider that, while it definitely can happen that a bad player projects their issues onto you, it can also be the case that your own perception of how things are going is skewed. Most players who claim that they simply can't stance-dance because they have to heal so much are actually overhealing like crazy.

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Or they're solo healing the duty because the other healer is totally out of their track :p

I can't stance dance because a) I don't want to and b) the ui sucks so bad I can't react fast enough to switch back.

And I prefer HP bars topped off. When they're not things get ugly.

Note, I don't have a static. I also don't trust pug tanks.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

I can't stance dance because a) I don't want to and b) the ui sucks so bad I can't react fast enough to switch back.

And I prefer HP bars topped off. When they're not things get ugly.

Note, I don't have a static. I also don't trust pug tanks.

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I'm not going to criticize you for not stance dancing, since the healing role is to heal, but I find that there's SO much downtime in almost any content when it comes to healing that I feel lazy if I'm not casting something. I'll even appreciate the non- stanced DoT's that some mages put up, at least they're casting something in the meantime. There should rarely be a situation where you have to "react" to dropping cleric stance, unless someone makes a mistake and eats AoE damage, the key is to know each battle, have a feel for the enemy's rotation, and use cleric stance in windows where little damage is coming in.

Hopefully AST floats your boat and provides enough support to where it holds up against DPS healers, I'm eager for it's release to see if it does just that.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

I can't stance dance because a) I don't want to and b) the ui sucks so bad I can't react fast enough to switch back.

And I prefer HP bars topped off. When they're not things get ugly.

Note, I don't have a static. I also don't trust pug tanks.

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How you choose to play is up to you.

That being noted, small points:

1) UI is adjustable to a pretty large degree.

2) Fundamental advice about stance-dancing has nothing to do with statics. Most of my own game time is spent with completely random people in DF.

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Originally Posted by Seryl199

I'm not going to criticize you for not stance dancing, since the healing role is to heal...

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Your post was very good, so forgive me if I'm nitpicking this part, but I want to emphasize that players shouldn't be encouraged to take their roles literally. The tank isn't there solely to be whacked on instead of everyone else (they should be maximizing damage while holding threat); the DPS aren't given utility and support skills because they are meant never to use them; and healers don't have a selection of damaging and debuffing attacks for the purpose of pretending they don't exist in group play.

When people around here try to make arguments for not using CS, I keep being reminded of the girl in the CNJ quest line who hates people trying to get her to learn how to do the rest of her job because she literally just wants to heal.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

When people around here try to make arguments for not using CS, I keep being reminded of the girl in the CNJ quest line who hates people trying to get her to learn how to do the rest of her job because she literally just wants to heal.

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That is an amazing point (though they of course threw other reasons in there for that).

That being said, I know I don't trust pugs very much so I don't tend to toss on CS when in pugs though I will throw out some dps abilities. Am I getting the most out of those non-CS spells? Certainly not but I prefer the ability to have immediate reaction if necessary to cancel my dps cast and heal; while CS has a short cd it still has a cd and if I have to cancel a cast and heal, it likely isn't available to turn off yet. I practically only use it for holyspam on whm. If I run with my FC though, I totally just throw a regen on my tank buddy and pop CS for most of the fights.

I wonder just how much dps AST spells will be doing though....some have said their dps wasn't very potent but overall none of the healers seem very potent if you compare them to a dps class, which it seems many of the reviewers tend to play. Will it really be more beneficial to spend time card buffing? Though I am willing to bet you can do all of it, card, dps, and heal. Actually I wonder if we will see people using Light Speed to push out dps/debuffs instead of heals.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

I want to emphasize that players shouldn't be encouraged to take their roles literally...

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I wholeheartedly agree, while my job as a healer may be "keep everyone alive until the encounter ends", healers are unique in that they have the ability to reduce how long said encounter lasts. DD's and tanks can only DPS so hard until they hit a ceiling, when their rotation is perfectly executed with impeccably timed buffs. The only way to move up from there? Healer DPS, reducing the overall time spent on the encounter and reducing resources (TP, MP, cooldowns) spent by the group as a whole.

not to mention just healing can get boring

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

How you choose to play is up to you.

That being noted, small points:

1) UI is adjustable to a pretty large degree.

2) Fundamental advice about stance-dancing has nothing to do with statics. Most of my own game time is spent with completely random people in DF.

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I'm legally blind.

The UI *sucks*.

UI mods are why I can participate at realm first level in other games.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

I'm legally blind.

The UI *sucks*.

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Yeah, that makes your experience a bit different than that of the average player. Maybe someone with similar difficulties can make suggestions as to how to improve the UI further if possible.

Although, if it helps (and if you haven't already done so), try mapping your most commonly used actions to the keyboard or mouse. I use Q, E, R, Space, Z, X, and +Shift combinations thereof to minimize the need to click on the UI. Whether that at all addresses your problem I don't know, but personally I find clicking on the UI to be a slight annoyance regardless of eyesight.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

Yeah, that makes your experience a bit different than that of the average player. Maybe someone with similar difficulties can make suggestions as to how to improve the UI further if possible.

Although, if it helps (and if you haven't already done so), try mapping your most commonly used actions to the keyboard or mouse. I use Q, E, R, Space, Z, X, and +Shift combinations thereof to minimize the need to click on the UI. Whether that at all addresses your problem I don't know, but personally I find clicking on the UI to be a slight annoyance regardless of eyesight.

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Agreed. I know it isn't an option for everyone, btu I have a gaming mouse myself, its an entire extra hotbar on your thumb. So I have the normal hotbar and my mouse button hotbar, and both of those further modded with +shift and +alt, giving me essentially 6 hotbars at my fingertips. But if your UI issue is more with the party UI and such, I am sorry I can't help :(

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

I'm legally blind.

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Pardon my ignorance (and genuine interest), but wouldn't a blind person be unable to play at all a video game ? Is there some special feature to allow blind people to play even if they can't react to on screen signals ? (not to mention PNJ interaction)

Or is this an expression to describe something I am not aware of (english isn't my 1st language) ?

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

Basically you can still see, but not very well even with vision correction.

http://www.visionaware.org/info/your...criptions/1235

This can include poor focus or poor peripheral vision. I am nowhere near legally blind myself, but without my glasses I cannot read a bold-print tshirt form more than 3 feet away. In these cases, not only is loss of detail a thing but if the details are small, I could even have a loss of color (black print on a white shirt becomes a grey smudge). If this happens with buff/debuff icons, I could see that being monstrous to play with.

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thanks for the insight, and effectively regarding that, the UI may suck a lot in this situation. Though there are a lot of efforts made to allow the maximum of people to play (Deaf people got the sound visuals to assist them in fights where it might be needed, such as Leviathan for example), maybe they'll do something for that too.

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

Pardon my ignorance (and genuine interest), but wouldn't a blind person be unable to play at all a video game ? Is there some special feature to allow blind people to play even if they can't react to on screen signals ? (not to mention PNJ interaction)

Or is this an expression to describe something I am not aware of (english isn't my 1st language) ?

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Basically you can still see, but not very well even with vision correction.

http://www.visionaware.org/info/your...criptions/1235

This can include poor focus or poor peripheral vision. I am nowhere near legally blind myself, but without my glasses I cannot read a bold-print tshirt form more than 3 feet away. In these cases, not only is loss of detail a thing but if the details are small, I could even have a loss of color (black print on a white shirt becomes a grey smudge). If this happens with buff/debuff icons, I could see that being monstrous to play with.

Well this sucks I wrote like the longest post yesterday but due to the limit had to post and then edit to post the rest but looks like only the first of like 5 paragraphs posted :(. How is it too hard to flip into CS cast some damage and flip back out? The interface is so easy, maybe it's harder on PC? I have CS set to left trigger and left D-pad arrow, hit that quick do my damage spells like Aero II and CS is usually off cool down by then to flip it off. I personally think healing would be boring if it wasn't for that, as there's many many times where you'd just be standing around as everyone is full health. Even Titan HM or EX, there's no reason that you can't at the start flip into CS, hit Virus and Aero II before anyone even starts taking enough damage to warrant healing. In fights like that with just 1 boss I typically will let the tank get aggro, then Medica II to take care of the DPS's that take minor damage, and then I blast away some DPS.

To the legally blind person, as I just saw that part, maybe try using the controller? I'm at the point where I generally don't even have to look at the crossbar any more as I just know that R2 plus down is Cure, up is Cure II, right D-Pad is Medica II, left is Esuna, down is Medica, swiftcast raise macro is L2+R2 and dpad up, etc. To be fair, if you set the UI to 140%, it's pretty large. I'm assuming you're on a PC but if you set the resolution to 720p as well vs 1080p, that literally doubles the size of everything (that's how I play it on my laptop as it's not a gaming machine and can't handle 1080p but 720 is fine, it's just that the UI is seriously massive).

Well, if you make the UI TOO large... it is very cluttering and then it becomes tough to dodge aoes and things because all your screen is UI.

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

Well, if you make the UI TOO large... it is very cluttering and then it becomes tough to dodge aoes and things because all your screen is UI.

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Agreed but I mean you can't have your cake and eat it too. If someone says they are legally blind and have issues seeing things, other than making the UI larger I'm not sure what other concessions SE could do since in fairness I'd assume it's not a large percentage of players it would impact. You also don't need to do all elements, like even just your own status effects making that largest type thing.

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Originally Posted by 416to305

Agreed but I mean you can't have your cake and eat it too. If someone says they are legally blind and have issues seeing things, other than making the UI larger I'm not sure what other concessions SE could do since in fairness I'd assume it's not a large percentage of players it would impact. You also don't need to do all elements, like even just your own status effects making that largest type thing.

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good point, cuz frankly I forget that you can scale the components separately ><;; derp on my part.

In a small effort to say something actually topic related..... I have been muddling over how royal road and spread will interact. For example can you use royal road and then activate a spreaded card, setting aside the dmg reduction buff to be aoe in an emergency? Or would you have to use royal road first and then use spread on the then-drawn royal road buffed card, which would be random? Perhaps even some limitation to those two cds interacting?

Also we know you get 'draw' right off the bat at 30 but no idea when spread, shuffle, and royal road will be learned. I am curious to see the order and how slowly they add these interaction mechanics to the learning curve of the class. Plus we -still- don't know if the basic spells like benefic and whatnot are 'learned' at a level lower than 30 for the purpose of level syncing below 30 for dungeons/fates/etc. Speaking of levels and learning spells I wonder when they will get their esuna/leeches spell. CNJ gets esuna at what, 18? While SCH gets it at 40 as a job skill. I remember sorely missing esuna in Brayflox when I was a SCH if I had a bad group. So will their 'detriment' (still don't see why that is the translated name for this spell so far makes no sense) come at a level for that? In time for Cutter's hopefully, the dot on the second boss is brutal and paralysis too.

Just had another thought...wondering if Light Speed will limit WHICH spells are instant cast. Can we use this to spam resses? Though MP would go down the toilet of course (oooh, mp cost reduction card I am looking at YOU) and if the potency is lowered, would targets res at so low health that it wouldn't be worth it? *sigh* ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS before I can just start fiddling with this myself and have all my questions answered.

So now the question for astrologians should be...

Should we use our buffs to up the output of the lowest DPS in the party...or the highest DPS in the party for when we get the Attack Speed and/or Attack Damage buff? What about Spire's reducing ability Cooldown?

The TP Down and MP Down buffs could do wonders to help the bards manage party TP and MP, and will go on whoever needs them (Or get Spread, or Shuffled or Royal Roaded back to the deck).

Look at it this way.

If you're boosting the guy doing 500 DPS by 10%, they're doing 50 more.

If you're boosting the guy doing 200 DPS by 10%, they're doing 20 more.

As nice as it is to make the worse DPS look better, your pity is just gimping you overall in the grand scheme of things. If people can't be arsed working for their numbers, then they can happily remain without external buffs. :p

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Originally Posted by UOdhn

So now the question for astrologians should be...

Should we use our buffs to up the output of the lowest DPS in the party...or the highest DPS in the party for when we get the Attack Speed and/or Attack Damage buff? What about Spire's reducing ability Cooldown?

The TP Down and MP Down buffs could do wonders to help the bards manage party TP and MP, and will go on whoever needs them (Or get Spread, or Shuffled or Royal Roaded back to the deck).

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The only dps class I have leveled is Bard (I don't count having a SMN I didn't level as that job and I am not great with it) and I just....I just want to put the recast buff on them because popping 5 cds at the start of a boss fight. So much cd pop!

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Originally Posted by UOdhn

So now the question for astrologians should be...

Should we use our buffs to up the output of the lowest DPS in the party...or the highest DPS in the party for when we get the Attack Speed and/or Attack Damage buff?

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Given the current Meta, I'd say whoever has the highest DPS should get the damage up buff. So, a 500 DPS MNK getting +10% would give them an additional 50 DPS (for the sake of easy math - I know it's more complicated than that) versus another MNK with 400 DPS who would only get 40 DPS. That being said, this buff SHOULD be coordinated with other CDs your DPS may have to maximize bang for buck.

For attack speed (this should also affect spell speed), BLM hands down. More spells, more damage, more up time in Astral Fire.

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Originally Posted by UOdhn

What about Spire's reducing ability Cooldown?

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Depends on the situation. Not knowing how all the DPS work in HW and given current meta, I'd say either NIN for more Ninjutsu or DRG for the massive amount of oGCD abilities they have at their disposal. Can make an argument to give this to a tank too if certain CD rotations help with a specific fight.

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Take it all with a grain of salt though, since we don't know how the rotation meta will shift come Heavensward release. All opinions in this post take into account current raid meta (which is not designed with these new jobs in mind

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Originally Posted by Raminax

If you're boosting the guy doing 500 DPS by 10%, they're doing 50 more.

If you're boosting the guy doing 200 DPS by 10%, they're doing 20 more.

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To be perfectly honest this has me a little worried when it comes to doing any content without a static. If you are in a group with more than one well geared player it can come down to favoritism when deciding which individual deserves the buff. Imagine yourself as a DPS in a dungeon, being well geared and believing you are doing very well, but the Astrologian in the group keeps deciding to buff the other DPS instead of you because they think the role of that DPS is superior or their individual performance exceeds your own. It can cause unnecessary friction and while perhaps the worst that can come from that might just be one less commendation for the Astrologian, I just have to wonder why they decided to go with single target buffs instead of having buffs that affect the entire group equally.

And actually I guess I probably know the answer to that already which is double Astrologian and the potential issue of stacking buffs. Unlike Scholar, who can coordinate to have one player use Selene and the other use Eos, it isn't the same thing to just tell an Astrologian to not use their cards. If Astologian buffs were party-wde and able to stack it could get a little too powerful, but even if they didn't stack it wouldn't necessarily mean that one Astologian would never get to use their cards as Royal Road would still be valuable and you would essentially get an extra card draw or two in the event the primary card user doesn't draw what they want.

Perhaps the buffs were all originally aoe and they decided sometime during development that this was either too powerful, or that the buffs would have to be too weak to matter and what ended up happening was what we get now, with only two of them becoming aoe at a potency loss.

As for having 2 well geared dps in a static, why not alternate which one you give buffs to? or perhaps use different buffs for dps-say the atk speed for a nin and the atk potency on a blm (just throwing out non specific examples). Or just throw all buffs on the tank and call it a day? hehe

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

Rawr!

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Live and let live in that case, to be honest. As said, it's the Astrologian's loss if they're making it harder for the party for whatever conceivable reason they have to do so. If it's desperate, I'd at least attempt to convince the Astrologian to try to use their card buffs on someone else and see if that works to beat an encounter, but that can easily go awry if one accidentally mentions raw DPS numbers. Awfully easy to construct that as harassment if someone in the party is feeling a bit sensitive that day. :p

As for the reason why they don't affect the entire group... we can only speculate, but I'm guessing that it's to give Astrologians more to think about when using their cards. If all of them affected the entire party, they would just simply hit Draw, Use and then call it a day, making cards perfunctory, especially when they're meant to be a major draw to the Astrologian job.

Sorry if this is a really stupid question but how do you know who is doing the highest or lowest DPS? Based on their apparent gear or HP? I'm not clear on how you compare 2 DPS and say one is doing 200 and one 500, where do those numbers come from?

There are various damage meters (most reliable one I know of is ACT - Advanced Combat Tracker) for XIV that will happily show you results without having to resort to patience, an abacus and a stopwatch. Damage dealt, health restored, how much a certain skill contributed to your output, you can see it all. :p

That said, it's... controversial. You won't get punished for just using it, but I've heard that people tend to get bans if they use the results to harass (what constitutes harassment is a player judgment, I suppose) players.

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Originally Posted by Raminax

There are various damage meters (most reliable one I know of is ACT - Advanced Combat Tracker) for XIV that will happily show you results without having to resort to patience, an abacus and a stopwatch. Damage dealt, health restored, how much a certain skill contributed to your output, you can see it all. :p

That said, it's... controversial. You won't get punished for just using it, but I've heard that people tend to get bans if they use the results to harass (what constitutes harassment is a player judgment, I suppose) players.

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Frankly I am glad that meters are not a huge thing in this game. WoW epeens ruined this nonsense for me, dps and healing both. Actually, healing meters more than dps because you cannot truly judge performance that way- how much you heal depends on how well the rest of your team does at avoiding damage. Flat numbers are less likely to get you through an encounter than proper utility, which is difficult to quantify. About the only thing I do like about meters is seeing things like, oh this tank never used his mitigation cds, dps never popped cds and stood in this mechanic every time, that whm only cast regen single target and no other spell when everyone was getting aoe'd to death.

I guess what I mean is that these tools ahve a place, but the average player misuses the tool. But even so anything that lets you pick apart performance can be used to harass by 'elitists', and probably do more herm than good overall.

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

As for having 2 well geared dps in a static, why not alternate which one you give buffs to? or perhaps use different buffs for dps-say the atk speed for a nin and the atk potency on a blm (just throwing out non specific examples).

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A well-organized static will likely do what you just described, though I think the attack speed would be better served on BLM and the damage up on the NIN, in your example. The way the buffs are thought out currently means that no DPS should ever go "without" a buff...EXCEPT maybe SMN, unless the attack speed up is actually spellspeed, and snapshots with their DoTs. Maybe MP reduction on them if no healers have MP troubles. TP reduction would be great on a BRD, MCN, or any melee, and the CD reduction would go well on tanks, DRGs, and BRD.

These are just my speculations. Without full patch notes to theorycraft with, I'm stuck guessing at some of the particulars.

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

I guess what I mean is that these tools ahve a place, but the average player misuses the tool. But even so anything that lets you pick apart performance can be used to harass by 'elitists', and probably do more herm than good overall.

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This argument pretty much debunks itself, though; these "elitists" that seem to have the more delicate flowers of our forum community living in perpetual fear of a harshly worded critique from a random stranger couldn't be bothered to actually share this information, whether constructively or abusively.

Also, most people playing on PC who are really interested in the meta game of maximizing DPS are already parsing themselves. The pro-parser threads are mostly for the benefit of console players and to help raise awareness of the expectation of DPS to actually try to do their jobs well, which exists regardless of whether or not the metrics are readily visible to the players.

ACT was originally an eq2 tool. Fun fact. Was unaware FFXIV generated an external combat log that ACT could read, though I haven't paid much attention.

What I want to know about AST... What cross class to use? I know conj/thaumaturge but what spells? Same boring stuff sch/whm already cross from both?

Chi wave from wow with an appropriate name.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

ACT was originally an eq2 tool. Fun fact. Was unaware FFXIV generated an external combat log that ACT could read, though I haven't paid much attention.

What I want to know about AST... What cross class to use? I know conj/thaumaturge but what spells? Same boring stuff sch/whm already cross from both?

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Going to say yes on that because there are no other useful cross-class skills. It's not like you'll be wanting to cross Cure.

Okay well there's no way that the new role can have any reliance on using your cards on a low DPS or high DPS since for one thing those apps are against the game rules, and secondly they are only for PC players meaning someone on PS3 or PS4 can't even use them. I play on PS4, so can't really see there being any way that you'd be required to use cards based on someone's DPS output when you're not even supposed to be able to see that. Someone in an instance yelling at you saying "stop using your cards on so and so their DPS output is too low" could result in a ban if reported to a GM since the GM would message them asking how they knew that players DPS was low vs high without using a parser.

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Originally Posted by Brightshadow

Chi wave from wow with an appropriate name.

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I would like Prayer of Mending too, personally...That spell is so darn good. :/ about every healer I miss from WoW has something about their spell or style that I miss which is why I am so happy a new healer is coming. I played every healer in that game and I was just dying for some more diversity, although I like how the whm and sch are very different they are still only two.

As for the high dps with no parser....Well there are certain visual cues I imagine. If you see one dps on your party burning down mobs and constantly in animations and the other one is kinda looking around at the scenery, or lagging or something, pretty easy to assume one is doing more dps.

Yeah it appears AST is getting a version of beacon of light which I found obnoxious to use when it had a duration on it. Made a focus target macro for it and just went from there, keeping it on the tank.

As for cross class... Gods I wish it wasn't swiftcast/cleric stance/protect for every damn healer. No variety. Boring as piss.

AST has a damage spell called Gravity
This spell should not miss because how can Gravity miss??

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

Yeah it appears AST is getting a version of beacon of light which I found obnoxious to use when it had a duration on it. Made a focus target macro for it and just went from there, keeping it on the tank.

As for cross class... Gods I wish it wasn't swiftcast/cleric stance/protect for every damn healer. No variety. Boring as piss.

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The only thing I found rather bizarre was that they get Swiftcast as a cross-class (and virtually nothing else of use from BLM), considering that they already have a "built-in" Swiftcast via Lightspeed...

I feel like CNJ/ACN would have brought more utility. Like it or not, Cleric Stance is useful, same with Protect and Stoneskin. Until they start building similar skills into new healer toolkits like they did with Swiftcast and Lightspeed, they'll continue to be the bread-and-butter for most healing jobs.

Or stop making them class specific and hand them out baseline.

Or remove cross class skills.

Or something. There's no variety anywhere. TP users, if you can get invigorate, you *will* get it. Same goes with swiftcast.

Arguably Cleric Stance isn't mandatory but there isn't anything useful to take. Its like my bard taking haymaker...

And if it was CNJ/ARC(which we have for both other healers) that "more utility" would be: virus and e4e.

Gotta come up with something better than that. Everyone cross classing the exact same things is *boring*.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

And if it was CNJ/ARC(which we have for both other healers) that "more utility" would be: virus and e4e.

Gotta come up with something better than that. Everyone cross classing the exact same things is *boring*.

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If they're not the "same" moves, it'll just be similar moves that do close to the same thing, or else certain jobs will be left out of specific content due to not having this-or-that. Why do you think with the introduction of AST that SCH and WHM got some skills that made them operate somewhat similar to one another? Instant cast heals on WHM, stronger AOE heals for SCH. The homogenization is real.