Astrologian buffs confirmed

While I don't think it's an awful thing for AST to use a card for their own benefit if necessary, suggestions like "oh, just depend on RNG granting you a Spear when you want to use LA, then blow it on yourself to witness how simple mana management is" should be made by no one, ever.

The use of Spear and Ewer on one's self should be a strategy for carrying an abnormally heavy healing load, not a behavior expected to maintain basic function as some suggest.

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It happens even as a SCH/WHM, I prefer to just let them die.

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You must enjoy wiping to dps checks.

I love medica 2's range. I feel like whispering dawn and Aspect Helios range is too short.

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Originally Posted by sharazisspecial

You must enjoy wiping to dps checks.

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So you don't ever have to deal with those randos who stay at the maximum attack range for absolutely no reason?

I still hate the entire concept of a hybrid healer.

It's constant "why am I not better/equal to a white mage/scholar at everything"

REALLY hoping the Lightspeed change includes what I have been saying for ages- a reduction in the gcd....

Also-sick of people pointing at cards as a solution to mana problems. While nice, you CANNOT rely on them because of the rng nature. Sorry I oomed that time guys, lets try again and hope rng doesn't hate me so much.

There wasn't even a "Get good" thrown in there this time

I really enjoyed levelling my Astrologian, and I'm so glad I have it geared, these changes hopefully will improve it's viability, I can't wait to try them. If it doesn't quite fit in with my static in Savage Alex, then I guess there is always my WHM I have ready as back up. I like the various viewpoints speculating is bringing about regarding the changes, I guess we will all see ^^ My favourite card has to be Spear, I think I've sussed how to use it now, it's really strong :D

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Originally Posted by Leiloni

I don't think the comment was in regards to us stance dancing. I think they were trying to emphasize that the changes to CU and CO will be in the style of the Astrologian class, so they will have buffs that differ between our two stances instead of just giving them flat stat increases like the other two healers. So we will get improvements to those two skills, but it'll be in the theme of the AST class and not simply trying to copy SCH/WHM. But we will not be stance dancing.

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This is also what I got from it.

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Originally Posted by Slib

I don't get why people have issues with mana on astro... I dps more than I do on it with white mage and I end up with better MP management.

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Spamming Malefic 2, combust 2, combust, and aero drains my mana faster than spamming Bio 2, Bio, miasma, shadowflare, maisma 2, and broil does on my SCH. Their mp sustain is atrocious.

Honestly at level 50 content the AST mp sustain is REALLY GOOD. I can dps, helios, do everything and my mana never drops below 3k but once I start doing level 60 content? My mana is dropping really damn fast and it's not the amount of heals I need to put out. The mp cost at level 60 is a much much higher % than it was a 50 or something is up.

Anyway I'm not sure about the stance dancing...
Because ok let's suppose that you cast your aspected benefic with diurnal, then u switch to noct and then repeat again... It's just having shields with reegens.. Hmm. I don't think it will b just this.

Mana should be a precious commodity. Honestly if healers have enough mana to dps without a hitch in content they do not overgear then mana costs should be tweaked higher.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

Mana should be a precious commodity. Honestly if healers have enough mana to dps without a hitch in content they do not overgear then mana costs should be tweaked higher.

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Please, let's not start this rhetoric again.

I'm The only 1 who thinks that dps healer it's just an OPTIONAL? It's not our role to dps.. It's ok sometimes we MUST dps but it should not be like 'a good healer is a dps healer'

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Originally Posted by Eraqus

I'm The only 1 who thinks that dps healer it's just an OPTIONAL? It's not our role to dps.. It's ok sometimes we MUST dps but it should not be like 'a good healer is a dps healer'

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We've been through this many times now on these forums.

If you think that roles are strict guidelines for which actions you should use while playing, then you might subscribe to the "not in my job description" view on healers bringing support DPS.

If you accept that it is the role of the entire party to do what they can to succeed, you'll probably consider healer DPS to be a given whenever it can be safely and effectively provided.

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Originally Posted by Leiloni

I don't think the comment was in regards to us stance dancing. I think they were trying to emphasize that the changes to CU and CO will be in the style of the Astrologian class, so they will have buffs that differ between our two stances instead of just giving them flat stat increases like the other two healers. So we will get improvements to those two skills, but it'll be in the theme of the AST class and not simply trying to copy SCH/WHM. But we will not be stance dancing.

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Yeah, I think this is what they were implying.

Now all they need to do is buff the cards to not be utter ass and we may have an actual class on our hands here...

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Originally Posted by Galdous

Mana should be a precious commodity. Honestly if healers have enough mana to dps without a hitch in content they do not overgear then mana costs should be tweaked higher.

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It ain't that black and white.

There are a ton of variables to how much mana a healer will be holding onto throughout a fight, and knowing when to CS and toss out all your DoTs is a skill healers should definitely want to hone.

There have been fights where I've sat at full mana the whole time and said at the end, "Gee, I guess I should've DPSed..." and other times where I thought it was safe to DPS and suddenly everything went to hell and my mana was suffering.

Really, our manapool depends HUGELY on the competency of our party, and even the best are prone to making mistakes. It's fine where it is now.

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Originally Posted by ckc22

I still hate the entire concept of a hybrid healer.

It's constant "why am I not better/equal to a white mage/scholar at everything"

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It can work...in theory.

A hybrid that brings enough additional functionality and utility to a fight can be a choice that a group makes: trade healing potency and emergency saving power for the chance to end the fight more quickly.

And that's really what ASTs need to bring to the table: instead of offsetting risk via emergency tools, they'd offset risk by ending phases faster and reducing the chance that something can go wrong.

But they really don't. The card buffs don't significantly increase DPS, even when they come up perfectly, and a Selene running the 1.5% average speed increase all the time equals out to be as much or more of a DPS boost than an AST getting the perfect setup every draw.

The cards just need to be better and do better things. These are the only things that AST could have over other healers and the majority of the time you're just going to draw uselessness.

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Originally Posted by Cynfael

We've been through this many times now on these forums.

If you think that roles are strict guidelines for which actions you should use while playing, then you might subscribe to the "not in my job description" view on healers bringing support DPS.

If you accept that it is the role of the entire party to do what they can to succeed, you'll probably consider healer DPS to be a given whenever it can be safely and effectively provided.

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As I said I know that sometimes we MUST turn to dps to help the party but what I hate it's e thing that, I repeat, a good healer it's a dps healer.

For the rest I'm with u but it seems that u didn't get the exact point of my opinion :-)

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Originally Posted by Eraqus

As I said I know that sometimes we MUST turn to dps to help the party but what I hate it's e thing that, I repeat, a good healer it's a dps healer.

For the rest I'm with u but it seems that u didn't get the exact point of my opinion :-)

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It was my nice and non-argumentative way to suggest that a good healer knows how and when to DPS. It's extremely difficult to make the case for "good" healers not knowing how to use their full kit.

A healer can do their job adequately without touching DPS skills in most cases, but no one would ever say that such a healer was better than average.

Why has no one mentioned that Collective Unconscious already changes with Sect? Did Yoshi misspeak or is this a Translation error? I think he meant Time Dilation.

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Originally Posted by Eraqus

As I said I know that sometimes we MUST turn to dps to help the party but what I hate it's e thing that, I repeat, a good healer it's a dps healer.

For the rest I'm with u but it seems that u didn't get the exact point of my opinion :-)

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I believe they said they didn't tune the coil fights with the idea that healers could pepper in additional DPS because it was pushing phases faster than they had accounted for and making the fights easier than intended. The Savage Alex fights have been created with the idea that healers can pump out significant DPS if allowed to, which may mean that as a healer you are expected to contribute DPS.

Honestly healing isn't incredibly hard to do well on compared to a DPS with a long repetitive rotation/priority system. You mostly just spam 1 key, your mana-efficient key, except sometimes you spam 2 (Cure II/Lustrate/Benefic II) when the tank takes more damage than the 1 key can heal, and otherwise you just AoE heal to keep the party alive every once in a while. It's why a lot of people find WHM so boring, you know? You don't have to DPS if you want to, but you will have to accept that you're not reaching your full potential if you sit around with your thumb up your butt and not doing anything when you don't have to be healing.

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Originally Posted by Emonik

Why has no one mentioned that Collective Unconscious already changes with Sect? Did Yoshi misspeak or is this a Translation error? I think he meant Time Dilation.

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I believe he was talking about giving it more of an effect that is unique to AST rather than a WHM regen copy or a Sacred Soil copy.

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Originally Posted by VitalSuit

Spamming Malefic 2, combust 2, combust, and aero drains my mana faster than spamming Bio 2, Bio, miasma, shadowflare, maisma 2, and broil does on my SCH. Their mp sustain is atrocious.

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Are you saying their MP usage is...astronomical? But I do agree, in all seriousness, that their MP sustain is rather lackluster.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

Please, let's not start this rhetoric again.

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Which is probably why No one listens to you. If not mana we could always go with dnd version 1 with casts per day but that is draconian.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Which is probably why No one listens to you. If not mana we could always go with dnd version 1 with casts per day but that is draconian.

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Strawman please.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Which is probably why No one listens to you. If not mana we could always go with dnd version 1 with casts per day but that is draconian.

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You apparently haven't seen his posts.
The only people who don't listen to him are those dead set on pushing their vendetta on here.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

Strawman please.

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Hypocrit much? I'm not sure you know what straw man argument means when it was a response against a troll.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Hypocrit much? I'm not sure you know what straw man argument means when it was a response against a troll.

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from what he posts i don't see how he is a troll, how about you back up your accusation with some proof. cause the only troll i see is you

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Hypocrit much? I'm not sure you know what straw man argument means when it was a response against a troll.

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How is SuzakuCMX a hypocrite? How is Ghishlain a troll? Disagreeing with you doesn't make him a troll.

He did not disagree with Vlad any. He just gave a 1 sentence reply without even discussing the topic and just sweeping the question under the rug. We can all disagree with views others may have but just to demean someone's opinion as rhetoric is about as inaccurate as you can get. Both of you are also constantly shooting down other people's opinion which in essence is the virtue of a hypocrit.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

He did not disagree with Vlad any. He just gave a 1 sentence reply without even discussing the topic and just sweeping the question under the rug. We can all disagree with views others may have but just to demean someone's opinion as rhetoric is about as inaccurate as you can get. Both of you are also constantly shooting down other people's opinion which in essence is the virtue of a hypocrit.

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There have been countless threads created here about healer dps. Given that his points were completely off topic it becomes just so for people wanting to read feedback about Astrologian buffs.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

He did not disagree with Vlad any. He just gave a 1 sentence reply without even discussing the topic and just sweeping the question under the rug. We can all disagree with views others may have but just to demean someone's opinion as rhetoric is about as inaccurate as you can get. Both of you are also constantly shooting down other people's opinion which in essence is the virtue of a hypocrit.

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The original reply was

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

Please, let's not start this rhetoric again.

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to

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Originally Posted by Galdous

Mana should be a precious commodity. Honestly if healers have enough mana to dps without a hitch in content they do not overgear then mana costs should be tweaked higher.

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This is an offtopic post that is seemingly wanting to cause the typical "To DPS or Not to DPS" that you see here on the healer forums, much of which Ghishlain has tried to reach across both isles to help point out the bonuses to both.
Do you blame ANYONE who doesn't want this topic to go shift towards on DPS'ing to push their Pro-DPS or Anti-DPS rhetoric? Even if unintentionally?

Sorry for the giant wall of text / flame fest in here, just gonna get this out on the table now.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

He did not disagree with Vlad any. He just gave a 1 sentence reply without even discussing the topic and just sweeping the question under the rug. We can all disagree with views others may have but just to demean someone's opinion as rhetoric is about as inaccurate as you can get. Both of you are also constantly shooting down other people's opinion which in essence is the virtue of a hypocrit.

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The reply was meant to curb the discussion to going towards a "DPS versus not DPS" debate that this forum is quite fond of. That fact that you tried to state MP costs should be higher because there was too much time to DPS without being over geared would imply that you wanted to shift the discussion in that direction. Considering this is a thread about AST buffs, and considering that particular post has 13+ likes at the time of this post, I'd say a few posters agree about avoiding taking the conversation in that general direction.

Now, to respond to:

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Which is probably why No one listens to you. If not mana we could always go with dnd version 1 with casts per day but that is draconian.

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and

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Hypocrit much? I'm not sure you know what straw man argument means when it was a response against a troll.

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If you think someone who can logically argue against and pick apart all your inane posts decrying WHM as a viable healer pre-3.0 gives you the right to call me a troll, you are sadly mistaken. We can agree to disagree, I will accept, respect, and appreciate that. But you have not once, in any post, have you given or presented a logical and factual retort to your own broad sweeping and uneducated opinions.

If you're going to call me a troll because I disagree with you and can make several retorts on various levels and grounds that you are wrong and you cannot defend yourself - that's not my fault. If you're so sensitive about people protesting your opinion and asinine enough to think you are beyond logic or retort - I pity you but I don't sympathize for you.

BTW, myself and Darkmoon Vael are still waiting for a credible reply to that thread.

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Again, I apologize for that wall of text. Just needed to get that out there. I've more or less stayed off the discussion because most of what I wanted to say had already been said and on top of that I hadn't leveled AST to 60 yet.

I hope the interpretation of the live letter is that we'll get specific abilities per cooldown based on stance, though I would love to see a stance dancing mechanic personally as this is what YoshiP originally said AST would have. If they can bring this back with a heavy cooldown, I would love to min-max and optimize that.

From a theorycraft stand point, I was no where near impressed by Collective Unconsciousness and Celestial Opposition - so I hope they fix that.

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Originally Posted by Vlady

Hypocrit much? I'm not sure you know what straw man argument means when it was a response against a troll.

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Strawman argument: A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent.

What Ghislain said:

Let's not get into a debate that we've had before that hasn't had a resolution because it's off-topic for this thread and won't go anywhere.

What you thought he said:

Healers shouldn't be gated by mana so they can spam as many abilities as they want

What you argued:

What's the point of mana then?

I think calling your argument a strawman is entirely appropriate, and calling me a hypocrite or Ghishlain a troll inflammatory.

Yay! Happy news! Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

To say on topic, while it's still unclear what sort of buff they were implying, at least it sounds like they have outright said that ASTs will not get potency enhancers like Divine Seal. The changes they are going for will be "astrologian-like", whatever that means. From the tone, it appears they still don't want ASTs to be strong healers, and let their utility be the focus.

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Originally Posted by Heinel

To say on topic, while it's still unclear what sort of buff they were implying, at least it sounds like they have outright said that ASTs will not get potency enhancers like Divine Seal. The changes they are going for will be "astrologian-like", whatever that means.

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That's sort of disappointing, seeing as AST could really profit from some sort of potency enhancer. Too often when I'm playing AST I find myself longing for the effects of Divine Seal. Oh well, we can only hope that What they provide will help improve MP management so you don't have to spam Benefic II to reach the same level as a Divine Sealed Cure II.

Astrologian like? More RNG? lol

In a serious note I thin celestial opposition will gain different effects depending on which sect you currently are aligned to. As for Collective Unconscious not really sure how they'd actually change that.

Why are people bickering? Astrologian's are a peaceful and dignified people.

On topic: being able to hold cards out of battle would be very useful.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderThorolund

Rawr!

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Astrologians are healers.

Healers are (probably) the biggest divas around.

Ergo, Astrologians are divas. :p

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Originally Posted by Flinx

Hiss.

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Maybe a Noct'd Collective Unconscious will create an absorption barrier that nullifies a set amount of damage? I used to like that idea as Power Word: Barrier's first incarnation in WoW, but it was admittedly a nightmare to balance. :p Practical invincibility in small scale situations, doesn't even finish its animation when cast in high end raiding. Celestial Opposition in Noct could also fully refresh current shields to their original values, although considering how hard people tend to get hit, it would likely end up useless in practice. :(

This is super exciting! I knew SE would address the AST, I love how quick and responsive they are with issues. I'm not the greatest AST but I love the class with a passion and those changes will be well received. :)

I did answer your questions. You just keep following up with new pointless questions. White mage didn't have a version of lustrate back pre xpansion and they do now so my issue is quelled.

You coming on a thread about Astros and flaming me then demanding I answer your question when you ignore my answer also claiming I am trying to alter the topic of the thread makes you a hypocrit yes.