AST buffs in 3.4 Changes to Barries and Cards.

SCH should always have a guaranteed raid spot while either AST/WHM sit out. Sorry to say.

That's extremely selfish of you.

Every combination of healers (aside from duplicates; including ast/ast) should have their own benefits and downfalls. Square Enix knows that Scholar is far too strong for the current meta and will continue warping things in the future, that's why they're making things fair ASAP.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rennies

Snip

---

Crazy part is all but one combination of healers is viable an that is WHM/AST every other combination of healers work for optimal groups outside of this combo. Leaving half of AST & WHM's raid group less. From a balance stand point were not too bad, but from a reality stand point this should have had more foresight. I really do hope they keep it with 3 healers for next ex-pac or they do just delete N.AST, or make it a Cooldown. We need somethign to compete with SCH. Buffs or not I just don't see N.AST doing that without the ex-pac skills.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yona87

SCH should always have a guaranteed raid spot while either AST/WHM sit out. Sorry to say.

---

Two players in this thread have a WHM AST in their statics, your argument was invalid before you had even said it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yona87

SCH should always have a guaranteed raid spot while either AST/WHM sit out. Sorry to say.

---

Said a sch which is currently trembling and sit in her corner waiting for the 3.4 patch because we WILL steal your spot after killing the whm...

Shantay we slay, good-bye sch !

...

I admit that I would love to steal eye for an eye but we can't have everything

I'm really curious what they gonna change this time. imo AST is fine the way it is right now. it's just harder compared to whm/sch to achieve the same goal. to many buffs and one of the other 2 healer might have to "suffer"

Nocturnal Astrologian is. Not. Fine. If a job has a harder time to reach the same goal as other similar ones because of lower overall contribution rather than higher skill required, it is in need of buffs. That's what balancing is for... An equal playing field.

Diurnal is definitely on par with White Mage but the card system could use a lot of work. I'd actually prefer if they nerfed our healing but made every card more universally useful.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rennies

I'd actually prefer if they nerfed our healing but made every card more universally useful.

---

That'll depend on how much you want nerfed. Remember when AST was released with lower potencies across the board and it was absolutely dreadful? I don't want that to happen again. Truthfully, that was wrapped up with a whole lot of other release issues involving cards, Synastry being sub-par, Disable being useless against multi-hits, CU being too much risk and not enough reward...

Yes, but Square Enix released Ast like that out of incompetency. They've had more than a year to balance it and what they ended up doing didn't really strengthen the job's identity, just made it usable.

so Rennies, how would you actually buff noct stance without overpowering it?

As a bonus to Nocturnal Sect exclusively? Allowing the cards to be used on enemies for debuffs would be fun, and would add another layer of complexity to the kit.

Bole would be a damage taken increase of 5% (don't even start with how OP it sounds, Scholar ATM brings more damage overall because of how much healing the Fairy takes care of for you).

Balance would be a damage dealt decrease of 5-10%.

Arrow would be a slow of 10%.

Spear would fully cancel the cast of an enemy (like Hot Tail/Wing) and render them "frozen" for however long they would have been casting. Sounds impractical, but so does the current Spear- at least you'd be able to see this Spear's effect.

I have no idea what Ewer/Spire could do though.

Bole and balance i can see however balance as malus is pretty similar to disable... Which is... Meeeh

Arrow is impossible slow doesn't work on most boss
Spear look so powerful ._.

...

One thing Really want... Celestial Opposition not extending shield duration but double shield potency (so aspected helios doubles like a CritAdlo deploy)
> Would work on shield already applied not next shield

otherwise it's hard to see what to up without making the ast really overpowered...

Well, Arrow would still be usable on allies. ;p

Balance would be a weaker disable, yes. Just as expanded Bole is a weaker Sacred Soil that doesn't have positioning requirements, and as Arrow is a spell/skill speed buff without actually buffing your spell/skill speed stats.

Spear certainly looks powerful. I think the "action stopping" effect fits the card's theme. You'd be caught off guard by someone's penetration (o.o) and frozen by the element of ice. But why would you hold a Spear over a Balance card when you could simply... do the mechanics correctly? Spear could offer more time to focus on your rotation instead of dancing around like we are so used to doing. This would benefit Black Mages a lot.

I think Scholar should keep the part of its identity where it has excellent (albeit inconsistent) shields.

I'm so hyped! My body is ready.

Sees post on Ast cards.....thinks about the absurd rng........thinks more about the absurd rng......stays with Sch & Whm......

Unless......

the changes remove this gimmicky lottery skill mechanic.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Teraluna

Sees post on Ast cards.....thinks about the absurd rng........thinks more about the absurd rng......stays with Sch & Whm......

Unless......

the changes remove this gimmicky lottery skill mechanic.

---

Gurl please

At least we have some fun and challenge beside a mindless cure-spammer and an angry fairy enslaver !

If rng is your main concern about ast then you didn't even open your eyes on this royal class road
Whm shall fear for their Ass <3

...

Ok i admit that RNGesus is favorably blessing my Ass because i always had the card i want/need what i have to have it xP

My wishlist:

• Nocturnal Stance increases ALL potencies and mana costs by 5%.
• Allow shield stacking if of different type. However, a given attack will only consume the largest shield, ignoring all smaller, giving this feature no added protection against one-shots. The largest shield at the time of the attack will always be used. However, when one shield is affected, all others on the target are affected by an internal cooldown of one second. Newly applied shields refresh this cooldown, but the resulting absorb will again trigger it. This gives it no added protection against one-shots or near-one-shots. This internal cooldown will affect only shields of the same type (flat damage, or %HP). (At this time, %HP shield stacking is still not supported.)
  
  
• Nocturnal Celestial Opposition now adds roughly the same % effect as Diurnal Celestial Opposition, duplicating 25% of all your shields applied to each ally affected. Due to the above limitation, there is no added safety from a one-shot raid wipe, but there is added safety over multiple blows.
• The 10% damage reduction from Collective Unconscious can now be acquired as a 10-second buff without remaining in the zone of effect, and may be refreshed by reentry.
  
  
• Ewer and Spire combined; one of the two removed. OR, Spire now reduces mana and TP costs by a large percent, while Ewer simply generates MP and TP over time.
• Expanded Royal Road now has a variable efficiency reduction, scaling with the amount of players affected. 100% at 2 players, 67% at 3 players, 50% at 4+ players.
• *mumble mumble slight Bole buff*

Alternatively, a laughable pipedream:

• Allow Sect swapping in combat. Beginning as a cast of 2 GCD's length, off the global cooldown, the opposite Sect's cast is reduced over 90 seconds without use to an instant cast, still off the global cooldown. This rate is affected by cooldown-reducing abilities.
  
• Most cards have been redone, and now resemble strong abilities of their own instead of more standard buffs. They are usable in almost any combat situation, but they demand team coordination and positioning to maximize their effects. Assume balance, though I didn't bother with the technical details here.
• Bole - radiates healing and shielding to or from the target. Damage that would kill the target is instead spread to nearby allies, to a cap of 80% of the target's health, while healing all overhealing done to the target is split among nearby allies based on range and missing % HP. [Used in AoE, this balances out your crits dealt and taken, acting as one huge HP pool.
• Ewer - Based on %TP and %MP, a portion of the target's TP and MP generated will duplicate to nearby allies based on proximity and missing percent, or a portion of nearby allies' MP and TP generated will duplicate to the target.
• Balance - increases all the target's stats by 5%. [Can now be used on tanks to push out a save, or carries a similar damage weight to before through increased Critical, Speed, Determination, and primary output stat.]
• Arrow - Used on an ally, it increases Haste by 10% (increases Attack Speed and periodic damage done, non-snapshot). Can now also be enemy-targeted. Used on an enemy, it causes all strikes to instantly hit an additional time for 10% damage, and all debuffs to last 10% longer. Does not trigger any diminishing returns. [Now as good as Balance was, with added weight for proc-dependent jobs.]
• Spire - Used on an ally, it decreases all MP, TP, and CD costs by 20% for 20 seconds. Can now also be enemy-targeted. Used on an enemy, it generates MP, HP, and TP per strike dealt to the enemy. (Formula used takes into account relative potency.) [The new "go ham" card.]
• Spear - Causes all procs (including from crits) and bonuses to increase nearby allies proc chances and bonuses (combo and positional), split based on proximity and affinity. [The higher the base proc chance, the less the bonus. Still, can, say, feed it to a single MCH during ammo phase to spill over proc chance for a BRD's Bloodletters or a SMN's pet-based Spell Speed procs, or even to proc some RNG healer effects.] [If no affinitive allies, will gain these bonuses/procs for and from oneself.]

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nekotee

Gurl please

At least we have some fun and challenge beside a mindless cure-spammer and an angry fairy enslaver !

If rng is your main concern about ast then you didn't even open your eyes on this royal class road
Whm shall fear for their Ass <3

...

Ok i admit that RNGesus is favorably blessing my Ass because i always had the card i want/need what i have to have it xP

---

I don't mind RNG in and of itself, but there's so many cards I just DON'T want. Spear is completely useless, spire is 90% useless, and arrow I'm fairly sure is just inferior to balance. Bole and ewer are also rather situational. It just feels like I'm dissapointed by my draws way too much.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basketofseals

I don't mind RNG in and of itself, but there's so many cards I just DON'T want. Spear is completely useless, spire is 90% useless, and arrow I'm fairly sure is just inferior to balance. Bole and ewer are also rather situational. It just feels like I'm dissapointed by my draws way too much.

---

This is mostly how I felt, as well. I don't really play XIV much anymore, and I'm not sure the AST changes will entice me to come back (don't like the ongoing focus on healer DPS), but I'm still watching with relative interest to see WHAT changes they make to the card system. If they insist on saddling us with RNG, and "RNG manipulation tools", then I'd prefer if they really removed the concept of dud cards to begin with. Spear shouldn't be an auto-RR, and I cringe at the amount of times I draw a Ewer, Shuffle, draw a Spire, Royal Road, then Ewer again...in a WAR/AST/BRD/DRG expert dungeon.

I'd prefer if all the cards at least had some functionality to them. Failing that, I'd like to see us get more ways to manage the pretty gross "failure strings" the class is otherwise capable of getting (letting us RR our Spread card, or having multiple Spread slots, or Shuffle being spammable/at least on a 30-second CD, or SOMETHING).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nekotee

Gurl please

At least we have some fun and challenge beside a mindless cure-spammer and an angry fairy enslaver !

If rng is your main concern about ast then you didn't even open your eyes on this royal class road
Whm shall fear for their Ass <3

...

Ok i admit that RNGesus is favorably blessing my Ass because i always had the card i want/need what i have to have it xP

---

As I play all three, then the whm 'ass fearing' is immaterial.
If I was concerned about the other healer classes being somehow threatened by the Ast, then I'd not be campaigning to make it better.

It's not royal road, spread, shuffle etc, it's the fact that they've introduced rng into the selection of a class's skills. This is a gimmick. Selection of skills should be down to the player, not a roll the dice rng, ooh look what I got mechanic.
That pot luck is bad enough in ftp games with lockboxes, and has no place in a structured mmo class.

To me they looked at the Ast and tried to go for either a Whm lite or Sch lite. This was a missed opportunity to introduce a truly different type of healer.
But that chance has gone unless there is a major re-imagining of the class, unlikely.

What can be done are revisions to the Nocturnal sect, which needs a good looking at.
The devs tried to combine both pre-emptive and re-active healing in this class with the two sects - and have ended up with a lop-sided bias.

They've also painted themselves into a corner in making this third healer a me too ranged class with little real differentiation. It's now a very fine balancing act to get players to use all three.
Playing this class purely out of boredom with the others doesn't give you that much of a change to be honest, particularly compared to the whm which you have referenced.

Hopefully the next healer class will have real differentiation - a battle cleric or similar. An in depth re-working of the Nocturnal sect could go this way, but I fear any changes will just be tinkering with the class.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Teraluna

It's not royal road, spread, shuffle etc, it's the fact that they've introduced rng into the selection of a class's skills. This is a gimmick. Selection of skills should be down to the player, not a roll the dice rng, ooh look what I got mechanic.

---

Crit Adlos allow you to completly bypass some mechanics and are also unreliable. The RNG of crit Adlos has even more impact on the fight than AST cards.
The only difference is that AST's cards include some kind of possibility of being "unlucky", whereas the effect of Adlos is always positive and spikes with a crit. You just don't pay attention to it because you always play around the idea that you won't have a crit, and that it's only a bonus when it happens, meaning it always feels rewarding. Getting a Balance or an Arrow doesn't feel that way, it just feels "normal", like it's the intended way of things... so the only real feeling you can have with the cards is when you don't get what you want, leading to disappointment.
But still, the effectiveness of Adloquium is tied to a RNG heavy mechanic too, no matter how it makes you feel. The punishment for being unlucky might not be the same in the two mechanics, but the RNG concept is.
Getting a crit adlo is a "ooh look what I got" mechanic.

For one time I partly agreed with your answer teraluna but still

As Fyce said
The CritAdlo is far more a gimmick than card
Yes skill should be choose by the player
But card are a bonus, their will never hinder the healing or dps capabilities
Only smooth them (bole on tank allow less stress during healing)

And as Fyce said more or less, the card system is choosed by the player, we do choose to have a rng bonus
We are lucky that there is no malefic/malus card (which honestly could have make it funnier, but hindering the gameplay)

...

Also i concurrence... I would love a battle oriented healer
Something strong enough for 4man content
But more dps/support in 8man

Let's not forget we have 4 buttons dedicated to this meh mechanic while other jobs got 4 real abilities. When you try to anything synced to level 50 as AST, it honestly feels like you forgot to equip your jobstone. You just have so few abilities.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by basketofseals

Let's not forget we have 4 buttons dedicated to this meh mechanic while other jobs got 4 real abilities. When you try to anything synced to level 50 as AST, it honestly feels like you forgot to equip your jobstone. You just have so few abilities.

---

This

It's padding in an attempt to distract from the lack of real utilities. All that just for a hit and miss rng bonus, whilst as you say other classes get real skills.

If they took away the rng and let players equip the card bonuses on their hotbars (with a common cool down) - then you'd just see a couple slotted. But they won't as this would remove the padding, making players more aware of the thin skills list.

So this slot filling gimmick stays put, suggesting somehow that playing an rng mini-game in the middle of an often hectic raid group is a good thing to do.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Teraluna

This

It's padding in an attempt to distract from the lack of real utilities. All that just for a hit and miss rng bonus, whilst as you say other classes get real skills.

If they took away the rng and let players equip the card bonuses on their hotbars (with a common cool down) - then you'd just see a couple slotted. But they won't as this would remove the padding, making players more aware of the thin skills list.

So this slot filling gimmick stays put, suggesting somehow that playing an rng mini-game in the middle of an often hectic raid group is a good thing to do.

---

maybe they finally realized "hey, we have draw, redraw, royal road, and spread all attached to a single mechanic and it's something like an 85% chance at garbage and the winner draw is pretty small too... Maybe all the effects should be quite strong so that the choice of where to put them or royal road is the big deal instead of pounding away hoping for the good one"

as far as nocturnal sect goes, considering scholar has all the utility and the fairy and basically infinite mp, a much larger potency than scholars seems to be the way to go. Since they specifically mentioned it will favor high skill, maybe a massive shield but only like 5s duration or something along those lines?

I shoudo remind that with or without card and card skill your healing power doesn't change
While if you remove some abilities to the 2 others they are broken

And if we speak about sync
The one most hurt is the whm since 90% of his gameplay is suppressed by sync
Sch become hurt become he lose 75% of his healing power (less if EoS is rightly controled)
Ast on the opposite only lose a bit of his dps (ok nullify his aoe abilities) but stay fine

...

Any player blaming rng on card did not learn to use them because they all are great and have utilities in their current state
I fear the up incoming because it might be so great that... Well some people might cry :D
And nothing make a dps pants go wet more than a well timed card from ast rather than a whm no support

I never try to do Astro in synced (I'm assuming you mean lv50) content, it's just far too slow without a Holy equivalent.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nekotee

I shoudo remind that with or without card and card skill your healing power doesn't change
While if you remove some abilities to the 2 others they are broken

And if we speak about sync
The one most hurt is the whm since 90% of his gameplay is suppressed by sync
Sch become hurt become he lose 75% of his healing power (less if EoS is rightly controled)
Ast on the opposite only lose a bit of his dps (ok nullify his aoe abilities) but stay fine

...

Any player blaming rng on card did not learn to use them because they all are great and have utilities in their current state
I fear the up incoming because it might be so great that... Well some people might cry :D
And nothing make a dps pants go wet more than a well timed card from ast rather than a whm no support

---

It's not about learning to use them at all. They all have descriptions like every other ability.

It is about the RNG gimmick put in to pad out the hotbar for something that's just a buff, a pot luck mess getting in the way of the main elements of the Astro.
I've seen posts on here from healers who've cleared the content without even going near the card lottery.
That shows two things:
1. They are not playing the class to it's full potential, and.....
2. It didn't matter
- because for them the card mechanism is too much trouble for too little outcome.

Which other healers do we have where you click on a skill and wonder what's going to happen? It's totally different than the chance of seeing a skill crit or not, because you don't even know what's going to pop out of the lucky dip bag.

You know what? It's less trouble for other classes to complete their full rotation sequences that have a real impact, than this cumbersome rng mechanism for an unpredictable lesser output.

The whole slot padding card idea needs to go. It's a buff, and should be a quick one click action. Put them on a common cool down and let the player choose how many of these they put on their hotbar, - all of them highly unlikely, or what in fact would happen - just a couple.

Card system is far à trouble

Each card have 15zec duration it's more than enough to act
Beside when clicking draw you don't have an infinite possibility
Only 6 way to go, and 5 on redraw
It's not that much to think about and plan in battle

It's almost instant reflexe in most case

Not high random situation here

...

The only meeeh point is that yes... You cannot macro that skill because of it's rng
Yes it force you to think and act accordingly
Something i know whm are not force to do often, i will admit that...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rufalus

Just a flat increase to nocturnal field barrier strength and card potency/duration would be easy to do and still wouldn't make scholar useless.

---

A little late to respond to this but, it is literally impossible to 'make scholar useless' at this point without giving scholar serious nerfs (which they won't do) XD.

I agree to the boost of the shield and nocturnal sect, they might come near the OPness of the scholar, but what do we have to compare to the diurnal AST as WHM now? the more the boost, the more the whm is getting lowered.

AST and WHM have nearly the same healing ability, but they keep enhancing the support side of diurnal AST, while all we had were nerf of all our support ability T_T

You still have Cure III and a better Medica II, and the Mind bonus.

...And Eye for an Eye, I guess. Yeah, Square Enix isn't known for their impeccable balance.

Hum... Whm support ability ?
Excuse me but what ?
Which one ?

I fail to see one...

With that boost... Sorry (not really) to say but whm can now go sulk in the corner XD

So, patch notes are out, and as expected, I will probably drop AST now since the class changed into something horrible that I hate.

Yeah yeah the buffs to the buffs are nice and all. Noct shields are just too OP now, no more reason to ever play this class in Diurnal again.
Also, the only thing that ever made AST fun to play was that it was a SPEEDY healer. Now they take that away to give us...crit? 15% crit is the chance I have with every normal cast anyway >.>
Now we'll be just as slow as any other healer and maybe get a big heal from time to time that will take ages to cast by which time the tank will be dead anyway already.

I can't even put into words how pissed I am about these changes....

well, back in my days we had something called stoneskin, but it was considered too OP at 18% hp, so it got nerfed to the ground :p.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atoli

So, patch notes are out, and as expected, I will probably drop AST now since the class changed into something horrible that I hate.

Yeah yeah the buffs to the buffs are nice and all. Noct shields are just too OP now, no more reason to ever play this class in Diurnal again.
Also, the only thing that ever made AST fun to play was that it was a SPEEDY healer. Now they take that away to give us...crit? 15% crit is the chance I have with every normal cast anyway >.>
Now we'll be just as slow as any other healer and maybe get a big heal from time to time that will take ages to cast by which time the tank will be dead anyway already.

I can't even put into words how pissed I am about these changes....

---

if you are serious, you might want to read over the changes again, since there is some misunderstanding on your side. also remember sch and ast shield's don't stack

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atoli

So, patch notes are out, and as expected, I will probably drop AST now since the class changed into something horrible that I hate.

Yeah yeah the buffs to the buffs are nice and all. Noct shields are just too OP now, no more reason to ever play this class in Diurnal again.
Also, the only thing that ever made AST fun to play was that it was a SPEEDY healer. Now they take that away to give us...crit? 15% crit is the chance I have with every normal cast anyway >.>
Now we'll be just as slow as any other healer and maybe get a big heal from time to time that will take ages to cast by which time the tank will be dead anyway already.

..

---

Oh god, you liked the insta cast bene2? Sorry to say, but pretty much every competitive healer agreed that it was crap.

By the way, Diurnal is still the primary mode IMO, it'll still give you the attack speed boost and you still have higher potency on Aspected spells. Where do you see it being taken away? I'll probably try out Nocturnal in more content, but I see nothing that points to Diurnal being removed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Atoli

So, patch notes are out, and as expected, I will probably drop AST now since the class changed into something horrible that I hate.

Yeah yeah the buffs to the buffs are nice and all. Noct shields are just too OP now, no more reason to ever play this class in Diurnal again.
Also, the only thing that ever made AST fun to play was that it was a SPEEDY healer. Now they take that away to give us...crit? 15% crit is the chance I have with every normal cast anyway >.>
Now we'll be just as slow as any other healer and maybe get a big heal from time to time that will take ages to cast by which time the tank will be dead anyway already.

---

B2 proc is an obvious improvement. Spell speed is the same, as diurnal still has it's passive attack speed boost. You kind of have it backwards, cause the instant cast was the useless trait. Overall the changes are ridic how good they are.

Agreed

Insta benefic II was cool on paper but on use, it also pump out mana (less a problem now)

And honestly the ast stay a speed healer
I mean just lightspeed + CO will be huge !

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rennies

Oh god, you liked the insta cast bene2? Sorry to say, but pretty much every competitive healer agreed that it was crap.

---

Yes, I loved it. I played AST 50% for the buffs and 50% for the instant second-tier heal. And sorry to disappoint you but I did competitive content as AST, so appearently I am not part of those "pretty much everyone".
I'm more surprised all those competitive healers appearently didn't know how to utilize the instant cast..^^°

Noct AST's shields are a lot more potent than SCH now, although ofc SCH still brings other things to the table that make it viable in a way, but combined with the heavy buffs to the cards, I can totally see SCH getting replaced by Noct AST.
Personally, I hate shielding. I do it if I have to because it's part of the class and I couldn't call myself a good healer if I wasn't able to do it, but I still don't like it.
My hope was that they'd just get rid of Noct entirely (and make the new 4.0 healer fight with SCH for a space) instead of boosting it to oblivion and making Diurnal useless in the process. Yes, it still lets you cast a tiny bit faster. But Noct lets you stay in CS longer, first with the strong shields, then because you can let the tank drop lower because of the strong healing boost.

I currently can see no reason to keep playing Diurnal AST. And if all I'm allowed to play as is Noct AST again, I might as well stop playing it since I do not enjoy shielding.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I won't try and stop you if you enjoy the changes, but I certainly don't, because they take everything I love about the class away and replace it with things I hate.