Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

I'm absolutely loving AST. To be frank, as much as I love SCH and I'm not trashing other SCH users, but for me personally I was going tired of SCH. Sometimes it felt too much like a DPS class and healer auto pilot. AST really keeps you on your toes and makes you think about your actions. I commend Square for managing to create a 3rd healer that feels different than the other 2.

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Originally Posted by VitalSuit

Honestly in order to bring AST up to par they need to reduce the cooldowns on all the card skills. IMO 20 sec for draw, 40 for spread, 15 for RR, 60 for shuffle.

I feel like either get rid of the -50% potency from aoe RR or increase the potency of all the cards.
Bole and Balance are fine as they are. Spear needs a rework to affect cooldowns that are already on cooldown and not the ones you haven't used yet. Arrow is definitely fine as it is. Ewer and Spire should have 30 second durations.

The biggest thing they need to change though is definitely the card skill cooldowns, they're way too long on something that's too much rng to be reliable.

Collective Unconscious should work similar to BLM ley lines. You cast the bubble and the bubble is created and you can MOVE while inside of it but as soon as you move outside of it the effect ends.

Granted I'm only a level 45 AST but these are my thoughts from what I've seen and what I've read and played.

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I wouldn't mind if they revamped the cards entirely to do more substantial things in general.

The less TP/MP usage is a joke. Reducing the recast time by 20% only works if a player uses that skill while under the effect of it, not if it's already on cooldown (so I hear), ergo you'll never get any mileage out of playing the spear unless you're on voice chat.

And considering how bad the aforementioned buffs are, 10% damage done/prevented for 15 sec isn't worth it, especially not when the healing power is lacking so much. I've played both SCH and AST to 52 and the SCH just does everything better. I can have my Selene out for the speed buff (which helps everyone reliably every 30 seconds) and my emergency options as a SCH are sooooo much better than AST.

And since my healing potency is that much better, I can afford to switch to cleric stance and DPS it up as a SCH that much more often.

The biggest problem is that the cards suck. Even when you get "the right cards", they're still not valuable enough to a fight to justify playing AST over SCH/WHM.

I understand the idea of a healing class that you bring only when you KNOW the rest of the party is going to be competent enough to not put too much pressure on the healer, but we ALREADY have that kind of reward in SCH/WHM both as competent parties will have a healer DPSing the entire time anyway.

Again, if you have a 17% chance of getting the card you want, that card had better move mountains when you draw it...

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Originally Posted by Shamirah

AST IS NOT A SUPPORT CLASS. Strop spreading misinformation. It is a HEALER class.

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But it is.
No matter how much you say it isn't it is in fact a support class.

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Originally Posted by Lycinder

But it is.
No matter how much you say it isn't it is in fact a support class.

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*checks forum name sees the forum named healer roles* pretty sure they are indeed a healing class

I personally find it extremely hard to play if Tanks (no offence meant) cant use their skills properly, if you want to draw a card and should and your tank if you forget for 2 sec to heal him goes from full down to zero, it makes my class totally useless, because all I do is spam healing hoping that the tank gives me a break for 2 sec. In my opinion and I am still working on it, if the tank (mostly him) cant use his own abilities and cds properly, astrologian is totally useless and is inferior to a WHM or SCH in terms of pure healing,which is not our main goal. So I foresee lots of complains soon about how people get insulting towards Astrologians....

Mei

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Originally Posted by Lycinder

But it is.
No matter how much you say it isn't it is in fact a support class.

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Yeah show me the SUPPORT lb ? Oh there is none. Show me the SUPPORT forum class. Oh there is none.

Dragoon is a support too i guess then ? He buffs BRD and MCH damage and can give 15% crit to everyone.

GUYS breaking news : DRG is not a DPS, it's a support !!

IMO, one skill that will improve astrologian performance a lot is a skill that can make a certain card to appear for 100% with a cd of 180s(6 draws). It could be 6 different skills(one for each card) with shared cd, where if you use it, for the next 15s, your next draw will 100% result in the card that you want. This will greatly reduced the randomness of the draw skill(1 in 6 will always result in the skill you want, just like the average) while still keep the random nature of the skill. Hopefully the dev will think about implementing this skill before the next major patch(probably as extra level 60 skill)

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Originally Posted by AlexanderThorolund

I'm absolutely loving AST. To be frank, as much as I love SCH and I'm not trashing other SCH users, but for me personally I was going tired of SCH. Sometimes it felt too much like a DPS class and healer auto pilot. AST really keeps you on your toes and makes you think about your actions. I commend Square for managing to create a 3rd healer that feels different than the other 2.

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Really? To me it feels like a less potent WHM. If it weren't for the card mechanics you'd actually be a WHM. (minus a few abilties)

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Originally Posted by Shamirah

Yeah show me the SUPPORT lb ? Oh there is none. Show me the SUPPORT forum class. Oh there is none.

Dragoon is a support too i guess then ? He buffs BRD and MCH damage and can give 15% crit to everyone.

GUYS breaking news : DRG is not a DPS, it's a support !!

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To be fair it has a higher support focus than the other two healers. At least on paper.

Continuing to play Astrologian, I find that it's harder to carry others than it is on other classes. Tanks that don't use CD's or DD's that stand in the fire can pose a real problem, since because AST lacks a way to straight up increase it's HPS (it has no DS, PoM, and Essential Dignity is a 40 second CD), it's maximum throughput is limited. Aspected Helios > Helios spam for AoE or Aspected Benefic > Benefic II spam for single targets. If the damage coming in is higher than your healing going out, tough popotoes, you're not going to make it unless you get a lucky Arrow or Bole Draw.

AST has been doing me well for day to day healing, it's still a lot of fun, and the animations and star globes are gorgeous. If players are doing well, Astrologian is free to heal, buff, and DPS in peace. When players bite off more than they can chew or start making grave mistakes, AST stumbles a bit and has to make precise, attentive decisions to recover where WHM/SCH can bulldoze through with higher HPS.

Ast has no emergency heals (outside of lightspeed maybe - which can eat a lot of mp) - the other heals have divine seal or rouse or fey illumination at no extra cost of mp. I do think ast is fun to play and I love the design and concept - but practically it just doesn't work.

Ast needs more potent heals - or a way of increasing potency - or have some sort of emergency come back factor.

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Originally Posted by Miiu

To be fair it has a higher support focus than the other two healers. At least on paper.

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on paper I agree that it is suppose to be a support healer hybrid. I still think the other healer skills can outclass the randomness of the card buffs (bole vs. eye for an eye/ virus/ sacred soil/ fey covenant for example. Or even fey glow/light. scholar i better support - and the extra damage you could milk out of a balance card would probably come from a scholar being able to cleric stance dps anyway.

Ast cards need improvements/ buffs.