Astrologian buffs confirmed

The cards are fine, if anything, AST could use a buff to the healing potency on abilities. As I see it, they only seem to lack when you are trying to help your under geared tank friend or highly immobile damage dealers get a clear on something! When things are going right, it is just as easy to weave in some cleric stance as the other healers. And any mana issues that I thought were present have gone by the wayside. Some added sect bonuses on abilities would be great. but I really do not want to see any sweeping changes to cards or abilities. Spread, out of combat, would be sweet. when you shuffle a deck the card you drew goes back in as it should, it would be interesting to not be able to draw the card you have on the spread, or royal road.

IMO, Astro doesn't need more healing potency. What it does need is more utility. The Spire and The Ewer need to be combined in 1 card. Then it won't be useless to use expanded royal road on them.
They should add a new card that grants vulnerability to an enemy.
Finally the bole should have a mantra effect attached to it too.
And we would have:
3 Cards that increase DPS.
1 Card that increases resistance and healing
1 Card that reduces resources consumption
1 Card that decreases cooldowns.

Then Disable should decrease the damage of the next Spell/Ability
Shuffle needs to have decreased his Cooldown to 30 OR make the card that you redraw can't be the same you've drawn before.


I'm not talking about +50 abilities, because i'm only lvl 50 and that's what I found while playing Hard Mode dungeons.

Benefic needs to be on par with Cure and Physick. It's a bit on the weak side. The Enhanced Benefic is also lacking due to the buff being applied slowly after it procs. Instead switch Enhanced Benefic to 15% chance your next Benefic II will have 100% critical chance.

The card system, while a good theme, sucks plain and simple. We have to deal with the Draw RNG while dealing with skills that work against the system instead of making it reliable and enjoyable to pull off. It takes far too much time to get the desired effect and then the impact of it can be a complete waste leaving the player demoralized.

AST uses Draw! -> Spire... -> Shuffle! -> Spire... you get the point.

Just change Spire to an effect that reduces the next incoming attacks damage by 20%. Other classes can worry about restoring tp.

My 2cents. As a Ninja, I enjoy every Spire card I get, allows the BRD/MCN to not have to paeon just for me, increasing dps overall.

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Originally Posted by Rahaya

The main reason why I think Spire/Ewer are fine effect wise is that it is percentage based. It is super useful on allowing more Ruin III outside of Dreadwyrm Trance or the hefty cost of Dark Arts as the 20% is a greater number with the larger cost, its drawing them for that time that's up in the air. However, I think they are decent enough to be tossed on whenever because while there is 'non-optimal' times, there is rarely 'non-beneficial' times, if that makes sense. I don't think they can ever be 100% useful all the time without retooling them altogether.

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The problem for me is that there are so many potential non-optimal times, including when a player doesn't actually even notice that they've been ewer/spired so they don't even know they should be trying to use more T/MP. Also, as has been said before, there are many times when you toss it on someone and the boss goes into an invuln phase or leaves the field or the player you just used it on gets stunned by something (like Titan's gaols).

Also, the card just can't do much for a player who's already run out of T/MP, meaning these cards are best used on:
-A player who will notice that they've received the buff
-A player who knows what the buff does
-A player who would run out of T/MP without the benefit of the card
-A player who still has T/MP to spend
-A player who will be able to use abilities the entire time they have the card (ie no raid mechanic, stun, etc. will prevent them from doing so)

And you need to also happen to DRAW the card when a player fits the aforementioned descriptors to get the most out of it.

Making them regenerate T/MP over time just fixes all of these issues, especially because it's still RNG as to when you'll get it. If you're mid-fight, odds are that SOMEONE will be missing T/MP from their bar and no matter what else happens, these cards will be able to help refill that missing stuff.

-If they don't notice they have the buff? Doesn't matter: they'll see more T/MP when next they glace at their bar and know they have more leeway to spend it
-If they're running from a raid mechanic or stunned? Doesn't matter: they'll still get the T/MP regenerated so they can use it when next they have a chance
-If they're already out of T/MP? The card will be a GODSEND.

The only situations in which these cards AREN'T beneficial is when a player is completely full on T/MP anyway and NOT spending it (since it would be restoring as they're spending) or the player gets hit by a raid mechanic seconds later and dies.

Really, just making the cards all around more versatile like this would be HUGE for AST because they'd be overall more beneficial. Since we have RNG tied to when we get them, it'd be nice if we could guarantee the cards would be useful in most if not all situations.

I still think they need a bit more emergency healing power (they don't need to be as good as SCH/WHM emergency power, they just have to not be egregiously worse) because they're still queuing as healers.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

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We really can't keep using 'They don't know what the buff is!' for the AST's cards forever. The only class that could possibly need heads up for Ewer is SMN. Melee classes are already using their TP at max efficiency. Literally everyone else is business as usual, no attention required. 'The player who will run out of TP/MP without card' applies to the refresh as well. If the player has completely bottomed out on TP, where was the BRD/MCH? RNG means we certainly can't replace those classes in the raid comp. In dungeons Spire would come out ahead, because in dungeons the melee classes can be expected to use aoe abilities. Greater cost with % = more TP saved. The refresh would have to be a set amount. And bottoming out in dungeons is rare. Both versions still require drawing it at that time to see anything worthwhile. And 'that time' is pretty much identical. Refresh shares many of the same downsides. Is better in one particular situation, worse in another.

It's a placebo. I think that might be the issue. Saving TP doesn't feel like giving TP.

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Originally Posted by Rahaya

We really can't keep using 'They don't know what the buff is!' for the AST's cards forever.

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I really wish they would have named the actual buffs more descriptively, using things like "Damage Up" (like the one from the 2nd boss of WP HM) or "TP Efficiency" (or something) so that other players wouldn't be expected to memorize the AST buffs, too. It's fine for the AST to need to know all six, but I think it's a little silly that the entire raid needs to remember them, since a few of them have incentives for the target to change behavior in some way that most other party utility buffs don't (namely Ewer, Spire, and Spear). It would have gone a long way toward making groups with randoms (like in the DF) more friendly to AST buffing, I think.

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Originally Posted by Rahaya

It's a placebo. I think that might be the issue. Saving TP doesn't feel like giving TP.

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This is certainly true--TP restoration has a more obvious effect. About the only times I've heard someone comment on getting Spire is to complain that it makes their TP numbers look weird, haha. At least in current 50+ dungeons, Spire's not incredibly useful for most physical DPS classes, since they're generally forcing small pulls of 3 or less these days. For the three melee, single-target focus is generally stronger than AoE until there are at least 4 targets (and not necessarily resource efficient until 5). MCH/BRD are a little better off, but their AoE are expensive enough that a Spire isn't likely to grant more than one (or perhaps two) extra AoE shots. Meanwhile, the larger AoE pulls (say the first pull on the last section of Fractal) tend to be relatively low-HP targets, so TP regeneration isn't much of an issue (especially not one that Invigorate won't fix).

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Originally Posted by Alahra

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Why would it be silly? Players learned what the yellow circle buff (Goad) was. Battle Litany of DRG has a brand new icon as well. We learned Mantra. MCH has brand new icons for their version of Mages/Paeon. Fae Illumination? 'Have to learn what this icon means' should not be a tall bar for players. I also play NIN, and as someone said earlier, Spire is super helpful. The BRD will notice they don't have to sing when they otherwise would too.

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Originally Posted by Rahaya

We really can't keep using 'They don't know what the buff is!' for the AST's cards forever. The only class that could possibly need heads up for Ewer is SMN. Melee classes are already using their TP at max efficiency.

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...Except when they have to decide whether or not to spam AoE abilities which they risk burning their TP out otherwise.

When I'm in voicechat and I can tell a party member that they have the Spire on them, sure, but I'm willing to bet that 90% of all group content is done by people not in voicechat. They may not know what Spire is OR they don't even notice that they've received it, and in the heat of an intense battle, that can easily happen.

That's one of the reasons why regen makes more sense: they have the TP they would've saved but they can use it whenever they want to/can.

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It's a placebo. I think that might be the issue. Saving TP doesn't feel like giving TP.

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...Except all of the other points still stand.

Saving TP isn't giving TP because you're not giving TP. People can't save TP on what they don't have to spend in the first place.

Regen would also save another healer/tank who have run out AFTER they've run out instead of only working before they've run out, again making the cards more versatile.

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Originally Posted by Starbirth

Benefic needs to be on par with Cure and Physick. It's a bit on the weak side. The Enhanced Benefic is also lacking due to the buff being applied slowly after it procs. Instead switch Enhanced Benefic to 15% chance your next Benefic II will have 100% critical chance.

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I agree with everything you said but i had to quote this specific part and say...
YES! Y.E.S