Astrologian Speculations! How will it fit in?

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

~insert very useful information here~

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Frigging awesome - but I hope there is a requirement for starting at those levels. I still think new players to the game need to start at level 1 on something at least and learn the game before they are allowed to start just diving into the higher level stuff. But if they allow those of us that already leveled characters up to unlock those jobs at the higher levels, then sweeeeeeeeeeeet!

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Originally Posted by RxRai

Just a random thought but what if their second stance was like something similar to Disc Priests' atonement? For those that don't know, it causes damage dealt to enemies to also smart heal the lowest health target in range for a % of damage dealt.

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So like a Chloromancer, but Single target version. Very very interesting indeed :) I'd enjoy that, too.

I actually like the idea of having a heavy heal stance and a light heal stance the most. I hope they will go with CNJ for crossclass just because of cleric stance. But I think it's quite likely that the crossclasses will be CNJ (due to the useful spells AST would get, ESPECIALLY cleric for solo purpoes even) and ACN (Just fits well lorewise and spells would be useful too) but who knows. We might get some really fu**ed up shit.

I kinda wish to be able to use the cards at will though. I was thinking they might be the AST CD's. A heavy CD based healer with the standard heals on GCD.

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Originally Posted by Faelandaea

Frigging awesome - but I hope there is a requirement for starting at those levels. I still think new players to the game need to start at level 1 on something at least and learn the game before they are allowed to start just diving into the higher level stuff. But if they allow those of us that already leveled characters up to unlock those jobs at the higher levels, then sweeeeeeeeeeeet!

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The Massively interview I posted in my previous post indicates the following:

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While Yoshida would not reveal the main stats of the new jobs, he did say that you will not be able to start playing one at level 1. As with other jobs, you have to reach level 30 first and do job quests to unlock them.

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If I were to take a guess, I would think you would need a class/job of the respective level to unlock, so:

CNJ 30 for AST unlock
GLD or MRD 30 for DRK unlock
A DPS @ 30 for MCH unlock

That way a random DPS can't just got and unlock a tank class and not know what their role is.

Also, take everything with a bit of grain of salt. A Polygon interview stated the exact opposite of the Reddit and Massively interview indicating that the Jobs WILL start at level 1. While Polygon has a stigma of being unreliable information, it might be best to wait to see exactly what S-E will say at like, one of their press conferences or something. Yoshi-P's words have already changed a few times. A previous interview from last year indicated that the new Job would be playable from Day 1 for any new player, and this doesn't seem like the case anymore.

I guess, in the end, time will tell. Speculation is always fun though, lol.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

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not quite

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/...d-new-details/

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“We were actually recently deciding what to call these jobs that don’t have a base class, and we’ve decided to call them ‘Extra Jobs.’ Just like when you can switch to different jobs when you’re at level 30, that applies to these as well. As long as any class or job is at level 30, you’ll be able to access any of these three new jobs.”

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

not quite

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/...d-new-details/

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I am personally hoping they renag on that. I don't want to see the kind of (unintentional) chaos a new player / MMO'r can do if they leveled Archer to 30 then unlocked Dark Knight and jumped straight into Haukke or Brayflox .-.

I don't know if it was mentioned, but I've been looking over the Astro video they showed at PAX. The starglobe is kept on the back like a PLD's shield and the cards are held on the hip (unless that's part of the Astro's outfit?). Even though the starglobe and cards go together, I think they might be considered 2 different objects. Ie, a main hand and off hand weapon. I think that's rather interesting, as PLD is the only job to have a main and off (aside from THM/BLM and CNJ/WHM when leveling, as they had a couple of one-handed+shield combos).

If they are a main and off-hand, I'm kind of curious as why they went with that approach. PLD's shields have a block rate, would that mean that the cards (I'm gonna assume they're off-hand) will have a special benefit like that, but just for Astro?

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Originally Posted by Selli

I don't know if it was mentioned, but I've been looking over the Astro video they showed at PAX. The starglobe is kept on the back like a PLD's shield and the cards are held on the hip (unless that's part of the Astro's outfit?). Even though the starglobe and cards go together, I think they might be considered 2 different objects. Ie, a main hand and off hand weapon. I think that's rather interesting, as PLD is the only job to have a main and off (aside from THM/BLM and CNJ/WHM when leveling, as they had a couple of one-handed+shield combos).

If they are a main and off-hand, I'm kind of curious as why they went with that approach. PLD's shields have a block rate, would that mean that the cards (I'm gonna assume they're off-hand) will have a special benefit like that, but just for Astro?

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That is a good observation and you might be onto something. It is an interesting coincidence that the card holder is positioned in the same spot where a Paladin or any crafting class would sheath their weapon/tool. It's entirely possible that it could be a separate object not part of the outfit and based off some of the old sketch work they showed off at the PAX event they did have similar concepts as a means for a card holder of some sort. The design on the back of the cards match those that appear around the star globe which I would also suggest isn't a generic "placeholder" appearance considering it doesn't match the "card casting" animation. I could even see how it could play into the concept of having two stances by having players swap cards with the ones at their waist which would explain why there would always be cards visible in the card holder.

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Originally Posted by RxRai

Just a random thought but what if their second stance was like something similar to Disc Priests' atonement? For those that don't know, it causes damage dealt to enemies to also smart heal the lowest health target in range for a % of damage dealt.

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I was actually thinking more holy priest then disc. I recently stopped playing WoW (holy priest is my main) so my first thought to the stances was holy priest. This would be exciting since I'm very disappointed with Blizz's priest right now. Would be nice to have SE do it right, I feel like they did SCH way better then Blizz's disc priest as well.

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Originally Posted by Selli

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they did say Astrologian will be about stances dancing. It may become very intersting

@Blueyes

I didn't really notice the cardholder at first because it is a really similar color to the outfit. It was the sketches of the cardholder and the colors of the globe being very different, that convinced me that they aren't considered one object (which might be wrong as Bards' quivers and bows are one).

My static Monk likes to play SCH and he said once, "Sometimes I wish my healer could have stacks like my Monk." and I always thought that was a pretty weird thing to say. Why would any healer like to start off a fight being slightly slower/less powerful? But in theory, the start of the fight is when the party is most protected (as they should have Protect, Stoneskin, and Adlo), so I can see why it wouldn't be a horrific thing. If the cards were like stacks, they would definitely be different from Cleric. The longer you do a specific action (ie DPS), the more the cards favor that action and enhance it, stacking together providing specific buffs (such as acc, crit, ect).

Oh yeah, despite the numerous times I've watched that short one minute video I never actually noticed it was a card holder at her waist or realized that it could be a separate object from the outfit. Though on closer inspection, I think the star globe and the card holder probably are part of a set similar to a bow and quiver. You have to look pretty close, but the blue color seen with the card holder can actually be found in small portions of the globe as a subtle ascent color alongside a similar gold tone. Granted that same blue color is also used in portions of the outfit as well, but I'm still willing to bet that the card holder is a separate object from the outfit.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

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The matching colors might be because it's AST's AF set/weapon, not necessarily because the items are together (crossing my fingers, as I say that, lol). It'd kind of suck for gathering wise because you'd have to get the starglobe and cards/holder separately. But the fashionista in me is loving all the glamor possibilities.

And because, you know, it's totally silly to have an off-hand slot that's used for only one job end-game. That little grey space needs some love.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

I am personally hoping they renag on that. I don't want to see the kind of (unintentional) chaos a new player / MMO'r can do if they leveled Archer to 30 then unlocked Dark Knight and jumped straight into Haukke or Brayflox .-.

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I agree. Players need to learn their jobs at the lower levels. It is easy for, say, a healer like myself to learn another healer role very quickly and still be good enough to be a benefit to the team. The skills may change, but the job stays the same - analyze your skills and do whatever it takes to keep the party alive. I can also DPS, so I could pick up the DPS role and do just fine . . . wait . . . that's not a good example. Anyone can DPS. Okay, so the DPS role can be picked up by any class, so omit DPS from any restrictions.

However, I do not know how to tank. I started learning a couple of weeks ago but I am in no condition to be doing level 30+ dungeons as a tank unless I am with my FC, who is being kind enough to teach me. Therefore I would want to be expected to level another tank class from the ground up before coming into this role.

SE - whatever you do - if you start tank or healer classes at level 30, PLEASE make players level a related to tanking or healing before letting them into 30+ dungeons right off the bat.

All in all, the best level would be 20 or 25. high enough to skip the "game tutorial" dungeons, low enough to keep the "role tutorial" dungeons that are halatali and toto-rak. 5 levels should be enough to get the most basic things down (spam flash derp) before the real deal in haukke

There's a tiny bit of information in this interview here... :p

What I got from it:
- Card selection sounds random. Or, considering that you apparently need quick reflexes, you might be spinning a wheel and the same reflexes will help you in picking the Card you want.
- Cards will seem to mostly be about buffs and supporting your party (more buffs, or debuffs on enemies?).
- Cards can be stockpiled instead of being used up immediately, perhaps allowing for some fancy combination spells!

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Originally Posted by Raminax

There's a tiny bit of information in this interview here... :p

What I got from it:
- Card selection sounds random. Or, considering that you apparently need quick reflexes, you might be spinning a wheel and the same reflexes will help you in picking the Card you want.
- Cards will seem to mostly be about buffs and supporting your party (more buffs, or debuffs on enemies?).
- Cards can be stockpiled instead of being used up immediately, perhaps allowing for some fancy combination spells!

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Darnit! Came here just to post the link to the interview and make my observations! You beat me to it ^^

Im glad they finally released some info, even if it is small about Astro!

I think they may focus on HOTs, potential a little buffing like brave, faith etc.

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Originally Posted by Sanguisio

I think they may focus on HOTs, potential a little buffing like brave, faith etc.

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With the new info, people are beginning to suspect they may play similar to corsair from FFXI mixed with actions similar to ninjas mudras.

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Originally Posted by TheMunimai

With the new info, people are beginning to suspect they may play similar to corsair from FFXI mixed with actions similar to ninjas mudras.

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I was thinking about the same thing (ninjas) when "stocking cards to make some fancy combinations" was mentioned. Hopefully it's not stupid like sleghting in KH:CoM.

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Originally Posted by AmewKitsune

I was thinking about the same thing (ninjas) when "stocking cards to make some fancy combinations" was mentioned. Hopefully it's not stupid like sleghting in KH:CoM.

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This actually makes me wonder if we could build our own AST decks, have a few decks saved, and pick a deck specific for a dungeon or raid. That's probably WAAAAY too much development work, but is an interesting thought.

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Originally Posted by TheMunimai

actions similar to ninjas mudras.

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They better not. No one would ever play AST if you failed a "Mudra" thing and couldn't heal. Healers are supposed to be quick and 100% that's why you'll never see a "Cure has missed the MT". There is a chance to it, like crits. But for the most part, when a healer pushes their heal button, the heal goes off* (latency and dead people not included in this message* lol).

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Originally Posted by Selli

They better not. No one would ever play AST if you failed a "Mudra" thing and couldn't heal. Healers are supposed to be quick and 100% that's why you'll never see a "Cure has missed the MT". There is a chance to it, like crits. But for the most part, when a healer pushes their heal button, the heal goes off* (latency and dead people not included in this message* lol).

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Don't really see the problem it adds different type of healers, some people are not going to like astrologian and that's completely fine there is another 2 healers they could try.

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Originally Posted by Brightshadow

Don't really see the problem it adds different type of healers, some people are not going to like astrologian and that's completely fine there is another 2 healers they could try.

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I'm that healer in t13 who is playing with 100-300 ping. I really wanted to play NIN as my melee DPS, but because my ping is so high, I can't do mudras at all. I don't want to see AST being another class I can't play because of the concept.

And healers failing to do spells is not a good thing. No one would want to bring a healer that has a possibility to fail a healing combo type of thing into any end-game content.

Lots of interviews as of late!

Summary:
- The two stances are currently quite powerful, so it's likely there will be a decent delay switching between them.
- The two stances are focused on healing (Tsukiyomi - Moon reader) and shielding (Hoshiyomi - Star reader).
- You will utilize the same spells in both stances, but their effects will change depending on which stance you're currently in.
- You get an unique Limit Break! Celestial Stasis will stop time and heal everyone to full health (so I'm assuming that it's functionally similar to Pulse of Life currently).

Besides that, there are also huge implications for the Spell Speed stat; it will be affecting DoTs in Heavensward and onwards. Assuming it also ends up affecting HoTs, Spell Speed might turn out quite godlike in the future for healers.

If I were to speculate, I would say a 30 second to one minute cool down between stances changes (my minimum guess would 15 seconds). It's good that they're not using the RNG elements of the card drawing on the healer toolkit, instead keeping it for the buffs only. We'll see just how "RNG" it is.

Sounds like Astologian might be pretty desirable if they're bringing buffs/debuffs. I love those type of healers plus they can switch between what seems like healing and damage mitigation. Sounds fun, I can't wait until they actually release all the information on it.
Also, since they can switch between both stances I don't think this would leave whm's or sch's completely out (hopefully). Could have either healer with ast, primarily being in the healing or barrier stance.

Okay but am I misreading the information or does it seem like AST is a chance class. They say you "draw a card", so do you not know what card you are going to draw? Are ALL the AST skills based on card draws? What concerns me is if the team has just taken a big mechanic hit on damage and we need heals fast - and we have, worse case scenario, two AST in the group (remember the DF does not discriminate on job, only on role), and the AST guys are there shuffling cards like mad trying to pick a card that heals. That could get very bad, very quick, even with an AST teamed with another healer. Or is it just the boffs/support that depends on lucky card draws and the heals are still basic hotbar skills that can be used/spammed any time?

It sounds like specifically, the deck component of AST is designed to augment the party via buffs, and the healing aspect is unaffected by that (or mostly unaffected, there could be a couple of cure potency buffs in the deck).

It also sounds like AST is the "pure" healer that some players have been clamouring for. I know that DPSing as a healer isn't everyone's cup of tea, and based on the way AST is described, it sounds like these players will now have this pure role and instead of providing DPS, they augment the damage of your party's DPS to provide that boost that is normally provided by WHM/SCH DPS.

A while ago, a user (I believe it was Lyrica, could be mistaken) made a good point on how S-E seems to handle their healer pairings - to have one main healer and one support healer. Given that the stance changes seem to allow you to go to heal from support, it matches that dynamic quite well. Double AST may be quite OP if the buffs can stack and they're potent buffs, so I get a suspicion that AST buffs won't stack. This way it "should" always be two different healers for every 8 man composition.

You have to be able to do damage, otherwise you'd never be able to finish solo content on your own (or just at an incredibility slow and agonizing pace). If I had to guess, it'll get Cleric Stance or the skill DPS would be higher then other healers that don't have CS on and lower then the other healers if they had CS on.

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Originally Posted by Faelandaea

Or is it just the boffs/support that depends on lucky card draws and the heals are still basic hotbar skills that can be used/spammed any time?

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Seems like the cards are buffs/debuff. Based on what it says here AST will have 2 stances, one for healing and one for barrier. The spells don't change based on the stance, just their potency. It was also said "You draw cards to buff your team" in that interview (the above link I quoted) as well.

It sounds like they have a healing and shielding stance. So it sounds like they can basically fill the roll of either a SCH or a WHM. I wonder if that'll make healers who currently main one or the other favor a stance more, or if not switching between the two will dramatically effect things.

So basically it sounds like a healer that can freely switch from WHM to SCH? I hope the spells themselves are toned down or that kind of versatility will put both existing healers out of work.

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Originally Posted by Velox

So basically it sounds like a healer that can freely switch from WHM to SCH? I hope the spells themselves are toned down or that kind of versatility will put both existing healers out of work.

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Astrologian will play like Astrologian and the other two existing healers will play the same way they do now, they wouldn't mix 2 existing jobs into a new job that would be pointless.

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Originally Posted by Brightshadow

Astrologian will play like Astrologian and the other two existing healers will play the same way they do now, they wouldn't mix 2 existing jobs into a new job that would be pointless.

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I hope you're right but I can see them mixing the two so they can keep the balance between the healers, WHM focuses on AoE, burst healing with some HoT, while SCH focuses more on single target, burst healing, shields, and some mild buffs with their fairies. The fact they have two different stances for Healing and Shields kind of makes it seem like its going to happen. >x>

I thought this may be the case.

Ast being able to switch stances to fit easily with existing healers in the game.

On a side note: Apparently their lb 3 will be calling Celestial Stasis or Galaxy Stop - how nifty!

So according to the PAX East Interview, Astrologians 2 stances will change from healing to barrier as we know, but they're kind of OP as of right now so they said they are going to put a limit on how frequently you are able to transition from one form to the other. They also said that the divining cards can be used immediately or combined with others for more powerful spells. They will not fill the role of a WHM or of a SCH. They will fill their own role. They are designed to be an intensely mechanical, busy class. So they will have to use both forms appropriately and effectively to be good healers. If there's info you missed. It's all in the link below.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...ast_interview/

A more in-depth translation was posted on Reddit recently. More or less more of the same and more confirmation, but I know everyone is dying to hear as much as possible.

Looks like that info just got updated:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ated_pax_east/

I guess that the ASTRO will have one stance for strictly healing purposes and the other for pure damage mitigation with no healing and the cards for resource recoveries and buffs.

which makes it sounds like a more complicated yet versatile version of a SCH

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Originally Posted by Memoriae

I guess that the ASTRO will have one stance for strictly healing purposes and the other for pure damage mitigation with no healing and the cards for resource recoveries and buffs.

which makes it sounds like a more complicated yet versatile version of a SCH

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Too soon to say for sure, but it actually sounds like a less versatile, but more specialized version of SCH. If there will be a significant cooldown on stance-changing as Yoshida suggests, then AST will probably lack the ability to weave and alternate strong heals and barriers the way that SCH can.

As for how it performs in its healing-focused stance, I'm curious to see. Maybe it will have an interesting mechanic that makes it feel different than WHM yet still be a viable replacement.