The changes to Astrologian are upsetting

I liked Heavensward AST then it changed and I gradually got more sad over the state of it as it became more and more homogenized. They took a good step in the right direction with uniqueness, but with the little potency compared to the OGC leaves people stating only two of the cards are good, but they can't make them too strong otherwi---- HAHAHAHAHA.

No, that is the problem- the main identity is the cards, the cards should be RNG and Almost Just as strong as the OGC's, not In Astral and Umbral sets with three different play buttons. EndWalker AST is great the only things that COULD make it better is Card uniqueness with a stronger potency for the effects with an Emphasis on MORE on the cards AND Sleeve Draw back for that Guaranteed Three Seals.

SE, retrain your team to listen to feedback.

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Originally Posted by PriklyMena

These new AST changes are terrible, our healing kit with 3 Essential Dignities, 2 Celestial Intersections, Exaltation, and Synastry are MORE than enough for single target mitigation and heals. Together with massive tank buffs, there is very little use for any more healing up, 10% mit, and whatever else these cards are giving that are not DPS cards. Because dear god, as a AST I'm about to have 6 single target mit/heal/buffs now?

Also how did we walk a decade back in game design from dealing cards with 1 SINGLE BUTTON to 4 DIFFERENT PLAYS (Play 1,2,3, and Minor Arcana). What is going on, did we not agree we need LESS button bloat not more? And please don't compare the 4 Draws to Undraw, Redraw, Astrodyne, etc... Replacing 4 different skills with 4 skills that does the same thing is 10 steps back from where we were and is incredibly clunky on the hotbar and gameplay.

Similarly to what others have brought up, we were given mana changes to Astrodyne and Draw in order to FIX our mana issues. Now we only have Lucid Dreaming + Draw every 60 secs to regen mana? Do the AST devs not play the game or are they not learning from their past mistakes. (similarly to other classes, GNB having a 800/100/1200 potency burst and SMN having a 1600 potency skill without guaranteed crit or direct hit, did we not agree with the Samurai changes this is bad game design?)

It's so infuritating to see all these changes for AST. I honestly wouldn't care about the complexity of the class if any of these game design changes make sense, but none of it does. These changes on top of healer homogenization and boring gameplay is the real dealbreaker at this point.

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LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

“On the other hand, we could look at the example of Time Mage,” Yoshida says. “This is a job we had considered previously, but that is known for using time-related abilities such as Haste to speed up the party or Stop to stop time.” These work fantastically in the turn-based and Active Time Battle systems of past games, he remarks. “However, in an MMORPG, we are not able to stop time. And [if it could] it would kind of overpower the job. And what would be the point of a Time Mage that could not manipulate time?

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What makes this funnier is WoW new healer and buffer spec in dragonflight was a time mage basically. The whole healing theme was based around reversing the damage dealt and charging heals over time and the buffing spec was all about giving power from other timelines to the person you're buffing.
Sure you can fully stop time but you can obviously have thematic moves about it, I'd argue Earthly Star is an example of a time mage healer move because it empowers over time.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Wasn't this just old AST? Stunning Enemies with Oppression + extending buffs with Time Dilation and Royal Road. No wonder AST keeps getting screwed over since even Yoshi-P is out of touch with how the job used to be themed.

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It was and it worked wonderfully, you could extend your buffs, enhance them, spread them, prolong HoTs and buffs with Celestial Opposition. It had time mage sprinkled in its kit which really fleshed out its support role and was my go to healer until EW, if only SE built upon its old frame and kept those gameplay mechanics I think AST would be the most well designed healer in its history but sadly it's not, SE is too afraid to bring back time magic as it made AST super strong.

Edit: Forgot yes Celestial used to stun mobs as well in dungeons it was a nice little extra effect.

I had to....process how I felt about these changes. I knew I didn't like them, but I couldn't understand why that was. Now that I've let it soak in, I have opinions.

I remember chugging my way through post-arr (pre trimdown) just because I was SO excited to play astrologian. It's a space healer, what more could I want?! That's the problem, you literally don't need a healer for most stuff now. TOP was a huge sign of this. I admit, I didn't like EW's astro, double weaving felt really really bad especially when drawing and playing are separate. People have been voicing their opinions on the healer watering down since SHB's media tour. The only "interesting" thing astro gets in DT is....a post-div button. What really gets me is you know the person redesigning the class doesn't know what they're doing because the role thing is still in the cards. Not only are we losing the bare minimum of the identity we had, but we're going to lose the beautiful animations of draw and redraw. I like Sleeve's animation, but this is an imposter. I wouldn't mind the buff-slut cards from SHB if they just....did away with the seal on div system. I understand the randomness of the seals for astrodyne sucked, but they're the ones that dropped sleeve draw, a simple fix to THAT specific issue.

I LOVE playing healers, healing in late HW into base stormblood was one of the best parts! I'll never forget getting the burn and having to redo it over a few times. I am absolutely heartbroken with these changes and the lack of listening unlike other jobs. Dragoon players complain about not being able to use their big buttons in early burst? Here you don't have eye of the dragon anymore! Black mages don't care for surecast/thunder's current system? Here's a light rework! ((though nobody liked surecast.)) Their lack of listening to job changes is bleeding into summoner too! Why on EARTH does it have a fat aoe heal for solar bahamut???

I've REALLY sat on it, but I've made the hard choice not to play astro for dawntrail in hopes it'll help a bigger issue. It hurts because I LOVE astro! It's everything I want in a RPG role. These card changes mixed with....the healer issue is.....yeah.

I really wish they would just listen to healer feedback but the past 5 years has made it obvious they don't.

HW AST still remains the best version of it for me. I miss time dilation and the nocturnal/diurnal system. Everything that came after is just... pointless. They keep dumbing the job down again and again.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Just want to link this article

It's an interview with Yoshi-P about job ideas that they ultimately abandoned when making new jobs. I find this part particularly hilariously sad.

“On the other hand, we could look at the example of Time Mage,” Yoshida says. “This is a job we had considered previously, but that is known for using time-related abilities such as Haste to speed up the party or Stop to stop time.” These work fantastically in the turn-based and Active Time Battle systems of past games, he remarks. “However, in an MMORPG, we are not able to stop time. And [if it could] it would kind of overpower the job. And what would be the point of a Time Mage that could not manipulate time? So we do place some importance on maintaining the legacy from the Final Fantasy franchise – but now we have fewer jobs that we can work with. So I think moving forward, we will have more original jobs for Final Fantasy 14."

Wasn't this just old AST? Stunning Enemies with Oppression + extending buffs with Time Dilation and Royal Road. No wonder AST keeps getting screwed over since even Yoshi-P is out of touch with how the job used to be themed.

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AST was/is a compromised version of Time Mage (combined with Gambler), the same way Sage is a compromised version of Chemist (combined with Sage).

In a better game that knew what it was doing, AST could still have a few more time manipulation skills that only affected its own skills or maybe a single party member's. As it stands, it still is a time mage, if only in flavor, for using time-space magic like gravity and light speed.

But no, the game will never have a Time Mage proper, and if it ever got to a point where it could, Astrologian is already that job fantasy and would likely receive the time magic stuff.

There's nothing Chemist about Sage though? Or really even classic FF Sage.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

“On the other hand, we could look at the example of Time Mage,” Yoshida says. “This is a job we had considered previously, but that is known for using time-related abilities such as Haste to speed up the party or Stop to stop time.” These work fantastically in the turn-based and Active Time Battle systems of past games, he remarks. “However, in an MMORPG, we are not able to stop time. And [if it could] it would kind of overpower the job.

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Final Fantasy XI, which is also and mmorpg, would like to have a word. They had haste, slow, and a multitude of other status effects, both buffs and debuffs, and it worked just fine. They just don't want to deal with balancing around more than the single 2 minute buff window and the single dot they gave us. This is not a game breaking issue, this is a dev issue.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

These work fantastically in the turn-based and Active Time Battle systems of past games, he remarks. “However, in an MMORPG, we are not able to stop time. And [if it could] it would kind of overpower the job. And what would be the point of a Time Mage that could not manipulate time?.

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And furthermore, we have Stop... it's just called Stun in this game and WHM uses it instead. It's funny because I remember in HW reading how they were considering giving AST something to compete with Holy but settled on giving it an oGCD stun with a cooldown so it wouldn't piss off WHMs. It would, but I'd still change to put Stop [Stun] on Gravity, Blind on Holy, Heavy on Dyskrasia, Slow on Art of War; it all seems more in line with job identity to me.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

There's nothing Chemist about Sage though? Or really even classic FF Sage.

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Cus that's meant to be Scholar. Really classical sage was just a better red mage this new sage is really it's own thing a sort of technomancer healer.

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Originally Posted by BlueMageQuina

And furthermore, we have Stop... it's just called Stun in this game and WHM uses it instead. It's funny because I remember in HW reading how they were considering giving AST something to compete with Holy but settled on giving it an oGCD stun with a cooldown so it wouldn't piss off WHMs. It would, but I'd still change to put Stop [Stun] on Gravity, Blind on Holy, Heavy on Dyskrasia, Slow on Art of War; it all seems more in line with job identity to me.

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Wouldn't a Heavy on Gravity make more sense? Like, you are literally crushing them under the weight of gravity

First CBU3 rework? They sand off everything interesting about the class until it's a reskin.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Wouldn't a Heavy on Gravity make more sense? Like, you are literally crushing them under the weight of gravity

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I think that makes sense too for the spell itself because Gravity. For the job, I think the Stun makes sense as well because time.

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Originally Posted by BlueMageQuina

And furthermore, we have Stop... it's just called Stun in this game and WHM uses it instead. It's funny because I remember in HW reading how they were considering giving AST something to compete with Holy but settled on giving it an oGCD stun with a cooldown so it wouldn't piss off WHMs. It would, but I'd still change to put Stop [Stun] on Gravity, Blind on Holy, Heavy on Dyskrasia, Slow on Art of War; it all seems more in line with job identity to me.

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The stun on Holy is necessary because WHM does not have many off-GCD heals. While other healers can do AoE damage with GCDs and still heal the tank with off-GCDs WHM would be locked into spamming GCD heals and their damage would go downhill.

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Originally Posted by Tint

The stun on Holy is necessary because WHM does not have many off-GCD heals. While other healers can do AoE damage with GCDs and still heal the tank with off-GCDs WHM would be locked into spamming GCD heals and their damage would go downhill.

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Sorry, for misleading you with my rambling about lore as opposed to mechanics. My point was more that Stop already exists and we just call it Stun. That's all. I can understand the purpose of Stun on WHM's Holy and why other healers don't have it.

#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

I'm happy to watch astrodyne die. The cards is a start but that's a lot of play buttons. But really Astro is just white mage with a card mini game. Now the mini game has been pretty reduced so it just seems like white mage if you don't consider the cards. I see another card rework.

What's really priceless is they sort of hyped this to be a huge change, considering it was first promised to be a 6.3 change but pushed back to 7.0. They made it sort of like a big deal only for... ... ... lol.

Come I clap for you, whoever green lighted these changes.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

There's nothing Chemist about Sage though? Or really even classic FF Sage.

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There's Chemist in the names of the skills, but that's about it. What we mostly have is confirmation from the devs that it started as a chemist job and the design was pushed into Sage because chemist as a concept is (and I am inferring the reasons here) (a) too variable and (b) lacking potent weapon designs.

And the design of the job does still retain a lot of Sage-ish elements.

1. Healing and damage magick? It's the healer that plays with damage/healing conversion.
2. The costume very much resembles the original Sage, other than the headgear.
3. The weapon is basically four crystals of light: i.e. the prerequisite to unlock the Sage job in FFIII.
4. The addersting/addersgall and milpreves, as well as the default noulith shape, in my opinion feel like they could have been referencing the "fang" magical items from FFII/FFIII.

You can definitely see some sort of logical throughput of Sage being based on the FFIII version, but with the heavy condition of not using actual BLM or WHM to prevent it conceptually overlapping with RDM.

I'm the kind who could only criticize the job when I get the hands-on experience, so I'll reserve my further judgement until then.
For now, my first impression it's nice to see the old card effects (with adjustment) from SB.
But really, SE? 2 of them are healing cards? (one is regen, another is healing action) I could foresee those two would be the least exciting to draw outside of very specific situations in the long run.
We already have plenty of existing tools to heal. This is just more bloat.

Do I like the changes better than EW AST? Yes.
Are they great changes that makes me hyped up for DT AST? Eeehhh
What a missed opportunity to reintroduce my beloved Time Dilation. :(

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

What's really priceless is they sort of hyped this to be a huge change, considering it was first promised to be a 6.3 change but pushed back to 7.0. They made it sort of like a big deal only for... ... ... lol.

Come I clap for you, whoever green lighted these changes.

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Dude they needed over a year to come up with these fantastic cards with effects I've never seen people... not exaltation, not divine benison, not aspected benefit and not krasis are definitely fresh and needed time in the oven

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Originally Posted by Zaytex

Dude they needed over a year to come up with these fantastic cards with effects I've never seen people... not exaltation, not divine benison, not aspected benefit and not krasis are definitely fresh and needed time in the oven

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AND it’s on the healer that struggles the least with single target healing

SGE or SCH might have actually benefited from this (minimally but still something)

AST couldn’t need this change less if it tried

Everyone can agree on one thing at least. Instant pull timers will no longer screw astrologian over

I do just want post here after we know the card effects, I felt like we already knew they were going to be bad.. but damn these effects just feel weak and flat. I knew they weren't going to be anything that useful but the healing effects in particular to me just show how little the rework considered astro's existing kit, We already have Single target ogcd healing, Mitigation and even barriers, why is it intresting now we get a extra one disguised as a "Card"

Even if you liked "stormblood astro" I really don't know how anyone is getting excited over a card that grants a regen or a barrier... or some other mild weak effects, I think if you at least gave astro a effect that could spread the card effect (not the damage buff ones) on party members then maybe it would have been a little more interesting but this just feels lazy.

I feel as if they should have gone the route where they split the utility cards & damage buff cards but kept the RNG, I understand not wanting to mix damage and RNG but this rework just feels really like "we didn't know what to do with astro" to me.

I would love more variety in the cards effects, things that are much more situational and take some thought to make the best out of. The rng returning I would be very happy with but I really don't see it coming back sadly. Returning card manipulation and time dilation would also be a huge win for me.

This iteration of ast while still not my ideal, ideal was for me SB ast, is still to me more enjoyable looking than EW. I can only hope 8.0 sees the return of some of our more defining features of the ast. Namely the gameplay around the cards being made interesting and dynamic again as it was in SB.

Astro isn't the problem.. stats and combat design held Astro back

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Originally Posted by luca20

someone will have to be forced to heal. y

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And there is the single most glaring indicator that this job class is broken. When people are forced into the role not because they enjoy it but because they drew the short straw and someone has to do it. busted.

Sounds like your problem is with tanks, not AST.