3.2 Astrologian Changes

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

I think they have given up on healing parity and from their comments during the stream they want to give AST its own niche with Card buffs (which is good and should have been a day one priority!). But if they just improve the cards then they have to be very careful about AST vs WHM balance.

They designed themselves in a corner with their initial AST concept and subsequent 3.07 buffs but that's no secret. I don't think it's going to be well-balanced before 4.0 either.

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This is why I really like the idea of Noct Sect being more about buffs. If you just buff the cards, you'll damage the WHM vs. AST balance, but if you buff the cards while in Noct Sect ONLY you'll give ASTs the ability to be a viable SCH replacement (with less healing/mitigation throughput possibly but if tuned right, maybe a bigger increase to party DPS? More risk, more reward?), without hurting how the job functions in Diurnal.

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Originally Posted by Kerrigen

Well yeah, you're probably right.

From today's patch notes reading according to that guy on reddit (take that with a grain of salt, I wasn't watching myself so that's second hand info):


He's of course not wrong and I appreciate the honesty but that's disappointing nonetheless when the dev team basically admits they have absolutely no idea how to balance something.

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It kinda sucks he admits that openly. Between the AST tweaks given in this patch and the VIT/STR changes for tanks, I've sadly lost every confidence in Yoshi-P and his dev team to balance the game properly --; I hope that changes over time - all they're doing right now is giving AST more raw power without actually changing their healing identity. And with Yoshi's comments above, he and his team even compares Noct AST to SCH and his comments is true - it's hard to argue against a pet that basically says "heal for 4,000 potency over the course of a minute at 0 MP and GCD consumption from my master" and buffing Noct AST to hit those kinda values would just be silly and most likely game breaking.

I guess it's pretty indicative too considering when this forum last looked at A4S clear rates, I believe there was literally only a single clear with a Noct AST according to FFLogs.

That is really upsetting to be honest, these bandaid fixes aren't enough.

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

It kinda sucks he admits that openly. Between the AST tweaks given in this patch and the VIT/STR changes for tanks, I've sadly lost every confidence in Yoshi-P and his dev team to balance the game properly --; I hope that changes over time - all they're doing right now is giving AST more raw power without actually changing their healing identity. And with Yoshi's comments above, he and his team even compares Noct AST to SCH and his comments is true - it's hard to argue against a pet that basically says "heal for 4,000 potency over the course of a minute at 0 MP and GCD consumption from my master" and buffing Noct AST to hit those kinda values would just be silly and most likely game breaking.

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Honestly, between that and the instant PvP nerf without letting The Feast speak for itself, I have no clue what they are thinking anymore. Like they are afraid of making a second healer on the levels of SCH, but at the same time they want to keep SCH on that level anyway, since they aren't actively trying to reduce the power of a SCH as it stands. And there have been ample of very valid suggestions without utterly breaking the balance.

Well the new jobs were marred the moment they decide to make it play like another current job. AST specifically didn't really stand on it's own because of the half-thought Sect system. The best option is to really sit down and figure out how they want AST to play as a healer instead of you can play like a SCH or like a WHM. That's just bad game designing. At this point though I'm not sure if Sect swapping in combat would help or not but it would be an improvement.

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Originally Posted by AzureFlare

Honestly, between that and the instant PvP nerf without letting The Feast speak for itself, I have no clue what they are thinking anymore. Like they are afraid of making a second healer on the levels of SCH, but at the same time they want to keep SCH on that level anyway, since they aren't actively trying to reduce the power of a SCH as it stands. And there have been ample of very valid suggestions without utterly breaking the balance.

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I can understand why they don't want to bump Noct AST to match SCHs potential. All three healers have beaten A4S so they're all capable, just SCHs ability is leaps and bounds ahead. I imagine they'll tone it back come 4.0 and instead of making AST "OP" they're also probably waiting to re-tune it come 4.0 as well. At least if they don't make AST "OP" they only have to scale back one job instead of two.

I'm expecting another Fairy potency nerf down to the 145-175 range in the future, to be honest and probably less exhilarating tools come expansion to try to bring SCH back into line.

A thought I just had while on the subway is that I feel they just need to take out the fact AST has two healing paradigms and instead focus on the one thing unique to AST - their cards. Turn Diurnal and Noct Sect into card effecting sects (ie, Diurnal makes Draw 20s and Nocturnal increases card potency by 5%) and then pick a healing kit to convert everything too (I'm leaning towards Diurnal since it's the more powerful kit at this time). This would make it easier to balance AST since you can't really make Noct more powerful without making Dirunal exceedingly more powerful in the process (kinda similar with how they had issues balancing SMN in 2.0 because SCH was just that potent as a healer).

These changes are fantastic.

Making me reconsider my main.

It seems they gave ASTs a toolkit that specializes in more emergency situations, on top of the support abilities.

(Optional Spear +) LA + LS+ CO is basically your raid saver. Pushing out massive heals and recovering large amounts of MP in a pinch

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Originally Posted by Ghishlain

It kinda sucks he admits that openly. Between the AST tweaks given in this patch and the VIT/STR changes for tanks, I've sadly lost every confidence in Yoshi-P and his dev team to balance the game properly --; I hope that changes over time - all they're doing right now is giving AST more raw power without actually changing their healing identity. And with Yoshi's comments above, he and his team even compares Noct AST to SCH and his comments is true - it's hard to argue against a pet that basically says "heal for 4,000 potency over the course of a minute at 0 MP and GCD consumption from my master" and buffing Noct AST to hit those kinda values would just be silly and most likely game breaking.

I guess it's pretty indicative too considering when this forum last looked at A4S clear rates, I believe there was literally only a single clear with a Noct AST according to FFLogs.

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Astrologian is a class, Nocturnal is a skill that the class has access to. Astrologian needs to be balanced. A Noct Astro is not an actual thing. You are speaking of it as if it's it's own thing that needs separately balanced and equally as viable, which simply isn't true. Astro is a great main healer. The next healer added should probably be a superior off healer. Astro doesn't need to be both.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

Astrologian is a class, Nocturnal is a skill that the class has access to. Astrologian needs to be balanced. A Noct Astro is not an actual thing. You are speaking of it as if it's it's own thing that needs separately balanced and equally as viable, which simply isn't true. Astro is a great main healer. The next healer added should probably be a superior off healer. Astro doesn't need to be both.

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We've had this discussion in the past, you're not going to convince me of this while the game basically tells you Astrologian has two unique and different healing paradigms and thus fundamentally different from most "situational skills" that you've argued in the past.

I'm agreeing to disagree again.

Though I'm not even sure why you think I'm saying they need to buff Noct in that post. I'm just saying that I've lost confidence in Yoshi-P and his dev team's ability to balance the game because of both the VIT/STR changes on tanks and the AST tweaks given to their MP management. I only mentioned Noct in this post because of the translated comment Yoshi-P said in the post I was replying to and adding my own two cents about it as it seems like my thought process behind Nocturnal matches his.

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Originally Posted by Sidra

Astrologian is a class, Nocturnal is a skill that the class has access to. Astrologian needs to be balanced. A Noct Astro is not an actual thing. You are speaking of it as if it's it's own thing that needs separately balanced and equally as viable, which simply isn't true. Astro is a great main healer. The next healer added should probably be a superior off healer. Astro doesn't need to be both.

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Actually i disagree with you here. The difference is playstyle and functional role in a raid group between a Diurnal Sect Astrologian and a Nocturnal Sect Astrologian is more a difference in kind than a difference in degree. Nocturnal and Diurnal have to be balanced separately and to such an extent that they both function in their relative healing niches. If they arent, then there is little to no point in the class possessing the sect that can not function properly. Balance has to be done for both to function equally if both sects are being kept in game.