Astrologian Speculations! How will it fit in?

Which is funny since given the job's lore it is based on Arcanima arts and all :v

Slycer of BG posted this Famitsu translation today on the BG forums. The part specific to AST is quoted below:

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Astrologian skills and battle technique

The additional action classes for astrologian are conjurer and thaumaturge. It's possible to switch between a pure healer and a barrier healer by using the respective Diurnal Sect and Nocturnal Sect stances. By using these two stances, the effects of many astrologian actions change.

>Aspect Benefic cures will be granted an additional regen effect with Diurnal Sect or a magic barrier which absorbs a certain amount of damage with Nocturnal Sect
>Ring of Fate will recover members within the field with Diurnal Sect or reduce damage taken with Nocturnal Sect

It might be easier to understand by calling Diurnal Sect the "white mage mode" and Nocturnal Sect the "scholar mode." As Yoshida mentioned in the live letter, it will be important to familiarize yourself with one of the types but also make sure you fully understand the other. Since this job is primarily a healer, it does have many basic healing techniques:

>Benefic: Equivalent to Cure, has an additional effect of granting an instant cast proc to Benefic II at a certain probability.
>Benefic II: Equivalent to Cure II
>Helios: Equivalent to Medica
>Ascend: Resuscitation with weakness
>Detriment: Equivalent to Esuna [[name doesn't really make sense, but that's what it says]]

In addition to all of the standard healing actions, it does have a new type of healing action [[presumably this is the instant heal, Dignity]] which recovers an increased amount of HP with the target at a lower HP percentage.

Furthermore, one of the other unique astrologian elements is known as Synastry. By specifying someone in advance, such as the main tank, when you cure another single player, the partner Synastry target will also be restored by 50% of the amount of HP recovered by the cured player.

Separate from the recovery techniques are the astrologian's card features. Starting at level 30, you can use Draw to bestow a variety of beneficial effects for a certain duration. There are no negative effects on the cards - they have different effects such as increasing the damage dealt by an ally, increasing an ally's attack speed, decreasing an ally's MP consumption, and reducing an ally's TP consumption.

For card-related actions, it's not all simply just drawing a card and using it. The Royal Road action consumes the drawn card to empower the next drawn card, such as giving it an area of effect. The Spread action allows you to keep a drawn card to be used at a more optimal time in the battle. If you really don't like the card you draw, you can also use Shuffle to re-draw a card. Although it seems like just luck at first, properly using these actions adds an element of player skill as well.

Although astrologian also has some basic single target, DoT, and AoE attack magic, we got the impression that its first and foremost focus is healing.

For buffs and debuffs, a buff called Light Speed allows you to cast without cast time but with decreased power for a fixed duration, an ability is available to restore MP, a new debuff action called Disable allows you to reduce the damage of the target's next action, and there is the powerful Celestial Statis reminiscent of a Stop style action.

Overall, as a main healer in many battles it will be fundamental to understand Diurnal Sect and leverage the benefits for Aspect Benefic. You'll also need to Draw cards at each recast and decide immediately whether to use, Shuffle, or Spread the card. Although it was a bit confusing at first to immediately start at level 60, it was easier to gradually learn by first ignoring Nocturnal Sect and focusing on Diurnal Sect. In any case, this will be a third healer job that's rewarding to play, packed with new elements.

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Some of the formatting he put in his translation didn't directly copy over, so I'd recommend reading it off the original just to get the emphasis/bolds, etc

The Disable action mentioned there sounds an awful lot like Supervirus. I feel I may actually end up leveling with more use of nocturnal over diurnal because I mained scholar before white mage personally (though I do have both at 50 and play either depending on mood)

This seems not to mention however if Helios gains stance benefit? Mentions benefic and also that ring of fate basically switches between the new asylum and the old sacred soil.

Also the beneifc proc here is stated to make the next benefic2 instant cast; not to make benefic2 available to cast. Been getting both translations of this ability proc. I was worried since making a spell AVAILABLE based on rng, is bad healing design. Keeping the rng only on the buffs is good but when you start locking out actual hp regeneration based on luck and chance, we have a problem.

Disable does sound interesting. For whatever reason it didn't cross my mind that instead of getting their own Swiftcast (which they do anyway) they could get their own version of Virus. It does raise a lot of questions such as how strong will it be and whether they will stack.

Also I did an edit to my earlier post about the Benefic II supposedly requiring a proc to be used. The document where that info came from has since removed that note so I'm now assuming that won't be the case.

There is one document that mentions Helios changing based on Sect, but most translated articles that I've seen like to only talk about Wheel of Fate. Would be nice to see some verification. I think the spell we see here is probably Helios. Based on the animation it looks like it's capable of applying a shield effect.

Indeed of helios does not change that leaves them without aoe regen/shield capability, leaving those solely for whm and sch respectively.

edit- the more I look at these skills for the ast, the more it looks like they will be able to push out a lot of healing in a small window but it will be costly in MP. No idea how their mp recovery spell will work but I am guessing they are gonna want to use mp cost reduction card on themselves a lot during heavy healing phases.

So at this point I think we may know quite a bit about Astrologian's overall healing toolkit, at least on a surface level. Currently we have a list of 17 named actions. Then there is one unnamed action said to be used for the purpose of spreading buffs from one person to the rest of the party (which if it does not work with cards I see it as their version of Deployment Tactics for spreading their shield or regen effect). None of these actions are said to deal damage with the possible exception of Celestial Stasis, but I suspect that may only be a utility-based spell like Sleep. Once at level 60 White Mage and Scholar will have 9-10 damaging actions. While Astrologian doesn't have to have that many it will most likely fall within the same ballpark. If we were to add 9 on top of the 18 that have been noted that would put us at 27 actions. Current jobs have 22-23 (discounting Ninjutsu and pet actions) and will gain 5 with Heavensward. What remains of the actions we are yet aware of may largely consist of damaging spells. Hopefully an upcoming article will actually go into detail about some of them.

Edit: I actually forgot about how Astrologian seems to have fewer confirmed healing spells when compared to White Mage and Scholar, mostly in regards to AoE healing. Early reports mentioned a small AoE and a large AoE heal for Astrologian, but based on the latest information on Wheel of Fate that spell won't even have a healing component when used with Nocturnal Sect. That makes me wonder if Wheel of Fate is something entirely separate and there's still one AoE healing spell we haven't heard about yet.

Somewhere I heard something about a reading of the 3.0 patch notes at E3 ( I think it was at the end of the last live letter they mentioned this) so That should include all the new spells/actions/everything for the new/existing jobs, right?

edit-I just realized the actual dates for E3, so it would be RIGHT before early access....down to the wire as it were.

Sounds like AST is getting Beacon of Light.

WoW Paladin spell. Transfers % of all healing done to target of beacon.

What cross-class skills do you think Astrologian will need?

swiftcast, protect, stoneskin. The others are luxury, up to you to choose. Just like SCH

So a new blog entry was posted with that included an image of Astrologian along with 24 action icons on the hotbar.

http://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/lds/b...20150614_7.jpg

I'm not sure how much information can be taken from the above image, but someone did point out that there are three actions with an MP cost in the four digit numbers. One of which appears to cost just over 2000 MP. Though that might not be that strange considering the MP cost of Black Mage spells are a little over triple what they are at level 50 (when idle). The most expensive spell on the list is probably Ascend with the other two likely being AoE heals.

Also I don't think all Astrologian actions are shown in that picture. Assuming they have close to the same number of total actions as the exciting jobs, by level 60 they should have a few on a third hotbar.

Actually I'm pretty sure all actions being shown on each job's hotbar are displayed in the same order they are learned. Using White Mage as a point of comparison, their first few spells go Stone, Cure, Aero, Cleric Stance, Protect, Medica, and Raise. If you go across the first hotbar for Astrologian the icons and associated MP costs seem to follow that pattern with the 7th action on the list being the most expensive.

Insert speculation that could easily be inaccurate:

Row 1:
Offensive Spell
Benedic
Offensive Spell
Draw
Lightspeed
Helios
Ascend
MP Restore?
Detriment
???
???
Dirunal Sect

Row 2:
Nocturnal Sect
Benedic II
Shuffle
Disable
Spread
Wheel of Fate
Royal Road
???
???
Synastry
???
???

I still speculate that there is another AoE heal aside from Helios and Wheel of Fate considering the way the latter of the two has more recently been described as an Asylum/Sacred Soil type ability, but until a source explicitly states that there is another AoE heal spell I'll assume it's just those two.

I think the 4th one with no mp cost might be the diurnal/nocturnal icon

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

I think the 4th one with no mp cost might be the diurnal/nocturnal icon

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I'm actually more suspicious of that one being Draw. I'm of the opinion that card use should be a central part of the job that we see used as early as the first dungeon and thus learned early on, similar to Summon. (Going off the assumption that the actions are in order.) When I look at the fourth icon in particular it looks like a plain, unassuming icon that I can imagine changing to something more vibrant and colorful to represent the drawn card similar to the icon for Ninjutsu.

Most of the other icons look too stylized, in my opinion, to be a representation of the Draw action with the exception of one of the darkened icons. There are four darkened icons, one of which appears to be the action being used (Lightspeed) and I am assuming the other three are the three actions that can only be used after a card has been drawn. (Shuffle, Spread, and Royal Road.) Through process of elimination I most suspect the fourth icon to be the Draw action.

Well I think I recall hearing draw was a lvl 30 action but That makes good sense. Though the 3rd 5th icon in to top row looks a lot like they have a card, so yeah probably some of thse other draw-related spells. These icons too small T^T

Only thing is though I can't see why you'd have 2 icons for sect and not one. I mean, can you even be in neither?! Would make more sense like a toggle switch.

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

Only thing is though I can't see why you'd have 2 icons for sect and not one. I mean, can you even be in neither?! Would make more sense like a toggle switch.

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Same logic with paladin's Sword Oath and Shield Oath :P

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Originally Posted by Lyrica_Ashtine

Same logic with paladin's Sword Oath and Shield Oath :P

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You don't learn those very early, and you learn them at different levels so level syncing affects that. Possible then that astro works similarly you think? Perhaps unable to use nocturnal sect at certain level sync? The thought hadn't occurred to me before now I am curious! :)

Friday.........cannot wait till Friday to play this.....

Thing is that the new jobs don't start at level 1, they start at 30 instead.

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Y: So there will be some updates to the battle system. Three new jobs: dark knight, astrologian, machinist. They will all be leveled starting at 30. When you enter Ishgard there’s a place where you can receive the first job quests. But, feel free to do some of the story before zerg leveling the new jobs. You have plenty of time. *

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So there's the possibility you'll have both stances at level 30.

As for the stances, they provide additional effects on certain spells, rather than affecting it's potency. Whether you cast a healing spell with either stances or no stances, the initial healing will be the same. So it is very possible you can't use a specific stance (or both) when level synced, but it shouldn't cause too much inconvenience. I mean, if you're level synced down to a point you can't use stances, nothing will truck your party that hard. The potency of each spell and the finer details of the effects from the stances are still unknown. According to some document** they're comparable with Cure and Cure II

* https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...eview?sle=true
** https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...lI1VGvrnl0/pub

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

swiftcast, protect, stoneskin. The others are luxury, up to you to choose. Just like SCH

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I would probably grab Surecast in there as well. It's useful in its own way.

A look at Astrologian gameplay! The video is in German so I don't know what's being said, but we get to see some actions in use that we haven't seen before. Looks like it was actually uploaded a few days ago, but it hasn't been shown in this thread yet.

One thing I notice is that the action that's been speculated to be Lightspeed (the one shown in the blog image) may actually be something entirely different. In that video we see it used early on, but the next spell that followed still had a cast time. That would suggest that the two actions that followed the use of that action in the preview video (speculated to be Disable and Celestial Stasis) are instant cast by default.

I'm actually having trouble figuring out what's instant and what isn't. Like in the beginning we see a DoT attack go off instantly, but then later we see it used again with a cast time. Or an ability would be used followed by two instant actions, but then later that same ability is used again followed by spells with a cast time. There are like two or three different spells shown both with and without a cast time at different points in the video and I can't pin down a correlation in ability use that causes those effects unless there's more than one instant proc effect going on. (Initial "star" attack proc > instant DoT attack.)

Editing this a lot as I make more observations. Taking a guess that what we see at 4:47 is Lightspeed.

So going off the post Ghishlain posted from BG, will AST main focus be heals/support in raids?

Wow, It looks like he uses ring of fate/wheel of fate and is animation locked for a fair bit. At least I think that was what I saw....at 8:53

If that it the case it is disappointing because its too short to be much use (especially if less potent than sacred soil/asylum) but you're stuck from not casting for too long. I hope that isn't how it works.

Anddd the video was removed. So sad. I suppose it isn't all that bad when early access is less than a week away. Now to just keep the tab open for as long as possible.