Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

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Originally Posted by Krixus

I almost never see selene being used in serious content until it becomes farmable. So pleeeease stfu about Selene's haste, as in the content we are talking about, you would have eos out. It is very obvious this discussion is lacked full of casuals. Also all the people that arnt even 50 yet just stop talking, it means nothing under 50 with you i40 gear.

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Ok so first you need to calm your ego and your attitude, you are being moronic.

Second : please if you're trying to act like you're a pro, please don't say stupid things. It just makes you look like a fool.

So i'm not so good with my English -but i hope some can be understand: I played AST to level 57 now. It felt very well at the beginning. In higher dungeons im feeling like missing something. Is it More speed (feels like im stuck on gcd)?weak heals? I like the idea of beeing a healer with a lot of speed. And im ok with that if the healpower itself is a lil weaker... But then pls make the spells cheaper from the mp-management. I heard we have to stand still when we put our bubble... Ehmm.. y? The other healer could use their one and can move. Standing still would be bad at bossfights. I like the cardbuffs but for me they r kinda short uptime. Ok we have that one buff for the buff...

But that one has a Big cd. And our cardmechanics cd is very high for just rnd luck with cards. I think of u wanna put all healerjobs More together, give us equal groundskills like the bubble in their mechanic to usw and a buff for healpower (kinda sacrefice fairy or miracle(?)). One healer have a huge healoutput with hots and dmg// one got big shields and dmg// and one in between with weaker heals/shields but alot of mana and spellspeed with grp buffs but not that much dmg. AST is so dann Nice, pls just "repair" a few things.

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Originally Posted by Krixus

Also for dps in dungeons ive been using sch stance, putting stoneskin + aldo on tank before pull, then popping combust I/II, aero, then spamming gravity (malefic II for 1-2 mobs). The DoT alone does 480-580 a tic and Im only i130. Not sure it beats sch but I know it beats whm.

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SCH isn't a stance. You mean cleric stance right? Adlo is unique to scholars... how are you using this as an AST? 10 minutes ago I was offended that you inferred I was a bad healer-- now I'm reading this and... well, I'm no longer offended. LOL.

My issue is the 45 seconds I think is too long. At the start of a pull I'm right on it. Then I find I'm either constantly waiting for it to come back up to draw a new card or because it's so long, I get into healing and then am like oh yeah the cards. I just wish they did something more obvious, not sure what though. Like I think of when the party is taking damage on multiple members, and you do a Medica II. It has a sweet effect and awesome sound effect hitting everyone and you see their HP beam right back up, so it's super satisfying. For me I KNOW that the Balance etc is being beneficial on the person I use it on, but I just find that because it's not so visible, it got boring pulling cards real quick. At first I was excited to see what I'd get, but now when I pull even the best cards like Balance, I don't find it all that exciting anymore especially since I seem to pull Ewer, Spear etc all the time.

My other thing is when I do trials as my WHM, sometimes when things get rough you're pumping out heals like crazy. I couldn't imagine actually pausing from that to pull a card just for the small benefit it gives.

I agree the Astrologian is much weaker than the other healers; however, I think that all they need is some adjustments and they will blend in just fine with their peers in endgame/full parties. Here are skills/spells I think need adjustments as well as some adjustments that could really make this job great. I know probably some of this has been suggested but some of the ideas presented by other posters are great solutions that I wanted to support.

1.) Who is the Astrologian?
Astrologian currently suffers from an identity crisis because while cards are unique and decent their healing style is way too similar to the white mage, it feels like they used the white mage as a template for this new job. Something many of us have noticed is that they are fast casters so I think the healers should function like this.

White Mage: Burst Heals/Healing Overtime
Scholar: Protection/Pet Healer
Astrologian: Quick Heals/Support

Some suggestions to achieve this goal.
A.) Lightspeed: I think the spell could be the Astrologian answer to an emergency cure, but since it has that nasty negative effect it makes it super weak, so a easy solution for this skill is to completely remove the debuff, and make this their signature emergency heal skill. if its too powerful for area of effect spells just make the debuff apply only to AOE, problem solved.

2.) Offensive Spells
Here are some suggestion for a few offensive spells.

A.) Stella: Change the effect, heavy just isn't worth it and I feel gravity should have the heavy effect instead. Perhaps paralyze? (10s) with each additional cast lowering the duration by half.
-First Cast: 10s Duration
-Second Cast: 5s Duration
-Third Cast: 2.5s Duration
-Fourth and Up: Immune

B.) Gravity: Add an additional effect of heavy to the spell, I mean it's called gravity afterall.

C.) Malefic II: While damage is perfectly fine for this skill, I find it rather odd that for a job that seems to be about fate, and time that Astrologian doesn't have any skills that inflict slow. I think they should tag a weak additional slow to this ability that declines with each cast.
-First Cast: 10s
-Second Cast: 5s
-Third Cast: 2.5s
-Fourth and Up: Immune

3.) Cards of Fate
While many do not like the RNG of the cards for Astrologian I feel its a fundamental feature of the job, and if we were able to control the buff we wanted everyone would use arrow and balance so I don't believe we should have direct control on what buff we could use; however, cards do need a buff, and we should have ways of omitting certain cards like other have suggested here are things I think would help.

A.) New Card Effects: Some Cards are just not worth using compared to others, many people try to get only the balance and arrow, and sometimes bole for tanking. I think they should revamp some of the cards so players use them more often. Some cards also need new colors because 3 cards are blue its confusing.
The Spear: Allow it to work on abilities already used. (New Card Color: Silver)
The Ewer: Make the card a refresh + regain effect instead of lowering the cost of skills. (New Card Color: Purple)
The Spire: Merge both the MP and TP Reduction.

B.) Increase the Duration: The duration of the enhancements should be 30s because a 15s buff is just not long enough with the time necessary to get the enhancements we are looking for, and the recast of the cards is way too high but instead of lowering the recast I have another idea that someone suggested, but I want to go more indepth with it.

C.) Charges for Draw?: Like someone else said in this thread in FF11 the scholar job had a charge system for their personal enhancements which allowed them to use multiple tune-ups at the same time, while it was quite a complex system without seeing it in action I will try to explain how it could work. Astrologian would gain charges as they level up these charges share the same recharge time of the ability; however, after a certain amount of time a charge would reset allowing you to use the ability again. Meaning you could use 2 cards at the same time and while draw recharges you could use it again after recovering one charge or wait till the duration fully resets to use 2 cards again. Here is a visual.

-Level 30 (1 Charge): Can use 1 card every 30 seconds.
-Level 60 (2 Charges): Can use 2 cards every 30 seconds. (A charge resets after 15s)
-Level 90 (Future Theory) (3 Charges): Can use 3 cards every 30 seconds. (A charge resets after 10s)

4.) Additional Suggestions
Here are some additional suggestions.

A.) When Spread/Shuffle is used do not allow the card held, or shuffled to appear again until the card in spread is used, or the shuffle is complete.

B.) Benefic: Increase potency to 400 / Benefic II: Increase potency to 650.

C.) Nocturnal Sect: Allow the shields to stack with other shields, and change the healing potency increase to healing speed increased by 5% since the potency of benefic & benefic II is increased.

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Originally Posted by OpheliaHeartilly

SCH isn't a stance. You mean cleric stance right? Adlo is unique to scholars... how are you using this as an AST? 10 minutes ago I was offended that you inferred I was a bad healer-- now I'm reading this and... well, I'm no longer offended. LOL.

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Nocturnal stance = sch stance, aldo = aspected benefit in nocturnal stance. Wasnt on the game and had forgetten the names, forgive me good sir.

sch can't use selene? most of the schs in my fc use selene exclusively. I prefer eos

It looks like SE is trying to make AST a mobile healer that focuses on quick heals at the cost of those heals being weaker. Unfortunately some of their skills seem to counteract this.... I think some of these changes would support the idea of a healer with weaker, cheaper spells.

Lightspeed- As is this skill is very difficult to justify using- it is too niche in it's uses and is the closest thing we could have to a burst healing tool but fits that very poorly. First off weakening the already less potent heals of the AST makes it a simply unsustainable cd to use as you will burn through too much mp for not much benefit. Secondly the instant cast speed does us little good if the GCD is not lowered as well- most cast times are at or less than the gcd as is making you not REALLY healing much faster, although you do gain mobility. This cd should both decrease mp costs of spells a bit to match the weaker potency and shave some time off the gcd. Perhaps 15% mp reduction and 1.0 off the gcd (I say a flat amount off the gcd as the spell gives a flat amount off your cast times as well. seems to make more sense if both follow the same line of thought) Also lower the potency reduction from 25% to 15%...No reason to act like it's cleric stance.

Shuffle- this spell should prevent you from drawing the same card twice. The whole flavor behind the spell when you get it certainly makes it sound like you should redraw the same card. In practice we use shuffle to remove an undesirable card and have slight control over our rng- getting the same card anyways makes that 'control' an illusion. Alternatively have shuffle, or if you allow a card to go un-used (time out) to reduce the cd on draw.

Collective Unconscious- This flies in the face of much of AST's toolkit. As a mobile class that does not even need to enter the fray for their aoe dps (holy/assize/miasma2 are self centered, gravity is not) why make them both get into melee range AND stay still without casting to get use out of this spell? It should be a ground targetable aoe like the spells it mimics. Nerf the potency if you must, to be weaker than whm/sch but this is just plain silly right now. I would rather a weaker spell than the self-centered spell that prevents me from being able to cast or move. I suppose being able to place it around self then move would be acceptable too.

Gravity/Stella- I agree with the above post about giving gravity heavy effect- it certainly makes sense, and stella some other effect (though idk about paralysis). Sidenote- anyone else find it funny that people playing AST prior to live in the press events and whatnot said they had a lot of weak aoe dps and yet they have one single aoe spell, that isn't weak at all?

While some other changes could be added as well I think it best to make less changes, or smaller changes, than doing too much at once for balance's sake. Make small adjustments and see how it goes before going too far in either direction. This is also why I don't have many card changes listed here-wanted to focus more on the other areas to see if they are just holding the cards back from being able to shine since they don't cover AST's weaknesses atm.

S

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Originally Posted by LycorisSelunis

It looks like SE is trying to make AST a mobile healer that focuses on quick heals at the cost of those heals being weaker. Unfortunately some of their skills seem to counteract this.... I think some of these changes would support the idea of a healer with weaker, cheaper spells.

Lightspeed- As is this skill is very difficult to justify using- it is too niche in it's uses and is the closest thing we could have to a burst healing tool but fits that very poorly. First off weakening the already less potent heals of the AST makes it a simply unsustainable cd to use as you will burn through too much mp for not much benefit. Secondly the instant cast speed does us little good if the GCD is not lowered as well- most cast times are at or less than the gcd as is making you not REALLY healing much faster, although you do gain mobility. This cd should both decrease mp costs of spells a bit to match the weaker potency and shave some time off the gcd. Perhaps 15% mp reduction and 1.0 off the gcd (I say a flat amount off the gcd as the spell gives a flat amount off your cast times as well. seems to make more sense if both follow the same line of thought) Also lower the potency reduction from 25% to 15%...No reason to act like it's cleric stance.

Shuffle- this spell should prevent you from drawing the same card twice. The whole flavor behind the spell when you get it certainly makes it sound like you should redraw the same card. In practice we use shuffle to remove an undesirable card and have slight control over our rng- getting the same card anyways makes that 'control' an illusion. Alternatively have shuffle, or if you allow a card to go un-used (time out) to reduce the cd on draw.

Collective Unconscious- This flies in the face of much of AST's toolkit. As a mobile class that does not even need to enter the fray for their aoe dps (holy/assize/miasma2 are self centered, gravity is not) why make them both get into melee range AND stay still without casting to get use out of this spell? It should be a ground targetable aoe like the spells it mimics. Nerf the potency if you must, to be weaker than whm/sch but this is just plain silly right now. I would rather a weaker spell than the self-centered spell that prevents me from being able to cast or move. I suppose being able to place it around self then move would be acceptable too.

Gravity/Stella- I agree with the above post about giving gravity heavy effect- it certainly makes sense, and stella some other effect (though idk about paralysis). Sidenote- anyone else find it funny that people playing AST prior to live in the press events and whatnot said they had a lot of weak aoe dps and yet they have one single aoe spell, that isn't weak at all?

While some other changes could be added as well I think it best to make less changes, or smaller changes, than doing too much at once for balance's sake. Make small adjustments and see how it goes before going too far in either direction. This is also why I don't have many card changes listed here-wanted to focus more on the other areas to see if they are just holding the cards back from being able to shine since they don't cover AST's weaknesses atm.

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I agree with your thoughts on lightspeed to make it a more viable cooldown. It need that little bit more to it to make it a viable cooldown to be using, not just sitting there for that one time where it does turn out to to be of good use.

The other ability i have issues with on AST is the lvl 60 one, Celestial Opposition. It is very meh. Conceptually its powerful, an insta-cast oGCD AOE stun. Realistically, what we have is holy split into 2 parts: Gravity and Celestial Opposition. However neither part quite lives up to the sum of the whole. I suspect Celestial Opposition had some last minute changes, as it was always touted as being really powerful and had to be used properly. What we have is holy minus the damage. I wonder if it was originally meant to have the same effect of the enemy used one in the lvl 60 AST class, where it gave a unique debuff, potentially effecting those bosses that are immune to stun, silence etc.

just remembered one more point I wanted to make...

Enhanced Benefic- Benefic 2 instant cast proc has similar issues to lightspeed in execution- perhaps make the proc have Benefic2 off GCD.

Please switch gravity to a lvl 50 or less spell, its sad to not being able to do any AoE on lvl 50 dungeons at all like WHM and SCH :(

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Originally Posted by kiraan

Please switch gravity to a lvl 50 or less spell, its sad to not being able to do any AoE on lvl 50 dungeons at all like WHM and SCH :(

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Dear god yes this... so frustrating! Honestly this and lightspeed were my largest gripes pre 50. Lightspeed just really irks me! It's our only real CD but we don't get crap for using it!

I tested the Expanded Royal Road buff earlier, the exact radius is 10y~. It's the same as Deployment Tactics, and 2y (25%) larger than the radius of Holy. With Deployment Tactics, I find it hard to hit every group member during certain encounters, especially when movement is involved; I often resort to positioning Eos/Selene in the center, and using Adlo/E4E on her, and deploying from that location since I can't use it on myself. Luckily, AST can use Expanded cards on themselves as the center.

Expanded Royal Road buff is relatively small; it should be at least 15y, considering you're giving up a large portion of the potency of the original buff and also skipping a card draw in order to receive the AoE effect. It's also a very short duration boost, which only allows most people to use 5~ GCDs in that time frame.

Well just finished the vault as 57 astro, i135 (which is rather low for what you could have there, also 59 lvl cap). Healing the final boss was rough towards the end, but I did it 1/1. And I promise you that could go south on any healer easily. So to anyone lossing all faith in astro from this nonsense thread, know that the job is working just fine in the right hands. I am willing to bet we will receive a small buff in the future though.

Se was wise to go this route. Astro doesn't need a healing buff and light speed doesn't seem intended as a oh shite cool down. Astro support and flexibility is it's strength. It's equivalent to bards from 2.1 to now with slightly weaker pure healing as compensation for the buffs. Buff astro any in healing and you shove white mage under the bus. Plus you don't know how astro will perform in alexander.

@Krixus : again you totally miss the point : we are not saying you can't heal stupid useless dungeon. You can. We are saying that AST being BELOW the other two healers will make him unwanted. If a + b are better than C. You'll take A and B and left out C. C is AST in this situation.

@Vlady : lol @ saying ast buffs are equivalent to bards. Just no. Bards is a guaranteed damage boost, guaranteed tp regen, guaranteed mana regen when you want it. You can use it whenever it sees the best use. You can't with ast and it's not as strong.

And buffing AST potency will not make them outshine WHM since we have shitty cds.

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Originally Posted by Shamirah

@Krixus : again you totally miss the point

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Not missing the point, I clearly see what you are saying. I just think you guys are underestimating the buffs. 45 second 10% dmg buff on your top dps makes a nice difference, and its really not that uncommon. Also if you pull a card you dont want you can cancel it in the buff icons and save 15 seconds, so draw is on 30 second cycles instead of 45 (with waiting an unwanted card out). I parse everything ive done so far and the dps im buffing always soars over the other.

Why take a whm + sch when you can do Ast + Sch and get double buffs? Open you eyes people! Good players in progression content will be able to heal perfectly fine, the potency is just shy of a whm. I wonder how many here even play the job, or just repeat what they have heard.

No. In theory it's all great. In practice it is not. Yeah you can be really usefull if you have good RNG. But I did several dungeon runs where I got like 2 freaking Balance. Otherwise it's mostly TP/MP/Spear cards. That's the main issue. I like RNG, but i don't like the fact that most of our cards are really useless or niche.

All the cards should be worth using outside of RRing them.

Okay, well has anyone actually taking AST to Coil or even CT/EX? I'm curious on how people are feeling it in actually end game scenarios.

Just some random musings,

I'm not going to address the "lack of healing capabilities" of an AST, mostly because I haven't played and experienced one myself.

On the other hand tho regarding the 6 drawn cards, is it possible that these seems underwhelming due to lack of communication?
Imagine a well oiled team where everybody's communicating via voice comms, as an AST you can announce which card you obtained, and who'll benefit most from that card.

Just a few examples to illustrate my point:
Got Arrow (10% attack speed) and a WAR is just about to pop his berserk? Slap it on him so he can get 1 or 2 more GCDs in.

Balance (10% damage), find out which dps is about to activate their CDs for burst damage, and give it to him.

Spear (20% Recast), maybe that summoner who's just Raging Strike-ed, and about to unleash all his/her festers, slap this on him, instead of 2 festers per RS, it is now possible to unload all 3 festers in the RS duration.

Obviously all these are extremely situational, but there's always the chance of some awesome synergy wombo-combo happening every 30 seconds :).

All of the above is most likely unattainable in a random DF party, but if SE were to adjust these buffs based on a random DF party, I honestly cannot imagine how frighteningly powerful an AST can be in a well oiled team.

The thing is DreamWeaver : like I said it sounds good in theory but in practice it is not.

You don't know which cards you will draw. You can't ask your party to "hold on to your CDs until I get the appropriate cards". That does not work. Yes it's great if you can align the cards with CD but you just cannot predict in advance what you will get. Plus, you can spend a fight without having any arrow or balance cards (yes it happened to me several times).

Ast is able to heal through EX primal just fine and maybe alexdaner.

We're talking about the fact that AST has ridiculously bad CDS and some serious other flaws. It's just not a good balance and design. Heck you could even do the first coils with a war, did not mean war were not bad and in dire need of a buff/rework.

I never imply that DPS should hold their CDs for the AST to try and grab the card they wanted.

I have also stated :
Obviously all these are extremely situational, but there's always the chance of some awesome synergy wombo-combo happening every 30 seconds.

Now, just how often these synergy can happen is not something that is quantifiable now, thus I won't comment "how awesome/badass" these synergies are, I am merely pointing out the possibilities.

There are many possibilities; no one is denying that. However, those are possibilities that rely 100% on RNG, and don't warrant bringing an AST in lieu of a reliable healer where the chances of receiving their full benefit is guaranteed.

as a 60 Astro currently working my way through LAW farming let me shed some light on the issues. The heals are weak.. plain and simple I feel ike im always playing catch and have been called bad many times. Im a solid healer, main heals and have cleared all content prior to astro on sch and whm. That being said the class is fun a lot of fun and I hope to see it improved potency etc. I have ran a few dungeons at level 60 the 60 ones ilv 155 and I have been told man your struggling.. I was spamming Benefic 2 just to keep a tank alive on a large pull. Small pulls I can handle fine, but with its current state in 60 dungeons your heals are too weak to dps and then catch up b efore your tank dies. so you cant do that, the RNG of the cards are very rough, but workable.

The potency of the heals are very weak and I find myself having to use 3 benefic2 in a row instead of a white mage using Cure 1 once just to keep a tank alive. Im always starved for MP in long fights, even with the MP regen ability and using Ewer when I get it. Its just rough right now. Anyone saying "im a pro astro can heal any content" is saying that pre 60. Post 60 where it matters, we are no where near on par with other healers in healing output. But man everyone loves our buffs at least though right?

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Originally Posted by Arragomis

as a 60 Astro currently working my way through LAW farming let me shed some light on the issues. The heals are weak.. plain and simple I feel ike im always playing catch and have been called bad many times. Im a solid healer, main heals and have cleared all content prior to astro on sch and whm. That being said the class is fun a lot of fun and I hope to see it improved potency etc. I have ran a few dungeons at level 60 the 60 ones ilv 155 and I have been told man your struggling.. I was spamming Benefic 2 just to keep a tank alive on a large pull. Small pulls I can handle fine, but with its current state in 60 dungeons your heals are too weak to dps and then catch up b efore your tank dies. so you cant do that, the RNG of the cards are very rough, but workable.

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I'd be interested in your healing numbers. Would you mind posting exactly what each spell heals for, in each Aspect? Along with what iLvl, stats, weapon, etc.

That guy is exagerrating. Yes, our potencies are weak, but three benefic 2s =/= one cure 1. Comon man, thats just ludicrous. Benefic 2 is only 30 less potency than cure 2. Hes right though, our healing is a STRUGGLE. Especially in pugs where you have to tell your dps to stand within a 15 yalm distance of each othre or they wont get hit by helios. Dignity is good, but i feel like it should be a 30 seconds cool down (why does our lustrate have to have a 40 second cooldown anyway? Scholars can essentially get a similiar spell three times in thirty seconds.). The cards are RNG beyond belief. I just love shuffling a spire into a spire and drawing a spire on the draw after that -_-. The abilities (all five of them) past 50 are garbage.

rought estimates. Aspected benefic averages about 1.5k Benefic 1 2200 base. Benefi 2 around 3.5k. spected Helios around 850. Helios around 1800 base. Those are rough stimates. But when tanks are getting hit 3k at a time, those numbers barely keep up let alone save a tank from brink. Our Mini Benediction is on 40 second CD and works best when people are on brink but I have around 9k HP and 12k MP atm with my current gear. Only 170 weapon and LAW legs. I know it should get better. and I hope it does.. but for a long time raid healer to be called a scrub by ignorant people really aggrivates me.. its not on par with other healers and I have to work twice as hard to keep tanks and party alive and manage MP and RNG cards you never want lol.

I just got to 60 tonight and there's a few things that really irk me. While I love the job, the abilities are gorgeous, and it's fun to play, I cannot help but wonder why:

1. WHY is our only "buff" actually a nerf you place on yourself? Yes, I'm talking Lightspeed. This skill infuriates me.

2. Why, if the heals are lower potency (and they are, obviously requiring MORE heals to match the output of the other two healing jobs) did we get stuck with Shroud, aka Luminiferous Aether? If we are having to cast that many more heals than a WHM or SCH would, why would we not get something akin to Aetherflow?

3. I know it's "random," but why do I always end up getting the cards I don't want (yes I'm looking at you Spear)?

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Originally Posted by SaintK

Dignity is good, but i feel like it should be a 30 seconds cool down (why does our lustrate have to have a 40 second cooldown anyway? Scholars can essentially get a similiar spell three times in thirty seconds.). The cards are RNG beyond belief. I just love shuffling a spire into a spire and drawing a spire on the draw after that -_-. The abilities (all five of them) past 50 are garbage.

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3 times a minute* with the possibility of dismissing the fairy for 3 more once every 3 minutes.

I have to admit, AST is functional, and the card buffs are strong, but the healing really is quite middle-of-the road. Their AOE healing is quite good though. Still beats SCH since they don't have to wait on CDs to do so with real potency (whispering dawn, indomitability, emergency tactics).

Not sure if AST is truly weak, or I'm forced to admit SCH is pretty much OP in every other regard that isn't AOE healing at this point. Even nerfed, lustrate ironically puts essential dignity to shame due to consistency (I estimate essential dignity to heal for 800 potency on a dangerously low target). Fire-and-forget AOE DOT dps, and their MP staying power is amazing as always between aetherflow, energy drain, and occasional free heals from fairy + lustrate.

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Originally Posted by fanservice

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Yep, and meanwhile WHM gets assize for another 10% of their MP back every 90 seconds on top of shroud. All AST has is basically base shroud. We can use ewer on ourselves, but that's best placed on the BLM for extra fire casts. I dunno, AST seems weak in the MP-regen department (59 ast here, will see during the 60 dungeons).

I never had any issues with MP on AST until I started grinding the lvl 60 expert dungeons. Enemies seem to survive a ridiculous amount of time and it seems the tank is always randomly spiking. On anything more than 2 enemies, it's practically impossible for me to cleric stance and pop off a swiftcast Gravity +AoE stun without my tank dying or getting dangerously low. That's just trash enemies, the bosses stay alive even longer and with AoE dmg on top of the tank spikes, I can run through my MP extremely fast

I'm usually very good at using our "shroud" every 2mins but there's one or two bosses where I'll actually need to Ewer myself just to last till the end.

Anyways, I have the 170 globe and fairly decent i156 gear set that I'm stil, upgrading. I imagine my gear and the tanks in general will only improve vastly with time so perhaps these won't be issues anymore. Its just that those 2 instances are very demanding as a fresh 60 AST

Got up to 59 on AST, really enjoying it. Such beautiful animations and it's all around a lot of fun to play. I haven't made up mind about the healing potency yet or how I feel about it's place in regards to the other healers. In 4 man content, it seems sufficient, and I've had few problems healing through any of the dungeons, even when tanks decide to pull an extra set of mobs. I do feel like I have to work a little harder, but the cards seem to balance that out (even if they are pretty rngish). Some of the cooldowns just baffle me though. I'm not sure what about Collective Unconscious justifies AST having to stand still. It's not that great of a cool down. Maybe if it had a much higher potency, or added shields with each regen tick.

so far my problems i've found

the base healing spells benefic, benefic II, and helios have no reason to be weaker than counterparts. The Buffs from the sect stances don't seem to make up for it at all for some reason

lightspeed is basically just mobile casting at lower potency, but we already have aspected benefic. It's like a self nerf using it

essential dignity is a great spell but the other healers have a lot more than 1 emergency heal now

stella is completely pointless
astrologian damage seems to be completely pathetic in general too even among other healers

disable gets removed from the auto attacks monsters do while charging up the big attack you used it for

time dilation and celestial opposition only seem to work on card buffs making them super limited

collective unconscious requiring basically a self imposed stun to use makes it kind of useless. A well timed nocturnal sect one can be useful but other healers get to be precasting their aoe heal

card buffs while strong are so random you often get things useless to the situation repeatedly

Maybe its time for ppl to just accept tht we need to change how we play if there is an ast in the party.
2 years of having whm/ schs healing us = should not be treating asts as if they were whm or sch.
Imo tanks need to break tht "pull lots of mobs and aoe burst them down" habit and understand, until we overgear. Ast cannot handle the amount of heals needed for those big pulls.
Trying to dps as an ast during the huge pulls is like suicide cuz the dmg is just too much to stance damce and heal the tank in time.

If we could do the job as good as a whm or sch then y would u need a sch or whm?

I've been level 60 for the past few days, and I can tell you that AST isn't very well suited for keeping up multiple targets, yet alone a single target, when faced off against burst damage combined with static constant damage. In situations where a strong DoT is applied, and the tank is getting trucked (most likely due to iLvL), I've been having little to no time removing debuffs as that one GCD was needed to keep the tank-up. Our main issue is that we have no reliable source of catching up on healing aside from Essential Dignity and that isn't even enough--even combined with a string of Benefic IIs.

I do understand it's most likely due to iLvLs, but when comparing AST to WHM & Scholars, especially for the first few weeks of end-game content (Alexander), our iLvLs will most likely be just the base, and AST skill set doesn't seem too reliable for that content. Just compare the level 60 skill set vs. the level 50 SCH and WHM skill set in T13. I do not think Astrologian will be able to fulfill a White Mage's spot without precasted heals nor a Scholars spot as their mitigation is very random and situational.

[1] Unreliable Buffs
Spread is our only means of holding onto important cards for key situations, but RNG can say otherwise. I've pulled 15 Spires in a row once with a full caster party. I think the tank was happy, but everyone else wasn't too happy.

[2] Lack of Boosting Heals & Catching Up in Healing
Essential Dignity is our only catch-up heal. Essentially it's our Benediction because that's literally the only emergency button we have. We have no Divine Seal, Fey Illumination, Rouse, Emergency Tactics, Assize, Asylum, Tetragramation... We don't have any of that. So if someone takes one too many RNG crits or eats too many avoidable damage, healing becomes heal. Synastry comes in handy at times, but it's on a two minute cooldown, a cooldown way too high for the amount of mistakes that can happen per 10 seconds.

[3] Aspected Helios
15 yalms. Not a Medica II.

[4] Collective Unconcious
Risky. Not a high-risk high reward skill. It's more of a high-risk, medicore heal or risky-sacred soil. If there are stacking megaflare mechanics that require a Sacred Soil and Succor and you are not marked, that Collective Unconcious is... well... blah.

[5] Expensive mana per HP.
Astrologians will not take the role of a White Mage for required burst heals. In encounters which do not need such burst heals, I can see Astrologians taking their place... Maybe.

In addition to all these negatives, the meta needs to change with how SE has changed a lot of things. With how high HP mobs have, how much damage is being taken, how AoEs got nerfed, how our iLvL is relatively low in comparison to content we're doing, large pulls and trying to ignore mechanics and let the healer power through everything is going to need to change.

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Originally Posted by DreamWeaver

On the other hand tho regarding the 6 drawn cards, is it possible that these seems underwhelming due to lack of communication?
Imagine a well oiled team where everybody's communicating via voice comms, as an AST you can announce which card you obtained, and who'll benefit most from that card.

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I've been doing many FC runs (or with my raid group), and I've been squeezing rotations and optimal times for it. I check for TP stats and whatnots, and try to keep track of their buffs. In Bismarck Extreme, I hold offensive cards for burst, which makes a huge difference! Communication is very key for Astrologian, especially since our class is relative to divination, the art of forseeing the future.

One thing for sure though is that Astrologians trade off their own potencies by boosting the performance of other classes.

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Originally Posted by Xenos74

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It'll get better as you fill out your gear while grinding Laws. My gear's all ilvl 160 + 4 pieces of Law including weapon and as long as the tanks don't chain pull it's quite alright. Some nasty mobs will hit your tank/party hard no matter how high your ilvl is I suspect.

In Fractal Continuum 2 mobs are extremely dangerous: A flying Naga creature (forgot its full name) that will AOE your party for huge damage. That Iron Knight creature that will swipe your tank/party for HUGE damage after it has overpowered itself. This swipe took an ilvl 160 Pally from 100% to 20%, though I didn't check if he was using CDs or not.

In Neverreap there's also 2 mobs: Stinging bees that hit for a crapload of damage if not killed in time. Those Elbst (lizards with sharp teeth) that debuffs your tank with Vuln.

Prepare your best wombo combo (RRed Bole + Regen + Aspected Helios + Time Dilation + Opposition on tank) in anticipation for these mobs.

Yes it is very rough for a fresh 60 AST but once you're geared out it'll be fine. In Neverreap, the last boss had 50% health left and a DPS dropped off the platform. Since he couldn't be resurrected, we had to make do with 3 people. The fight took so long that the live DPS was able to LB 1 twice. We ended victorious with me still having ~40% mp. It would have been absolutely impossible if I was a fresh AST.

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Originally Posted by Aphel

Yes it is very rough for a fresh 60 AST but once you're geared out it'll be fine. In Neverreap, the last boss had 50% health left and a DPS dropped off the platform. Since he couldn't be resurrected, we had to make do with 3 people. The fight took so long that the live DPS was able to LB 1 twice. We ended victorious with me still having ~40% mp. It would have been absolutely impossible if I was a fresh AST.

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I agree. I'm slightly behind you in gear progression, but after an extra run or two, my mana and healing comfortability has been pretty good. It's just when people start taking extra hits or avoidable damage that my mana starts tanking (eek!), but it's still manageable unless it's quite frequent to the point I'm required to turn my attention to healing DPS.

3 manning the final boss of Neverreap is fun though! A summoner got knocked off around 30%, so I didn't get to experience that fun double LB you got :P Yay for challenges!

I feel like some of these 'potencies are lower' comments belie the AST's healing power a bit. Diurnal Sect grants 5% Spell Speed, while Nocturnal Sect outright buffs the potencies by 5%. Nocturnal Helios is outright stronger than Medica, for example.
What Astrologian's healing really lacks, in my opinion, is a tool for situations with a huge amount of incoming DPS. White Mage gets Divine Seal, while Scholar gets Fey Illumination. The best we get for that situation is planning ahead and having a Bole + appropriate Royal Road handy.

Edit so I can respond to the above: High level healing gear appears to be forgoing accuracy in favour of piety all around. I suppose this is fine, but we'll see how the DPS checks are in Alexander soon.