Patch 5.05 Astrologian is still frustrating, stressful, and disappointing
Introduction / contextI usually refrain from complaining on the forums if a job is simply "difficult", because I believe that difficulty can be reduced over time with practice and developing instincts/muscle memory. As long as the job is fun to play and produces rewarding results, difficulty can be "ok" (stressful, but overall, okay).
So, if I'm writing a post on the official forums about how negative my experiences with a job have been in the current patch, please understand that those experiences have been very negative. Also, please understand that, overall, I enjoy FFXIV and its job and combat design very much (which is why I feel passionate enough about the gameplay to want to spend time making a post like this in the first place).
What I enjoy about 5.05 Astrologian- Earthly Star is still a very satisfying ability. Watching it detonate is both beautiful and rewarding, and learning when to place it in during an encounter for maximum results is fun. This is one of the abilites that makes playing non-AST healers boring/less fun for me.
- Cards/Divination are, conceptually, fun and appealing. I like buffing my party members. I think doing this is much more fun than just spamming Glare and drooling, or tossing one debuff on the target every 120s and otherwise not interacting with my party members. Watching their buffs or the encounter and timing the release of synergistic effects is rewarding and satisfying.
- The sparkle princess stars and planets aesthetic is unique and appealing. It feels very drab and boring to switch from AST to WHM (non-descript white lights, and then more non-descript white lights) or SCH (which barely even has an aesthetic or a concept other than "I'm wearing a mortarboard").
- The new OGCD heals added in Shadowbringers are a satisfying and appealing addition to AST's toolkit. Horoscope, Celestial Intersection, new Celestial Opposition, two charges on Essential Dignity, and Neutral Sect have all helped make AST feel more rounded and comfortable to play as a healer.
- Malefic's 1.5s cast time allows me to zoom and scoot around the battlefield and freely weave OGCDs after nearly every spell. Switching to other healers from AST feels much more sluggish and annoying, with constantly pushing slidecast risks after long 2.5s spells and struggling to cram double-weaves into what non-clipping windows I can find.
- The ability to flip between Diurnal and Nocturnal is conceptually-appealing, and it's fun in dungeons to switch back and forth between pulls to give the tank maximum defensive coverage before combat.
What I dislike about 5.05 Astrologian: Cards- The new Card system is too over-designed and over-complicated. It's distracting, overwhelming, irritating, and not very fun to try to manage and juggle all of these decisions during an active encounter.
- First, I'm not allowed to gain Seals outside combat. This is very frustrating. Sometimes I play a card just a split-second too soon, even though I've already attacked a target, and I get no seal and I'm now behind on prepping Divination.
- I can't prep Divination before combat, meaning that during the opening of encounters (when I'm trying to do maximum DPS and not clip or slow down) or during huge trash pulls in dungeons (when I need to also be weaving tons of defensive abilities on the tank), I'm burdened by having to do a truly boggling amount of Draw / Sleeve Draw / Redraw / Play / Redraw / Redraw / Play ... in rapid succession, trying to get 3 different Seals for a proper Divination, which also must go out within the first 10 or so seconds in order to not miss everyone's important buff windows. This is extremely stressful, and also hurts my fingers.
- It's also kind of awkward that Divination has been reduced to 120s CD, but Sleeve Draw is still 180s CD. Sleeve Draw feels designed to set up Divination: it lets me get a lot of cards out on a lot of players in quick succession, as well as getting a lot of different Seals (hopefully) generated and cycled through. Divination without Sleeve Draw first requires me to be extremely picky and cautious (and sometimes outright sub-optimal) about how I play my Draws every 30s, to make sure I set up the next Divination correctly and especially to make sure I don't get slightly distracted and accidentally play a card without Minor Arcana first when I have 3 seals lined up (it's a terrible feeling to think I'm playing a well-matched card, only to suddenly have my heart sink as I realize I just turned Moon-Planet-Sun into Planet-Sun-Planet), because I then don't have Sleeve Draw to make a last-ditch attempt to patch up the Seal array. And then, Sleeve Draw without Divination is like "Oh okay, I guess here's a lot of random cards on random people at a random time, enjoy I guess". (To be fair, a lot of CDs come up at 180s, such as Brotherhood and Inner Release, etc... but as I've detailed elsewhere, actually getting Draws to work out correctly on-time is a headache that often doesn't go well).
- Cards are awkward and annoying to use, because FFXIV still has a terrible targeting system for friendly players. Having to click a party member, detarget the enemy, activate an effect, then retarget the enemy all within approximately 1-2 seconds, multiple times in a row (Sleeve Draw) or every 30s (Draw), is neither comfortable nor fun. Add in having to attempt to Draw, process what I've just Drawn, and then Redraw or Play all inside one GCD as a double-weave while Lightspeed is up and all while not clipping my next cast, and I absolutely dread seeing Sleeve Draw is coming off cooldown — utilizing the ability is stressful and irritating.
- I can't even just Draw a card and play it. Because I might get a Melee card when I need Ranged, or vice-versa. So then I have to Redraw. But maybe that Melee card had the correct Seal, and I redraw into a Ranged card with a duplicate seal. Now I'm behind on setting up Divination and I have to add yet another OGCD weave to convert the duplicate seal into a Crowns card so it doesn't mess up my Divination prep. The amount of times that I often need to weave Draw, Redraw, and Minor Arcana over and over in a short span of time just to get a card I can actually play is very frustrating.
- And for all of this, the cards last only 15s and have a disappointingly small effect. This means that I need to do my best to land the card inside someone's burst or buff windows. But that's difficult to do with the short duration, and being constantly pressured to Draw again (every 30s) or spit out cards rapid-fire (Sleeve Draw). I sometimes find myself growing so tired of this over-complicated busy-work that I just start flinging cards on anyone with a warm body just to get it over with and concentrate on the encounter. And it barely feels like it matters.
- And all of this might not even be a problem if FFXIV had old-school MMO "true support" classes where my sole job was to add some DPS while managing and distributing cards. But instead, while I'm managing these constant multi-stage weaving and buff management plans every 1.5s, I'm also supposed to be keeping the party alive, placing or activating appropriate healing OGCDs (which further displace weave slots for this card mess) and generally doing everything that a White Mage needs to do, except the WHM gets to spam Glare and sometimes tap Afflatus Misery, all while adding more total DPS and equivalent or better healing to the party than anything I do with my cards or healing OGCDs. Why should I bother playing this Job in patch 5.05?
What I dislike about 5.05 Astrologian: Healing- Horoscope not auto-detonating when it expires is very punishing to a job that is already over-loaded on OGCDs it's trying to weave. To make use of Horoscope, I have to spend 1 OGCD (activate it), then spend 1 GCD (upgrade to Horoscope Helios), then another OGCD (trigger the heal). And this is while I'm probably busy trying to get out Essential Dignities, Celestial Intersections, Earthly Stars, and, of course, Draw Redraw Play Sleeve Draw Redraw Play Minor Arcana Play Redraw Redraw Minor Arcana Play Divination Draw Redraw Play. I honestly like that Horoscope is a healing ability that "rewards" a healer for using a GCD heal with a nice OGCD burst heal sometime later, but the buff is too short (I honestly don't always need a 400 potency OGCD AOE within 30s of casting an Aspected Helios), and the finger/clipping clutter required to use Horoscope causes me to sometimes either let the buff expire, or leave the ability on cooldown, because it's just not going to fit into everything else I need to do.
- Even as a healer, AST feels mediocre and underwhelming. WHM and SCH feel much more balanced, and much more powerful. In a dungeon, I can go so much longer, and handle so much more incoming damage, as WHM or SCH before having to resort to direct GCD casts, compared to AST, which quickly exhausts its tools and falls behind and has to resort to Benefic 2 spam. WHM is still drowning in healing output and MP recovery tools; SCH's Fairy actually seems more powerful than ever, as well as SCH's ability to leverage OGCD / "No-GCD" (Embrace/Veil) healing feeling more powerful than ever.
- Neutral Sect is a disappointing level 80 ability. Yes, it's very powerful, but it's also a last resort: it's a button I don't want to press, because it only affects GCD healing, meaning that I will do everything in my power to exhaust all of my other tools before finally resorting to Neutral Sect. And when I finally do, I'll cast maybe 1-2 Aspected Benefics or an Aspected Helios, and then do very little else with the buff. This would be a much more exciting ability if it boosted and "dual-bonus" all healing actions. Compare this to Temperance (even if I cast zero GCD heals, I still get party-wide damage reduction for a single OGCD weave) and Seraph (it costs me almost-literally nothing to get two free "super-Succors" and a little turret machine-gunning baby Adloquiums on the tank).
- Nocturnal Sect is still a limp, flaccid, disappointing stance. It's just so much weaker than a "real SCH", my heart sinks any time I see I'm partnered with a WHM. It's not fun to heal in Nocturnal: I want to avoid using my shields as much as possible, because they're expensive and inefficient. Which is also an issue for SCH, except SCH has a Fairy, Aetherflow, and tons of other tools to make it feel well-rounded and strong even when it's not shielding. Nocturnal AST is a hollow shell of a job with barely any identity or purpose; my sole reason to even exist is because this-or-that mechanic every 60 or 180s needs a little extra EHP on the party to squeeze through it. The rest of the time, avoiding using my shields means I feel like I'm barely doing anything as Nocturnal AST, because I have so many fewer relevant tools by comparison to everything SCH can do even when an encounter requires zero shields. Diurnal AST, on the other hand, at least feels like a mostly-legitimate "alternative WHM" in terms of its toolset and abilities.
- MP vaporizes way too quickly. I know this has always been a weakness of AST, but I think it's a poor kind of weakness ("This healer has a much higher chance of running out of fuel if they make mistakes, and dooming you all / shutting off Raises"). All it does is help make AST feel like even more of a liability compared to WHM and SCH.
- Competing with WHM or SCH for a healing slot, I feel self-conscious and guilty. I do starkly underwhelming personal DPS, and I don't even effectively compensate for that with my Cards, even if they're played perfectly. And as I noted above, playing Cards / Divination perfectly while not clipping and not missing important healing actions and not messing up encounter mechanics is a stressful, overwhelming chore and it relies on my party members being skilled enough with their own jobs/play to make full use of the buffs. And for all that — it doesn't even have a payoff that makes it worthwhile! AST is literally making my, and my party's, life more difficult... for no reason. Just take a WHM: you get better results with much less stress and distraction, and largely independent of anyone else's job performance. This is honestly kind of depressing, but sparkly stars and a fun design aren't good enough to justify continuing to do this.
What could make 5.05 Astrologian better?- Card management should be simplified. It's not the basic concept (matching shapes and colors, getting all 3), it's the fact I need to do this using animation-locked OGCDs in-between doing everything else I'm trying to do, and I need to do it a lot (way too much). The number of OGCD weaves that I need to spend managing, adjusting, and correcting cards, and the awkwardness/punishment of trying to set up Divination, should be heavily streamlined so AST is less about constantly switching targets and breaking my fingers trying to weave up the correct card.
- Give Horoscope a longer buff after being activated (honestly, 45-60s wouldn't be unreasonable given the requirements to set it up properly), and let Horoscope auto-detonate like Excogitation and Earthly Star (AST has way too many OGCDs to manage already).
- Nocturnal Sect still needs help. It should just be a duplicate SCH. I'm not even joking any more, I'm tired and I think this is the easiest solution. Give me a little moon that follows me around casting "Nocturnal Embrace", and give my OGCDs extra charges while in Nocturnal to mimick Aetherflow. It's still not going to be 1:1 with SCH, but it also shouldn't be (SCH still deserves its own job identity, after all), and at least Nocturnal AST would start to feel like a legitimate alternative to Diurnal, and AST/WHM might stop feeling like a parody of a real comp.
- Either strongly-increase AST's support buffs, or increase AST's personal DPS, or both. There needs to be some kind of incentive to actually justify the amount of effort and attention that AST's support toolset demands right now. (This is definitely somewhat contingent on how much AST's personal DPS is increased, as well as how much Cards are streamlined).
- Some MP management boosts would also help. WHM feels like it almost has infinite MP and can do whatever it wants; SCH isn't far behind (especially with Energy Drain back). Subbing in an AST, by contrast, makes everything feel a lot more delicate. I understand that WHM does need to retain some advantages of its own, but right now AST just feels strictly worse in basically every way, and MP management is one of the stand-out points.
ConclusionI expect that some of my points might be over-exaggerated or refuted by more skilled players operating at a higher level of play, and I respect that. But, I am a "reasonable" player: I research my Jobs extensively before playing them, spend a lot of time setting up my HUD and keybinds, practice a lot and run content repeatedly to learn it and how to manage my tools. So, at least understand that if I'm feeling this frustrated and underpowered as AST, it's probably even worse for many players (who approach the game in a more relaxed manner, or put less effort into research, learning, and practice) and still a problem for more skilled players (even though they are talented or experienced enough to compensate or manage better than I can).
