What I think the celestial opposition buff is going to be...

So what we know about Celestial opposition is that it is going to be akin to stance dancing, and some are confused to what it means so the following is what I think its going to be -

Imagine you are in a raid and everyone is topped up in health and your healing partner is able to solo heal, normally this is the part where someone pops cleric stance dropping your healing for more dps but instead the Astrologian pops an aoe balance or arrow and then goes into celestial opposition.

They become a "totem" where everyone in range of celestial opposition has their buffs placed by the astrologian "time stop"ped as a support class this could be a massive boon and its balanced by the fact that while you are effectively permanently placing a buff on a group you can't heal or move to dodge.

This is all of course speculation but it seems like it could work and would give the skill more of a "big deal level 60 skill" feel compared to how it currently is.

Far more likely that it's just gonna switch you between diurnal and nocturnal. Which will be interesting to see, considering nocturnal's kit is underpowered and lacks synergy. Will likely be only useful in 4-mans and in 8-mans with a WHM partner.

Haha, not a bad idea. Though you should change the title to say "What I would love the celestial opposition buff to be". There's little indication as to the changes that will actually be made. However, I wouldn't be surprised if more is changed than stated in the Live Letter. There's no reason for them to spill all the beans, only enough to let us know they are changing things.

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Originally Posted by GideonHighmourn

Far more likely that it's just gonna switch you between diurnal and nocturnal. Which will be interesting to see, considering nocturnal's kit is underpowered and lacks synergy. Will likely be only useful in 4-mans and in 8-mans with a WHM partner.

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"As for Collective Unconscious and Celestial Opposition, instead of adjusting the stats similar to other healer actions, we’ll make astrologian-like adjustments where they switch between stances"

This statement from the official translation has no connection between Diurnal and Nocturnal, people heard stance changing and got their hopes up, what they are saying is that Collective unconsciousness and Celestial Opposition are going to be toggles like cleric stance instead of just changing their stats to compete with the other healers.

While that sounds amazing, you can't really think that's what they will do lol. Would be wayyy too OP.

Edit* just saw OPs most recent post

I really think its just diurnal and nocturnal, as they are stances. Doubt they mean a toggleable ability.

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Originally Posted by Lycinder

"As for Collective Unconscious and Celestial Opposition, instead of adjusting the stats similar to other healer actions, we’ll make astrologian-like adjustments where they switch between stances"

This statement from the official translation has no connection between Diurnal and Nocturnal, people heard stance changing and got their hopes up, what they are saying is that Collective unconsciousness and Celestial Opposition are going to be toggles like cleric stance instead of just changing their stats to compete with the other healers.

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I wouldn't expect anything ground breaking like two more stances on top of the three they already have access to. Just because they didn't say Dirunal and nocturnal explicitly doesn't imply that they're adding NEW stances; instead, they said switching between stances. Diurnal and Nocturnal ARE the Astrologian stances.

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Originally Posted by Krixus

While that sounds amazing, you can't really think that's what they will do lol. Would be wayyy too OP.

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Ehhhhhh not really, since you are effectively useless during it - Won't be able to move to dodge mechanics and won't be healing until we switch it off (I am assuming there will also be a cooldown on Celestial.

Instead we become what we were supposed to actually be, a support class, our gameplay changes to trying to keep the group up while maintaining buff uptime like a support healer hybrid should be about.

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Originally Posted by GideonHighmourn

I wouldn't expect anything ground breaking like two more stances on top of the three they already have access to. Just because they didn't say Dirunal and nocturnal explicitly doesn't imply that they're adding NEW stances; instead, they said switching between stances. Diurnal and Nocturnal ARE the Astrologian stances.

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I repeat - They said nothing about Nocturnal Diurnal, they were talking about Collective unconsciousness and Celestial Opposition, like really actually read the quote from Bayohne and notice if they were talking about Nocturnal and Diurnal that means they went absolutely off-tangent and didn't finish what they were saying about Collective unconsciousness and Celestial Opposition.

What I think they mean is having them toggle like cleric STANCE which is definitely a different kind of stance to nocturnal and diurnal, because its an active toggle.

They literally said changing CO and CU to allows Astrologian to switch between stances. It's really not complicated as you're making it out to be.

A sch or whm could solo heal while this is being done. And if it were able to be toggled, you could run out of an aoe, run back and freeze time on buffs again. And while running away from aoe you could be drawing a new buff to hold for when that one drops. I can see buffs lasting very long since you could reapply a new one after holding one for a min+. It's a cool idea just not realistic.

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Originally Posted by GideonHighmourn

They literally said changing CO and CU to allows Astrologian to switch between stances. It's really not complicated as you're making it out to be.

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Your wrong, no actually I hope your wrong because that would be a terrible change...Why would they change those into being stance dance cooldowns? It doesn't make any sense why their would be two...Actually it will make the skills a waste of a skill slot.
Read A20. like really read it, Bayohne said "instead of adjusting the stats similar to other healer actions" now how Collective Unconsciousness currently works is either a copy of sacred soil or the channeled WHM regen if they just change that to "Flips your stance in battle" we lose that utility.

We don't need Noct-diurnal switching our healing is viable, we need our support buffed to be weighed up against the other two healers.

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Originally Posted by Krixus

A sch or whm could solo heal while this is being done. And if it were able to be toggled, you could run out of an aoe, run back and freeze time on buffs again. And while running away from aoe you could be drawing a new buff to hold for when that one drops. I can see buffs lasting very long since you could reapply a new one after holding one for a min+. It's a cool idea just not realistic.

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Give it the same cooldown as Gauss and Wanderers, moving means you drop your buffs, there are many ways to balance it.

I don't think that Collective Unconscious will lose it's SacredSoil/Asylum Effect >.<
it makes no sense.

Saying I'm wrong doesn't make what you're trying to write into their words correct. If they intended to add two new stances or toggles, they would have stated just that. You're literally trying to interpret their statement into meaning something entirely different.

I DO think switching between Diurnal and Nocturnal WAS intended from the beginning, as their healing potency is quantifiably lower than SCH or WHM. It would have given them flavor and versatility, rather than being a poor replacement for either.

Now it's going to be the most difficoult healer to play in this game and I could really love it.

God could you imagine the skillcap of astro if you could stance swap at any moment?

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Originally Posted by GideonHighmourn

Saying I'm wrong doesn't make what you're trying to write into their words correct.

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Well no I corrected myself in my earlier post "I hope your wrong" it would be terrible it doesn't work and I am pretty sure they stated from early class previews that you couldn't switch between stances.

Making it into a homogenised healer with support tacked onto it kind of kills the whole support part, we shouldn't compete against healers with healing we should be competing and topping healers in the support, its the same for support dps hybrids, do they compete with dps or the utility they bring?

AST is a healer first, support second; there are two healer spots, and much like MCH/BRD, they need to contribute more than just support. They should be able to sustain a group on their own if needed, and compete with SCH/WHM; otherwise, there's no reason to bring one over WHM/SCH. Adding versatility to the class wouldn't "homogenize" it, it would diversify it. Right now, Dirunal Sect is what 90% of AST's play in, due to the weak nature of Nocturnal Sect, making them a poor WHM replacement. The ability to switch to Nocturnal when mechanics call for it, and then back to Diurnal to recover afterwards, would make them far more viable and versatile.

Combined with card changes, their support portion is going to be more competitive as well.

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Originally Posted by GideonHighmourn

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Yes nocturnal needs changes to weigh up against diurnal that I concede but I am of the group margin which says "Our healing is fine, we need our support buffed." our healing works, it has been shown Astro can solo heal Ravana EX so our healing is viable in the same way that MCH and Bard (with their new buff) dps is totally viable.

We don't need to compete with SCH and WHM in raw heals if our support is diverse and good enough we can bring in our own flavour which makes it so that people can effectively weigh us up. "Do I want safety of heals if people take more damage or would I want sustained buffs from Astrologian."
If our healing is buffed up to the same level as SCH and WHM and our cards are buffed it becomes a situation of "Always bring an Astro."

I'm not saying AST needs to be equivalent to SCH/WHM at all; don't put words in my mouth.

The ability to switch between stances is powerful, and diverse enough and competitive against SCH/WHM. Combined with changes to cards, AST will become an actual contender for progression, rather than "passable" in an ideal encounter with perfectly executed mechanics (Ravana EX solo heal).

What people don't realize is you can have a strong healer, and then a support healer. If anyone here played ffxi think about the pt's there. You would have a whm, and then a rdm. Rdm couldn't heal as well as whm, but was useful to have for refresh and haste.

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Originally Posted by GideonHighmourn

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But I am repeating what you are saying, competing with SCH and WHM, to compete means you need to be at the same level...So point has been made.

The relationship between Warrior, Paladin and Dark Knight says "Hi! :D" Paladin was generally preferred for progression as MT because of their mitigation making it easier on the load to heal but as things were on farm on some encounters it was a dps net gain with warrior MT when everyone learned the ropes.
Also in progression SCH's would heal way less than WHM because they were trying to hit dps checks which were hard to hit at progression level, my suggestion is like cleric stance but its own support flavour to help hit those dps checks with sustained buffs.

I don't think we should be theorycrafting progression raiding until we understand how progression raiding is going to work, tbh, but looking back in previous progression raiding like I just did Astro would still have a nice spot to sit.

We don't fully know what these changes are or are going to do, and personally I think they're going to be far lackluster to what we actually think they're going to be. It still won't address the problems that Nocturnal has and it's yet to see how the cards will be effected.

They don't mean they're adding stances or letting us switch between the ones we have. All they're saying is CU and CO will get buffs/improvements in the style of the AST, so they'll have improved effects that differ between our two stances depending on which one we're in, as opposed to just giving them a big stat buff or something in the style of WHM or SCH.

I find it kind of funny how much people are arguing over what kind of buffs AST should get. Having finished AST to 60 and now working on getting my SCH from 50 to 60, it's apparent that AST just needs to bring more to the table. I don't care what they get as long as it makes them as valuable as WHM/SCH.

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Originally Posted by Azorius

I find it kind of funny how much people are arguing over what kind of buffs AST should get. Having finished AST to 60 and now working on getting my SCH from 50 to 60, it's apparent that AST just needs to bring more to the table. I don't care what they get as long as it makes them as valuable as WHM/SCH.

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No one is arguing over what buffs to get. Yoshi P already indicated today some of the ideas they're working on. It's just that one sentence was a bit vague so this thread is discussing what people think he meant by that.

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Originally Posted by lordparanoia

I don't think that Collective Unconscious will lose it's SacredSoil/Asylum Effect >.<
it makes no sense.

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Huh, I sure hope they drop those effects completely and rework the skill into something entirely different. Given how undesirable an AST/AST combo is for party composition, you're most likely going to have one of those skills in your group already, not to mention the effects aren't even all that useful to begin with.