The AST’s main issues are not the Cards !! Petition here with me

In this post I will talk about the main issues of this Class (or what’s left of it). I don’t want discuss about the Cards honestly there is plenty and you may like it or not this is the new card system and that’s not what totally makes this class miserable. In few points:

1) CO is way too weak and irrelevant, the animation is still too long and with high ping you even clip your M4

2) For CI is exactly the same concept.

3) You can’t double weave without clipping Redraw and Play in the same ogdc window.

4) You can’t prepare prepull your divination to spread, that’s ridiculous and to get three seal will always be a matter of luck

5) CU it’s way to weak and less than 100 pot it’s not acceptable.

BIGGEST ISSUE OF ALL!!! :

6) You will run out of mana and nothing will savage you! There is no mp management and only LS won’t be enough. I tried and even with LD and LS in 7 min you are out of Mp even if you use as little as 1 Helios or AHelios every min. The only solution right now will be LS cost skills 0 mp or make CO restore 10% of your Mp like the Sch’s Aetherflow.


This are big issues that will bring the class to its historical lowest moment.

Please sign this petition and let SE hear our voice! Thanks:)

Please don't take this as me bashing or white knighting AST.

But for all the things that need addressing with it, let's at least be sensible here. There is no way the job is anything like as bad as it was when it launched in 3.0.

Concept: Astrologian isn't that bad.

I have lucid on cd and lightspeed cast very often and now I rarely run out of mp, only if I forget to pop one of them. My gripe with AST atm is that it needs its potency buffed in every dimension and cooldowns on divination needs to be halved or at least taken down to 120. Im sitting on seals and just spamming lord and lady after getting my seals. Divination is just pointless atm since you can only use it around 3 -4 times in a regular dungeon if you are lucky. If they are going to have celestial opposition be THAT weak then at least break the cooldown down to a minute or so. I am bored with the cardchanges tbh but it isnt my biggest problem with the class. Also please SE fix the damn playbutton.

I just want seals to work outside of combat.
The restriction seems meaningless, you're just delaying a 6% buff by 45s into a fight, and then it goes back onto its usual 3m cooldown. But the issues it causes are incredibly annoying. I've lost so many seals to the last enemy of a pull being killed as I pop it, or because I haven't healed/attacked since the tank pulled.
A 120s cooldown on Divination wouldn't be bad either. As it is, you have basically no chance of not getting three different seals. Cut it down so that you can only fit four draws into its cooldown and you might have some actual RNG to worry about.

Well you are talking about dungeons, irrelevant. In dungeons there is down time every room btw. I was talking High end AST so ex trials and raids, try to use multiple AHelios/ Helios in a 5 min room and you see.

Divination only working in combat is just absurd...

CO,CI are a joke and CU lost all its value and are basically fillers just for no reason, they are not functional.

Horoscope potency it’s pretty good at 400 pot like Indo and you will alternate it with the star, still you need to regen heal to drain your mp and 3 abilities just sitting there

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Originally Posted by JohnSeal

6) You will run out of mana and nothing will savage you! There is no mp management and only LS won’t be enough. I tried and even with LD and LS in 7 min you are out of Mp even if you use as little as 1 Helios or AHelios every min. The only solution right now will be LS cost skills 0 mp or make CO restore 10% of your Mp like the Sch’s Aetherflow.

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While i can confirm that AST as a whole is just a wreck at the moment, i must say that i havent encountered any serious mana issue so far. I have killed both Titania and Innocence extremes and some of them where overly messy with multiple resses over a 11~ minute fight and furthermore since most co healers where WHMs i was in Nocturnal Stance and can also say that quite a couple times i did shield more than needed. This leaves me thinking that the issue you having with mp might be more on your side rather than the games side.

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Originally Posted by LuciaMirain

Im sitting on seals and just spamming lord and lady after getting my seals.

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you know what really bugs me about this

if the Seal mechanic has a 180s cooldown, why is Minor Arcana the "extra button" that we have to weave during the cooldown?

at this point we should just be using Minor Arcana to get the seal, so we don't have an extra button to have to use during the majority of our gameplay, because the skill locking it is on such a huge cooldown

honestly, with all the complaints about the cards, i don't see this being brought up enough
it's not just about "muh utility" or "muh origins" or what ever a lot of people bring up when they wanna complain about the new card system

it really is fundamentally flawed, like, from the ground up

even on paper, why would the devs believe sub 10% damage bonus on a single target for 50% uptime was a good concept to have 7 buttons dedicated to it in the first place

i don't care that it had to change if it was overperforming, i just really hate "how" they changed it.... like they weren't even thinking, and just rushed out the first concept that came out of someones mouth during the meeting on how to balance the card system

You don't make a good use of Essential dignity trait that lower lightspeed CD/probably don't use Lucid Dreaming on CD.
Even with a lot of Benefic II spam/Gravity spam.

Only Nocturnal Ast might see some mana problem with the shield is spammed too much.

But otherwise, Ast's mana is really solid. Not as good as WHM but definitly not as awful as people say it is.

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Originally Posted by Yakugami

you know what really bugs me about this

if the Seal mechanic has a 180s cooldown, why is Minor Arcana the "extra button" that we have to weave during the cooldown?

at this point we should just be using Minor Arcana to get the seal, so we don't have an extra button to have to use during the majority of our gameplay, because the skill locking it is on such a huge cooldown

honestly, with all the complaints about the cards, i don't see this being brought up enough
it's not just about "muh utility" or "muh origins" or what ever a lot of people bring up when they wanna complain about the new card system

it really is fundamentally flawed, like, from the ground up

even on paper, why would the devs believe sub 10% damage bonus on a single target for 50% uptime was a good concept to have 7 buttons dedicated to it in the first place

i don't care that it had to change if it was overperforming, i just really hate "how" they changed it.... like they weren't even thinking, and just rushed out the first concept that came out of someones mouth during the meeting on how to balance the card system

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the values they were willing to give astro was probably predetermined, based on an acceptable balance and expected difference in dps. So the point of the whole card minigame was predetermined to be low dps gains, then add in they expect a certain result within a certain time frame, involving 6 cards, so its not surprising.

it was never going to be a 1 button to get top card effect design.

I don't like the new system much, but i doubt it would be more entertaining if you just gave buffs on cool down with a skill

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Originally Posted by Physic

I don't like the new system much, but i doubt it would be more entertaining if you just gave buffs on cool down with a skill

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Maybe not more entertaining, but surely less of a chore.

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

There is no way the job is anything like as bad as it was when it launched in 3.0.

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Amen to this. AST was so bad when it first launched, it was regularly disallowed in PFs for diadem, exes, savages, etc. AST prior to 5.0 was the best version of AST, though it could've had more dps tools like sch/whm

Tbh i find most of AST new skills really annoying. Especially horoscope. You have to aoe heal to get a heal and it’s on a 20sec(?) timer. It just really doesn’t flow together. They were already the healer with no burst aoe heals and they still kind of are. Potency buffs are sorely needed

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

Please don't take this as me bashing or white knighting AST.

But for all the things that need addressing with it, let's at least be sensible here. There is no way the job is anything like as bad as it was when it launched in 3.0.

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Have you played it? The flavor and identity has been completely torn out, and what's left is weirdly undertuned numbers very reminiscent of the 3.0 days where it couldn't keep up in healing at all in raid content causing wipes or loads of stress on the other healer.

I'm fine with AST having to rely a lot on the other healer, if the buffs and benifits of having an AST outside of healing are good enough to justify bad healing numbers. Spoiler: They don't.

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Originally Posted by SakiKojiro

Have you played it? The flavor and identity has been completely torn out, and what's left is weirdly undertuned numbers very reminiscent of the 3.0 days where it couldn't keep up in healing at all in raid content causing wipes or loads of stress on the other healer.

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Personally, I've only done dungeon spam on it so far. I'd be lying if I said I was eager to take the job into anything beyond that as is ;)

I did get a rather relevant group last night though. I helped a 7/8 static get their Titania clear with the co healer being an AST and to say things were rough would have been understating it (With one of the tanks being the main issue). The co healer's throughput was underwhelming to say the least. Interestingly, it wasn't through a lack of APM, they were in the 97% mark which is very decent on that fight. Rather, they simply weren't using Earthly Star. Not even once that I saw.

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Originally Posted by SakiKojiro

I'm fine with AST having to rely a lot on the other healer, if the buffs and benifits of having an AST outside of healing are good enough to justify bad healing numbers. Spoiler: They don't.

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It honestly hadn't dawned on me just how much that ability carries AST now, but yeah, this group opened my eyes to it. Without decent star usage, you're absolutely right, the job really is subpar if they aren't getting value from them. The issue here of course is that ASTs that can actually make good use of Earthly Star are arguably the minority, not to mention that it's not really at it's best outside of boss fights etc.

I'd actually go as far as saying that even though CU was horridly overpowered in 4.5, AST thoroughly deserve it back alongside a similar treatment for CO and more.

AST is just not fun anymore. It is tedious and underwhelming, not to mention underpowered in pretty much every aspect. It has the lowest heals, lowest pdps and the new card mechanic, while interesting, is just clunky. I spend far more time fishing for seals then I ever did for balance in 4.0 becuase there were other cards at my disposal. You can not open with a divination because you can not gain seals out of combat. Our direct heals are underpowered, CU was nerfed into the ground and instead of keeping our most useful skill they have turned it into an insta cast helios... why? Horoscope is interesting in concept but feels wonky to execute. Nuetral sect sounds good on paper but is basically an aoe CI.

I was so excited for AST and had really high hopes for it this expansion, especially riding the coat tails of 4.0 AST... but I am just disappointed. Yes it is playable, but it has no heart anymore. It feels so robotic and clunky and I pray that they adjust it properly. I feel like there are simple ways of fixing it that would make it feel more fluid and at least similar in concept to what it was like in 4.0 without being to overpowered and absolutely META, but ultimately it's up to the devs to listen to the players and adjust accordingly.

A few things I would do to that are within the bounds of the build we currently have are
1. Raise potencies for all heals slightly (especially CU).
2. Treat Horoscope like Earthly Star and let it go off by itself or be triggered. It would be a time released helios. They could honestly leave the potency where it is if they made this change. It doesn't need to be super strong for it to be useful. This would make it more fluid to use and be a "set it and forget it" type of move.
3. Revert Celestial Opposition back to how it worked in 4.0 and leave Horoscope to be out gimicky Indom ability. There is no reason to have two insta cast helios spells, it's a waste of an ability and old CO would fit better in the job fantasy, plus you could stack it with the Divination and give yourself more time to focus on healing.
4. Change either the card or seal effects. They spent a lot of time with the lore for the cards, making them each feel different and special. By making them all the same it feels all for nothing. Even if they had three different effects (3 for melee and 3 for ranged) and then made the seals be the damage buff, it would make things more interesting.
5. This one I don't know if they will change since every job has things they can't do outside of battle now, but grant seals out of battle so we can open with Divination. Right now AST feels like it is constantly playing catch up and by making this change we can start off the fight with a bang and make sure cds line up in a meaningful way.

These are all changes that would be very easy to adjust, they wouldn't delete any abilities or bring any old ones back. They can utilize the assets that are built in the game without having to waste to much time. I truly feel that these changes would make the job feel more in line with how it felt in 4.0 without changing the concept they had in mind for 5.0.

From my experience as an Astologian, It feels like I am healing way more then every other healer.
I was in Mount Gulg, with a tank that was a bit of a Jerk. He would run in getting giant pulls, I healed him as much as I can, he hadn't died yet, so good so far
But the problem was, I wasn't able to focus on cards, just had to heal him because his health was going down way too fast, so I had to pull all the heals I've had out of my butt.
He continue to do this more and more, until we almost go to the end. He died after pulling the mega load of add ons, mind you I'm spamming heals and shielding him as much as I can,
Lightspeed, horoscope, aoe heal, everything and he died and he says "That was a first." then commence to calling me a bad healer, because he died, got us all killed, from charging in
and pulling giant loads of monsters.
First of all, you should've kept an eye out on your health, I wasn't able to heal as much as I can and I have crit/Det build,
so I'm focusing on healing and healing and healing but his hp was always close to death. That should've told him "healing is not enough atm, need to go lighter."
I explain to him that He's taking all of my attention to even get anywhere but he mocked me.. I only was able to get sets at the bosses.
That's where I could take a break and focus on cards, buffing, aoe buff a lot more, after healing of course.
But imo, healing is not as strong as an AST.

You'll spend more time healing, now, then you will be focusing on anything else and you'll be even more busy then the other two healers.

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Originally Posted by NebulaStarsong

But the problem was, I wasn't able to focus on cards, just had to heal him because his health was going down way too fast, so I had to pull all the heals I've had out of my butt.

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Main issue with the class and it's card system. Other healers have systems that support the class. WHM has the auto charging lilies and SCH has his aether charges and faerie gauge which fill while you do your job. Both get used in any circumstance because they so tightly woven around the classes. Not so for AST. The cards are like a side job for them. If s* hits the fan there is no way you have the time to incorporate the cards, now even less so since bole is gone too, while WHM and AST can make use of their systems to support them even in the tightest situations.

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Originally Posted by kartana

Main issue with the class and it's card system. Other healers have systems that support the class. WHM has the auto charging lilies and SCH has his aether charges and faerie gauge which fill while you do your job. Both get used in any circumstance because they so tightly woven around the classes. Not so for AST. The cards are like a side job for them. If s* hits the fan there is no way you have the time to incorporate the cards, now even less so since bole is gone too, while WHM and AST can make use of their systems to support them even in the tightest situations.

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Cards really support AST's DPS, so not having time to use cards when s* hits the fan is kinda no different from any other healer having no time to DPS.

One solution, to re-incoporate cards into AST's healer toolkit, could be through Minor Arcana.

How about:
Reduce Divinity cooldown to 120s.
Buff potencies of Cards back to 10% of old Balance. (5% for incorrect role lets say)
Have Lord and Lady heal. Perhaps Lord is a shield and Lady is a HoT.

This means that a 2m window will have you using 3 cards, plus a Divinity, with a rDPS output more similar to how it was before, and room for one Lord or Lady as an additional heal.
That Lord/Lady can instead be used to fix your seals if you don't draw three different ones.

When s* hits the fan, you Minor Arcana whatever cards you get, delaying your next Divination and reducing your rDPS, like any other healer.

I'm honestly good with most of AST - I just wish the divination CD was a little shorter. I don't know about anyone else, but I line up 3 seals pretty easily with redraw - it almost makes the RNG seem pointless, because the cooldown is so long, I don't HAVE to decide whether to use a 2-seal that redraw stuck me with, or to go another round. I just arcana the last draw and try again in 30 seconds. Div is on cooldown anyways, I got time.