SCH and AST

So i\\'ve been playing SCH since ARR e AST since HW and i gotta say, i have no idea of what SE tried to achieve with these changes.
Sure i know the whole "pure healers" stuff, but, is this the right way to do so?
Most of the changes seems so questionable, its almost as if they don\\'t even play their own game.

The new cards are by far one of the weirdest experiences i\\'ve had in this game.
I feel like im working a lot and doing nothing at the same time...
3%? 6%? Really? What\\'s that? 200 more damage on a skill/spell? Seriously?
3 minutes for a 6% lame AOE damage buff that lasts a ridiculous 15s?
And looking at numbers, these buffs doesn\\'t do THAT much, i better of just stop and DPS myself instead of wasting my time thinking on which card to use and having to stress myself with redraw in order to try and get the right seals.
(Without mentioning the frequent "SPIRE>BALANCE>SPIRE" situations)
Isn\\'t our job as AST to buff people? Would it really hurt THAT much to give us some real buffs? And not these lame 3/6/8% crap?

Also, what\\'s with Celestial Opposition? Long CD really low potency, short range, while SCH has a 400 AOE, and WHM a 300 AOE+Damage at a low CD. If you\\'re going to turn it into an aoe instant heal then at least do it correctly for christ sake.
CU feels terrible as well.
In big pulls i use literally everything, it all goes into CD and then i turn into a Benefic 2 spam machine while SCH has 1612772 tools to use and WHM has way more potent heals.
The job was standing at a pretty nice spot, only spire had to be changed and SE decided to simply kill it entirely.
So let me ask you dear SE, why do you hate AST so much?

As for SCH...
What\\'s the point in having 2 fairies doing the exact same thing? Why not make eos focused on pure heals/regens and Selene on shielding?

Embrace on EOS would be the 150 potency heal, and for Selene it would be a flat X potency shield with no heals
Whispering dawn for eos would be the AOE regen and for Selene a X potency shield on everybody.

I don\\'t know, something else instead of just an useless fairy glamour...

I always loved the "shield healer" design and i was expecting more shields, but instead i got more heals, I AM NOT A WHITE MAGE SQUARE ENIX!

SCH already has enough healing tools, give them SHIELDING/defense tools.
I always wondered, why doesn\\'t excog give a 800p SHIELD instead of heal? That would make much sense to me at least....

Sure, some shields wouldn\\'t stack but i believe y\\'all know what i mean...

I won\\'t even mention the whole "only in combat" stupidity for seals and Aetherflow...

Jesus Crist Square Enix.
I really hope you do something, i\\'ll be really surprised if you actually manage to fix this mess.

I feel the new healing skills are underwhelming.

fey blessing is weak
not amazed by seraph either. consolation doesn't feel that great ...

Our best AoE heal is still indom (and even better if u use recitation) ... and it just feels strange that higher lvl heals are weaker. I was doing crystal tower dg and didn't feel consolation was enough to keep group up ... u need to use it with another AoE healing ... same for fey blessing .. so weak

indom is 400 cost 1 AF
fey blessing is 300 pet potency so not even 300 .. has CD AND costs fey gauge.

even fey union feels weak.


so on top of everything ... and the removal of so many skills .. the new ones aren't that great for me. Not that we NEED uber healing spells ... but u would think lvl 80 would bring more than indom that is 52.


for AST, I think I'll lvl it now I finished SCH to see how it goes :o

Consolation is great, it’s an ogcd succor shield you can use back to back. I think seraph is one of, if not the best, healing mechanic they introduced this expansion.

I hadn’t been able to put it into words but that’s exactly what playing ast feels like now:

You’re working a lot and somehow not really doing anything

Even if they intend to keep this new system at least make the buffs last longer or make them worthwhile. No ones winning a fight or finishing it quicker bc of a 6% or 8% 15 second buff every three minutes. Like no.

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Originally Posted by EaMett

Consolation is great, it’s an ogcd succor shield you can use back to back. I think seraph is one of, if not the best, healing mechanic they introduced this expansion.

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Personally, I think consolation would've been better if I could only use it once, but it was a bigger heal/shield. I don't see why I would ever need to succor twice in quick succession like that, as well as everything else Seraph offers is underwhelming. Seraph was not worth losing everything we lost. I love the idea of SCH having their own version of bahamut, but I honestly forget to use her most of the time, because when I do, she doesn't make enough of a difference.

I haven't had a chance to play SCH yet, but as for AST... I am pretty disappointed still at all of the changes. I will not lie and say that the old card system was perfect, but it was way more fluid than what we have now. I think the new system is interesting, but I spend way more time "fishing" for seals then I ever did for a Balance in the old system. The payoff for cards is way to low for the amount of time we waist waiting for the cd and the duration of the cards. Also, why did they make Celestial Opposition an aoe heal when they gave us Horoscope... CO should have stayed the way it was, then you could boost your aoe card durations to make up for the extremely long cd of Divination. The heal potencies for the new abilities are abysmal and the nerf to CU just makes me sad. I could 100% understand having lowered heals if the buffs we offered made up for it to balance things out, but realistically they don't. I feel like half the time I am either focusing on the card mechanic or spamming heals. The dps is pretty much the same so it is what it is, I knew what I signed up in that respect. All in all, AST is not unplayable by any stretch of the imagination but it has lost its spark. AST was SO damn fun in SB and now it just feels tedious. They say they wanted to balance the healers and make them more approachable for newer players, but honestly... they have just made it more convoluted and unremarkable.

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Originally Posted by nalol

even fey union feels weak.

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This is what gets me.

When I pop Sacred Soil (with regen) Whispering Dawn and Fey Union and STILL have to heal the tank, something is very wrong.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

This is what gets me.

When I pop Sacred Soil (with regen) Whispering Dawn and Fey Union and STILL have to heal the tank, something is very wrong.

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Honestly I'd trade an increased Faerie Gauge cost, 30 and upwards, for it being buffed to do even 1.5x the healing it does now. Right now it's just a filler heal that I only remember to click if I have no other options left.

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Originally Posted by Haxaan

They say they wanted to balance the healers and make them more approachable for newer players, but honestly... they have just made it more convoluted and unremarkable.

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My brother was leveling up AST just before 5.0 and he was starting to get the job and he actually liked it. He was lv. 45 when the calamity (the AST patch) came
Now I taught him the new changes and the new way he has to play and he was like kthnxbye and he isn't interested in AST anymore :(

I have leveled AST to 80, am currently leveling WHM, and SCH will follow up probably after I level BRD to 80.


I won’t go too much in depth about AST right now—I really want to get WHM to 80 and compare them at level cap—but leveling it felt like a chore. I felt incredibly weak almost to the point of useless in some instances. The cards are lackluster. Divination is lackluster—I have a lot of issues with this skill, to be frank. It’s supposed to be our hot, new gimmick, but it’s +6% for 15 seconds every 180 seconds. It just feels so weak and underwhelming that I forget it even exists until I hear the sound effect for it proc.

Leveling up AST, I felt as if I was doing a lot of work healing but not really putting any dent into the damage my party was taking. Popping CU or COpp were meh. I hate Horoscope, simply because you have to use it, cast Helios/Aspected Helios, and then use it again to get the heal off...it just feels really clunky. Especially compared to the new PI on WHM. I do not think that the outgoing damage has increased. I think that my heals are just really weak. As if I was healing with half of my gear broken. I want it to be known that I don’t mind healing more or spending more GCDs on healing—but it has to feel satisfactory, and this doesn’t feel satisfactory. It feels like I’m limping.

Conversely, healing with WHM is super comfy. Yeah, I feel like I have to use a couple more GCDs on Solace or Cure II if Tetra and Bene are down, but otherwise I’m still spamming Holy as much as I was before. With AST...I actually felt unsafe spamming Gravity on some occasions. Even with tanks that were really good at rotating their CDs. I was just afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the auto attack damage. I don’t have that fear with WHM at all.

I also lost a couple DRKs to Living Dead at the higher levels while leveling AST, because even with spamming Benefic IIs, it was hit or miss if they died from LD or not if I had no oGCDs to buffer. Usually with Essential Dignity or Earthly Star, I could manage with the rest being Benefic IIs no problem... but I lost a few when I didn’t have ED/Star despite spamming my other heals (even trying to get Celestial Intersection off for that tiny top-off). I think it was because they would be sitting at 100,000+ HP, but my Benefic IIs were still only healing for ~20,000 (~30,000 if it was a crit)—and there just wasn’t enough time without lucky crit RNG to save them. Maybe I just have bad luck. Maybe this is an issue exclusive to me...I don’t know. I never had issues healing LD on AST prior to this: even with spamming Benefic II if I didn’t have ED.

Anyways, that’s my quick and dirty thoughts on healing thus far. I’m fairly certain I’ll end up abandoning AST in favor of WHM at this rate.

After my disappointment with SCH, I decided to look into what other healers got (or lost) and AST ended up attracting me. Looking at some of the complaints: the card system, I didn't play a lot of AST so the changes don't affect me but I very much understand why AST's are complaining, they liked the way it worked and why change it? It's too busy and it doesn't heal so well.
If anybody has seen my SCH complaints they mostly boil down to being bored and healing too well. I missed having to think harder for my heals back in 2.0. So you can imagine seeing complaints like this attracted me to trying AST.

From an outsider perspective, I think the card system is enjoyable. The buffs it gives are stronger than the DNC equivalent at a base level(I am maining DNC at the moment) but may not be as powerful as they were before (with Royal Road removed). 2 min cooldown on Divination seems long, but I kinda get the feeling that was balanced around DNC's Technical Step too, which is a 5% every 2 mins (but gets a DPS move on top). Not gonna lie, it seems like it's an AST version of the DNC buff. Flat damage boosts and a system that's about matching symbols that affects potency. And it works nicely for DNC at least.

But the way I've been rotating it is building unique seals for Divination and then whilst Divination is on cooldown, take advantage of Lord/Lady of Crowns. I felt I wasted fewer cards with this system. Though that could be because I was a less experienced AST, I don't know how much wastage experienced AST's got. Healing was harder than it was for SCH, but I was also a lot busier and I still weaved in buffs and DPS skills and I liked that. A friend did big pulls in a dungeon and whilst I did fear for her life a couple of times, I figured how I might balance AST to keep her alive and still DPS & play cards, as I was determined to do stuff between heals. I DPS'd less mind you, but I also gave DPS boosts to the party SCH and WHM lack. I don't know how that'll differ once I am better at the job.

But coming from a SCH main, it honestly feels like I'm going to prefer how AST plays, without trying to downplay any of the complaints careers AST's have, because they are perfectly valid. What you liked about your job what completely changed and feels underwhelming in comparison to how it was before for you.

At least, these are some of my impressions coming at AST from somebody who didn't main it or play much of it. However, I kinda feel that instead of reworking AST's card system, that effort could have been given to SCH and/or WHM to give them something more to do in their downtime that's not DPS. Thus addressing people's concerns rather than making more of them.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

The buffs it gives are stronger than the DNC equivalent at a base level(I am maining DNC at the moment) but may not be as powerful as they were before (with Royal Road removed).

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AST buffs now are a shadow of what they used to be. AOE Balance was +5% to the entire party for 30 seconds (and could be extended to 40s with the old Celestial Opposition, plus an additional 15s on a single player with Time Dilation). Now we have +6% to a single person for 15 seconds with no way to extend them, spread them, or enhance them. And the Draw timer is still cooldown the same outside of a Sleeve Draw window. So their buffs are pathetic compared to what they used to be. The original problem was with Balance being too good—but now every card is a crappier Balance, and all equally lackluster.

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Originally Posted by Saefinn

2 min cooldown on Divination seems long, but I kinda get the feeling that was balanced around DNC's Technical Step too, which is a 5% every 2 mins (but gets a DPS move on top). Not gonna lie, it seems like it's an AST version of the DNC buff. Flat damage boosts and a system that's about matching symbols that affects potency. And it works nicely for DNC at least.

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This is incorrect. Divination is 180s, which is 3 minutes. It lines up with DRG’s Battle Litany and BRD’s Battle Voice. It will not line up with every Technical Step outside of the opener, and at the 6 minute mark in a fight where all raid buffs line up again.

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But the way I've been rotating it is building unique seals for Divination and then whilst Divination is on cooldown, take advantage of Lord/Lady of Crowns. I felt I wasted fewer cards with this system. Though that could be because I was a less experienced AST, I don't know how much wastage experienced AST's got.

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With the old AST, once you got Minor Arcana at level 66, you didn’t waste any cards. If you weren’t going to hold them in a Spread or Royal Road them for an Extended/Enhanced/Expanded effect, you used them on Minor Arcana. Original Lady of Crowns was a free, oGCD heal (perfect for quick top-offs during Malefic spam), and Original Lord of Crowns was an oGCD damage ability. With Minor Arcana, there was no wasting of the cards. They just didn’t buff party members.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

AST buffs now are a shadow of what they used to be. AOE Balance was +5% to the entire party for 30 seconds (and could be extended to 40s with the old Celestial Opposition, plus an additional 15s on a single player with Time Dilation). Now we have +6% to a single person for 15 seconds with no way to extend them, spread them, or enhance them. And the Draw timer is still cooldown the same outside of a Sleeve Draw window. So their buffs are pathetic compared to what they used to be. The original problem was with Balance being too good—but now every card is a crappier Balance, and all equally lackluster.

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I can see this being a fair argument for why it is worse in terms of its effects versus Stormblood. And the fair argument for them to get buffed. My main impressions were more in how the job played because I will admit my ignorance in how potencies affect the role because it is a job I previously didn't play an awful lot of.


If I am to compare to how my main healer, SCH, feels to play the following changes, I think AST 'feels' better at the moment. As soon as I jumped into roulettes with my SCH I got bored. AST I didn't, because I had more to do. But I realize there are still staggering problems that need to be addressed, though arguably it is the case of all healers.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

This is incorrect. Divination is 180s, which is 3 minutes. It lines up with DRG’s Battle Litany and BRD’s Battle Voice. It will not line up with every Technical Step outside of the opener, and at the 6 minute mark in a fight where all raid buffs line up again.

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My bad, 3 minutes. Then yes, I can definitely see how this is worse.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

With the old AST, once you got Minor Arcana at level 66, you didn’t waste any cards. If you weren’t going to hold them in a Spread or Royal Road them for an Extended/Enhanced/Expanded effect, you used them on Minor Arcana. Original Lady of Crowns was a free, oGCD heal (perfect for quick top-offs during Malefic spam), and Original Lord of Crowns was an oGCD damage ability. With Minor Arcana, there was no wasting of the cards. They just didn’t buff party members.

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Ah, my AST was 65 in SB, so I just missed Minor Arcana and before that, mainly tried it out in HW. I've now got it 71 in ShB on my alt.

I've been leveling AST and SCH side by side. Every time I unlock a new dungeon I do it on one job, and then the other. And I have to say; healing on SCH is way easier than AST. As SCH it's easy to pull from boss to boss, or as far as the dungeon will let you. Just toss down a soil, excog, fey illumination, whispering dawn, let your fairy offheal, and you can even toss in AoE dmg without loosing your tank. As AST you need all your cds and Bene2 spam at half the pull size, with no chance for any gravity in between. I understand that they want us to heal more this expac, I just wish they would give AST some more spells to actually heal with. SCH has so many cooldowns to rotate through... Fey Illumination, Dissipation, Recitation. AST has Lightspeed...
I don't want this to come off as a rant that SCH is too powerful, I just want AST to be brought up to par. I really don't understand the design decision behind some of these spells. For example why is Collective Unconscious a 90sec cd when it does half as much healing as Soil (which is a 30 sec cd and doesn't need to be held). Why is Celestial Opposition a 2 minute CD when it's healing over time is even less than Whispering Dawn (which has a 1 min CD). Why is Divination a 3 min CD when Chain Stratagem is a 2 min CD...

I really hope they give AST some more spells. It feels like we lost a lot and didn't gain much to compensate.

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Originally Posted by heynowjose

I hadn’t been able to put it into words but that’s exactly what playing ast feels like now:

You’re working a lot and somehow not really doing anything

Even if they intend to keep this new system at least make the buffs last longer or make them worthwhile. No ones winning a fight or finishing it quicker bc of a 6% or 8% 15 second buff every three minutes. Like no.

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the reality is, ast became doomed when they decided they want to lower class synergy. The buff is garbage because they want there to be no advantage to selecting an ast over another healer. This means the buff is tuned so that a really great coordinated team, making use of the buffs might catch up to the difference between ast dps and another healers dps. This means, for most situations, the buff ends up really low.

before they may have tried to give ast more situational buffs, unique utilities, or have the random element balance this, but they decided they want to reduce random, and they don't want some situational synergy popping up that becomes meta, or people never using said situational skill.

the main problem, is with these limitations they have imposed on themselves, it would've hard to make a job with ast's main concept fun. It's designed to be a reactive tactical synergistic buffer/healer.

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Originally Posted by Tinytiger

I've been leveling AST and SCH side by side. Every time I unlock a new dungeon I do it on one job, and then the other. And I have to say; healing on SCH is way easier than AST. As SCH it's easy to pull from boss to boss, or as far as the dungeon will let you. Just toss down a soil, excog, fey illumination, whispering dawn, let your fairy offheal, and you can even toss in AoE dmg without loosing your tank. As AST you need all your cds and Bene2 spam at half the pull size, with no chance for any gravity in between. I understand that they want us to heal more this expac, I just wish they would give AST some more spells to actually heal with. SCH has so many cooldowns to rotate through... Fey Illumination, Dissipation, Recitation. AST has Lightspeed...
I don't want this to come off as a rant that SCH is too powerful, I just want AST to be brought up to par. I really don't understand the design decision behind some of these spells. For example why is Collective Unconscious a 90sec cd when it does half as much healing as Soil (which is a 30 sec cd and doesn't need to be held). Why is Celestial Opposition a 2 minute CD when it's healing over time is even less than Whispering Dawn (which has a 1 min CD). Why is Divination a 3 min CD when Chain Stratagem is a 2 min CD...

I really hope they give AST some more spells. It feels like we lost a lot and didn't gain much to compensate.

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As a Scholar, I've felt they heal too well for some time. I remember HW complaints about them being OP and it had its novelty for a while being so. But I am a 2.0 Scholar who misses having to better utilize his damage mitigation and faeries to optimize my heals to make up for the fact our base heals weren't as strong as WHM's. But it came to the point where the healing aspect for SCH felt much easier because shields are effective and they can get people to full health very quickly. Hence my bit above about AST feeling weaker being attractive to me. But of course, I wouldn't gimp any of the jobs either. If I were to have my way, I'd probably bring down SCH healing in favour of better mitigation and if AST still needed it, a boost. The impression AST has given me in terms of heal is that its advantage is in versatility (but in practice is a lesser SCH or lesser WHM in terms of heals), but SCH was more focused on mitigation and WHM more focused on pure healing. However, it feels in attempts to balance they've kinda screwed with that.

I honestly can live with AST having to heal more intensively or even spam heals compared to other classes. They were underdogs at first in Heavensward - but holy where they fun to play back then.
They are underdogs now too, the difference being they are now underdogs with an uninteresting set of skills.

The new card system may be more efficient in terms of reliability now, but why? Because they made all 6 cards the same, so my decision making now consists of 'do I buff ranged or melee' - which is not even a decision, since the card you draw hands you the answer already. And once you realize that previously offensive cards(spear, balance, arrow) all buff melee and utility ones(bole, spire, ewer) all buff ranged, it becomes even easier to pull off.
But the worst of it(for me) is how unsatisfactory handling cards feels now. What was a core mechanic of the job now became a simple 'slap card on player'. Done.

Divination is far from feeling impactful either. Collecting all the symbols every three minutes is not an issue at all. It IS an issue however on a pull. Why? Because seals can only be collected in combat. So having Divination ready just after the pull requires Sleight of Hand and Redraw to cooperate. You get one card from drawing, three from redrawing and another three from sleight of hand. Thats seven - or eight if you waited for Draws cooldown to wear off before pull. If they fail to deliver, you just crippled your raids DPS by up to 4% on what could be considered the DPS haviest phase of a fight.
But even if it were possible to start with Divination up every single time, it does not make the skill any more interesting to use, because by the end of the day it is just your card buff on the entire party instead of one player.

In terms of healing spells AST is pretty boring now too - most of the time.
They took some of Collective Unconscious' HoT Potency away and put it on what they called 'reworked' Celestial Opposition, basically splitting one of our Abilities in two. And since they have different cooldowns, they can not even be used together all the time, leaving you with 2 weak skills that feel crippled on their own.

For me personally they stripped AST from its class identity: cards and time manipulation. One got its fun factor gutted and the other was removed entirely, leaving us only with tons of AoE Heal effects that are either weak on their own, boring to use or both (Earthly Star being the exception).

I do like the idea of converting AST to a sort of hybrid with HoT and shielding effects at the same time by adding Celestial Intersection and Neutral Sect. While Celestial Intersection is fine by itself, Neutral Sect is only good on paper. After casting Aspected Skills once under Neutral Sect - what purpose is there for casting them again? HoTs are already ticking so no reason to, leaving you benefitting from both Sects up to a maximum of two times during Neutral Sects 20 seconds. In other words: While awesome on paper, Neutral Sect is a gloryfied 20% increase in healing magic potency and a huge Amount of excess healing if used to spam aspected skills.

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Originally Posted by Billythepancake

Personally, I think consolation would've been better if I could only use it once, but it was a bigger heal/shield. I don't see why I would ever need to succor twice in quick succession like that, as well as everything else Seraph offers is underwhelming. Seraph was not worth losing everything we lost. I love the idea of SCH having their own version of bahamut, but I honestly forget to use her most of the time, because when I do, she doesn't make enough of a difference.

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You can use it literally any time you would generally want a succor shield. The double stack is great for every situation you would otherwise succdeploy (since we no longer can) and more. On Titania ex you can essentially negate all the first portion of the big add phase damage and build gauge back to tether the tank afterwards since you should be depleted from fey union on the little add phase.
You can use her early to pad your pull shields and build gauge off the bat as well.
You can use her on trash pulls as extra mitigation when you have no gauge.
Etc. Etc.

The fact you can’t fey union with her up also means you need to give it some thought.

I maintain that seraph is a really cool mechanic.

All our non crit shields feel weak atm but it’s the same as usual for an expansion. It’ll scale well with gear as it has in the past.

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Originally Posted by Physic

the reality is, ast became doomed when they decided they want to lower class synergy. The buff is garbage because they want there to be no advantage to selecting an ast over another healer. This means the buff is tuned so that a really great coordinated team, making use of the buffs might catch up to the difference between ast dps and another healers dps. This means, for most situations, the buff ends up really low.

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As of right now, it doesn’t look as if AST will make up for WHM’s personal damage with its cards. WHM right now can pull upwards of 7,000 DPS, while AST sits at a little above 4,000. Even in Alphascape, AOE Balance was only ~1,000 rDPS if you had really good RNG. I don’t see these single-target cards or Divination making up the difference of ~2,500+ rDPS to make the job competitive. With regards to healing, level 80 SCH is busted to the point where they can solo heal while the WHM turrets DPS—which was the only advantage Noct AST had (it was really good at solo healing).

Ast feels so badly designed right now that you could probably just ignore the cards and call the job "Tiny Whitemage"
It's so boring right now to fish for cards that i want to pull out my toenails while healing and i have healing experience that goes way back to guildwars 1 release and normally love it to bits.

AE heals with 15y range are also pretty underwhelming compared to other job ranges.

Seeing a job being butchered so much, for no reason, really hurts in the brain.

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Originally Posted by gerrylix

AE heals with 15y range are also pretty underwhelming compared to other job ranges.

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To be fair, WHM’s Medica is also 15y—Medica II and Solus Rapture are 20y. They gave Horoscope a 20y range for AST, so I guess that’s supposed to compete with Medica II/Rapture...but it’s extremely clunky to use. I prefer the new PI instead, where it activates with the additional heal on its own after receiving a Medica/Medica II. No additional clicking required. But the range of AST heals never bothered me all that much. I learned to deal with it after 3 years of playing the job.

SCH’s Succor is also 15y; Indom is 15y as well.

I have leveled both AST and SCH to 80. Used them both on Extreme content. Here's my two cents:

Scholar:
-Dps rotation is effective but boring. Yes, you basically do the same dps (It's just more tedious and repetitive, especially having to sling Biolysis to each mob when you could spread them with Bane before.) AoW is fine I guess, it's just underwhelming to use and very expensive for what it does. I ultimately wouldn't change much here, maybe adjust some potencies and MP cost since DPS is not the main focus of a healer. (I'd instead focus on improving Scholar's overall support abilities.)
-Fairy Gauge and Aetherflow stacks feel extremely clunky now: Being unable to apply excog pre pull is unnecessarily frustrating. Moreover I often find myself with excess AF stacks that I am forced to dump on overhealing to make efficient use of the manaregen on AF. Fairy gauge is still rather useless, Fairy Union is weak and locks your abilities out during the channeling. Fairy Blessing is allright I guess, though I don't know why it costs Fairy Gauge considering its on a CD.
-Dissipation is now less taxing since it summons Eos back but now stacks are less valuable. In addition the fact that it sends your fairy away is still rather stupid, you are basically locking yourself out of several skills for a 20% healing buff- This problem is aggravated when you take Seraph into the equation. I guess they wanted Dissipation to be a last resort button, when all your fairy and seraph is on CD and you've spent all your AF stacks. I've barely used it so far, maybe twice in all ShB when leveling and Tank pulled more he could withstand. I didn't use it at all in Stormblood. I didin't even have it on my bar)

Scholar's kit feels like it fights itself with a lot of its mechanics.

Astrologian:

-Seals: The fact that you can use cards out of combat and seals only in combat makes it so that I often use cards at the beginning of the pulls only to not get a seal since, while the character I buffed is in combat, my character isn't yet so I lose the Draw CD for the seal.
-Divination: It's clearly a huge nerf to Royal Road+ Balance. While it's more consistent, the fact that it's on a 180 second CD makes it extremely weak. Cards are supposed to be the strong feature of AST- With strong cards I could understand the weak heals overall but that's not the case.
-Celestial Opposition, Collective Unconscious: Extremely low potencies for those very long CDs. CO should be o an a 30s CD. CU should be on a 60s CD. That or simply increase the potencies on both.

Astrologian overall feels weak compared to SCH and WHM. It's strong point, the Card Buffs, is needlessly frustrating and weak. A shorter CD on Divination and higher potencies on the cards would make the job feel more impactful.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

To be fair, WHM’s Medica is also 15y—Medica II and Solus Rapture are 20y. They gave Horoscope a 20y range for AST, so I guess that’s supposed to compete with Medica II/Rapture...but it’s extremely clunky to use. I prefer the new PI instead, where it activates with the additional heal on its own after receiving a Medica/Medica II. No additional clicking required. But the range of AST heals never bothered me all that much. I learned to deal with it after 3 years of playing the job.

SCH’s Succor is also 15y; Indom is 15y as well.

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Oddly enough, I'm not sure if this was an oversight by the development team, but Divination is only 15y while Expanded Royal Road was 20y. Effectively a nerf to the radius.

You are right on the 15y front, you get used to it.
Cards atm remind me somehow of some vanilla wow paladin blessings everyone hated back in those days.
I shudder by even thinking of going down that road with cards.

It's funny when thinking about the job quests for AST, they try to explain in depth the seven heavens and how every constellation is special only to recognize that the whole story was made up.
Maybe the Ishagardian Astrologians were right in the end, sharlayan artrology sucks, for the moment at least.

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Originally Posted by KittenMittens

Oddly enough, I'm not sure if this was an oversight by the development team, but Divination is only 15y while Expanded Royal Road was 20y. Effectively a nerf to the radius.

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Divination in and of itself is a nerf to the old Expanded mechanic. Probably goes in line with the overall redesign of the card system. (I'm so cynical right now.)

Another thing that has been bothering me is why didn't they just make Horoscope a better potency and leave CO how it was in SB. That would help with extending the buff duration of divination, making the 3 minute cd at least feel a little more viable. Granted Horoscope feels a bit clunky at the moment, but it is also super weak. I hate that they took CO,the most fun and versatile ability AST had, and made it into a baby medica. CU was nerfed in half as well. I'm all for balancing and lowering potencies, but changing abilities for the sake of changing them is just silly. CO could have stayed exactly how it was, CU could have had a minor nerf and Horoscope could have been our singular insta aoe "Oh Shit" button.

It feels like they looked at PI and Indom and said "Hmm you know what, let's give both of these to Ast but make them both really weak but stackable cuz raisins..." Like seriously WHY? Sorry for the rant, but it is really hard to wrap my head around some of the changes they have made to this job. It went from a super fluid job to a very robotic job that, while busy, doesn't actually do much.

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Originally Posted by Muahbec

this

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Jesus my phone messed up with these "//" all over the place...
Sorry bout that

Been grinding fates as AST all night and it occurred to me that I can't aoe my cards anymore. I know RR doesn't exist anymore, but I just figured it would automatically AoE cards instead? So, why is it that DNC and BRD and other classes can have AoE synergist skills when AST, the synergist healer, cannot?



A friend of mine and I've been talking and while I consider AST the synergist healer (i.e. the healer with the many buffs for a whole party) and SCH as the saboteur healer (i.e. the one with many debuffs, like DoTs, for enemies), both classes don't really "have" what made them...them. They've lost their identities. I know it's been repeated all throughout the forums but just really hit me when I played it in a party. It does not feel good.

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Originally Posted by MOZZYSTAR

Been grinding fates as AST all night and it occurred to me that I can't aoe my cards anymore. I know RR doesn't exist anymore, but I just figured it would automatically AoE cards instead? So, why is it that DNC and BRD and other classes can have AoE synergist skills when AST, the synergist healer, cannot?



A friend of mine and I've been talking and while I consider AST the synergist healer (i.e. the healer with the many buffs for a whole party) and SCH as the saboteur healer (i.e. the one with many debuffs, like DoTs, for enemies), both classes don't really "have" what made them...them. They've lost their identities. I know it's been repeated all throughout the forums but just really hit me when I played it in a party. It does not feel good.

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You can AoE your buffs once every 3 minutes now using Divination

There's no point to AST even having cards to draw, now. They might as well have had the card graphics play randomly with a single button and saved us a GCD input, since they're already dumbing it down into oblivion.

I've now switched to WHM because it's the only healer that hasn't been nerfed into the ground. I don't even have the motivation to level AST or SCH any more; SCH especially is just plain frustrating with half our tools gone. The mechanics that made AST fun, engaging, and very different from the other healers has been reduced to a slight damage buff with a long cooldown and poor duration considering its overall mediocre effect. I don't even bother looking at seals types. Divination has so little uptime (and terrible AOE range to boot) that it barely even has an impact even if I decide to not use it at all during a fight.

I am currently leveling WHM with AST side by side and I dont understand why I should continue to main AST who has worse healing output, lower DPS and most importantly is not fun for me anymore due to changes to card mechanics and removed time magic. I mained AST for more than one year and I really wanted to like the class even in the Shb... but i just dont... I want my old AST back :(

I've leveled SCH to 80, toyed with WHM, haven't touched AST yet this expansion...here's what I've noticed:

First, as SCH:

I do like the idea of Seraph, and it is fun to use, but it's a bit wonky to have the double-charge Consolation that must be used within a 20s window. Further, it's kinda sad that Angel's Whisper is no better than Whispering Dawn (like what's the point of even naming it differently?), Fey Blessing would probably be nicer if it didn't have a cooldown, Fey Union feels weaker than ever.

The forced crit to galvanize is nice, as is deploying off myself.

Eos and Selene being identical is stupid.

Aetherflow is a problem...I mean, either I have nowhere near enough stacks...or I have stacks for days. There is no middle ground. It's also ridiculous that it can't be activated pre-combat when at least one other class (WHM) gets their full kit pretty much right away.

Overall, I feel slightly more capable on the healing side, massively nerfed on the DPS side, clunky overall, and it's boring to DPS. Yay?

Now, as WHM:

Healing feels as great as ever, possibly more so due to the WHM Lustrate (whatever the lv52 rose healing ability is), and I feel like I have more time to try and DPS.

DPS feels mostly the same as ever (I barely miss Aero2), and from the WHM in my static I've heard (and seen secondhand) the godly DPS that comes from the blood lily. WHM is in a good place.

Overall Thoughts:

It should be noted that the DPS difference is substantial...which the median WHM DPS being 17% higher than SCH (and rising as high as 20% higher as skill levels rise) while providing more substantial healing, having abilities that can stack with all other healers (including another WHM), better MP management tools, etc. I'm not sure if a 15% crit buff 12.5% of the time (net 1.875% crit if used on cooldown) to the party is necessarily worth bringing a SCH over a second WHM or an AST if a party is in a tight spot when WHM personal DPS might more than make up for that difference alone and an AST can give a flat 6% DPS buff to the party roughly 10% of the time while boosting individual members [such as the party's best individual DPS] throughout.

Sure, SCH does also have shields, but so does AST, so it's not like there's any special identity there.

A fix needs to happen for Aetherflow...several good options have been presented throughout these forums, such as returning energy drain (even if it just did MP restoration and no damage), having held stacks provide a buff to the fairy gauge, etc.

SCH AOE is way too expensive (basically a more expensive [albeit instacast] Holy without the stun [but a smidgen more potency] for 33% more MP), and without the MP management that WHM has...it's even more underwhelming. Something should probably be adjusted here, whether it's the MP cost or the potency (even if that means adding a cast timer to compensate).

If SCH is going to be primarily shielding or healing...the shields should probably mean more.

Seraph should be more meaningful (perhaps by buffing Angel's Whisper, buffing Consolation but taking it down to just one stack).

Fey Blessing shouldn't have a cooldown (even if we lost a bit of potency to make such happen), or it should be more meaningful to account for the cooldown (even if it cost more fairy gauge as a result).

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Originally Posted by galbsadi

Sure, SCH does also have shields, but so does AST, so it's not like there's any special identity there.

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If you want your AST to have no MP anymore sure, bring a Noct AST instead of the godly SCH. Bringing the Noct AST also means less rDPS since SCH actually does good DPS and AST just does not buff enough to make up for their lack of DPS and lack of healing which forces the WHM to have to cut into their DPS to make up the healing slack. Whereas a SCH can pretty much solo heal currently and let a WHM use their massive DPS to make up for the lack of AST raid buffs.

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

If you want your AST to have no MP anymore sure, bring a Noct AST instead of the godly SCH. Bringing the Noct AST also means less rDPS since SCH actually does good DPS and AST just does not buff enough to make up for their lack of DPS and lack of healing which forces the WHM to have to cut into their DPS to make up the healing slack. Whereas a SCH can pretty much solo heal currently and let a WHM use their massive DPS to make up for the lack of AST raid buffs.

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To be fair, as long as the content can be cleared then at least 6 out of 8 party members (basically everyone but the healers themselves) will prefer any combo that includes an AST because of their effects on their own personal DPS parses.

I only managed to deal with leveling AST one level since the expac..and that was because I was helping others avoid paying healers to get runs done. It wasn't fun, I felt like the fun was sucked out of the class and I just couldn't deal with it. It's sad because I love the class but..the changes just made the class an unfun balance bot.