My issue with AST.

Yes, yet another AST thread.
And as long as SE continues to ignore it i believe we should all keep posting.

I've been playing AST since its release in HW. I absolutely love the animations, weapon and concept of the job.
I'm not a hardcore player who does savages and all that, cus sadly i don't even have the time for that, but i feel like i also have the right to give my thoughts on the job, the game wasn't made only for hardcore players right?

So, my first issue with AST started back in HW.
This lazy as **** "hybrid" job idea.
I believe its common sense that hybrid jobs are nearly impossible to balance and EVEN MORE when a job is basically copying other existent jobs.
Its a lame design that could have been something way more interesting, engaging and most importantly UNIQUE. But we ended up with this WHM/SCH wannabe, getting constantly buffed/nerfed because, as i said, its pretty much impossible to balance.

AST needed an overhaul back in Stormblood (maybe even in HW) to turn it into an actual NEW JOB and not this unbalanced unoriginal mess.
Jesus, i can place most of WHM/SCH spells in the same exact Hotbars as AST because they're basically the same abilities with different animations, it almost feels like i don't even change jobs when i go from WHM to AST.

SE locked themselves inside a cage with this job, they can't buff it becuse it can turn into a overpowered mess and replace the other 2 healers, they can't nerf it because it turns the job into an useless crap, they can't change abilities because of the lore, and they can't simply add or remove abilities because of, again, lore.
There is just no hope for it.
I only have the patience and motivation to play this because of the whole job design but honestly, it can get pretty frustrating


CARDS

Oh my god.
We press 11718 keys (draw, redraw, redraw, redraw, minor arcana, play, fishing seals, while paying attention to which type of job -meele/ranged- will receive the card while having to heal, dodge stuff, rez someone, throw a malefic now and then, try to use horoscope, etc.) for a mediocre buff on a long cooldown, that honestly doesn't add that much to the game.
(And honestly DNC can quickly press 4 keys, deal a lot of AOE damage and buff the entire raid for nearly the same amount)

Just change it back to the old system, change spire AND balance into something different, a lot of players ignored the usefulness of the other cards because they were "fishing balances" so just change balance into something else and players will have to use the other ones as well, i don't know, JUST DO SOMETHING.

And what's with this whole meele card/ranged card mess???
Let's say you are doing progression and end up in a party of 4 with 2 meele dps, all of my ranged cards will go to me? Really? (Remember, there's not only savage content in this game.)
Again, SE being messy.

Let me continue this here.

What is the point of Horoscope???
For a job that's constantly pressing buttons like crazy, giving a tool that forces them to press 3 more is ridiculous. Why does it only lasts for 10s after you activate it and only after you buff it with helios/aspected helios it goes to 30s duration?
What the hell?

CU?
We are sacrificing our mobility and the possibility to cast malefic, throw a card or heal someone for a lame heal and some mitigation. It should honestly be the most powerful bubble in the game to compensate for the sacrifice.
But again, in the end, its a lame sacred soil with different animations.... nothing unique about it.

I'm still trying to find where does the "opposition" in "celestial opposition" makes sense....
Its just a reskined instant aspected helios which in the end turns out to be just a medica 2/succor with different animations.... depressive.

NOCTURNAL SECT
I dont want this to be buffed so it can "compete" with SCH, i want it to be something completely different. If i wanted to play the shield healer i could easily switch to my SCH and be happy. And this goes to Diurnal sect too.

I am so tired of people saying "ooh give AST this so they will have their version of WHMs that"
No.
I want something unique, not this copy/paste mess.

I started playing this game because i wanted to be a healer and i want to play 3 different healers.
And you know whats even more ridiculous?
SE ignoring the healer community, the fact that SE NEEDS more people to work on these jobs properly and the fact that it has been 2 expansions with this hybrid unbalanced mess and they still haven't reworked it.

Im over it

I agree with some of the points; Astrologian is causing SE some major issues just like other ‘support-based jobs’ (Ninja, Dancer, Bard, Red Mage) and they’re pretty much unsolvable without breaking the balance completely. And they should being reinforcing the things that make it different from other healers rather than removing them

I don’t dislike current cards, but at the same time I don’t think they’re any better than how they were before. I’ve seen others say it’s like a mechanic that should exist on a different job which I totally get; it’d be fun on a different job. But I’m Astrologian something just doesn’t feel right about it. That said, I don’t have issues personally with how we use them mechanically (Draw/play/Arcana/etc), but I’m aware that the majority are very unhappy with it

I’m not sure I agree about Horoscope being pointless. Timing it properly saves you casting a second Helios or using a different oGCD which conserves resources and gives you more opportunity for pDPS, which is the endgame of any healer (including Astrologian). Horoscope can easily be weaves between Malefic IV too so technically it should take no time out of our rotation. It’s flexible in that it can be used proactively (before Aspected) or reactively (after Helios), not that you should ever be doing reactive healing at level 80. I can understand feeling like it can be clunky to use, but I don’t think it’s fair t call it pointless.

Collective Unconscious won’t ever get stronger because that would mean having to channel it which nobody would ever do. I think it’s more likely they’ll just remove the damage reduction and channeling, and just keep the Regen. Either that or the effect will change depending on Sect as usual, and it’ll just be a standard oGCD where you shoot out a bubble that remains visible for like .5 of a second so the animation won’t clip with your next spell (effect durations will remain the same of course). I like channeling Collective Unconscious but it’s impossible for them to incentivise it because it’ll be impossible to keep channeling for the full duration (because of the DPS loss). I think there’s an extremely high likelihood they’ll just remove the channeling aspect, because nobody is ever going to use it anyway (no matter how strong it is)

Edit: Partially agree with Nocturnal Sect too. I do like having the choice of which style of healing, but at the same time I totally feel the same way (if I want to use shields I’ll play Scholar since it’s my main lol).

Basically, I love the current Astrologian, but even I think it needs a lot of changes to bring it up to the same quality as other jobs

I wish instead of going full balance bot if SE would have gone the complete opposite way, keeping divination for damage like Chain is on SCH and Afflatus Misery on WHM, but make cards full support, we are healers / support at the end of the day, I used to get more enjoyment giving Bole to a tanks or Ewer / Spire than handing out balances back in the day.

I'm still of the mindset they need to drop the Sects completely, and adjust the base healing kit, since that's the main problem of the job (as you've noted). I'd say have Minor Arcana's cards be healing modifiers for the Aspected spells (meaning Minor Arcana would be gotten much sooner when leveling). Lord gives Shields, Lady gives HoTs, both working for the next 3-5 Aspected/oGCD casts. Which minor arcana you'd get would go back to being random, so your fate is in the cards (literally). This gives the class a bit of its own healing flavor while expanding on its main class mechanic, which are the cards themselves.

More on the cards, I'd have preferred the old card system with Spire being changed to Direct Hit (since TP no longer exists) and Balance changed to a True North type buff for the melee positionals. This effectively removes the problem with people fishing for balance and makes every card useful in its own right.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Collective Unconscious won’t ever get stronger because that would mean having to channel it which nobody would ever do.

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CU was pretty strong in SB, but proper play never involved channeling it. Especially after the 4.4 change where its HoT and mitigation were applied instantly (provided people were standing under it when it activated). A buff to its regen potency wouldn’t necessarily mean that it would need to be channeled—it honestly needs one, because both Sacred Soil and Asylum crap all over it.

I find myself going out of mana so fast as noct astro even with popping Lucid Dreaming and using Lightspeed on CD, do you actually need to meld Piety compared to the others healers?

I think they need to tune down mana cost on malific or something because with the 1.5 cast time it has it drains my mana so damn fast :(

The card mechanic is annoying and dumbed down so much so why not even dumb down it further just using Lord and Lady, for melee and ranged and just remove the other cards, if they arent gonna go back to the old one.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Collective Unconscious won’t ever get stronger because that would mean having to channel it which nobody would ever do.

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Lmao wut

By "channel" do you mean spending time to cast it instead of it going out instantly? Unlike Sacred Soil and Asylum which are both stronger than CU and targeted AoEs?

You realize that currently even if it is just a buffed Regen without Damage midigation no one would use it still right? The issue with it is that it is insanely weak for the size and restrictions it puts on the AST. If they buffed its heal but kept everything else as is now it still might not be used that often.

The fact that it requires the AST to position in a good spot and take a full GCD to use effectively (in most situations) AND holds the AST in place means it needs to be buffed. Compare it to Sacred Soil and Aslyum that are used, basically, on CD and there is no way you can say its even close to OP.

Its best used when it ticks and you can cancel it quickly. But this relies on server ticks and if/when your party gets hit by it.

Really all I would like to see with CU are the following:

1: Increase the potency of the Regen to at least 100 to make it match the sacred soil and asylum's regens.
2: Increase the range of the bubble to 15y or there abouts so you can more easily use it as an an AOE oGCD regen.
3: If they are going to keep it as a channel then make the damage reduction portion persist longer than a second or 2 after they leave the bubble like the regen. It doesn't have to be as long as the regen but at least maybe something like 8 seconds like the short tank CDs.

I wish and was hoping, with the changes to SS and Asylum, that they would give CU a trait making it be deploy-able where you currently are, they homogenize a lot of the healers kit, yet the one skill that should have been changed for sure was left untouched.

Actually I wouldn't care so much about the overhaul if they didn't gate seals behind your personal aggro table. I spent the entirety of my healing being very careful not to prepull or pull off the tank but if you dont have regen on a party member or actually perform an attack, you can throw the card for the buff but you wont get the seal. I assumed it mean your party had to be in combat but no. You have generate aggro before you can get a seal. I cant tell you how many times ive thrown a card out at the end of a pull only to get no seal because i used shields and not regen in deference to the tank getting first aggro. Cant stand this part of AST.

Also you can blame the community for the card debacle. All anyone wanted was balance cards, especially in high end. Now everything is a balance card and everyone hates it. *shrugs* hopefully they'll do something about it next expac.

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Originally Posted by Rivxkobe

Lmao wut

By "channel" do you mean spending time to cast it instead of it going out instantly? Unlike Sacred Soil and Asylum which are both stronger than CU and targeted AoEs?

You realize that currently even if it is just a buffed Regen without Damage midigation no one would use it still right? The issue with it is that it is insanely weak for the size and restrictions it puts on the AST. If they buffed its heal but kept everything else as is now it still might not be used that often.

The fact that it requires the AST to position in a good spot and take a full GCD to use effectively (in most situations) AND holds the AST in place means it needs to be buffed. Compare it to Sacred Soil and Aslyum that are used, basically, on CD and there is no way you can say its even close to OP.

Its best used when it ticks and you can cancel it quickly. But this relies on server ticks and if/when your party gets hit by it.

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You’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. I haven’t claimed that Collective Unconscious is OP in its current form. What I’m saying is that the channeling effect doesn’t have much point right now, because you’re never going to channel beyond the initial application anyway. And so the natural conclusion is that they’ll just remove the channeling effect, and turn it into a normal cooldown like Asylum or Sacred Soil, then do whatever to the effects to compensate if necessary.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the initial application, I’m talking about the feature of holding it beyond that, which doesn’t normally have much benefit because that’s time you could be using on GCDs and Cards. I only suggested removing the damage reduction as a random balancing idea, that doesn’t mean I think it’s too strong as it is. More likely they’d make it the same as Soil/Asylum with exact same effect.

If CU had some additional effect when channelled, it still wouldn’t be the live up to Sacred Soil and Asylum, because channeling that additional effect would get in the way of GCDs whilst Sacred Soil and Asylum don’t have that restriction, and their additional effects activate regardless. For them to make that feature of holding it for a longer duration worth it, it would have to have a very powerful additional effect (because otherwise you’re better just using normal GCD/OGCD). And since that seems unlikely, developers changing it to be more in line with Asylum/Soil seems the most likely outcome.

My post essentially said that Collective Unconscious will become more in line with Sacred Soil and Asylum. I’m not sure what the disagreement is about?

I understand that they wanted to make it so certain card draws didn't feel useless, but then why not simply balance the cards? Make spire direct hit and then if balance is overpowered nerf it or buff the others. Even bole and ewer have their purpose and when not needed they can be consumed for the incredibly strong AoE or double duration buff. If anything I feel like I get more "useless" cards now when I burn through all my redraw charges for the right seal I need for divination. The fact that it even has three charges kind of proves it's a band aid they just slapped onto the system.

I was really hopeful and excited for what they were going to do with the rework and it just ended up being a disappointment.

One thing that I find strange about new Ast is how Redraw took an effective step back. They changed what we care about from what card we are getting to what symbols we get. So I find it strange that Redraw doesn't force a different symbol to come up. TBF, I'm surprised that they didn't make it so that it would alternate melee to range as well as the symbol.
For example, draw a melee card with a sun symbol, hit Redraw and then it would be ranged with say a moon symbol.