Question to AST mains:

What do you like about AST?

Like, what are the things you most enjoy about the Job/would least like changed?

And what are the things you most dislike and WOULD like changed?

The aesthetics and the memories of 3.2-3.5

Things i enjoy with AST:

The Cards:How they play atm..(Buffing and preping the 2-3 different astro sign for your burst phase)
Heal Over Time stacking: AST have 4 HOTS and you can stack em - it's overkill but fun in dung when i can ignore healing tank during WTW bc of it :).
4 ways to inc my own healing: I like that i can mix and match abilites and buff my own heals in many different ways..there isnt just 1 way to do things.
Strong Burst Healing: It's fun to top everyone off from low to 100% with Earthly star or with Macrocosmos.
Have abilites with (some) mitigation: Celestial Intersection / Exaltation / Collective Unconscious / Nautral Sect + Aspected Helios.
Simple DPS I enjoy that i dont have to think much when i DPSing.. the fact that i just spam my ST ability and kinda forget that i dpsing is great...
I can 100% focus boss and on buffing and prep for big dmg!.
I like how AST looks and play: Animations,skill effects and weapon looks.


Things I dislike:
Minor Arcana
Rework it into a AOE buff-card!!! - kinda like the one we have in PvP.
( RNG 3x possible buffs - stack with other cards..)

I dislike when i get paired with an another AST in PF
- Cards dont stack and have to avoid useing DIV at same time.

I enjoy it being the last healer with something akin to non-slug apm!

I miss royal road still too ofc!

I find AST to be more engaging than other healers (though admittedly I don't like Scholar/Sage as much as WHM/AST- I'm more of a reactive person, especially with connection latency). I like the almost "mini-game" feel of drawing and applying cards whilst keeping the party alive with your healing abilities. I do miss it's original incarnation though - I much preferred the card system as it was originally compared to the 2 options we have now (physical dps or ranged dps based on card border colour) so I' hoping they do make some good changes to it in 7.0. I also like the lore behind it too (although again, the quest story is not as engaging with the card changes - it's like "We have shown you the constellations, the power they can bring to make or break you! What's that? How do you wield this? Oh, you don't - we'll just let you boost some dps for a short time.").

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

What do you like about AST?

Like, what are the things you most enjoy about the Job/would least like changed?

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Things like Horoscope, Macrocosmos and Earthly Star. The concept of delayed healing, compiled healing and healing that grows over time is an interesting one, I'd be interested to see a healer built entirely throught interactions like that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

And what are the things you most dislike and WOULD like changed?

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Minor Arcana. It's such a pointless button in this new incarnation. Can't rely on the AoE damage from Lord of Crowns and also can't rely on the AoE heal from Lady of Crowns, it would at least not be as bad if they alternate after each draw so you can rely on having Lady up at certain moments by planning from the start.

Love the overall aesthetic (I basically designed my character for this job).

The card system feels like the only job gimmick that's actually focused on playing with your team. Although I was a bit disappointed that all it does is increased damages.

One thing I'm very sad about is Collective Unconscious. With initial application going way beyond the bubble, it removed almost all need for proper positioning, and what could have made the skill feel unique to use; now it's just a second charge to Celestial Opposition. Sure it's still possible to channel it, but there's still no real use case to that.
I'd rather they had kept the limited range, and either increased the damage mitigation, or gave channeling some extra healing so it would at least keep up with Helios spam.
PS: PLD's Passage of Arms is basically how I enjoy using Collective Consciousness the most.

What I like °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
-The aesthetics; I love when RPG classes and/or magics are less generic-fantasy and more based on magic through out IRL history. I also like things related to tarot and astrology.
-I like playing jobs that focus more on buffing
-I like jobs with higher APM and weaving
-I like Earthly Star and Macrocosmos

What I don't like .( ̵˃﹏˂̵ )
-Seals and Astrodyne are really lackluster. No AST should be prioritizing increasing their own DPS by 5% if it means not giving the correct cards to the highest DPS(s) in the party.
-EW's Minor Arcana isn't reliable. I would of preferred that they stuck with ShB's version (which I think would of worked fine with Astrodyne).
-Lightspeed and Astrodyne/getting three seals doesn't line up with the 2-minute rotation.
-Synastry and Neutral Sect are interesting abilities but rarely/never used if things are going normal/well.
-I miss Royal Road.
-I miss being able to lengthen the duration of my buffs and regens.
-I don't miss the function of the two Sects but I miss the flavor and job-fantasy they added. Same thing with the 6 different card effects.

Liked

The aesthetics- which is not saying much as that is not really that important to me.
The ability to apply buffs and regens
Higher APMS and weaving
Agreed - skills like ES and macro that allow some control and apply heals and damage (especially before ES became huge) are great.

Dislikes

Absolutely braindead DPS skills to choose from
Horrid personal DPS - buffs aren't adjusted for solo play
Depending upon party composition, you may not be able to contribute that much, i.e. party is at least semi-competent and geared, and especially if card RNG is not in your favour, your heals aren't needed, your buffs may not contribute as much (due to RNG), and your own personal DPS is low.
I miss the 2 sects - diurnal/nocturnal was better, in my case it was due to functionality.
Agree about minor arcana- frequently useless.

My three favorite things about Astrologian:

The Stars
The Cards
The Shields

As far as I'm concerned, AST has lost 2/3 of those in recent years. My biggest dislike is that the things I enjoyed about the job got taken away.

Hopefully the stars aren't next on the chopping block. Realistically, the stars will probably get to stay. Probably. But I'm still very concerned about what 7.0 will bring.

Things I like:

- the aesthetic and pretty effects
- the card buffs because it makes me feel useful even when I don't have to heal
- cards giving me something to do between casting Malefic
- having mitigation on top of having heals and having the ability to shield the party at least a little
- delayed healing in Earthly Star, Horoscope and Macrocosmos
- the fact that I basically never run out of mana between Astrodyne and Lucid Dreaming

Things I don't like:

- the RNG of Minor Arcana
- one button DPS rotation combined with hitting like a wet noodle
- I don't have to use a good 2/3 of my healing tools unless something goes horribly wrong, but that's an issue with all healers currently

I'm honestly really worried about the advertised rework in 7.0. Astro is the only healer I find engaging to play, please don't make it a complete WHM copy.

Well... I play it often in pvp.. So l guess l will say why l like it in pvp. Limit break can really boost my burst damage and shut down enemy dps. If l run into people that know what their doing, it would be fun. Such as s summoner Let me buff Him with my lb before he cast bahamut. Although ast heals less overall than whm, healing is instant and the double cast being ogcd can really help a teammate to survive. The cards' aoe effect ignores line of sight, So it really fun to buff my teammates from behind the walls. Lastly, the bind and root from gravity and double cast gravity is really good to secure a kill after someone guards, or use on 2 separate targets to peel for me or my team.

Likes:

1. Pretty, over the top VFXes.
2. Arguably the most support-ish amongst 4 healers.
3. Animations are elegant, looks great on any character.
4. PvP AST is fun.
5. Delayed healings such as Earthly Star, (buffed) Horoscope, Macrocosmos, & (arguably) Exaltation.

Dislikes (although most are shared by other healers as well):

1. 'Why do you even exist'-buttons such as MA & Undraw;
2. And somehow lore-breaking buttons like Neutral Sect also survives the purge whereas nocturnal sect had to go? lmao
3. How all the button presses are condensed into that 2m reopeners but leaving the rest of 105s mind numbingly boring.
4. I miss old redraw stacks & sleeve draw.
5. Synastry is left on the dirt unexplored further.
6. Cards are all basically "bigger dps buff vs smaller dps buff".
7. The fact that the gain between 3-sealed vs 2-sealed Astrodyne is so miniscule, people can pretend it doesn't exist at all.

Likes:

1. APM, card weaving
2. Tarot/Stars aesthetic
3. Macrocosmos, Exaltation, Horoscope, Earthly Star/delayed heals

Dislikes:

• Earthly Star/Collective Unconcious's radius
• Lord/Lady of Crowns (would be better if I could choose to sacrifice a card to become one of them instead)
• Synastry being purposefully useless. Let it work on oGCD single target heals.
• Neutral Sect and removal of Nocturnal Sect. Because AST could have been a stance dancer but no, because SE.
• Being a WHM clone. What? We couldn't be a stance dancer or a regen/delayed healer sub-50?

Hates:

• Astrodyne. It wasn't good when it was Divination and its worse somehow now.
• Undraw. Still. EXISTS.
• All six cards are basically the same buff. Why have 6 cards then? And why consider us the buffing class when we only give one (1) buff?
• AST is by far the worst class in the game to solo in a game where the devs are pushing for it to have a solo experience.

Interesting.

I appreciate all the perspective, thank you all.

The cards although they were a bit too simplified in Endwalker. Gives me something to do when healing is actually pretty low (for somebody who lives and 'dies' in Duty Finder that can be rare) and feels good to buff up the DPS and tanks and something other than DoT and single nuke spam. Plus dropping the Earthly Star for a bit boom is neat.

So many ways to recover from a poopstorm that happens every so often in DF. And mana for days between card doling, AstroDyne and Lucid Dreaming (bitter over the Thin Air nerf)

And prefer throughput over shielding so SCH and SGE are out.

like: aesthetics, cards give something to do other than malefic spam, support-themed identity, delayed-heals are an interesting concept

dislike: cards are all the same, cards have to all be used in burst windows (no 'adapt to situation' anymore), noct sect deleted instead of effort made to make it work in a rework to the kit, neutral sect somehow survives the purge, APM is too high in burst windows and too low in non-burst, minor arcana is the worst of both worlds(damage competing with nondamage utility, plus 'cannot predict when the utility will be available'), too many skills that are pointless/niche (synastry, undraw, minor arcana system arguably) leading to hotbar bloat, macrocosmos is a GCD when it could just be a non-damaging OGCD to make it less clunky to apply, earthlystar doesn't smoothly scale (detonating at 0s is the same as detonating at 9s of charge)


my fixes:

make cards have unique effects again, keeping them single target to make them easier to balance
make Minor Arcana use the full deck, and use it as a way to break up the downtime between burst windows (this adds more 'i am supporting' flavor to the gameplay)
make earthly star give a stack each second, and at 10 stacks it gets the power it has now. this means detonating at 9s is not as punishing as it is now, as you'd miss out on a much smaller amount than currently
delete some useless things like undraw, merge some older skills like Helios>Asp.Helios, and make room for new stuff (or just to declutter the hotbars)
maybe bring back nocturnal sect, and give the class the ability to stancedance to apply shields (this is part of a 'destroy the pure/barrier split' move), neutral then is 'does both sects at once' as a moment of power-CD
make macrocosmos an OGCD that does not deal damage



Oh wait you said AST mains, the forbidden site claims I was an AST main in Aspho thanks to P3S, does that count

I like nothing about ast anymore, the cards are dull and boring with barely any lil benefits, ast is just more a powerful better copied cheaper whm clone now since it cant stance, stormblood ast was and forever will be the best that is all I can say. As stated at the start of ew I went fast to grab my sage job and drop off my globe immediately. Though I say I do not like ast anymore there is good I can say of it going back to my second point that its a powerful healer which so much heals that half of them sometimes you do not need and they are useful, its mana mp is infinite which is crazy when it was back in 5.0 it had the worst of way of getting mana back then, lucid/draw/astrodyne=no way you should ever be out of mp. It spells are ofc the prettiest out of the 4 healers and the sfxs on its spells is all lovely. But yeah I want stormblood ast back plain and simple.

Likes:
Cards offers something else to do when you are just pressing 1, so its a bit more engaging than the other healers.

I like the delayed healing spells like star, macro and horoscope, that makes gameplay slightly more fun.

job Aesthetic and spells visually are very nice.

Dislikes:
Cards are somewhat boring, but when DPS is the only thing that matters in current gameplay, it seems hard to add other things for them to do, that would not just be worse options - Minor Arcana being a current example

Feels bad to play, when the group is terrible, usually making me play another healer when queing with randos

Not a fan of Minor Arcana RNG. This is mostly a problem due to how lacklustre enemy damage output is. You always want the damage card, healing card is useless

Synastry feels useless, never uses it

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gullis

Likes:
Cards offers something else to do when you are just pressing 1, so its a bit more engaging than the other healers.

I like the delayed healing spells like star, macro and horoscope, that makes gameplay slightly more fun.

job Aesthetic and spells visually are very nice.

Dislikes:
Cards are somewhat boring, but when DPS is the only thing that matters in current gameplay, it seems hard to add other things for them to do, that would not just be worse options - Minor Arcana being a current example

Feels bad to play, when the group is terrible, usually making me play another healer when queing with randos

Not a fan of Minor Arcana RNG. This is mostly a problem due to how lacklustre enemy damage output is. You always want the damage card, healing card is useless

Synastry feels useless, never uses it

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Synastry isn't useless..it has saved many tanks from dying on lower level content xD
It almost dobbels your healing (Benefic II and Aspected Benefic // when you heal the same target you place it on.

Did anyone ever redo ast story to find out if it was changed? Cause HW =used dirunal sect and stormblood used=noct sect for plots and what not so with them gone.. how did that work out?

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Synastry isn't useless..it has saved many tanks from dying on lower level content xD
It almost dobbels your healing (Benefic II and Aspected Benefic // when you heal the same target you place it on.

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I'd agree, technically you could use it, I have but it's used so infrequently I qualify it as "useless in most content/if your team is undergeared/if your team is not yet competent (skills, mechanics issues)/are in relevant content/there are no better skills available to use"

I have left in on my bar for my "just in case" scenario, but it's left in a dusty corner just like cure is.

The thing about Synastry isn't that it's a bad tool, but that it's been severely power crept. The thing about healing is, we keep getting new healing cooldowns every expansion, but the amount of healing required isn't really changing. What this means is that even though we already have enough healing tools to get through all the content in the game, the new tools being some combination of stronger, more frequently available, easier to use, and DPS neutral has gradually devalued tools that used to be very important resources. And it's not because they no longer are important, but because there aren't enough reasons to use them.

Great examples of this would be spells like Succor and Regen. Both were very important to Scholar and White Mage in the past, but have become largely irrelevant because there are just better resources to heal with, and any decent healer is very infrequently pushed to use them anymore.

We cannot continue to just add more and more healing resources unless you increase the demand for healing to match, or we're just going to balloon this power creep more and more. Look at tanks. The demand for personal mitigation has not changed very much across the lifespan of the game. Tanks acquire about 3 extra mitigation cooldowns after level 50. Healers acquire about 10 healing cooldowns after level 50. And I didn't include actions that received upgrades, just new actions altogether in that.

Not every new healing action (or tank mitigation action for that matter) is a bad thing. There is something that can be said about the QoL that certain tools provide, but to the degree that healers get new heals without upping the demand for heals just creates a lot of dead weight on the healer's hotbar. And that's not to say that those dead weight actions are badly designed, or that you don't ever use that at all, but that what they accomplish is now done with something new instead. Why Succor when you can Sacred Soil? Why Regen when you can Afflatus Solace? You could merge some actions, or cut certain unnecessary ones and do a better job of ensuring every action has a place on each healer's hotbar.

It depends upon how you define a bad tool. If I have at kid sized shovel that I used in a playground to fill a pail , but now I need to excavate a plot of land, and I have now have 4 pieces of industrial machinery designed for that- well that kid sized shovel isn't going to be used.

That's how I view synastry. Sure, it does what it needs to do but I now almost never need to do as I've outgrown the playground. I just keep it around on the odd chance that I need to babysit someone's kid AND they forgot their own shovel, in which case sure- it does the job it needs to do.

Yeah Synastry isn't a bad spell by itself. Its just very niche at higher levels, as you rarely need to gcd single target heal, unless the tank decides to ignore all of his buttons, or dps is slacking so hard, you run out of cooldowns during w2w pulls in dungeons (happens sometimes)

Would be nice if it got uppgraded so you could use it for Celestial Intersection or something

If Synastry was changed to work on singletarget OGCDs too, then it'd affect Essential, Intersection and Exaltation (only passing along the healing, not the additional effects like the mit or shielding presumably), that'd still bump it from 'only used in sub60 content' to 'used pretty consistently in all content', they love their double hit tankbusters (P10S stomps/akh morn, P9S duality, P11S Dike, P12S Glaukopis if you don't immune it), so being able to hit the MT with an Essential, and have 40% of that transfer to the OT as well, would be very nice. Maybe shields could transfer too, at 40% rate, but I don't really think Exaltation's 10% mit effect should/needs to

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sebazy

The aesthetics and the memories of 3.2-3.5

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Don't remind me. AST at its most creative IMO.

Likes
Cards & Divination- fantasy+, support roles+
OGCD Layering - Astro has so many OGCD's that you can layer to give a lot of HoT or burst healing. This excels best in dungeons
Macrocosmos - What a fun multi-use tool
Earthly Star - This ability is wonderful as its the kind of multi-use tool that does better and better as Astrologians understand the content they are doing better and better
Neutral Sect - Its nice retaining some shield ability despite being a pure healer now. This single ability allows whitemage and astrologian to still co-heal encounters that require shielding big mechanics
LightSpeed - This spell is so perfect. Its unfortunate that it's ideal use is for burst windows, but the feeling of popping it and rezzing 4+ people really fast is amazing. It really makes you feel like astro is the MVP job for prog or recovery

Dislikes
Minor Arcana - The only version of Minor Arcana I have ever enjoyed was sh.b where you could turn cards into bigger DPS buffs. I don't mind RNG abilities but the lady card can't be relied upon in 8man content and is not necessary. I don't think any iteration of lord/lady that deal direct damage/heal have been good
OGCD Layering - This works less well in Savage if your co-healer does not allow your OGCD's to do their job. With astro being the least used healer in savage, it can be hard for other healers to even know how to heal with Astro though.
Astro Dyne - Astrodyne feels really bad because it creates rotations where you must hold your dps cards for buff windows and you have to hold your minor arcana without being able to see it's CD, in hopes you can double lord card in buffs. It's a type of gameplay where astro's really need to be on top of where they are in the fight to remember when to hold and when to not hold. This is espcially true because there is always a part of the fight where you get an extra astrodyne that is not paired with divination. This means you have to be actively aware of which astrodyne that is. Requiring seals for divination just felt so much better to play even if you got RNG'd into 2-seal divs on pull
Removing Nocturnal stance - My Main job since Astrologian was released was Noct-Ast. I was almost always paired co-healing with whitemage through all my PF-Savage experiences. This has never been an issue outside of the end of Eden when double regen became best and so I was running Diurnal Ast w/ whm co-healer. Now, whitemages are far more plentiful than any other job in PF. The amount of times I've had to flex to shield healer this expansion has been so high. I'm not complaining about this because I dislike shield healing, its my preferred way to heal, but Ast is my main and my favorite job so it feels really bad to have to swap to shield healer because none join the PF after 45+ minutes. I believe this is due to ast/whm combo being something more difficult to pull off in a prog environment

The stars spells and buffing friends. Always liked that about supports.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The thing about Synastry isn't that it's a bad tool, but that it's been severely power crept. The thing about healing is, we keep getting new healing cooldowns every expansion, but the amount of healing required isn't really changing. What this means is that even though we already have enough healing tools to get through all the content in the game, the new tools being some combination of stronger, more frequently available, easier to use, and DPS neutral has gradually devalued tools that used to be very important resources. And it's not because they no longer are important, but because there aren't enough reasons to use them.

Great examples of this would be spells like Succor and Regen. Both were very important to Scholar and White Mage in the past, but have become largely irrelevant because there are just better resources to heal with, and any decent healer is very infrequently pushed to use them anymore.

We cannot continue to just add more and more healing resources unless you increase the demand for healing to match, or we're just going to balloon this power creep more and more. Look at tanks. The demand for personal mitigation has not changed very much across the lifespan of the game. Tanks acquire about 3 extra mitigation cooldowns after level 50. Healers acquire about 10 healing cooldowns after level 50. And I didn't include actions that received upgrades, just new actions altogether in that.

Not every new healing action (or tank mitigation action for that matter) is a bad thing. There is something that can be said about the QoL that certain tools provide, but to the degree that healers get new heals without upping the demand for heals just creates a lot of dead weight on the healer's hotbar. And that's not to say that those dead weight actions are badly designed, or that you don't ever use that at all, but that what they accomplish is now done with something new instead. Why Succor when you can Sacred Soil? Why Regen when you can Afflatus Solace? You could merge some actions, or cut certain unnecessary ones and do a better job of ensuring every action has a place on each healer's hotbar.

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Synestry is like dissipation, a good, well designed tool from the era of skills having downsides that has been powercrept by endless oGCD’s that are just an entire essay of benefits with no downsides

People are always like “ugh why does synestry not affect oGCD’s” or “why does dissipation buff GCD’s only when it gives aetherflow” but that was exactly the point, tools had upsides and downsides