Astrologian Speculations! How will it fit in?

[Ghishlain]

I get the sneaking suspicion that AST's won't have strong offensive potential compared to the other two healer's in the game. I would like their stances will be a heavy healing stance and a light healing support based stance.

What I'm thinking is the healing stance will be provide a boost to their healing potential, something like a permanent Divine Seal (but have lighter potency heals to make up for that).

In contrast, their light healing support stance will have their heals be small AoE (10y?) HoTs with a healing penalty (something in vein of how Cleric's Stance reduce potency) that while the HoTs are applied, the respective party members get a small buff to their stats.

This way AST can provide a heavy healing role or a supportive healing role and be matched well with either WHM or SCH at the same time. Being able to stance dance effectively would also be extremely rewarding as well as you're providing the best of both worlds to your party.

[Faelandaea]

I think the AST will have 2 stances, a heal/support and an attack/support.

They will have to. Not a SINGLE player in this game except for myself would accept a pure healer, so AST will HAVE to have an attack stance. There's no way around it, because this is the only MMO I play where players expect the healer to do the DPS's job so the DPS players can be carried through dungeons without doing their jobs.

I get the sneaking suspicion that AST's won't have strong offensive potential compared to the other two healer's in the game. I would like their stances will be a heavy healing stance and a light healing support based stance.

This would be my dream come true, but the player base would start rioting if the healer can't go into some Cleric stance and DPS.

[Brightshadow]

Astrologian does not need a DPS stance because that already exists ingame "Cleric Stance" all SE needs to do is make it crossclass. As for what the second stance will be its anyone guess but I think it'll be for buffing because it'll be a nice alternative rather than having all healers DPS in their downtime.

[Ghishlain]

This would be my dream come true, but the player base would start rioting if the healer can't go into some Cleric stance and DPS.

While I can see some people complain about a lack of offensive capability from a healer, I think if S-E made it clear that "this particular tool was never intended to be part of the AST toolkit", it would appease the majority of players.

If AST can supplement their lack of DPS with DPS boosting support, that would put AST in a good spot for not having offensive capability.

Leveling may be an issue, but since there's a plan to have the new "extra Jobs" start at a higher level, my guess is the minimum level AST will begin at is 15 or 16 so they can jump into Low Level DR and dungeon grind from the get go.

[AmaiHanakaze]

While I can see some people complain about a lack of offensive capability from a healer, I think if S-E made it clear that "this particular tool was never intended to be part of the AST toolkit", it would appease the majority of players.

If AST can supplement their lack of DPS with DPS boosting support, that would put AST in a good spot for not having offensive capability.

Leveling may be an issue, but since there's a plan to have the new "extra Jobs" start at a higher level, my guess is the minimum level AST will begin at is 15 or 16 so they can jump into Low Level DR and dungeon grind from the get go.

This, pretty much. I'm really with Faelandaea in the fact that I don't really enjoy being expected to provide DPS as a healing class. I would absolutely love to have a healing/support role where I can help boost the damage of the full time DPS while providing good restorative abilities. I do worry about killing mobs at low levels being slow without an attack spell though so I'm sure there will be a few early level DPS spells but maybe post level 15 abilities can be more support based.

Regardless of how this job ends up playing out though, I'm going to level it as I consider myself a healer main and try to maintain all healing jobs at max level.

[Lorick]

. . . Not a SINGLE player in this game except for myself would accept a pure healer, so AST will HAVE to have an attack stance. There's no way around it, because this is the only MMO I play where players expect the healer to do the DPS's job so the DPS players can be carried through dungeons without doing their jobs.

Hahaha, I love it! Preach on!
Where I come from, true healers only have a weak stun in their arsenal of offensive spells.

Seriously though, I miss the defined healers of my EQ days. Those guys knew their jobs inside and out because healing was all they did.

[Mirakumi]

Just silliness here, but what if Astrologian gets abilities similar to FFX-2's Lady Luck...

Such as:

Clean Slate - Restores 25% MAX HP and cures negative Status Effects of user.
Auto-Life - Automatically revives an ally the next time they are Knocked Out.
Luck. - Crit chance up on self.
Felicity - Raise Crit chance up on all members of PT.

These could be interesting, and different from current healers.
/shrugs/

[Faelandaea]

Leveling may be an issue, but since there's a plan to have the new "extra Jobs" start at a higher level, my guess is the minimum level AST will begin at is 15 or 16 so they can jump into Low Level DR and dungeon grind from the get go.

Woah, really? Can you link me to that article? I missed that one. I thought the new jobs also had to start from level 1. O.o I mean, I won't argue having a good boost to my leveling, as none of us wants to start from level 1 when doing additional jobs - but what will that do for the gold spammers and bots if they do that?

Hahaha, I love it! Preach on!
Where I come from, true healers only have a weak stun in their arsenal of offensive spells.

Seriously though, I miss the defined healers of my EQ days. Those guys knew their jobs inside and out because healing was all they did.

Precisely. My first MMO experience was as a healer, and I have healed since. Druid on Vazaelle in EQ in 1999-2002. Since then I have healed in many MMO games. It's crazy how much the player base here treats healers differently than all of the other games. But, we digress.

[Ghishlain]

Woah, really? Can you link me to that article? I missed that one. I thought the new jobs also had to start from level 1. O.o I mean, I won't argue having a good boost to my leveling, as none of us wants to start from level 1 when doing additional jobs - but what will that do for the gold spammers and bots if they do that?

Here's the Reddit Interview @ PAX:

RPGamer: For the new jobs in the game, do they start at level 1? And if so are the new zones and quests for those classes or do they have to return to old zones to level up?

Yoshida: (Editor’s note: This question will read a bit difficult because it was mistranslated at first but thanks to Matt Hilton was corrected. I've included both answers because I think they both provide worthwhile information.) Heavensward is an expansion so if you create a brand new character that character will start at level one. So the areas within Heavensward will be level fifty one and beyond. So if you have a character that is at level one they will have to revisit the Realm Reborn areas. There may be questions because there is a system in WoW where you can either start off with a higher level character or purchase a higher level character. Those apply to games that have been around for a while, eight to ten years, and those initial levels are just way too far back in history that it would take forever to get to the current level. But A Realm Reborn has only been around for about one and a half years, almost reaching that two year mark so we feel there’s still enough time to go through and take your time to revisit the areas in a Realm Reborn and there’s still many new players that are coming on board to the world of XIV so we feel that there’s not too far of a gap between a very new player and the more experienced players. So we encourage players to explore the areas in A Realm Reborn and we don’t feel that it is time to offer an official powered up version. In terms of jobs we don’t start at level one.

Reddit: Specifics? Numbers?

Yoshida: We’re still in the final tweaking stages on where we’re going to have them start but definitely not at level one. If we mention it I’m sure so many people are going to try and get ready and get a head start. We’re going to keep it a secret as long as we can. It definitely won’t start at level one so you won’t have to scramble to get through things such as guildleves.

Massively has a similar response from Yoshi-P in their interview too.

[RxRai]

Just a random thought but what if their second stance was like something similar to Disc Priests' atonement? For those that don't know, it causes damage dealt to enemies to also smart heal the lowest health target in range for a % of damage dealt.