Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[SenzorialBoundries]

AST is very lackluster and while it may be fun to mess around with there is no way ever that ast will replace either whm or sch, you cant match either whm or sch at what they are doing by that logic why would i bring an ast which is meh at both over a sch which is the god of utility and mitigation or over a whm which is the god of group healing. Also ast/whm is much less viable than sch/ast due to losing supervirus covenant or sacred soil (talking bout progression)

[DarkmoonVael]

So i have my astrologian at level 54 now, done lots of stuff with it . The cards are strong when uses correctly, like seriously strong. Manipulating them through spread, shuffle and royal road brings a nice level of skill to the job. The healing is fine, my co-healer in Ravana story mode got them selves killed and managed to rescue the sitution on AST, its through put of HPS in that situation seemed to be fine. However, when going into Sohm Al (lvl 54 dungeon iirc) i had some issues, which may have been down to the tanks choice of play style. So new dungeon, new people, tank decided to speed run the thing O.o. It went fine, however the AST theough put of healing for this was ditincly low. Even in Diurnal Sect using Aspected Benefic, Benefic and using procced Benefic II and then shoring up the healing with Essential Dignity, there seemed to be something slightly lacking with its healing capabilitites. However, this could entirely be down to trying to speed run a dungeon when undergeared as well. What also didnt help was the abrd who stood out of aoe healing distance all the time on the opposite sides of the boss arenas, so far that if i wanted to get him in the aoe healing, the BLM would have been out of range O.o.

Also, synstry seems to have applications in raids, but in 4 man dungeons this seems to be less useful . Nice skill, but has its distinct times and places to use.

The lack of cooldowns on AST to boost your own healing is also noticable, making the AST through-put of healing feel noticably weaker compared to WHM/SCH.

My only real concern once i get to end game is with tanks not understanding AST vis-a-vis speed running end game dungeons, i am not sure if AST has to tools to get the HPS ip to where it should be.

In a raid, its going to be strong.

AST is very lackluster and while it may be fun to mess around with there is no way ever that ast will replace either whm or sch, you cant match either whm or sch at what they are doing by that logic why would i bring an ast which is meh at both over a sch which is the god of utility and mitigation or over a whm which is the god of group healing. Also ast/whm is much less viable than sch/ast due to losing supervirus covenant or sacred soil (talking bout progression)

SMN also brings supervirus, AST brings Disable which can stack with supervirus. AST has exactly the same skill as sacred soil whilst in Noctural Sect, albeit on a longer cooldown.

WHM can not match AST buffing power through cards.

SCH cant match AST buffing capabilities through cards.

Three healers, each bringing something unique to the raid.

[Mhikail]

aspect benefic and aspect helios should be affected by it, the tooltips may be wrong though,....

Exactly, the tooltips are non-existent so I have no idea if it's just not there or?
I'm asking if the SCH effect works on all of what Diurnal works on.
Also Rez+SC doesn't work as a macro.

[Viviza]

My own take on it right now is that AST suffers too much in its basic heals in return for very circumstantially useful buffs. It results in a number of "if this and this and this happen, then using the cards this way was worth it". For example getting Spear card just as someone is about to trigger several abilities with cooldowns, or Bole before a big boss hit, or Spire on someone who would have ran out of TP if you had not used Spire. And the more times you spend redrawing to fish a good card, the less useful it is overall.

Take a best-case and always-useful scenario where you royal road Arrow or Spear, then draw Balance or Arrow, for raid dps. You increase raid dps by 5% for 15 seconds, at the cost of two draws, so once a minute. This works out to 1.25% dps to the raid. This also only has an 11% chance to actually happen, without using additional abilities like spread and shuffle. Compare this to Selene, a pet, who offers 3% speed with 50% uptime, and works 100% of the time. So about 1.5% bonus dps.

[Superlol]

Go. Away.


Anyway I love AST so far. I like the healing spells they have and stuff and junk. The only thing I don't love is Stella. I like the animation I just haven't found much use out of it besides soloing. Which I guess is the point of it but it just seems... Blah. Only level 43 though.


???

How can you miss it? Aspected Benefic and Aspected Helios apply them, and they are impossible to miss.

Oh yea my mistake.. I thought it always gives the regen effect :S

[Mimilu]

Celestial Oppression seems sadistic.
You extend all your party's buffs by 5 seconds but also stun enemies.
If used in the wrong location, you could easily throw off the tanks' stuns during a boss or trial.

[Aphel]

Cleared FCOB with both Whm and Sch. My Astro's 56 now but I find it fairly weak compared to the other two.

Just a few comparisons

Whitemage - Raw healing power (Divine seal +30% heal potency), Holy (stuns and doesn't require a target), Benediction.
Scholar - Fairy, almost OP lustrates for instant heals, great mana management.

Astro heal/shield potency is slightly lower. When your tank or entire party gets smashed and everyone's low on health, Astros have only 1 emergency instant heal which is on a 40sec CD (single-target too). No there's no Cure III for you, no Divine-sealed Medica II, no lustrates that can bring your party back from the grave. Lightspeed? LOL! And oh yeah those cards aren't going to make you a powerhouse, the randomness just means that you don't have reliable on-demand answers to whatever is thrown at you. To those who don't understand, run some level 50+ dungeons and you'll immediately notice the difference. A lot of the bosses do so much party-wide damage that sometimes it's difficult to recover from, if I had my Whm/Sch on those occasions it would have been a breeze.

[jars]

I like AST so far(almost 53) but my observations on where it needs help:

enhanced benefic is not useful. freecure is MUCH more useful than a random proc that probably won't do you any good because if you're casting benefic 1 no one is probably in need of a benefic 2 immediately
spear: spear isn't good, aside from royal road. I always groan when I pull it and already have extended up. spire isn't my favorite but I just don't know much about tp usage
nocturnal sect: this is really bad. what is the point of this stance? it doesn't have throughput, or efficiency. it stinks. why would I ever want weak shields that cost a ton of mana.

that said I don't think the sky is falling just yet. we're 3 days in.

[jars]

SCH cant match AST buffing capabilities through cards.

yeah they can

[VanilleFang]

yeah they can

Um. How so?