Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[jars]

selene
virus
eye for an eye
sacred soil

what do you mean how so? they have better buffs than ast, if anything. and don't try to say 'smn can virus too' because they is no guarantee a smn will be in your group. and all of those buffs are controllable. just look at how much easier it is for a scholar to do a 10% aoe damage reduction than it is for an astrologer. well actually ast can only do 5% so.. another point sch.

[sharazisspecial]

3% haste
and
Damage reduce
Damage reduce
Damage reduce

No that's not better then AST. Unless your goal is to make it easier to heal. Instead of trivializing the DPS check like AST can do with the right buffs.

Hopefully we will get calculations and parses showing how much DPS each healer contributes.
SCH+AST can add alot of extra damage to the raid. Compared to SCH+WHM. Normally the difficulty comes from the DPS check.

SCH is probably alot more enjoyable to heal with over AST lol.
Would rather see a SCH/WHM in duty finder then a AST.

[416to305]

I just got to 38 and I'm not really sure what I think. I loved it for awhile, loved drawing the random cards and seeing how I can best put them into play. Now that I have RR though there's something less exciting about it. Like using RR on a card I don't want I feel like takes forever before you get your next one. I mean it's 1.5 mins from the time you first Draw, so I'm finding that unless it's a boss fight, usually RR doesn't help much in a dungeon pull as many times (even without RR actually) I'll pull the Balance as the last enemy has like 10% HP left. I agree with another poster now that I read it, it does feel like healing as an AST is like WHM with Cleric Stance on. I'm so used to seeing a tank at a certain point of HP, and knowing exactly that one Cure II will fix that etc, but Benefic II just seems to do 70% of what I was expecting. Might be my gear as well, just torn on if I should keep at this or get my WHM to 60 first instead.

I think my other issue with the cards is that people don't know what they are or when they are up on themselves, and for me healing you don't really see the direct benefit. I mean if I use The Balance on a DPS, I know that more damage is being done, but it's not visibly more damage, and sometimes (like in Sunken Temple just now) the BLM I used it on would just keep spamming Physik over and over to the point I told him I know how to heal. So because of that I found since Friday I've lost some of the excitement of drawing a card, like drawing Ewer at the start of a fight, or Spear and it becomes more routine on who you use it on. Like when I use I forget the skill but where you get the 30% healing bonus on WHM, you can visibly see you're pumping out higher heals. But when I do like the Bole on the tank, I don't really ever feel like oh wow look at how little damage he's taking now. Again maybe this will change at 50+ when things are harder as well. Not going to fully judge until I'm at 50 with it where I can run the stuff I do now as a WHM to compare, as that's the only real way I'll know. Just finding when things have gone south in a boss where the whole party is getting low, Helios I need to use sometimes a couple times to get everyone back up, and I do actually find myself looking over to see if I forgot CS on!

I'm also finding when doing leves that they seem way harder than when I did them as WHM, like I'm constantly healing myself or having to try them a couple times even at the recommended level, when as WHM I'd always do it at the highest level possible and never had problems.

[jars]

the math was already posted and selene is a better raid buff than a perfect balance uptime. when you consider that you're not always going to pull extended arrow or balance it gets even worse. ast has worse damage buffs, and it has worse defense buffs. like I said the sky is not falling yet but when the dust settles I am not going to be surprised if we see some ast buffs.

[Esmir]

I like AST. Coming from Scholar, I am missing the "security" that the faerie and the shields offer, but I'm a sucker for cards and orbs, so I will just have to bit the bullet and play more like a White Mage. I can't wait for Nocturnal Sect. Anyone have something to say on the shields? Thanks!

[jars]

I like AST. Coming from Scholar, I am missing the "security" that the faerie and the shields offer, but I'm a sucker for cards and orbs, so I will just have to bit the bullet and play more like a White Mage. I can't wait for Nocturnal Sect. Anyone have something to say on the shields? Thanks!

they are weak and cost a lot of mana. don't get your hopes up

[Esmir]

Just to confirm, you can't stack aspec bene and helios shields, yes? Regardless that is kinda upsetting T.T

Makes me wonder why they don't allow stance switching. To me, that would excuse the weaker potency and add some flair to the class.

[kiraan]

No the shields don't stacks unfortunately, the regens does.

I don't really see the point of not being able to switch stance during the fight when you consider that only 2 heals ( +1 if you count collective unconscious) are affected by stance.

I find AST a bit lacluster for now, even if i have fun spamming gravity during light speed and listening to this awesome sound effect ^^

[LycorisSelunis]

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.

The nocturnal part of the tooltip sows up after unlocking nocturnal sect. I reported the macro bug in the forum last night. Diurnal and nocturnal also give you stance benefits aside from affecting those 3 spells, diurnal gives haste and nocturnal increases potency.

Okie dokie, here is my level 50 comparison feelings.... I used the same gear on diurnal/whm and the same gear on sch/nocturnal for closeness. weapons excluded of course but all ilvl 100. sch and ast had 30 points mind, whm has 30 points piety (don't judge plz)

My diurnal sect astrologian heals are slightly weaker than the whm, but my spells are all slightly quicker cast. I actually found the potency of the regen aspected helios slightly stronger than the regen of medica 2, though medica2 had a better frontloaded heal...I assume this is from spellspeed affecting hots now. Aspected helios also casts faster and costs less mp than medica2.

my nocturnal sect astrologian had the same casting speed as my sch but had a higher healing potency than my whm very slightly (probably due to the piety points), retaining of course the lower mp costs. helios and succor share casting speed, aspected helios is slower. aspect helios is about the same as succor and same mp cost, aspect benefic is slightly weaker than adlo but also instant. Sch galvanize also doubles on crits, ast shields do not. (at least the tooltip certainly doesn't state it like adlo does. though succor doesn't have that note so idk...)

I was surprised to find out that at lvl 50 ast mp costs were actually lower than the other 2 healers- it sure didn't feel like it leveling up. the lack of free heals from the fairy or highly potent, mana efficient hots to shore it up is what I think may be the cause of the feel of being weak/spammy to me. WHM still has amazing self healing buffs, and sch still has amasing party buffs. ast's self buff seems much too situational-you really don't want to use it in an emergency for something like bene2 spam because of the potency loss, but it's great for stuff like spamming esuna or raising a lot of people. The card buffs will shine the most in a static when you know which buffs affect your members in the most efficient ways.

ash/ast shields don't stack whm/ast hots do. 4 regen effects like double whm sure is fun

it is late and I am tired now.......

[Lycinder]

I always give up the "Arrow/Spear" Card after drawn, which results into AoE Card Buffs. I had 2 AST's in the Chrysallis Thanks to Trial Roulette with different Stances over the Fight.
Result : The Boss in there just got trashed and the Tear Add didn't need to be LB3'd *lol*

Ahhh Chrysalis "1 minute Aoe Balance goooooooo!!!" When I drew the balance card it was like "Thats on spread." before being dragged into the tear I pulled spear and proceeded to giggle maniacally.

they are weak and cost a lot of mana. don't get your hopes up

Iunno an instant cast galvanise is pretty damn useful to use during akh morns/bahamut claws.

Currently people don't seem to get what kind of healer a Astro is, and that is a speed healer, they can react faster and do more clutch heals then either of the other healing classes. I made a lot of people go "Wow" when we were doing the mario kart method in T9 since I popped lightspeed and could use even Aspected Helios, also mana management if properly managed is no issue since I was less oom than I normally am playing SCH.

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.

Tooltips are there, it has both diurnal and nocturnal effects explained on aspected Benefic and Helios read the entire tooltip.