Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[Shamirah]

I almost never see selene being used in serious content until it becomes farmable. So pleeeease stfu about Selene's haste, as in the content we are talking about, you would have eos out. It is very obvious this discussion is lacked full of casuals. Also all the people that arnt even 50 yet just stop talking, it means nothing under 50 with you i40 gear.

Ok so first you need to calm your ego and your attitude, you are being moronic.

Second : please if you're trying to act like you're a pro, please don't say stupid things. It just makes you look like a fool.

[DontFindAName]

So i'm not so good with my English -but i hope some can be understand: I played AST to level 57 now. It felt very well at the beginning. In higher dungeons im feeling like missing something. Is it More speed (feels like im stuck on gcd)?weak heals? I like the idea of beeing a healer with a lot of speed. And im ok with that if the healpower itself is a lil weaker... But then pls make the spells cheaper from the mp-management. I heard we have to stand still when we put our bubble... Ehmm.. y? The other healer could use their one and can move. Standing still would be bad at bossfights. I like the cardbuffs but for me they r kinda short uptime. Ok we have that one buff for the buff...

[DontFindAName]

But that one has a Big cd. And our cardmechanics cd is very high for just rnd luck with cards. I think of u wanna put all healerjobs More together, give us equal groundskills like the bubble in their mechanic to usw and a buff for healpower (kinda sacrefice fairy or miracle(?)). One healer have a huge healoutput with hots and dmg// one got big shields and dmg// and one in between with weaker heals/shields but alot of mana and spellspeed with grp buffs but not that much dmg. AST is so dann Nice, pls just "repair" a few things.

[OpheliaHeartilly]

Also for dps in dungeons ive been using sch stance, putting stoneskin + aldo on tank before pull, then popping combust I/II, aero, then spamming gravity (malefic II for 1-2 mobs). The DoT alone does 480-580 a tic and Im only i130. Not sure it beats sch but I know it beats whm.

SCH isn't a stance. You mean cleric stance right? Adlo is unique to scholars... how are you using this as an AST? 10 minutes ago I was offended that you inferred I was a bad healer-- now I'm reading this and... well, I'm no longer offended. LOL.

[416to305]

My issue is the 45 seconds I think is too long. At the start of a pull I'm right on it. Then I find I'm either constantly waiting for it to come back up to draw a new card or because it's so long, I get into healing and then am like oh yeah the cards. I just wish they did something more obvious, not sure what though. Like I think of when the party is taking damage on multiple members, and you do a Medica II. It has a sweet effect and awesome sound effect hitting everyone and you see their HP beam right back up, so it's super satisfying. For me I KNOW that the Balance etc is being beneficial on the person I use it on, but I just find that because it's not so visible, it got boring pulling cards real quick. At first I was excited to see what I'd get, but now when I pull even the best cards like Balance, I don't find it all that exciting anymore especially since I seem to pull Ewer, Spear etc all the time.

My other thing is when I do trials as my WHM, sometimes when things get rough you're pumping out heals like crazy. I couldn't imagine actually pausing from that to pull a card just for the small benefit it gives.

[Brightshadow]

I agree the Astrologian is much weaker than the other healers; however, I think that all they need is some adjustments and they will blend in just fine with their peers in endgame/full parties. Here are skills/spells I think need adjustments as well as some adjustments that could really make this job great. I know probably some of this has been suggested but some of the ideas presented by other posters are great solutions that I wanted to support.

1.) Who is the Astrologian?
Astrologian currently suffers from an identity crisis because while cards are unique and decent their healing style is way too similar to the white mage, it feels like they used the white mage as a template for this new job. Something many of us have noticed is that they are fast casters so I think the healers should function like this.

White Mage: Burst Heals/Healing Overtime
Scholar: Protection/Pet Healer
Astrologian: Quick Heals/Support

Some suggestions to achieve this goal.
A.) Lightspeed: I think the spell could be the Astrologian answer to an emergency cure, but since it has that nasty negative effect it makes it super weak, so a easy solution for this skill is to completely remove the debuff, and make this their signature emergency heal skill. if its too powerful for area of effect spells just make the debuff apply only to AOE, problem solved.

2.) Offensive Spells
Here are some suggestion for a few offensive spells.

A.) Stella: Change the effect, heavy just isn't worth it and I feel gravity should have the heavy effect instead. Perhaps paralyze? (10s) with each additional cast lowering the duration by half.
-First Cast: 10s Duration
-Second Cast: 5s Duration
-Third Cast: 2.5s Duration
-Fourth and Up: Immune

B.) Gravity: Add an additional effect of heavy to the spell, I mean it's called gravity afterall.

C.) Malefic II: While damage is perfectly fine for this skill, I find it rather odd that for a job that seems to be about fate, and time that Astrologian doesn't have any skills that inflict slow. I think they should tag a weak additional slow to this ability that declines with each cast.
-First Cast: 10s
-Second Cast: 5s
-Third Cast: 2.5s
-Fourth and Up: Immune

3.) Cards of Fate
While many do not like the RNG of the cards for Astrologian I feel its a fundamental feature of the job, and if we were able to control the buff we wanted everyone would use arrow and balance so I don't believe we should have direct control on what buff we could use; however, cards do need a buff, and we should have ways of omitting certain cards like other have suggested here are things I think would help.

A.) New Card Effects: Some Cards are just not worth using compared to others, many people try to get only the balance and arrow, and sometimes bole for tanking. I think they should revamp some of the cards so players use them more often. Some cards also need new colors because 3 cards are blue its confusing.
The Spear: Allow it to work on abilities already used. (New Card Color: Silver)
The Ewer: Make the card a refresh + regain effect instead of lowering the cost of skills. (New Card Color: Purple)
The Spire: Merge both the MP and TP Reduction.

B.) Increase the Duration: The duration of the enhancements should be 30s because a 15s buff is just not long enough with the time necessary to get the enhancements we are looking for, and the recast of the cards is way too high but instead of lowering the recast I have another idea that someone suggested, but I want to go more indepth with it.

C.) Charges for Draw?: Like someone else said in this thread in FF11 the scholar job had a charge system for their personal enhancements which allowed them to use multiple tune-ups at the same time, while it was quite a complex system without seeing it in action I will try to explain how it could work. Astrologian would gain charges as they level up these charges share the same recharge time of the ability; however, after a certain amount of time a charge would reset allowing you to use the ability again. Meaning you could use 2 cards at the same time and while draw recharges you could use it again after recovering one charge or wait till the duration fully resets to use 2 cards again. Here is a visual.

-Level 30 (1 Charge): Can use 1 card every 30 seconds.
-Level 60 (2 Charges): Can use 2 cards every 30 seconds. (A charge resets after 15s)
-Level 90 (Future Theory) (3 Charges): Can use 3 cards every 30 seconds. (A charge resets after 10s)

4.) Additional Suggestions
Here are some additional suggestions.

A.) When Spread/Shuffle is used do not allow the card held, or shuffled to appear again until the card in spread is used, or the shuffle is complete.

B.) Benefic: Increase potency to 400 / Benefic II: Increase potency to 650.

C.) Nocturnal Sect: Allow the shields to stack with other shields, and change the healing potency increase to healing speed increased by 5% since the potency of benefic & benefic II is increased.

[Krixus]

SCH isn't a stance. You mean cleric stance right? Adlo is unique to scholars... how are you using this as an AST? 10 minutes ago I was offended that you inferred I was a bad healer-- now I'm reading this and... well, I'm no longer offended. LOL.

Nocturnal stance = sch stance, aldo = aspected benefit in nocturnal stance. Wasnt on the game and had forgetten the names, forgive me good sir.

[jars]

sch can't use selene? most of the schs in my fc use selene exclusively. I prefer eos

[LycorisSelunis]

It looks like SE is trying to make AST a mobile healer that focuses on quick heals at the cost of those heals being weaker. Unfortunately some of their skills seem to counteract this.... I think some of these changes would support the idea of a healer with weaker, cheaper spells.

Lightspeed- As is this skill is very difficult to justify using- it is too niche in it's uses and is the closest thing we could have to a burst healing tool but fits that very poorly. First off weakening the already less potent heals of the AST makes it a simply unsustainable cd to use as you will burn through too much mp for not much benefit. Secondly the instant cast speed does us little good if the GCD is not lowered as well- most cast times are at or less than the gcd as is making you not REALLY healing much faster, although you do gain mobility. This cd should both decrease mp costs of spells a bit to match the weaker potency and shave some time off the gcd. Perhaps 15% mp reduction and 1.0 off the gcd (I say a flat amount off the gcd as the spell gives a flat amount off your cast times as well. seems to make more sense if both follow the same line of thought) Also lower the potency reduction from 25% to 15%...No reason to act like it's cleric stance.

Shuffle- this spell should prevent you from drawing the same card twice. The whole flavor behind the spell when you get it certainly makes it sound like you should redraw the same card. In practice we use shuffle to remove an undesirable card and have slight control over our rng- getting the same card anyways makes that 'control' an illusion. Alternatively have shuffle, or if you allow a card to go un-used (time out) to reduce the cd on draw.

Collective Unconscious- This flies in the face of much of AST's toolkit. As a mobile class that does not even need to enter the fray for their aoe dps (holy/assize/miasma2 are self centered, gravity is not) why make them both get into melee range AND stay still without casting to get use out of this spell? It should be a ground targetable aoe like the spells it mimics. Nerf the potency if you must, to be weaker than whm/sch but this is just plain silly right now. I would rather a weaker spell than the self-centered spell that prevents me from being able to cast or move. I suppose being able to place it around self then move would be acceptable too.

Gravity/Stella- I agree with the above post about giving gravity heavy effect- it certainly makes sense, and stella some other effect (though idk about paralysis). Sidenote- anyone else find it funny that people playing AST prior to live in the press events and whatnot said they had a lot of weak aoe dps and yet they have one single aoe spell, that isn't weak at all?

While some other changes could be added as well I think it best to make less changes, or smaller changes, than doing too much at once for balance's sake. Make small adjustments and see how it goes before going too far in either direction. This is also why I don't have many card changes listed here-wanted to focus more on the other areas to see if they are just holding the cards back from being able to shine since they don't cover AST's weaknesses atm.

[DarkmoonVael]

S

It looks like SE is trying to make AST a mobile healer that focuses on quick heals at the cost of those heals being weaker. Unfortunately some of their skills seem to counteract this.... I think some of these changes would support the idea of a healer with weaker, cheaper spells.

Lightspeed- As is this skill is very difficult to justify using- it is too niche in it's uses and is the closest thing we could have to a burst healing tool but fits that very poorly. First off weakening the already less potent heals of the AST makes it a simply unsustainable cd to use as you will burn through too much mp for not much benefit. Secondly the instant cast speed does us little good if the GCD is not lowered as well- most cast times are at or less than the gcd as is making you not REALLY healing much faster, although you do gain mobility. This cd should both decrease mp costs of spells a bit to match the weaker potency and shave some time off the gcd. Perhaps 15% mp reduction and 1.0 off the gcd (I say a flat amount off the gcd as the spell gives a flat amount off your cast times as well. seems to make more sense if both follow the same line of thought) Also lower the potency reduction from 25% to 15%...No reason to act like it's cleric stance.

Shuffle- this spell should prevent you from drawing the same card twice. The whole flavor behind the spell when you get it certainly makes it sound like you should redraw the same card. In practice we use shuffle to remove an undesirable card and have slight control over our rng- getting the same card anyways makes that 'control' an illusion. Alternatively have shuffle, or if you allow a card to go un-used (time out) to reduce the cd on draw.

Collective Unconscious- This flies in the face of much of AST's toolkit. As a mobile class that does not even need to enter the fray for their aoe dps (holy/assize/miasma2 are self centered, gravity is not) why make them both get into melee range AND stay still without casting to get use out of this spell? It should be a ground targetable aoe like the spells it mimics. Nerf the potency if you must, to be weaker than whm/sch but this is just plain silly right now. I would rather a weaker spell than the self-centered spell that prevents me from being able to cast or move. I suppose being able to place it around self then move would be acceptable too.

Gravity/Stella- I agree with the above post about giving gravity heavy effect- it certainly makes sense, and stella some other effect (though idk about paralysis). Sidenote- anyone else find it funny that people playing AST prior to live in the press events and whatnot said they had a lot of weak aoe dps and yet they have one single aoe spell, that isn't weak at all?

While some other changes could be added as well I think it best to make less changes, or smaller changes, than doing too much at once for balance's sake. Make small adjustments and see how it goes before going too far in either direction. This is also why I don't have many card changes listed here-wanted to focus more on the other areas to see if they are just holding the cards back from being able to shine since they don't cover AST's weaknesses atm.

I agree with your thoughts on lightspeed to make it a more viable cooldown. It need that little bit more to it to make it a viable cooldown to be using, not just sitting there for that one time where it does turn out to to be of good use.

The other ability i have issues with on AST is the lvl 60 one, Celestial Opposition. It is very meh. Conceptually its powerful, an insta-cast oGCD AOE stun. Realistically, what we have is holy split into 2 parts: Gravity and Celestial Opposition. However neither part quite lives up to the sum of the whole. I suspect Celestial Opposition had some last minute changes, as it was always touted as being really powerful and had to be used properly. What we have is holy minus the damage. I wonder if it was originally meant to have the same effect of the enemy used one in the lvl 60 AST class, where it gave a unique debuff, potentially effecting those bosses that are immune to stun, silence etc.