Your thoughts on Astrolgian so far?

[fanservice]

Dignity is good, but i feel like it should be a 30 seconds cool down (why does our lustrate have to have a 40 second cooldown anyway? Scholars can essentially get a similiar spell three times in thirty seconds.). The cards are RNG beyond belief. I just love shuffling a spire into a spire and drawing a spire on the draw after that -_-. The abilities (all five of them) past 50 are garbage.

3 times a minute* with the possibility of dismissing the fairy for 3 more once every 3 minutes.

I have to admit, AST is functional, and the card buffs are strong, but the healing really is quite middle-of-the road. Their AOE healing is quite good though. Still beats SCH since they don't have to wait on CDs to do so with real potency (whispering dawn, indomitability, emergency tactics).

Not sure if AST is truly weak, or I'm forced to admit SCH is pretty much OP in every other regard that isn't AOE healing at this point. Even nerfed, lustrate ironically puts essential dignity to shame due to consistency (I estimate essential dignity to heal for 800 potency on a dangerously low target). Fire-and-forget AOE DOT dps, and their MP staying power is amazing as always between aetherflow, energy drain, and occasional free heals from fairy + lustrate.

[UOdhn]

-snip-

Yep, and meanwhile WHM gets assize for another 10% of their MP back every 90 seconds on top of shroud. All AST has is basically base shroud. We can use ewer on ourselves, but that's best placed on the BLM for extra fire casts. I dunno, AST seems weak in the MP-regen department (59 ast here, will see during the 60 dungeons).

[Xenos74]

I never had any issues with MP on AST until I started grinding the lvl 60 expert dungeons. Enemies seem to survive a ridiculous amount of time and it seems the tank is always randomly spiking. On anything more than 2 enemies, it's practically impossible for me to cleric stance and pop off a swiftcast Gravity +AoE stun without my tank dying or getting dangerously low. That's just trash enemies, the bosses stay alive even longer and with AoE dmg on top of the tank spikes, I can run through my MP extremely fast

I'm usually very good at using our "shroud" every 2mins but there's one or two bosses where I'll actually need to Ewer myself just to last till the end.

Anyways, I have the 170 globe and fairly decent i156 gear set that I'm stil, upgrading. I imagine my gear and the tanks in general will only improve vastly with time so perhaps these won't be issues anymore. Its just that those 2 instances are very demanding as a fresh 60 AST

[Seenth]

Got up to 59 on AST, really enjoying it. Such beautiful animations and it's all around a lot of fun to play. I haven't made up mind about the healing potency yet or how I feel about it's place in regards to the other healers. In 4 man content, it seems sufficient, and I've had few problems healing through any of the dungeons, even when tanks decide to pull an extra set of mobs. I do feel like I have to work a little harder, but the cards seem to balance that out (even if they are pretty rngish). Some of the cooldowns just baffle me though. I'm not sure what about Collective Unconscious justifies AST having to stand still. It's not that great of a cool down. Maybe if it had a much higher potency, or added shields with each regen tick.

[Nihility]

so far my problems i've found

the base healing spells benefic, benefic II, and helios have no reason to be weaker than counterparts. The Buffs from the sect stances don't seem to make up for it at all for some reason

lightspeed is basically just mobile casting at lower potency, but we already have aspected benefic. It's like a self nerf using it

essential dignity is a great spell but the other healers have a lot more than 1 emergency heal now

stella is completely pointless
astrologian damage seems to be completely pathetic in general too even among other healers

disable gets removed from the auto attacks monsters do while charging up the big attack you used it for

time dilation and celestial opposition only seem to work on card buffs making them super limited

collective unconscious requiring basically a self imposed stun to use makes it kind of useless. A well timed nocturnal sect one can be useful but other healers get to be precasting their aoe heal

card buffs while strong are so random you often get things useless to the situation repeatedly

[Yumi_umi]

Maybe its time for ppl to just accept tht we need to change how we play if there is an ast in the party.
2 years of having whm/ schs healing us = should not be treating asts as if they were whm or sch.
Imo tanks need to break tht "pull lots of mobs and aoe burst them down" habit and understand, until we overgear. Ast cannot handle the amount of heals needed for those big pulls.
Trying to dps as an ast during the huge pulls is like suicide cuz the dmg is just too much to stance damce and heal the tank in time.

If we could do the job as good as a whm or sch then y would u need a sch or whm?

[Parawill]

I've been level 60 for the past few days, and I can tell you that AST isn't very well suited for keeping up multiple targets, yet alone a single target, when faced off against burst damage combined with static constant damage. In situations where a strong DoT is applied, and the tank is getting trucked (most likely due to iLvL), I've been having little to no time removing debuffs as that one GCD was needed to keep the tank-up. Our main issue is that we have no reliable source of catching up on healing aside from Essential Dignity and that isn't even enough--even combined with a string of Benefic IIs.

I do understand it's most likely due to iLvLs, but when comparing AST to WHM & Scholars, especially for the first few weeks of end-game content (Alexander), our iLvLs will most likely be just the base, and AST skill set doesn't seem too reliable for that content. Just compare the level 60 skill set vs. the level 50 SCH and WHM skill set in T13. I do not think Astrologian will be able to fulfill a White Mage's spot without precasted heals nor a Scholars spot as their mitigation is very random and situational.

[1] Unreliable Buffs
Spread is our only means of holding onto important cards for key situations, but RNG can say otherwise. I've pulled 15 Spires in a row once with a full caster party. I think the tank was happy, but everyone else wasn't too happy.

[2] Lack of Boosting Heals & Catching Up in Healing
Essential Dignity is our only catch-up heal. Essentially it's our Benediction because that's literally the only emergency button we have. We have no Divine Seal, Fey Illumination, Rouse, Emergency Tactics, Assize, Asylum, Tetragramation... We don't have any of that. So if someone takes one too many RNG crits or eats too many avoidable damage, healing becomes heal. Synastry comes in handy at times, but it's on a two minute cooldown, a cooldown way too high for the amount of mistakes that can happen per 10 seconds.

[3] Aspected Helios
15 yalms. Not a Medica II.

[4] Collective Unconcious
Risky. Not a high-risk high reward skill. It's more of a high-risk, medicore heal or risky-sacred soil. If there are stacking megaflare mechanics that require a Sacred Soil and Succor and you are not marked, that Collective Unconcious is... well... blah.

[5] Expensive mana per HP.
Astrologians will not take the role of a White Mage for required burst heals. In encounters which do not need such burst heals, I can see Astrologians taking their place... Maybe.

In addition to all these negatives, the meta needs to change with how SE has changed a lot of things. With how high HP mobs have, how much damage is being taken, how AoEs got nerfed, how our iLvL is relatively low in comparison to content we're doing, large pulls and trying to ignore mechanics and let the healer power through everything is going to need to change.

On the other hand tho regarding the 6 drawn cards, is it possible that these seems underwhelming due to lack of communication?
Imagine a well oiled team where everybody's communicating via voice comms, as an AST you can announce which card you obtained, and who'll benefit most from that card.

I've been doing many FC runs (or with my raid group), and I've been squeezing rotations and optimal times for it. I check for TP stats and whatnots, and try to keep track of their buffs. In Bismarck Extreme, I hold offensive cards for burst, which makes a huge difference! Communication is very key for Astrologian, especially since our class is relative to divination, the art of forseeing the future.

One thing for sure though is that Astrologians trade off their own potencies by boosting the performance of other classes.

[Aphel]

Snip

It'll get better as you fill out your gear while grinding Laws. My gear's all ilvl 160 + 4 pieces of Law including weapon and as long as the tanks don't chain pull it's quite alright. Some nasty mobs will hit your tank/party hard no matter how high your ilvl is I suspect.

In Fractal Continuum 2 mobs are extremely dangerous: A flying Naga creature (forgot its full name) that will AOE your party for huge damage. That Iron Knight creature that will swipe your tank/party for HUGE damage after it has overpowered itself. This swipe took an ilvl 160 Pally from 100% to 20%, though I didn't check if he was using CDs or not.

In Neverreap there's also 2 mobs: Stinging bees that hit for a crapload of damage if not killed in time. Those Elbst (lizards with sharp teeth) that debuffs your tank with Vuln.

Prepare your best wombo combo (RRed Bole + Regen + Aspected Helios + Time Dilation + Opposition on tank) in anticipation for these mobs.

Yes it is very rough for a fresh 60 AST but once you're geared out it'll be fine. In Neverreap, the last boss had 50% health left and a DPS dropped off the platform. Since he couldn't be resurrected, we had to make do with 3 people. The fight took so long that the live DPS was able to LB 1 twice. We ended victorious with me still having ~40% mp. It would have been absolutely impossible if I was a fresh AST.

[Parawill]

Yes it is very rough for a fresh 60 AST but once you're geared out it'll be fine. In Neverreap, the last boss had 50% health left and a DPS dropped off the platform. Since he couldn't be resurrected, we had to make do with 3 people. The fight took so long that the live DPS was able to LB 1 twice. We ended victorious with me still having ~40% mp. It would have been absolutely impossible if I was a fresh AST.

I agree. I'm slightly behind you in gear progression, but after an extra run or two, my mana and healing comfortability has been pretty good. It's just when people start taking extra hits or avoidable damage that my mana starts tanking (eek!), but it's still manageable unless it's quite frequent to the point I'm required to turn my attention to healing DPS.

3 manning the final boss of Neverreap is fun though! A summoner got knocked off around 30%, so I didn't get to experience that fun double LB you got :P Yay for challenges!

[Kietsu]

I feel like some of these 'potencies are lower' comments belie the AST's healing power a bit. Diurnal Sect grants 5% Spell Speed, while Nocturnal Sect outright buffs the potencies by 5%. Nocturnal Helios is outright stronger than Medica, for example.
What Astrologian's healing really lacks, in my opinion, is a tool for situations with a huge amount of incoming DPS. White Mage gets Divine Seal, while Scholar gets Fey Illumination. The best we get for that situation is planning ahead and having a Bole + appropriate Royal Road handy.

Edit so I can respond to the above: High level healing gear appears to be forgoing accuracy in favour of piety all around. I suppose this is fine, but we'll see how the DPS checks are in Alexander soon.